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I'm gonna be brief, I never wanted to use the new Reddit interface and always stuck to Old Reddit. Recently, it has been decided that logging in would be mandatory to use old reddit, another step further to try and smother it, to force people to go to the new shittier and more ad friendly interface. The days of old reddit are numbered, and one day they will pull the plug for good. If I can't use Old Reddit, then I will not use Reddit at all, which means I need a new place on the web to discuss RPGs.

Where are the other big RPG communities on the internet? Some friends of mine have suggested Discord, but I always felt that it was better for casual chat than long and in depth conversations, and debates. Also I vetoed places such as RPG NET because of their adversarial, and downright user hostile approach of moderation.

This post may mean trouble for my account, so if you have an interesting answer, give it quick.

So, I primarily play oneshots and some games I've had a blast with in recent months have been:

The Treasure at the End of this Dungeon is an Escape from This Dungeon and We Will Never Escape from This Dungeon: a very meta poetic GMless game about transformation and dungeon design. The base game contains 5 rooms (in nod to the five room dungeon) and four selves (player classes/archetypes that break the rules of normal dungeon crawling fiction like the thief literally pretending to have rules attached to their class when they are a cheat), although the supplement extends the number and possibilities.

The game goes like this, a player takes the role of a room, the others of the characters. The player answer the first question of the room then picks an element of design. Then fiction turns into a conversation until conditions are met to open a door and leave the room. Characters die on certain condition, can come back or the players create new ones.

This sounds simple, but because in the base game there are only 5 rooms, you will always retread old rooms. That can lead to stuff like. There is a room with a puzzle of a lion and owl statues and moon and sun lanterns. The room is in twilight. Take the lanterns and place them on the statues whether to either let them forever sleep through their animalic habits or wake them up and kaiju fight. (I stole that, I confess) Return to the room. It is blinding day light. On the floor there is a mirror. Mage shatters the daylight into motes and then shatters the mirror into cracks. The muscle enlarges a crack so that we might slip through. There is a seemingly never-ending ladder and darkness. The mage throws the motes into the darkness to light what is below.

Return to the room. You are now in the lantern of a now sleeping sculpture. Break the hinges and open the door.

Dead House: I believe I got the title right. I played it at an online con. By the makers of Fiasco. A GMless game where you play through the winter of 1888. There are three seasons: Fall, Winter and Hell. It is a game that starts out with putting the locations and npcs on your board to create a map of the town. This isn't as freeflow as I would have liked as characters have deep links to one another and cannot just be randomly set. Same with locations. The goal of this part is probably to get acquainted with the cast.

Then the game follows answering a series of prompts, similarly to The Quiet Year, only darker. The first season start fairly unassuming, then it gets worse. People will die. A lot. People will go crazy. The aim is to reproduce despair. It's basically about a winter where the situation got dire as resources dwindled and people were left without food and wood to burn when it was blizzarding outside and they had no exterior help.

The characters are miserable too. They are layered people and many of them have been stuck in the small village due to circumstances and hate being there, especially the youth.

What I really liked despite being mechanically bareboned was that the story started telling itself and even though I started with rooting for certain npcs, in the end, I was killing them off and orchestrating their fates based on narrative logic and what would tell a better story. Only 4 people lived. I hated them all. It was a success.

Parsely: an rpg that mimics old computer text games. Containing 12 scenarios in the base book it is a game of few words. The players take turn controlling the nameless PC through a set of pre-written commands such as go north, go south, examine, take [object]. You have even have the ability to save. The map is not visible and needs to be drawn by hand, lest you go in circles or meet dead ends like we kept doing in the jungle adventure. The adventures are very on rails, although they have several potential endings. What I mean by this is they emulate simple games and your actions are restricted. An adventure has several predetermined locations of interest, several predetermined challenges with most likely predetermined potential solutions, predetermined endings, etc. It acts as a puzzle on figuring out how to progress. It even has somewhat moon logic solutions, though most stuff makes sense. It can get very silly because of the extreme constrictions.

