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I've been watching a few video game retrospectives lately. And a phrase that shows up a lot is "that's a good problem to have". Usually along the lines of "it makes me want more".

A few examples I can think of:

* The bonkers nature of Paranoia XP being chaotic, but a vacation from more serious games.

* Call of Cthulhu's lethality promotes players to be more cautious when playing.

* Warhammer 40k's Critical Damage tables leading to gruesome injuries that make for amazing stories.

Stuff like that. Something that sounds bad, but makes a game feel unique and memorable.

I’m a psychology student in Brazil and were thinking of having a campaign with teenagers (specially trans teens, most in vulnerability), as a therapeutic experience. Do you know any systems or campaigns that we could use for that purpose?

Hello, I'm a long-time GM who has been running my first (and very fun) game of Vampire: the Masquerade 5e for the better part of a year now, and as my Coterie enters their final act, I've started to look forward to what comes next.

Games we liked:

Pathfinder 1e. This is what I cut my teeth on in high school. We probably played it a million different kinds of wrong, but I've got a lot of nostalgia for it.

D&D 5e, obviously. It's what got a lot of my friends into rpgs, but after nearly 10 years, everyone's pretty ready to let it rest.

GURPS 4e: A steep learning curve, but once we got it, our group \loved\ it. We played a Weird West game that became so beloved, we played our first and only sequel game years later. As a GM, it can be a lot to run, especially the social system IMO.

The aforementioned VTM5. Again, everyone is \loving\ this one. My players are getting into character and role-playing in ways I genuinely haven't seen out of them before, and the game is very narrative-focused, which I like. It feels much more like a collaborative storytelling effort than the traditional GM-Player dynamic to me.

Call of Cthulhu 7e: I've never not had fun playing this game, but I've never run it as the Keeper. Additionally, the high mortality rate means running a longer-form game can be difficult. The one time we tried, we party-wiped trying to climb a rope in session 2. Still, it makes for great oneshots.

Games we did not like:

Pathfinder 2e. Hot take, I know. Everything about this on paper should be fun, but it really just wasn't in practice. We called it quits midway through our third game because nobody was having fun, which is something that hasn't happened before or since.

Mutants Masterminds 3e. This is the first game I ever ran as GM. We had our fun with it, and I learned a lot, but the system really just wasn't for me. I find that we're seriously leaning away from d20 systems in general.

I'm looking for something with a gritty, street-level vibe. A skill-based system where combat is quick and deadly, that rewards roleplay and gives the players a more proactive role in shaping their story.

Systems I'm looking into:

The Burning Wheel, Mythras, Mage: the Ascension Revised, GURPS

Please let me know if you've played any of these systems, or know of another one that might scratch the itch for someone like me!

I love Cyberpunk in almost all its forms. From the ttrpg, to the anime, to the videogame (which, I honestly think is the best one I have ever played). A lot of this love stems to the setting and the themes of the game.

Turning back to the ttrpg, I have a mixed feelings on the system. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I do feel it is slightly too crunchy and a bit unwieldy, especially in regards to Netrunning. With an experienced enough group you can get over these things and have an amazing time with it.

But, what if you have a group that simply played the game or watched the anime or saw that there is a new season coming up and has that rush to play something. The group who is not that experienced with TTRPGs, and for whom Cyberpunk RED might be a bit too much?

Well, for that group we have this absolute gem of a game here, CBR-PNK Augmented. Leaving aside this game’s apparent aversion to vowels, this game offers quite a tight package. And I do mean tight, as it presents us with a bare-bones minimalistic RPG powered by the Forged in the Dark engine. The size of the core rules for this thing? One freaking pamphelt, roughly one A4 page I guess.

It's short and sweet, punches way above its number of pages and might be one of the best way to introduce someone to ttrpgs, with some caveats that we go over in the review! I hope you'll enjoy it!

For an example, I love game with hundreds of options available to players and DMs, specially feats/powers, mundane items and Monsters.

I'm also starting to like games with a higher level of deadliness, since that mean we need to think more carefully about actions.

HOWEVER, I game were death is easy and options are abudant seems like hell on earth to me.

Which are combos of things can make an amazing game become terrible very quickly?

Hello!

The past few weeks I've been obsessed with running a modern mage focused gameplay where all PCs are Mages/wizards of different strengths/abilities.

