**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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.

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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.

When my wife and I were going through a rough patch (following some personal stuff that had been nobody's fault), our therapist recommended we try roleplaying to put ourselves in each other's shoes. As it turns out, she meant considering hypotheticals and the like, but that wasn't clear to me at the time. And, either way, both my wife and I were avid roleplayers even before we met.

So we dug up from storage the first hardback RPG I owned, which was GURPS 3e, and we built each other. I built her, she built me, advantages, disadvantages, skills, everything we could think of. Then we discussed our characters, how we saw each other (embodied in our characters), and how we saw ourselves (you know, they ways we differed from how we saw each other).

The process gave us a lot of insight into each other, and is something that we talk about to this day. Of course, we also had a lot of therapy and other things to work through the issues as well, but I like to think that without GURPS we wouldn't be the characters we are today.

I heard about Mutant Year Zero years ago, but I never looked into the game. Now several years later I am looking at their line-up of games and it's impressive. Mutant: Year Zero, Tales from the Loop, Coriolis the Great Dark, Coriolis the Third Horizon, Alien, Blade Runner, Symbaroum, Dragonbane, The One Ring, Forbidden Lands, Walking Dead, Vaessen.
The games seem to have a gritty atmosphere, great art, a simple system that gets out of the way during play, very thematic and deep lore.

It seems to be some sort of post-OSR games, which combine certain OSR staples like sandboxing, exploration, player agency, lethality and having a lot of random generators in games with a very deep lore and worldbuilding that you see in more traditional games. Do they do everything right or do you have some complaints about certain settings or just in general?

Okay, I don't really make posts ever, so please forgive me for potentially bad formatting. I will also try to keep this brief, but I am seeking advice on how to handle my current situation, potentially.

So, to keep a long story brief, I have been playing D&D 5E roughly on and off for the last eight years or so with a singular close friend group. I was the one charged with being the DM for said games and did so with glee, but after several games falling through the cracks, either due to players flaking on me one too many times, and scheduling issues thanks to sporadic changes in life, I found myself heavily burnt out. It did not help that, despite my liking of fantasy, I prefer Sci-fi settings more on average.

So I found my game master spark fade away with time, and when I tried to reignite it with pitching different systems, or even just flavouring D&D into more sci-fi elements, I was shot down right away by my players who would refuse to play, which to an effect I can understand as I don't want to "force" my friends to play a game they don't want to play. This left me with either one or two players at my table, who, for very obvious reasons, did not want to play with such a small group even if they found the setting or system interesting.

This leads me to my current situation. I was invited by another friend of mine to join their D&D as a player, which I accepted in a heartbeat! The game had its hiccups here and there, but for the most part was an absolute joy. However, the game recently came to an end, and the previous GM was tired of running games and wanted a break. The group, knowing I ran games in the past, volunteered me to run their next game mere minutes after the campaign's ending. Something I was not really ready to do in the first place.

Despite not liking the fact that I was effectively forced to be put back in the GM chair, I still felt I could run a campaign for them. I once again pitched a different system that had caught my eye and felt could be a breath of fresh air for myself, only to be told they did not want to change systems; instead, they are wanting to stick to D&D 5/5.5E. Unfortunate, but I can at least pitch one of my Sci-fi settings then! I was told right away that they would rather have a fantasy setting.

To add to that, they wanted it to be a longer campaign at that, and here I am now. Two days later, making maps and forcing myself to try and come up with anything. It feels like a chore, that I am striding through a mire. I want to make sure my players have a fun time at my table, but I also know that as the GM, just like the players, I need to have fun with the game. While I know I would get that spark of joy seeing my players laugh, figure out puzzles, outwit my villains, throw the story for a loop with a wild scheme and experience whatever story I concoct, it feels like such a slog right now and I know that whatever spark I do get would be lack luster in comparison if I was running a game I would want to actually run.

I know I need to have a chat with my players about how I feel and see if maybe I can get some sort of compromise, but I don't really have much social experience, and this group is cool with me I am somewhat of a newcomer to it, as they are friends with my friend, who was the only person I knew before joining. So any advice on how to potentially tackle this upcoming chat I must have would be deeply appreciated. Regardless, if you made it this far, thank you for your time.

For those of you that try a lot of new TTRPGs from indie designers, are there common design decisions that you dislike that you find popping up in a lot of them? If so, what are they? I guess I could've just titled this as "What are common TTRPG design decisions that you dislike?"

