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Nominees were announced! (I do not work with IGDN nor do I have any games nominated, just sharing the news)

It seems somewhat common for D&D and D&D-derived settings to have three main elven branches: wood, high, and elf. 4e has "elves" (wood), eladrin (high), and drow (dark). 5e has wood, high, and dark. 13th Age has wood, high, and silver/dark. Draw Steel has wode, high, and shadow. Sometimes, the divisions are a little different, like in Eberron, and sometimes, they are downplayed, as in Golarion.

A good deal of these settings have these super-cool, super-mystical, super-mysterious (and often, to some degree, closed-off, stagnant, or both) elven polities. Examples include the Forgotten Realms' Evereska and Evermeet; Birthright's elven forests; 4e's Feywild cities; Eberron's Aereni, Tairnadal, and feyspires; Pathfinder's Kyonin and Sovyrian; ENWorld's War of the Burning Sky's Shahalesti; ENWorld's Zeitgeist's Elfaivar; 13th Age's Court of Stars; and Draw Steel's wode elf wodes and high elf cities.

Sometimes, the writers play up how longevity, magic, discipline, ancestral guidance, etc. make the people of these elven polities super-strong and super-competent. Eberron's Keith Baker mentions that "There’s a reason we present the Tairnadal as the being pound-for-pound the most dangerous people on the planet."

Then there are "casual elves." Often, in setting writeups and adventures, one or more NPCs in a mostly human place will coincidentally be elves, without it being a major part of the character. They are not super-competent or super-noteworthy just for being elves. Sometimes, demographics back this up; the spotlight nation of Eberron, Breland, is canonically 8% elves (or 7% in Sharn, the big megacity), and they are surely not Tairnadal-tier.

I get why it is this way. Writers want to have both super-lofty elven ethnostates, and the freedom to have "just so happens to be an elf" NPCs and PCs.

In Eberron alone, I have played a "regular" everyday elf, a House Phiarlan elf, an Aereni elf, and a Tairnadal elf all as separate PCs. In Eberron and in a variety of other settings, I have depicted a large assortment of elves as NPCs.

There is a bit of cognitive dissonance. Players are expected to meet some "casual elves" in a small town or a big city in an "Oh, those are Bobeth and Maryel. They just so happen to be elves. Normal people, if a little quirky" manner. Those same players are also expected to encounter "hardcore elves" in a "You stand before Borithanaeth and Maralaruelle of the super-cool, super-mystical, super-mysterious elven ethnostate of High Pothelshapareia. Fear them. Their longevity, magic, discipline, and ancestral guidance make them super-strong and super-competent. They are beings far above you" context. It can be hard to reconcile both in the same setting, you know?

It also creates this odd sense that if everyday Bobeth and Maryel were instead born and raised in that hypothetical elven ethnostate, then they would have been lofty superhumans instead.

Eberron was close to solving this by playing up half-elves as a people of their own (the "Khoravar"), but Eberron ultimately did not commit to this. In the megacity of Sharn, for example, elves are more common (7% of population) than half-elves (5%).

The "hardcore elf" vs. "casual elf" divide, I think, is a far more significant distinction than anything about "wood elves" and "high elves" and whatnot.

What do you think on the subject?

Looking to Eberron as an example, according to Keith Baker:

https://keith-baker.com/eberron-flashback-aereni-and-tairnadal/

Looking to what that means: There’s a reason we present the Tairnadal as the being pound-for-pound the most dangerous people on the planet. It’s because their lives are intensely structured and devoted to emulating their greatest champions. Tairnadal children undego decades of intense training in the path of their ancestor. If the typical human soldier is a first level warrior and the typical Tairnadal soldier is a fourth level ranger, it’s because that Tairnadal has spent a decades mastering those skills… and, as noted above, because they are further being guided and inspired by their patron ancestor.

Given Keith's background in D&D 3.5, he is probably referring to warrior, the NPC class versus ranger, the PC class.

So in this example, being an everyday soldier in an everyday nation results in being a 1st-level warrior with an NPC class, whereas being an everyday soldier born and raised among the Tairnadal elves results in being a 4th-level ranger with a PC class due to overwhelmingly superior discipline and training (and ancestral guidance).

Hey all, looking to hear from some people who have played these kinds of games to figure out which is the best for my group. Any advice would be appreciated. The things I'm looking for are:

1. Characters can be teens without breaking any core assumptions of the system

2. Takes place in the real world (or real world-adjacent) early 2000s, or is easy enough to change the time period

3. Reasonable amount of lethality. Death can come for the characters, but I would like most of them to make it to the end of a 10-15 session game.

4. Characters have no supernatural powers, at least from the get-go.

5. Level of crunch ranging from the high end of rules light to medium. I usually run Pathfinder 2e for these players, and we want something lighter than that but still able to sink our teeth into.

The systems I have in consideration are:

1. Call of Cthulhu. Fits the supernatural investigations aspects really well, not sure if the lethality is too high (I'd probably try 7ED, if it matters).

2. Things From the Flood. Perfect for the age range, time period, and desired lethality, but seems firmly sci-fi and I don't know how hard that would be to hack out.

3. Kids on Bikes. The only one of these systems I've played, it's perfect in just about every way except for one. It's a little too rules light for my group, and the lack of progression is a downside for us.

If you have any experience with these systems I'd love to hear from you, or if you know of any other ones that would suit us, throw 'em out there.

I’m wanting a game or expansion to any of the big games for a system that makes you feel like a common soldier who is fighting against impossible odds.

I’m thinking like imperial guard from 40k

I’m not looking for something hardcore that’ll have players constantly rolling up characters.

