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a. Focus on Newbies and new group. Do not try to convert anyone who is used to 5E to anything else beyond one time writing them: "Hey I am 100% stopping 5E. I will be running XYZ from now on, if you are not interested in that, no worries! But if you are really keen, would love to have you play, let me know please."

Newbies do not have pre-conceived notions of how TTRPG or even "D&D" ""should"" be and have not invested dozens of hours in learning and playing 5E nor possibly spent money on books etc. Especially if you pitch it as "I only run 'Classic D&D', which is way closer to how the 2 creators played it, the books are free or far cheaper, it has modern rules too and it is way less pages, rules and easier to learn than 5E", you likely will get people into it!

b. Westmarches. Westmarches. WESTMARCHES! The BBEG that wrecks most groups is planning, doodling, life-changes, adulting, people quitting (for a 1000 reasons, game system is just one of many) and cancellations.

A pool of at least 8, but better 12, players prevents almost all these problems. It is also means that if 1 or 2 people say "Well, I tried non Hasbro rules/system A and G with you but they are not for me, going to quit and find a 5E group instead", you are not starting over from scratch, you can just keep playing.

c. The recruitment never ends! I have a few posts on Reddit with very clear info about how and what we play (and just as importantly what we do not) on the subreddit of the city where I live. I repost it every 6 months, at least. Because I found out in practice that many people who will join your group,.. do not use the search function, or assume that an old post no longer has relevance. Reddit has worked out amazingly for me, but any and even many avenues, from a flyer at game store to any soc media or messaging apps, or asking people at work, can be great way to find players.

d. To detail how doing all the above worked out for me: been doing it for at least 10 years. In Berlin (big city) I ended up playing with 40 ish people total (at least once) of those, 15 became a hardcore Westmarches group that plays often, until today and which spawned 3 more DMs and campaigns at least and added another 6 players after I left the city. When I am in town, we still play! A few of those people became very friendly acquaintances and I do other nice stuff -besides D&D- with sometimes.

Currently, in Valencia, not a truly big city (800k people) I have had a group that had a total of 25 people that plays at lease once, of those 11 remain and also 2 are DMs with own campaigns and w play with some regularity. Always with 5 players and the DM, but having 11 active players in the Westmarches pool, means vacation, illness, adulting, jobs, kids etc means sessions are never cancelled due to lack of players.

We have played: Basic Fantasy RPG, White Box, MOTHERSHIP, Pirate Börg, Mork Börg and a few more. For some years now we have primarily settled on Shadowdark, but all the players would not play 5E for a million bux, they know too much, they love non-Hasbro stuff too much.

I am not saying the above is easy or doesn't take time, but it is very doable. And the sooner you start and the more clear you are about what you do and do not want, the more likely that you will have a blast playing exactly what makes you happy with like-minded people and will avoid DM burnout or even quitting wholesale for months or even years.

Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post this I don’t use Reddit much but wanted to talk about this.

So a friend wanted to try a new ttrpg and it’s been going great. Our group consists of two guys and three gals.

The problem player we’ll call Josh. Josh is playing a guy but it’s become incredibly obvious that the character arc he intends for the character is that they want to transition. The problem is the way he’s doing it just feels very shallow I guess. Like he’s a goth guy but he keeps flashing a pink “I love boobies” bracelet to the other players whenever he can, has being muttering that he wishes he had boobies and more “booby” related stuff like that. The only other thing his character has done besides this is stare at hot topic skirts.

Myself and another player are trans women and it is making me uncomfortable. I think it’s being made worse by the fact that his character has my deadname down to the uncommon spelling of it. The other guy is playing a woman and I’m totally cool with that it’s just the weird “boobies” obsession Josh has given his trans character that’s bothering me.

It doesn’t help that Josh does not like me. Everyone in the group knows this. The last campaign we played with Josh he kept trying to murder my character and steal her character arc because he didn’t like her and seemed to be unable to separate the character from me irl. Since joining this new campaign he hasn’t done anything and seems neutral to me for the most part.

I just want a second opinion on if this is weird or if I’m overreacting because I can’t tell since none of the other players or dm are reacting to it like it’s weird.

