**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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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I'm lucky enough to have players who are willing to play any TTRPG I want to play as a GM. I'm thinking of doing Fabula Ultima as my next game and I've played few jrpgs throughout my life so I get the general feel and look of the game I want to run, but a few of my players haven't. So far we've only run medieval fantasy settings like DnD, Dragonbane, Vagabond and everyone gets the general idea of those settings.

How do you get players to get the general image of the world? Do you use pictures of things to send to players, are you more descriptive of things around the world? Any help would be appreciated

Hi everyone,

Novice GM here, looking for advice to restart a campaign with my group after a medical hiatus. I would love to find a system better suited to our expectations.

Here is my TTRPG History

- As a player: D&D 4e (on Roll20) and D&D 5e (in person)

- As a GM: Pathfinder 2e (Beginner Box then Age of Ashes, stopped at the beginning of book 2). I have to stop due to medical reasons.

My feedback on Pathfinder 2e:

- I heavily relied on automations in Foundry VTT and, for me, it killed the TTRPG feeling. It felt like playing a video game at the table, with very little interaction.

- Our absolute best session was a homebrew in-person one-shot. We used maps strictly for combat, and everything else was handled through TotM. It worked incredibly well, proving that this format fits us much better.

- PF2e is maybe too "complete". I spent too much time looking up if a specific rule existed for an action rather than just improvising (also because I was afraid of breaking the game balance if I didn't).

- My players never managed to exploit the 3-action economy in combat, and I failed to guide them properly on how to use it.

My Players' Profile:

- They really love exploring dungeons, killing monsters, and looting.

- When they do roleplay, it is mostly to negotiate, lie, or scam NPCs, and they always try to test the boundaries of situations or the rules system.

- They struggle with pure, selfless heroism. They prefer playing pragmatic characters with personal motivations who always look for what they can personally gain from a situation.

- However, we are still looking for high stakes and epic situations/combats.

What I am looking for today:

- A system that is easier to pick up, which leaves real room for GM improvisation (and ideally integrates it into the mechanics. For example, I saw the Fabula Points system in Fabula Ultima and it seems to fit).

- Real tactical depth in combat, but without the heavy mathematical modifiers of PF2e.

- Setting: Fantasy only.

- Red Line: ZERO horror. My players will not enjoy a horror setting at all, and some players have extreme arachnophobia.

PS: English is not my native language. I apologize if some phrases or wordings sound a bit strange!

Thank you !

Hello! I’m looking for a kinda drab hopeless kinda game, low power where the PC’s have to put deep thought into what they do, rules heavy I like my games to be as crunchy as humanly possible along with being Dark Fantasy themed, think Dark Souls, Kingdom Death or Darkest Dungeons vibes.

Suggestions are appreciated as anything I find always seems to be rules light from what I’ve found thus far, I don’t care what engine it is as long as it’s not PBTA style, never could get into that style of gameplay.

In investigative games it's not entirely uncommon for the players to look for leads in places the GM never considered and planned for. Usually, if the location is reasonable enough, this isn't a huge deal since pre-planned clues can simply be relocated or new ones can be invented.

But what when the players do something fruitless and/or, you know, kinda dumb? When they aggressively interrogate someone who really knows nothing about the case? Or dig through completely unrelated archives? Or tap the phone lines of an empty house?

On the one hand I can see the argument of giving them squat, since them's simply the breaks. Walk down the wrong street and it doesn't matter how many successes you roll; there's simply nothing there, and that's just how investigations go sometime. However that can easily lead to player frustration and wasted time.

You could also give them something even if they're barking up the wrong tree, but that presents issues as well. Rewarding the players no matter what paths they choose takes away from the intellectual challenge of mystery games and cheapens the intended experience. There's little satisfaction in success if there's no real possibility of failure. This method is also prone to causing plot holes and contrivances, leading the players even further away from the core of the case, and by that point you're kinda forced to just keep going with it or the scenario's completely borked.

A third option could be to simply tell them that their course of action is extremely unlikely to be fruitful. This does save a lot of time and frustration, but also takes away from the freedom of an open investigation. What's even the point of giving the players free hands if you're just going to slap them away when they reach in the wrong direction?

Personally I find myself using all three methods where appropriate, but neither have ever felt all that satisfying. Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Hi everyone,

two very close friends of mine are getting married soon, and we planned a weekend away as a Bachelorette/Stag party sort of things. While organizing this weekend, the other people invited to this weekend (a total of 9 people including myself) asked me if I would be willing to GM a wedding-themed session one of the days. I was surprised but so happy about this, also because only 5 of them have played a full campaign with me as a master, while the other 4 either never played dnd or played only a one shot.

I have already several ideas on how to incorporate little inside jokes, but I'm at a total loss about the structure and main "plot" of the session.

The requirements would be:
- not too long, 3-4 hours to leave space to the other activities
- it should have the bride and groom as the protagonist of the story, while still involving the other 6. Not necessarily as a party of 8 people, some could also be NPCs or enemies.
- No combat required at all, as that is the most rule-heavy part of the game and we wouldn't have time for that.

Do you have any suggestion for a plot that might fulfill this criteria? Do any of you have experience running something along these lines?

Also, on a side note, what system would be best to get playing as fast as possible, given that I don't want any combat? I personally am very familiar with pathfinder 2e, dnd 5e, call of cthulhu and to a lesser extent a couple of borg games.

