**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.

For me, it's Viking-inspired settings. Feels like the last few years have seen an oversupply of games with a Viking aesthetic.

Less “This isn’t even my final form!” and more like having a dramatic moment in combat where you reach a new permanent height in power?

There's been a lot of games that have gone out of print, or never got that expansion that everyone was hoping for.

If you had the power to fix that for just one game, what game would you choose?

Some builds are too goofy, mechanically clunky, or narratively exhausting to run for 50 sessions, but would be peak entertainment for abouut 3 hours.

​Mine would be a bumbling Mr. Magoo character built on a Drunken Master chassis, where every hit/dodge/counter is completely accidental while looking for missing reading glasses or some macguffin.

​What's the single-session gimmick or high-concept PC you’ve been sitting on?

I've always found TTRPGs interesting, even before I actually played one. As a teenager I got sucked into various MUDs, but as I grew older, cognitive issues kept me from being able to engage with a lot of them, without massive tinkering or 3rd party tools. I eventually graduated to proper MMOs. They're fun, but lacked the "immersion" of a MUD, it felt more "gamified."

Fast forward to 2016 and getting roped into my first 5e campaign run by a friend. I loved it. I was initially hesitant, as my experience with Neverwinter Nights and 3.5 made my head spin. I was pleasantly surprised at how streamlined everything was. Not going to debate whether that's good or bad, but it was good "for me."

Go even closer to the present and I really do miss game night, and I'm also really missing the social side of a lot of older MMOs. I even keep a handful of dead ones installed on my deck for nostalgia's sake. (I may be addicted to EQOA again)

I have a lot of free time, but as other conditions have progressed, I'm not as spry as I used to be. I have a PC, but prefer to use my Steam Deck and recliner wherever possible, to put things in context. I have also learned to appreciate slower games that give me time to digest what is going on.

I don't know how it happened, but the Algorithm started serving me videos from a channel a lot of you are probably familiar with: Daddy Rolled a 1

I'm a big fan and while just listening to some of his videos in my chair, as one does, it got the wheels in my head turning. Starting around the video "AD&D was about campaigns, not heroes" I started to take a keen interest in older TTRPGs because of what I was hearing. Characters seemed less complex to build, the game is more lethal, and it's more about how you interact with the systems than in-depth character arcs and lore. When Martin explained things further it started to feel like an "analog MMO" and I started thinking "damn, I have to try this!"

A light round of Google searching left me with a few leads, but I'm still quite clueless. From what I can tell this format does still see play, in the form of a "West Marches" style game. My hope was that with all the new tools we have now, finding one to play in online or remote would be a possibility.

I love the idea of table top mechanics in a shared world, and if such a thing exists, how might I go about finding it?

Starting last June, I made a series of very poor decisions involving a Chronicles of Darkness living world server that I joined and proceeded to ST in. I would like to share my story, so that others can avoid making the same mistakes.

I entered the server by the end of June 2026, back when it was first getting started. I started roleplaying with a PC soon thereafter. Come the 4th of July, I ditched my PC in favor of full-time ST duties. I was the only person in the entire server who opted to be a PC-less, full-time ST.

The hierarchy of the server was as follows. There was the head ST, henceforth referred to as "the Big Cheese" (and no, that was not their actual username). The Big Cheese did a lot of genuine, meaningful, appreciable work as ST and as server runner, and I must credit and admire them for that. However, they also liked to play PCs, and they had a lot of PCs: 22, last I checked. These PCs were entirely separate from the Big Cheese's NPCs, and the Big Cheese really did like to get these PCs into a wide range of scenes.

Below the Big Cheese were their three friends, nominally acting as moderators. Only on rare occasions did they do any STing. For the most part, they just played their share of PCs. One moderator had 9 PCs. (To be clear, this was abnormal. The one non-ST player with the most PCs had "only" 6 PCs. The bulk of players had only 1 or 2.)

