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So my players rarely roleplay. I will take a lot of the blame for it because I hold their hands a lot. We've played DnD for the longest and while we all loved our campaign, it played like a video game with dialogue options instead of free roleplaying.

My players also never drive the narrative forward. They have to be given "A or B" instead of coming up with a solution. They are very passive instead of active players.

I want a system where the players actually enjoy roleplaying (and there is some guidance for it).

Let me give some examples.

- The "Everyone is a dick" storyteller

I had some annoying (but respectable) DMs when it was about chatting with NPCs, for some reason MOST of them were assholes or annoyed guys who just can't tolerate that our characters breath without purpose. I can understand a Gordon Ramsay chef who looks like Ryan Gosling being stressed about a missing ingredient when a food critic could arrive at any moment, the situation gives a more than perfect scenario to let him react like that, but dear lord some DMs of the very same server behave like if being hostile with the players made their NPCs interesting, I don't need dwarves shitting on me for asking if they wanted help to push something.

- The one being too permissive

This is a short one, I don't want to touch themes way too sensitive on this post, but let me resume it as "dude, why did you let him name his character Nate Higgers?"

Same server as the previous one, I left that discord a month later. If there's a problematic guy and no one raises an eye, don't put hopes in that place.

- The critical fumbles lover

One thing is failing a skill and another is just roll a one, throw a dice to decide your punishment, and then roll your instant death. Yeah, Conan the level 20 barbarian decapited himself with his own axe while trying to hit a tree.

That. Fucking. SUCKS.

There are other versions that just hurt yourself or others and that's it, but dear lord it still feels frustrating. It can even humilliate bosses and villains with a bad roll, missing is one thing but if the dark warrior that we heard during the campaign finally faces us and the first thing he does is stab his own rib during combat, everyone would assume that we found a fraud and the atmosphere gets harmed. If you try to say that nothing happened, everyone will call out that bullshit of a ruling, making it exclusive to anyone but bosses would make it unfair. Either everyone suffers or just don't.

I don't think I would need to explain how much this harm martials classes too.

Throw me another kinds of DMs that annoy you.

As I get older, I find that I have little to no time for statting out adversaries or monsters. I'm always prepping here and there, but procedurally creating the people or things to fight always takes the greatest effort and time of that prep work.

That said, I'm looking for more non-fantasy games to branch out to that have statblocks already prepared. Why non-fantasy? Because between OSR and 5e and DCC I have enough fantasy systems to run for the rest of my life. I finished an Essence20 campaign in April and loved it; I love Dark Heresy 1e; I don't play or run in Call of Cthulhu but I'm in love with BRP:UGE and its recent Creatures book.

I recently got Obsidian with the Sync Plus plan, and holy shit is it formidable. It was a bit intimidating at first, but I spent most of a day educating myself on the syntax and how to formulate different things, which community plug-ins would help the most, what structure I should use for my vault(s), etc. I started with a vault dedicated to CoC and got to work.

For the one-shot I prepped for, I started with an introduction page with pertinent general information, internal links for locations, important NPC‘s, PCs, and key items and artifacts. I created templates for all those categories, and I ended up writing whole damn pages of notes for every location and main NPC!

I’ve written about this before here, but the thing I’m most self-conscious about when I GM is “dead air” when I have to pause the game to look something up or try to come up with something on the fly. Well, in the session I just ran on Discord there was no dead air. I was able to follow everything and react to the players’ actions seamlessly, since I could just click through internal links in my Obsidian vault and instantly find what I need. I had all my relevant skill checks and SAN checks listed at every location.

And that’s when I needed to remember something! All this prep, locked a lot of it in my brain. I really was on a roll and I could tell that the players were having a great time!

The only problem is, it TOOK FOREVER. Not counting the time it took me to get the hang of Obsidian, it took me about 9 days of all my free time to get all this plotted and written down. And again it was from a published module. 9 days for a one-shot! A one shot that we wrapped up in less than 4 hours.

I don’t know what kind of advice I’m looking for, but I’d like to find some kind of balance for prep. I don’t want to only run 1 one-shot every 2 weeks because of prep bloat.

EDIT: I should add that one of those prep days was spent making handouts on the Cthulhu Handout Generator website.

Just a post on what I've been playing, with short 'reviewlets' of Forbidden Lands, Heart, Alien, Mothership and Brindlewood Bay. First impressions, rickety opinions and further plans.

https://www.trentjswindells.com/blog/five-months-five-games

Hello everyone!

I'm currently doing a bit of a deep dive on this interesting time and game system that had such a short life. Might be making a video on it.

I was wondering how the general zeitgeist of ttrpg players felt about it. Have you ever tried it? Have you heard of it but what you heard made you steer clear of it? Are you relatively new but would like to try it at some point? Have you played it and did you like it or not?

I would love to hear people share their thoughts on this overlooked time in D&D's history. If you have any personal stories of your time with it I would love to hear that as well.

Thank you all for your time! I can't wait to read what you got for me.

Edit: Thank you all for the amazing responses. I am doing my best to read them all. Also thank you all for the great discussions!

Before you say it, yes i know about the gurps one and the 5E one. but im looking for something different, any suggestions for systems or game that can scratch that itch? i considered vaesen as well

Like I have 5 awesome ones I read and would love to run and want to get a good idea of which ones my players are excited about.

For me as a GM reading the rulebooks is the best way to "get" an RPG and fall in love with it, but players aren't as patient. I'd love to be able to point them to like 1 page for each RPG that captures well what makes it awesome and what it's about. You'd think their own store listings would do that, but alas I haven't seen that be the page.

Just sending the first page or two from each rulebook doesn't quite work either. My only option that's left seems to be to throw the books at the table and talk about each and see what my players pick, but this will still more get their likes on the setting and art and for adventures esp hard to do so without spoilers.

Would be awesome if every little thing came with a one-page pitch which seems common in other industries. Like imagine one single page that captures the awesomeness and art of Mythic Bastionland, or that of Mork Bork and so on.

Maybe it's too much to ask haha, but right after writing this I think I'm gonna go write up some flyer-type page for each RPG/adventure I wanna run to hook my players.

Hey all, im looking for some fantasy rpgs that just me and my girlfriend can play together for a date night. A dnd like game that we can do with just us. We are both into high fantasy and im just looking for something we can play, preferably something with chapters that we can play each week.

Kia ora,

I'm looking to make the final push to finish a project I've been working on for a while now. Part of that is a hexcrawl map, the basic idea of this is to have something that retains some of the feel of something like Dolmenwood (sprawling map with hooks to pull you all over the place) but far less dense.

I put the project down for a while because scope creep was SO real and I've had a lot going on. Right now I'm thinking about reducing scope so that I can make this part of my project feel more achievable.

So the ACTUAL question,

(Also the TLDR),

If you were to use a hexcrawl map, how much actual detail for a notable hex is enough? Currently I'm thinking something like a brief description to indulge the senses, a few hooks, a few notable NPC's (if a settlement), and maybe a situation. This would just be on notable hexes.

Does that feel like enough to somewhat guide an experience/take labour away from a GM?

Any examples about how much detail you like included is very welcome! I of course understand that preferences will differ between people and that there's no answer that caters to all tastes, I just want to make something that would enhance fun and feel useful.

Thanks for ya time!

I'm thinking something akin to Lancer but instead of mechs, its starships. Can be either a tactical game or a narrative game, just wanna see what's the most popular ones at the moment.