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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.

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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A few days ago, I ran John Harper's renowned rules light one-shot game, Lasers and Feelings, for some of my players, and the story we created was honestly amazing.

For those who don't know, Lasers and Feelings is a one-page RPG available for free: https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings

It's a sci-fi game with a very simple core mechanic:

• You have a number between 2 and 5
• If it's a higher number you're better at LASERS, if it's a lower number you're better at FEELINGS
• Whenever you do something risky or uncertain, the GM tells you to roll Lasers (roll a d6 and try to roll UNDER your number) or Feelings (roll a d6 and try to roll OVER your number)
• If you do some preparation, or if you are an expert, or if someone helps you, you get a bonus die for each of those, and can stack
• 1 success means you barely do it, 2 successes means you do it well, 3 successes means you do it with a bonus
• If you roll exactly your number you get LASER FEELINGS, which is a success but you also get to ask a question of the GM to get unique insight into the situation

And that's literally it. The one page comes with basic character creation rules (choose a style, i.e. hotshot, alien, savvy, etc.) and a role (envoy, scientist, doctor, soldier, etc.) and your character's goal in life, which can inform some of the bonus dice and of course how you play your character, but otherwise that's it for the mechanics. Then there are some random tables for the GM to generate an adventure.

I started by giving my players a primer: this is a rules light game, which means that you get as much joy out of it as you put effort into it. The fun scales with initiative and roleplaying effort. This isn't a game where you can sometimes have an off day and lean on the mechanics more, because there are no mechanics to lean on (this ended up not being strictly true, because the bonus dice mechanics ended up being quite important to our game, but at the beginning it definitely felt true). You gotta bring 100% of your energy to roleplaying your characters — and boy my players did.

My four players created their characters in 10 minutes, then we did the "two strengths and one flaw" for the spaceship, and then I rolled up an adventure on the spot and we started playing it out.

I've written up a full summary of our session here if you want to read it, but what I will say is that the character and spaceship creation, brief situation primer re: the Raptor spaceship and Captain Darcy's situation, and the random tables to generate the adventure did a lot of heavy lifting to help us immediately get into the right mood and mindset for the game.

My players were improvising interesting fictional details for their characters (our hotshot pilot had a beloved cat who become absolutely central to the adventure) just as much as I was improvising interesting voices and descriptions throughout the adventure. They were roleplaying in clever and creative ways with one another as much as my NPCs. They were able to grasp that this is a game that just allows players to create facts about the world (if the GM is ok with that of course) and started making up things when needed (like the aforementioned cat, or one of our two android players randomly shouting during combat "OUR ODDS OF SURVIVAL JUST WENT UP 2%!").

In the end, we told a story that was absolutely hilarious (one player messaged me after saying he hadn't laughed this much in an RPG session in a long while) while also having some tragedy and heart. I think one thing that made it work was the absolute trust my players had in me to be fair in a very GM-vibe-y game that allowed me to kill off a couple of them at the end on "success with consequence" (only 1 success) results for very high-stakes situations. But just as much it was because of how much the simplicity of the system is inspirational.

Now do I have an amazing group of players? Yes, absolutely, and that makes a huge difference for a truly rules light game like this. All the same, John Harper is quickly becoming my favorite game designer because of how much he can inspire us with very little mechanics and setting information. With a few deft words, he has us going for 3 hours. (Chris McDowall has a similar strength.)

I don't think it would work for every group per se, but for groups willing to commit HARD to the bit and treat the fiction with equal amounts of seriousness and levity, it will sing.

So, if you're searching for a great one-shot game to play, consider Lasers and Feelings. Incredible super fun game and we had an amazing time.

The indie TTRPG scene is often really theory and tastemaker-focused, which makes it easy to lose sight of what the vast bulk of players are actually enjoying or looking for in their games.

I regularly see posts here full of interesting and sophisticated preferences, critiques, aspirations, etc. that contradict the trends and think-pieces in my Bluesky feed. They remind me how broad our design space actually is and how large the various audiences within it might be.

I'll often read a comment like this that expresses a preference I share but wasn't thinking about, which unlocks a door in some project's design that I hadn't even noticed was closed.

It's do-or-die to both make what's in your heart and to stay in touch with the people you're actually designing for, and this sub helps me do both. Thank you!

