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91 minute review. We are eating well today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH5-uQj4uOA

“Elric returns to the tabletop in an officially licensed RPG powered by the award-winning Dragonbane system

Hello!

Today, we are thrilled to announce Legends of Stormbringer, a new officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game based on the iconic fantasy works of Michael Moorcock, planned for release in 2027.

Legends of Stormbringer will carry you into the Young Kingdoms – a world of dying empires, warring gods, and doomed heroes – and bring Moorcock’s richly imagined setting to the tabletop using rules mechanics based on our award-winning Dragonbane RPG. The game will feature the same accessible, dynamic, and deadly approach that has made Dragonbane one of our most celebrated titles.

Returning to the Young Kingdoms as setting writer is Richard Watts, whose work on previous Stormbringer RPGs helped define how generations of roleplayers have experienced Moorcock’s world.

“This has been in the works for several months and we’re thrilled to finally share the news,” said Tomas Härenstam, CEO of Free League Publishing. “We are honored to bring Elric and the Young Kingdoms to the tabletop once more.”

Further details – including crowdfunding plans and additional creative team announcements – will be revealed at a later date. “

https://mailchi.mp/frialigan/legends-of-stormbringer-rpg-dragonbane-announced-news?e=da5d961137

Some years ago I was looking for podcasts and shows where they would address other tabletop roleplaying games (ttrpg) beyond Dungeons & Dragons (DnD). I know there are plenty of options but many do not align at all with the perspective I have on rpgs, or we differ in theme interest.

But a thing that stuck with me was a podcast episode where the person reviewing it talked about World/Chronicles of Darkness (WoD) and said something in the likes of: "The game seems interesting but I will put it low on my ranking because you need a different book for each class/race you want to play, like if you want to be a vampire, or a werewolf, or a mage..."

The take was such a miss that it made me physically facepalm. But it brought to the surface a type of problem that people might miss when discussing diverting from DnD to other ttrpgs, which it's the rigid mindset that DnD culture has created. Of course this is a fringe case and what I am laying out might be obvious to many, but I thought I'd put it here cos I have not seen it discussed from this perspective.

Less obvious examples include the notion of what people consider difficulty and the determination of where excitement comes from. For DnD, it seems like conflict and progress both emerge from violence and the risk of death, which makes it so that people unconciously looks for life-risking tropes in the game when trying to interpret the story premise a narrator puts forward. It makes it also hard to treat those moments of physical conflict in any way other than "goal is beat opponent", closing the walls around any other possible outcome of an altercation that has a physical component to it. This culture of narrator challenging players and threatening their character's lives is, I believe, one of the aspects that might contribute to isolating the narrator from the players, and ends up creating an unspoken rivalry between them as seen in shows like Dimension20, where the point is to "ruin some master plan" that the narrator might have, cheating the challenge, "winning" the game, outsmarting the other player (in my opinion, the narrator is a player too).

Another one is the case of applying videogame's materialistic, individualistic mindset to any story as the logical one. This include the culture of looting, raiding, individual increase of wealth, or the idea of calling characters heroes for performing feats (violent or not) that do not involve selfless risks and sacrifice. You might say "but players put themselves at risk of death constantly" but this form of risk emanates from the hustle attitude that is more akin to gambling than heroism. This even makes it so that literary tools and tropes like "a dragon hoard" become a wealth-earning prospect more than the the fable-filled notion of greed that the stories that inspired the tropes sometimes might have meant to convey. These specific aspect (which might actually be many merged into one) also might contribute to the "narrator is the simulator and emulator of the game" expectation, making players reactive espectators of a show put up for them that is even smaller of a role than what an actor would actually have on an improvised show.

Things like loot, combat, and character development follow the videogame recipe and can become the predetermined mindset for all ttrpgs, which might contribute to the difficulty of many on seeing the appeal of non-DnD ttrpgs. Players expect their skills to grow instead of declining with age or staying the same, they expect that every item put in their way is a gift to them to acquire to increase in power, and the expectation that every game is meant to tell a rags-to-riches story of personal capital growth and power.