Edit: Some added stuff after seeing replies. I’ve been trans for a long time and I’m not usually bothered about my deadname. I don’t go around telling people it but it’s still very easy to find it if you look. So either it’s an unusual coincidence or he looked for it.

I will also say not to be rude to Josh but he is immature for his so it makes me question whether it’s malicious or him having the maturity of a teen. One of the reasons why I wanted a second option on whether I’m overreacting.

I’ve always love the Guy/Girl in the Chair archetype. You know, the operators in The Matrix, Barbara Gordon in DC comics, or Benji in Mission Impossible. The person who’s far away from the action, but connected with the main people and helping them from afar.

This seems like a tough thing to pull off, since they’d be playing a fundamentally different “game” than the other players; they wouldn’t be in any direct danger, they’d have different tools at their disposal, and they’d have limited ability to interact with NPCs.

Is there a system that could make this work for 1 player in the group?

Hey gang! I've come out with a new RPG culture video: https://youtu.be/ZL9WHXtA6SA

This is one I've wanted to tackle a long time, especially after seeing so many conversations here where people who don't have games going on around them don't realise that they can and should try running games themselves! I've tackled a few tips, including getting over needless fears, assembling a group, and picking a game. I even face head-on one of the most common conversations I've seen on Reddit, where a whole thread is begging an absolutely brand new GM to please run some pre-published stuff before trying to hit their table with their mega magnum opus of a homebrew campaign.

I really think giving GMing a try just once, even if you find out it's not your cup of tea and you prefer playing, is worth it just for the learning experience and to give some perspective on what your own GM is going through. But I find a lot of players just have this monkey on their back telling them they'll be no good at it, which is a damn shame.

Let me know what you think if you do watch it (and if there's anything I missed) but if you don't wanna (which is fair as it's 25 minutes long!) I'd still be interested in why you think crossing that boundary to behind the screen is so difficult for so many.

Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/originalpost

So we have had our next session and straight off the bat, in-character, I went to this other player (for ease I will just name them Steve), and said along the lines of, 'I don't quite know what I have done to cause you to attack me so much, but can we just have a truce?'

Steve's response was unsurprisingly to not agree to this truce.

It was at this point where I just asked to pause the game and just talk as normal people for a moment. I said, 'Seriously, can you please stop just attacking me. It's not fun, it's irritating, it's wasting all our time. I get you want to play some crazy character, but stop attacking me and casting all your spells just to be a hinderance to me' (or something along those lines).

At this point Steve seemed to realise I was being serious, so he somewhat agreed, but then going back into his 'Bad Eye' character, he said 'Well I still want one freebie for every person we meet,' implying that he wants to still insult NPCs, or just pretty much do something to aggravate and impact our campaign.

The session goes on, very very slowly. We'd left the previous session sleeping at an inn, so when we wake up, Bad Eye wants to search the other rooms, in which we find a dead person. He then proceeds to bring this body down to the main seating area of the inn, and want to skin the person and take all their bones, all in front of the maid. He then wants to kill the maid. Julia (the other player) and I just look at each other like 'WTF is going on?'.

It's at this point that Steve also suddenly decides to give his character a Scouse accent (Liverpool), which if you do not know, sounds very jarring especially if someone is purposely putting it on and making it annoying. With this accent change, almost his whole personality changes too. Just becoming rude and wasting even more time just talking for the sake of it.

The session goes on and the DM calls it a night way earlier than they want to. Steve leaves and for a few minutes it's just myself, Julia (the other player in this campaign), and the DM. I say, 'I'm finding it really hard to not get annoyed at Steve for his character.'

The DM agrees. The main problems that the DM has is that firstly, they don't like people leaving once the campaign has begun, so they somewhat accept it; also, they are concerned about if they stop inviting Steve, then it will just be two players and not just will that mean he will need to revise some parts of their campaign, but they fear it won't be as fun. I told him that I would find it much more fun even with just two in comparison to now.

So I suppose now, I am asking what can I say or do to help with the DM's thoughts on Steve and his character? I don't want to be pushy or forceful and dictate the way the game goes, but after having a chat and finding that everyone is in agreement with Steve's attitude towards the game, to me it's a no brainer to remove him, but ultimately that decision doesn't come down to me.

