**Come here and talk about anything!**

This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on r/rpg.

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

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Hello all, I've been GMing for about 7 years (mainly dnd but recently branched off into Lancer, Pathfinder, Draw Steel and Fabula Ultima).

I recently started looking into Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulu, and suddenly realized that my catalogue of systems doesn't have as much variety as I would have hoped. I think I have Fantasy covered but I was wondering if you all have some recommendations on some systems to try so I can cover a wider range of interests and skills!

Basically like an Infinity Gauntlet of systems so I can do anything, anywhere for anyone? Haha I recognize this may be impossible but I'm always eager to learn more about systems outside my comfort zone.

I'm working on a horror setting for Savage Worlds that takes place in the early 70s, but *specifically* before the gas crisis of 1973. While I've been working on the game, I've also been looking at the prices of everyday things, which companies existed at the time, catalogs from department stores for the past couple years, which books were already written by then, etc. I've been planning on making a guidebook for players so they know this information too so they could be immersed in that specific time period. I'm nervous about the logistics of placing my game in a specific year range like this, and I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar. How did it go? Could players mostly stick to things within that time and before, or was it really difficult? Did being in that range not really matter as much as I've been worried about?

I'm not a GM but I want to be the. The problem aside from time consumment from my job and college is that my friends are scared of the idea of skill based games and improving their skills little by little (a lot of them they don't find particularly useful) as they like more pulpy fantasy.

I've explained to them that a game such as Mythras can handle pulpy fantasy very well with paragon character creation rules. But they are scared of the idea of combat (as I once famously said in our group chat: "in Mythras even a 'trash fight' with bunch of goblins will be remembered as a heroic quest" something i came to regret saying)

Now I know what you guys are thinking "well maybe this isn't the right genre for your group" and you'll be right in saying that and that's why I usually play such games solo but let's just say I can have them for a oneshot regardless of the game and I think that's my opportunity to introduce them with such systems

Provided I can bring an entertaining enough session that is faster and more heroic then they normally assume.

(Also before going further I want to point out that I got the name 'sim-light' from yet to be released broken empires rpg so I'm well aware of that but that 600 or so pages of manuscript makes my commitment more of a problem than my players lol)

Here are the things I'm looking for:

Fantasy (any kind)

Less crunch and book keeping from the player side at least

Faster progression than it's usually done

Heroic feeling

Fast and brutal combat so I can show the immediate differences with something like pathfinder 2e (preferably with gridless theatre of mind so something like harnmaster is out of question)

. that is descriptive (like mythras)

.while also not being so deadly (so characters can in be incapacitated before dying)

.hit locations are not necessary but are welcome if they handle it as easy as broken empires (as far as I'm aware of it anyhow)

(I know so far ended up describing mythras and for good reason because that is my favorite game of all time)

.That uses something "less intimidating" than a percentile system for its skills

Thanks for reading so far and thanks in advance!

Edit: also I'm already eyeing one particular system which is dominion rules that uses a 12 sided die in its skill based format do you think that one fits ?

I have not used GURPS since 3rd edition in the late 90s. I recently brought up GURPS to some of the players at my table and one of them said the new GURPS book is totally worth picking up.

What do people think of the 4th ed revised book, other than it can be a deadly weapon?

I haven't seen anything here discussion Blackmoor week. Are you doing anything to celebrate?

Blackmoor week is around Dave Arneson's birthday each year (October 1st). A good time to celebrate the group who created roleplaying games together.

I always make a point to reach out to old gaming buddies, and work on some game design. I also run a sale on the two RPG marketplaces I run.

Maybe this weekend I'll re-read some of "Blackmoor Foundations."

For years my narrative online games lived in Miro, or Figma: a background picture, some character cards, Fate aspects scribbled all over, art from Pinterest etc. Quick and messy, and everyone could draw on the table.

I also own Foundry and I like the dice and music there, but prepping a game in it always felt like paperwork. Modal windows with 35 fields just to type in some text? D'oh.

So I made two free modules: a whiteboard on top of the Foundry canvas (works with any system), and a Fate character card that lives on it. You click a skill and it rolls etc. It's very visible and quite compact.

