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This was a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and not a very long one (5 sessions). I cooked up everything about it in my head, and it was my first time running a game in 3 years after my last one fizzled out. The ending was fantastic. The dice told such a story and after it ended we all had a group hug and sat in a circle complimenting each other. That was two days ago. In the two days since, my 5 players have made about a dozen really good fanarts of the characters. It's just so surreal to see this thing that I created inspire my players to make art like that. I'm still riding that high after two days because I just feel so proud of all my players and so happy that we came together for this campaign

Rant over, just wanted to share this awesome experience with people!

Side note, one of them stalks my reddit profile sometimes, so if you see this, hi leia! Your art is really cool

I've DM'd a decent number of games, ranging from masks, DnD 5e, LotE, mutants and masterminds and a few others, but I'm looking for something more Sci-fi. I would prefer it to have no magic, or at least a kind of magic that can be explained away like "that's not healing, that's nano machines".

Could anyone recommend a game that has space combat, spaceships, maybe rules for cities as well if I need to build them and traditional RPG aspects? Gunfights and nanotech? Preferably no magic or magic-like equivalence?

And by that I mean games where you can buy 1 product and have everything you need to crack the book or box open and start playing.

For example, Mythic Bastionland is little bit of rules followed by dense pages of just stuff to include in your game. Myths, enemies, allies, names, spark tables, items, seers, other knights, and on and on and on. All you need that's not in the book is a hex map, and there's plenty of options for that.

Another good one: Dragonbane. In the box you get the rules, premade characters, plenty of standees, adventures, a solo adventure and accompanying rules, a map, and I think dice too. All for less than the price of many of the popular core books.

As a buyer I really love games that come essentially feature complete out of the box like these. I know pretty much all of Free League's publications are like this to some extent. What else is there?

What are your favorite, single purchase complete games? And what all comes with them?

I'm looking to share some preferences on your favourite TTRPGS, where the mechanical complexity (or absence of it) perfectly matches the theme/setting they try to portray.

I'll give some example of my current favourites. Feel free to add cathegories based on your experience and preference:

- Horror/Investigation: Mothership.
Simple in rules (like all OSR), but has the BEST gm advice ever.
I still use its suggestions as baseline for all my stories in any rpg i gm.
I exclusively run it using its modules as they are probably the best in the market quality wise

- Heroic Fantasy: Draw Steel
This one makes you feel like a true hero.
The closest thematically to DnD (in the sense that it is high fantasy), it plays very differently though, since instead of an "attrition" games (your resources go down until you are forced to rest), it is a "momentum" game (meaning you become more powerful the more "victories" you accumulate, resetting at rest). This means that the players are incentivized to always push themself to the limit until their HP permits it.
Also attacks don't miss ever, which means that they will be forced to rest eventually, no matter what.

- Pulp: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition
This is my personal favourite to gm, because you can literally improvise any encounter on the spot and it will work, and the meta-currency (the "Benny", a poker chip) is fantastic.
Character progression is horizontal: PCs become better at doing more stuff, but no encounter is ever trivial. It is also class-less: you customize you PC with features ("Edges") that you gain almost every level.
The meta-currency is essential to minimize randomness (the dice mechanics can feel very swingy), and I love that it gives a way for the players to influence the story, especially when they are willing to pay (literally) to do some crazy idea they have. It makes it feel earned.
Excellent for homebrews, excellent to fight lots of little guys, requires some house-rules to do solo boss fights (check out this comment it you're interested in doing that)

- Vibes: Blades in the Dark / Mythic Bastionland
These are two heavy hitters on the atmosphere they create.
Blades make you in a band of industrial punk criminals. Perfect heist game, very improvisational: you pay "stress" to have flashbacks that resolve a problem during the heist instead of having to think out a solution before, so you're always in the action.
Also it's Zero prep-time for the GM. The settings does the heavy-lifting (lots of pre-gen factions and locations that react to the players action).
Mythic is great for its random tables. I recommend rolling randomly for your PCs (they are arthurian knights fighting esoteric horror), since all of the option are extremely flavourful. Less improvisational than Blades, but still highly improvisational.

Newbie friendly: Lady Blackbird / The Witch is Dead
Both excellent one-shots for new players, rules-light and quick to the action.
Lady Blackbird is classic steam-punk adventure sillyness. Character are some flavourful pre-gens and the system allows the player to choose some world-building aspect when the GM asks them ("Lady Blackbird, you know magic: do only nobles like you knows it, or is it more commonplace in the Wild Blue?" stuff like this)
The Witch is Dead (or anything else by Grant Howitt, really) is an excellent on-page rpg. Players are the witch's familiars and have to defeat the witch hunter that killed the witch. I like to GM this straight, serious and dramatic, but it is very open to silliness. Very fun for people who are learning the ropes of rpgs

These are my recomendations, what are yours?

I’m always on Backerkit checking out new TTRPGS coming through and I just saw the new game Ink Ribbon from Old Oak Games.

