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I'm a new GM, I'm posting here to maybe gain some insight to aid me in my GM journey. To keep it brief, prepping has become a bit of a slog recently. I spend a lot of time prepping for each session just for my players to completely blow through the things I have prepared. I think what I've narrowed it down to is that I tend to prepare exposition and information, and not tension. Exposition and lore drops last maybe minutes at a time when tension, creating situations, and presenting problems to my players create a longer and more immersive session at the table.

I know that kinda sounds like I get it, but I don't actually understand the process to get there. I've read Don't Prep Plots series by the Alexandrian many times over as well as similar posts online and I can't seem to grasp the concepts they're trying to get at.

I've seen tons of videos and posts online talking about DMing as giving a sandbox to the players, or giving the players toys (NPCs, setpieces, problems) to play with, experiment with, and live in the situation I've given them. Fundamentally, if I want to create tension and meaningful choices for the players, I don't understand how I can not prepare branching outcomes and waste prep on outcomes the players will never see depending on their choices.

I am mainly confused by this. if I don't prep branching outcomes to the player choices, I don't get how i should handle unexpected and open ended solutions the players create, without improvising everything on the spot. Unless improv is really the heart of the solution to all of this? That seems extremely hard.

Example: the party is hired to export cargo to Awesome City, but upon arriving at the dock, the ship they were guaranteed is missing.

Sure I can come up with the problem, however, i dont understand how to prep for players potentially stealing a boat, fighting a crew, or investigating the disappearance.

What does the process behind "prep situations, not plots" actually look like structurally? Any advice is welcome and helpful!

I’m looking for a well-rounded setting to run high fantasy games in. Lately the impression I have is that a huge proportion of TTRPGs in fantasy settings (and maybe others as well) are set in dark worlds, with themes of horror, gothic horror, post-apocalyptic, survivalism, gritty, etc. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that and there are some that I have enjoyed, but it isn’t what I’m looking for right now, and it surprises me how much of what I find is in this vein.

Then a lot of what I do find that isn’t dark is on the opposite end of the spectrum: cozy. Which, again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with and I have enjoyed some of, but also isn’t what I’m after.

I’d like a setting that feels like it has a balance of both. Not a cozy world with only minor conflict but also not a dark, unforgiving world with unending conflict. I want a setting that has a mix of downbeats and upbeats, of darkness and brightness, of cute and terrifying, of hope and fear, you get the idea.

If I think about video games that I enjoyed growing up that had that kind of feel, I think of things like Skies of Arcadia, the Tales series, Golden Sun, Final Fantasy, Loom, Baten Kaitos, the King’s Quest series, and others. Games that had dark moments, places and people mixed in with moments that felt bright or heroic, or curious or beautiful or mysterious.

So far the thing that has hit the closest is the Dales setting from Legend in the Mist, which is one of the things that I like about it. It’s good, and I also enjoy it but I’d also like something that lends itself to more high fantasy. Eberron has come up in my searches, I don’t know much about it but am interested in looking into it especially if others might recommend it for this.

Would love to hear thoughts and recommendations!

Anyone still playing Rifts?

In many Space Opera works, there is this "Trope" which consists of having a giant planet sized space station which serves as a hub for all factions known in the galaxy. In Star Wars this station is Coruscant, in Mass Effect it's the Citadel, in Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 it's the eponymous station.

My goal is to make a Spy Campaign inspired by John le Carré which is set entirely within the walls of said station.

Is there a RPG sourcebook for such as setting?

Hi all,

I'm always a fan of RPG books with an "Appendix N" or an "inspirational material" section. It's great fun to dive into the works which inspired a fictional world; I like to think of it as an intellectual history.

I love that in Mage the Ascension Revised ed there is a reference to The Matrix but many people imagineMage inspired The Matrix.

I loved the shared DNA between GURPS Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase being shown clearly by the works they reference.

With all that said; I'm looking for recommendations. What RPG book do you think has the best "Appendix N"?

preferably older systems with a lot of support

What’s the most memorable example of players massively overthinking a simple situation in your TTRPG games?

I’m thinking about those moments where the GM presents a completely straightforward obstacle, NPC, door, clue, or encounter, and the players immediately assume there’s some deeper conspiracy, hidden trap, or elaborate puzzle involved.

What happened, how far did the overthinking go, and how did the situation finally get resolved?

So I really like old school fps games , like doom for example, and one day I decided that I wanted to DM a dungeon and dragons campaign, when designing my first dungeon , I noticed that it was very similar to making a doom map, you place down the walls and halls , doors with keys and mazes full of monsters the player has to fight while he gets better and better loot

And then I thought " wouldn't it be cool if there was a table top rpg with sci Fi elements and guns like doom ? "

So basically I'm looking for a table top rpg that I can do this , imagine a sci Fi themed rpg campaing that mixes the best of DnD with the best of sci Fi

I'm not sure if I got my idea across correctly in this post but I just thought it would be very cool idea, maybe I could home brew something

My boyfriend just gave me a heart attack by saying

"Hey. Some friends have asked me to GM a dnd campaign this afternoon. You're invited to join us."