Links will be in the comments.

How do you all do visuals for narrative games online? Anyone else using online whiteboards - Miro, Figma, Holst - or you lean to Rodeo, Foundry, Roll20?

Polaris is interesting. At the Utmost North a kingdom of ice and beauty lies in shambles. For what was eternally pure, magnificent and good has been gnawed and melted by the Mistake. What was the Mistake, whether the obsession with the sun that started rising in the East and the sacrilegious sacrifices that were made for it or a simple adultery is now a myth, but now beasts and demons roam the land, possess the weak of heart and the light of the incandescent globe in the sky drives people to madness. In the spring, they sit mesmerized by it, looking from a special window, unmoving, for example. The affairs of the kingdom have grown to a stall. The Knights of the Order of Stars are sworn to fight the Mistake. But this is a tragedy and each knight will succumb to either the wounds of combat or to the treachery of the mind as they join the enemy.

Mechanically , there are three major distinctions.

Polaris is a GMless 4 player game where people take up roles respective of where they are seated at the table in relation to the others. The Mistaken, the antagonist to the Heart, the protagonist, sits at the opposite end. On their sides sit the New Moon and Full Moon, again, opposites, pertaining to the feminine and masculine elements, to the close relationships and institutional elements the knights upholds to. Thus the people who are your Moons, are the Heart and Mistaken to each other. People always sit at the table in the same place as the game starts and you can see how this positions wane from one to the next by table order. The Moons play minor NPCs and act as jury.

Next, the game is a ritual that doubles as a negotiation. It starts and ends with formalized key phrases and ends with them. "Long ago people were dying at the end of the world" introduces the somber tone each time. "But hope was not lost for Character_name still heard the song of the stars." introduces a character for the first time in a session. "And so it was", finally starts the scene. The session end with another key phrase.

But ritual phrases are everywhere, most of all the negotiations. In Polaris, you learn to ask too much and negotiate down. Unlike other games where the defeat of a demon is an exercise of wits, here you lay a claim about your action and your opposition has the role of negotiating the terms down to something softer or where both partners of the dance or fight get hurt.

I could follow the trail of my missing sister but only if a demon in the shape of a monstrous dog was hunting me and attacked me. I allowed it but only if there was a thorn in his paw that caused his to lash out. The negotiation continued, my character got hurt, but in response, I was able to remove the thorn which revealed that it was in fact a possessed direwolf, which was added as an asset to my Blessings as a companion. What in another game would have been cliche, here was intense, because of the collaboratively adversarial nature of the game.

Later, the Heart to which I was the Mistaken was looking for another missing person (look, it's complicated) and I, as the Princess of Spring, a demon who lays a flower trail where she walked, lead him both true and false to the nest of a demon bird with an egg in it. In our negotiation, I was clumsy with the rules, that's fair, but we dealt with three things.

First, the knight would be knocked out but manage to make the bird demon flee and injure the Princess by cutting her sinister hand only for her to escape. Next, the egg would be about to hatch a half-demon half-human fiend who is actually the person he is looking for, but transformed. More negotiations later and it was revealed that what could turn her back was her only one true love and to this the Heart bargained that the one true love was him.

There were times were other phrases were used. I told my Mistaken that he asked too much when for breaking the lyre of a musician that praised the sun he said that in the altercation I would get bashed and a string would cut across my throat. I worried, that would not allowed for me to sing any longer, so I negotiated that my sword arm got hurt instead. Making such bold statements is not a mistake. This is how the rules work. If you don't dare to ask what could be too much, it would lead to a boring game. That is why "It shall not come to pass" and "It was not meant to be" can be used. Although, fair enough, our group liked getting loads of consequences.

Once the negotiation is over, you finish with "And this is how it happened."

But fair enough the gameplay is as of now at session two still somewhat clumsy. We scrambled through our cheat sheet to look for our counter phrases and our group kept forgetting the phrase we were supposed to start the scene with somehow (Idk why this was a thing. I've played Ten Candles with a group that nailed the ritualistic elements perfectly). I also had the problem of asking a set of actions that needed to be negotiated in succession instead of asking for one action, waiting for resolution and then continuing to the next.

