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Mausritter made me a better player.

The concept of "Good" and "Bad" players is a bit of a touchy one. But I want to know what games have made you feel like a better player.

Games whose designs have taught you lessons, changed your minds, and opened your eyes to new possibilities of play!

Mausritter made me a better player for a strange reason. Something about playing as little mice kick-started something in all our brains. Immediately, we were on the same page about the setting and tone, and the generally mundane characters and RP we would play became so much more charming and fun! I've now had more fun with characters and RP since this game!

What games do you feel like did something to change your behaviour or viewpoint?

Did anything stick with you?

Please let me know!!! :)

Every Villain Is a Loser is now available as a digital package! This is a game for all the henches, minions, lackeys, and goons. Play as a villain's hired help as they inevitably fail to rule the world.

GM-optional. Comedic and improvisational themes with a simplified d100 resolution mechanic. For 2+ players. Includes 5 villains and their associated adventure scenarios.

Happy holidays, goons!

Forever DM here, I really want to move my games to a sci-fi setting/feel but most of my players only know and love D&D 5E. Any recommendations for a Sci-fi game that's got a similar level of crunch to 5E but is sci-fi... and NOT Starfinder? (No disrespect meant just I'm worried it's too much crunch).

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

Every now and then I think about running a Star Trek RPG for my friends. I am curious, does anyone have any knowledge of ships that would make sense for 5-12 people. As in a small ship for special missions (might be section 31) and not a starship where they are just 5-6 people out of hundreds on the ship

Hi folks!

My name is Kurt, and I'm a TTRPG designer. In a previous life, I was a full-time board game teacher, so the game-learning process is something I'm always thinking about. I loved teaching games. The board game world has so many how-to-play videos, including ones that are directly sponsored or created by the publisher. Which got me thinking: it would be nice to have some of these for TTRPGs, too.

Earlier this year I published a game called Sock Puppets, where everyone plays squabbling puppeteers on a failing children's television show. Sock Puppets isn't much longer than a zine. But a 40 page rulebook is still an intimidating idea if you're new to the medium! This brings us back to the title:

I made a 5 minute video with all the rules in it. And also a lot of embarrassing jokes.

I get why there aren't more videos like these, even for small games where the rules can be summarized. TTRPGs aren't like board games; the rules are the whole product. Publishers worry that if they give too much of their game away, people won't buy the work. But I think people seek out opportunities to support art that connects with them, and I want to open as many doors to the hobby as I can.

I hope you like the video. I had a lot of fun making it, even though the lighting looks like I found a puppet in the basement and immediately pulled out a 2012 smartphone. If you want to check out the game, you can find it here.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Simple question really. Sometimes I feel like I worry or care too much about others' reactions when doing RP, as a player. It ends up limiting my fun because it makes me feel like I'm not being genuine with my character(s). How do you avoid that?

I have this recently created campaign, Paranormal Order system, where my party just unlocked a kind of "shop" in their base and stuff. But I'm out of ideas for "magic" items to be sold in that said shop. Any ideas? There no actual limits, but if possible I'd like simple ideas cause they're a low level party.

So, I have little experience using any kind of software, but I was wondering what options are out there to make character sheets?

I don't mind a little bit of a learning curve, but nothing too terribly complex. I'd rather stay away from using excel or word, unless someone has some nice tips/tricks.

I tried Canva once, and I found it a little too much of a learning curve, but maybe a little guidance I could use it.

Thanks

Setting authors tend to get weird about scale whenever extra worlds are involved, and these are no exception.

These games' settings want to fulfill multiple conflicting desires:

• #1: One or more "flagship" fantasy worlds: the Realms/Greyhawk/Dragonlance trio in 2e, mostly just the Realms in 5e, Golarion in Pathfinder, Orden in Draw Steel.

• #2: A vast universe full of so many other worlds, so that GMs can feel cool about their own homebrew worlds somehow sharing the same universe.

• #3: Otherworldly planes full of celestials, demons, devils, fairies, and the like.

