**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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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 mean one where you barely have to touch the rules and just give the setting and tone a coat of paint. I ask cause I have been toying with making a Delta Green romcom module. In it, Sanity becomes your Heartbreak stat, and the Horrors of Delta Green are the agonies and mindgames your beloved puts you through to win their heart.

Okay, hear me out: What if instead of showing the video of the players just sitting around the table, you kept the audio of the game but then did sock puppet theatre afterwards for the visuals?

You could do sock puppets of the players talking but also little recreations of the action with sock puppet characters, sock puppet dragons, sock puppet mysterious hermits, etc. Games become a lot more fun to watch and demand for puppeteers (and socks) around the globe immediately skyrockets. I'm not crazy, you're crazy!

Seriously, I would watch that. Why is this not a thing?

After over a year of playtests, tweaks, and additions I just released a major update to my crunchy, shonen inspired RPG and I'd love to get some feedback. You can find the rules here but here's the elevator pitch:

As the name implies, Over 9,000 is a high crunch system that uses an escalating dice pool system to try to reflect the insane power scaling of shonen anime (one anime in particular) in a way that's still engaging and fun to play. There's rules for beam struggles, kicking enemies through mountains, and (as of the latest update) turning into a legally distinct golden haired super warrior and blowing up the sun.

The core gameplay loop is built around the risk/reward of allocating your dice to actions like firing ki blasts, or keeping them in reserve to defend yourself with reactions like DODGE!. More powerful characters have more dice available to them, so the action economy doesn't hamper boss/swarm fights nearly as much. There's also a system to create your own custom techniques or recreate moves from your favourite shonen anime, screaming is optional (but encouraged).

There's a Discord link on the download page, I'd love to run a few playtest sessions if anyone is interested.

I dreamed that I discovered a pristine first edition—or perhaps an early second edition—book. The book described a Dungeons & Dragons city built entirely within a colossal magical sundial.

The city itself was about a mile across and occupied a broad, shallow bowl or valley. Three great metal towers dominated the landscape. One tower marked the outer edge of the city and the sundial. A second tower, shaped like a giant triangular blade, served as the gnomon—the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. The third tower cast no shadow at all and had once been the home of the wizard who created the city-sundial. The city's streets formed the hour lines, while the ground itself served as the dial plate. The entire settlement functioned as an immense magical timepiece.

Then I woke up.

It was only a dream, but I still love the concept of an entire city designed as a gigantic enchanted sundial. I have no idea why such a city would have been built, but the idea suggests all sorts of intriguing possibilities.

I've played 5e for so long, and tried to turn it into a good story game, but it kind of fights me every step of the way, to the point that we basically never do combat, skip all of the persuasion, insight roles, make long rests a week, and a bunch of other changes to make it better for an emotional story. Although, in the end, it doesn't work too well.

Our group tried Pathfinder 2e for a while, but found it occupied the same genre of "superhero fantasy". And, while that is cool and all, I'm trying to run those emotional character arcs but I'm realizing I should probably just look for other rpgs just in case.

I posted earlier about TOR, read it, and it seems pretty cool but I'm curious if there are any other like that (TTRPGs that give more focus on story)?

The rules don't state a specific size -- how big have you made your mechs in your game?

Just asked this over on Bluesky and getting some great answers so, for those of you who either write fiction or your own scenarios/adventures/campaigns etc (professionally or not), what is the nerdiest most pointless research rabbit hole you've gone down in the name of worldbuilding, which you're well aware that no one else will ever care about but you wanted to get right?

this was prompted by finding my old notes with all the phases of the moon & tides in Northern England in 1566, which for those of you thinking "well actually it's entirely reasonable that the players might want to know the tides & phases of the moon in 1566 over the course of a scenario, best to be prepared," the scenario in question took place in 1583

So i was thinking of ruining some like a spec ops/Gi joe inspired game while I personally like essence 20, my group does not and we are exploring other options. We prefer classless and skill based and maybe a little room for "powers" or upgrades like cyberware. I was thinking Shadowrun might be a springboard, But I would love to hear other suggestions.

TL;DR: What's a lightweight ruleset that's still compatible with Mythic Constantinople?

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As I grow older I feel myself shifting away from my youthful obsession with fantasy in all forms and finding an increased appreciation of historical fiction: the stories of real (or real adjacent) people, sometimes in extraordinary situations, sometimes just dealing with the everyday struggle for survival, connection, and purpose.

As such, I'm also interested in exploring those kinds of stories in RPGs, but RPGs devoted to historical fiction are relatively rare compared to the enormous wealth of options in the fantasy/sci-fi genre.

Rare, but not necessarily hard to find.

The best options I've seen are for GURPS (a veritable cornucopia for historical RP) and Mythras with its line of "Mythic ____" setting supplements.

As a GM, I prefer to run low-crunch systems:

• I like to keep my games flowing along at a nice clip, even in combat
• Fast character creation encourages me to not pull punches - death is always on the table if it's a realistic consequence
• I like to run small campaigns and switch systems fairly regularly because there's just so many interesting things to play. I can't ask my players to invest in a complex system that we'll be done with in a few months.

Mothership and Pirate Borg are my current favorites. So what's my best option for lightweight historical roleplaying?

1. Is there a version of BRP light enough for my tastes?
2. Should I suck it up and figure out a version of GURPS that works for me?
3. Is there another RPG that fits my preferences and is well suited for historical play?
4. Should I make my own Panic Engine or Borg hack to suit my needs?

Thanks!

Running games for a while now and I have always been a chronic overprepper. Statblocks for NPCs who never show up, maps for locations the party skips, contingency notes for decisions they never make. Classic stuff. My assumption going in was that a ruleslighter system would naturally produce lighter prep because there is less mechanical scaffolding to build around. What I actually found is that the prep just shifted shape. Less time on stats, more time secondguessing whether I had enough fictional texture to improvise confidently when the rules stop holding your hand.

Which is interesting because that second type of prep is harder to measure and easier to underdo. At least with a crunchier system you know when you are done because you have filled in the boxes.

Curious whether other GMs experienced something similar or whether the lighter prep thing actually delivered for you. Did you end up running more sessions on the fly, or did you just frontload different kinds of work? And does the answer change depending on the system? I suspect games like Ironsworn handle this differently than something like Fate, where the GM scaffolding is almost entirely vibebased

Also wondering if player experience level changes the equation. My group is pretty comfortable improvising, but I could see a newer group needing more GM prep to compensate regardless of what the rulebook says.