The Dunwich Horror: this is the name under which the playtest was offered under. It's the GMless Cthulhu conspiracy board game. As with Carved from Bridlewood, it is a mystery without a preset solution, although it goes in opposite direction of that format. Where in CfB there are two mystery phases, the collection of clues and the theorizing, in The Dunwich Horror, the gameplay loop is that your characters, all playing pregen investigators have an evidence board and some preset named clues in the shape of lead cards containing locations, myths, npcs, etc. which you will through the course of the play tie in with cute little strings.

You start by doing backgrounds: the occult site you work for, your character intro. Then you arrive in the town and start investigating. You play out doing stuff at locations and trying to figure out things and you make a lot of shit up in an improv kinda' way. As you do you add a clue to the board, tie it together with other clues and dice roll for pushback. When pushback happens you advance on a three phase table and see the dangerous or supernatural consequences meddling with the eldritch create. These start tame, but get progressively more dangerous until your character's untimely demise or worse. You may also add more connections instead of clues.

Unlike Brindlewood Bay, you will theorize at every step of the way trying to figure out how everything fits in a hyperactive brainstorm. You will end up reviewing information and adjusting your beliefs as more suspects and clues are added and things are tied in. There is even a time of solace when the group can get together in a safe place to go over their leads and see how to proceed next. That happens in the middle, not at the end.

And in the last phase it becomes obvious that you are way over your head. You can at the end chose to kill off your character, go insane or worse or flee. But generally people pick the first two options cause Lovecraft.

A friend and I are looking for something to facilitate some RP, and I was wondering if there were any rules light systems for playing James Bond-style Cold War spies. I’ve already looked a bit into Spycraft and Classified, but we just need something that we could pick up easily

I'm struggling to understand how leaving regions in The Last Caravan is supposed to work. Per the rules, for most regions there is a specific narrative condition you have to meet so that your caravan moves to another region. The narrative arcs are very specific, so I could easily imagine scenarios in which:

- characters fail to fulfil the conditions;

- players and characters are not invested enough in the premise to engage with the condition (say, because of their faction alignment);

- some in-game events preempt the narrative premise (say, because of the faction conflicts).

What then?

I could easily see that failing to fulfil the requirement also allows you to leave the region, I could imagine that hooks should be replaced with different ones to make sure players stay invested etc. I could imagine that if players just ignore the hooks, I could advance some clocks. However, FiTD games tend to have rather tight design when it comes to their basic play loop, so I've been wondering whether I'm not missing something fundamental. Maybe it is intentionally possible to just not go any further with the caravan and "loose"? Maybe there are some developers' clarifications or games with similar mechanics where the intent was clearer?

I guess that the issue is so pronounced, since the characters are supposed to just head towards California, so there seems to be a fair amount of possible drama around just leaving some people in need behind you without engaging with their problems and it seems that this should be a genuine in-game possibility.

Edit: holy hell, I didn't expect SO many suggestions, you guys are the best, thank you so much!

I started playing d&d from 3.5 and also played enough of 5e. It has a lot of cool stuff, but also a lot of stuff that I hate. It's difficult to check new systems and judge them without actually playing a little and there are a lot of them... I'm sorry for a lot of words here, but if you have some time can you guys recommend a good system based on my specific nitpicks?

1. I hate that a lot of stuff is there just because it was always there, not because its good game design. Like fireball is intentionally OP because its iconic and sort of a "brand" and taking any alternative feels bad. Spell slot system just feels outdated and too cumbersome for new players. I want the system to be built with good game design in mind, not "we have to save 50 year old legacy" bullshit.
2. Whole system build around resurrection being a common tool. Death is not dramatic, its just a resource. Also because of that i have to come up with bullshit reasons why specific important npc or backstory character cannot just be brought back. Or why nobles aren't just reviving everyone important for them every day. Death should be important and dramatic narrative moment and permanent. And i can't just homerule "there is no resurrection magic" because the whole system is built with resurrection as resource in mind and I would have to rebalance all of it basically making my own system.
3. Opportunity attacks kill all dynamics in combat when dynamics is already one of the weakest parts of ttrpg. Its a stupid mechanic that leads to "come close, do not move, roll dice until one of you is dead" the optimal tactic which is extremely boring.
4. Improvising cinematic cool shit is usually less optimal in termns of raw rules. Its always better to strike with your longsword than smashing a chair into enemy's skull because "improvised weapon is d4 and longsword is d8". This discourages creativity.

