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Ever wanted to check out what the best RPG of all time is all about? Atlas Games kindly released the texts for all 53 books of Ars Magica 5th Edition a while ago in CC-BY-SA-4.0 license. I've run a project for a while to produce reviewed and source-complete Markdown versions of the complete corpus. 16 books are done and counting...

Today the markdown for the new core rules, the seminal work Ars Magica Definitive Edition (a 2026 release) so you can review, remix and enjoy the texts.

Hopefully this will enable more players to enjoy the best magic system, and my absolute favorite of (many) favorite games.

You'll find it here: https://github.com/OriginalMadman/Ars-Magica-Open-License

I highly recommend to still buy the absolutely gorgeous book in physical version (not yet delivered) or PDF.

I just hit Burnt Out. I can't believe how many new campaigns are being trotted out every day and it's genuinely making me feel a little weird (yes, that's a me problem!). How's everyone else holding up?

Did they railroad your character to do something you weren't okay with? Were they getting way too descriptive with certain actions or creatures? Did it feel like they wrote it more for them than you and the rest of the group?

I like to think I've dabbled in a fair few RPGs and I'm open to trying anything once. But one thing I've yet to try is mixing and matching systems and settings. I pretty much just stick to whatever comes out of the box.

I know when it comes to the D&D-likes, d20 and OSR games there's a huge culture of doing exactly this, which makes a lot of sense as there's plenty of family resemblance there. But a lot of modern games come with in-built setting flavour so strong that, to me, it feels like I'm "insulting the chef" if I mess around with it too much? and that's maybe limiting my GM experience?

I'd love to hear peoples' experiences/recs with mixing and matching setting-and-system, either when it went well or when it went horribly. The more unexpected the mix, the better! Has anyone used a PBtA system to run a story-heavy Spelljammer game? What about a Shadowdark delve but you're humans in the world of VtM?? Lemme know!

PS: What got me thinking about it is going back and reading the setting lore in 5e's Saltmarsh book. Truly one of the best "small town" settings in D&D in my opinion, but from first reading I always felt that 5e's super-heroic game had left the setting behind somewhat.

There's one particular story where an assassin practises some batman-style secret meditation effect so he can slow his metabolism and lie in wait in an attic for weeks before dripping a single drop of poison through a crack in the floorboards into his target's soup or something. Incredibly evocative stuff, but I know my players would just ask something like "Why didn't bro just bring some goodberries" or something lol.

I've read dozens of OSR or adjacent games, and something of a consistent frustration is that many are very similar with only one or two interesting mechanics to differentiate them.
To alleviate this problem I'm creating something of a Frankenstein's monster OSR ruleset for personal use, and I'd love to hear suggestions for your favorite mechanics. I've found that what I really enjoy is systems that have rules for as many situations as possible, but that those individual rules aren't very complicated.

(Don't worry if they're contradictory or not strictly OSR, I'm just brainstorming at this point)

So far I've got:

- Most of the combat system from Block/Dodge/Parry

- The "players state what they're afraid of and the GM makes it worse as a consequence of certain types of failure" mechanic from Public Access

- Going to 0 health giving you permanent wounds which reset health from Mothership

- The Tetris inventory system from Mausritter

- The one-line spell descriptions and exhaustion filling up inventory system from Knave

- Backgrounds coming with highly asymmetric abilities/traits from Songbirds

- The stronghold system suggested by Colton Terry in this blog post

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions everybody!

EDIT2: Thanks to all the people who linked me to GLOG, I'd somehow never heard of it but it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for with this.

I decided run a hex crawl in my current game in order to try and improve as a GM. One possible challenge however is that it might be difficult to engage the players in the hex crawl since this game system is explicitly not about tracking things like food, ammo, and encumbrance. My question is: What methods can I use to encourage players to put meaningful thought into the hex crawl choices? The only one I can come up with is time. Certain events need players to be in a specific place and/or do a specific thing by some time for example.

Hi ya'all, needing some help looking for a good system for my needs.

Quick Pitch

It's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but instead of finding Atlantis, it's a whole new world akin to Breath of the Wild, but even less populated.

The Background

Very recently, I've gotten word that I *may* be able to run systems alternative to 5e at my local library, and I have a campaign in the works set to start in June that I was initially planning to run using 5e (and hopefully Nimble 5e, cause I hate standard 5e combat). The question is, what system would work for this? Usually, when you look up system recommendations for a West Marches-style game, you get gritty, more medieval fantasy recommendations (Dragonbane, Shadowdark, OSE, etc). Now I have systems in mind that'd work for my unique setting (Savage Worlds, Genesys, Daggerheart, to name a few), but I don't see them working as well in a West Marches-style game, at least off the cuff, with less emphasis on acquiring loot, exploration, and base building.

The Campaign

Players are part of an expedition through a portal that's opened in the ocean. On the other side is a whole new world. Said world is inspired by Breath of the Wild, a post-post-apocalyptic fantasy world with ancient ruins of advanced technology, scattered tribes, and terrifying monsters (and those ancient hyper-advanced powers might not be as gone as initially believed).
The players are from a fantasy world (there's magic, dragons, etc), but it's in its late 19th/early 20th-century technology phase; there are cars and guns, but they're kinda crap and being through a portal means you're relying on long wait times for and expensive resupplies/repairs. Plus, being stealthy/not using super loud equipment might be the better way to go with all the dangerous stuff around.