Thanks for the help!

Edit: Thank you for the comments so far, but to clarify I'm looking for ways to build new maps from scratch not use existing map or randomly generate one.

Hey all, I'm looking for a new map maker because the ones I currently use feel lacking in this particular niche.
Currently I use Dungeondraft for battle maps and Wonderdraft for overworld maps but I dont have anything good for city maps, I own some 2 minute tabletop assets for cities in wonderdraft but they just dont work for my purposes.

Im not looking for insane detail, actually the best looking city maps in my opinion are from watabou's city generator and I'd love to use those but feel the tool doesn't give you enough control about where to place things.
Noteably I'm looking to create cities from scratch, not generate them so I wondered if there was anything in a similar style with more manual control.(I've looked at Inkarnate but they are basically the same as my wonderdraft assets, so not really what I'm looking for.)

Thank you for reading and any tips would be appreciated.

Hello guys, im currently looking for a TTRPG, to change from dnd, i found one called Wanderhome and i really like the vibe, the art, i think i would really like one with cute anthropomorphic animals going on a journey on a post-war land. But after seeing some review, i dont really like the "no dice" and the fact that players also take story control when they want, i think its a bit too much of a transition and i like to still get the "play" experience.
(sorry for my bad english)

any idea ?

https://app.alchemyrpg.com/marketplace

I'm not affiliated with Alchemy in any way, I just got an email about it. Free VTT Day is an initiative created by Alchemy RPG.

The 2026 collection includes the following all for free:

• Blades in the Dark, Evil Hat Publishing.
• Degenesis Core Set Enhanced Edition, SIXMOREVODKA.
• Call of Cthulhu: No Time to Scream, Chaosium.
• City of Mist Starter Set, Son of Oak.
• Heckna! Campaign Setting (5e), Hit Point Press.
• The Veiled Lady (5e), Loot Tavern.
• Mountain Realm: Rustborn, Cryo Crypt.
• Swordlender: Where Heathens Roam, Cryo Crypt.
• Into the Wilds: Fey & Fell Map Pack, Tom Cartos.
• Industrial City Motion Overlays, The Kinemancer.
• Fluffy Folio Volume 1, Fluffy Folio.
• Fluffy Folio Volume 2, Fluffy Folio.
• Magnus Starship (Scene Pack), CZEPEKU.
• Magnus Starship (Map Pack), CZEPEKU.
• Oasis Expedition (Scene Pack), CZEPEKU.
• Oasis Expedition (Map Pack), CZEPEKU.
• Swamp Graveyard (Scene Pack), CZEPEKU.
• Swamp Graveyard (Map Pack), CZEPEKU.

Just thought I'd pass the word along. Not sure if you can bulk collect, I had to collect redeem one by one for the products.

As a long-time GM, I've always been extremely fascinated by sandbox and open-worlds. It always felt like, to me, that that was the core reason we played RPGs: for total creative freedom for players and Game Masters / Storytellers alike.

So I created "The Deck of Fates", a 52-card oracle deck that uses narrative themes to help guide improv. In short, it gives you a way to represent the whims of Fate itself to create a small bit of chaos that I feel mirrors the real world so much better than anything I would have written myself.

But especially, I liked that it gave me a way to give my players a narratively fitting reward for good RP. Instead of just letting them re-roll a die or check, I give them a card that gives them a fleeting bit of control over the narrative -- just like a "temporary GM".

Anyway, if you want to check it out, it's live now on Backerkit if you feel like you might want a copy: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/amoirais/the-deck-of-fates?ref=rrpg

As a bit of FAQ, it's fully human-made (no AI!), designed to work with any TTRPG (especially narrative ones!), and features some ready-made adventures we're making in partnership with other big publishers like 9th Level Games, Critical Kit, Hunters Entertainment, and so on.

But otherwise, I'd love to hear about how other folks capture that feeling of an open world: what do you do either similar or different to something like my Deck to help your worlds feel more alive?

Hi! sorry for my bad English but I came here to ask if there was any universal TTRPG with a focus on Sci-fi that is easy to learn and teach and has a simpler combat system that allows all sorts of things like mechs, spaceships, psyonichs, etc

I know many of you are gonna recommend GURPS but, while I personally like the system for its robustness, I don't think it is easy to teach and handle and I would like a TTRPG system that is easy to understand and expand.

GURPS is too much and Fate is too bare bones for my liking and for the setting I want to construct into a TTRPG. I would like something like Chronicles of Darkness (or World of Darkness) but with a Sci-fi focus.

I know this is too much to ask and a little contradictory.

The setting that I want to work on into settings for a TTRPG is a little complex but in short the premise is that a group of technologically advanced humans arrive on 2040s Earth (which still looks like our modern day Earth only lot more miserable and a little bit more advanced in tech but still similar to what we have now) in order to unify it into a single banner and bring justice and dignity to the humans here. There are alien races, laser weapons, synthetics, FTL and the whole sci-fi shabam.

Is there something like in the middle that can work for a premise like that?

sorry if I keep this short I don't want to over expand because its kind of long but you can ask me anything you need.

World Cup started a few weeks ago as we all know, and I wanted to play a soccer RPG, so I heard about Fight with Spirit, but Idk if it is the best option to do so.

Any thoughts about it or any recommendations?