Finally, below the Big Cheese and their three friends were random people who volunteered to be ST. During my stay in the server, there were three of us. It felt like the three of us were doing vastly more work as STs and server runners than any of the moderators, and yet we had significantly less say in house rules and rulings than those moderators. One of those three volunteer STs, other than me, left due to their own grievances and dissatisfaction.

The server ran Beast: The Primordial (the head ST's favorite by far), Changeling: The Lost 2e, Demon: The Descent, Deviant: The Renegades, Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e, Hunter: The Vigil 2e (which the head ST disliked, yet allowed as a concession), Mage: The Awakening 2e (which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be the most problematic by a huge margin), Promethean: The Created 2e (whose eponymous Prometheans had most of their drawbacks heavily neutered), Vampire: The Requiem 2e, and Werewolf: The Forsaken 2e. There were lots and lots and lots of third-party books available. Also, mortal humans, including hunters, could mix two templates at character creation.

In theory, different game lines were divided between different STs, giving each ST a well-demarcated responsibility. In practice, this was seldom the case. Differing availabilities meant that each ST had to run every game line. Furthermore, since the PCs in a scene were often of mixed character types, each ST needed to be reasonably familiar with the rules of every game line; for example, I once wound up running a combat for a mage, a vampire, two werewolves, and a Beast, each of which were activating all sorts of scene-defining abilities.

Chronicles of Darkness games are absolutely not well-balanced. Each game is full of rules and character options that are poorly balanced, ambiguously written, or both. This is exacerbated in a crossover game with different types of supernatural PCs.

The Big Cheese and the moderators wanted some semblance of balance, so they varied the starting XP based on supernatural type (e.g. mages got the least), and put up an extraordinarily long list of house rules and rulings. Some were understandable, but many were puzzling and arbitrary overcorrections. The list grew longer and longer with each month, and several additions felt very knee-jerk.

The list and its additions incited many arguments. Whenever a player, especially a new player, questioned the house rules and rulings, the Big Cheese got very grumpy and standoffish. Two of the moderators would pile on and belittle the person asking about the house rules and rulings. To their credit, they eventually gained some self-awareness and cut back on such behavior, but arguments and dissatisfaction over the house rules and rulings still happened.

Despite the above efforts, there were still major rifts in PC power. Some PCs, even within the same supernatural type, were vastly more optimized and thus powerful than others. The Big Cheese and the moderators knew this, of course; the Big Cheese openly described one PC from a moderator as "easily among the most powerful characters on the server." Because noncombat rolls did not quite have the same stakes as combat rolls, combat optimization was the only optimization that mattered.

It did not help that the Big Cheese and the moderators made resource management nonexistent. They wanted a player to be able to play a single PC across multiple scenes simultaneously, sensible timeline be damned.

The Big Cheese and the moderators ruled that whenever a PC entered a new sequence of scenes, the PC would just... fill up to fresh: full Health, full Willpower, full Mana or Aether or whatever, full 1/chapter abilities, the works. Non-Persistent Conditions, too, vanished every real-world Monday. So naturally, PCs went nova and burnt through resources all the time. Ending a sequence with 6 aggravated damage and a stack of non-Persistent Conditions meant nothing at all. This distorted game balance even further. (Permanent PC death was not on the table. The server's setting had a gimmick of resurrecting PCs for a price. During my time in the server, no PC died.)

As a result of the Big Cheese being both head ST and the player of a staggering 22 PCs, there were conflicts of interest. The server had no safeguards against the Big Cheese giving their PCs as an advantage. I do not think they ever did so intentionally, but there were many moments when it felt like the Big Cheese was unconsciously placing a thumb on the metaphorical scale. These included:

• Giving rulings that set precedent that favored their PC.

• Preemptively building a PC with favorable rulings in mind.

• Laying down interpretations of setting lore that favored their PC. Because the Big Cheese had final say over the truth or falsity of any given piece of lore in the books, the Big Cheese could leverage that authority to vindicate whatever their PC was doing at the time. For example, one of their PCs went on a fervent crusade to defend X controversial subject; shortly thereafter, the Big Cheese made it canon that defending X is the morally and ethically correct thing to do.

