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From either a game lineage, from the discourse, or a player expectation.

Mine is that I don’t get the appeal of “always hit” mechanics like in Nimble or Draw Steel. I’m sure there are very good reasons to use it, and I don’t doubt the games still work, but I just don’t have a problem missing an attack sometimes.

So there is this GM advice that I have heard from some different sources, most recently in the latest video from Dungeon Craft. It goes something like "Don't save your best ideas for later in the campaign, use them next session! You never know how long the campaign will last."

So how would I actually apply this advice? I would like my campaign to move faster between adventures, but since I am running a sandbox/West Marches campaign I have to rely on my players to follow plot hooks. The last few sessions they have been hanging out in a big city, doing a tournament during a festival, but my "best ideas" are in another location. I don't want to take away my players agency, but at the same time I want to make each session as fun as it can be.

Edit: For context the campaign is supposed to be pirate themed, so my best adventure ideas are treasure hunts and heists on a series of islands. So these pirate adventures don't really fit in the city they are in at the moment. I guess my issue is I don't want to tell my players what to do or teleport them to the location of my best adventure idea.

How would you tell a complete story in only, say, six sessions?

I have a massive cast of NPCs. I need something to remind me of who is in the room. For a long time, I've used Roll20. Instead of a map, I just cluster the tokens together on a background image of a location (the players don't see this). I've started a new campaign. I considered doing the same thing — making a hundred tokens and adding them to Roll20 —but I thought there must be a simpler, less resource-intensive tool than Roll20. Owlbear.Rodeo is nice, but it still has more than I need. Google Draw would be perfect if I could put names on the tokens. And maybe there's a better way than using tokens.

Any thoughts?

I'm the type of person who knows very little about the history of the systems I play and mostly creates my own worlds. For me, the most valuable thing is the rules (obviously a certain "why" of things being the way they are is necessary, but I don't like/usually get too involved with the history of the systems). This is coming from someone whose favorite system is Mage: The Ascension.

Lately I've noticed that a non-trivial amount of fantasy TTRPGs have been including some manner of playable merchant (or similarly-named) class as a player option, despite how that archetype is typically thought of as an NPC-only role.

The big examples currently in my head would be Tactiquest, Fabula Ultima: Natural Fantasy, and Vagabond (where a class straight up called a Merchant shows up, typically with boons pertaining to handling inventory and money as a form of support). The Wildsea: Storm & Root also delivers with its Marketeer post, which offers similar deal-making and resource management benefits.

Curiously most of these games take some or a lot of inspiration from JRPG video games, where, as I undestand it, the concept of a playable merchant class is a bit more established than in most of Western-style fantasy (across both tabletop and video game spheres).

And now I'm kind of curious if there's more, and how such classes (or playbooks, or archetypes, or what have you) play!

So I've had this idea in my head for awhile of something mirroring Advance wars/Fire Emblem where each individual player has their own group of soldiers that they level up/command/customize etc and combat plays out on a much larger warband/army level scale.

Something akin to Lancer where you are the Player but as soon as combat starts you switch to controlling your whole unit instead, do you guys know a system like this?

I read through books for mutants and masterminds and thought the power system offered a lot of options but was a little rules light, I'm looking for something with plenty of options for my players to build their concepts, but that is a little crunchier, help a gal out?

hello there! i have played a few ttrpg sessions before, but i've never gm'd before. i know this is silly, but i would like to gm a oneshot where the players are criminals in a mall and batman is after them. its supposed to be scary, but not very complex. (some of my friends have never played ttrpgs and was thinking itd be funnier if the characters were the players themselves, you get what i mean?) batman is also supposed to be unbalanced and unforgiving, making the players feel more fragile. and also, preferably something that uses die (i've seen games like dread that look really really fun but i think its better to stick to the good old dice instead of jenga towers for example, hope you understand :D)

does anyone have a good recommendation?

I made a listicle image template for this, but thought I'd post here in text form in case people wanted to fill it out.

Basically fill out this list of the RPGs that best fit the category for ya:

• Favorite Game -
• Best Lore -
• Best Art -
• Best Mechanics -
• Biggest Personal Impact -
• Overhated -
• Underrated -
• Overrated -
• Criminally Overlooked -
• Has Aged Well -
• Nostalgic For -
• Game I want to play, but I can't find a GM -
• Game I want to run, but I can't find players -
• Go to for One-Shots -
• Guilty Pleasure -
• Needs a New Edition -
• Not Usually My Thing, But... -
• Current Game -
• First Game -
• Game Everyone Should Play -

Note: To put Underrated and Criminally Overlooked in context; I'd define Underrated as you like it but people seem to dislike it, and Criminally Overlooked is a game that's not talked about but you like.