More of a light at the end of the tunnel type of feel or “man how did we survive that?”.

Hi there,

I've been GMing for a long time for a diverse kind of RPG.

I've recently opened some of my choir members to RPG and ran a DnD campaign for some of them. One of the other choir member, "C." wanted to see what it was but our campaign was already at max player for me, so she came to play the character of an absent player one day (with the absent player authorization). And she said she would like to play someday.

Now the campaign isn't over but I'd love to show some of my players and her something other than DnD, in gameplay, vibe, etc, but only for a one or two session shot, over Discord and Foundry, with premade.

At first I proposed Avatar Legends (GMd one session of the quickstart story once), but C said she would still like to play a medfan for her first play.

Even if I like it I won't go Pathfinder as it's too close to DnD.

What I looked at : The One Ring (never played, don't really know if it's good for a short story with premade), Spire and Hearts (never played, but I'd love to try a PBtA for them, but I fear it might be too obscure or strange).

TL;DR: Would you have some recommandations for TTRPG that is sufficiently different from DnD, mostly would like a roleplay oriented one, medfan, with potentially a good offical one shot ?

As a follow up to this question, what are some modern trends you like in ttrpgs. I do like more games making fail forward a core part, pbta, daggerheart. I also like the recent move away from d20 and the ogl scandal fallout.

In about a week I will be DM'ing a first part of the campaign about a group of detectives at the crossing of XIXth and XXth centuries to my wife and few friends, inspired by their unhealthy obsession with Detective Murdoch. I'm a pretty experienced DM I guess, with some ten years of it being my hobby, it was even my part-time job for two years (best way of making money BTW, you scream at people in your best goblin impression and they pay you for it, I'm certain only some niche fetishist have it better in that regard)... But it was basically all fantasy. If it didn't have pointed ears, magic rings and borderline arsonistic wizards I wasn't interested. When it comes to DND-esque atmosphere I have my flow and I can make it magical, but I'm not so sure when it comes to detectives.

Still, it's a nice occasion to go out of my comfort zone. So a dreaded "hey, heard you were into those erpeegee games?" spell was cast upon me, some pride-fueled stupid decisions were made and now I have to try going five hours without uttering words "enchanted" and "craftsdwarfship". Normally I have my own means of engaging player, like "potions" made of coloured ginger juice in small glass bottles, one-use magic scrolls with some funny powders that have to be burned irl to cast a spell and so on. But I'm completely unarmed when it comes to this new and suspicious setting, so here's my question - what is your equivalent of those immersion helping little things? What do you do when it's time for a game more grounded in reality and you want those jaws to hit the floor?

Reading up on the Numenera setting and it's quite interesting. However I am less excited about the system that it uses, the mechanics just aren't doing it for me. Any suggestions for other systems that might work well for the setting?

Like many GMs, I started with 5e in Phandalin. I've been running about 4 games a week for about 3 years now. Mostly still D&D with an occasional Blades, Fallout, Ten Candles, and (my fave) Degenesis. And I too have given this advice, because it's good and easy: Run the Starter Set before moving on to other more epic stuff.

However (and yes this is totally biased and possibly wishful thinking) I now want to run a Delta Green campaign. I've never GMed it (or Cthulhu) and I've only been a player in a Last Things Last one-shot, which is the most commonly advised "start here" adventure.

I want to run Impossible Landscapes. I don't want to run LTL or other simpler, shorter modules first, I want to go straight for the epic thing. So yes, clearly I'm biased because I want to hit the ground running.

My question is: If you're a relatively experienced GM, how necessary are those "starter" modules? Of course this would depend on the game, but in general, at what point can you confidently jump in the deep end?

I know there are many RPGs out there that don't use classic classes or levels, but most of these seem to be very narrative i.e. little crunch or rules.

I've always loved GURPS and the D100 Basic Roleplaying system (Runequest and similar) precisely because they don't have levels or even strict classes. So I'm wondering what's your favourite RPG that doesn't use "levels" but still has a good amount of crunch.

The game could still include XP and advancment or something similar, but anything that describes a Level 5 Mechanic for example would be out.

2 years ago I played the Knave-based rogue-lite A Rasp of Sand by Monday Cox, which was a transformative experience. In a quest to reimagine that template, I've made and playtested my own rogue-lite, Castle Noth, which I tossed onto itch back in February. I've been hesitant to self-promote, but I'm really proud of it, so here goes! Also, I've made it free today in hopes of fostering discussion rather than commerce. The player half of the rules are always free on itch.

What is it?

A rogue-lite OSR dungeon crawl where players try to reach the top of a morphing castle and disrupt a ritual of eternal night. Every item, room, and monster is hand-crafted. There are sub-plots to discover throughout the castle, and a bunch of ways to disrupt the ritual or deal with Count Starost Noth, the vampire warlord cloistered at the castle's apex. Players descend from ancient clans, whose secrets can be unlocked to aid them in their runs through the castle's rooms.

How does it work?

The rules are derived from Mausritter's, making it a Mark of the Odd game. I wanted combat to be a viable option and not a trap, so I added stunts based on Mythic Bastionland's brilliant gambit system. The OSR promise of rapid death and unbalanced fights is still there, but players get plenty of tools to exploit or avoid combat.

The GM gets 80 rooms across 5 floors and 89 illustrated monsters/NPCs to work with, plus tons of relics, magical flowers, and spell-infused skulls to dole out.

Anything else?

I've run 2 full playtests of the game to battle test it. I'm proud of it and would love to share it, hence the sale. I would absolutely love to discuss the game or hear feedback!

I recommend not reading the GM rules if you ever intend to be a player, since discovery is the primary goal of gameplay!