**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.

James Introcaso (lead designer of Draw Steel) just released this video announcing an open alpha playtest for MCDM's next game. This came is called Crows and is designed to be the exact opposite of Draw Steel in many ways. Where Draw Steel is about epic heroes solving world ending problems with badass abilities, Crows is about nobodies risking it all to venture into the dungeons of a magical post apocalypse and hopefully bring back loot to improve lives back in their home town.

The playtest materials can be accessed here in a free Patreon post. Here's what's inside:

• A booklet containing the game's core rules
• A booklet containing character creation and advancement options, rules for gear, and rules for creating and advancing the PCs' village
• An adventure to, in, and from the Blood Library, a flesh-covered ruin containing spellbooks and other treasures
• A booklet containing the statistics of creatures used in the Blood Library
• Maps and art needed for the dungeon. The art is from the great Nick De Spain!

This is playtest material and so has not been fully laid out or edited. Feedback on these materials can be provided here through Monday June 29th at 8AM Eastern Pacific time.

For more details on Crows you can check out this intro post and this playlist on YouTube. MCDM is planning on crowdfunding this game in August and you can sign up for more details on that here.

Well, that. I would love to be able to find books with illustrations of creatures where the illustration is accompanied by a bit of lore about the creature, or details about its behavior, or information about its powers, anything.

I am a big fan of bestiaries in video games because they precisely meet all these requirements, but I became curious to know if there are books of this style.

I'm trying to find more stores in Canada that sell tabletop RPGs online (I am not looking for D&D or Pathfinder, those are a dime a dozen - I'm looking for stores that have a good stock of other RPGs in the top 10 or top 20. And Indie RPGs too). So far I'm not finding much...

My local store Gauntlet Games has a good selection, le Valet d'Coeur and 401games do too, Sentry Box does (but is expensive) and Ratti Incantati is great for small press/solo games. But are there any more? That can't be it... but I guess the dedicated RPG store is a thing of the past now.

Can anyone point me to any more stores in Canada with a big stock of RPGs please?

EDIT: Thanks everyone! You've pointed me to some great stores to look through! :)

I am running a year of short S&S games before jumping into Stonetop. Anyone have an opinion on which is the better game for short action and adventure scenarios? I know S&S games don't lean toward long campaigns, but what about three to five sessions?

I've been wanting to write and run a campaign I've been contemplating for a while now, a Vampire game set in London during the Blitz. I played the original VtM back in the 90s as my first foray into RPGs, and I've got a copy of the latest (5th ed?) that I've read but haven't played. And I've played in a one shot of what was possibly 4th ed.

I love the lore of VtM, but I've always been a little underwhelemd with the mechanics, and I know my players would start to get annoyed and/or disengaged with it, so I'm looking for guidance:

• what other Vampire systems are out there?
• What other Vampire systems are GOOD?
• If VtM is the main event, which version is the best?

Thanks!

I'm currently writing a small, 1-2 shot adventure that the primary focus is a group of strangers arriving to the same inn, each of them with there own personal agendas.

Someone who stole something valuable

Someone running from a cult

Some kind of officer of the law who was (secretly) recently fired

A snake oil salesman, but some of their brew *unexpectedly* work

etc. details of these characters aren't locked in place, but that kind of thing.

As the players arrive at the hotel and start to meet, some of the people who are looking for them start to filter in, and hijinks will ensue. Maybe some combat, maybe some subterfuge, maybe some sabotage. There will likely be some *small* amount of PvP, but something will always intervene so that the players don't actually kill each other, and hopefully all band together by the end of the night to resolve some greater threat. I'm planning on it being a little campy, a little romp-y, but still character-focused with bursts of high-octane adrenaline.

My question is: What system works for this kind of adventure? I'm thinking fantasy setting so we can be a little fantastical. I've considered:

Blades in the Dark: has some of the heist-y feel, but I don't think exactly matches the vibe.

Fiasco: Hits some of the comedy, but I'd like the players also to have the option of starting a larger adventure together after this.

Generic, easy to learn systems like Dragonbane might work? That's probably what I might default to, but I was just curious if anyone had fun suggestions that might fit better!

We have been playing in a campaing for more than 7 months, and our story is very close to it's end. Despite that few sessions left, we cannot take anymore the attitude of our DM as players. Since the start there were minor red flags that were barely noticeable in comaprison with joy and excitement we had in our games. The quality of the characters and story used to be higher. Then there were problems with balancing, intercations with NPCs and open use of AI during the games.