The Gameplay

These are current ideas I have in mind for gameplay.

Exploration will be done by a hex map, with a few locations initially visible/vaguely mapped at the start.

They're gonna be starting in a desert on a coastline.

Players will have a base, separate from the main force, which is headed by a nation's military and instead backed by a big business known for its adventurous ventures. They'll be able to upgrade the base, order supply shipments, and even call in experts to help with certain specialized projects (i.e. translating a language, digging crew to unearth a dungeon, reinconasse, etc).

There's gonna be some other sapient peoples, but they'll be wary of the PCs, and there'll be a language barrier (spells like Comprehend Languages & Tongues won't work, but telepathy might). I'm thinking there'll be a beetle race, an elf-like race (since I don't have elves in mine), and a few scattered giants wandering around.

What I'm Looking For

- Has incentives and mechanics for exploring, base building, and finding cool loot.

- Works with firearms, even a heavy and mounted Gatling-like gun, and cars.

- Easy to homebrew. I have a lot of stuff to transfer over from 5e.

- Dangerous combat. I don't need Dark Souls/Shadowdark/OSE early levels of deadly, but I don't want my PCs to feel invincible either.

- Easy to jump into, especially for folks familiar with 5e.

- This is more a bonus than a necessity, but I would like it if the books were readily available, even through regular bookstores, so players can get the rules if they want to easily enough.

My Current Candidates

- Pathfinder 2e: Good, but might be overwhelming since this is a drop-in library group. I imagine I'll get some regulars, but I'll need to keep it easy for folks to join midway potentially. It's also a system I'm not super familiar with, so homebrewing is gonna be hard. Final worry, character creation is long, which might be bad for drop-in play or if this ends up as a deadly game.

- Nimble 2e/D&D 5e (with Nimble 5e): I've got a ton of homebrewed material for the origin world, from entirely custom races, firearms, and more, so making it 5e compatible or literally 5e with faster combat would make this the easiest option. The only downside with going full Nimble 2e is acquiring the books, which are expensive here in Canada (the box set's $160...), but I do at least have the PDFs already. I have stuff like MCDM's Stronghold & Followers to help, too.

- Break!!: I really like Break!!, or at least what I've read of it, but I know it's pretty baked into its own setting and is probably lacking a lot of content I'll need, so I'll need to homebrew stuff in a system I'm not familiar with.

- Basic Roleplaying: I like this system from my experiences with Call of Cthulhu, but I know at least one of my hopeful players hates it. Not sure if it has good systems for exploring, base building, and finding cool loot.

- Forbidden Lands: Remember this while writing, might be a great candidate? I'd need to add firearms and custom races, but I can pull from other Year Zero Engine games like Vaesen and whatnot for reference.

- Savage Worlds: I've already got some of its books (including Fantasy, Horror, and some of the Pathfinder ones), and I really like the system, but I don't feel like it's got good systems for exploring, base building, and finding cool loot. Idk, I'm just having trouble imagining it in a West Marches-style game.

- GURPS: I mean, it's GURPS, it does everything supposedly. I have the PDFs of a few books, but I've been too chicken to actually look into them much.

- Vagabond: Another super strong candidate cause I love what I've read of it. Gonna have a physical copy soon, which helps, there's firearms, and I would be able to use most other OSR supplements to help fill in areas it's lacking (like exploration and base-building). Easy for new players to jump in and to homebrew, too.

So i recently found one of my old Homebew Total Conversion Projects for the Dark heresy 2E system Labeled d100 Mass Effect, and i recently restarted working on it.

Anyone else in here think the Mass Effect Universe is an Awsome RPG setting? :D

Ok, core idea, a light rules primer for people with attention or reading issues, new to RPG.
System: Dragonbane
Format: One page (Letter or A4), printed on both sides and folded into a four-page pamphlet.
Design: Nice, readable "dragonbany" design, short sentences, some small, funny graphics, and a sense of adventure. The first "page" and the back should contain the most referenced parts, and the inside should contain less-used info.
Challenge: Finding the balance in text amount, depth, and details. I want to draw them in, and then the GM can bring up further stuff when they are invested.

I have a long RPG background and also work in design, but this is not something I've tried to do before.

I'm looking for similar creations (Quick starts, Intros, Primers, etc) and wisdom from people who have tried them or made their own.

Most (all) of the examples I find are way too long, detailed, and verbose, rule references rather than primers.

So I'll gladly check out any examples you can bring up!
Cheers! / Mattias

I'm reading the Sixth World Almanac even though I don't play Shadowrun and I love it! Do you know any other books that focus entirely on lore instead of gameplay or adventures? Can be either history or current lore

Several years ago I came across small cryptic ttrpg. Players played as kitsune, golem and taoist, all had strange mechanics - golem was spinning dreydl, kitsune tearing tree leaf apart and taoist placing stones on go board. They all were trying to find treasure in a manor of a miser. Maybe someone could remember title of this game?

UPD: after asking everywhere, I finally understand, where I have stashed this pdf many years ago so I can't find it) This is Four by David Rothfeder, and there was fourth character - Kabbalist mystic)