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The free quickstarts that many systems have are an incredibly valuable resource, both for promoting and learning their game. Whether they're just an adventure with pregens and a rules summary or a full little rulebook in and of themselves, the ability to pick up and try a system at no cost, and without having to peruse a whole book, is fantastic for getting both players and gamemasters into it. With all that said, what do you think are some particular hits or flops among quickstarts, and why?

Personally, I think the Call of Cthulhu 7th one is one of my favorites, somehow containing everything players and even keepers realistically need most of the time while still being conveniently small and nice looking. On the other hand, I'm not a huge fan of the 13th Age 1e quickstart (though I am a huge fan of 13th Age), which while fine for people already familiar with F20 games, explains very little except for how it's different from those, and doesn't include pregens or adventures in its own page count, all together which make it much less useful for introducing newcomers to the game, in my opinion.

EDIT FOR THE KIDS WHO THINK A MAGE GUILD WITH BUREAUCRACY IS JUST WRONG: You don't have to use it. I mean it. It's your world and you can have it work in any way you want. I am not saying you should run it this way. Truth is thou, that this kind of stuff is present in many, many worlds and scenarios of our beloved games, so I think what I explain here might be a nice a idea for a game. That's all.

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Characters need help with magic, and they have money and fame, so they go to the head of the Mage Guild or whatever magic-user institution, and what do they find? A politician. I know, it might sound counter intuitive, but hear me out.

IRL dynamic in academic research

In real-world research universities, the department chair isn’t the brilliant researcher running experiments at 2 AM. Au contraire, they’re the person who figured out how to navigate faculty meetings, secure funding, and befriend all the different (and many times rival!) departmental claques, and maybe the staff union. The misanthropic nerd loner, 100% invested in advancing science? They’re probably in a windowless lab, avoiding committee assignments like the plague.

This structure replicates scaling down: Consider a research lab. The head professor spends time crafting a funding proposal (i.e., a sales pitch), plans the budget, deals with admins and bureaucracy; meanwhile, the students and postdocs that do not even know exactly from which project their salaries comes from are the ones developing the actual science.

Hospitals work in a similar way. The Chief of Surgery might spend more time in boardrooms than operating rooms to keep that title. Meanwhile, the surgeon who can perform miracles with a scalpel is scrubbing in for their fourth procedure of the day, muttering about “administrative nonsense”. Brilliant practitioners might find politics tedious, and self-promotion awkward and exhausting.

What if Magic guilds or schools mirror this dynamic?

I do see a strong parallel. The obsessive wizard who spent sleepless nights to craft a new spell probably hates dealing with apprentice applications and guild politics.

The person running your Mages’ Guild is likely someone who mastered the social game: Building alliances, managing resources, understanding what different factions want. They’re likely a competent spellcasters, sure, but their true talent lies in organization and influence. So when designing mage guilds and schools, I would factor this dynamic in.

When the players need help from the best mage to investigate the artifact they just snatched from that forlorn crypt, well, they can go to the master wizard and, disappointingly, find a politician. The master wizard is all worried about maintaining the status quo and the problems that the artifact can cause: How to report this discovery to the king? Wait, are there taxes to be paid on unearthed magic artifacts?, etc. The mage that the players need, the one that would obsess over the artifact and help them understand its powers and how to control it, is likely a foul-mouthed recluse loner (and super fun to play).

Original link and shameless plug, if you want to subscribe to my blog: https://open.substack.com/pub/kindofold/p/the-real-archmage-is-probably-not

(RPG contents for NSR, OSR, and PBTA systems; solo actual play; agile reviews of indie games; and very occasionaly, rants)

new to gming and need a system to run for a one shot

the gist of the game is that the you are goons trying to escape from a deranged slasher villain type batman after a job went terribly wrong. something stealth based with minimal combat,rules lite. any suggestions?

Looking for moderate crunch, not too much magic (although I'm not anti-magic), but most importantly it needs to have a different feel to the combat compared to the previously mentioned games.

