**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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.

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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.

**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.

I know that a lot of us are guilty of buying more games then we can realistically play. Sometimes we want to collect them, sometimes we tell ourself that one day we will definitely get around to playing it, and sometimes we just can't control ourself when we see something cool.

What games do you have that you are most likely never going to actually play? Is it a lack of time or willing players? Is the system or theme more complex or niche than anyone you know is willing to try? Is the game just kind of disappointing?

Please share your tales of unplayed games and why it's just not going to happen.

For me the two games that I will likely never play are Blackbirds, and Bladerunner. I absolutely love Bladerunner as a setting and a book, but I doubt that any of my friends would want to sit down and play a serious and gritty detective game. Blackbirds is a great idea for a fantasy world, organized by someone who desperately needed an editor and laid out will all the enthusiasm and style of a cardboard box. I love the ideas inside it but the game fights you at every step to keep you involved and understanding of the material. It desperately needs a 2e that will never happen.

Well. I just turned 51 a month ago. I've been gaming almost 40 years now, mostly as the GM.

Recently pitched a Shadow of the Beanstalk game to my group, even added some new players - everyone's jazzed about the setting and the cyberpunk genre. Great says I, and figure I'll use the system for the SotB sourcebook, Genesys. I'd even run Star Wars before, many many years ago (and two sessions of Genesys when it first came out).

I can only game once a month, so, plenty of time to get ready, right? Well...life happened. Work got crazy; I have a lot to do and, as a university teacher, have to grade tests and such as I can (which often means weekends if I don't have office time for it). The war in Iran has actually caused the wife and I to have to move plans around and cancel others (which takes time to unravel).

What does this have to do with anything? Me, and learning Genesys. In the old days (a decade or two ago) I'd do all the above and still have time to read a game and learn it fast. Did it all the time, which is why I thought nothing of doing it now. But this time? No dice (pun intended).

I realized that as I started really getting into the prep (how to teach the game, rules and side rules, figuring out opposition, the actual situation/story, etc.) that I just didn't have the bandwidth for it all. I wrote my group yesterday that I'm not able to run Genesys; can't learn it fast and well enough. Can I run something else I know well, but in the same setting we're all here for (Fate Core in this case)? They've agreed and its a relief. But I realized that, partly, I have already so many games in my head, that fitting in yet another was...a chore. Or at least harder this time around. Genesys is a fine, mid-cruch game, but just felt like too much for me right now.

With Fate, I sat down yesterday and wrote up a version for the Andriod setting pretty fast (I had a previous cyberpunk game I'd run in Fate maybe a decade ago so I dusted off those notes and built from there). Didn't take long.

Realized that as I age, I feel like learning some new games isn't worth it. Like, conceptually I have nothing against it - I learned Mythras maybe two years ago and it ran really well; also relearned GURPS 4e to run it for a short campaign I just finished. Before that, Savage Worlds and I hadn't run that in like 15 years so it was sort of like new. I'm also a big Burning Wheel fan.

So it isn't that I can't handle complex rules or whatever, it's just...Genesys was new. After three weeks of prep I don't feel up to running it well. And so here I am, having to switch to something I know well so we can start the campaign next weekend.

Anyone else in this old person's boat? I'm a grognard, but a slightly sad one - are new rule sets always going to be this much effort? I like reading rules and trying them out, or at least, I used to...

P.S. - lots of great comments here. Made me rethink my position. I talked to my group again and they're okay with a "non-perfect" first session; takes the pressure off. I do still have a week to read and prep, and now that I finished grading papers, I think I even have a little time before the next set of papers in a few days. So...gonna give it a whirl! Thanks to all!

I'm really enjoying reading "The Game Master's Handbook of Collaborative Campaign Design" by Jonah and Tristan Fishel. I found it in a local bookstore. My (now adult) children enjoy RPGs, so when I saw it on the "staff recommendations" table, I picked it up.

It's a delightful deep-dive into ways to facilitate relatively unfettered interactions among a group of people in the table top role-play context. I'm a software developer who's never played, yet I'm finding it fascinating.

I'm even finding some insights are applicable to working with groups of people at my job.

It's an easy read and I'm learning a lot about the game play that's been going on in my dining room for years. :-)

\ I'm not affiliated in any way with the author, publisher or sellers.*

Hey, I just wanted to share some joy.

Yesterday I finished a campaign - 30 sessions, around 120 hours of play over 8 months, 5 players - in my own system: low-magic dark survival fantasy focused on narrative. One of the players was my wife, the rest I found online in my city. About 3/4 of the campaign was played in person, and we finished the rest online when two players moved away. The campaign lasted exactly as long as I planned - I ran it with the intention of not letting it drag on.

We tackled a heavy theme - it was essentially a political, social, and religious drama. The players were very engaged; some didn’t miss a single session, and no one missed more than two. 0 calendar issues. One of them commuted an hour from another city to attend. The finale was a kind of ordeal trial - a debate where the players tried to influence a crowd in hopes of changing one of the continent’s nations. There was no boss and no combat in the final - we had fight more or less evert 2-3 session. Throughout the entire campaign, the players encountered 4 monsters - they fought one, one appeared in a dream as a nightmare and not a real entity. They met only one person capable of casting magic. That doesn’t mean there weren’t fantastical elements tho - there was dream travel, glimpses into the past, rituals, strange locations, and more. We managed to keep a mystical, mysterious tone in a harsh and brutal world.

Each player started with two fate points (like in Warhammer Fantasy), and more could be bought by development points - everyone except one, who sacrificed himselve, made it to the end. Along the way, everyone lost those points at least once, some multiple times. In the ending, the players achieved many of their goals, but they also felt the consequences. At the end, we played epilogues for each character - each player described what happened to them afterward, supported by a few rolls - everyone left satisfied. The players surprised me many times, and I almost always liked their ideas.