Just some answers to some stuff raised in the previous post:

• All players are adults, 20+
• Yes I had already spoken to the DM before making that original post.
• Yes we had a session 0. The DM asked us to bring 3 character ideas. Julie and mine were much more fleshed out than Steve's. Steve did not have a backstory for his character. When pushed to make one, I have gathered through their chats that the DM wasn't overly happy with it and had to make many adjustments.
• Steve is very secretive about their whole character. For example, I am playing an exiled princess. I have made all players aware I was once a princess, but in-game their characters would not know that. On the contrary, Steve will not tell us anything, not even their character's name.

So, I'm. hosting a D&D style ttrpg game for me and my friends to kill time at school, and we got pretty deep into our (I'd say) sixth session? And my friends walked into a rift in a town and ended up in a limbo type world, and it was knee deep in some weird fog. And my friend immediately after I said the fog enveloped her; told everyone at the table that something grabbed her leg and is actively pulling her away. But I didn't put ANYTHING in that fog. And after they bested the Mother Mimic that was taking the shape of the church, she suddenly revealed that the Mother Mimic was her biological mother and started "Grieving" by doing nothing to help the team during encounters. How do I tell her to knock it off politely? It's jumbling up the stories and lore I have planned even tho I mentioned derailing too hard without informing the GM (me) was bad during our session zero she just doesn't seem to remember. that or she doesn't care.

(I asked about this on the Curseborne sub, but this sub has a million followers so....)

What is the archetypal Curseborne adventure or story?

Are the Accursed themselves direct desendants of those who wwere the first to bear that curse? I don't have the book so I'm unclear as to how they present their splats. I'm a little unsure about how the notion of Families in all cases. It makes sense for the vampire not-clans, but do all the Poltergeists hang out together and just throw shit around? :D

So; are new Dead characters, descendants of previous Dead (obviously prioer to their passing) Accursed?

Presumably the Hungry pass theirs on through biting/siring etc.

What about OUtcasts, since they are basically fallen angels. Are they mortal descendants of fallen angels who, coming to earth, had relations with a human?

How about Sorcerers? I suppose entire bloodlines get the curse.

Or am I misunderstanding?

so im recently starting up a campaign and I was wondering if anyone else had some sick anomaly ideas to throw in? for those who dont know Triangle agency is a lot like control, jjk, chainsaw man, where beings called anomalies are formed from a certain thought that people have. that could be fears, loves, dislikes, random thought about Karen down the street, literally anything. Anyone have any suggestions?

Does anyone have any recent experiences and musings regarding Eat the Reich that they would like to share? I've read the main book, the incomplete SRD, and Havoc Brigade.

As an aside; I decided to adapt the engine to a shonen battle anime adjacent setting and was wondering what sorts of weaknesses that folks have identified with the system and possible ways to fix them? Perhaps ideas that could be applied to EtR as well. Or, even best practices to really make the game sing?

I just watched Mystery Quest's actual play of it; I feel like the players didn't fully take advantage of the freedom to describe the carnage. The GM states in a post-game video that he feels like he didn't get to do much as the GM but I feel like he could have harnessed description and threatened the players more.

Discovered a neat new rpg; Troubleshooters from Modiphius.

Aside from noting how Modiphious seems to be doing truly every genre now, no matter how niche, a Tintin-sque international adventure rpg seems cool for sure. Especially because it hasn't really been done outside of a few SW entries.

Edit: It's distributed by Modiphious.

This is a question for GMs and players alike.

When you are looking for a module or setting to play your games in, how much does the artwork matter?

Would you play in a setting if the creator put no artwork in it?

Would you avoid a setting all together if rather than an artists work, it was full of AI (assume they weren’t charging for it and putting it out for free).

Would you navigate towards a setting that had an art style you favored like anime, watercolor landscapes, or detailed concept art?

For me, artwork will draw me in for sure, but it’s the setting and promise of a great story that ultimately gets me interested in playing in it. Now how much does the art sway your overall decision to pick a module setting? And also, since this is a discussion, what other things will make you stick with a setting or toss it aside? Writing style page layout?