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As the title says.

This, this and another post about a GM creating some handmade letter handouts for his players which I can no longer find recently all followed the same pattern. The posts were made by accounts created days ago, usually with multiple posts in very unconnected but popular subreddits. Usually there were some random comments made on other posts, done in french for some reason.

The posts all had a very similar pattern of complaining about some personal issue that demanded either sympathy or advice from their readers, always written in the most self-hating tone possible. If they described players acting badly, they always ruled out the immediate option of talking it over like adults.

None of these accounts seem to have any interest in responding to comments on their post, despite writing posts that are quite long about deeply personal issues. By the way, they seem to have a lot of deeply personal issues, judging by their other posts on other subreddits.

I might be wrong about some of these, but I would advice people to be skeptical about the stories that get posted here, and not let it distort their view of how other people actually play or interact. Bots like these can make dysfunctional groups seem way more common than they actually are.

Please tell me other GMs have had to do this, because I’m sitting in front of my notes right now having a quiet identity crisis.

I have been running a gritty investigative campaign for the past two months. Tonight was supposed to be the session where my players finally pieced together the clues and caught the noble who poisoned the city magistrate. They were sitting around my kitchen table passionately debating the evidence for an hour.

While listening to them, I glanced down at my timeline notes and felt my blood run cold. My timeline was broken. I forgot that three weeks ago, I canonically established that my actual killer was on a military barge eighty miles downriver. My own mystery was completely, mathematically unsolvable.

the players, meanwhile, somehow connected three completely random throwaway descriptions I improvised in session two. They constructed this airtight, emotionally devastating theory accusing the innkeeper. Their logic was so much better than mine that I just put on my best poker face and said, "You solved it." They literally cheered and high-fived. They think I’m teh storytelling god of our friend group, but I'm an illiterate hack who doesn't understand calendar math. Do I take this secret to my grave or am I cheating them by retrofitting their theories?

https://stonetop.cc/

Bryan Legend made an interactive web version of Stonetop RPG. I think it is quite nice.

Strandberg put his RPG's text under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this site is legal.

Greetings from Brazil, fellow RPG enthusiasts! While exploring the GUMSHOE system—starting with Trail of Cthulhu—I stumbled upon The Esoterrorists, a very intriguing horror and investigation RPG. When I tried to find some content about it on YouTube—like recordings of actual play sessions—all I could find were reviews of the system itself, the rulebook, and so on. Even on Reddit, I’ve seen very few people talking about this TTRPG. Have you played it? What was your experience like? In your opinion, why doesn't anyone talk about it much?

Before anyone immediately comments "have an adult conversation with your group" or "this should’ve been handled in Session 0", please hear me out. I’m not angry at them. They’re my closest friends. I just feel deeply, quietly pathetic.

I’ve been running our campaign for about seven months. Last week, I had what I thought was an inspired idea for their investigation in the capital. I spent my entire Sunday afternoon writing three separate in-world letters, printing them in calligraphy, staining them with black tea, and even sealing them with actual red wax. I felt so proud of it.

Fast forward to tonight. They finally breach the magistrate’s study where the letters were. I set the real wax-sealed props in front of them with a grin, expecting some gasp of excitement. The barbarian player glanced at them, didn't even break the seal, and went, "Can I just roll an Investigation check to see if the desk is expensive? I want to chop it up." Everyone laughed, the wizard cast Fire Bolt to distract the guards outside, and they moved on.

They didnt even pick the props up. I just quietly slipped them back into my folder while they spent 45 minutes debating whether to adopt a stray goat. I know it’s just a hobby with plastic dice, but man... do I just have completely unrealistic expectations, or is running a game always just an exercise in emotional masochism?

I'm a forever GM and I've noticed something that might sound too mean, but I say with the bottom of my heart. Most players write terrible characters. It's their characters so I usually don't bring it up to them, but most players write characters that are bad for a variety of reasons.

Common reasons I've noticed are that they mistake elaborate backstory for an interesting character, writing characters that are written with one specific character arc in mind, characters who are too mysterious so nobody in the party ends up caring about them, one-dimensional personalities and etc.

This isn't a post about me venting about players, as I would normally just keep this to myself since I don't want to judge and the good lord knows my players could find way worse things to pick apart about the settings and adventures I write.

But then I noticed, when writing settings and adventures, I have lots of guidance. There's tons of advice on how to write a good setting, adventure design and all that. While a lot of this information can be found in blogs, videos and other sources, it can also be found in the rulebooks of the TTRPGs that I'm actually playing. The Dungeon Master's Guide has tons of useful information on worldbuilding, adventure design, setting up campaigns and all that stuff.

Meanwhile, the Player's Handbook's guidance for writing interesting characters is to just come up with a concept. This extends to almost every TTRPG I've ever read, that players just need to come up with a concept without any guidance on how to make an interesting concept.

No doubt, there's tons of information on writing interesting characters from the perspective of fiction writing, but don't think all fiction and improv advice applies to TTRPGs. I think a lot of the bad characters that I've seen came from assuming a style of fiction that doesn't suit most TTRPGs.

