**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.

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

I'm not talking necessarily a dnd game that you'd really struggle to find players interested in, I mean games you want to run but no TTRPG that properly fulfills the fantasy you want exists.

For me personally, its a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure TTRPG. I've researched fanmade systems, indie systems, GURPS and... nothing. Nothing properly scratches the inch and I can't explain wby

Mostly the title. I've been a long time GM for about a decade now. I started with FATE and DnD 5e, moved onto more indie systems like Wildsea, Mythic Bastionland, Root RPG, my own games, Lancer (barely counts as Indie at this point love that game though), and about a dozen games I've never ran. But I need new players

I love GMing with all my heart, and I love my players as people, but not players. We grew up and all moved different distances away so I've been running our games online for about 3 years now, but this past year has been rough. My once wonderful players are now never on time, half the time MIA, or don't even engage to begin with. I can't blame them I suppose, we're all busy adults now. They didn't fall out of the hobby or our friend group or anything, still around, still begging me to run games...but never showing up to them.

So I've decided I need to find new players, but I have never actually started a group or game for completely new people before so, how do you all much more experienced people do it? an LFG post and just, charisma and safety tool my way through it? Kidnap cool and unsuspecting people? Consult the divines?

I miss telling stories together :(

I don’t necessarily mean the worst or even one you consider to be bad: a game can be fun and enjoyable while still being a nightmare to balance.

Case in point, my vote goes to obscure Italian superhero TTRPG Urban Heroes, a game that my table picked up out of patriotic curiosity and ended up doing a year-long campaign on.

Compared to the other options on the market, Urban Heroes goes for a distinctly grittier take inspired by Watchmen, Kick Ass and The Boys, and it does so by heavily leaning into the “human” parts of the superhuman: there’s plenty of options for your character to have had traumatic events happen to them, physical ailments in the present and a whole slew of mental issues, not to mention that each superpower comes with a flaw that grows proportionately with your power.

Some flaws are less debilitating than others: one would much rather have a weird appearance than, say, cancer. So why would someone ever choose the worse option? Well, the game is explicitly designed with the old-school idea of rolling almost every single aspect of your character, down to the powers. Because of the aforementioned reasons, this can have you end up with a party where one person might have a few negative quirks with nothing too bad, while another is a barely functional liability. Fun, if the whole table buys into it beforehand, but obviously deeply, deeply unbalanced.

It doesn’t help that the powers vary from pretty much useless in all but the most niche of situations (like being able to put small objects inside you, but only for a few seconds), to pretty weak (being able to bounce onto enemies), strong and versatile (controlling electricity) all the way to downright broken (stopping time and interdimensional rift opening): with random selection and considering you can have a max of 4 powers per character, it’s entirely possible to end up with some joke of a shmuck who’s dead weight in a fight.

What’s funnier is that, considering all this, you’d think Urban Heroes to be a narratively focused, theatre of the mind kind of game, and indeed it is better played that way. The designers clearly did not think so however, because everything takes for granted that you’re playing on a grid with well-defined turns, which can be somewhat understandable at lower levels… but as soon as you truly develop some powers like super speed or super-size, it becomes asinine to keep it all confined to grids and turns (the former in particular can do crazy stuff like double-digit reactions per turn).

The dice and multiplier system does this no favors either: the game eschews traditional modifiers in favor of increasing dice size and a double digit multiplier on the result to indicate improvement, inviting at the same time insane swing on the low end (increasing the dice size can only help you so much if you keep rolling low) as well as on the higher-end (the difference between 1 x 60 and 20 x 60 is huge).

Despite it all, we still had a blast: it’s easy to have ludricrous funny moments on a system this absurd, and we still appreciated the genuinely well-built aspects of the system, such as the very wide selection of powers and the XP system allowing you to customize your powers to an incredible extent. Still very unbalanced, of course.

What about your examples?

This week's RPG is Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine!

Have you played it? Have you run/GM'd it? How did it go?

What's your favourite memory from the game?

What's the best thing about the game?

What's the worst? How would you improve it?

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Last week was Mythras. Join us again next week for Microscope!

Welcome one and all to a post where we can freely discuss the games that we have released or the games that we are making. Stop on by and maybe you'll find your new favourite RPG!

A bunch of us make cool shit, but the Indie RPG space is crowded and it can often be difficult to get the word out about why people should try out your game. That's why every week we try to focus on a different mechanic or setting to see how new RPGs can solve decades old problems or put new spins on old greivances!

Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, towns are razed and built up again and sometimes looking at things from the perspective or an adventurer isn't enough to understand what goes into building an empire, so come tell us how your game (or just any game you really like) tackles Kingdom Building!