Just to clarify again, I am not saying it should not be this way or that this is bad. These are fun aspects that have all the right to be present in any ttrpg, DnD or not. I am just trying to develop an idea about other forms of struggles that people might face when jumping from DnD to other ttrpgs that can contribute to a narrower understanding of them, while also limiting the way people can play ttrpgs, that are all about the complete freedom of creating a story and navigating it.

There was a poll a while ago that asked "ttrpg Game Masters" questions about how they organise encounters, how they challenge players, if they sandbox or railroad, etc. But none of these apply that well if you look at a game like the Witch is Dead or Everyone is John. And also shows how this mindset serves as a wall that limits the space in which ttrpgs can be played.

It seems to me, that this mindset puts characters as the players' pets, and the game as "taking your pet out for a walk", where they are brushed, dressed, given treats, taught tricks, pee on constructions, and let out to chase local wildlife. The narrator is there to make sure they do all that.

I think I had other ideas but right now cannot remember them. I would love to read some of the many things I have missed that form inherent part of DnD culture and mindset, that also can become a culture clash when learning other games. Again, I am not against any of it, just stating that these very fun aspects of DnD can be detrimental to imagining ttrpg outside this space, and that addressing them directly or with awareness might make the jump easier.

TLDR: DnD has a bunch of invisible rules and expectations that also make the culture around it harder to open a different approach to stories an ttrpgs when making a leap to other games. What are some you have found and what are your ways to un-learn them?

Not affiliated with Arc Dream but Shane Ivey posted a new ebook bundle for a lot of the Delta Green line. It gets suggested here frequently and they're offering like 30+ titles for 15 USD which is an excellent deal.

Standouts include Impossible Landscapes, Static Protocol which is like... an index of clues/information for IL, and it's digital art assets for in-game handouts, God's Teeth & digital assets and the 4 scenario mid-campaign book God's Hunt (broken into individual scenarios) along with the core books and some classics like Convergence and Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays.

Lot of good stuff here. Not as crazy as the "here's literally everything in DG" sale they did a year or two ago but still an excellent starting point at an aggressively good prive.

What genres do you not flow with and why?

Basically the title. I am constantly seeing people talk about ttrpgs that i have never heard of and was just wondering where people get to know about all these different ttrpgs. Is there like a blog or a news-site or something different entirely?

i love all the tropes of lovecraft but want new ideas. call of cthulus system is very arcane as well which is a downside.

The free quickstarts that many systems have are an incredibly valuable resource, both for promoting and learning their game. Whether they're just an adventure with pregens and a rules summary or a full little rulebook in and of themselves, the ability to pick up and try a system at no cost, and without having to peruse a whole book, is fantastic for getting both players and gamemasters into it. With all that said, what do you think are some particular hits or flops among quickstarts, and why?

Personally, I think the Call of Cthulhu 7th one is one of my favorites, somehow containing everything players and even keepers realistically need most of the time while still being conveniently small and nice looking. On the other hand, I'm not a huge fan of the 13th Age 1e quickstart (though I am a huge fan of 13th Age), which while fine for people already familiar with F20 games, explains very little except for how it's different from those, and doesn't include pregens or adventures in its own page count, all together which make it much less useful for introducing newcomers to the game, in my opinion.

I am running a game of Dungeon World for a group of people I met on VRchat.

They have been a great group so far. We are using the Plangea setting for 5e and converting to DW and it's gone well so far.

But, one player was noticeably quiet. I spoke to them about it and asked if they'd want to meet one day and discuss it.

So, we met yesterday and chatted about it.

What they said is, essentially, they are having trouble because they are used to 5e and exception based design. Dungeon World, as a PbtA game, is much more open and leaves things open to interpretation. For example, the move elemental mastery was confusing to them because it just says "when you call on the spirits of the elements to perform a task" and just says how to handle the outcome.

I explained to them that DW is a narrative first game with no baseline. In 5e, all characters have the same baseline. Your class provides exceptions. In PbtA, you can do anything that makes sense for your character and then the game either has you resolve with a specific move or just fallback on defy danger...or have the GM make a custom move.

