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I'm endlessly interested in the manifestos written about different styles of RPG play. I'll link below a collection of blogs and books I think play in this space but I'd love any additional links you have in this genre!

Blorb is a style of game really focused on consistency in the world and the GM not improvising at the table.

Principa Apocrypha is a manifesto for OSR-style play, with focus on rulings over rules and player ability over mechanical ability.

The 4D Handbook is a manifesto on playing games laser focused at keeping players in character for as much of the game as possible.

The Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying is a book that pushes for characters to be proactive and motivate the story via explicitly stated goals. This isn't new, off the top of my head it's part of what makes Burning Wheel special, but here it's given as a guide for any game.

Almost what I'm looking for section

The Open Table Manifesto is a about running West Marches style games. This is more a structure for a campaign, though, and assumes play to be happening in an OSR style.

Don't Prep Plots isn't explicitly a manifesto but lays down clearly guidelines for a certain style of play (or in this case, prep). It is more a guide than a manifesto, however.

The Expressionist Games Manifesto is more a manifesto for making games than playing them.

A Dozen Fragments on Playground Theory is a great collection of ideas pointing in a similar direction but, again, is more focused on design and considering the relationship between player and designer than it is prescribing play at the table.

Games that kind of fit the bill section

There are plenty of games that made their point by doing it through a ruleset. Wanderhome had a lot to say about what counted as play, Index Card RPG openly acknowledges that it's a playstyle wrapped in a system, and enough ink has been spilled about PBTA game design to fill the ocean. If you've got a game that explicitly discusses play style and culture, please tell me about it!

Hello, /b

Right now I am in the midst of GM'ing a game of cyberpunk-genre Warhammer 40k which my players and I have been quite proud of, however it has been quite an emotional rollercoaster. For my next game, I would like something a lot more blue-collar. So I have come to you for aid.

Right now, I am heavily leaning toward Mothership as the system of choice. While the game is heavily billed as being a horror game, its setting does not really require it be horror at all. What makes Mothership MOSH is its Stress system, which, alongside its silky-smooth gameplay-lite systems and excellent freight hauling expansions, make it my current #1 pick.

Traveler I have also looked into, and while it may be the go-to "space trucking" game... it's not really space trucking. It's space market speculation. Sure, you might be physically moving boxes, but the actual gameplay is "buy low, sell high,' and that's not how the blue-collar job of a container ship works. The ship itself doesn't do commodity trading. So... unless there's any supplement to change this, I'm not really interested in Traveler.

I am a huge fan of Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands/Our Golden Age, and that setting's trade caravan system is top-fucking-notch. However, not only do I kinda run into the same issue of playing the part of the merchant, not the trucker, it's also... mostly setting. It's an anti-canon setting book, not a particularly good game system. ((But seriously, buy UVG and OGA, they're amazing.))

So now I pose my question. Are there any other blue-collar space-trucker RPG's with any amount of meat on their bones that you all might recommend?

P.S. - I'd love to dip my toes into CY_BORG eventually, but that's gonna have to wait until my group and I have emotionally recharged from our current 40k-cyberpunk game. One ought not overindulge in CP, contrary to what some corpo dogshits would have you believe.

It's not a common rule but I've seen in more than one system where instead of tracking individual amounts of things like water, food, and most commonly ammunition you instead roll a die ranging from d12 to d4 and if you roll low you go to the next smaller die size to track how much you have left.

I've seen a few people mention it but have never seen it in play in any of the games that mention it as a variant rule and wanted to know people's experience with it. I imagine it spices things up to not know when you will run out, and plenty of people enjoy rolling dice so it might make the act of tracking resources more fun.

I imagine it could be built upon to make things more interesting. Like instead of only going down on a 1 you could do something that uses extra and that expands the range before it goes down.

Examples: having a explosives kit with sticks of tnt and making a bigger Explosive makes you more likely to go down in size but maybe it goes by units of 2s and has a max of a d6 so throwing max bombs would give you like 3 sticks the first time and then 2 the second, but you can try to be conservative and roll and maybe only use 1 each time and be super luck and have 10 uses before you end up running out.

Another idea would be like tracking water with the size of the container being the size of the die and the terrain changing the range. A canteen could be a d4 likely to run out in a day or two, a barrel might be a d12 but you aren't carrying that on your person and then when you hit the desert you have to roll above a 3 to not go down making a canteen rarely ever last but if you came prepared you can more likely make it.

I've thought it a novel idea but I wanted to know if anyone has used it in play before and if so how did it change resource management, was it fun or a choir, does it work better in gritty games only, anything would be nice honestly. Thanks.