(I have nothing against the titles mentioned. I just need something fresh Y'know)

It sounds silly, but we all get excited to throw little plastics rocks around and play make-believe with friends.

Some systems or even homebrews like to have different shapes of dice, some games have cool dice mechanics or extensive tables, some have small props or card decks, meters, candles, all that kinda stuff.

For bonus points: I was wondering about how funny it would be to have a "first session-of-the-month jell-o" or "cosplay week" tradition for everyone to bond over or look forward to, and was wondering if there was any other silly rule you took totally seriously, or a recurring bit everyone ran with!

Hi, I'm working on a rpg one shot in a post apocalyptic world. Players will have to go to a radio tower to repare it, on the way i put forest and building for them to explore (they can find stuff like oxygene, bullets, trace of other expedition etc, and zombies)

I would like that they can't return back to the base so i need to have enough thinds to play with on the way but I don't know if what i prépare is enough.

I tried to follow te 3-3-3 rule.

Do y'all have any advice ?

What are the no-goes in your world-building and storytelling? Gory stuff? Psychological things? NSFW?

I've listened to a few, and I'm planning on rating them by the following criteria: Game-i-ness, polish, humor, and story. The rating is supposed to be really simple, just 1-3, just to give people an idea of what each one is. I'll write basically what I'm thinking so far, and I'd love to know where you disagree with me, or if you could add on with other podcasts you recommend, I'd appreciate it.

1. World's Beyond Number
   Game: 2/3 Very little of this podcast feels game-y, but Brennan likes to emphasize the roll of dice in their storytelling, and it's clear the game has a big influence on the story being told.
   Polish: 3/3 Enough said, listening is like listening to a professional radio drama.
   Humor: 1/3, it's not unfunny, but it's not the focus. Don't let this dissuade you; humor isn't the main goal here.
   Story: 3/3

2. Critical Role
   Game: 1/3 I don't think it's scripted or anything, but the fact that they are playing a game doesn't feel important or integral to much of it.
   Polish: 1/3 Talking about the podcast specifically, there isn't much editing to make the podcast shine, but of course, all of the performances are phenomenal. (Personally, I find it hard to listen to as a podcast, much better as a video.)
   Humor: 2/3. It's similar to World's Beyond Number, but I'd say that, depending on the campaign, specific characters and large-group dynamics lend themselves more to humor.
   Story: 3/3

3. Dungeons & Daddies
   Game: 2/3 They're not too concerned with being accurate to the game they're playing, but a lot of humor comes up around designing new game mechanics and leveraging existing mechanics for interesting situations.
   Polish: 3/3 Has great audio production, music, and uses editing well to service other narrative and bits.
   Humor: 3/3 It's a comedy podcast.
   Story: 2/3 90% of episodes aren't really focused on story or important character moments, but the last 10% is really high quality.

4. KOLLOK: 1991
   Game: 2/3 Not terribly focused on being a game, but they have some mechanics that make their way into the story.
   Polish: 2/3. Original music, a fantastic ability to set the tone, and immersive storytelling, but sometimes I find the performances a little difficult.
   Humor: 1/3 Not what it's trying to do, but still present.
   Story: 3/3 A very compelling and interesting mystery with equally interesting world-building.

5. NADDPOD
   Game: 3/3 Feels like the most realistic portrayal of what a D&D campaign is like.
   Polish: 2/3 Easy to listen to, audio production does its job.
   Humor: 3/3 It's a comedy podcast.
   Story: (I need help on this, I'm only like 20 episodes in, right now I'd give it like a 2/3, but I'm not sure if it ramps up)

6. GumShoes and Dragons
   Game: 3/3 Every episode is a mini murder mystery puzzle game.
   Polish: 3/3 Similar to Dungeons and Daddies
   Humor: 3/3
   Story: 1/3 It's largely just episodic mysteries of the week.