This time around I'm testing out putting a personal definition of the topic in as well, but by no means take it as law:

For me, Kingdom Building is a (sub)system that allows for management style gameplay either as a part of the core roleplaying loop or even as the main focus!

Thank you u/Conrad500, for the suggestion!

As per mod approval, comments here do not count against rule 7 - comment as much as you want, answer as many questions as you need and discuss to your hearts content!

All that I would ask is that anyone who comments about their own system takes the time to look at the minimum at one other game in the comments and ask a question or provide feedback. Lively discussions are what get people interested and what keep people engaged!

Last week was "Urban Fantasy" and we got some pretty interesting discussions going on what that even is!

If you want to suggest a topic for future weeks, be sure to include "suggestion" in your comment so I can easily find it!

Edit: Forgot the Master List

As the title says, I've been wanting to run a supers game for a while now, but the amount of options and factors for what I want have left me a little paralyzed. I've looked at a few games (Mutants and Masterminds, Sentinel Comics, Marvel Multiverse) but I can't decide between them or other games. Essentially what I want is a game that can accommodate any kind of character concept or power set, but isn't so crunchy as to be difficult to parse and make said concepts hard to realize (which is one of the worries I have with M&M, as even I struggle to figure out the power system). To give some examples with NPC heroes I have planned, I want a system where I can easily make a demon girl who fights with a chainsaw scythe and uses hell-chains to swing and zip around like Spider-Man and bind people with, a character who uses magical tarot cards to utilize abilities themed to each arcana and their reverses, and a Kamen Rider-esque character based on both music and the Cthulhu Mythos, with swappable forms and weapons. I also would like a system that isn't just focused on the combat aspect of superpowered beings fighting each other (though I do want that to be a good part of it) but also perfectly accommodates roleplaying and doing things outside of combat (investigations, exploration, etc.). On top of all this, I really want something where my players and I can work together to make our own unique supers universe, with potential for legacy characters and generally just feeling like a lived in universe with consequences (which I know is ultimately just down to roleplaying those things out).

Idk if I'm asking for a lot here, but if you know a system that would be perfect for what I want, or if you think one of the systems I've mentioned looking into fits what I want, please let me know. Thanks in advance!

I was watching the recent episode of Cyberpunk RED that Mike Pondsmith ran on the 2077 YT channel, and it got me wondering about this. I personally would go with the aforementioned Mike Pondsmith, because he seems like such a cool guy.

Hey everyone,

I’ll be GMing at a local Halloween event. It’ll be set in the MÖRK ORG (an office-themed MÖRK BORG hack). Are there any movie clichés that combine Halloween and office themes that would fit this setting? Do you have a specific plot in mind, or a suggestion for a one-shot with a similar concept? It needs to be a short game lasting 3–4 hours—I’m open to any suggestions!!!!

I understand, conceptually, that the 90s were 30 some years ago- But it still hurts to hear.

That said- Any funny moments from recent games you wanna share to help soothe my old age?

I love vampire stories and vampire games. I think Vampire: The Masquerade has had a stranglehold of the genre for so long. I am also an Ann Rice and Interview with a Vampire fan. Great movie, great to atrocious books!

My concern comes with this new TTRPG. First, a large publishing company is kickstarting their nigh on finished product. I know this is basically the norm now but we must point out that it is shitty and buried actual projects that need to be kickstarted to even exist.
Second, the campaign is to back a Starter set and a setting guide. When you strip all the extras away that’s the meat of the game you are left with. No core rulebook is a big red flag that is dyed extra crimson as they refer to it as the first instalment in the immortal line. It feels, to me at least, like a nasty little money grab scheme. Selling off a full core rule set and default setting over multiple books and boxsets. Monetising the now liberated copywrite to a thirsty audience.

It seems a shame too because they are exploring mechanics with vampires that are sorely underestimated. Having a timeline of a vampires long life you can jump between decades sounds really fun. Based on the character sheet, brooding, obsessing and being taken along by your dark fate are all baked in.

Am I just an old man yelling at clouds? I’d back this project in a heartbeat were it a full core rules with the New Orleans as the core setting as part of that core rules. But the aforementioned reasons have put me well off until I see a core rule book on shop shelves.

EDIT: I have messaged Renegade about the New Orleans book being a core rulebook or a supplemental/setting book.

I didn't see these shared yet so thought to do so in case someone else will find them interesting.

Vincent Baker, co-author of Apocalypse World, talks about what games originally inspired Apocalyse World and what kind of different game "branches" have followed AW.

The talk is split between two shortish videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8DmKH8FSnY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0UZiAJAssQ