**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.

Hey everyone!

We're making a standalone TTRPG using the Draw Steel engine called Night Shift: Devil Division. Set in 199X Tokyo, you play as a squad of operatives working for the Devil Division: the corporate facade of an ancient order tasked with detaining (or sometimes destroying) Devils who lurk in every corner of the city.

Hunt down Devils by tracking their wareabouts and detecting levels of Kegare (sprititual pollution); chase cultists or Yakuza through the narrow alleyways of Shinjuku; fight huge Devils in subway stations and pachinko parlors; or even drag a Devil back to HQ for interrogation and perhaps make a pact, at a cost...

We'll be streamlining certain bits of the Draw Steel engine, and doing our own thing with the layout of the books. Here's some stuff we're hoping to do:

• Rewards shift toward Vault Abilities, Division Loadouts, Commendations, and Clearance progression
• Unified class resource (Momentum) and shared squad meta-currency (Adrenaline) -- easier to track, more tactically interesting
• Downtime as On Leave -- Training Arcs, Vault Visits, Leave Activities, and the world moving without you
• Chase Sequences -- a full dedicated chapter so you can run, leap, and tear through Tokyo in pursuit or retreat
• Simplified (optional) negotiation mechanics for Operatives who want a little more structure when dealing with sapient Devils and NPC contacts

There's more info, artwork and spread examples over on our BackerKit page if you fancy taking a look 👀

Some that come to mind for me:

• Can't Find A Game/Players
• The game loses support, such as supplements or new edition.
• Lose interest in the game's setting.
• A new edition comes out.
• A new game comes out that you like better than the other system.

Why has caused you to drop a game system?

I've only run campaigns with D&D and one very brief one shot with Mork Borg. I want to branch out with some different game systems, I don't mind gimmicks (like Dread) and was wondering what lesser known systems you guys might suggest?

My game style is pretty light with the rules, I tend to prioritise story and player enjoyment where I can

Not knocking on 5E here, just interested in hearing about what (if any) older editions of D&D you play and why.

I have experience with AD&D 1e - fun but probably won't go back to it for a variety of reasons. I've also played quite a bit of 4e - this is likely just nostalgia speaking, but there come times that I'd like to get back into it. Heard Draw Steel might scratch a similar itch. I've only played one session of 3.5, can't comment on it much beyond remembering that character creation took quite a while.

I'd be interested to hear about editions you still play in the present and why you prefer them.

Fanatical currently has a sale on a bundle for DCC. https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/dungeon-crawl-classics-purple-planet-and-dying-earth-rpg-collection

Hello r/rpg!

I recently released Uneasy Lies the Head, a GMless roleplaying game where you act as nobles and monarchs embroiled in royal court intrigue.

Here is a video that explains the game in under five minutes.

To play the game, you'll step through the 13 rows of the Public Record, which is styled loosely off of a medieval calendar. Each row starts off blank, which means a player will set a scene to show how their character is scheming at court. When a scene is done, that player gets to prepare one of the game's plans, which mechanically sit somewhere between a PBTA move and a Firebrands mini game, and allow you to do things like propose decrees, host festivities, and welcome new allies to the court.

Those plans get added to later rows of the public record, so won't resolve until a few turns of the game passes. This delayed gratification adds some juicy tension and intrigue, as players set scenes to get out ahead of the rumors you're spreading, wars your declaring, or duels your proposing.

Uneasy Lies the Head was just nominated for two Indie Groundbreaker awards by IGDN in the Best Writing and Most Innovative categories. The game can be bought as a pdf, book, or deluxe boxed set and is available in a few places:

• My webshop
• Tabletop Bookshelf
• IPR
• itch.io (pdf)

Hey, looking to start a west marches campaign this summer and just any sort of resources or advice are appreciated. I want to run a sort of classic fantasy greyhawkish setting. Here’s some of the specific info I’m looking for. Running it in 5.5e.