• Having major NPCs support their PC, sometimes within the same scene. For example, when one of their PCs went on a fervent crusade to defend X, the single most personally and politically powerful supernatural resident of the city just so happened to endorse and support the PC in the same scene, and decry everyone who dared to stand against X.

• Directly overruling me, while I was STing for one of the Big Cheese's PCs, if I established an inconvenient plot point. Twice, I tried to inject some nuance by suggesting that defending X is not so clear-cut, and was overruled.

(X is, of course, fetches. They wanted to protect all fetches from changelings, and they wanted their PC to be in the right.)

• There was a fighting tournament. The Big Cheese had a PC as a contestant, and so did a moderator. When the Big Cheese's tournament host NPC laid down the rules for matches, they just so happened to significantly favor the Big Cheese's PC and that moderator's PC.

My biggest and most regrettable mistake was not realizing how much of a commitment this would be. STing this game was a daily, high-intensity commitment: running multiple concurrent scenes, devising and portraying NPCs, piecing scenes together into wider adventures and plots, adjudicating rules and rulings (always a necessary evil in a game as jankily written as Chronicles of Darkness, triply so with our overly long list of house rules and rulings), checking in with other STs, helping new players assemble sheets, reviewing sheets for approval, and more. Engaging with this game absolutely devoured my time, effort, and inspiration.

This might not have been so bad, but I had obligations to other games. I put two play-by-post games that I was GMing, with two players each, on hiatus for over six weeks. At the time, I did not tell those four players the true reason why I was putting their games on hiatus. This was absolutely horrid of me. I have no excuse for being so hyperfixated on STing for this server that I simply had no time left to run those other games. I have since come clean to those four players.

I am the sort of GM who strongly prefers tightly balanced, unambiguous rules; the shaky balance of Chronicles of Darkness games, and the well-meaning but ultimately troublesome attempts to "fix" them constantly grated on me. Similarly, I was constantly bothered by the Big Cheese and the way they played their 22 PCs.

I stuck around for months as ST, giving this my best effort. I could have done something else with all this time and effort (e.g. actually attending to those two games that I put on hiatus), but because of some strange sense of sunken costs fallacy, I decided to stick it out. Only after months did I realize that I was choosing to be in the wrong place.

Hours ago, I put in my two weeks' notice. I announced my departure as ST for that server in a fortnite's time. I hope things will get better there.

And I hope I can pick those other games back up.

Well, as an update, the final yab happened.

Hey everyone, here is an announcement on the state of the Server and its future.

When I originally made the Server I had a certain vision that, in part due to certain mistakes and inexperience on my own part, the Server has failed to achieve. On top of that, the entire Moderator team has found itself rather unhappy with many parts of the Server in ways that cannot be easily reconciled, both on the IC and OOC level.

Adding onto this comes the fact that we Moderators and the STs have had our differences in how the Server should be run, which has lead to the STs announcing their future departures.

As such, this is what is going to happen:

[This server] will come to an end by the end of this month. However, we are going to make a new Server that will go live with the beginning of the next month. One built with the lessons we learned on this one in mind and a much more concrete grasp on the vision and expectations we had for this Server. The Moderator team will stay the same for that Server. Those interested in following us may apply to do so, as instead of simply having the Server be open for anyone to join, we want to put a proper application process in place where things like expectations will be discussed beforehand. Most of the mechanical rules changes we have made thus far will likely remain the same. We are also going to implement a way for Characters to be able to transition from this Server to the other one with relative ease from a storytelling perspective, so you can continue playing Characters you've grown fond of on this Server on the new Server.

Regarding [this server], I am going to try and finish up my ST-Events by the end of this month. The Server will be deleted at the end of next month.