While reading ive seen lots of discussions centered around the games listed above but im unsure of what to read first. I'll list some bullet points that id like my game to focus on.

- Magic has a cost or everyone would be doing it.

- The characters will be involved in some form of political maneuvers against another faction of magic users.

- Early game PCs are not very capable and will have to take risks to get strong results.

- this mostly goes with the point above but lethal combat to make the world feel grounded.

Does anyone have any recommendations for one of the three listed above? Or can you provide some strengths for each?

Im also happy to hear other recommendations . Thanks everyone!

Hi I’m running a game for a group of high schoolers who never really played before. I’ve mostly played DnD but I don’t think I’ll be able to dm it. I’m looking for a simpler system that would be easy to learn and teach. Like I’m good with itchio ttrpgs. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

I'm going to run Breathless soon, for the first time. I have a lot of experience with fiction first games but I thought I'd tap the community to see if anyone has any good tips, tricks, or resources that would enhance my ability to provide a fun game for my friends.

Many thanks in advance!

Attempting to run a game in which spiritual mediums are performing a seance and must discover how to calm the restless spirit by exploring the manor

Looking for roleplay and exploration heavy with little to no combat

I run two MonsterHearts2 campaigns and desperately need some new ideas to liven up my monsters, conflicts, etc.

The game is highly focused on roleplaying; however, having planned monsters, conflicts or mysteries can really help move the session forward when things aren't chaotic enough. The game MH2 focuses on teen characters coming to terms with their monstrous identity, while also trying to stay incognito (woo queer allegories).

The campaign I'm struggling most with is set in a rural seaside town. It's kind of modern times, but internet access and technology is very limited. The town has some tourist attractions in the summer, but it's usually pretty dead all winter. People in the area are SUPER superstitious and refuse to acknowledge any of the monsters plaguing the town. I tend to fall into some pretty basic monster/creature tropes. A small monster that needs help, a massive eldritch thing that you shouldn't anger, shapeshifters taking a classmate's place, etc.

Two of the players in this campaign are in the other one, too, so I don't wanna do the same old things I've been up to.

Please let me know any cool monster or conflict ideas! It could honestly be anything. A murderer, a weird ghoul, brain worms, etc.

(P.S. There are sirens already a big part of the plot, and selkies, and a really big bird)

I've been running Dolmenwood for my friends for about six months. It's my first long open-world sandbox campaign and overall it's been a great experience. It made me realize that I really enjoy long campaigns and my players seem to enjoy it too.

At the same time I can see how I made some mistakes as a first-time gming sandbox. The biggest one is that the PCs never developed strong longterm goals: players enjoy following rumors, exploring places, and seeing what happens but their priorities constantly change. Because of that no larger emergent story arc ever really formed that I could now bring to a satisfying conclusion.

A couple of months ago I suggested choosing one direction, focusing on it for about five sessions, and then ending the campaign. My players said they would rather keep going because they were still having fun. Problem is that I'm starting to feel kinda burned out. The amount of accumulated material I need to remember, rules discussions and the feeling that campaign could just continue indefinitely are starting to wear me down. I noticed this especially after taking a break and running a one-shot in another system. I felt much fresher as a GM, and the whole session felt more relaxed.

So Ive decided that I probably want to end the campaign even though there isn't a natural "final arc". I might frame it as the end of Season 1, so we could potentially return to Dolmenwood someday.

My current idea is to have one final evening without a normal game session. I'd show them a map of the areas they explored and the parts of dolmenwood they never reached and we wouldd talk about favorite moments, dead and surviving PCs, memorable NPCs, discoveries, unfinished rumors, etc. Basically, a campaign retrospective and maybe short epilogues for the characters.

Then I was thinking of introducing the next campaign and possibly doing character creation together. I've never really done a Session Zero before though and I'm not sure if it would feel strange to have our usual game night without actually playing. I'm also wondering if going straight from "I'm ending this campaign" to "here's the next one" might feel too abrupt.

So eh how would you handle this?

Would you try to run one final adventure anyway, or is a retrospective/epilogue session a good way to end a sandbox campaign that simply doesn't have a natural finale? And if I move directly into talking about the next campaign and character creation would that feel too sudden?