Hello! I am looking to start an RPG group in the city I live in and I wanted to do something that was not fantasy, I just watched my partner play through the Uncharted series and I would love to make an RPG that is reminiscent of it. Treasure hunting, Gun fights, crazy set pieces and character drama.

I have taken a look through savage worlds but I felt as though that system is rather heavy with a lot of heavy rules. I personally prefer games that have fast and light rules. So I am wondering what sort of games there are for this :)

Two years ago I was burning out hard from 5e. The combat was too slow and too tedious, but at the same time so integral to the intended experience. So we decided to try out some OSR games for a spell. This ended up being a two year stint where we played games like Electric Bastionland, Mothership, Pirate Borg and Shadowdark before finally ending up doing a year long campaign of Dolmenwood. It's been a blast!

Wrapping up our Dolmenwood campaign I was at a bit of a loss as to what we should try next. After two years of carefully tracking inventory through hex-crawls and dungeons I was really open to try something a bit different. Then, the very next day, Ben Milton (aka Questing Beast) dropped a video where his group played the Draw Steel Starter Set, The Delian Tomb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTbeWhngiZQ

I had actually backed Draw Steel when it launched on Kickstarter, but by the time I got my hands on the PDFs we were so into rules-light systems that I barely flipped through it. I was intrigued to give it a go this time.

So this weekend me and my group got leave from our spouses and kids, went to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and spent close to 15 hours playing The Delian Tomb. My short take is this: both me and my players absolutely loved it!

Here's a random assortment of thoughts on the Delian Tomb and Draw Steel after this weekend:

1)

The starter set kicks off with what is basically a computer game tutorial section where you railroad your players through a series of combat encounters, and they slowly get more and more abilities and complexity added. And its a lot to absorb at first. After the first hour I could see one of my players starting to get that panicked "I'll never learn all this" look.

But then, once we had gone through the first two-three combat encounters, something clicked. It was almost a group-wide event, everyone just suddenly "got it". We've played some complex board games over the years and it was that exact same feeling, that moment where the rules suddenly fall into place and the game just gets going.

2)

Once you get over that initial hump the rules are surprisingly streamlined. Most things like cover, high/low ground and conditions usually boil down to getting edges and banes, which are Draw Steel's version of 5e's advantage and disadvantage.

Most rolls are usually rolling two d10's, adding them together and then adding some bonuses or penalties (from abilities, skills and edges/banes). If the total is 11 or less you get a tier 1 result, 12-16 is a tier 2 result, 17 or higher is a tier 3 results. These tier thresholds are always the same and it makes it so that the entire table knows almost instantly if someone had a really good or really bad roll.

Also, like in Blades in the Dark and similar games, the rolls outside of combat can have a more nuanced outcome, making it possible to get for example "success, but with a consequence" depending on the rolled tier.

3)

The combat was a blast. One of my players played a Tactician, a sort of battlefield commander/fighter, and I could just see him scouring the battlefield all the time between his rounds for opportunities to assist other players. Everyone was really invested during the entire combat, planning and strategizing together. For me as the GM my monsters had so many fun abilities that I was really looking forward to my turns.

Ben Milton complained in his video about having to jump between a bunch of different tabs and sheets when running combat, but I actually found it really easy to just jot down the most important information such as HP (called Stamina here) and turn order on a piece of paper and then just use the Encounter Book. I only had three players though which reduced the amount of monsters on the field, so this might have helped in making the combats more manageable.

Draw Steel markets itself as a "cinematic" game and it really managed to become that during the fights. My players just instinctively took to shouting out their ability names when they used them. "Protective attack!". "The Flesh, a Crucible!" It was all gloriously silly. I've never seen them like this during any 5e fight.

Some enemies also are "minions" which share a health pool, meaning that if you damage one with more damage than their health the excess damage is applied to other enemies in the same group. This lead to some really funny situations where we tried to explain in fiction how enemies across the room was killed in the same attack. "So, this goblin was hit by my fireball and was thrown into that stone pillar, which made a stone fly across the room and crush the head of that goblin, which in turn knocked out one of its teeth that flew across the room and through the head of that goblin". Good times.

4)

Draw Steel has this whole system for running negotiations which is supposed to be used during high stakes conversations (say getting the BBEG to hand over the McGuffin). When I first read this system I almost rolled my eyes. It seemed so overly complex for something I consider just standard roleplaying. I was almost dreading trying it out as I suspected it would lead to some very stilted and awkward roleplaying.

In practice though it went swimmingly. An NPC in a negotiation is expected to have *very* defined motivations, and the negotiation will always end on a set outcome like "No, but" or "Yes, and". This actually provide a nice structure to guide your thought process when roleplaying a character, making choices for them and ruling the outcome of important conversations. The gamey parts of the negotiation were also easy to keep track of, so they didn't require much brainspace at all. I found that the conversations flowed just as naturally, and the players said that they really liked that the conversation had a structure they could influence directly with their abilities when they couldn't think of the "right words" to say.