But also:

The STs leaving is actually just a minor inconvenience

On one hand, I really do hope for the best for them. On the other hand, they are keeping "most" of the laundry list of house rules and ruling, many of which are arbitrary, and "the STs leaving is actually just a minor inconvenience." This also does not address the head ST's 22 PCs and the safeguards against abuse of power.

I still want to be optimistic, though.

Hi everyone! 😊

I’d love to run a horror one-shot for my players this Halloween. Do you have any scenario suggestions (official or otherwise) or just general ideas?

I ran a game two years ago where the players were a group of friends filming an urbex stream. Each player had a secret (e.g., you’re in debt to some shady characters and absolutely have to make it big tonight or you're dead; you’re an alien; you woke up in someone else’s body this morning; you change your entire life every five years because of a curse that, you realize, is likely to strike again today...). We had a fantastic time!

In terms of mechanics, character sheets, and so on, I think I need something fairly simple and quick to play, but with a fun or surprising concept at its core.

I’m leaning more towards atmospheric horror focusing on the uncanny, an unwelcoming environment, etc. rather than gore or anything too extreme.

It’s worth noting that I have some time to set the mood with music, decorations, and the like.

I can also ask my players to dress up or prepare some small props for them.

There’s a park near my place and I have a small garden, so taking short trips outside to boost immersion, like a scavenger hunt, is definitely doable if needed.

I think a game that can be played in 6 to 7 hours (absolute max) would be perfect. Also, there will likely be 4 or 5 players.

Any recommendations? 🎃

Hello! I wanted to GM a campaign with folk-horror and witchcraft as its main themes. The best way I can describe what I’m looking for is a mix of dark fantasy, folklore, and the occult.

The players would be navigating a world plagued by an arcane sickness/curse that turns people into monstrous versions of creatures from myth and folklore. The adventure consists of learning things about this disease, and finding out how to cure it. They’d also engage in combat to discover gate-kept information, save people from these monsters, etc.

I want players to be able to use magic or weaponry in combat, but also have more manual aspects of magic present as well (rituals, incantations, material gathering, etc.) a balance between combat and role play would also be preferable as well.

I’ve only GMed DND a few times (2 campaigns, 3 one-shots), and I just don’t think it’d work, as horror quickly becomes old and at mid-tier play since characters get really strong rather quickly. I’ve also tried Call of Cthulu which is really fun, but I want my players to be able to practice magic without being punished, and the combat isn’t quite right either. If I’m wrong about either of these systems, and there are things I could change or tweak, I’m 100% open to any tips or advice.

If there are any suggestions for new systems, though, I would love to hear them!

While only two GMless games have been nominated at the Ennies, Deadline: A Clockwork Press and A Land Once Magic, I own both and have played Deadline, with a session for the other one planned soon.

Lately, I have tried older GMless games with my friends, some I have mentioned in my previous posts and comments like A Complicated Profession, The Treasure at the End of this Dungeon is an Escape (...), Fiasco, Dead House, The Dunwich Horror, Wanderhome, A Christmas Belonging, various hacks of For the Queen. I am also going to play Decomposer and the famous Polaris soon and during this year have tried oneshots or twoshots of some Belonging outside Belonging games such as Our Haunt and Extra Ordinary.

This subgenre has been getting a lot of dev love with so many niche games with fantastic pitches being available on itch, although I have played very little of them so I cannot speak for their quality.

And I noticed an uptick of requests for GMless recommendations here recently, which received wonderful suggestions in general. Not just the usual, Microscope, Fiasco, Alice is Missing, Ironsword, i'm sorry did you say street magic and The Quiet Year, but also Dialect, Fall of Magic, Annalise, Beak, Feather and Bone, City of Winter, Archipelago, Kingdom and Follow among others, just to name the titles I have either played or own.

we play every 3-4 weeks and every session starts with me summarizing because nobody remembers anything. I've tried sending session summaries, asking players to take notes, making recaps part of the game nothing sticks. Last time someone asked "who is this guy?" about an NPC they'd met twice. I've thought about using a campaign wiki or NPC tracking but not sure if it's worth the effort. What do you all do?