**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.

​

----------

​

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**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.

​

----------

​

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

Since I love reading reviews of systems by people who've actually played them, I endeavor to post my own. You can skim my past opinions here to see if my tastes align with yours.

During a lull in our ongoing campaigns, my group finally tried Brindlewood Bay. I'm an improv-y PbtA GM at heart so I was very excited to give this a whirl! I came away even more impressed than expected with the clue/theory system (which is saying something; I expected to be impressed). I also discovered to my surprise that several parts of the system did not gel with me as much as anticipated.

The good

The rulebook is nicely laid out, with a clean evolution on a recognizable Powered by the Apocalypse frame. I know that Carved by Brindlewood has become its own offshoot of PbtA, and I don't want to diminish that, but I can say that I was comfortably able to port my PbtA experience into running BB with no hassle. As a result, I was able to skim over plenty of the rules.

A notable standout for me was the Session One walkthrough, which takes you through everything you should do during a first session. There are time estimates so you know how long each portion should take, and even read-aloud bits so you don't have to equivocate. Even for our group of experienced players, this was a really helpful guideline to make sure we didn't miss anything as we jumped into our first session.

The great

I really loved the way clues and theories worked. If you're not familiar: the players have two moves, "Avoid risk" and "Find a clue." Clues are evocative snippets pulled from the mystery at hand and they come without context. Their true meaning is intentionally ambiguous at first. However, players can at any time choose to propose a solution to the mystery, and they then roll with a bonus for each clue that they incorporate into their theory.

This played great for me! I already think of GM prep as "Prepare breadcrumbs / link them on the fly"; it's the whole organizational scheme behind Atma, the card-based RPG-in-a-box that my brother and I made. What BB added to the mix was the idea that "Link them" became a delayed, player-initiated action. We never had to pause the action to fit a clue into our mental model; we just jotted it down. And the moment when the players theorized usually included at least one "Aha!..." moment as someone cleverly linked a difficult clue into their solution. I think this moment of "Ah, that's how it could fit" equated well with the epiphany moment you get as you watch the detective explain the solution in mystery fiction.

The less good

Here are the things that didn't work as well for us.

Playing as elderly women: I thought this would be a great premise, as it's so evocative and fun. But it slowed us down a bit in play. The PCs weren't authority figures, so people weren't bringing problems to them. And the PCs weren't action heroes, so chasing danger felt a bit iffy. I think it led to a more observational stable of characters than we expected. One player mentioned that he struggled to come up with appropriate actions until he started thinking of his character more like a diabolical mastermind and less like a grandma.

The rigidity of clues: As much as I loved the clue system, I got tripped up a few times. We often wanted to treat some evocative detail as a clue, even when it wasn't the direct payoff of the Meddling Move. And sometimes, rolling a 7-9 on clue discovery (especially early in the mystery, before things escalate) led to a pause as we tried to think what on earth could be complicated about it.

The mystery seeds: Again, I really like improvising off a set of sparse breadcrumbs. But across two mysteries (Dad Overboard, Jingle Bell Shock) I found myself filling in way more gaps then expected to make sure we had enough locations, enough bystanders, enough details to explore within those locations... I'm not sure why this surprised me, but it did. Also, in Jingle Bell Shock, the players essentially start in a foyer with all the suspects. It was way too much info for the players to absorb at once; it took another few scenes with them split up and talking to individual suspects before they started to separate the characters (by role, not by name).

---

Overall, I really liked the system and really liked its innovations in improvising a mystery. I don't think the actual experience of play was as good for our group as Monster of the Week or Blades in the Dark, but I do expect to apply some of the lessons and mechanics from BB into other systems going forward.

I just love listening to TTRPG content and my current streaming platform of choice is YouTube. What are some of your favorite TTRPG content creators that don't get enough traffic or might be lesser known?

The medium can be anything: Youtube, podcasts, blogs. I'm focusing primarily on YouTube but would love to hear who you've found particularly inspiring.

Ideally someone with a small-ish following (<10k subscribers/followers, perhaps as a metric for "small"?). I love finding little diamonds in the rough.

Here's five:

1. Role on Buddy with Uriah - Extremely polished production, positive vibes, and a great introduction to techniques that really help out my player. His most recent videos talking about subjects like "high trust tables", "roleplaying for introverts" and "fast prep" are absolute gold mines of wisdom! Seems like a great dude.
2. The Tomb of Lime Gaming - Again, Matt has some phenomenal ideas on how to approach roleplaying as an exercise/skill. His discussion on horror gaming, pacing, and other themes are really extremely high quality. I especially like his video "How to achieve immersion in a Table-Top RPG" (you'll notice it by a giant label "MUSHROOMS" on the thumbnail).
3. Table Top Empire - Focused mostly on Fantasy Flight/Edge Studios Star Wars RPG, he does provide awesome breakdowns on the system, skills, and great "intro" content that could be easily cross pollinate. The guy is so passionate about Star Wars and he's truly helpful as a GM
4. Runeslinger - An older choice but a great one. Very long form content. Also provided a lot of GM guidance for FFG's Star Wars years ago. However, his roleplaying live plays are a blast for me to listen to. I really appreciate his in depth discussions with other folks in the hobby.
5. Tablerunner Crispy - Maybe a little bit of a controversial pick as he's certainly dogmatic about his style of roleplaying (with a heavy focus on immersion). However, you can't fault the guy for wanting to improve the experience of people at the hobby. Once you can accept that maybe there is a "better" way to roleplay (a controversial idea in and of itself but somewhat rational if you think about it), his ideas on ways to improve time at the table make a whole lot of sense. I don't agree with every single one of his dictums, but I do find a lot of his advice helpful. His review of "professional" games has really reinforced my own confidence that high quality gaming is really accessible to everyone. His live plays also serve as a great resume.