Did you ever play a session where one person spoke to the GM for everybody else, like they describe in ye olde D&D?

If you did, bonus points for saying what year it was.

So I have been curious about this Mythic Bastionland ever since it released but only recently has my Pendragon 6th edition campaign has finished. I love Pendragon, I've run the Great Pendragon Campaign in 5.2. I will run it again someday when the full 6th edition expanded version is released. Knights going mad, dynastic growth, Traits & Passions, Manor management and more. There's so much I adore about the system.

I enjoy OSR too, I have been running Dolmenwood for about 7 months now. What does Mythic Bastionland offer me that Pendragon doesn't? I'm not sure if there's much overlap in the communities but I like the idea of Arthurian Knights in an OSR setting but how does that take form in this system? Or is it just another game in BX/D&D shell because after my Dolmenwood game is finished, I’d rather have something different enough to run.

Would appreciate any insight.

I have a lot of thoughts about our first session of Stonetop.

I'm hoping to get them all out. Some in this post and some in the comments if people are interested, as I'm still not seeing enough discussion around the game from people who are actually playing it since the "full" release.

Firstly, I'm a somewhat experienced Game Master, I've been running games for my friends for over 15 years. A lot of that was D&D. I've also run sporadic games using different systems. Including PbtA. Some of them very different.

Stonetop doesn't feel that different. At least not in an uncomfortable way.

This new group I've pulled together for this game is made up of my wife (D&D Veteran), one of my oldest friends (D&D Apprentice?) and two friends who have never played a TTRPG.

Obviously as a GM I have to speak in two different languages, one for those with experience and one for those without. Stonetop and my prep for the session made this actually really easy.

Those of us who have taught people to play these games know there is a bit of a balance between pacing a session, teaching rules, and establishing fiction. The "Rules Light" genre in general I've found helps with that balance. But can sometimes lack in crucial areas because of it.

The bulk of Stonetop is flavour.

It's actually unreal. Everything I keep reading makes me stop and physically look away from the page and just get so excited. But I'm not here to grease the game. I'm also not going to start idea dumping.

I want to talk about experiences from the session and if people have any, answer questions.

First observation, Session 0 took A LONG TIME much longer than any session 0 I've run before for any system. The book makes it clear you're not running an adventure the first day. (unless you have that kind of time, then I'm jealous).

It wasn't a marathon session, our newer players didn't really know what to expect, and I'm hoping for longer sessions going forward, but it was just shy of 3 hours.

We didn't even get through character creation. We ended the session with our character introductions done, but for those of you who have read some of the system, all of the questions that flesh out your characters relationships and details, we didn't get to those.

Regardless, I made sure to really hit hard on what people found interesting from the Setting Guide. I have mixed feelings on that, it kind of takes me out of the fiction a bit, but I think mechanically it's super important, and am glad I made everyone read it, and we went over it in the session too.

Because of the way Session 0 is scripted to go, I have so many ideas for Threats and Adventures/Opportunities already.

I think this post is already too long, so if anyone is thinking about running the game, I can go more over my prep to run this (which is the longest I've ever prepped for a new game btw) or any other questions. I am actually super excited to run this game and so are my players.

TL:DR I think it's neat

So, there's a new RPG storefront out there. I am not affiliated with this site in any way, but I think it's worth making people aware of new options. I've had good experiences with drivethrurpg, but competition beats monopoly. I couldn't see any other posts in the sub about this.

They're offering POD via Lulu, and seem to have a not-terrible range for a site that's only just gone live.

I believe the owners are based in New Zealand and are registered in Australia, which will also be relevant to some people who are looking to support non-US businesses at the moment.

I've seen a fair number of systems with social mechanics. I'll let players roll for stuff like persuasion, bluff, insight, intimidate, etc... but when it comes to NPCs rolling against players it is usually defensive, such as a player trying to figure out if a character is lying I'll roll bluff.

But when it comes to social skill checks vs PCs, I never tend to do it. What about you all?

Basically as the title - there are a lot of dice mechanics out there. This isn't strickly about 1d20 vs 2d6 vs special dice - but more specifically about dice resolving general skills/traits.

I'm curious which systems have the best spreads and ability to adjust difficulty based on context. Which ones seem very flexible to many situations and leave lots of room for degrees of success.

