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Last Friday, the Director of Events at Gen Con shared this list of games with the most "underserved demand." That refers to games with the highest ratio of "people who want to play" versus "games available." For example, there was unmet demand for D&D events, even though there were more than a 1,000 events at Gen Con, because it's so popular.

The majority (all the listings in bold) were RPGs:

1. Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG
2. Dungeons & Dragons
3. Call of Cthulhu
4. Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable
5. Kingdom Death: Monster
6. Cosmere RPG
7. Daggerheart
8. One Piece Card Game
9. Pathfinder
10. Shadowdark
11. Delta Green
12. Dungeon Crawl Classics
13. Alien
14. Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game
15. Draw Steel
16. Savage Worlds
17. Clank!
18. The One Ring
19. Vaesen
20. Lancer
21. Blades in the Dark
22. Mothership
23. Shadowrun
24. Starfinder
25. Vantage
26. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
27. Arcs
28. Cypher: Old Gods of Appalachia

I have to say the Dungeon Crawler Carl being at the top is especially impressive, since they ran more than 100 events (gauging by the Gen Con events search) with over 800 total seats.

Here's the full text that he posted on the Discord server for Buried Giant Studios:

Here is a list of some of the games with the most unserved demand from 2026.

Some of these are very much driven by specific groups (most of the unserved D&D demand is for prominent groups like Avantris or Baldman Games, for instance) and it's pretty dominated by RPGs, but if someone is looking for motivation to run a game and wants a safe pick that'll likely fill a table, this is a reasonable starting point.

The game is CMT. A Lucha Libre RPG. which is free a D6 system inspired by the likes of CAIN, Troika! and Lancer. Its tone is of magic realism and pulpy urban fantasy with a big dose of surreal Mexican horror and folklore. También hay una versión en español disponible.

The gist of it is that you play as a Luchador, a Mexican Pro Wrestler whose aim is to Level Up in the world by winning Main Events that you'll organize yourself. All your brains and brawn will go towards the horrific tasks of marketing, booking, and also contracting the Rivals you’ll face. And not only are there opponents to defeat, but an Audience to please, and you better please them, lest they ruin your nascent career in this bizarre world of monstrous showbiz.

When you Roll in CMT, each Result of 4 and above on a D6 counts as one Success, and these Successes are used to solve the roadblocks you'll face along the way, including Progress Clocks. Successes are also how you Hurt the Rivals and Satisfy the Audience in the ring, but not both at the same time, so a Luchador must always be choosing between survival and performance, and suffering either way. Obtaining advantages in the game means adding more Dice to your Roll, which means more potential Successes.

Furthermore, you can build your Luchador by adding various Moves to their Repertoire, such as "Grab", "Flex", "Horrify" or "Fly". These empower your Rolls and have special effects when the Dice land in the numbers where you have placed a Move. And here is where Player expression begins: do you want to put your Moves in high numbers so your good Rolls are even more potent? or will you put the Moves low so they are a cushion for your low Rolls? Who are you when you wear the Mask?

Wrestle Monsters the Media and the Masses for Free Here:

itch.io - DriveThruRPG - RPGTrader

No AI was used in the creation of this game.

Am I the only one noticing a huge asymmetry in the TTRPG hobby right now - one that’s actively burning out GMs?

Back in the day, it felt like you’d have a dungeon to clear, a few factions thrown into the mix, and the players figured out what to do with them. But now? It feels like the GM is expected (in most cases) to deliver a "good plot," a "great story," and "interesting twists" so the players can be surprised and have big emotional moments.

And what do the players bring to the table? Most of the time, they just show up - and that’s pretty much their entire contribution. Rarely do they even know the rules.

Was it always like this? Am I just burned out? Or did I finally figure out something fundamental about this hobby? …Or am I the toxic one?

Just to clarify - I mostly play online with randoms. I’ve played with friends too, but their expectations were pretty similar, which is why I don’t run games for them anymore.

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Thanks for the answers. I'd like to clarify one point.

Just to clarify - in my experience, it’s not even about the rules or the system themselves. People come to this hobby looking for the same emotions and payoff they'd get from watching a series or playing a video game. And since their input there is minimal, they carry that same passive, low‑effort attitude over to the tabletop.

One of my biggest GM takeaways from a recent campaign is nothing gets the players going like a Big Map. We started with a poster board where I had marked a few notable locations and encouraged them to draw and fill it in as they explored, and if you've never tried it I highly recommend it. Finish your introductory mission and then break that puppy out and ask "where do you want to go?" and everybody's eyes light up. It doesn't have to be to scale or super detailed, just a general map and room to write and draw.