Before I start, let me say that these are little elements that felt always dealable and we can get through it. But it turned out to be that we were wrong to ignore it, now the probelms as so many it literally paralyzed us.

The setting of our campaing is Underdark, drows, intrigues between houses, conflict between Lolth and Eilistraee, written by the DM. Majority of our pack is House Baenre's slaves and few ones are drows from noble houses. We played once a week and payed for each session to our DM.

Let's start with the fact that our DM cannot take any criticism, immidiate reaction to any feedback is denial and gaslighting. So, that was the main reason we kept taking all the issues quiet untill we all snaped. I understand that it also makes us guilty for sinking that badly deep into problems that cannot be solved peacefully now.

Our DM set several bans from the begining, we were okay with at the session zero, but the list kept growing as our characters leveled up and got naturally stronger. She gets genuenlly pissed when we come up with good plans and destroy the enemies. It led to more complex combat, more units in the encounters, and endless amount of counterspells. DM would get confused in many status effects and the list of initiative and got even more frustrated. Even at that pont we didn't see any major issues. And then she introduced a "death mark", which means that in the fights she would focus only one strong player. That player more likely would be at 0 hp by the end of first turn or disabled by spells. It was nerly impossible to play normally under that mark. She focued our Bard first, then the mark shifted to our Druid. For the fist time it felt like stakes went higher. After all, it just killed all the motivation for those players. So, I baited our DM into putting that mark on me, my Gloom Stalker Ranger also wasn't a favored class of hers, "I should have banned that sub-class" she told me and I became her beating toy. Fortunatly, my high HP and high saving throws would not let me die on the first turn. Then it moved to our Wizard.

It was okay for her to say at the start of the session "I've had a bad week. so you all gonna suffer today" with a dead serious face. Maybe she though that it made her look cool. As players we sticked to each other cheering up, and helping through tough times. Our DM never felt like she fitted into our vibe. At some point there was a feeling like "finally, she's becaming our friend!" and then something gonna switch and she's again felt like an different hostile figure. The setting of the campaing also made us tolerant to her bad attitude, drows, viloence, slaves and so on.

Half of the campaing passed. We loved it despite ocsional miscommunication with DM, turning each seed of a conflict into a joke and cooling down. And then, one day, I noticed that our DM is generating the text for the session during the game itself. Player interacted with an NPC and I saw DM quickly typing into Grok, waiting for it's response, and reading the generated text. Once, my character looted a letter from her sister, DM also generated the content of the letter after I looted it. Moreover, she read the text outlound and then said "oh, wait there is a mistake", she edited her promt and read me new generated text. I was so shoked at the moment, I don't think it is okay to do so, but I kept quiet. Starting this point the quality of the story dropped. For the last 2 months DM uses AI generation almost every game. Yesterday it turned out that other players didn't know that she actively used AI during the games, they had a feeling, but no proofs. While I saw everything every game because I sit near DM and can see what's on her screen.

Characters that PCs romanced suddenly became very flat and appeared only as a meme material. The depht of intractions and developing relationships faded. The story itself overall started to feel flat, unplanned and very predictable. A lot of cliche.

Our DM used to hint that we are just a work for her, a way to earn some extra money. She had tough days at work, tired, physically and emotionally, but she would never cancel a game or share her feelings. We really wanted to be friends with her outside of the game and help her irl. Later we found out that she has mental disorders like PTSD and some hints towards scizophrenia. We kept going to the games to make extra money for her as the way of supporting. Because she would be pissed to us if we didn't come, offers to take a break were declined.

The number of problems only kept growing, players started to lose motivation to come very week. The only movitation for us was to see each other. On the outside we knew about all the problems, but once the game starts it always felt like we are back to our good old times.

Recently or pack started to really fall aparat. Our Bard skipped 3-4 games due to personal reasons. First time it felt real, but slowly we realized that the problem is the conflicts she had with the DM privately about the story development of her character. Our Bard didn't share any of it willing to do not ruin our mood and enthusiasm. She decided just to dissappear. Death Mark returned to me, but to the love interest of my character. Who also became a meme material flat character I started to hate intercating with. In the last session there was a wedding planned of my character and her love interest. I wrote down the vision of the event I had in my mind, she seemed excited too and we agreed for a meeting the next day in Discord to plan the session.

