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Where do we stand on reminding players versus letting notes decide during puzzles?

I was running Sailor of the Starless Sea for a group of newbies. Due to scheduling and how they chose to go through the dungeon, we had 4 weeks between raiding the temple at the top of the dungeon and getting the censer, incense, and candles... And finding the menhir where they were meant to use them.

The players weren't sure what to do. As they investigated, I added details to help remind them of the candle by saying they found ash and wax residue. One said "do we have candles?" When no one remembered, I reminded them they did get some in the temple.

In my mind, 4 weeks passed for the players, but only an hour or so for the characters. It is reasonable to remind people something their characters should remember that the players forgot.

In a similar vein, yesterday, the players in a different game I run fought off a person who was trapped in a mega dungeon so long they became "Queen of the Giant Ants" and planned to sacrifice someone in a bit of acid. They saved the man and he rewarded them with a bag of medicine from a small god, which can cure any disease.

When the party found the gift strange, I asked them if they remembered anyone in town who'd want it. One member then pipped up and remembered that a merchant was willing to trade a priceless artifact that turns lesser undead for medicine to take back to his village, as they were suffering from a plague.

Where do y'all fall on this? It's hard for me to watch people fumble, especially when it feels like the only reason the player doesn't remember is the passage of time and the characters themselves should remember.

I LOVVEE the beginner’s guide Choose Your Own Adventure books Chaosium includes in their starter sets. That, and their “Alone Against The…” are such a good way to scratch the itch without a whole group. Does anyone know of any other books like that? Even if they are from third parties, I’m interested!

My idea is to have a bit of a metacurrency called composure, which can go up if you do things that are relaxing or feel morally good, and go down if something humiliating happens or if you do something that makes you feel guilty.

I want to have a good sized list of these things to pick from, is there another rpg out there with a similar system that I can look at?

Does anyone know of any RPG-focused gaming conventions in the state of New York? I'm aware of the Central New York RPG Convention (https://cnyrpgcon.com/) but I'm having trouble finding other New York-based conventions. I'm also aware of conventions in neighboring New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but I'm specifically interested in conventions throughout New York. When I was a kid I went to I-Con at Stonybrook in the 90's, but I hear it's different now and not really gaming focused, unless someone can confirm otherwise.

Thank you!

I'm running a post-apocalyptic game (Rifts) in person with no battle mat or minis, just theater-of-the-mind. Players keep asking things like "how far away is the bad guy?" expecting answers in feet. I don't mind answering, but an answer can often lead to more follow-up questions, and the minutiae bogs down a system that's already hard to run.

My current fallback is "Tell me what you want to do and I'll tell you if you can do it." It works for some players, not all. A mat feels impractical with guns, vehicles, and long sight lines, but I'm open to leaning more tactical if there's a good way to do it.

For those of you running modern or gun-heavy games without a grid: how do you handle distance and positioning while keeping tactical-minded players happy and the pace moving?

I’m aware only about Mythic Bastionland but maybe there are other games with something like classes and/or character progression with new abilities.

Hello, I came up with a setting idea for a game in wich an advanced alien race comes down to earth, infiltrates its institutions and eventually strands humanity to one last city. The main theme i was looking for is to give players a feeling of impotence and progression through sacrifices (like the deals with devils in Chainsaw Man or the cyberware that may lead you to cyberpsychosis in Cyberpunk) making levelling up more of a necessary evil than a reward.
I would like to keep the genre sci-fi (cyberpunk or mechas) and/or urban fantasy. However I am mainly looking for systems with a similar theme.
I have no problem about having to make heavy homebrew or system hacking, i like those aspects of GMing. So if you have any game suggestions please let me know

This isn’t entirely a discussion about “bad” adventures, because even great ones can go horribly awry for one reason or another: GM misinterpretation or inadequate preparation, player disinterest, etc. (It also goes without saying that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.)

With all of that in mind, have you ever run or played through an adventure that flopped so hard that it ended a campaign? I don’t mean a total party kill or diegetic narrative event, either: I mean something that killed everyone’s interest in playing any further, left bad feelings among the group, or otherwise made people shelf the RPG.

I had this experience GMing Diogo Nogueira’s “Halls of the Blood King,” an adventure for Old School Essentials. I like Diogo and his work, generally speaking. No blame on him, this was all me.

It is a very loosely structured module, and I think I wasn’t expecting that. It felt fine in prep, but in practice, I failed to find the rhythm.

Things just spun out of control and I wasn’t able to correct them. I had players stumbling around and not knowing exactly what to do, my own problems handling a mansion full of vampires, and finally a player who lost her first character and didn’t take it well.

The whole thing felt awful enough that I ended up declaring a complete do-over. We’d forget it ever happened and move into the next adventure, which we did, but the damage was done.

We shelved OSE and put the characters on ice after the next session. We love OSE, but have yet to return to it. We have been playing other things ever since. We’ll start anew when we do. The player (a new person) who lost her character won’t be returning: That rupture was irreparable.

I’m a forever GM of over 40 years and the last time a derailment of this scale happened was in high school with an adventure I wrote for my AD&D group. I guess things happen sometimes.

Any of you have a fatal flop?

Hey

I watched Resident Evil today - great movie, I recommend it - and it made me want to play a survival horror system.

The only ones I know for that are Call of Cthulhu, but the character sheet too time-consuming to create imo and I wanted something more dynamic, I also heard of Paranormal Order and Alien, but I've never played either of them.

I wanted to know which system you prefer or if you have any other recommendations for me - even PBTA would work.

To be clear not a shill just excited and want to see this not Kickstarter push further, it already funded the base goal and is just adding stacks of good stuff onto the pile.

The game is called Ink Ribbon, there's a quick start to try and see if it's worth throwing your money at.

Resident evil, last of us, Alan Wake (gods I'm old), eventually if it hits the bigger stretch goal Dino Crisis inspired TTRPG, go read the posts check out and see if you want to add it to your pile of 'will I ever run/play this or will it just be great reading material I can borrow' like I do.

Again, not a shill just excited as a forever GM that loves resident evil things.

My wife and I came up with an idea for me to GM a one shot for her and some of her friends. We want to do a rules-light system since there will be a couple of folks who have never played a ttrpg before and it’s just meant to last one session. I’ll take any ideas or recommendations any of you all have. Thanks!