5)

The Delian Tomb adventure itself is fine. It's a pretty generic fantasy adventure. Reminds me a lot of when we played The Lost Mines of Phandelver actually, which was our very first roleplaying experience.

I suspect the book itself could be a lot more streamlined though. There was *a lot* of scrolling up and down, left and right, trying to find information when outside of combat. For someone who has spent the last two years reading and running the books of Chris McDowall, Kelsey Dionne and Gavin Norman I have probably become extremely spoilt on good organization! It also might be that the OSR just lends itself better to terse writing? I don't know. There was just this continuous sense that the book should have been easier to use at the table.

For example, when the heroes went to a new place in town I was so used running Dolmenwood where I would find all the important information about the place almost instantly, with a structured box for each important NPC providing information about their mannerism, looks and wants.

In the Delian Tomb every place in town has almost a small novel connected to them. Information about the building itself, what is happening, what could happen in the future, suggestions for tests to roll and information about the NPCs such like looks and motivations could pop up almost *anywhere* in that text block. I'm a fast enough reader so we're used to keeping the flow even when I check stuff mid-session, but in the Delian Tomb I found myself asking the players to take literal snack breaks while I read through stuff.

This might be mostly an issue with this being a starter set that tries to help new GMs, and so other Draw Steel adventures might be a lot easier to use.

Also, the read-aloud texts spread throughout is probably a lot more useful if you are a native English speaker, but for someone that runs games in another language I really prefer having shorter text, preferably bullet points, that I can expand on instead of trying to basically translate a full paragraph from English in the middle of a session.

In conclusion:

I am interested to see how the system turns out when we leave the starter set behind, especially in the amount of prep for each session. I also suspect Draw Steel lends itself more to linear adventures and less sandboxing, but we'll see. All in all we're really excited to continue playing Draw Steel for now!

Ideally from an actual ttrpg book!

I lean more in to an OSR flavoured style with more emergent gameplay and I don't plan out a narrative, but I'm still new enough at this that I can feel SPOOKED about guiding compelling longer-form play.

I adore Mythic Bastionland's procedures for exploration and myths, I'm a big fan of Mothership content (Another Bug Hunt and the like), but I am looking for sources of reliable and widely applicable wisdom that ideally lends itself to lower prep.

Creating a situation, featuring a couple of factions, and including some tools or items is advice I've taken on board, is this what you would typically what do? Just ask players what they want to do at the end of sessions, and then pop them in a situation related to/leading to that in the next?

I've sort of asked 2 questions here sorry, but what book do you recommend for guidance on campaign play, and/or what is YOUR checklist for keeping things engaging session to session?

Appreciate your time and your WISDOM

Edit: if it helps, I'm gearing up to coerce some dastardly goons that I love in to playing a game from the BORG family, but it is unique enough in flavour that I'm not wanting to rely on the premade BORG content out there and want to just feel more prepared for keeping things rolling

I know we have Retroclones of various editions of AD&D and D&D, and Marvel Role Playing. But are there retroclones of any other old TSR products?

Welcome to my review of Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

After wrapping up a 50 session, level 1-10, campaign using this game, I can confidently call it my absolute favorite D&D style heroic fantasy game. It's a must have for anyone dipping their toes out of 5e and a wonderful alternative for tables like mine who have fallen out of love with 5e, but want the style of my play that modern D&D promises. I've been able to successfully pitch this game to players hesitant to try something new, making it my gateway game to introduce people to the broader TTRPG space.

For my table, it is the best at what it does, which is fulfill the promises of 5e, but better: tactical combat, heroic class fantasy, and minimal barrier to entry for a broad audience. It does this by making small adjustments to the 5e formula that add up to an incredibly streamlined game that is more than the sum of its parts.

On release, Weird Wizard got a lot of flak for being an uninspired generic fantasy mutation of modern 5e. The book itself didn't help as it had some poor art pieces that were fixed later on. The layout is passable, but the art direction and visuals don't really catch your eye. In the sea of 5e kickstarter supplements and knockoffs, lavish visuals, player facing splatbooks, and strong gimmicks seem mandatory. The game definitely fails to sell itself, but shines the moment you dig an inch deeper.

The game is a no-nonsense best bang-for-your-buck workhorse. Weird Wizard was never trying to be a reinvention of the fantasy genre or even a particularly creative take on it. It is what new players think of when you offer to play D&D with them. It meets those expectations perfectly then exceeds them when you realize how well it executes on its premise.