It's a "say yes or roll the dice" game. I explained they can do whatever a druid could do in a game and I'd just tell you how to resolve it. I said I trust them to be reasonable and work with players if they aren't.

That was still confusing to them. They said they are more used to going through rules for specific wordings and sticking to them literally.

I said that's completely fine and many games support that. I then said we could use their familiarity with 5e to ease them into this system.

We went to 5e and found what a level 4 Druid could do. We argued a level 4 druid equals a level 2 DW Druid because DW is a 10 level game. I sent them a snapshot and said "don't look up these spells and abilities, but use their names as a jumping off point. Consider this an idea list you can use when trying to think if a Druid should be able to do this."

I thought that may help by giving them a loose set of rules to adhere to as they said having limits in other games and exact wordings help them.

They then said they had trouble jumping in because it takes a while for them to think and, by the time they decided, the moment passed.

I said they could just say "hey, I want to do something here" politely when they got an idea and the group would wait for to make a decision. Letting us know to wait for them to work it out. I thought that would fix that problem, especially as one player said they were going slower to give them time since they mentioned this prior but never knew when they were thinking.

Lastly, they said they were having trouble with the bonds mechanic because they can't think what their character would think. They can't figure out their guy so figuring out how they think of others was hard.

I suggested that, if they have trouble thinking in character, to maybe just play their character like themselves for now and let the personality develop naturally. Just do what they would do in the situation and see what feels natural. Ease over consistency and essentially a character would form.

I also suggested they could ask the other players for suggestions on bonds and do them backwards that way. Let them give them ideas and let it spark that way. And, eventually, things may click.

After that, we felt comfortable to just chat. They then...told me about Connor.

This is a tangent, but telling me about Connor explained everything. Connor was their first GM and was when they got into D&D during COVID. Connor...was a bad GM and taught awful habits.

Some highlights include

• Awarding the opposite of Inspiration points he called GFY points for being late

• Demanding a player lower their Intelligence for saying something he saw as "dumb"

• Having a character be kidnapped for a 4hr session where their player could do nothing and force the player to stay in the discord call, quietly for a fucking hrs

• Trying to force players to optimize and punishing them for saying no

• This one requires a trigger warning for rape Allowing a Player to sexually assault a lesbian NPC for refusing that player's sexual advances and then allowing that same player to try to ruffie another PC. It is worth noting that the player that was ruffied was the husband of my player character. Adding extra levels of WTF is that my player's husband is trans masc and their character was trans masc and you get the idea. How my player didn't deck that guy, I don't know. I mean it was a discord call, but holy shit. This may be worst horror story I've ever heard.

So, yeah, this chat explained A LOT about why my player was having trouble. I never heard of a worse GM and its no wonder my player was afraid to be spontaneous or take risks. They even said they were afraid to say dumb things because they were told to "play their stats" because of Connor's weird "dropping Intelligence for bad roleplay" thing. So, I told my player to just play however they wanted and let the stats only matter for rolls.

Anyway, tangent aside, do you think my solutions were a good approach? Never heard of such a bad GM before so I'm not sure if my solutions would help someone who learned such awful habits from that.

Hello! I’m an experienced GM who has played systems such as Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Quest, Mothership, 10 Candles, Goblin Quest, and Call of Cthulhu.

I’m currently looking for a system that gives me the possibility to play in both a narrative-driven and OSR style, since I want to create a series of adventures set in the same world, and I feel that my strengths are both worldbuilding and improv. My idea is for it to be a dark medieval homebrew setting.

Any recommendations, and maybe an explanation as to why?

After playing final fantasy 7 and 15 i been wondering about playing a TTRPG who brought both modernity and fantasy into the mix

Every time i ask people keep saying shadowrun

So iam going to check it now

What editions this has? Where and what should i start? Preferably looking for something that isnt too complicated and has a lot of player customización

I come from pathfinder 2e and dnd 5e

If that helps in any way