It’s advertised as bringing the survival horror aspect of notable video games to the table top.

I read through their quick start that comes for signing up for a notification, and it’s super interesting! I love Resident Evil and other survival horror games, and I also love d6 based games so this is right up my alley. I’m very unfamiliar with Old Oak Games, though.

Anyone else interested in this?

Pretty much what the title says. I really want to start playing some ttrpg’s with my friends but none of them are really familiar. I’d definitely have to DM for them which I don’t mind but I’ve never done before. Does anyone have any suggestions for good one shot games that could get some people interested and also be forgiving to a new dm? Thank yall in advance!!

EDIT: For everyone asking what genre I’m looking for I’d say that my friends aren’t super into fantasy like I am, but I think they’d enjoy games with maybe some Supernatural or sci fi elements. Idk, I’m just trying to broaden their horizons and add some whimsy to our lives lmao

Hello, I have gotten back into a Bionicle Hyperfixation, and I have been looking into ttrpgs that could be best used to emulate that franchise. While I am aware of Red Star Games' Doronai Nui, it seems to basically be a Fantasy Heartbreaker, not really what I want or feel is fitting for a Bionicle TTRPG. As such, I want to hear what suggestions people have.

I want to run Apocalypse World for some friends, and while I've run PbtA games before (e.g. Monsterhearts, Masks), the OG seems to be giving me some great difficulty in understanding how to run it. I'm looking for seasoned MC feedback who have played Apocalypse World (particularly 2nd edition, as that's what I have).

I actually don't care about the sex moves; they're whatever. I'm more concerned about the playbooks that appear - to me - to be broad and difficult to run with things like holdings, which may be hard for players to grasp and difficult for the MC to adjudicate how players will wield them and interact with others through them. I want active players participating at the table.

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General Questions

1. Running gangs

When a PC is a Chopper, Hardholder, or similar with a playbook focused on an established group or location, what happens when the "PC" themselves is not available but their gang - or members of their gang - are in a scene? Is the Hardholder in the scene as a named NPC - portraying that NPC with limited abilities? Or is the MC running that NPC? If the latter, doesn't this make the PC more of an audience member than an active participant in the game? If the PCs are often going out and doing gigs, then the hardholder would typically only be "playing" during the before and after gig scenes, right?

2. Nature of the Game and Static Holdings

When players have things like bars, compounds, etc. to maintain, this creates a kind of west marches style campaign, doesn't it? That is, a safe haven from which the PCs journey from and return to, every session (ideally) begins and ends there, as opposed to always being on the move, wandering across the land. Or said another way: it feels a lot more like Stonetop with players individually possessing holdings (rather than Stonetop's single, shared holding).

Is this the expectation of the game, or does it run fine with having more of a world-sprawling "adventure" ala people traveling across many lands or far from holdings for long stretches of time? I feel like the answer is, "make a home base and stay there," but I'm curious.

3. Death and Player Choice

On pgs. 207-208 of the AW 2nd Ed. book, there is a description of a PC "dying" by being shot in the head with a shotgun. But then, the book specifically says that he's "maybe" dead; it's the victim's choice. And he somehow crawls to a doctor who then brings him back to life with -1 Hard. Now, maybe this will just be a "my table" kind of thing, but shotgun to the head is a death sentence, and I'm wondering if others find the ability to come back from something like that as crazy or not. Do you allow players to come back from point-blank buckshot like this?

4. Weird from Death and Weird in General

I find coming back from the dead with +1 Weird to be... well, weird, because does a +1 to weird not benefit the character? Is there some negative side-effect to having more weird? It didn't seem like it to me, but I guess it implies you "went to the other side" or something. Do other MCs play with this option? Given +3 is the max, don't people get to +3 quickly with this? (If a player is already at +3 weird, and they choose to get +1 to weird when they come back, do they just come back with no bonus or penalty?)

5. PVP

PvP seems to be a big draw, but it might also be incredibly divisive. How do you deal with this?

6. Character Identity Bound to Vehicles

Much like identity bound to locations/establishments (though easier to cope with since vehicles more easily move with the PC), what happens if you can't take the vehicle into the scene? Does the player with the vehicle feel hamstrung? Does it feel good? (This is a common problem outside of AW, so it's not quite as much of a concern to me.)

7. Side-character stuff

In Monsterhearts, a lot of it feels like a college romance/horror drama ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Vampire Diaries, focused on the PCs, but in Apocalypse World proper, the game is grander in scope, focused on a LOT of NPCs, locations, holdings, politics, etc. Am I right about this?

8. Management

It feels like to get the right pay-off here, there are a LOT of NPCs to name, relationships to manage, etc. Does anyone have suggestions or tools to keep track of those things aside from what the book provides?

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Specifics Moves

1. The Angel's Kit and Healing Someone at 9:00 or Past

Two of the choices on this list seem the same to me:

-"They fight you, and you have to narcostab them. How long will they be out?"