Weird Wizard hits my exact Goldilocks zone of what I want out of D&D. It preserves buildcrafting and tactical combat without reaching Pathfinder levels of crunch. It stays streamlined without reaching OSR levels of low fidelity. PCs are heroic and powerful without combat getting bogged down or character sheets exploding out of control. The spells range from simple like fireball, to very fun and creative like entering people's dreams or time traveling into the future. While certainly not the most balanced, the magic feels much more creative and playful than what I've seen from D&D. For a small team, the core rulebook and bestiary offer an outsized amount of content that will last years at the table.

The rest are details that I think make this game.

• Instead of picking out the minutiae of skills, weapon, and tool proficiencies, PCs pick a single profession at creation which is a general job description of what they'd be good at. Out of combat competencies are instead agreed upon between player and GM. Outside of combat, the game gets out of the way and lets me handle the RP.

• The rolls are much less swingy than 5e. PCs start off fairly competent and only get more consistent as they level. The game combines situational Advantage/Disadvantage with permanent skill proficiencies in the form of Boons/Banes. They stack which allows for more teamwork in layering buffs/debuffs. Critical successes happen at 20 and above, plus 5 higher than the target's defense. Crits slowly become reliable for classes that rely on them. Crit fails occur at 0 and below, which means they only happen when PCs make a really poor decision outside their training or after being hit with multiple debuffs.

• All PCs get access to Attack Options so non-casters can reliably inflict status effects or forced movement. Martials get to do this and inflict damage. Martials also get Bonus Damage which is either spent on a hit, or can be spent for more attacks to guarantee at least some damage to avoid that feeling of a wasted turn.

• Multiclassing no longer flips between optimized meta builds and combat ineffective RP builds. The 10 levels are organized into 3 tiers that require multiclassing at each tier: Novice, Expert, Master. Adding an Expert caster path to your Novice martial path means you get full access to the most powerful Expert spells. The trade off is that PCs who began as casters get more spells and are more consistent.

My favorite details are in the combat. They encapsulate the genre and themes of the setting perfectly.

• Initiative requires constant monitoring and engagement from the players. Enemies always go first unless a PC spends a reaction to go first for that round. PCs can get their Han-shot-first moment or save the reaction to Dodge. Just like in movies, the heroes start off reacting on the backfoot, but slowly the tide turns in their favor as they start Taking the Initiative to finish off enemies before they can take their turns. In an ambush, PCs can't Defend themselves, but they can still Dodge, Withstand, and Cover each other.

• All excess damage from a single attack is lost when the PCs get downed, improving their odds of survival. At the same time, many Master tier AOE spells also instakill anything below a max HP threshold. You can still show off your BBEG if you really want to.

• The Frightened condition, magical or not, doesn't limit movement but still gives a debuff. The heroes can always choose to face their fears head on, knowing the odds are against them.

• Anyone can Cover Ally to switch the target of an attack in place of a nearby ally and they can Defend to make a Luck check when hit. On a 10 or above, or 55% chance, the hit turns into a miss. It's balanced by Weird Wizard having dozens of ways to get around it including guaranteed damage spells, AOEs, and multiattacks. It's usually better to just attack. These two would be used most often by dedicated tank-DPS combos or during those movie moments where the heroes try to stay on their feet after being hit by the villain's telegraphed super attack. Even failing the luck check, the heroes aren't down permanently.

Taken as a whole, these simple mechanics naturally encourage those storybook moments I crave. From the beginning of their journey to the very end, the heroes can always make the choice to protect their loved ones by facing their fears, even against foes far stronger than them. They'll need the luck of heroes to succeed, but knowing this game, luck is on their side. They are heroes. Not because of the cool powers or the big numbers. It's the literal actions that they take.

Are there any good modules out there for running a one-shot or mini-campaign centered around a fantasy military type situation? Perhaps where the PCs are soldiers or officers, or similar? I would also begrudgingly accept mundane military modules as well, I could adapt it fairly easily I'm sure.

System doesn't matter. Thanks in advance!

I've seen variations of this question in other posts but I have no seen it for my specific needs.

As the title says, I want a rules-light (narrative driven, little / no crunch) system that can be used for mechs and pilots. Specifically, I want the possibility of encountered where pilots are also able to go up against other mechs without using their own mechs, similar to Titanfall as mentioned. The humans should be as badass as the mechs in this ideal system. I've tried Lancer (great game) but it hasn't scratched that itch of having really cool pilots alongside really cool mechs. I've looked on this sub and on Google but I haven't found anything that fits what I am looking for as of yet. Are there any systems that fit this criteria, or any known hacks for other systems that can fit this?

PS: if possible, if there's something that's not a d20 systems that'd be great. But that's more of a personal preference.