Edit: Should have said favorite - I know there isn't any 'best' in the objective sense. Just trying to get an idea of mechanics I haven't thought of.

Hi! I'm going to be running Urban Shadows (and PbtA in general) for the first time.

I think I'm going to love this game, but as a European some details don't really feel right if I set it here: the urban sprawl is smaller, there's way less car traffic, and above all there's way fewer guns - if there's a crime involving a knife, even in a "rough"/over-policed neighbourhood, that's already national news in my experience. Where I come from, even police shooting a weapon is rare: gun violence mostly happens in rural areas where people have hunting guns. However, I understand that most of the media which inspires the game (and which I have consumed) is American, so some genre expectations will always lean US-centric.

I want to set my game in Brussels, because I've lived there and because I think it'll be fun to play in the center of Mortal power for the continent. There's some industry in the outskirts which can provide some warehouses or such, but I can also otherwise make the lack of a large urban sprawl work in two ways:

• there's a small forest right up against the south side of the city outskirts, which could be contested territory between Fae and Werewolves, and which is right next to a university campus, which could be a meeting place for Wizards or some Veterans;
• Brussels is very well connected by rail and road to a bunch of other cities in Belgium and the neighboring countries, so if I need a longer distance I can just make up some trouble elsewhere.

The lack of car traffic and weapons, especially firearms, is giving me some more pause. Many archetypes have these as important pieces of starting equipment, special modified ones like the Hunter, or nice cars. Using these often would be immersion-breaking for me and my (also) European players, so I'd like to know, from more experienced MCs:

• if restricting weapon usage to outskirts of town, under threat of national news breaking "shadows" of the supernatural world, unduly depowers characters like the Hunter or if it adds good fun tension;
• if you have run this in cities where it's more suspicious to see cars than people walking at night, and if it loses flavour due to no classic chevy impala or blue beetle car that's as much a character as the people.

If you have any more advice or resources for running Urban Shadows in cities which aren't New York or Chicago or London-sized, I'll also appreciate those! Thank you all in advance.

I have recently got closer to the PbtA sphere and finally got the idea of it.

Now what I would love is to find the right game.

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I am looking for a dark and low fantasy setting, possibly iron age kind of medieval era with chance to lean into heavy medieval horror (like Gunmetal Gods or Between Two Fires).

I really like political intrigue and difficult decisions similarly to A Song of Ice and Fire (I know, you heard this before.)

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I don't mind much the system itself, cause I never played any of them!

But I'm familiar with a few systems: blades in the dark, ironsworn, Apocalypse World, Lumen, Charge, and even more indie like Caltrop Core.

I would prefer something without modifiers (so no 2d6+stat), but if I find the perfect match, I dont care about this much.

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As long as is "inspired by the apocalypse", or "not OSR", more narrative.

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I already made my researches and I already have a list of things that are similar but maybe dont fit exactly, so please feel free to give your opinion on them, if you have one you particularly recommend and why, or if you have an other entry!

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Trophy (Dark/Gold)

Ironsworn

Root

Monster of the Week Medieval (yes it exists)

Bloodstone

Fey Fire

Free from the Yoke

The Sword, The Unspeakable and the Crown

Wolf Head

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Good evening all,

TL;DR - I'm lost, confused, and need sci-fi TTRPG recommendations.

I'm a couple of campaigns deep as a player in both DnD5e and DrawSteel. We are coming up to a natural pause in the DrawSteel game, and the Director has asked for a break before returning to the story. To keep the group together, I want to step in and run a campaign of something different in the interim.

The vibes I like would be Andor / Necromunda /Alien in a blender. I'm not bothered about *flying* space ships (travel could be a "cutscene", or a large ship could be a "dungeon" for a setting), or being "main character" types (i.e. space marines or Jedi). I like space to feel big and uncaring. I suppose, actually, the "space" bit is optional, it could be Cyberpunk-esque on future earth.

I probably lean toward the PC's being mostly human or human adjacent, to keep any hostile Xenos similarly abstract and threatening, or we could just stick to dealing with other humans.

I was looking at the Inquisitor rules, but I think they're a bit crunchy.

I appreciate that's quite a list, and I could compromise on any of those requirements to some extent. There are just so many to chose from that I need a steer!

Many thanks :)