**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.

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I'll start. Even after doing hundreds of hours of classes, workshops, shows and open jams of long-form comedy improv, it can feel awkward, overthinking, tense and vulnurable to jump back into improv. (As a side note, long-form just means interconnected performances compared to short-form where they use games like Whose Line Is It Anyway?)

There is a huge difference between when you've had time to warm up with improv games compared to jumping straight into improvising. These are just like stretching before exercise. They get you into an mindset (away from real world's social perspectives) that makes improvising so much easier and practice important specific skills to do it well. And the same is true for roleplaying.

I think Improv Game warm up is especially true for people who are newer to roleplay and feel intimidated that they will look ridiculous. If you want a good list of them organized and with good explanations, Improv For Gamers is a solid book to pick up. But you can find these free online - I'd specifically look up "Zip, Zap, Zop", "Five Things" and "Mind Meld". They do a great job focusing on Listening and Immediacy (not worrying about being right, be willing to be obvious). If you want one to be especially ridiculous and silly - "Kitty Cat Careers."

Making everyone do some of the most silly actions normalizes this extreme behavior so much that then roleplaying is not silly at all. It initially seems pretty intimidating to do these games especially some of the most active games. People will feel vulnerable acting that way but as they see others be just as ridiculous, they ease into it. Attending a couple intro workshops and it works like a charm for people from all kinds of backgrounds.

As a bonus, it serves a second purpose as a ritual to get the table from side chats to the mindset that we are now we are playing.

Hello everyone, long time lurker first time poster here.

I have been running 5e/5.5 for the better half of a decade and I'm burnt out. Half of my table is quite reluctant to learn a new system while the others have no issue with it. I have played and looked into multiple games outside of d20 fantasy. (I.e. Draw Steel, Mothership, VtM, Delta Green, Mythic Bastionland, Candela, Pendragon, etc...)

My players for the most part like a power fantasy. They like RP as well. What are good alternatives to suggest to them?

My wife and I have never played any sort of TTRPG before. I wanted to disconnect from always being on my phone or computer and someone recommended Ironsworn: Starforge for first time solo play. I spent hours building my universe and character and I think I am slowly wrapping my head around the process, but I do not think my wife would be into it.

Can anyone recommend something that would be good and lightweight for newbie folks as a co-op style play without me having to be the GM? Free is preferred cause it may all crash and burn. I did read thru some of the recs here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/twoplayers/
but none of them really sounded exactly right.

I mean I think we almost need boardgame style, but we have played boardgames and I want to move onto something original. I know I would want at least a bit of dice rolling, but maybe that is about it, overly complex systems to track would probably not be great. Setting for the world might not be a huge deal, she reads a ton of books and enjoys pretty much any fantasy or sci-fi style stuff, but I would want something light, not dark and about depression or death if possible. We don't want to make it trauma inducing.

Again, just looking for thoughts or suggestions, and if anyone has any questions please let me know. I appreciate any assistance with this.

Hello,

I'm building out a world for my solo Legend in the Mist game and looking for inspirational content to draw from. I've done a fair bit of drivethru-ing, reading through my own personal collection and nabbing inspo from books and movies I enjoy.

I've been interested in the more grounded, "late dark ages", low fantasy medieval frameworks that would fulfill the Rustic Fantasy touted by the book. I like a more soft magic system, with more higher-level spiritual or wishy-washy effects.

This game really lets me build out concepts to start with and them mechanize them from there. I've thought to mash the retired knight tries to settle down meets coming of age hero as a concept (2 main PC's to start).

Here are the inspos I'm already starting with:

- The Children of Hurin, Of Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin

- Tales of Argosa

- The Odyssey

- Mythic Bastionland

- Forbidden Lands (I have every book)

- Kal Arath / Al Rathak

- The Odyssey

- A Wizard of Earthsea Let

- The Chronicles of Prydain (The Black Cauldron)

- Stonetop

Can you recommend other books that might include various themes or tables that fit a more grounded, "rustic" variety of fantasy?

I'm specifically looking for vibes builders. Tables like quest hooks, area descriptors, NPC descriptors, terrain / travel descriptors, etc.

The vibes of mythic bastionland and forbidden lands are near perfect - though they're very dark and violent with lots of blood and guts and demons.

Any product type is fine. Everything will filter down into tags in LitM so any string of words is enough to function in play. Bonus points if tags are a core element of the descriptors, but i'm generally quick enough on my creative feet to transpose things.

So, I guess this is different enough from an LFG post. I'm visiting my aunt with my family in Rhode Island for a week, and most of our plans involve visiting family. I'd love to know if anyone has recommendations for places to visit related to RPGs or board games. I tried searching on Google Maps, but I mostly found TCG shops.

I'm about to start a campaign and my spouse is currently running her own. The other day she asked me for low cost character art options and I've been reviewing what's out there. I don't want to use generative AI of any kind.

So far, here's what I've found:

• Old school flash character creators. (e.g., "Fantasy OC Creator")

There are dozens of these floating around, many of which can trace their lineage back to the days of flash games. They tend to be two dimensional and limited in feature customization. Stylistically anime / cartoon focused in many cases. This won't work for what I need - wrong style, too many limitations.

• 3D Miniature Generators. (e.g., Heroforge, Eldritch Foundry)

The advantages here are customization and an easy pivot to a working miniature should you have the funds or facilities available. The look is a bit cartoonish for many models. I like Heroforge, but a lot of people don't (my spouse included, unfortunately, otherwise she'd just use that). She feels the models are too "rounded" and are just not really the vibe she's after. I'm going to try and make one of her NPCs in this anyway, just to see if I can pull it off.

