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There's a really fantastic bundle of Free League RPGs on Humble Bundle right now. Already own and have read several of these from previous bundles, so I'll add my thoughts after copying the list

Pay at least $25 for these 29 items

• Forbidden Lands: Raven's Purge
• Forbidden Lands: The Bitter Reach
• Forbidden Lands: The Bloodmarch
• Forbidden Lands: The Book of Beasts
• Twilight: 2000: Urban Operations
• Twilight: 2000: Hostile Waters
• Twilight: 2000: The Black Madonna
• Vaesen: Mythic Carpathia
• Vaesen: Mythic Britain & Ireland
• Vaesen: City of My Nightmares
• Vaesen: The Lost Mountain Saga
• Mutant: Genlab Alpha Core Book
• Mutant: Mechatron Core Book
• Mutant: Elysium Core Book
• Symbaroum: Game Master's Guide
• Symbaroum: Monster Codex
• Dragonbane: Path of Glory

Pay at least $15 for these 12 items

• Twilight: 2000: 4th Edition Core Set
• Forbidden Lands: Core Game
• Symbaroum: Core Rulebook
• The Electric State Roleplaying Game
• Dragonbane: Bestiary
• Symbaroum: Advanced Player's Guide
• Vaesen: Seasons of Mystery
• Vaesen: A Wicked Secret

Pay at least $5 for these 4 items

• Vaesen: Nordic Horror Roleplaying Core Rules
• Dragonbane: Core Set
• Mutant: Year Zero Core Rulebook
• Vaesen: Starter Set

Alright, so I love Free League's books. The layouts usually make them really easy to peruse and they often have amazing art. I'm not actually a huge fan of the Year Zero Engine, but there are a few interesting concepts in it still. Dragonbane felt difficult to balance and probably needs some more clarification when it comes to managing Loot, but I had a lot of fun running the Dragon Emperor campaign which is part of the Core Set. I'm extremely interested in Vaesan after watching the Quinns Quest video on it, even with his criticism of the investigation section.

Since I bought the previous Free League bundle a while back (Free League RPG Mega Bundle, Nov 28th 2024), I can confirm that a lot of this stuff isn't new. What IS new:

• T2000 Hostile Waters
• T2000 Black Madonna
• Dragonbane Path of Glory
• All Vaesen content aside from Core Rules
• The Electric State Roleplaying Game

Also worth mentioning that if anyone bought the Fanatical Symbaroum bundle then you also own some of the same content.

Edit: Fixed formatting, added Electric State to the new content section, added reference to the name/date of the last bundle. And a special thank you to /u/DouglasHufferton for adding proper formatting in the comment section.

Looking to run a series of episodic one shots following the basic story of a western movie. Crucially, I'm looking for a game who's mechanics incentivize this sort of story structure. Does anyone have recommendations?

The first is a collection of John Harper games that predate Blades in the Dark, but seem to have inspired elements in the game or been directly referenced by it; the second is about the many supplemental releases that further detail the Shattered Isles, including a few that are contradictory or outright non-canon.

Do you know about Lord Scurlock's kids? Are any of y'all veteran bulls of the Ghost Lines? Want to hear about some Factions that only exist in a deck of official reference cards?

I was led down this rabbit hole by a surprising number of easter eggs and recurring older elements that showed up in both Deep Cuts and Blades '68. Hope it's interesting for some of the folks here to read!

So, I'm a LONG time gamer - started with RPGs back in 1987 maybe, and been playing and GMing since then. I played and ran a LOT of BRP based games back in the day (Runequest 2nd and 3rd, Stormbringer, Elfquest, Nephilim, CoC). Then there was a massive break in running those games, maybe 25 years.

Bought some books of BRP and Mythras some years ago. Ran Mythras a bit and liked it in general, though I have some pretty big quibbles with it (not a fan of hit locations, not super into the Special Effects actually but they're certainly usable and my groups had fun, I hate the mass combat rules).

Then, recently, running a game in Genesys (this is after running many, MANY, systems, mostly Fate Core, Savage Worlds, GURPS and Burning Wheel). Anyway, I was thinking, after this current campaign (which I plan to rap up in 2-4 months), I was thinking, why not give BRP a whirl?

