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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.

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

I know a weird question. I have some ttrpgs set out to play, but i have a lot of deadtimes at work, which i fill by reading new systems (and if they look fun to run i end up filing them in the list of campaigns i run over the summer). What are some ttrpgs that are interesting reads in terms of artwork, unique mechanics, ext?

Series Ive already run/read:

Loved:

Mythic Bastionlands

Without number systems

Monster of the week

Cyberpunk red/2020

Deadlands

Enjoyed:

Pathfinder 1e/2e

Knave

Pendragon

ADND 1/2e

Draw Steel

Call of cthulu

Disliked:

Lancer

Daggerheart

Dnd 4e/5e

Orbital Blues

Shadowrun

Hello everyone,

I’d like to share an extremely frustrating encounter that my fellow players and I experienced during a Deadlands session.

We started the campaign not long ago , we’re about six sessions in, and so far everything had been going really well. The group has great chemistry, the GM does a good job improvising and adapting to our actions, and overall we’ve been having a lot of fun.

Right now, we’re in a kind of sandbox phase, trying to figure out the source of a mysterious evil affecting a town.

For the past few days, the GM had been teasing me about introducing a “rival” , a recurring character who would evolve and cross our path throughout the campaign. On paper, I thought it was a really cool idea.

But things went off the rails during yesterday’s session.

We’re a group of four seasoned characters. The game’s ranks go from Novice → Seasoned → Veteran → Heroic → Legendary, with 4 advances per rank. We’re just at the very beginning of Seasoned.

We had just finished fighting a group of eight bandits, and while we won, we had already taken some damage.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a man shows up to claim the bounty on one of our party members. Combat start and we get absolutely DESTROYED.

This character was completely over the top: a highly skilled gunslinger with a very high chance to hit, four bennies, and on top of that, a spellcaster capable of doing basically everything , despite not belonging to any specific arcane background (not a huckster, not chi-based, not a sorcerer, etc.).

He had five wounds, a toughness of 14, a natural -4 penalty to be hit, 30 power points, could heal himself, and had access to some of the most powerful spells in the game.

The fight was entirely one-sided. Two party members died, and the GM seemed quite proud of the encounter.

After the session, I asked to see the character sheet. It had 36 advances… meaning Legendary +16.

He then told us that the outcome was due to our bad dice rolls.

Honestly, I find that hard to accept given the massive power gap , the character felt on par with a Judge.

At this point, I’m seriously considering leaving the game.

EDIT : We tried other approaches, like talking or fleeing, but the GM used his bennies (like luck tokens) to basically say, “No, you actually fail your roll” or “You can’t do that.”

Design director of Draw Steel James Introcaso just posted this video overviewing MCDM's next RPG.

Crows is a dungeon crawling post apocalyptic fantasy RPG inspired by games like Shadowdark, Knave, Troika!, and Mausritter. It uses Draw Steel's power roll system, but other than that is very distinct from that heroic game, instead focusing on a gritty survival fantasy with original horror monsters designed to be named by the players.

The game will be classless with most power coming from tools found in the dungeon rather than the XP you get from grabbing treasure. Usage dice will moderate item and spell power with realtime 30 minute dungeon turns potentially triggering random encounters or torches going out. PC's are expected to die often, but not all progress is lost as there is some meta progression in the game's town based on what treasures (or corpses) you can bring back... assuming you survive the overland travel and don't get lost.

More details can also be found in this free post on the MCDM Patreon and the BackerKit for this RPG will launch on Tuesday August 4th.

This is long, and extremely whiny, but maybe it'll help with context. I'll add in a tldr, of course.

I was planning to run VTM because a friend of a friend really wanted me to, and I love WoD. I got together them, a friend who's been a regular player of mine, and another friend of hers together. They took... forever to organise characters, read up on literally anything (two of them are new to WoD), or even do anything at all. About 6+ weeks of nothing, even though I and the first player offered to help constantly.

It kinda killed my motivation a lot. I struggle sometimes with feeling less motivated if my players aren't putting in the same amount of effort I do, and it really made it difficutl for me to want to run for them. Then, around the same time, some irl events have made things quite difficult to me.

But, eventually, after bugging them over and over and over and over we finally had a session 0, finally had their sheets made, and ready. Now it's all on me. And I don't know if I have the energy or motivation.

I have to set up the vtt, write the session plan, NPCs, get it all together, and... I just don't know if I can. I'm dreading the idea of future sessions, I feel like my first session plan is awful, one player is way more knowledgeable about VTM than me, who's quite rusty in comparison so I feel like I won't live up to expectations, I feel really frustrated they didn't seem to want to do the bare minimum when I have a ton of prep to do. Add in all the irl stuff too, and I just don't know if I have it in me.

But I have no idea how to say this. They FINALLY got excited for the idea more than a few weeks after I was, clearly want to do it, but I don't know. I hate the idea of making a bad impression on the other two as they're lovely people and I don't want them to hate me for being such a flaky DM. But at the same time... I just don't know. I feel so guilty over the idea of it, and I'm kinda lost. It doesn't help in my other game, my players are extremely unreliable with times which has me feeling iffy too.

TLDR: Lost motivation to run VTM for a friend and two of her friends after a session 0. Feeling extremely guilty over it. Has anyone else ever done this, maybe why, and how did it go for you?

This is going to mostly be a rant, I guess. If you are reading this and are a player, please: be more respectful of your GM.

I am going to attract a lot of hate and say that, yes: you probably need to hear this.

I have been a forever GM for various games and I love it. I love reading about new RPGs, new adventures or campaigns, and I do genuinely prefer being a GM than a player.

But I am tired…I am really tired of players being generally disrespectful of my time. And I know it is not every single players, but in my experience it has certainly been every single group.