• #4: These planes are so vast that they influence many worlds simultaneously! We have heard since 2e about how the Blood War has spilled into and ruined many worlds. Pathfinder's Hell has "countless malebranche," each specifically tasked with conquering a whole world for Hell.

• #5: The adventures that take place on a "flagship" fantasy world are of super-great import. Their stakes and consequences ripple throughout even otherworldly planes.

• #6: The planes and their cities and hierarchies should be approachable in-game and understandable, not totally mind-boggling.

These lead to some weird contrivances, such as:

• Virtually everything important in the cosmos centers around the "flagship" worlds, like Earth in Marvel or DC. In 5e, the Abyss and the Nine Hells suffer upheavals in leadership based on events in the Sword Coast. In Draw Steel's Crack the Sun mega-adventure, all of the cosmos lives or dies based on an adventure that unfolds starting in Orden.

• Non-flagship worlds are immaterial in the grand scheme of things.

• Populations are odd. In 3.5, Sigil, the city at the center of the cosmos, has a population of 250,000. In Pathfinder, Dis, 1/9th of Hell, has a population of 9.5 million, only 5.7 million of which are devils. (Pathfinder's Hell is supposed to be threatening "countless" worlds.) In Draw Steel, Matt Colville says that Orden's largest city has a population of ~1.5 million ("The vast majority of Capital’s citizens live a life basically the same as your average Londoner in Shakespeare’s time"), and this is supposedly the largest city in all the cosmos... even though other worlds have outright space opera levels of technology.

I do not know. It makes the stakes of adventures feel so bizarre, artificial, and inauthentic whenever they get raised to a cosmic level.

I am a much greater fan of, for example, Keith Baker's approach to cosmology in Eberron. (Note that I say Keith Baker's approach, not WotC's. The two are very different.) That is, Eberron is a self-contained world. Its cosmology is specifically tailored to and calibrated for that world, rather than saying, "These planes touch and influence all worlds!" The mortal world is the crux and fulcrum of the cosmos because it simply is, and there are no other worlds around to get sidelined.

What do you think?

Im looking to run my first ttrpg for my partner to start practicing and getting use to DMing in general. Im looking for an easy one-shot duet that I can do. Doesn't necessarily have to be one-shot either, but relatively short. Maybe 10 sessions max.

My rpg group is looking forward to trying out Rapscallion as our next mini campaign, and I'll be playing the fates this time around. I'm the one who purchased the core rulebook, and I've read it cover to cover, listened to a couple playthrough starts, and scoured the Internet for some more information, but can't find quite what I'm looking for, so I'm asking for advice as to how the Navigator playbook vice was handled in other people's games.

The biggest issue I've seen with this system so far is rules ambiguity, and it looks like I'm not alone in that. The only one I haven't been quite able to nail down my own solution for is how to run the "sea's servants," particularly as the navigator's vice. The navigator and I have decided the sea's servants will be a constant storm over the ocean that "finds" when she breaks the curse, and that's fine, but I'm struggling with playability and mortality of the navigator. While the other playbook's vices offer up ways to give in to their compels to gain experience regularly, such as the gunslinger killing an innocent or getting a crewmate in trouble, the navigator's vice earns them experience only when giving in to the sea's servants "claiming you," and being scarred for it.

But, everything I've read either doesn't mention the sea's servants, or indicates this would be the navigator's final words. What does "giving in" entail, and same with "being scarred for it?" While I understand that fates have a lot of creative freedom here, the only thing I can think this would lead to is..death, or a major quest derailment, disproportionate to the other playbooks. While I don't think the other playbook vices are necessarily EASY to achieve, depending on how you run the game, it certainly looks like the navigator's is near impossible without creating a new character entirely, or leaving them in the ocean for a while until the rest of the crew can save them.

I also understand this isn't the primary way to gain experience, but it still seems pointless for this method to gain experience at all if it just results in death.

Let me know if I'm fully missing something, or how you guys handled the navigator's vice!