I ran it according to my “Play to Reveal” approach - I prepared frameworks and structures of events and tried not to let players escape beyond them, but inside those frames they could do whatever they wanted. You can think of it as a stable scaffold for improvisation. Players couldn’t create the story from nothing, but they could add details to the world.

One mechanic stood out above everything - the narrative sequence (two clocks: progress and failure running in parallel), which allowed us to resolve complex scenes like dungeons, heists, dream journeys, exploration, etc. in about 8 rolls wrapped in a story over ~40 minutes with a real feeling of preasure. Without it (and the chase mechanic, which allowed for different kinds of narratives), we probably would have been playing this for 3 years.

I’m extremely happy, proud, and artistically fulfilled - and also grateful for the players I ended up with - engaged, respectful, non-conflictual, and friendly. I worked on this (campaign + iterating on the system mechanics) for 2 years, basically in every free moment, to the point where I was sometimes completely fed up with it - and then kept going anyway (this is not good or recommended).

This is the first campaign I’ve ever managed to finish - and the second one I’ve run. In a few others I participated as a player - my character always died.

I wouldn’t change anything. It was an absolute pleasure. A dream of mine came true - a few people truly bought into my story.

I’m mostly writing this just to share the joy - I guess that’s why we play, for moments like this, whitch I wish upon you - but I’m happy to answer any questions.

Maybe I’ll add some conclusions or observations later, once I process it more.

Now comes the emptiness after a big project and a strange kind of nostalgia - the awareness that I experienced something with these people that we’ll probably remember for the rest of our lives, but because of distance, we’ll most likely never play together again, since playing in person is just better than online.

I'm a GM. I've run a fair number of systems and I'm happy to learn new ones.

I've got a chance to play some one-on-one with a friend who is new to the hobby but interested to give it a go.

He lives near by so it's easy for him just to come over and we don't have to rely on getting a group together which means we can play more often.

I'm looking for recommendations of either a system or a system and a prewritten campaign that are particularly suited to one-on-one play.

Would love to hear people's experiences.

Quite keen to keep a game master player dynamic but I'm open to hearing about GM-less games if they work well one-on-one.

Looking for something we can run as a campaign so not really up for one-shots etc

thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for something a bit specific, and I’m not sure where to start anymore.

I used to be really into text-based roleplay back in the day on Skyrock (before it disappeared). I would create blogs for different characters and build stories with other people—sometimes in fantasy or sci-fi settings, sometimes just modern or realistic ones. It was very writing-focused, character-driven, and collaborative.

I’m not really from the “gaming” side of RP (like MMORPGs or video game-based roleplay). What I’m looking for is more about writing with another person—developing characters, relationships, and stories together over time.

I guess I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, but also genuinely curious:

• Where do people go for this kind of RP nowadays? • Are there platforms, forums, or communities that still focus on this style of writing? • Is it mostly on Discord now, or are there dedicated websites like before? 

I’d really love to find a space where people are still passionate about storytelling and character-building like this

Thanks in advance 🤍

I keep a spreadsheet, so (accounting for errors, missed zines, pamphlets, etc) I'm close to or at 1,000 books. Fortunately, according to my own arbitrary tiers, I don't have a problem overcollecting (yet)...

What about you? What tier do you think your collection is:

Tier 1 - Just a few of my favorites (1-20)
Tier 2 - Starting off (20-50)
Tier 3 - Enough for a nice shelfie (51-100)
Tier 4 - This is getting out of hand (100-250)
Tier 5 - I'll never play all of these in my lifetime (251-500)
Tier 6 - My books have their own room (501-1000)
Tier 7 - I may have a problem... (1001+)

Zines & Pamphlets either don't count or count as 10th of a book (sorry Mothership / Mork Borg fans!)

I work a lot in games, but one of my specialties has been to help companies and game studios get funding in Canada through grants. For all the non-Canadian folks out there, Canada has a HUGE network of programs that fund art and games at multiple levels of government. I'm fairly successful at creating grant materials and applications for myself and clients; in fact I'm working on a video game right now through grant funds. Most of my grant work is related to video games and it's good contract work I enjoy.

Recently, I was approached by a prospective client with a Tabletop RPG concept they've been working on for a while. They are looking for grant funding to reach the final stretch and wanted me to help with that. However, I have very little experience in the TTRPG realm, which is hindering me as I map out a funding strategy for them before they hire me. My major problem right now is that I know a lot of funding programs that support Video Games in Canada... But that's the thing... VIDEO Games. My usual sources don't support TTRPGs and focus on video games. Because a big rulebook is involved, I thought to try and approach it from a Book Funding approach, but the grant officers for several Book Funding initiatives do not seem to like TTRPGs, instead focusing on mostly funding novels, poetry, and comics.

That's what brings me here to try and find people who might have a better understanding of how TTRPGs are funded than I do. I'd like to ask if anyone does anyone know some avenues people use for getting TTRPG funding? I'm sure people on this sub will have more experience or know-how on this than me, so I'd appreciate any tips and advice.

So, me and my group want to do something SCP for our next campaign since SCP: Galionic is coming out sometime and it’s revived our middle school interest in the franchise. Therefore, I came to ask what system (DnD, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc.) would be best for running a campaign in the SCP universe. Does anybody have any suggestions?

I have trouble focusing when typing out my notes and find I get much more done writing. Has anyone figured out good methods for organizing campaign notes non-digitally?

Thank you in advance :)