-"They're at your complete mercy. What do you do to them?"

Are these not close enough to one another as to be one choice? If you're knocked out, you're at the Angel's Mercy. The only real difference I see is that narratively a fight ensues in one choice and not in the other. So, how do these differ mechanically (if at all)?

2. The Battlebabe's "Visions of Death"

This move reads: "When you go into battle, roll+weird. On a 10+, name one person who will die and one who'll live. On a 7-9, name one person who'll die OR one person who will live. Don't name a player's character; name NPCs only. The MC will make your vision come true, if it's even remotely possible. On a miss, you foresee your own death, and accordingly take -1 throughout the battle."

Common sense would presume the 10+ and 7-9 options do not allow the naming of PCs. That's how I would rule it as an MC anyway, but the way it's written, it makes me wonder if the 10+ CAN have PCs named while the 7-9 can't. Is this confusing for anyone else?

Iirc, other confusions in wordings exist for other moves, but I don't want to re-create them all here. It suffices to say I'm a bit unsure about some of these moves and feel like I'll have to do some immediate house-ruling, but I would like to avoid it if I'm just not reading things "right."

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As I read back through this, I think one of the things I'm maybe focusing on too much is the playbook's abilities on the sheet vs the general style of play. There is definitely an identity on the playbook sheet and abilities to support it, but I maybe am discounting too much on how the play at-the-table will be more important than the playbook itself.

Also, I have the 3rd Edition (Burned Over) Playbooks and Rule Changes that went out to backers, and I'm fine to run with those, too. They appear to be a touch more refined.

Really appreciate your help! Thanks!

Hey y'all,

I'm looking to run a tabletop game for The Division when it comes out in October, but right now I'm trying to decide which rule set to use, and I'm stuck between Twilight: 2000 4e (specifically with the Urban Operations expansion) and GURPS.

So most comparisons I see focus on gunplay, cover mechanics, and gritty survival rules and for my table, that part of the equation is already pretty clear with Twilight being the better of the two.

What I'm really trying to figure out is how to handle the signature Strategic Homeland Division tech without breaking the game or making prep a nightmare.

I love the urban survival structure and city-sector framework of Urban Ops, but the base game is obviously grounded in cold war military grit.

How feasible is it to adapt or homebrew Division-specific hardware into the Year Zero engine?

I'm talking about things like:

* ISAC integration and tactical HUD overlays

* Deployable seeker mines and assault turrets

* Pulse scanners showing enemy locations through walls

* Ballistic assault shields and mobile cover

* Revive hives and micro-drones

If you've run high-tech military gear or Division like game in T2K4e, how did you handle this?

On the flip side, GURPS has books like Ultra-Tech and High-Tech that can mechanically model every single microchip and gadget down to the decimal, but it comes with the usual upfront system bloat.

Is GURPS simply the better call because it already has the infrastructure for high-tech modular gadgets, or is it easy enough to tack SHD tech onto Twilight 2000 UO without blues and lethality?

To be clear I haven't purchased anything but the division game and I'm still waiting for it to be delivered in October.

I'll be purchasing the books for the rule set I end up with from a local shop.

Thanks for any help!

Some RPGs have combat that gets very unwieldy if you have 10+ participants on either side. Others have difficulty balancing for duels. Others are meticulously balanced at one scale and then use an entirely different set of mechanics for other scales. I’m looking for games where one could do duels, group combat and mass combat and not use completely different sets of mechcanics for each. Even better if it’s a game with a “combat as war” philosophy, IYKWIM.

So I’ve been wanting to run a campaign that is similar to the various Gundam series. The idea is to basically do what series like SEED and IBO do where they take the main outline of the story and premise of the 79 show with a whole new cast of characters, remixing the story and with some new twist and turns.

I doubt there is one system that has everything I am looking for so I am thinking of using two different systems at once, one for the core role play and on foot combat and one for the mech and vehicle combat. But if someone does know of a ttrpg system I can use for both, I’ll take the recommendations

So first, for the core roleplay and on foot I have been thinking of using the Alien RPG, it already has mechanics dealing with spaceships and fixing things around said ships, but what leans me more towards it is the stress die mechanic and the way that game sets up factions for pcs to choose from with their own (sometimes contradicting) goals. It also already has gun mechanics and I can easily reflavor the weapons to fit in a gundamisk theme.

I don’t really know where to start looking for one for the mech combat. I want something that lets pcs target specific parts (like limbs or what not) and the damage based around said parts. I would like a system that has both hand to hand combat as well as range combat, and preferably one that also allows for a decent amount of mobility across the battlefield. It doesn’t need to be a mecha rpg, just something I can work with to reflavor it to mechs.

Thank you for all your help!!

Edit: after seeing the comments I am moving against using two systems and I think I am leaning towards either Armour Astrir or Mekton Zeta, I’ll be doing some more research on them and maybe posting asking for more information. I’m still reading through everything so all suggestions are welcomed!!