7. Dimension 20:
   (This wavers some from season to season I'd say this is largely true for most seasons, but there's more info here: on what seasons are more comedic https://dimension20.fandom.com/wiki/Watch_Order )
   Game: 3/3 This is Brennan again, so similar to WBN, but with less editing to get between the audience and the game.
   Polish: 2/3 It's better watched than listened to as a podcast.
   Humor: 3/3
   Story: 2/3 It has a very good story, good character moments, especially in later seasons, but every other episode is a combat encounter, which weakens this category a little bit for me.

Thank you, Mod Team, for approval!

Hello, everyone! Meredith from DriveThruRPG!

⏱️ Over the last few months, 80 publishing partners (20 of them brand-new to publishing!) joined in our annual game jam, PocketQuest, with the theme of time travel! The publishers were challenged to make their own stand-alone game with the theme and create this in 25 pages or less. We had a blast in our Discord Community doing writing challenges, constructive critiques, playtesting, and more support from not only veteran publishers but ones doing it for the first time.

⏳ Some people chose going for more horror, some decided to use cards for mechanics, and one person even did a solo journaling adventure! There's so much variety in this year's submissions!

This week, those beautiful creations are released to the public!

🕰️ I wanted to take a moment to celebrate these creators on completing this game challenge and wanted to show off their work to all of you!

🎉 Please join me in celebrating them and if you'd like, checking out their submissions this year. Thank you for the space to support new creators on an extremely fun challenge.

You can see all PocketQuest submissions in the Newest Title Strip on DriveThruRPG in the PocketQuest filter here.

Hey all! I wanted to see if someone could suggest a game that would "fit the best" into a custom setting ive been making a long time now.

A while back I wanted to challenge myself to make a whole setting and I have it very fleshed out now. The question is. I am between a few systems and I can also explain what notes I wanted to touch on for my setting.

I personally have been suggested alot of OSR (Vaults of Vaarn, Electrum Archive, GROK) but most of them arent beefy enough for our groups tastes. My group loves long running games they can really sink their teeth into. Like D&D or Traveller. I half considered a Warhammer game but dont know enough about it. I also own all of the Without Number games.

Using the description below, which Science Fantasy with Magic game should I pick?

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It is a setting that is post space age collapse. Tech was so advanced they discovered magic and accidentally woke up the sun, Shamash, a now living god. The magic, destroying all of the advanced civilization with the sun gods eldritch power killing a lot of tech and pulling wild Interdimensional beings into the world.

The planet where this takes place on is a heavily mutated place. O°2 levels are intense on the surface and have made the air so thick it has a shimmer like you are under water. MagiTech devices were created to make floating islands to escape the dangerous surface (you can still explore it with gear). Now everyone uses airships and other contraptions on the surface to get around.

The main idea of the setting is to have tech and magic intertwined. Similar to the game Sable, Kill 6 Billion Demons, Naussica, Book of the New Sun, or Moebius.

The plot of the game would be explore megastructures, delve into ancient but futuristic ruins, fight old facilities defenses and eldritch horrors, spend downtime together and travel to new horizons on the waves of water like air.

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EDIT: some comments asked me to go into more detail on what systems I like and what I am looking for.

I am looking for a system that could last a long time and could run more than 10 sessions per campaign.

My players love character classes but strong abilities to differentiate them could also work.

I would like to not have to homebrew a magic system or create a way for airships to exist within the world.

Last piece, is I would like exploration be at the forefront, combat second rather than first.

Thank you!

I have a Homebrew campaign I'm looking to run but me and my playgroup are getting a bit tired of dnd5e so I was thinking this would also be a good time for us to all swap to a different system.

If it helps at all the setting is kind of like horizon: zero Dawn, current technology is about a medieval level but there are artifacts that are actually remnants of a vast super advanced civilization with magic coming both from that and from multi-dimensional shenanigans.

Though also just share whatever system you currently use or is your favorite even if it doesn't align with that setting.