Love to hear what others in the community are listening to!

Edit: THANK YOU! What outstanding recommendations! Half of these I've never heard of which is the entire purpose of this thread. Isn't our hobby awesome?

I have been running my own campaign for about 5 months now, I am a new female DM but I have spent DAYS researching on how to be the best DM possible and how to make my players have a good time. I currently have a party of 6 players, 4 male 2 female, and they are all older than me by 4-8 years. Every single session, at least 1 to 3 people show up late, like half an hour to 45 minutes late. Yesterday 3 people showed up 45 minutes to an hour late. I have already set the precedent that those who show up on time get inspiration for that session. I have a roommate, who is in my campaign, that also DMs a game that I am in as well. Almost all of the players in my campaign are in his, and they do show up late, but not nearly as often (maybe 1/2 players 10 minutes late every week). I’m starting to feel like it’s because my players don’t respect me and my campaign? Is it because I am a woman or a first time DM? All of my players express how much they love my creativity and I put so much time into making the experience individualized for each player so no one is ever bored. Help!!

I've had a couple of tables already, most of them had the same people. Friends of mine. Idk if i did a bad job as a dm but they just didnt care about the table. Not showing up, showing up and not caring about the game.

I felt terrible, like i was making them play my table, even tho they wanted to. I always had to set the sessions dates, they just didnt do anything to play or to make their characters or to learn the system

I spent so many hours learning the system, learning to dm, writing. Learning how to make maps on tabletop or Roll20 (i have 300 hours only for this table)

Am i wrong to not want to dm anymore? Any tips on how to want to comeback or to find better players?

What do yall think?

Hello!

In my journey to become a better GM, I'm looking to expand my horizons beyond 5e and Starfinder. (Main games my party's been playing)

So far we've tried Vagabond and ICRPG. They liked Vagabond, and while ICRPG worked well for the oneshot we tested it with, I worry it wouldn't be enough for a longer campaign. I (with a different party) have played OSE, and I'd rather pick something else. In addition, I'm looking at Worlds Without Number, and Macchiato Monsters.

Personally, I prefer a bit of crunch, but I imagine most of my players would prefer something a bit simpler.

My favorite part of any game is exploring locations and settings that my gm is presenting me, but I feel like the games I currently play are lacking in good mechanics for that. Anyone have any suggestions for games that focus on exploration?

finding a common date, time and place for my games is always a struggle, i live in a small apartment so bringing my friends here is a generally not an option, when we find a common place the true boss show his face, the time schedule. How do you guys organize this kind of thing? do you know about any app or site which can help me organize this with my friends instead of just keep asking in a group chat "who can play day x at time y"? i was thinking about google calendar but i was wondering about other options too

Just re-watched Cloverfield and Monsters. Curious what system folks would use if you wanted to run a Kaiju survival horror game. Not a system where the players play Kaiju, but one where the state of the world is that Kaiju now exist and what life looks like with that reality.

hi, i want to narrate a monster hunting campaign to my friends. i was recommended both monster of the week and Ihunt. both seemed interesting and it was hard to tell wich one is better, but... both are kinda heavy on magic stuff and im not a big fan of that.

my campaign will be less about "werewolves, witches and vampires" and more about more weird folkloric monster like nuckelavee, tenome and the mare demon

i want the "magical nature" of the monster to be truly a unknown, scary thing and not "yeah, the monsters can use magic but i can too"

but of course, monster hunters should be badass. that's why, like humans do. they adapt, they develop their own tools to fight.

maybe humans can use magic but those are extremely specific individuals that spent their life studying, and even so they can only do small stuff.

is there any system that is more fitting?

i can, of course, adapt any of the two systems and tell the players that they can't pick the human magic options, but i think is kinda sad to cut out a part of a system that way

I'm looking for the following type of battle mat book for theatre of the mind play in a wide range of settings:

1) spiral bound or equivalent (so it can lay flat when open);

2) a range of full colour, feature generic, top-down terrain types (no really specific features - just the detail needed to convey a general sense that it's tundra, grass, sand, snow, or stone etc. underfoot);

3) no hexes, grids or equivalent tactical overlay;

4) dry erase or equivalent (or straightforward to laminate a DIY surface of this type);

5) ideally not much larger than A4 (8 1/2" × 11") as a closed book - but I'm prepared to be flexible here in either direction with no real prefereance as to portait, landscape or square.

Does something like this exist? Thanks!