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According to Andy Collins on LinkedIn, Wizards of the Coast laid off ~90% of the team working on their VTT. This is pretty wild to me. My impression has been that the virtual tabletop was the future of Dungeons & Dragons over at Hasbro. What do you think of this news?

I have been playing “D&D” since the early 80s. I had the red box, the wax pencil for my dice, the whole experience. I know I never really played by the rules because I was 10 or 11 when I started, but I didn’t care. It was awesome. I got into MSH/Faserip, Star Frontiers, and more. I played solo before it was cool. As the decades passed I played each new addition of D&D and since TTRPGs have exploded in popularity I have Kickstarted and picked up TONS of indie and third party games.

Unlike many I actually liked 4e but hated the massive power bloat and sky high ACs and HP. 5e was a nice compromise of crunch and simplicity. Still, I was always searching for something else.

Index Card RPG was a revelation for me. It opened my eyes two ways of playing Dungeons & Dragons that I hadn’t thought of. Basically it was permission to change the rules and make the game easier and faster which I was a fan of. It also made me search out some old school style games. I tried OSE but remembered I hated THAC0. Old Swords Reign was fine. I checked out Castles and Crusades and more. So when I heard about Shadowdark, which was heavily influenced by ICRPG’s creator, I jumped right in.

I KS’d the whole package, all the zines and the DM screen. I was excited about a faster and easier version of “D&D”. The enthusiasm faded as I looked at the classes and options and found them to be very bland and boring. The fact that mechanically you can’t make a fighter much different from every other fighter in the world was annoying. I wanted low HP I wanted fast combat but I also wanted to play an actual hero not a barely competent villager for three or four levels. The game is well-made for certain and seems to be well-loved, but I just cannot get excited to play the PCs. I REALLY wanted to like it but I’ve had the books for years now, I’ve made a few PCs, watched a hundred videos about how great it is and I still can’t get it to the table.

I’m frustrated and curious if anyone else has gone though this same experience? I keep going back to 5E with some homebrew. But every few weeks I stare at my Shadowdark stuff, wishing it had more to offer. Wondering what I’m not getting. I played old school D&D and I guess my tastes and preferences have grown up? I am not a min max’er at all, but I guess want neat things my PC gets to do. I don’t want to run from Goblins for 2-3 levels, I want to be a hero. Not a superhero, but someone that can do cool stuff. I feel like there just aren’t a lot of games in the gap between OSR and 5e/PF2e. I have ZERO desire to play past 7th-10th level in any RPG, but I want to enjoy 1st-3rd.

I'm mainly a DnD 5e player, but I've branched out to other things, and love Shadowrun/Cyberpunk RED/Delta Green as well. However lately I've been looking for more games to try out with my group, here's what I'm looking for and my problems:

I want a game (ideally medieval fantasy adjacent, but anything goes) that does the following:

1. Has some kind of grid or mini based combat
2. Is more narrative friendly than 5e/Pathfinder and rewards more RP or Exploration etc...
3. Combat is less grindy/difficult than 5e (Not necessarily rules light but ideally avoiding 2-3 hour long combats)
4. Lends itself to cool narrative moments, flavorful actions, mechanics related to non-combat stuff (xp for traveling or RP encounters, etc...)
5. Is NOT player facing. Don't know if that's the correct term, but whenever I've seen someone ask about a more "narrative" game everyone recommends PbtA games, which is decidedly not what I want. I want an experience that still has that GM / Player divide, where the GM sets the story and players don't have to improv scenes or new characters into the world on the fly

Overall I really like the Idea of PbtA but every one of those RPGs lose me when the players have to come up with characters, scenes, etc... on the fly, that is very much not what my group and I want, we still want a similar experience to DnD where the GM narrates almost everything, the players only really have agency over their own actions not the world itself.

Games that have called my attention so far based on that is stuff like Dragonbane, Tales from the Loop, Draw Steel (MCDM RPG), Pendragon, and Daggerheart. However several of those are not fully out yet, so my question is, are there any other games you could recommend along those lines based on the above?

For the GMs, what's the largest gaming group you've ever ran? What were the challenges? What were the high points? What's the largest you would ever run?

For the players, boat anchor characters are NPCs or PCs that require regular effort and energy from the party to protect- for example having a young child in the party's care. How do you feel about boat anchor characters? Are they annoying? Do you enjoy them? Does it make a difference if the character is an NPC vs a PC?

