**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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Three sessions into this arc, seven unauthorized entries, one destroyed chandelier my players described (in-session, out loud) as "not even that good." I finally had the villain's legal team respond formally.

Dropped this in the party Discord before last session. They spent the first twenty minutes arguing about skeleton labor law before anyone touched a character sheet.

CEASE AND DESIST

Grimthorn, Azkoval & Bones LLP Attorneys for the Undead | Bar-Registered, Infernal Jurisdiction Transmitted via Spectral Courier, Third Urgency

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From: Counsel to Lord Malachar the Undying To: The Party, aka "The Adventurers" — last known location: outside the dungeon, again Re: Unauthorized Entry; Property Damage; Employee Termination (Multiple Counts); Theft of Artifacts Under Active Curation

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Lord Malachar the Undying ("CLIENT") has retained this firm to address your group's ongoing pattern of unauthorized access to CLIENT's PREMISES. Said access has occurred no fewer than seven (7) times in the past fiscal quarter. CLIENT notes, with some frustration, that each visit has been accompanied by your group's insistence that this is your "first time here," a claim that strains credulity given the personalized bounty notices CLIENT has distributed throughout three kingdoms.

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SPECIFIC GRIEVANCES

1. Property Damage. Your party has destroyed: one (1) drawbridge, three (3) proprietary trap mechanisms, two (2) golem-class security staff, and the original chandelier in the Grand Hall of Suffering, which was irreplaceable. The replacement chandelier is functional but does not project the same atmosphere. CLIENT is aggrieved.

2. Wrongful Termination of Employees. Seventeen (17) of CLIENT's staff have been killed during your visits. None had issued any act of aggression prior to your party initiating contact. CLIENT notes that Grimk the Skeleton was three days from retirement.

3. Theft of Property Under Active Curation. The artifacts removed from Vault 4-B were not "treasure." They were part of an ongoing collection, several items of which remain in conservation. CLIENT requests their return in original condition. CLIENT would hold its breath pending compliance, but CLIENT cannot technically breathe. This is therefore moot.

4. Harassment (Claimed). CLIENT has experienced what this office can only describe as a sustained campaign of psychological provocation, specifically your party's habit of leaving motivational notes throughout the dungeon ("evil never wins," "we'll be back," etc.). CLIENT considers this actionable and has instructed us to say so in writing.

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DEMAND

You are hereby directed to cease and desist from: entering the PREMISES; interfering with CLIENT's employees or undead labor contractors; and making further public representations about "ending CLIENT's reign." CLIENT has reigned for four hundred years and has reviewed your party's level estimates. The timeline is not in your favor.

Failure to comply within thirty (30) days will compel CLIENT to pursue all available legal remedies, up to and including construction of a second dungeon with updated traps.

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Grimthorn, Azkoval & Bones LLP

Curious what RPGs people are playing from small and indie creators?

I follow a lot of people on itch.io and also have bought several of the mega bundles over the years. And with more games out there than I could ever play, I wonder what gems are hiding in plain sight.

So, please share what RPGs you play, enjoy, and recommend that you believe have small following or player count and let's see if we can drum up some secret gold.

Rule: please don't suggest your own RPG or a friends. Nothing against good natured self-promo, I'm just hoping to see genuine recommendations from fans and players (not that your RPG isn't amazing, I promise).

Edit: title should be "play and recommend"

Hi everyone, my friends and I dropped into Wildsea and are really enjoying the Piratey life there.
Now I was looking for some Pirate vibes in rpgs and was looking at Wildsea, but I'm still on the fence.

What are your experiences with it? How did you like it? Can it do Piratey (I mean the more romanticized Version of Pirates not the grim and dirty truth) and Swashbuckling well?

Recently I've been wondering if prepping has been hampering my GMing. I've been GMing for the past couple years, and I've found that I'm spending an increasing amount of time prepping. And while that pays off great for the content I do have prepped, I honestly feel less confident in my improv these days. This has led me to prep more to minimize improv, but now I'm thinking it's making my improv worse. Is there anything I can do to improve my improv specifically? Should I intentionally under-prep a little to exercise the skill?

I am running a custom Traveller setting, right now my players are caught up in a mystery/conspiracy. They are pretty smart and can connect the dots, but they are not searching for dots.

In the setting are media like internet, Wikipedia and open and secure databases. And the have made some contacts here and there that could have or get data.