With all this, why do you think there isn't much guidance on writing interesting characters? Am I wrong in thinking some characters are better or worse than others?

I'm going to be running Call Of Cthulhu for the first time, running The Derelict. I'm hoping my players will enjoy it and that we'll be continuing with more CoC into the future

In several games such as Shadowrun 5e, the Witcher TRPG and Dragonbane (specifically the Swedish version) and I assume many more, there are mechanics which seek to encourage good roleplay by rewarding players for it. In Shadowrun 5e you regain Edge (effectively luck points) and in the Witcher TRPG and in Dragonbane you gain the equivalent of XP. When I’m the GM I never use these mechanics and when I am a player I make it clear to the GM that I dislike them as well. I think this for two reasons:

First, I dislike how the GM becomes a judge of good roleplay. When presented with a reward, players will seek it out and while I understand that that's the point, I think it subtly shifts the motivation for roleplaying from doing so because it is fun into trying to impress the GM with your performance. It inevitably invites the question: how good is good enough? Say two players both thought they had good roleplay but the GM only rewarded one. If I was the other player I would be disappointed, something I wouldn’t want as either a player or as the GM.

A counterargument may be that it could be up to the players to judge themselves, but I’m pretty sure everyone would just reward themselves in that case, making it pointless. The entire group, instead of just the GM, could also judge together, but that doesn’t solve my fundamental issue of how good is good enough and that some players may be disappointed by the outcome.

Second, I dislike how it gives better roleplayers a mechanical advantage. Not all players are alike, some talk a lot, some are quieter. Some like to speak in-character and with a voice while others simply like to describe what their character is saying. Some play very interesting characters while some play more formulaic or mundane characters. As long as everybody is involved and has fun, I think this is fine. However, a more active player who likes to speak in the voice of their interesting character will be disproportionately rewarded by mechanics which reward good roleplay. Said player will gain an advantage while the others are effectively punished, and in games where good roleplay is tied with character progression, this issue would worsen the longer a campaign goes on.

A counterargument may be that it encourages less active players to take more space, but in my group at least, that doesn’t happen, and even then I think players should want to be better at roleplay because they enjoy it, not because not doing so risks them falling behind.

These are my opinions which I hope make sense. Since these mechanics exist in many games I assume many people like them, so I’m curious what everyone else thinks. I’m also curious how other games implement such mechanics and if my critiques apply to them or not.

Personally I predict that Solo TTRPGs are going to grow in popularity, even if only temporarily.
Could be wrong, but making predictions is fun even when they're wrong.

Do you have any predictions? What's your biggest, most bold prediction?

I'm looking for Gothic Horror adventures (not games, I already know the system I will be using, just adventures to adapt to said system), but most of my research run pretty dry.

What I mean by this is : an adventure that takes place in a world similar to our own (not Curse of Strahd, which is Gothic fantasy), if possible within the time period of Gothic litterature (18th or 19th century, but other eras can work at long as it doesn't rely too much on modern technology), with themes and tropes inspired by classic Gothic horror novels (Frankenstein, Dracula, Castle of Otranto, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde...).

So far I've find a few Cairn adventures that can work if I remove a few of the more fantasy-coded elements, a few Call of Cthulhu adventures where I just need to change the time period.

Do you have any suggestion of stuff that would work? Thanks in advance if you do!

So I had my first game last week as a DM. I thought I'd share my experience.

So first, I had to say it was pretty cool. My players and I loved it and we had a great time. They all thought the rules were pretty light and easy to understand. The game mechanics (especially establishing truths) were really inspiring and entertaining. Some of my players even came up with problems to overcome instead of advantage.

There were some things that were challenging to deal with though.

As a DM:

1/ Knowing how when I should take the lead or let my players do.

2/ The "no prep" thing can be unsettling sometimes.

I mean, if they win the narration rights, how do you decide if they had enough or not ? At a certain point, we were in a forest and one of them won narration rights. So I let him decide the outcome and all. Then they went on going foreword but didn't know what to do next. I came up me something after a bit but I have to say it's not that easy to go "no prep" when you're used to DMing pretty standard ttrpg.

How do you guys deal with all that usually? Any advice?

As a player:

1/ Narrating some traits that weren't blending easily with the story and be stuck with a trait you can’t burn.

One of my players had "afraid of heights" but we were on plain site for some times. Trying to set up this trait, she even came up with a truth saying the group came across a zip line. But when she tried to roll she failed but roll no 1. (Which will bring me to my second point).

Any advice in order to narrate traits easier for the players?

2/ Failing but not rolling any ones so burning traits has no use.

We came across many situations in which my players were failing a roll, they wanted to burn their traits in order to reroll/keep the game moving but as they failed they didn't roll any 1. I mean I get that in order to be different from drinks, traits make you reroll only your ones. But I felt like it was kind of frustrating for them that they couldn't use their "joker card" if they wanted to, even though THEY FAILED. It happened at least 5 times.

Any advice about this matter ?

Overall it was a great experience for all of us. I feel like they would love to do it again.

I have a second game this week, this time online. I just hope I won't loose too much of the atmosphere that all the set up creates IRL. Wish me luck !