**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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.

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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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This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**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.

Five players and a GM. On your turn, you get maybe 30-45 seconds of meaningful decision-making. Then you wait 3-5 minutes while everyone else goes.

That's not a player problem. That's a design problem.

When the only thing you can do on someone else's turn is maybe use a reaction, most of the table is just... sitting there. Watching. Checking their phone. The game actively tells you "you don't matter right now."

I've been GMing for 20 years and the single biggest thing that improved my table wasn't better encounters or cooler loot, it was finding ways to make players feel like they had something to do when it wasn't their turn. Whether that's systems that let defenders make choices when attacked, or mechanics that let you spend resources on other people's turns. In the age of instant dopamine... I have left the traditional DnD method of combat.

Has anyone else noticed that the tables where combat drags are almost always the tables where players check out between turns? What have you done to fix this at your table, system changes, house rules, or just better encounter design?

MCDM have confirmed that the VTT for Draw Steel will release as a Steam store exclusive available for $30 per person, or $20 for players that buy it during early access (and discounts on one copy for people that already purchased the game).

The VTT includes the base rules and quickstart adventure, though doesn't have a "player only" version with just the rules.

It's an expensive option for a group to use ($210 for a group of 6 players and a director, or $200 if the director purchased the pdf of the rules before April), though MCDM seem to be positioning this as an option for superfans rather than people trying to work out whether this might be the system for them:

"The Codex is not for people who want to play Draw Steel online with their friends. Folks who want to do that already have lots of free options. That's why we recommend Owlbear Rodeo!

The Codex is the "I want to fly first class" experience. The Codex is for people who want to use the Codex. There's no "player version" or "director version," there's one product. We think $30 for a first class flight is pretty good!

Folks who want to buy the Codex for their players? We'll have a bundle you can buy with a discount. And you can always buy Steam Keys for your friends."

So I'm teacher and have never played D&D. Today I decided I'm going to make my students create characters and take em on adventures. Would anyone have any tips or anything on how to get started. I want to create a world that will keep expanding as the years go... but I think I can do 3 or 4 quests per year in the overall world... is this a good idea or am I getting over my head...lol

Interested in any content from people who have done them before on tips about starting or just talking about the process.

So I recently picked up Phantasy Star Tabletop RPG and one thing I liked about it was the inclusion of combination attacks where two pc's perform a single attack together by taking actions that linked together. The concept of team/combo attacks in rpgs is something that always interested me. I was curious what other examples might be out there of combat systems that codified this sort of action as opposed to leaving it more open to free form improvisation. Have you folks encountered this sort of mechanic in other games/systems?

I'd like to know if anyone who has played Rolemaster Unified and Rolemaster 2e thinks that the Unified version hasn't lost the diversity of scenes and consequences that the rolls and character traits brought, which were the most interesting aspect of Rolemaster 2e for me

I know that from a rules organization standpoint, 2e is quite precarious, but I like the system. Unfortunately, I also feel that these rules are very scattered across the Companions, so the "Unified" in the name of the new edition really appealed to me haha

Hello!

My friends and I are going on an artist retreat and I thought it'd be a great opportunity to introduce people to the world of ttrpg's. Now, I originally was going to make a one-shot using the D&D 5e system but that seemed to be too much of an undertaking to teach and perform a satisfying job for 10 people in 2-3 hours (not even including character making, introductions, etc)

So I've landed on 2 alternatives:

Option 1: I use Monster of the Week and run an investigation in a Twin Peaks-style town. Hunting down a lead on some killer or supernatural creature in a quirky little town. A lot of the players have familiarity with either Twin Peaks or some kind of episodic monster hunting show. Lots of big Buffy fans. A bit more grounded but still some fantastical elements and the ability to step out of themselves to create a new character.

Option 2: We play End of the World and they just play themselves during the apocalypse. I would just need to do some research on the town we're going to. Lots of benefits to this, namely everyone gets to play themselves and will have an immediate emotional connections to the other players since we're all friends.

there's also the third option which is I just give up and not do it lol

What do y'all think? I've been trying with ideas for a few weeks now but haven't made a decision and the retreat is this weekend. I have until Saturday night/ Sunday to prepare.

also, my ttrpg experience is okay. I've just begun dming and like ~2-3 of player experience in D&D.

Hi, so I recently have gotten back into pokemon and im realizing that I wanna run a campaign with my Girlfriend and her friends so im curious what systems i should use. I have quite alot of ideas but i do need a system with a decently easy system for my gf and also be decently easy to add new pokemon to the list of already made pokemon. This campaign is gonna be a "world tour" and have all the gimmicks so id need to use fan made megas and such.

Running a Pathfinder campaign that's 28 sessions in. A choice the party made in session 3 just came back around.

I'd held it in reserve, waiting for the right moment. When the consequence showed up, two players immediately traced it to the original decision. The energy in the room changed. That moment is exactly why I run long campaigns. Replicating it consistently is the hard part.

The naive answer is: take good notes. True but insufficient. Some consequences land and others feel arbitrary, and I think the difference is whether the choice felt weighted when it was made. If a player has forgotten the original decision by the time its consequence arrives, what should read as payoff reads as random bad luck instead. The connection only works when there's a thread they can pull on.

So the choice has to feel momentous in the moment, even if its full weight stays invisible for months.

I've also noticed a timing pattern across campaigns I've run. Consequences arriving in the same session push players into tactical thinking rather than narrative thinking. Somewhere in the 5-15 session range seems to be the sweet spot, where the original decision is fading from immediate memory but not gone, which makes the callback feel both surprising and inevitable in a way that's hard to manufacture. Consequences arriving 30+ sessions later risk losing the causal thread entirely, unless you've built in explicit callbacks, which can feel forced, honestly, if you're not careful about it.

The part I haven't solved: how do you track consequence chains without it becoming a second job? A running doc works until it doesn't. Trusting my own memory works until it doesn't.

What systems have long-haul campaign runners developed for this? Especially curious about anything lightweight that doesn't require indexing every single session from scratch.

After playing only DnD 5e for a few years during the pandemic I jumped feet first in the large world of TTRPG's.

Now 5 years later I've read, learned and played a lot of different systems and settings. I've also learned that different groups prefer certain systems over the other.

Since then I've ran games adopting the setting that the players want but choose another system to better fit needs of the players. i.e Eberron, Cyberpunk 2077 in Daggerheart

Which got me thinking about the stereotype that Forever DND players will often use the DnD rules to run everything, often viewed in negative way.

Have you ever taken a setting from a game that is pretty locked to that game's mechanics and run it in another system? How has that turned out for you?