We were somewhat confused about how to do scenes with two knights in them and we have avoided them until we will get more familiar. We were also checking the rules a lot to see if the player needed to roll for experience after a scene (the only instance where dice were used). The game uses three stats of which, for new knights Zeal, which goes down as their prowess in the rest increases is most interesting for narrative purposes.

Another problem I had, I didn't know when I should interject as the Moon and if we could create appropriate minor NPCs if they were needed and none of the ones we already had on sheets were useful. At one point they made so much sense, that another player nudged me to create a group of squires, because they were mentioned in the scene, but no one was playing them.

All in all, I am still very excited to play some more as we grow into the game and I feel that if I ever get a second campaign going this would be going so much better, because in that case, there would be a veteran player. Right now we are all newbs and most of us have an OSR/NSR background.

I am surprised that Polaris never created any offshoots and lies as an experiment that is very different from the GMless games that we are familiar now such as Microscope, The Quiet Year or Belonging outside Belonging.

Welcome one and all to a post where we can freely discuss the games that we have released or the games that we are making. Stop on by and maybe you'll find your new favourite RPG!

A bunch of us make cool shit, but the Indie RPG space is crowded and it can often be difficult to get the word out about why people should try out your game. That's why every week we try to focus on a different mechanic or setting to see how new RPGs can solve decades old problems or put new spins on old greivances!

Can't find the perfect mix of setting and system? Is Pathfinder hampering your ability to play a sentient table? Perhaps a universal system is the right cure for your ails! Whether simulationist or narrativ , come tell us how your game (or just any game you really like) tackles being Universal!

Thank you u/Kiliantill, for the suggestion!

As per mod approval, comments here do not count against the Self-Promotion rule (rule 7) - comment as much as you want, answer as many questions as you need and discuss to your hearts content!

All that I would ask is that anyone who comments about their own system takes the time to look at the minimum at one other game in the comments and ask a question or provide feedback. Lively discussions are what get people interested and what keep people engaged!

Last week was "Cyberpunk" and we got some pretty interesting discussions going!

If you want to suggest a topic for future weeks, be sure to include "suggestion" in your comment so I can easily find it!

Hey everyone,

I just started a world-building project for school and I’m creating a magic system where artistic creation can manifest into the physical world, drawings coming to life, painted objects becoming real, sculptures gaining animation, etc. My main inspirations were Kanjuro from One Piece and Pictomancers from Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve looked into the trope a bit and found a couple of other examples I like, but every time I search, it seems to surface the same handful of characters/systems. I’m posting this in a few larger subreddits, hoping people know of more examples (books, games, anime, movies, tabletop systems, whatever). Any recommendations would be really appreciated.

This week's RPG is Barbarians of Lemuria!

Have you played it? Have you run/GM'd it? How did it go?

What's your favourite memory from the game?

What's the best thing about the game?

What's the worst? How would you improve it?

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Last week was Triangle Agency. Join us again next week for Ars Magicka!

I'm planning a scifi heist one-shot next weekend and I'm stuck on picking a system. I was leaning towards Scum and Villainy, but I'm having a dilemma. My players don't have a lot of experience with ttrpgs outside of power fantasy. Reading through it, so far I like a lot of the mechanics of Scum and Villainy but I worry my players will dislike rolling 4-5 for a partial success and 6 for a full success. I've heard that BitD systems are more punishing than dnd/pathfinder and I'm concerned that my players won't enjoy that. I was toying around with the idea of adjusting the success rates: 1-2 fails, 3-4 gives a partial success, and 5-6 gives a full success. But God I'm so undecided. Games need failure. When done right it drives the story forward, creates interesting story beats, and makes successes all the more satisfying.

So I'm looking for advice here, especially from people with experience in a BitD system. How often did you/your players succeed, get partial successes, and flat out fail? Would it have lessened the fun or taken from the experience if you succeeded more often and had less complications? Should I just choose a different system altogether, something less punishing? If so - any rules light scifi systems you'd recommend?