5.1 Tons of "you don't get to play the game" effects. I could see "mind control" effects kind of fun if you just tell your player "now you get to pvp legally, have fun". but stun/paralise? okay, you took time out of your week/month to come play the game and now you just sit there for half an hour doing nothing while other players take their turns because you failed a save. Or maybe even more if you fail your consecutive save. Great game design guys.

5.2. Roll to hit is basically the same shit. Fighter waits their turn for 20 minutes after all spellcasters doing their shit, rolls 5 and 7 on his two attacks and can go make coffe feeling he didn't do anything.

5.3. Saving throws are weird too. Either you wasted your only 5 lvl slot and nothing happens, or enemy just stunned you (see 5.1). I get it that "save or die" effects are less common now, but they just became "save or suck" and you still don't get to play the game even if your character sheet is still technically there. Maybe some gradation system could be cool, dunno.

1. A lot of character archetypes just suck in terms of player fantasy. Wanna be a cool necromancer? Okay, you can summon...1 skeleton. When you're at least lvl 3. And after 1 round of combat he is dead and you're just slinging fire bolts again. Wow, thats definitely what I imagined when I wanted to play cool necromancer. Sure...

2. DMG says the system balance is build around 6-8 medium difficulty encounters per long rest. When you're trying to play anything other than tightly packed dungeon crawl (but remember, D&D is not just dungeon crawl anymore, its versatile system and you can play any type of game with it!!!) you usually have on average 1 meaningful combat per day. So either martials feel shit because spellcasters go nova every time, or you have to come up with bullshit 6-8 combats per DAY, which take several sessions. Wow, we've been playing this campaign for a year and it's been...3 days in game time? and all pcs are suddenly demigods now even though we _just_ entered this dungeon. Sure you can tell "use gritty realism rules", then its the other way around. Your wizard casts their 5 spells in 1-2 in game days...and the rest of the week just spamming firebolt and feels like shit. Maybe we could balance character classes without spreading them between "short rest based" and "long rest based" so I as dm dont have to fucking juggle this balance myself every time I try to make a story?

3. It feels like lvl20 is there mostly for marketing purposes trying to sell you godlike power fantasy? who actually plays at these levels? All i ever see online is people saying its basically impossible to make actually good games at this point and system is just broken.

4. Lorewise its cool that humans live 80 years and elves live 700. But I do not buy that an elf with 250 years of life experience would find any common ground with an 18 year old human. Have you ever tried to communicate with people 10 years younger than you? It already feels like talking to a toddler, imagine 250 year difference. And also they both get to cast 2 spells a day? Come on...

5. Can I have a cost for every magic item please? If I want the "they are rare and not really tradable" feeling that dmg tries to force on you, I can do it myself. But why the fuck do I have to actually come up with item cost myself if i need to?

What I actually like:
11. Complexity level for new players. 5e made it reasonably easy to learn the game. I would be okay with a simpler system, but probably not more complex one.
12. Large bestiary of cool thematic monsters made over the years. But I could just steal these into a different system...
13. (dis)Advantage system is pretty cool
14. Its kind of actually good in being middle ground base for different types of games. Yes, it sucks in lots of specific ways, but in general it feels like you can combine different elements into a single game fairly well.
15. 5e has made a good job in lowering the amount of random "+1" effects that I have to track for every little thing. pathfinder sometimes feels like im doing math homework instead of actually playing the game.
16. I like rolling dice other than just d6s. Although my favourite d12 is still too rare...
17. I like generic heroic fantasy as main focus of the system

I mean, technically I could come up with homerules fixing these things...but I feel like it would be easier to just fucking make a new system from scratch. I mean there has GOT to be a system that already exists and doesn't have these problems?
Thank you so much if you read this far.