It also opens up a whole host of extra puzzle options. You can give them in-world treasure maps. NPCs can indicate that something is somewhere or beyond something and players can understand where that is. Players can track where someone has been and where they might be going. The possibilities are as big as the map.

I'm prepping for a hex crawl based campaign soon and I'm looking to figure out how to make Big Hex Map. I've never gotten this level of engagement out of any other prop.

There are a lot of rpgs who don't have a tactical grid or even a combat state that differs from the rest of the game but the moments where I felt I was roleplaying true cinema are somewhat far between. A chase often feels more dynamic than a fight in a fixed environment and how much the environment itself has an impact pays a part, especially when it is interactable and not just a scenic backdrop.

That said, the game that made me truly feel that I was making cinema was Fiasco. As we going through Act One, I realized how much I felt both a screenwriter and an actor. Every card was juicy and ready to create a trainwreck, our characters were rotten hot messes and when the Tilt happened and everything went off tracks we just rode it screaming. I had heard it described as playing a Coen Brothers movie and it definitely delivered.

I think what really sold it to me was that the story it told were were both modern, extraordinary, dark humoured and unlikely, but at the same time grounded in a reality of depravity and vice. All was just hammed up to 11. It was a comfortable absurdity under the the sign of maybe; Maybe people can be this scheming/ can be this stupid/ this irresponsible/ this insane. Maybe it all finally spirals into murder. No. Not a maybe. A certainty.

The other thing was the pace. We were never allowed to catch our breath. The story was going at 1000 miles per hour. But it was dramatic and intense as our characters were highly volatile and impulse driven.

The game wanted us to be bad people making bad decisions and that's probably where it diverged from most rpgs. While not the most common structure, tragicomedy feels more grounded fiction than in games. It does not have you root for success. It does not have you play to win, but rather tell a story with a deep emotional range.

And it allows for characters to have conflicting agendas, especially that you establish their messy Relationships and Needs. You can have a villain or have bad people all going against each other. This is more movie-like than a lot of system where the party has a common goal. In fact, the best cinematic games often have interparty conflict.

The last piece is the unpredictability. A player can only establish or resolve their scene and that creates plot twist after plot twist and only the Aftermath ties everything together.

I was surprised how well everything turned out. We even improvised two flashbacks.

I've been peripheral to the hobby for a fair few years now, used to GM a huge amount but have only done one or two one-shots a year for the last several years.

My local boardgame cafe has asked if I'd like to run a campaign there on their RPG night, they're looking to expand it.

So my question is - whats actually big in the hobby right now?

I know the immediate answer is DnD, but I'm one of those folk who has never gelled with DnD. I'll leave running that to someone who enjoys it. Other than DnD, what systems or styles are trending at the moment?

Hello everyone! Time for another TTRPGs for PCRF itch charity sale! We raised over $15,000 for Palestinian children last year so lets see if we can break that record! If you're a TTRPG or Print and Play creator on itch, come on down! The submission jam will be running from 8/17-8/28, Link below 🇵🇸

itch.io/jam/palestinian-relief-ttrpgs-for-pcrf-2026

What it says on the tin. Personally I wish that more games would adopt a static turn order (like in CoC or GURPS).

I keep having this issue both with my players when I GM and also some other people at the table when I'm playing a character, where they keep wanting to learn as much info as possible before acting at all. "do we really want to enter this home that we can see through the window has a single unarmed person inside?" "Nah better make 3 more rolls outside it to try to get the information that is very easily accessible risk free inside it"

I get wanting to try things as risk free as possible and I also don't want to force my players into houses just to get the plot moving, but I actually keep running into this issue all the time where my players will stand just outside houses in my game, discussing what to do. I obviously keep giving them the info on what they can see and hear inside, but they just refuse to act on it in any way. So I move the plot forward, close off options, kill NPCs inside, whatever.

I am actually getting frustrated by it, cause it happened 3 times now. I swear the biggest obstacle to players following the plot is if I put a fucking door in front of it, not even a locked one, just a door with the vague implication that there is an NPC behind it.

How do I get my players to just act and move forward? Is it something about my playstyle that makes them super afraid of random consequences or something?

I’ve come to terms with the fact that apparently a lot of TTRPG gamers would strongly prefer a game that involves no math whatsoever.

Well I’m trying to find the opposite. I think that the math adds something positive to these things, that can’t be achieved as well without it.