1. Good sources for random tables

2. Good sources for shorter adventures, advice on running them. I’ve got the dragon delves anthology book and thing some of those could be trimmed down for a single session but I really want that classic vibe of goblins, dragons, liches, you know.

3. Tips for creating my setting. I’ve never made a homebrew setting for myself and only have experience running curse of strahd and lost mines. I do play in a weekly session that is entirely homebrew and have been getting tips for that.

4. Recommend 5.5e rule adjustments and just general rules to better fit the west marches style (travel, downtime, xp)

5. This is a big one, the best way to organize things logically. Obviously discord is probably the move but like how should I go about navigating the channels, what channels could I need? What functionality? What resources are there to use for booking sessions, posting what kind of adventures are available? Maybe create an xp scoreboard? Idk just really want to facilitate the collaborative nature of west marches.

Any tips on these questions or anything I didn’t mention are appreciated! Thanks!

https://mouseborn.com/

I didn't succeed at finding any real information about this upcoming rpg and wanted to know if anyone knew anything and if it was a scam or legit?

It was of course a Facebook ad so I'm wary. But it looks cute and has nice art.

Convincing Her:

When we first started dating I walked her through making a D&D character, but I was already disenchanted with D&D around that time so I never got a game off the ground. At the time she was willing to try, but as our relationship continued we defined some clear "this is your hobby", "this is my hobby", and "this is OUR hobby" spaces.

It wasn't until we were talking about Fallout recently that I convinced her to give Fallout 2d20 a shot. We bonded early on in our relationship playing Fallout 4 together, her playing it on her own as I watched. We tried Fallout 76 this year, but it wasn't for us.

I asked her if she'd be fine with trying a TTRPG set in the Fallout universe and she agreed. Mainly because she knew about the setting and wouldn't be as caught off guard with the setting material.

The Leadup:

I set it in the Fallout 4 universe as my wife was most familiar with that setting. I kept flip flopping through potential plot hooks based on the system:

• Establishing a settlement.
• Clearing out a Super Duper Mart of enemies.
• Dungeon delving into a vault

But all these options felt very "combat" focused with little in the way of interesting social aspects. I settled on:

• Negotiating trade with another settlement who then ask for the group to take out a Raider gang.

This was after a lot of talking with people on Discords and Subreddits. My wife also said she didn't want to play a 100% serious game which was good because my games typically lean into humorous moments to contrast with the serious moments.

The Game:

We took sometime to get started but we got there in the end. My wife played a Ghoul Trader (Elle), my sister played a Vault Dweller (Leslie), and my friend played a Nightkin Supermutant (Mary) using standard Supermutant rules since I didn't have the supplement with it. And their Pack Brahmin Moolan.

They started off in a Post-Fallout 4 Sanctuary Hills where the Vault Tec Rep was leading the settlement after the Sole Survivor left. They were charged with establishing a trade route with the Starlight Drive In)'s new leader, a free Synth named Top Dog.

To finalize the deal they needed to take out a raider gang called the Black Claws in Bedford Train Station. They scouted it out and figured out that their leader was also a synth. And they assumed the two leaders were sisters or synthsters.

Leslie volunteered to try to establish a dialogue with the raider leader to see if the situation could be resolved diplomatically. But had her face scratched by the leader who was in the middle of a cat nap. It was at this point the Elle theorized that the Synth had a cat cyber brain installed. They bloodily killed a few raiders causing them to flee and the vault dweller knocked out the cat synth with a laser pistol shot.

It was at this point the Elle theorized the synth leader of Starlight Drive In had a cyber dog brain. Which was confirmed when the leader executed the cat synth by tearing out her neck with her teeth.