I’m curious about the thoughts on Black Powder and Brimstone from those that have played it.

— how does it depart from MORK BORG if at all? — is it more or less a campaign setting? — positive experience when you played?

I’m a big fan of most of Free Leagues stuff and close it picking it up. I could use a push one way or another. Thanks.

Let's get down and dirty here. Let's talk logistics. For those of you here that run or play in games heavily dependent on grid-based tactical combat, what are your tools and methods? By which I mean:

Do you run grid based combat online or IRL?
If online, what VTT do you use?
If IRL, what battle mat do you use?
If IRL, how much table space do you have? How do you balance space needed for the map/minis vs all of the other miscellaneous junk (dice, character sheets, snack, drinks, etc)?
Do you create the map during pre-session prep, or draw it at the table?
How long does at-the table setup take? Laying out the map, positioning minis, etc.
Do you use "fog of war"? If so, how?
How often do you use pre-written adventures/modules vs homemade?
How long does it typically take you to prep?
How long does it typically take the combat to play out?
Do you provide players with minis or expect them to bring their own?

As the title says. Do you really do that? or do you use some app? Does it slows down the game, i mean, when you roll physical dice?

Hey folks,

A few months ago I got into Troika!. It's a fun system, very lightweight OSR thingy (my first contact with OSR actually, so a nice way to get into it), and the "making the lore up as you go" philosophy along with the strong weird science-fantasy vibe made the game feel really unique to play.

Troika has no official lore, only snippets you and your table glue together as you go. Over time, the snippets combined into a campaign pitch: The players have an aether-faring vessel, but are stuck in a region of space because of a powerful space dragon (details To Be Worked On™). I then read a good chunk of the AD&D spelljammer books for inspiration, and yeah, that is really the vibe I'm going for.

Now, my problem is that I am no longer sure I want to do that campaign in Troika. I envision a game with a little bit of a heroic/epic feel (alongside the usual comedy that so many games usually devolve into) that I am not 100% sure Troika is suited for. My two gripes are a) I still have trouble running OSR games, they are not intuitive to me eg. I am afraid to kill player characters and I don't know how much/if I should help them for numerical progress; and b) Troika is designed with very simple, chaotic combat in mind, whereas I actually enjoy a bit more tactics. If I do run it in Troika, It's likely I will stitch together a simple ship tactical combat system from old spelljammer stuff and some troika community resources, but I don't know if I should also want more tactical combat for player combats.

So I guess my question is, do you think Troika is a system suited for that sort of stuff? If so, How do I handle longer campaigns in OSR-style games, where death is supposedly always on the table, but characters are still supposed to progress? And if not, what system would be better suited for that sort of campaign? (I prefer avoiding D&D 5e, as I am not a big fan of the system)

All of the books have been pulled from Drive-Thru and there's no mention of the game at all on Lightspress's website. It seems like a licensing issue, but I don't know what license that would be. Anybody know what happened?

Hey everyone,

I’m on the hunt for some great Substack blogs that focus on tabletop RPGs (TTRPGs). I’m especially interested in blogs that dive into game design, world-building, GM advice, indie RPGs, or deep dives into RPG theory. Bonus points if the writing is engaging and offers unique perspectives or tools I can bring to my table.

Do you follow any TTRPG-related Substacks that you’d highly recommend? Whether it’s well-known or a hidden gem, I’d love to check it out!

Thanks in advance!

Hallo mein Name ist LordJoye,

ich habe nach langem beschlossen mein eigenes Regelwerk zu veröffentlichen. Dazu würde ich aber vorher mir eine generelle Meinung holen bevor ich es komplett veröffentliche.
Persönlich leite ich grade eine Gruppe mit diesem Regelwerk und arbeite es weiter aus.

Damit ihr dieses Regelwerk ausprobieren könnt habe ich mein erstes kleines Modul zusammen gebastelt.
Hinweis: Das Regelwerk in diesem Modul ist aufs anwendbare reduziert worden.
(Handwerk, 2 Zauberstufen und einige andere Sachen wurden entfernt)

Es kann sein dass manche Sachen unbalanciert da das Regelwerk noch in Entwicklung ist.

Ich freue mich über positives Feedback und konstruktive Kritik.

Link zum Modul:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l5365x6gbtnrz2gdqgr60/Kantkaruna_modul.zip?rlkey=54w5l4jc1janvej1f6qje56aj&st=w3b468vu&dl=0