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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"?

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.

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)

As a fan of TTRPG from first exposure, I’ve curious what folks’ favorite books are from a lore standpoint, regardless of system/setting. What (any why) stands out as material that really immersed you in its respective world and vision?

my friends and i are very big Fable fans and are looking to run a game themed around it, but we're having trouble finding a tabletop that suits the style of the games. any suggestions?

I was assembling a short three shot for some tabletop acquaintances and one of me said something odd. She told me that her always DMs designs her characters for her, and she expected me to do the same. This struck me as odd. Has any of your players asked you to do this? She seemed to treat it as a pretty common thing, but I've never heard of anyone doing this? Is this just a thing some players prefer?

I've been trying to make sense of how this room works, especially gravity and maps. Can someone explain it to me? Anyone else with the same problem?

I am looking for any campaign or adventure for first time GMs:

* Genre: Sci-fi (Space sci fi is preferable)

* System agnostic is preferable

* Something that is meant for not more than four pcs is preferable

* Not 5e based is preferable

* Players are new to rpgs too

Anything I need to add here to make it easy to give suggestions?

TIA

I've noticed this with almost everyone I've played with, including myself. The nicest, most calm person in the world becomes more bloodthirsty when they play; while the amount differs between players, everyone seems to be more prone to violence. Why is this?

We have this player who is incredibly active but sometimes disruptive.

We are trying to play Vampire the Masquerade. Storyteller wants a crime-focused game. I probably create the most on-theme player character, but we end up making a coterie that doesn’t quite fit cohesively in the end. Two sessions in, the player in question does something no one likes because it effectively creates a problem everyone has to deal with that no one else thinks is fun or interesting.

This has happened before because this player gets bored. It completely killed a game in the past. We did stop during session 4 of VTM and decided we needed a reset for unrelated party cohesion reasons. The week before, we played the session without this person and it was really fun.

During retconned character/party creation, he said something along the lines of “What left-field things are you planning on doing?” and I don’t know that I want to play games that way. He seems to be all about shaking things up just for the sake of it and I’m finding it exhausting.

We definitely have a problem with passivity in our group so part of me worries I’m being silly and this is just what it’s supposed to be, but I am not having fun when he does these things. We’ve shared these sentiments with the GM, but nothing has been addressed directly with the player. It always seems to be: “Well, let’s try this first and if it continues to be a problem, I’ll say something.”

Do I just suck it up? Do I maybe take a break/ try to find another table? I know our GM is already stressed about making sure everyone is excited about playing. It just feels a bit like a mess right now.

This is a strange one, but I'm looking for a system that encourages/supports/just is about playing as a rat or cat or dog in a modern city, or the wilderness either really works. It's a kind of sick idea I've always wanted to run, warrior cats but it's rat clans within NYC or something like that. But it's hard to find a good match or even know what to look for.