**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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I'm a big fan and advocate of Pendragon #ttrpg, and have run it regularly at conventions for (checks notes) decades (😲), so great to see the new edition doing better than Lancelot at a jousting tourney. What thoughts does everyone have on the new version? Or if you're new, what do you like?

Title. I noticed it yesterday during my session, and realized that exact sentence occurs verbatim a lot across various groups I've been in. Obviously, sometimes it's understandable, since the GM can give a lot of information, but I notice it happens with smaller bits as well, and I can't help but think maybe it's a little...boring, I guess? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if people tried filtering the information they find through their character, but maybe people might just see it as shoe leather.

The game is called Arkhora, and it's the product of a lot of different inspirations and ideas rolled into one (hopefully cohesive) book.

It's currently in a playtesting stage and is available for free on Itch.io (The option to donate is there, but genuinely don't feel pressured to do so, I really just want to know what people think of it.)

The brief is that in the extreme future, the universe has reached its natural end of life. All the stars have gone out, planets have drifted beyond reach of one another, and time is beginning to unravel. a small enclave, Arkhora, was able to survive past the end, but some force of nature seemingly takes issue with their defiance of fate. Strange energy-beings begin to change the past, undermining the events that allowed Arkhora to live past the end of the universe, and so you must travel back in time to set events in order and secure humanity's continued existence.

Above all, it's a game about being in grimdark scenarios and having the hope to continue on anyway. I got tired of the dark and depressing stories of human cynicism, and wanted to create something that imagined a hopeful future for humanity, even if everything around it went to shit.

Please check it out if you're at all interested in science fantasy, stories about hope, hopping through time, tactical combat, character customization, or just a free indie RPG! And if you have any questions or feedback please let me know!

Finally (and I hate that it has to be stated at all): Generative AI hasn't previously and will never, ever be used in any part of this project.

I ran Dolmenwood as an open table recently. My players wrote and shared excellent session notes after each game, but eventually even the regulars started getting confused as to what was where, what NPCs were related to what quest hooks, etc. This was even more difficult for new players, who were invariably lost when they started.

As the GM I had the advantage of the Dolmenwood Campaign Book, which laid out everything and linked neighboring hexes together. I wanted to turn my player's notes into their own version of the Campaign book - until I actually tried to do this and realized what a giant pain in the ass it is to make a million tiny links, zoomed in pictures around maps, etc etc.

So for my next campaign I made a program to do this for me. You describe the map you have and give it an image, and the program turns this into markdown and html. You can then print the html to a PDF and get your own Dolmenwood Campaign Book, but for your own campaign.

https://imgur.com/a/X95B8V4

I made this in Rust with no AI, it's open source (MIT Licensed). You can build the binary from source or take one of the releases from Github page.

https://github.com/AlexanderPruss/rpg_map_to_html

Sorry that this reddit account has almost no activity; the source is tied to my real name, so I made a new account to share it.

Does anyone know if there is a book or some other compilation of game mechanics? I’m not looking for design theory, but specifically a collection of mechanics for different situations. For example, when you need to represent a dwindling resource you can use… [insert usage die system here].

We all know the type of character built around a joke. A silly name (Whoda Shit), a goofy concept (my Malakvian believes he is a superhero), or a reference to some other media (A warlock who thinks he is a Druid because he talks to plants.... but it's just one plant, who will grant him powers as long as the warlock keeps Feeding Him.)

But have you ever had one that was meant as a joke at start, last the campaign, and become more serious?

Tell me about them?

A few years ago, in one of the DND sessions I am a player in, a player character died. The player got extremely upset, actually had to be excused for a while. In a different DND campaign, a PC made a series of foolish decisions that caused another PC to get hurt, almost died. The player of the injured PC got extremely upset.

I have a hard time relating to this feeling of protectiveness over the characters. I often have my characters do risky "take one for the team" type actions that frequently goes badly for my character. Some folks even asked why I hate my characters, and I'm honestly baffled by this question. I put a decent amount of thought into my characters, and I enjoy playing them. Within the fiction, my character might fear death in story, but I as a player I do not fear my character's death. I think it could be a cool plot twist for one of the player characters to die, and if it were mine, I am happy to create a new character.

It's the same for more narrative games I play, like Ironsworn, Colostle, or Wanderhome(?). If my character died from bad dice rolls and the story calls for it, it really doesn't feel like a big deal to me.

If another player's character died, and if the player was feeling bad, I would empathize and feel sad for the player if they were sad. But I don't think I would feel sad for the character. Same for the NPC.

But that's just me, but I'm curious to hear from you.

1. Would you be sad if your character died?
2. Would you be sad if someone else's character died?
3. What about an NPC? Would death of an NPC make you sad?

"I will take the Ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way." vibes all the way. Basically the characters aren't really special, but they will rise up to the challenge when faced with the choice.

Examples of this:

The hobbits in LotR and, well, also Bilbo, and by extension TOR 2e, especially the starter set

Mouse Guard (comic) and by extension mouse games such as Mausritter and I assume Mouse Guard although I do not own it.

U was talking to my old high-school gaming group & a system we used once was brought up. All we can remember is the attributes, which spelled out the acronym "DREAMS" & it used d6s. The attributes were Determination, Reaction, Endurance, Acumen, Muscle, & Supernatural. I think it was a catch-all system you could apply any setting (we used Star Wars) to. This was late 90s or early 2000s.

I want to create unique districts, buildings, and shops (like the Fear Shop). I'm also intending to publish the settings I create my settlements in.

Hi, everyone! I know I've been asking a lot of questions recently, but this one is eating me up-so I would appreciate some advice.

I am a baby DM whose only run a few campaigns (1 Monster of the Week-Fantastic Failure) 1 Vampire the Masquerade (Smashing Success) and 1 Pathfinder (Foundry induced successful mess). This weekend I'm beginning a homebrew VtM campaign, and also starting up a completely new game-Daggerheart on Sunday with 3 players who are also totally new to the game (but all have more experience with TTRPGs than I do.)

The thing is...I'm really, REALLY excited about Daggerheart and I wanna play it more in the future. But I am terrified I'll fumble the introduction to my friends and they'll all bounce off it. Like I'm worried I'll screw up so badly that I'll make a bad impression of the game and they'll say "no thanks." I know I can find other games through online LFGs, but this is something that's been consistently freaking me out with anxiety/worry.

So for those of you who are long time GMs, excited to try a new system but scared of giving your players a bad impression of it...how do you get over that anxiety? And do you have any advice for helping to give a good impression of the game? My players are thankfully all chill and recognize everyone starts somewhere, but unfortunately my naturally high anxiety makes it hard to get that into my head. I'm so scared that if I do a bad job it'll kill all interest in the game.

So how do you get over that fear of failure? I'm eager to hear some advice on this one.