**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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From a commenter who felt that the general attitude of players was this:

People are extremely resistant to the idea that the DM gets to run the game they want to run and that’s okay. I’ve been heavily downvoted many times on this sub because I said the DM should just do what they want to do and the players can either enjoy the game as it is or quit.

This OP opines that this the general sentiment of reddit. I am honestly amazed that this kind of attitude exists, and I don't think it's widely true. For sure, if you are paying your GM for the game, I think being able ask for the kind of game you want is fine, as it is a paid service.

But for GMs who give up their free time and labor to make a game, is it at all fair for players to be able to dictate what kind of game they get? I feel that is wildly audacious. I've certainly never encountered this from literally 35 years of running games.

View Poll

For those of you who have been GMing for a while, what are some things you wish someone had told you when you were just starting out?

It can be about session prep, improvisation, dealing with players, managing expectations, building encounters, handling mistakes, or just learning not to overprepare everything.

What advice would you give to a new GM today, especially something you had to learn the hard way?

I have a setting in my mind that I would love to DM and that can be a little alterated for other things, but the principal is that this setting has no Sun, and because of that, the world is dark, dead, and very cold.

It is still a fantasy world, but it's dying, and well, there are not much that the characters can do. There are more things, like the old gods vanished with the Sun, and with that, the capability to cast magic, and so, the only way to cast spell is throught runes, that were basically how they were casted but they do not saw this. Or by using the "flesh of the world" (minerals) to become stronger.

Having all this is, I know, really specific, but I probably would change these settings for the system. The most important part is the first one.

Also, no DnD, Pathfinder or GURPS, please. Thank you

(Is this on the right flair?)

Context: I have a online group running for several years now, we rotate between GMs and systems, but most of the time people just show up with characters made with minimal information provided other than system and genre/broad setting. Most of the time it has been fine, we have fun, its a very chill game environment.

I am stepping up to the GM plate again when the current adventure finishes this weekend and want something a little more before we dive into the next thing. I want everyone to be in channel together and discuss their characters and have a more within the setting functional crew (doing sci-fi this time). While some of the general background I have already dropped in a discord thread, I am intentionally keeping it detail light because I want the players to tell me what kind of adventure experience they want while everyone is present and active instead of trying to just ask within discord and get maybe two of them responding. Sure I have a basic plot plan, but how they players get there could vary a lot. Since this is an ongoing group (one player swap, but someone we know) there is not much need to discussing problem topics, but I understand how that would be important for people not as familiar with one another. Since we do not do longer running campaigns we tend to keep things like character backgrounds really light, usually just asking for a few sentences and maybe one important character/npc relationship so the GM has a little to draw on if they need it.

What are your priorities when doing a session zero for a new adventure? Do you want to info dump as a GM? Do you want deep, well developed characters as a priority? Do you have a lot of table rules that need to be highlighted?

I may be a bit of a.... collector at this point. I own rulebooks for like a dozen different TTRPG's, including the bigger ones and multiple versions of those, random solo games, indie games, even a big book of 25+ one shot standalone games.

The problem is that I literally don't even have a gaming group to play with. I haven't even ACTUALLY played D&D in over 10 years.

Just bought Slugblaster and Ion Heart at Pax West today and I'm stoked about them (especially Ion Heart as I might actually get to play it. lol) but I already know I won't be playing any group campaigns any time soon.

It looks like the Legendary Games website has been down for a little while, https://www.makeyourgamelegendary.com. Anyone know what's going on?

Bonjour ! Je voudrais jouer à Alice is Missing ce week-end, problème.. nous sommes 7. J'ai vu qu'ily avait de nouveaux rôles dans la seconde extension, est-il possible/faisable selon vous de jouer à 7 en prenant les rôles du jeu de base et 2 rôles de |'extension ? Ou cela fout-il trop le bazar ? Merci!

NOTE: This doesn't mean "three things you hate and three things you love", I mean one-to-three RPG things you're burnt out on, and one-to-three things you want to see more of.

Tired of (in no particular order)

Anime/Zelda/Ghibli settings: Especially because most of the time they just slap the aesthetics of contemporary Japan's concept of pastoral Europe onto whatever RPG slop of the day mechanics are popular.

Anything Grimdark: Double-points if it's clearly Bloodborne inspired. Like the previous point, it's usually an aesthetic slapped onto OSR-but-different mechanics. These titles also usually are just grimdark, without any sense of irony, satire, or black humor, making them much like the poison swamps of whatever latest game FromSoft put out.

Meta-currencies: Particularly GM-facing ones. The sort of mechanics where you're "buying permission to be a decent GM" (or how it feels to me).

What I want to see more of

Traditional (non-European Medieval) Fantasy Settings: This has been a problem since I was a child, but the fantasy genre isn't limited to Tolkein-esque medieval Europe. 1001 Nights, Alice in Wonderland, Journey to the West, and Star Wars are all fantasy.

Great Book Layout: I'm soo happy that this is becoming more of a staple, and have started to buy books from publishers that care about layout and editing. Also any book that contains an entire subject of rules to one page or paragraph.

Adventures: It used to be that adventure paths were far more common, but even WotC seems to be shrinking away from them in exchange for a glut of settings. Even though I'm unlikely to run Kala Mandala, I will use Reach of the Roach God at some point, for example.

I am running a GURPS game set in Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk.

One of my players has been asking endless questions about the nature of the tech in the setting. "Does wireless hacking exist? What are the limitations of cyberware? What about smart clothes? Can I get a drone? What about smart grenades? Can monowire cut through walls? Why not? That doesn't make sense because realistic [thing]. That's kind of retro-futurist though and I don't like that. What about this thing? How about this?"

Sometimes I have an answer, sometimes I don't. I feel pressured to deliver an answer but sometimes I need to consider the gameplay ramifications of such an answer.

I like this player. How can I gently shut down discussion on things that I can't feasibly answer immediately but the player insists are important to know right now?

Hello everyone! I don't know if this is the right sub to ask this, but I have several questions regarding online playing.

Some friends and I started an online campaign, because some of the players moved away from our sector and they brought in two new ones. (I am not native, sorry in advance, maybe some sentences won't make much sense or some words won't be the right ones)

- How do we regulate speech time ? In IRL games, we can chat without making much noise when the spotlights are on another player or other players, but on Discord this is impossible. We thought about changing channel to talk but it would surely kill the dynamic of the game?

- How to organize discussions between two characters without making the others wait ? If two players want to talk ""secretly"", we could put them in another channel but if their conversation lasts longer than the events of the main channel, or vice versa, we could be forced to cut one of them short

- How to setup private discussions with the DM? While I am not a fan of this, two of the players are playing "edgy" characters and need to talk with the DM once in a while, so same solution as the two above, they go on a private channel w/ the DM, but sometimes it feels long for us other players, and we end up breaking roleplay quickly

Thanks a lot! Have a great day