There's something appealing to me in a game that doesn't have special Feats or Edges or Talents - purely skill based. I like the wide range of skills - one thing that bothers about certain games is the smaller skill list; I get ideas from that list!

Anyway, I wanted to ask folks - how do you feel about the game? I'm planning to use in generically, for a Bronze Age political game (I plan to retrofit GURPS or Savage World mass combat for that part), and I think BRP will give a better feel for that game than any of my other games (except for Mythras and maybe GURPS).

So how is it for you? What do you like about it? How is it to GM? For reference (haha!) I have the BRUGE book and the Creatures book (which I just got today, actually). I also have a copy of the old Big Gold Book, and a slew of Mythras books to mine (Core, Classic Fantasy, and others).

Thoughts?

I played a little Doctor Who RPG about 35 years ago and just wondered if there are any new rpg time travel games that deal with paradoxes, time loops, etc?

Do they work? Are they interesting enough regards the rules/mechanics of time travel?

Thanks for replies

In the hypothetical scenario that you get fourish people together that are more than happy to be led along the direction set out by the GM while the GM is happy to regale them with their camp fire story every week.

In such a scenario, what systems would be particularly well suited to that style of play? Obviously you could likely run a lot of systems, I'm just curious if there's any standouts.

An alternative approach to the question would be systems that expect railroading in themselves, their very mechanics discouraging creative thinking or venturing off the intended path, that would finally have a time to shine.

Hi hi hi! So yeah, this is happening on the second weekend. On the last-to-last weekend we played Concordia and it was great!

But then we were asked to prepare for the game called “Heart - The City Beneath”

And boy oh boy, while I was so excited about the whole process that was to follow the preparation which involved a lot of reading with my love for fantasy, and the imagination all at a high.

To turn my excitement sour, I had the busiest work week where I slept after more than 12-14 hours of work.

But I managed to read the book, read my class and calling, choose abilities, and come up with a backstory.

The Heart is a dystopian world where the dejects and desolates find their calling in the Heart, and either they perish for it or keep taking stress throughout their journey. There are few reddit posts on that that helped me. There are YouTube videos that are there but I couldn’t watch.

With a break or two, we continued for hours and hours. We started at 11 am and kept going till 11 pm, followed by discussions for a few more hours.

My highlights:

1 - Loved the combat

2 - Decision making came naturally to me

3 - The group appreciated me saying I played like an experienced player 🫣

4 - The group has been playing serious D&D campaigns for more than a decade now, but they said they loved Heart more.

5 - I found some sections of the game too simple and it was easier to remove stress. I want the game to be more serious and higher in difficulty, where your combats are with limited ammunition and preparedness.

6 - The final combat was a mix of chess and Heart and I love that our DM did that. It was too good.

7 - I learned I must try and keep calm and let the DM finish describing a scene or a character!

Now I am not writing much about what Heart is, but you can read about it online. Attached below is a glimpse of how I began preparing.

My class was Cleaver, my ancestry was Gnoll, and my calling was Heartsong.

I think in RPG preparedness matters a lot! Good preparation and good situational awareness will ensure one has a decent game.

What was your experience with Heart? Btw I started board games this year!

I was watching a YouTube video discussing roll over vs roll under systems when I had a thought.

So in a "normal" roll under system you'd have a base chance of success based on some character stats, and then a difficulty penalty might get subtracted from that. So let's say it's d20 based, you have a Climb score of 14, you're climbing a sheer cliff for a -3, 14-3=11 so you need to roll 11 or less.

But what if we stick the difficulty on the other end? Instead of subtracting 3 from 14, numbers 1-3 on the d20 are a failure, 4-14 are a success. No subtraction needed.

But nothing is new under the sun and I'm sure others have had this idea before me. Do you know any systems that use this kind of mechanic?

While not new to the GM role, have done some oneshots here and there, it will be my first time GMing my first full campaign, going from 3rd to 15th level in a 1-20 levels system (Tormenta20, a Brazilian D&D-like).

I have very little experience GMing anything more complex than 3 combats in a row + one trap that failed. I'm trying to get better at making puzzles, mysteries and social situations, but my mind is very rules + combat brained.

