**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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.

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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.

**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.

​

----------

​

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

I am working on quite an extensive article about the history of the Romanian TTRPG community and last weekend, we (as in me and Yuno) had the chance to make a small presentation on what we have uncovered thus far. This whole process however got me thinking about past campaigns. Even though I am continuously running something I always get somewhat melancholic thinking about those past groups and experiences and even while running, there is a part of me that dreads the finale of it all, the end of the journey.

Roughly a year ago I wrote an article arguing that TTRPGs are a form of folk art, it is one of my favorite pieces of writing I have done. But in this melancholic state and emboldened somewhat by reading more about oral literature, I decided to write a sort of companion piece for that article. This is the end result. It is, at least in my opinion, much more raw than other articles I usually write, despite the fact that it is also much more academic then what I have written in quite a while on the blog. It also proved to be somewhat of therapeutic exercise for me, as it helped me with processing the ephemeral quality of this hobby in a slightly better way.

I now share it with the hope that you will all find it interesting, that it might stir up something in you and perhaps above all, with the hope that, for those of you who are in the same predicament as me, it will prove to be therapeutic as well! Thank you!

Hi everybody! I'm Raven, the developer of WARDEN. I finally got it out, after a few delays and problems. I ran a successful Backerkit campaign for the game a year ago, and now I finally have gotten it to shape to release.

The game is available digitally for 20 bucks on Itch.io and DrivethruRPG. This includes regional pricing on both platforms, which reduces the price to 5 bucks. The itch also has Community Copies.

Physicals can be bought from Lulu (note that there are two copies of each, they are in Imperial and Metric measurements, as noted in the subtitles) and ghostspark.dev, my own site. Lulu doesn't include the digital copies natively, so I need to send them separately (or you just have to ask for them and I'll provide).

So what is it?

WARDEN is, very broadly speaking, a Pathfinder 2e hack. It uses the ORC license, a select number of feature names, the three-action system, and PF2e-style d20+mod, with level being added to things you're proficient with. It also uses a similar structure of building a character with various Abilities and Feats you obtain as you gain levels.

However, WARDEN also diverges from Pathfinder 2e in many key ways, most notably in the things it inherited from Dungeons & Dragons, such as Classes, Ancestries, Spell Slots, HP Bloat, and overall Adventure/Combat Focus. Instead, I've built on the base mechanics of the game and tried to make everything fit together nicely so that different sorts of settings and campaigns feel easier and more natural to play. You can make a completely nonviolent campaign and it would work.

Obviously, to make different settings possible to play, there are rules for various subsystems such as Magic, Hacking, Bionics (i.e cybernetics), Magitech, Vehicles, Warfare (i.e mass combat). There's also more in-depth mechanics for Stealth, Social Conflicts, and Investigations. The Abilities in the game also feature things like Stands from Jojo and Magical Girl / Sentai Transformations, meaning you can really hone pretty exactly the sort of game you want to run.

The game takes a lot of influence from games outside of the modern d20 games, including PbtA games, OSR games, and other generic systems like Genesys. For example, there's a system for trust between player characters that you cultivate with scenes of camaraderie, which is pretty unheard of in d20 games. Similar kind of outside influence can be seen in the Hit Point system, where your character, by default, has a maximum of 20 Hit Points, and your defenses are much more focused on Reactions and Damage Resistance gained from Armor.

AMA or Challenge Me!

So, you can ask me anything about the game, the process of making it, the mechanics, or how I got here. I'll answer to questions whenever I have time, and the maximum time of 48 hours is mostly a suggestion. I'll be here fair amount later as well.

Alternatively, you can Challenge me! This game is Genre-Agnostic, so let me prove it to you! You can either drop in a (short) description of a character or setting, or alternatively some media franchise you would like to run a game in, and I'll tell you how feasible it is with the system, and how I would do it! My media knowledge is not perfect, so I can't really do deep cuts unless it happens to be something I am familiar with.

And by "Feasible", I don't mean "technically doable due to open-ended mechanics", I mean literally the game's mechanics supporting it.

ETA: I'm going to sleep soon, so I'll answer the rest of the questions tomorrow.

When you're writing for a campaign that takes place in the real world, were you ever sidetracked by all the interesting things you didn't know about that location?

It's not the "This tip will save your game" but it is the most easy to identify.

I've used a stopwatch to time how long turns take in my DnD games in the past to see where slowdown occurs. A normal player turn can take anywhere from between 2-10 minutes depending on a number of factors, like looking up rules or losing track of what's going on.

The more players added to the mix the more people disengage as they wait for their next turn.

What is your first thing a GM should look into if their game isn't working out?

What are some rpg systems you’ve played that either use a ton of dice or use really unique dice (not the 7 dice set)?

I’m trying to learn how different systems use dice outside of DnD!

Disclaimer: this is market research for my dice roller app

Was a great campaign. Lots of detailed maps in owlbear with lightning, and tried to get as much out of the DnD mechanics as I could while keeping the feel of the classic Diablo 1 Action Adventure CRPG.

By the end I was throwing what are calculate as "Deadly" encounters for a level 20 party against my 4 x Level 12s. They did fine. Though admittedly, true to Diablo, they had plenty of OP loot and buffs.

Scale was really fun to play with. First level was scavengers and fallen doing D4 damage. Twelfth Level Diablo was hitting for 10D6 Slashing + 30 fire with each melee attack.

Anyway, if anyone wants to do similar or has questions or whatever, keen to hear from them. Cheers!

I want a contemporary fantasy system where magic is approachable and accessible to players, like D&D.

Where guns matter and health bars are fragile things like Chronicles/World of Darkness.

Not looking for rules light nor narrative first systems like PbtA or Fate.

We prefer some crunch and definitive stats to our systems, especially with lots of character options with good progression.

And prefer nothing with gimmicks like cards or dealing with maintaining temporary tokens/currencies.

We play online via a mix of roll20 and theater of the mind.

Hey there!

I’ve been trying tabletop roleplaying with two of my friends. For better or worse, I ended up being the DM, but we actually enjoyed it, and they said they liked it too.

But apparently not, because since then they’ve been coming up with different excuses whenever I suggest playing again.

I’ve been thinking about finding a group online instead, maybe people who are more into the hobby so the rules and the flow of the game would rub off on me more naturally.

But I’m pretty introverted, and it’s hard enough to imagine myself joining a group of strangers, let alone getting into character and roleplaying in front of them.

Do you have any advice or something?

I like dnd, though i underatand it isn't an everything game, if anyone would like to suggest a ttrpg that really gives the feeling of doom (1993 or anything else) or helldivers 2, please do

Everyone vomits in their mouth while looking at the fatal. Everyone gulps and tugs their collars while looking at RAHOWA, and everyone gets an aneurysm after looking at the garbled mess that is Hybrid. But I'm not satisfied. These three (Well, at least FATAL, and somewhat of RAHOWA, IDK about Hybrid) have been dead horses that have been beaten to a pulp. I want the hidden turds in the rough. I want niche terrible TTTRPGs. Be it something a guy sold in his garage in the 60s, or the premier garbage that you can find on Kickstarter. I want to play underrated trash! Basically, if it was covered in Kam Sandwich's TTRPG video, it is disqualified.