As a character I should have know what's and how gonna happen. I arrived at time (9PM), texted her "I'm on my PC, online, call anytime", she was also online playing Marvel Rivals with her friends. I waited until the match ended, she just started a new match, didn't write me back or explained why the call didn't happen. I waited for her 2-3 hours, nothing from her side. The next day was a game day, I didn't want to go for another AI slop session. My messege about the meeting left unanswered which pissed me off even more in the morning. For me it became the last drop of my patience and I snapped, dumped all my thought and feelings to Druid player. Druid shared the similar frustrating intreactions with her too. So now it snowballed into other remaining players. We all found out that we were just forcing ourselves to the games because we were used to, and because only few games left until the end. But I already could not overcome my feelings to make myself go. We as players cancelled the game, explaining due to bad feelings and personal reasons. DM texted: "I'm also feeing bad, but I've always kept coming despite everything".

Another nail on top of the coffin was her statement on the last session: "Congrats! You are offically on a bad ending of the campaing". Because we did a quest for a archimage on a railwayed plot, we didn't want to do it, but the DM gave us no other choice. Straight up saying that we cannot defeat him and there is no point in it. So it totally was not in our hands to influence.

So, now, we are stuck. We didn't tell her yet that we don't want to continue the campaing. We know it's gonna hurt her a lot knowing her mentail disorders. On the other side we cannot force ourselves into games anymore knowing that we all went through. Our DM does not appreciate us and she will not admit any criticizm going to the full denieal mode and blaming us for everything.

I don't know if anybody gonna read it fully, but I needed to dump my feelings. Like somehting I have been supressing for months just exploding like volcano and I can stop it yet.

Thank you for your time! Sorry if there are mistakes in the text, it's an emotinal writing and English it not my first language.

It’s a bit of a dream of mine to eventually GM a long, evolving campaign set in a world I’ve been slowly fleshing out over the past couple years. I’m very much inspired by those who’ve run campaigns lasting decades.

Lately, though, I’ve mostly been running 6-9 session campaigns, because trying out new systems and settings is a lot of fun for me too.

At the same time, I’d like to start something more lasting eventually.

For those of you who have run long, sprawling campaigns, any tips for success? Did you set out to run a game for the long term, or did things just naturally move in that direction? Did you take breaks for other games and life, or did you mostly stick to your campaign and schedule?

After a few narrative games of Stellaris and Age of Wonders with friends, i noticed that this format could lend well to TTRPG. Are there any where you play as leaders of governments, political parties, corporations... that interact with each other? I heard Apocalypse World allows some playbooks to lead groups - but are there game where it would be at focus?

Getting people to read books can be tough and is probably the biggest problem when getting folks to try out other TTRPGs.

However if you could just tell them how to play yourself, I imagine that would be a lot more digestible to a number of players. I know I've met at least one person that preferred to listen to a video on it rather than read it, even though a video could be 40 minutes long.

It doesn't have to be completely material free. For example I think Fate would be a good example of one you could keep in your head, and for that you'd still need a character sheet and a list of skills for players to choose from. But that's two sheets of paper. I'd also think RemiNES would also be a good example, if only because I myself could probably explain how to play off the top of my had, sans the specific lists of personality quirks or example specials, though those can also be made up on their own.

Compared to something crunchier like D&D where, sure you can probably remember most of the core rules of movement and resolution and stuff, but you're probably not going to remember all the weapon lists and their money prices, or the exact details of all the spells. Or even if you had memorized all the spells it'd be a bit much to vocally describe each of them in turn while players try to pick which ones they want their character to have.

You might still need the book yourself to remind yourself of this or that little rule, but mainly the idea is something you could teach relatively easy without players having the book themselves.

What do you think about the idea of players not knowing their exact hit points during combat?

I once ran an entire campaign like this. During fights I described wounds, pain, blood spraying, exhaustion, and the characters getting into worse and worse shape, but I never said things like “you lost 8 HP.” I kept track of everything myself behind the screen.

To my surprise, the players absolutely loved it. They became much more cautious, more creative, and started making decisions based on the situation and their characters’ emotions instead of pure math.

The typical RPG mindset disappeared:
“I still have enough HP to survive two more hits, so I charge.”
or:
“I’m low on health, so mechanically it makes sense to retreat.”

Instead, there was constant uncertainty. Would the next hit be the last one? Is the character barely standing, or can they still keep fighting? Is it worth taking the risk?

Because of that, combat felt far more brutal and much more real. A character knows they are badly wounded, but there is no health bar or percentage floating above their head. They do not know how much longer they can hold on or whether the next attack will kill them.

For me, it created incredible tension and atmosphere. I’m curious if any of you have ever run combat this way and how your players reacted to it.