Is there a good template I can use to start with or simply some guidance from more experienced player on how to that notes for making a campaign? I know at most how to make a 90% combat dungeon and that's it, but my friends deserve better than that.

Hello! My game left off last week with the PCs in an Indiana Jones-style ruin that was supposed to have trials for the heroes to pass. However they also have to deal with their enemies who just arrived. I'm looking for any cool traps people can think of in an old ruin. (The system is homebrew but the setting is kinda steampunk though this ruin would likely predate that.)

I was able to run three sessions of an Honor + Intrigue game in the first half of this year. Actually, we were supposed to run a lot more, but scheduling issues meant we were only able to run three sessions. Still, I feel like I got a good experience with lots of different parts of the system and want to share some thoughts.

Overall, my players and I really enjoyed this game. We decided on doing a pirate campaign set in the Indian Ocean in 1635 (all three options I gave them were unconventional — Indian Ocean pirates, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ottoman borderlands), and I had a lot of fun creating the setting document, which the players used to figure out what sorts of characters they wanted to play.

Character generation was pretty fun. I think my players and I particularly enjoyed the fact that you choose four Careers at character generation and distribute some points among them just as you do with your attributes and combat skills; during play, Careers were more flexible than skills, while most of them also had a lot of specific sub-mechanics that still kept them distinct rather than feeling very general and generic.

Our characters were:

• Lan, an exiled general of the Ming Dynasty in China who lost a battle to the rebel leader Li Zicheng, then fled in shame before he could be disciplined. He is the captain of the ship.
• Jago, a Javan warrior who came to the seas to learn more about the Dutch (who have established a base on his island called Jakarta), thinking that his own people are not treating them as enough of a threat.
• Bassam, a cowardly merchant who serves as quartermaster of the ship, who just wants to make some good cash.
• Esmail, a teenage healer-in-training from Safavid Persia who fled during the purges of intellectuals under the rule of Shah Safi I.
• Yusuf, a Ukrainian Janissary who fled the Ottoman Empire after being ordered to fight against the people he hailed from.

The plot opened with the crew doing a heist of a Mughal treasure galleon heading toward Oman, upon which they found two highly valuable stowaways fleeing the Mughal Empire: Princess Jahanara, daughter of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal, incidentally), and a Portuguese merchant named Duarte. The two were eloping and being chased by Jahanara's brother, Prince Murad Bakhsh (a real historical figure). The players wanted to use her at first, but were won over by the couple's charms and helped them evade Murad Bakhsh at the port of Aden and escape east toward the city of Aceh where they would be able to disappear.

We had at least one combat in each of our three sessions (including a barroom brawl), as well as a chase scene and a naval combat. Combat was pretty fast (a little slower for naval combat) and most of our sessions were spent on roleplay and dialogue, making our campaign feel a little more like the TV show Black Sails than the nonstop action of something like Pirates of the Caribbean.

I think my main complaint with the system is that I would have appreciated some more stat blocks for enemies that I could plug and play (or slightly adjust) — even if those had to come in a supplement. There are a few "sample characters" but for example having more Pawns, Retainers, and Villains (the three types of antagonist NPCs) in a bestiary of sorts (not to mention having creatures that could fit as well, both real and mythical) would have been extremely helpful. As it was, I found prep kind of exhausting even for just three sessions because I had to construct lots of NPCs from the ground up myself which massively ballooned prep time from my normal 15-30 minutes to like 90 minutes to two hours.

When you combine this with our scheduling issues and some issues I was having structuring adventures, you can see how we kind of just stopped playing after 3 sessions. Still, overall the game is great, and I'm sure that if we had played longer I would have gotten the hang of building stat blocks — I just find it tough to get into games that demand a lot of prep from me up front these days, and that will probably get worse as I'm starting law school soon.

Regardless, we had a great time, and we'll probably return to the game and our campaign in the future if timing lines up better.

Probably our standout moment from the game was when Lan and Jago snuck onto Murad Bakhsh's ship in Aden while he had blockaded the harbor with his fleet and was scouring every ship for his sister, and they blew his ship up to create chaos and draw Bakhsh away from them. That was fucking epic and we absolutely want to experience more of the game after that.

Have you guys played the game? Tell me about your experiences! What sorts of adventures have you gone on?