I grew up on DnD and Warhammer, and while I’m not ultimately a fan of Battletech I do have to say that it isn’t the math that makes me not really enjoy it.

I think of all of the games that involve math, and I prefer them the way they are. I wouldn’t prefer poker or monopoly if it didn’t involve math. I certainly wouldn’t prefer Warhammer or DnD without the math.

The way it’s implemented in the TTRPGs that I like always felt to me like it added the right amount of chance and realism that would feel lacking to me without it.

So I’m looking for people who feel the same way. People who like math in games, and prefer games that involve mechanics involving some basic arithmetic.

A couple weeks ago I posted some quick reviews for games I've played, since I think it's always useful to get some reviews from people who've actually played games rather than just read them. I was making plans with some friends and realized that I missed a few on my last post, so wanted to complete the list (until I play some more systems, at least!).

GMless games:

- Last Train to Bremen: a very atmospheric GMless game that I picked up on a whim at my local board game store, made for one shots. You play a game of liar's dice with more of the story unfolding with each round, and it's fantastically messy and super well-paced. I don't think I would play it again in the same way I wouldn't replay a video game like Outer Wilds. The twists and turns are enough of the experience that I think I'd prefer to just watch a game that another group played.

- Fiasco: another great GMless game, but one that I absolutely would play again. The structure does a great job at setting up hilarious and chaotic scenes. I'm honestly surprised I don't see this game talked about more, as it's been around for a while.

- Alice is Missing: I think I had a good time playing this game because I like my friends rather than the game itself. The first time I played this game, I was disappointed to find that the point of the game wasn't necessarily to solve the central mystery, but instead to generate character drama between the players in the group chat. The character drama was great, but too much of the game feels like you have to get lucky to tell an interesting or coherent story. Worth noting that I was the odd one out in my groups as most people loved it with no caveats.

-Tacklebox: a very strange, very small RPG in a box that my partner and I absolutely adore. It's a nice way to spend 20-30 minutes that will usually get a nice laugh or a sweet moment.

Other games:

- Infinite Revolution: a super indie FitD scifi combat game my friend has been running for a few sessions now. I like it more than I thought I would! The combat is a very satisfying puzzle that very nicely feeds back into the between-mission scenes to give those combats stakes. Would recommend!

- Shadow of the Demon Lord: I played a game of this at a convention a couple years ago and then became sad that DnD combat doesn't work more like this. Crazy variety in ways you can build your character, and I loved the way initiative works. Boons and banes were also a really fun core dice mechanic, although I don't know how I feel about the target DC always being 10. Oh, and I can't talk about this game without mentioning how awesome the spells are - some really cool stuff in there.

- ROOT RPG: I almost feel bad giving this game a bad review because I suspect most of my problems with the game I played in was the GM just not being very good. It's to the point that I expect the GM must have either gotten half of the rules wrong, or this game was simply not play tested before publishing. From what I played, it seemed like the game was primarily built around combat, then severely punished you for engaging in combat. I believe my character could do exactly one unique combat move without passing out from exhaustion which seemed very strange when I had two pages of combat maneuvers on my sheet. The out-of-combat rules were not particularly memorable either, and seemed to severely restrict any creativity we might have displayed to avoid the terrible combat.

- Girl By Moonlight: I loved playing in this system, it's #1 suggestion if anyone ever asks about wanting to play as a group of magical girls. There's slightly different rules to facilitate different tones of magical girl stories and from the few games I played, they do an incredible job of setting the mood and atmosphere. Actually, everything about this game from the skill names to the individual character drives to the playbook powers are a masterclass in how to use rules to tell exactly the kind of story you intend.

- Welcome to Nightvale: I had a lot of fun with this game at a con but suspect I missed out on a lot by not knowing anything about the podcast it's based on. Everything about the setting was very wacky and strange in a deliberately confusing way. Our party included a dragon lawyer, as well as a poetry-loving scorpion, and they were among the most mundane characters we met in that session. I actually won a boxed set at the end of the game but will probably be looking for someone more into the setting to give the game to; I don't know if I had enough fun for it to take up room in my overflowing book shelf.

- Pigeon's Eleven: a very simple but elegant system designed for one shots. The game is hilarious, and I've really enjoyed undertaking ridiculous bird heists both times I played, but you do need a group that is on the same page and understands the assignment to make your plans as convoluted as possible. I'm not sure the rules do quite enough on their own to push people into those convoluted plans, but hopefully the name of the game should be enough to get people in the right headspace.