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I ran dnd 5e for a couple dozen session, a campaign and a couple fewshots and oneshots. Some sessions were fun, some were not.

Recently I discovered new RPGs, tried Nimble and loved it but still felt held back by the super generic dnd setting.

Then someone wanted me to run Delta Green, so I read thru the quickstart and the Music from the Darkened Room, but I just couldn't make my sessions not a slog. It took them 2 session to even get to the house. Each session and during prep I felt overwhelmed with information, and at the table nothing I needed was ever easy to find.

Then I came across Cairn 2e and used it to run the waking of willowby hall, which was boring and a slog the first time I ran it, but the second time I added a live countdown timer where every 10 mins the giant hit the house and an encounter happened, which was way more fun but didn't give the players a lot of room to breathe or be creative.

Due to scheduling issues neither of those have continued yet, but last week I got super into Mythic Bastionland and read it cover to cover, and got a good sense of the game as I had with previous games. I expected that running it could be very hard, and risked being boring and a slog. Ran two separate oneshots, in one the player resolved a myth and the other they literally only experienced one omen but they were both so incredibly easy to run and so much fun because I was discovering the situation and exploring alongside the players.

It was really hard to run, consistently so thru the session, but it almost felt like the book was holding my hand and forcing me to the creative and interesting in the way of making sense of the spark table results for everything. The world felt generative, in a good way, and I felt like I was a great dm doing a good job running an interesting game even when the second session's pace was much slower.

I think a part of it is the What's going on section in DG and other scenarios kinda just spoils the fun to some extent and with Mythic I didn't even know what's going on until it unfolded so it was way more engaging but that's maybe a bit irrelevant.

Finally, I separately also read thru the mothership player manual and the wardens guide both cover to cover and it made a ton of sense, I could envision how the game would play out and I was so excited by all the different cool modules and scenarios it had to offer. After running Mythic successfully I was very optimistic about mothership, which was known to be easy for new dms because of the good warden's guide and clear player's handbook and I've also read a lot of scifi and even played alien isolation, so I had a great idea of the vibe and inspiration to draw from.

I was planning to run Anothet Bug Hunt but after a couple of pages in it felt too handholdy and too verbose, almost harder because of the walls of text. So I decided to run Screaming on the Alexis, which seemed simple, interesting and fun.

But the session began and I just started failing. There was no index on the player's guide, so I couldn't easily look up any relevant rules, I barely understood how combat worked even tho I had read it and watched yt videos about it and thought I fully got it, but at the table I just choked and the combat section barely clarified anything when I eventually found it labelled Violent Encounters. The same books that felt so awesome and well designed and well written when I was reading them suddenly felt like my enemies bent on confusing me. Sorry for dramatic statement lol.

There were no stats or what the enemies are supposed to do and how, players would go in a room find a thing and spend somehow 30 mins discussing what to do even tho they understood the threat (I used the memory loss start I saw on reddit which I thought was awesome, with the alpha gaunt hitting the door and them being trapped in a room with a small gaunt and them realizing their memories were wiped and last thing they remembered was approaching this ship).They figured their jump drive was broken due to the artifact and had a clear goal, but had no idea what to do and honestly I didn't either.

I just had such strong mental blcoks and info overhead that I basically blanked and just was doing things pretty much randomly making up the system on the fly or off my memory.

There were just so many questions and so many things I couldn't answer or didn't know, like the android having superhuman strength or having a vacsuit but idk if they can survive a vacuum so on. Like way too much felt like it was just left up in the air for me to figure out on the spot. I'm writing this directly after the session and honestly I'm not sure what prep if any I can do for the next session to not just have info on hand better (seems like I need to come with a lot of info about the canon and tech and hacking and androids and so on that I can't just answee on the spot) but more importantly how to "get" the game.

I'm noticing a common problem that any scenarios that are just a bunch of rooms with descriptions either I just don't get how to play them or my players don't or both, but every room they go in and every bit of info they find just seems so mundane and boring and the encounters being just toxic crawlers combat felt underwhelming (they oneshot all of them since they had a single wound no health apparently).

I really wanna love mothership and I don't know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it. Maybe if the game just isn't for me then I'll have to live with that but I want to power thru and learn to get it and run it for others such that they have fun.