• CRPG Character Creators. (e.g., BG3, Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma 2)

There's some promising options here if all you need is a 2d image. Thing is, there's a ton of character creators out there, and their constraints vary. Like for BG3, you can't really fine tune facial features (unless Larian added that while I wasn't looking or there's a mod for it). Some of them have race or genre constraints.

Am I missing a major category here? Any games with stand out character creators I could use, preferably with a darker, more serious tone? Are there standalone apps that do this besides a full blown 3d rendering suite like Blender or Maya? I've run a bunch of queries through Google and Duckduckgo with the -AI tag and I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of standalone apps purpose built for this. Maybe I'm just using the wrong search terms though. Let me know if you've got better ideas!

hello guys, i really like to create dungeons, so anyone has a good book or article about it?

i'm not a beginner on it and are searching for more advanced material

I feel crazy posting this, but months ago I was at a used bookstore and came across a LotR TTRPG rulebook that I absolutely was fascinated by. It intrigued me because you could play your typical character archetypes in LotR, but they also included magic for these sorcerers or mages. The magic felt very Middle Earth too (Waves of water shaped like horses kinda spells). I was a fool of a Took for not buying it, and I hesitated too long, and by the time I decided to buy it, someone beat me to it. I'm trying to find that game again, but all the major LotR games people mention don't exactly fit what I saw/remember. The main LotR games people are mentioning are The One Ring, MERP, and The LotR RPG by Wizards of the Coast
What I remember:
-It was distinctly LotR. It wasn't a game that felt like Middle Earth.
-The art and style of the book was similar to The LotR RPG sold by Wizards of the Coast, but that game is missing elements that I saw in that book.
-The rules of MERP sound awfully close to what I saw. But every edition I've found online looks... too old to be what I found. Maybe I'm misremembering what the art in the book looked like. The book felt like it was made at least late 90's to mid 2000's, maybe into 2010's
-There were a couple of different spells for each element. I remember some either weather control spells or cool water control spells like Arwen's wall of water horses

Can anyone confirm what game I was looking at?

I’ve been wanting to make a RPG campaign where the players are part of an asymmetric armed force fighting against a much stronger organized enemy, where the core idea is that fights are unfair, and before any shots are fired they must plan meticulously to give themselves every advantage to even hope to win.

I was looking into Mothership but I feel the system is built almost entirely around a horror/Alien theme which is kind of hard to fit into what I’m thinking, but if you think it could work please tell.

Any genre could work, but I’m leaning either a sci-fi or “IRL” (idk how to explain, like based on either historical or possible things, with fewer fantastical elements).

Please tell whatever you think works

Hi everyone!

I’m starting to work on a project that I’d love to develop together with the community: an additional PokéRole manual set in a completely original Pokémon region.

The idea is to create a region from scratch, with new Pokémon, designs, stats, lore and locations.

I’m an illustrator and I’ll be handling the art direction and final rendering, but I’m looking for people interested in collaborating:
- Illustrators / Sketch Artists
For Pokémon concepts and sketches, as well as other elements of the region. You don’t need to have the same style as me: the sketches will then be refined and unified by me.
- Graphic Designers
For Pokémon sheets, stats, layout and the overall graphic design of the manual.
- Writers / Story Writers
For lore, worldbuilding, locations, characters and the story of the region.

The project is still in its early stages, and I’d like to build it together with the people who join, leaving plenty of room for everyone’s ideas.

I’m not necessarily looking for professionals. If you’re a beginner, want to experiment, or simply like the idea of the project, feel free to reach out!

If you’re interested, send me a DM with the role you’re interested in and, if you have any, some examples of your work. A portfolio is not required.

I’d really love to create something great together with the PokéRole community.

I’ve previously posted about the game back in November when we launched a prerelease version of the game, but now the book’s fully complete and funding for a physical print run.

40 years ago, people manifested psychic powers across the world, seemingly at random. Many of them had to leave their old lives behind, turned upside-down by potentially dangerous abilities they didn’t fully understand. Zener City has welcomed them with open arms.

How it's played

Checks in the game are resolved with a deck of poker cards instead of dice. Draw a hand of 5 cards at the start of the session, then play cards to resolve uncertain outcomes and use your psychic abilities. However, you don’t draw new cards until you’ve emptied your hand, so choosing when to fail something is vital! As play continues and the deck dwindles, players can be a little psychic themselves as they make guesses on what’s left in the deck and people’s hands.

Players create a House of Espers with a shared goal and visual aesthetic, then build out their individual members with a super flexible gear system and over 30 psychic abilities. Each ability has a flexible ‘Story Side’ and a more tactical ‘Action Side’, so your power choices remain useful no matter the scene and reward inventive usage.

A game about the city as much as the people in it

Something I always want city-focused games to dig into is "why do the characters care about living here?" so a lot of the rules for creating your House and the adventures they go on tie into exploring a local community.

Houses that navigate big challenges together might even psychically resonate with their own neighbourhood and create Turf, giving it a consciousness and a personality. Turf can change itself to reflect the will of the House that made it… but not all Houses create Turf for wholly altruistic ends.

The last 3rd of the book has profiles of 12 different Houses to find across Zener City, along with 10 districts with NPCs, key locations and rumours to springboard session writing.

In short, it’s X-Men meets Jet Set Radio. Or perhaps The Warriors by way of Mob Psycho 100. Necromunda but cheerful? However you slice it, it’s a love letter to graffiti culture, music and fashion subcultures, and the trials and tribulations of making (and maintaining) a community.

If you’d like to see the game played before you back, there are two demo session videos linked on the campaign page, and the aforesaid prerelease rules are still available via DriveThru RPG (although there have been a number of mechanical refinements since its release!).

The campaign will run until September 29th, and we’re aiming to have the physical book in people’s hands by January (and the digital version sooner than that). I hope the game’s your vibe, and as the writer, I’m happy to answer any questions here!