**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! I'm Ben Robbins.

I made Microscope, a fractal game of epic histories. And now many years later I'm hard at work on a new edition (which is kickstarting right now).

I also ran the original West Marches campaign. Is it weird that the same person who came up with West Marches makes GMless games of cooperative world-building?

I could talk about Microscope (or West Marches) all day, but I'm also happy to talk about other games I made like Kingdom, In This World, or This Means War. Or about Story Games Seattle, a public meetup I ran for eight years. Or how way back in the 80s I was a camper and then councilor at the Shippensburg D&D summer camp, and all the awesome teen-nerd shenanigans that entailed.

I've also been blogging about all this stuff for 20 years, because I love talking about games.

Ask me, as they say, anything.

UPDATE: And I'm back!

Hey Party People,

I want to manifest something into the world, and I don't know how to do it, so Im going to post on reddit, pat myself on the back, and tell my therapist I did all I could. Mostly because of the back pat.

The folks at MCDM released the 3rd core book for Draw Steel. Its called Encounters. I wish every game had this book.

For those not in the know, Encounters is a 300 page book in 5 sections: Delves, Montages, Negotiations, Heroic Tests, and Dastards. Its all modular content. So there are 20ish short dungeons complete with room descriptions and monster stats. They are for all levels of play. You can just dump one into your game. Done.

Do you need a montage scene to get through a storm or whatever? Page 225. Read. Make a note in your prep. Run that thing on game night. Want to spice up a monster for a set piece combat scene? 276.

This isn't a post about Draw Steel, though I do love the game.

The Encounters book is a functional. Need a one shot? Grab the stuff. Go. Want to design your own one shot? Look at how they do the things, adapt your stuff to fit that.

I want this book for any game before I want a setting guide. I want a book of 100 clocks and the various elements needed to progress them. If your game has shopping and commerce, I want a dozen item shops stocked with items and ready to go. I want monster foreshadowing stuff for narrative games. Show me what your game looks like with muscle and skin on those bones.

But Mike, you say, in a narrative game, this stuff is up to the players at the table! Having 100 clocks doesn't give you the clock you need - and even if it did, who's to say your players won't find some weird work around and completely nullify the clock itself?

Well, strawman, I think you're wrong. If I have 100 clocks, I certainly have one close enough to the one I need to run, and if the party finds a way around it, awesome, I can hit them with the next scene and I'll be more prepared to improvise that with the book of Frankenparts (terrible name for modular content) for your game.

Set your game masters up to run your game. I'm going to run it anyway because theres so much cool stuff out there, but when its easy to run your game, everyone wins.

Please do this.

Okay. Now it's time for that back pat.

Kickstarter Page

13 Omens, the new rules light RPG from Paizo, launched it's Kickstarter today. The rules have been available for a couple of weeks now, and there's a foundry module as well.

I've skimmed through the rules, and it seems like a solid system. It's actually way more rules light than I was expecting given it's published by Paizo. I really like that it's designed for 1-shots, since I find 1-shots are the easiest scenarios to find time for. Plus I find 1-shots and horror go really well together.

The thing I find most interesting is the story aspects. If you haven't read the rules yet, each character has 10 aspects (aka their skills and attributes). Five of those aspects (Courage, Evade, Fight, Luck, and Perception) are part of every character. The other five aspects are called story aspects, and they change from scenario to scenario). It seems like a really nice way of bringing the more "narrow" or "thematic" skills you see from more rules heavy systems into a rules light system.

I'm thinking of backing it, but I've already got a few horror RPGs in my collection, so this might just get thrown into the pile and never played.

I'm very curious to see what people think, especially if you've already found the time to try out the system.

See title

I'm looking for alternatives to D&D that check a number of boxes for my needs, and I'd like recommendations. I'm reasonably well-versed in the TTRPG landscape, but I realize I have a gap in games that are actually intended to be D&D alternatives or can easily be used as one. I dislike the dumpster fire that Hasbro/WotC became as a company, and I'd like to broaden my options in terms of having something I could use to run a sword & sorcery or science-fantasy TTRPG campaign. I know a number of D&D alternatives by name, but little on their gameplay, so I'm hoping people can steer me in the direction of a game that does the following well.

• Low prep and easy to GM: This is a must; the amount of work D&D 5E was asking of me as a DM is the reason I kept dropping campaigns in recent years. I've been eyeing Numenera/Cypher on that front, but I have no idea how easy on the GM games like Daggerheart, 13th Age and Shadow of the Demon Lord are.
• A great toolbox for building your own fantasy world: I think D&D was at its best when it was light on lore, and supported the DM well in creating their own fantasy setting. I don't want to run someone else's world, I want to build my own.
• Easy to learn for players: My likely player group has learned D&D and is reluctant to learn a new game.
• Supports build-crafting and longer term character leveling: I have people in my group who are optimizers, they'll need something to sink their teeth in, but it shouldn't be the main focus of the game (Lancer or even D&D 5E-level of that would be too much, and I think Pathfinder 2 might be too much or too rule-heavy at least). My players like their characters getting new toys to play with in terms of abilities. This is why OSR/NSR fare or PbtA might not fit the bill.

So I was curious what suggestions people would throw my way. Stuff like Daggerheart, Shadow of the Demon Lord and 13th Age have been on my radar. I'm familiar with the Cypher system too though I've never played of GMed it. Thanks!

Getting straight into it, i have this ocean/pirate setting where the players are adrift at sea beign thrown into all sort of challanges by the sea god and other sbangs like that.

Between challanges, there'll be interlude sections where players can roleplay, buy stuff, interact etc...

One of the things i want to do is make so that there's certain "tasks" in the ship that, on a plausible skill check, can either benefit or hinder (just a little) the party for the next challange (ex. Player X decides to cook for the whole crew, on a success they eat well and get smt around +2 on physical tests, but if they fail they need to make a con save every new scene to not throw up on the first round or smt like that)

My problem is, i'm a nerd, not a pirate, and i'm kinda stuck on what tasks there should be.
Is there a good homebrew alr somewhere that does basically that? Or does anyone have any suggestions on how those tasks should be?

I recently came across the 1988 Task Force Games' "Central Casting: Heroes of Legend" book, a very detailed character background generator. What a gem! A lot of wonderful inspiration here.

Do you have any favorite flavor, setting, or other sourcebooks which, due to age or obscurity, may not be getting the attention they deserve?

Can be as simple or elaborate a theme or setting you want. What setting just immediately pulls you out of the table and into the game world in seconds?

How is this collection as inspiration for other campaigns? Is the Pacific Northwest setting worth reading?

After years of playing but not really finishing any campaigns, I've decided to write my own based on "endings".

The beginning would be really mundane: a group of people in a small city investigate a series of disappearances only to meet a creature that's been feeding off of stories and a tear in the fabric of reality. If they decide to investigate this tear (and i hope they will) they will travel to different worlds and meet their own characters from other campaigns.

The problem is, I have been so excited about the middle of the campaign and knowing that it will eventually have a big turn has been demotivating for the beginning, any tips for overcoming the crative block?

Are there any games that are built around a two-part before/after The Event structure?

I'm thinking about a period of "normalcy" with escalating tension, but then something happens (the contagion is released, the bombs fall, the rebellion is sparked) and the all the in-fiction assumptions/social rules are dramatically changed. Bonus points if the players' actions influence the nature of the The Event.

Some published campaigns will probably fit this, but I want to know if there are any games that are built around the premise, with designed-in support for the GM.