What is a good way to nudge my players to use technology or connections with NPCs to get informations without outright telling them to do it?

Please don't downvote before reading, I'm looking for an real RPG system.

I'm Brazilian, and I used to be an Amino user. As a child/teenager (today, o have 21y), I was part of Brazilian roleplaying communities, including one focused on a zombie apocalypse setting.

One of the things I liked most about that community was the "narrative system". Basically, it was a set of rules for obtaining items, such as weapons, equipment, vehicles, animals, creating bases, etc. You should write a specific number of lines to achieve each of these items, with more difficult things requiring more lines. The narratives should describe how your character explores an environment to acquire a weapon, or how they repaired a vehicle, or cleared a building of infected to turn it into a base. There were more internal systems, combat systems, resource systems, attributes, skills, and everything else, but what caught my attention the most was the narrative system.

I always thought it was brilliant, and until then, I believed that the creators of the idea were the same people who created that RPG community. But, talking to someone recently, apparently this is older than I thought. I also ended up discovering other communities that use the same idea, and although they were created after Amino, I find it hard to believe it was an idea initially brought from Brazil. I think it's more likely that she came from somewhere else, and that the community I mentioned was one that integrated the system into their RPGs.

So... does anyone have any idea where this came from? I have no idea how to search for something like this. It looks like the kind of thing that could have come from a roleplaying forum. I don't know.

I would like to know where it came from so I can read about its conception from its origin.

As per the title - Gregor was working on the sequel to 3:16 CAtS, that had some small evolutions to the rules (flanking, and cover).

But he ended up never finishing the game...I'm hoping some fan has a copy of the preview?

Basically, i want a system that support the "characters doing cool shit all the time" type of campaign. Kinda like Jujutsu Kaisen or Kagurabachi. Is there a system that fit this description?

It was interesting how so many people can start with different systems that seasoned veterans claim would be the bane of a newb, even by their own standards...but have no problem with it because they start with it young or just have an easy time grasping it. I have my own answers to this question, but i wanna see how many answers differ and pick the brain of this community some more!

I usually just describe with my everyday voice as if I was telling them a story, while still directly adressing their characters ("Miranda the witch tells you that she knew [PC]'s mother many years ago").

Many GM resources tell you to come up with peculiar ways of speaking for your NPCs but it sounds to me that nobody is gaining from that haha

Happy to know what GMs who do use distinct / funny voices at the table think about this!

Alternate link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/549599/the-beginner-s-4d-handbook

I enjoy reading rpg books, manifestos, and essays, since they help broaden my views on the hobby. Recently I have been reading the 4D Handbook, which has some enthusiastic adherents of the playstyle. There's some ebullient enjoyers of the work, so I don't doubt that it has appeal, but I genuinely can't understand what point the book is making and or how it would work in practice.

The book clearly isn't intended for narrativist systems, as discussed in Appendix C, struggles to work with many gamist-leaning works, and the book mostly discusses simulationist, crunchy, trad games. However, the advice here takes the assumption that this style can work for most simulationist games, despite referencing works that extensively use mechanics that need out-of-character interactions to resolve.

One of the principle ideas here is that 4D eliminates GM-Player negotiation and empowers players to add to the world. However, given the elimination of OOC and addressing the GM, this seems like it would just create new communication issues. This is something the book alludes to, but the advice here is address it after the session. The book proposes "counter-creation", but that is still a form of negotiation.

I also can't find myself agreeing with some of the book's definitions. It has a very specific idea of what roleplaying, and quality thereof, is. Likewise, there is this weight placed upon verisimilitude and immersion that is, at the very least, debatable.

Finally, I can't help but feel like I have this is reinventing the wheel. It's taking aspects of Nordic Larp, FKR, OSR, storygaming, high-bleed play, and neotrad philosophies and packaging them together. However, by it's own admission, it is incompatible with those, making their influence somewhat contradictory.

I know this all sounds harsh, and incoherent given the three hours of sleep I had, but there are some interesting ideas here. The general playstyle specific advice to GMs is great, and communicates best practices well. The focus on spatiality and player turns is cool. The book also is forthright with playstyle trade-offs, which was refreshing honesty for these kind of works.

I'd love for someone to tell me their experiences with this style. Hopefully it will make the ideas more grokable.