The Snarl is an upcoming RPG from Posthuman Studios, who you might know for the Eclipse Phase sci-fi game. It was announced sometime last year, and presents itself as a "vibrant gnarled twist on the fantasy genre" according to the Kickstarter pre-launch page, "set in an environment of massive, kilometer-high trees, abundant but deadly."

It's technically in playtesting currently, but it's being rolled out strangely, in three parts - part 1 that's available currently is an overview of the setting, with parts 2 (basic rules) and 3 (character creation) coming out sometime early this year.

From the moment I saw it, I couldn't help but feel like it's massively inspired by The Wildsea (what with the whole "mile-high forest full of weird species" idea), though it's far from just a ripoff - The Snarl isn't doing double-duty as a sea that you sail (at best it seems you can get an airship?), it has capital-m Magic based around utilizing Sap taken from the giant trees, there's no humans whatsoever, and overall there appears to be a lot more assumed canon history, culture, and locations (described in some detail in this first playtest document).

Broadly I don't think it's for me (based on both the specific vibe of the setting and some previews of the much crunchier rules from the blog posts), but maybe the followup playtests will sell me on it. Curious what others think though, I've not seen a whole ton of discussion online around this yet!

Animism is the belief that everything (animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, etc.) possess a distinct spiritual essence and can be interacted with.

I am building a Bronze Age inspired setting, and I want to lean heavy into animism. Have you found or created a good system for this kind of thing?

I am using the latest Barbarians of Lemuria, but I can convert from other systems without much trouble.

Repost with better title

Over the course of the next semester, Im trying to dm a rpg marathon. We have 14 weeks and Im going to spend avg 3 sessions per RPG. I want to cover as many Genres (both narrative and gameplay), Playstyle, Systems etc as possible.

Requirements:

1. Not extremely crunchy. We just have 3 sessions and i cannot spend an entire session just explaining the rules. i also want to reduce the mental load on me as a DM. For reference, Draw Steel & 5e is good crunch level for me. i would not go any higher
2. Can be experienced decently within 3 sessions. So nothing that starts to get better when youre 10 sessions deep.
3. Must have a basic starter adventure (bare minimum)
4. Not super niche. As i said, i want to cover as much ground as possible so somethign thats extremely niche would go against that. It should have a decently sized fanbase

Edit:id appreciate if you tell me what general genre they cover so i dont have to look up all of them.

Right now this is what i have as an example:

Draw steel/ savage worlds (tactical combat simulator)

Masks (slice of life narrative?)

Any osr (tactical deadly)

Blades in the dark (cyberpunk narrative deadly)

I feel like my D&D, Elder Scrolls playlist isn’t Arthurian enough. Any suggestions?

Link to the campaign's coming-soon page below, with more details than those usually have. I'm crazy excited, but I have two questions for those who've played or run the playtest version:

-How much are you losing if you're a player who isn't familiar with old-school Doskvol?

-How hard (or feasible) is it to shift the game to a non-Doskvol setting?

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/c7788a1e-2f1c-4525-bc66-2a99b84ebae9/landing

EDIT: In response to someone on Bluesky asking about non-US backers, Evil Hat said:

We'll have PDF, POD, and a full, text-complete preview ready to go when the BackerKit starts but international shipping hasn't in any way *improved* since we did the Deep Cuts campaign. So placing an order with your FLGS will continue to be the best way to get the hardcopy.

Hey everyone!
Imagine you're in a remote community with no electricity, no internet, and no outside distractions. The only form of gaming entertainment is tabletop RPGs, and you can only bring two books with you.
These books have to be your go-to for creating and running campaigns for years, so the books need to be versatile and have lots of replayability.

What two books would you choose, and what makes them the perfect choice for a long-term RPG experience in your opinion?

The kingdom is in disarray.

The Six Kings of Auld have lain waste to the land. Monsters and madmen engage in endless war while Providence watches from on high.

​Now, more than ever, we need a hero. ​

Now, we need a KINGBREAKER

Happy to announce that KINGBREAKER - the new two-player TTRPG from Sealight Studios - is available now to playtest! In this game, two players will go head-to-head in a harrowing duel to the death for the honour of being crowned KINGBREAKER.

To playtest the game, head over to the Sealight Studios website and download your free copy now.