I don't get what makes mythic bastionland so much easier to run like I can't possibly having a boring session of it, and what makes Mothership and Delta Green feel like the opposite where I can't seem to have sessions that are nothingburgers and a slog. It almost feels like the scenarios are lacking in "content". It doesn't feel novel or interesting or scifi, maybe a hgih bar set by mythic but the spark tables really made the world feel foreign and interesting nonstop, nothing was ever plain and boring. Maybe I just need spark tables of inspo for mothership idk.

Planning to read both books in full, research all questions that came up and those that could, try to organize all this info in handwritten notes that I can hope to reference better (tho I've never been able to successfully do this before maybe notetaking and bad prep is my biggest weakness Mythic does require literally zero prep).

I guess this post is both seeking advice on how to run mothership better but also subtly seeking more game recs like mythic that are so easy and fun to run that you just can't not have fun running it.

Also I'll read thru all of Another But Hunt as well maybe that'll help wrap my head around it.

I left Discord some months ago because I really dislike their user data collection and their app is basically spyware.

Does anyone use/know/recommend an alternative platform suitable for TTRPG communities? (besides Reddit).

In my collection of got Pirates of the Spanish Main for Savage Worlds, Rapscallion for PbtA, possibly debatable, but Scum and VIllainy for potential space piracy and FitD, and of course I've been obsessed with Pirate Borg.

I know there's more than one 5e supplement. I know Pathfinder has Skull and Bones. And, I know over the years there have been others. Since it might be the single most represented genre in my collection (if we exclude dragon in dungeon style fantasy), I figure I might as well go all in and start collecting stuff.

So, I come to you for recommendations!

NOT named FIST. Looking for alternatives.

I was looking to get an universal RPG and most of my friends pointed out to Gurps, especially since 4e revised has just been released.

I’m ignorant with the system but I understand Gurps as a very easy and streamlined RPG, but also contained a massive toolbox of rules that you can plug n play to make your game as tactical/crunchy as you seem fit. Most of my friends pointed out the system to be the one where you can actually build any type of character and run any setting on it (although they did highlighted that over the top settings like superheroes might fail with the system).

For people who played/DMed multiple universal systems, how does GURPS compare to other universal systems like SWADE, Cypher 2e, Fate core, BRP, Genesys and etc?

Thank you everyone!

Hi everyone, I'm looking for recommendations for fun, short campaigns, preferably for newer systems.

I've started a new job and won't be able to find a lot of time for plotting and scheming. We're about to finish a year-long Warhammer Old World campaign (a system and setting I cannot recommend highly enough) and would like to run something from a book for 3-4 months while I catch my breath in the new job.

We've played a lot of D&D, Pathfinder, Cthulhu, Warhammer - we'll pick up any system easily enough. It would be fun to try something in a new system, but not vital. Please give me your recommendations for a campaign I can run without too much prep. Official or third party, open to all suggestions!

(we play weekly - so 3-4 months is 12 to 16 sessions, at 3-4 hours a session)

Hi! I'm going to run a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I'd like to capture the atmosphere of The Batman (2022). Do you have any tips on how to achieve this, or on how to create a good atmosphere in general?

I'm curious about anybody having had an experience with a game designed around a different proportion of GM and Players. I could see GM-less games kind of fitting this, but I want to see a game where the asymmetry between the two roles is kept, even if there are more of them at play. I imagine something like a game where everybody but one player is a ghost, and so the ghostly GMs all have to haunt the one living person in their own way.

I think of TTRPGs as "gamified improv", but it's so abstract I prefer going like

It's a game where people tell a story together and roll dice to find out what happens next. Each player has a character with skills and stats like in a video game, except for one, who controls all the secondary characters, describes what goes on in the background, and conducts the story. It's played like a conversation, and players speak as their characters and narrate their actions, but it's kind like a board game because when your character attempts something, you roll dice to find out what happens.

I love the combat of MERP.
But character creation takes forever, especially when you could get one shotted.
Is there a d100 fantasy game with a lot of combat that’s simpler in character creation?

Beyond dice-based mechanics, what other systems do you find fun for advancing the story?