**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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.

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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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This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

So I recently had to take a little break from this sub, for entirely valid reasons. And over that time, I realized, how much I'm letting the constant negativity, both in RPG spaces and in a lot of other places in my life, get to me in ways that are not super Duper healthy, and I don't like that so much. I know how to seek out and engage with the negativity, I have no problem doing that, but where do I find the people who aren't getting into that mud, who focus on positivity, on uplifting people? Who's making fun good faith reviews, who's telling uplifting stories, who's just living and breathing the joy of this hobby? Because I need those folks and I don't know where they are

Im wanting to GM a game in a world inspired by x-com 2 but have no clue where to start system wise. Ive looked up sci fi/universal systems and got so overwhelmed on where to start. Im looking for something not too complex/easy to learn with a combat system thats not necessarily deadly but would encourage players to play carefully. Any direction you could point me in would be helpful!

Edit: I realize the tone of the game i want to run is similar to andor season 2 with the building of a resistance to the alien forces.

My mate spends 10 minutes after every session reflecting on how the game went and what he can do better next time round. He makes notes and makes sure to incorporate the ideas next time.

I love his approach to becoming a better DM and believe it can work as a player too. AS such I have started doing some reflection myself.

My question is, do any of you do anything similar, and if so how do you structure this reflection?

Daniel Estes 1971 - 2025

Daniel Estes was different. He had learning challenges that no one understood or knew how to address. By the time he reached fourth grade he had mastered few of the requisite skills of reading, writing or mathematics and there were behavioral issues. It was obvious that his needs were not being met. It had become apparent that some drastic intervention was needed in order to turn the situation around.

I had written “Return to Brookmere,” the first of what would become the Endless Quest series for TSR (the company that created Dungeons and Dragons) on my own time. I traded the rights to the book to TSR in return for them endowing a scholarship for Daniel so that he could attend a school that would address his educational needs. I chose the Hillside School in Marlborough, MA and it would shape the person Daniel would become. Aside from class room sizes of 6-7 students, which provided a great deal of individual attention, his life was given structure. Hillside’s values were those of “compassion, determination, honesty, respect and empathy. Boys were taught to look beyond themselves and to recognize excellence in others. These qualities took root firmly and would come to define him.

By the time he returned to Lake Geneva and entered high school, he was greatly changed. He was focused and had become outgoing, confident and a leader. His learning challenges still existed but he fought through them graduated from high school and enrolled in the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He powered through his learning difficulties and ultimately graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a teaching certificate. Throughout his career he focused on and specialized in working with those who had learning challenges of their own. He learned Braille and taught and mentored a blind student from middle school through graduation and even beyond.

Several years ago, Daniel created an Instagram account called Return to Brookmere. A celebration of me, his mother and my books where he read the books aloud with group participation and created books and art with his followers. Following his death in September of 2025 from an incurable liver cancer, I was contacted by a great many people who told me that he had been their friend during a crisis in their lives and helped them weather the storm. I also heard from a great many of his followers who told me of being encouraged and mentored by Daniel as they struggled to bring their words, art and game designs to fruition. This was done quietly, privately.

If Daniel believed in something, someone, he committed his whole being into supporting those efforts. Hillside’s core values had become his own, compassion, determination, honesty, respect and empathy were words that defined him. He is greatly missed by those whose lives he touched.

For more information write: [DanielEstesFoundation@gmail.com](mailto:DanielEstesFoundation@gmail.com)

Hello again! After getting help with finding stats for weapons and exotic ammo, i need some help once again. Namely, after getting the storyteller screen for WTA 20th i was a little disappointed it lacked some things i think would be useful (regen per turn, lacking melee maneuvers (MrGones sheet did have those thank goodness, their stuff is amazing!) and other player useful things)). Now is there anything like that? And if earlier editions are compatible (note i am very new to WoD coming from CofD) with minimal changes, where can those be found?

A few months ago I asked here for advice on if people would be upset with me (I have anxiety what can I say) if I made my goofy 1990's cyberpunk zines Dead Halt and Grum Hall free, when lots of people had already bought them.

My main thought was that making them free would feel crappy for those folks that purchased the pdf. The comments were mostly "You're overthinking it"

You all were very right!

I made all the PDF's from my now almost 7 years of content free, and the only thing I got back was positivity, and outpouring support, and ironically, more sales. (On Itch.io's pay what you want). Another huge boon is I don't have to worry about it anymore. I get to focus on making the physical books pretty and selling those, and if someone wants to play the game I don't have to tell them to buy it, they can grab it and print and play if needed. That feels really good.

I got into all this because I wanted to make things that my friends wanted to play, and I wanted more friends to play with. After making the games free I started getting lots more folks joining our Discord to try and find games, chatting, and even helping making adventures for other people to play in their games. It's really felt special and I have no regrets from the decision.

Not only that, but I was able to get lots of feedback on Grum Hall and used it as a playtest to develop the game further and make changes without feeling too stressed about sending out new PDF codes, or sending codes with the physical book. It's free right on the website for anyone.

Lastly, I was printing out Grum Hall at home and binding it and all that, and so many people (lots who got the game for free) wanted pretty physical copies that I decided to launch a Zinequest project for pretty physical copies. Its funded well over in the first few days, even with the free pdf there right on the top of the page.

Thats it, thank you all in this sub for your insight, and maybe this helps as a point for others that are tiny creators like me in the future. I don't think everyone should give away everything they work hard on for free, but it worked for me to lessen my stress and build the community I wanted more than anything.

Long story short; if you're a nervous-nelly like me maybe make your digital work free, it may both build your community and paradoxically fund your project.

Got into doing a Gundam conversion for Mekton Zeta with some friends and while I really like it, the challenge of statting out a bunch of different mechs is incredibly daunting and I'm wanting to shoot for something that's not big on crunching or statting everything out, but flexible enough to let the players experience fighting a lot of different things or have a lot of freedom in how they want to play.

I never got much chance to actually play in them, but I've always thought that the "Living" organized play campaigns that were in vogue in the 2000s and 2010s were theoretically interesting. I'm thinking here of campaigns like the RPGA's Living Greyhawk and Living Force campaigns, which attempted to create a consistent campaign setting that was shared by many players participating in games at conventions, game stores, and at home. This sometimes led to issues with record-keeping - I know that Living Greyhawk was sometimes nicknamed "Living Accounting" - and it seems like organized play in general has gone out of fashion except for some holdouts like the Pathfinder Society.

If anyone has links to some interesting blog posts or other writing about this style of campaign, how it influenced game design or play culture or anything like that, I'd love to see them!

Sorry if this is a weird request but I want to homebrew a system using narrative style contested rolls (CAIN, VtM, etc) while still giving the monster a turn with turn based combat (DND, Pathfinder, etc)

How do you guys prep for upcoming sessions? Is it a focus task over 10 minutes to four hours? Do you note snippets of inspiration that strike you between sessions? Do you have a fixed day in the week set aside for this?

For my part, sessions tend to last into late hours, so I'm usually too exhausted to start prepping close to my last session. I usually take the opportunity and reflect shortly before the next session to refresh my memory and try to note down bigger background events when inspiration strikes.

Been in a couple of situations lately where people have used either Google's AI search or ChatGPT to try to reference RPG rules. These summaries can sound very convincing and even seem to provide page numbers or other citations, but in reality they're just as liable to hallucinations as any other AI (and in my own recent anecdotal experience, got things significantly wrong in each case).

If you're trying to play or quote things as-written, please refer to the original text, not AI summaries.