Let me be extremely clear. I understand playing RPG is a hobby, but if you say you are interested in playing, YOU FIND THE TIME!!

Yes, I said it…players need to do BETTER and be more COMMITTED. I am tired of players not answering online polls that I set up to decide when to play: this is not work! I don’t want to chase you down to fill a fricking poll!! I am tired of opening these polls and see that in whole months, not a single day has been picked by all players at the same time. I am sorry, but this is impossible: I am married with kids and I am the GM and I am somehow always the flexible one: what is your excuse? We are all busy, but you just have to come and play: I did find the time to prepare the game! What is your excuse? Too tired to sit down on a couch for an evening??? And I am tired of people canceling en-masse an agreed-upon game night!! Even on play-by-post, I am tired of people saying “I don’t have the time”. This is insanely ridiculous!!! Just read the post I have written and answer it, it only takes 30 min TOPS!! You can set aside 30 minutes every 4 days to do that…yes you can!!

And surprise surprise! The players that don’t have this problem…are GM themselves!!! Shocker!!

Players: you have to understand that GMs are putting a lot of time and love into the games you play. And you have to understand that the gaming session is fun for us too. That is our play time too, ever thought of that? Probably not. So if you cancel last minute, the GM too doesn’t get to play. And they are the most invested in the game, so it sucks for them more than for you.

I know it s not every single one of you, but I am afraid it is most of the players. And I know you are going to tell me: “talk to your players, blah blah” been there, done that. I am simply afraid that, overall as a category, rpg players need to GROW UP!

ok…sorry…I will take my ban for life now…

Anyone have experience running or playing it? I’m on the fence whether I think it’s amazing or a gimmick. Would love some actual player and GM feedback.

I'm trying to remember the name if a game I found a while back.

It's an entirely free system with all the rules hosted on its website with an urban fantasy setting that personally reminded me a lot of The Secret World.

I remember the heart of the gameplay loop is that players are in a sort of magical super power gig economy, where characters go on missions for powerful patrons that grant them new powers, and there was a system for generating new powers.

Part of the goal of the game seemed to be that you could take the same character to any table and as long as their powers were created using the system correctly it would be balanced and you'd be ready to go. It seemed designed for black marches style games with players rotating in and out.

Thanks in advance!

Us history nerds sometimes come across fun little facts that may come in handy when constructing scenarios. Here are a few of mine:

• Modern wheat grows to about waist-high, but before the Green Revolution it tended to grow six or seven feet high. Good to know in case someone (or something) wants to hide in a wheat field, perhaps to approach the barn where the PCs are resting.

• Napoleon Bonaparte introduced a system of semaphore flags to spread information of prices at the Parisian market to the rest of France. This form of communication fell under the purview of the army and codes were kept extremely secret. Still, some clever merchants would make a killing by bribing officers and getting information on prize changes before they could be transmitted to the general public. Optical telegraphs in general are pretty fascinating. Maybe the PCs could be hired to plug a leak or they might be tempted to send a few false messages to divert the local garrison.

• Some old maps would deliberately include fake villages and streets as an early form of copy protection. If some less than scrupulous cartographer plagiarised your work you could instantly call them out on it by pointing to the copied false information. Some of these are still visible on Google Maps, but vanish when you shift to the satellite view. Less fun for the group when they're looking for an inn for the night and the hamlet on their map simply doesn't exist. Must be some Fae trickery going on...

• Squirrels used to be very popular pets. At times during the 18th and 19th century they were the most common pets in America.

• In 1521 Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, survived getting hit by a cannonball. Clearly a lvl 20 5e Cleric, he was cannonized before he was canonized.

• At Castle Heidelberg in the early 17th century a rule was put into place that the guards were "only" allowed seven tankards of wine per shift. Before that they could drink as much as they wanted for free from the castle's cellar. Pretty useful information for an infiltration mission.

Those are just a few; there a millions more of these lesser known details and anecdotes that can be used to add spice to adventures or game settings. Feel free to share yours in the comments!

I actually really like Shadowrun but I am curious to find out what else is out there, I've been aware this is a not-uncommon type of project for a while but haven't really catalogued them before and I really want to take a look at the ways it's implemented elsewhere just to idea mine. So what options are out there in this vein?

Projects that explicitly list this as a design goal or ones that just fulfill it coincidentally are both fine.

edited to add: I am especially interested though in projects that are explicitly porting a "Shadowrun with the serial numbers filed off" setting to a different system.

The mermaids have been studying and their teacher feels they are ready to head to land to explore. On the next full moon, they'll swim up and will work together to accomplish their personal goals.

Fish Out of Water is the lighthearted game of mermaid field trips to land, a new roleplaying game for all mermaids and humans. The world is full of interesting things they've never seen or experienced and they are eager to try it all. They've got talents and magic and a curiosity that can't be stopped.

TV sitcom vibes: Designed for 3-6 players, sessions last 2-3 hours and feel like a cozy romcom or a YA fantasy novel.

Simple, tactical magic: No complex math, just uncertain outcomes resolved with a flip of a coin or two.

The power of Song: Cast unique, magical Songs - from the Song of the Siren to the Song or Storms - using Major and Minor scales to influence the world around you.

Dynamic identity: Mermaids are fluid! Change your biome, appearance, and your role in the group as you learn and grown the power of Pearls of Wisdom.

Unique game system designed by Jared Sorenson (InSpectres, Lacuna, Parsely Games) of Memento Mori Theatricks and Bardic Armadillo (Mermaid’s Song, Crows versus Cats). Now on BackerKit (fully funded). https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/bardic-armadillo/fish-out-of-water-the-cozy-rpg-of-mermaid-field-trips#top