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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.

​

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

Everyone in our group takes a turn at the head of the table, rotating out every few months. Last night I ran a modified version of the Daggerheart starter adventure Sablewood Messengers as a oneshot between campaigns. Our group mostly runs D20 systems (D&D 3/5 and Pathfinder 1/2) with lots of grid combat and a decent amount of crunch. My general feeling was that Daggerheart was going to be kind of a tough sell.

The players showed up with an open mind, but no clue about what Daggerheart was other than it was related to CR (which none of us really watch), and maybe that it leaned into the narrative elements. I handed out the Pre-Gen characters that come with the adventure and saw what an uphill battle it was going to be as they looked over the sheets. All eyes glazed over, and the fear set in.

It only got worse when I tried to explain the difference between Evasion, Armor, HP and the Thresholds. I was intent on making this happen, though, so I put on my best teacher voice and brought out the skittles we would be using as tokens. Combined with the flashiness of the cards and the teaching resources like the Sidecars, that totally brought things back on track.

Never underestimate edible resource tokens.

For the adventure I mixed around encounters and added a couple things from their free expanded content on the Sablewood Location. They were hooked by the first combat. They loved passing the spotlight between themselves, and the gameplay felt familiar but so much more dynamic than what we are used to. I saw them taking to combat naturally, so I threw plenty of adversaries at them. As a GM, tracking HP through thresholds is incredibly intuitive and much more manageable. My players were skeptical about it on their side up until they saw the Giant shrug off a pretty heavy blow entirely with her armor, and by then the min-maxer fully bought in.

This game isn’t just for beginners, and it isn’t the rules-lite feelings simulator some will tell you it is. It is a high fantasy action game that absolutely holds its own.

You really do have to play it to know what it's like, reading it or watching videos won’t give you the experience. Lean into what it offers: Ask the open-ended “What do you see?” questions even if they seem strange at first, and work that into your story. Let your players try being a little frog who rides on the shoulders of the Giant. It’s pretty cool, and I will be running it for my next months-long campaign.

I don't particularly like BitD (there are plenty of things that seem to be not well thought out, from the base roll that just ceases to function as the game progresses to crew sheets that would be much better if they focused on who the characters are rather than what they do: Copperhead County seems to be much better iteration of the same concept), but I be damned if resistances aren't amazing.

There are many reasons but I'm going to focus on two main ones.

First: they flow smooth as butter. Saving throws, otherwise ubiquitous in RPGs (even in some FitD hacks, like Grimwild) have an inherent issue: they create a weird gap in the narration.

— She takes a triangle step and winds up an ascending cut! Whatcha gonna do?
— I'm gonna void to the side, like this!
— Okay, uh, roll +agility.
— Twelve!

There's back and forth, and by the time anyone gets to describe whether the hit connected or not, nobody cares. The important information (whether the attack hit, and if yes, how much damage it inflicted) is already said, and anything beside that is just fluff.

In Blades, you get to actually finish your fucking thought. You just say, "She takes a triangle step, and her blade cuts through your ribcage, throwing shards of bones and viscera around! Level 4 harm: bisected.", and only then pass priority to the player, exactly at the point you'd want to shut your mouth anyway.

Second: they allow for a unique playstyle normally absent from RPGs. I'm a bluest of blue mages, the only time I want to see something resolve is when I say "I allow it" (and I only allow it because I can deal with it in some other way).

With Blades resistances, you get to play as close to permission control as you'd get in an RPG, with mostly the same play patterns. It's truly amazing and is such a fruitful design space.

I have burnout from dnd and some stuff, but im going thru depression right now which kinda resulted in my burnout which is a bummer.

I just want something other that dnd that can be played along by myself? I would like something free if possible to get a grasp of rpgs.

Ive heard of ironsworn but is it good? im debating on getting a printed copy of ironsworn one day.

also yes ive tried therapy but its been a hot minute, right now im on meds too.

I'm taking a break from running Blades in my group as we kind of run out of steam with it. One of the other players is now running a new Cthulhu by Gaslight mystery. So, whilst I'm getting to be a player, I want to find a new RPG/setting/genre to prep.

Please hit me with some suggestions:

- Something less or equally complicated to BitD or CoC
- Perhaps modern-day or sci-fi? But something with a strong theme that's easy to jump into.
- Not fantasy or horror to give us a balance from what we've been playing recently (we're plannign on playing the new Discworld RPG when it's out this year too).
planning.
- Nothing too gritty or intense.

I think I'm possibly a tad burnt-out by Blades so I need a complete change to get my GM juices flowing again. Thanks!

For context, I've been GMing for some years now, but I've always kinda dodged the responsibility of designing my own dungeons (partially because I used to not enjoy dungeon crawls). I've recently been delving into "So You Want to Be a Game Master" by Justin Alexander and I'm running a lot more Dragonbane games; so that has ignited my interest in dungeons, and the interest in designing my own dungeons for my players.

The Solo Tables from Dragonbane have been a great tool to get inspiration to design my own dungeons, because its procedural nature makes me enjoy it as a game in itself. Making sense of seemingly unrelated details, reflavouring, defining themes and motifs, are all interesting challenges, and I feel like I'm discovering the dungeon as I go. But I'm curious if you know of similar tools for procedural generation of dungeons.

I've tried the Forbidden Lands' ones, but I don't know why they don't click as much as Dragonbane's (maybe because they aren't clearly designed with a discovery procedure). So which random tables for dungeons are your favourites?

P.S. As a nerd tangent. I like random generation because I think it feeds creativity in a way that is coherent with the "Geneplore" model in psychology of creativity, which demystifies creation as relying on a disembodied "inspiration" that is dependent in divinity or individual genius.

Just curious, say for example, with D&D, where you can cast a certain number of spells per day. I know some NPCs wouldn't want to disclose their power but I'm just interested to see what's the general attitude to this questioning. I think it comes from a place of looking to see how strong an NPC is or even if players talked to each other like that.

I have run Spire before, and next week I will try out the Heart Quickstart.

The Junk mage pregen character has Kiss of the Drowned Queen, which in narrative terms fills your lungs with water. I can see how for other kinds of enemies (e.g. robots without lungs) we would just narrate the impact of saltwater and deal the according damage.

Is that also the case for the "Vassal" adversaries in the story? They are already drowned. I have not found any mention of immunity or narrative exception so I am going to go with "The system has some fluff around this, but mechanically this works as a regular Piercing weapon, so just find a way to make it narratively plausible", but I am curious if there's anything on the document that I might have missed.

I mean there must be surely.

Dark Ages Britain, you fight monsters, action horror. A bit like Army of Darkness I suppose (just no time travel....almost)

Looking for a site to creat a world map

As I’m sure we’re all too aware, the greatest obstacle to great rpg gaming is the dreaded schedule. Nothing disrupts your game more as a GM than players daring to have a life outside of gaming.

With this in mind, I run a back up game that is essentially a series of one shots that we run if we have a less than full complement of players. We dip in and out as required by the player count but it works well. It’s a simple, scratch built modern campaign that the players all heavily influenced as a background. It actually works really well as an idea. Because of the nature of a three hour session that needs a clear start and end I have to drive the action fairly hard sometimes to hit the deadline, but all in all, it works well and is certainly a lot better than a missed session.

Does anyone else do something similar with their group? I’m curious as to your experience if you do.