And this is not going to be the stereotypical story of a girlfriend just having no idea what an RPG even is... Quite the opposite:

My gaming experience:

I've been playing since I was 20 (40 now) mostly one shots and shorts campaigns of various systems (some Dnd 3.5 abandoned a long time ago, world of darkness, trail of Cthulhu, PbtA everything, Fiasco, Primetime adventures and a variety of systems I was lucky to get to try at cons). I've GMed some stuff, but mostly been a player.

My boyfriend's experience:

He's played a couple one shots in which I was a game master, and a couple mini campaigns of ToC in which he was playing with me as a guide (because where I live he doesn't speak the language).

I burst out laughing. Apparently that wasn't supportive enough (😅).

I got a little scared for him and pointed out he couldn't read the manuals and be ready to GM within a couple of hours, but apparently this little group that asked him to join are really chill players who are playing DND 5e without using the manuals.

I can be just as chill (mostly laughing my ass off, as I come from a group of avid RPers who even host annual conventions, and host panels and rules debates and stuff, and prep campaigns for weeks, so this gave me a heart attack of sorts).

I don't want to discourage the fun, which clearly they're having doing whatever they're doing, and I can be just as chill about rules, but I feel that they could benefit by adopting something rules light that still has a balanced structure.

He's thinking of making his adventure about vikings.

Do I let him just do this? Or do I handle him a manual of some sorts?

And if the latter, what? (Can't be over 30 pages given the time constraints)

I’m going to be completely honest: I’ve been GMing since I was 14. I started back in 2014 with Werewolf: The Apocalypse 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1e/D&D 3.5.

Back then, I could only play in person. Sure, we were kind of at the mercy of whoever owned the books, because that person usually became the GM. But games actually happened. As long as you didn’t end up with a tyrannical GM, groups could grow and stick together.

Since 2020, because of the pandemic, I moved mostly to online games. And to this day, I’ve only managed to form one stable online group. That group only exists because we became actual friends outside of RPGs too. We play online games together, we hang out in person, and so on.

Recently, though, scheduling became harder. On top of that, my group has been hyperfocused on World of Darkness. For context, the group has around six people total, and two of us are GMs. I was getting burned out on running WoD, so a friend took over as GM. I love being a player, but I also love GMing, and lately I’ve really wanted to run medieval fantasy again.

My main group didn’t want to play. That’s fine. Scheduling conflicts, WoD hyperfocus, I get it. So I thought: okay, I’ll find another group to GM for while I keep playing with my regular group on weekends.

But man, the lack of commitment online is brutal. And the D&D phenomenon is also rough to deal with.

First, nobody seems to want to actually form a group. Everyone wants to play exactly what they already want to play, and that’s fair, but it becomes frustrating. If I post a game with a specific premise and three people show interest, usually none of them seem genuinely invested. The game just dissolves.

But if I post the exact same premise and slap “D&D 5e” on it, or even “custom system,” suddenly I get flooded with replies asking if there are spots open. I’ve literally had application forms get around 50 responses in two days. And that makes it feel like a lot of people are there 100% for the system, not for the actual premise. They’ll play anything as long as it’s in that system.

I swear I’m past my “angry at 5e” phase, but the difference is just brutal.

And then there are the weird, stubborn players. When I say weird, I don’t just mean “quirky character concept.” I mean stuff like posting a Curse of Strahd game and having someone insist that I should let them play a homebrew race and class they created based on magical paintings and sculptures. And no, they won’t accept playing an Artificer with reflavoring. It has to be their thing.

And even if, by some miracle, I do find committed and reasonable people and we finish a campaign, they usually don’t want to keep the group going afterward. The group just dissolves anyway.

The only real alternative I’ve seen is paid campaigns. With paid games, I usually get the best of both worlds: players are more committed, more respectful of my time, and more invested. But I feel bad charging. The effort I put into a free game and a paid game is the same. The quality is the same. The difference is that in one, people respect my time and enjoyment, and in the other, it often feels like they don’t care about me or the commitment at all.

This isn’t really a criticism of D&D, online play, or paid games. It’s just a vent about my own frustrating experience.

I guess I wanted to ask: do other online GMs go through this too? Because whenever I play with random people instead of my regular group, I always try to respect the GM religiously. I show up on time, I pay attention, I take the game seriously.

But it feels like players like that are rare. Most people just don’t seem to care.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I’m just frustrated at this point. I’m almost considering giving up GMing, something I’ve been doing for 12 years, because lately it has felt incredibly unrewarding. Either that, or I only run paid games from now on, which I also don’t really want to do, because I like the idea of keeping access to RPGs more open and democratic.

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