Other Stuff that Happened:

• They mentioned scavenging on the way to the Starlight Drive In, so I had them come across a partially scavenged house with a few traps inside. Mary tried to sneak in, but ended up getting a complication which I ruled had her stepping in a bear trap and taking 1 damage. It wasn't plot relevant, but it was a way to get them used to the die rolling in a less high stress environment like a combat.
• Moolan was a party favorite and my wife enjoyed that Moolan was a sweetheart because I had the Brahmin boop them with her snoot when she was hungry and stuff. Even though she didn't do much except acting as the party inventory.
• "Behind the scenes" we established my sister's character as Vault Dweller Leslie because she knew nothing of the Fallout universe which meant I got to give her a fish out of water character with no strings attached.
  • The background for her was she was in Cryo sleep during a radiation leak that led to her entire vault being killed. And the vault experiment was designed to create the ultimate killing machine, which when only 1 vault dweller was left she was deemed the most deadly canidate to assassinate the Chinese leadership post-Great War, which given the state of the world wasn't going to happen.
  • I based her backstory on Lister from Red Dwarf.
• My friend was really into playing her Nightkin as a mutated woman, Mary. I had given her character a necklace of junk per the random story item table and wrote down "molerat teeth necklace". And she called it her supermutant's closest way to make a pearl necklace in the Post-Apocalypse.
• Through out the entire session, the players were trying to figure out what the twist was going to be. The main thought was that the settlers were going to be the actual raiders. Top Dog's reaction to them was "New people? I love new people!" and that immediately made them convinced she was a good person. 😅
• The moral choice of whether to let the cat synth stay alive wasn't as much of a moral choice because they recognized that cats are mean. But also they came up with a secondary way to complete the game by trading Brahmin milk to the cat to get her to stop attacking the settler's supply lines.

How I modified the system

The biggest thing was that I reduced the enemy health points to like 1 or 2. I did have an issue with timing in the end which left me with 45 mins to run the boss fight which wasn't ideal.

End Result

All and all a fun game, my wife enjoyed it (SUCCESS!) but wasn't sold on TTRPGs becoming a frequent thing for her. Her positives was the group of players she was with. And that it was fun to have my sister and our friend as it was a really fun group of people to hangout with.

Her main issue was how long it took me to look up rules and calculating dice rolls. This was the first time I ran Fallout 2d20 so I was flipping through my notes and rules on a few things. Additionally the 2d20 dice bot hadn't sync'd with my server when I added it, which meant we had to rely on rolling using google's die roller or a website die roller that didn't store die results (i.e. they'd roll, but then the numbers would disappear).

She's up for playing in one-shots in the future, but not anything long term. Which I call a win! My other players also had fun which I'd call a win as well!

Do you know any tabletop RPG systems with a setting (or a separate setting) that has:

1. A tech level analogous to modern-ish times or maybe even higher.
2. Magic that isn't hidden and is intertwined with the society. It doesn't matter what form or name this magic takes: be it just magic, eldritch horror pets or something else.
3. Magic (or horrors) is either built into technology and/or societal structures use it in everyday life.

?

It's totally fine that parts of "magical" are hidden. But an average Joe should have some, even tangential, access.

What I already know that fits (mostly):

• Shadowrun checks all the boxes. But I'm gluttonous for more :).
• Blades in the Dark. Outside the tech level, it's a good example. This is the earliest technology level I'm fine with for this itch.

What almost fits:

• Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening. Very cool worlds, but magic hides itself basically.
• Warhammer 40k. Some factions fit while others are a total miss.
• Eberron. If I understand correctly, large parts of the setting are still stuck in medieval or renaissance times, so it doesn't really fit. General vibes are exactly what I'm looking for, though.

What doesn't fit:

• Most Superheroes. 95% of times supers and society at large are "separated". Outside of teen drama and a random company here and there, there's usually zero interplay. Superhero Registration Act is an exception in this genre.
• Starfinder. As with most D&D-adjacent settings, magic and technology feel very separated.

Inspirations outside of TTRPG space:

• Library of Ruina. Main inspiration.
• Deadlock.
• Lord of the Mysteries.
• To be Hero X.
• Fullmetal Alchemist.

Thank you to everyone who reads this post or responds to it!