Basically, I want something that offers a similar level of character creation stuff as the Mekton Technical System rules but a little less crusty and aged. Cuz I really don't care for the ruleset and there's certain amount of like clunky stuff that feels like game design parts that didn't age well.

it's hard to describe, but basically in lancer it's very limited, very strict and so you can't just imagine something, you have to pick from a list of existing stuff and so Idk if there's any system that is made to allow for custom made stuff, that work around vibes and that could maybe be all theatre of the mind? but still with rules and overall a system

I recently bought the Vampire the Masquerade 2nd Edition core rule book and I’m wondering what other books I could collect to add to the game. I’d like more detailed Sabbat npcs, werewolves and hunters to add as npcs. Along with anything else that seems cool and works with 2nd edition.
Any recommendations? Thank you!

I have a player of a mage in Mage: The Awakening 2e. This player has not particularly invested in mundane abilities for their character much, if at all.

After one particular challenge that the PC failed to succeed at using mundane means, the player expressed a preference that challenge difficulties should be calibrated such that mages can succeed on them easily enough using purely mundane means, without having to buff up or otherwise cast spells.

I can see where they are coming from, certainly.

In the end if the expectation is that people are gonna prebuff all the time then you encourage that to become the case.

But on the other hand, I specifically, explicitly said that the PCs had time to buff up to tackle the challenge ahead of them. And on the other hand, if I calibrate challenges such that mages can succeed easily enough without the use of magic, then any mage who does elect to cast some spells will simply smash through everything.

I have talked to the player about it (over a couple of days, by this point), and they really seem to prefer a setup wherein mundane abilities are perfectly sufficient to overcome challenges. But again, if I do that, then it means that a mage (e.g. this person's PC) can just opt to go gloves-off and "lock in" at any given moment to trivialize all challenges.

I do not know how to handle this. What expectation should I set?

For reference, here was the challenge in question. They were in the Hedge. There was an enchanted, warded door that demanded an excellent, really excellent song and dance performance to pass: one success on a roll of [lower of Dexterity or Presence] + Expression − 5. I told the players that they had ample time to buff up. This particular player wanted to tackle the challenge purely mundanely, and assembled a dice pool of Attribute 3 + Expression 3 + Willpower 3 − penalty 5 = total 4. However, the roll failed; the player remarked that I made it too difficult, and I mentioned that I expected the PCs to actually buff up.

This particular character had Gnosis 3, Fate 1, Forces 1, Matter 4, Mind 3, Prime 3. They were accompanied by a mage with Gnosis 3, Life 3, Mind 3, Space 3, Spirit 3. I feel as though Fate 1's Quantum Flux alone could have done a lot, to say nothing of heavier-duty spells.

Tento separá-los por famílias políticas principais; fica mais conciso e consigo focar nos membros mais importantes. Me sinto péssimo em criar NPCs genéricos... Mas criar tantos detalhes ainda é bem cansativo; existe alguma maneira de otimizar esse processo criativo? (The system is Dungeon World.)

After a conversation with a friend yesterday, I got suddenly curious about a general category of TTRPGs I'm not sure I have a convenient label for other than what I assume is the granddaddy of them all, Gamma World - games set in weird science-fantasy worlds far in the future and/or after some manner of apocalypses, filled with all kinds of mutants, psychics, robots, maybe aliens, strange technologies, and probably more than their fair share of strange playable nonhumans.

Some examples (besides GW itself) would be things like Vaults of Vaarn, Cloud Empress, and The Electrum Archive; at a stretch you could probably also include things like The Wildsea and Songs for the Dusk, and in other media this would be video games like Caves of Qud, Nuclear Throne, maybe Fallout, or the Ghibli movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Anything else that I've missed?