**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.

Hello! I go by forthesect most places.

I've been an amateur rpg designer for about 4 years, longer than I've been a gm by at least a couple weeks funnily enough, and I’ve been running a free rpg bookclub subreddit for most of that time. I’ve seen tons of really cool games of all different types and sizes!

Varied size type and genre, 1 to 200+ pages, fantasy/scifi to historical fiction, solo to full party with a gm, and some rarer or even unique stuff like full a table controlling one character, games where the way you roll dice matters as much as the number, toolkits for generating random roads and hazards, and a game where you perform irl actions throughout the day to exorcise objects that look like faces!

Its really made me love the indie/amateur rpg scene!

So I organized a pwyw collection of some of the most unique and well developed submissions I’ve seen to show of how creative and passionate ultra small studios, or even hobbyists like me can be!

I also got and vetted more submissions by making posts asking for them on other subreddits, and some from Bluesky.

We decided to donate any proceeds to charity, and DOTS RPG Project, a charity that promotes accessibility in rpgs, agreed to work with us! They make braille dice, run spaces and panels at pax, develop alt text for various publishers, and are designing tools to help designers make their pdfs more accessible.

We launched on June 24th, and within two weeks hit our $1000 goal! That may not seem like a lot, however, we managed to get this far with the bundle being available for free, containing just 45 projects, and all our games being pretty underground except for maybe a fate accessibility toolkit. No donation matching, and no press coverage!

It gets less attention, but the limited scope is part of why I wanted to organize the bundle. I’m hoping the smaller (than other charity bundles) handpicked selection will encourage people to really check out as many of the games as they can!

I’m happy to take questions on anything from the ideas behind the bundle and process of organizing and sharing it, to some the work DOTS does, to the games in the bundle, which I’ve looked through thoroughly excluding some supplements/add ons, to what I’ve had for breakfast this morning! There might be some things I can’t answer, but no question is in bad form.

Here’s a link to the bundle if you want to see it for yourself! https://itch.io/b/3605/indie-charity-bundle-for-accessibility-in-ttrpgs-pwyw

Theres a full list of all the games in the description, each with a 1 or 2 sentence summary! I’ll be here from about 930 a.m. to 930 p.m., maybe not active the whole time. I have some wrist issues, and might switch to speech to text at some point, so apologies in advance if my capitalization and grammar starts to suffer.

What is your favorite sword & sorcery RPG? When I say that, I’m talking about RPGs inspired by the pulp works and sensibilities of authors like REH Howard, Fritz Lieberman, and Michael Moorcock. Examples include Barbarians of Lemuria, Crypts & Things, Red Mists, any number of Lankhmar-based games, various Conan-based games, The Black Sword Hack, and Hyperborea.

I can't find any in-depth reviews based on actual table play, only day one quick rules breakdowns. Even people who really praised the game didn't seem to play it afterward.

This has been a question poking at me since I've started playing tabletop games, and has persisted even as I've run my own and continued to keep it secret. The only two reasons I can think of are to fudge health and to "keep immersion," the latter of which sounds like a flimsy excuse when players actively discuss their own HP levels. Is there a reason you do it? And if you don't, have you noticed a difference in how your players act?

This question is inspired by Zach the Bold's video on TPKs.

While I DM for my friend group and am trying to do some DMing on YouTube, I have read through more then a few campaign/adventures. I have found that I just truly enjoyed reading through a few adventure paths just as much as reading a novel/book, if I DM them for a group or not.

Which campaign/adventure (any system) was your favorite to just read through? Excluding how great it was to play, what was just enjoyable to read through?

Thanks.

Oh, Pendragon, how long I awaited for you, beloved. I think I got this starter set about a year and a half ago and I had a couple of unsuccessful attempts to put together a group in order to run the game. But, finally, a couple of weeks ago, the planets alligned and the Lady of the Lake smiled upon me and I was finally able to run the starter set!

And it was an absolute blast! I was always a big fan of the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table and I constantly heard how Pendragon is one of the best TTRPGs out there. And finally, I can say that I see why that is the case. The system is elegant, fun, the mechanics flow together very nicely and manage to encourage roleplay in a very simple fashion - the more you describe how you do a certain thing, the easier it becomes (of course, up to a certain level).

The Starter Set is an amazing point to try out Pendragon and it more then makes up the value of its cost! Truth be told, I feel like it's somewhat of a steal, with dice, superbly illustrated characters, combat cards and of course the three booklets. But more about that in the actual review, now if you'll excuse me, I have to look for the corebooks!

What are you using to track your games, and what information do you collect? I started with earnest data collection this year, but so far it's only a text document, which I will probably turn into a Calc sheet so I can do some statistics at the end of the year.

But I'd love to know

• What data are you collecting?
• What do you use to track your games?
• What are the coolest statistics you have collected?

Note that this is about the sessions (what game, what module, who played, which characters died, etc) and not about what games you own.

It can either be systems that have you roll multiple dice at once, systems that ask you to do a lot of dice rolls, or both.

I'm a father of two, and have very few time.

I'm a huge lore nerd, love reading and writing.

Have been getting bored of video games lately, and started looking into not so digital experiences. Eventually, RPGs came into my radar.

I played a one shot session once and really liked it. However, currently, it's hard for me to have time to play.

So, any suggestions for me to start getting into it? Not sure if this is silly, but are there alternatives? Lore books, litRPG for lonely sessions?

Thanks!

Hi!
Looking for a good system for the new campaign I'm creating for my group. The main premise is that there will be two parties (so two concurrent campaigns), who will be each other's BBEGs. For simplicity's sake, one of the parties/campaigns will be more Cyberpunk/MaxTac styled, the other more Cowboy Bebop vibes. Basically, cops and robbers in SPAAAAACE.

Main Considerations:
- Dying fast. Combat should feel incredibly dangerous. Be it the fear of going into a criminal hideout blind, or being able to simulate a good ol' western standoff, death should be able to happen quickly and sometimes randomly.

- Power Level- Not a power fantasy. The world(s?) I'm making are ruled by megacorporations, dictators, what have you. Toppling intergalactic megacorporations/empires is not something in the scope of the campaign. The players are intended to just be people, who maybe get caught up in a situation bigger than themselves, but they aren't "chosen ones" and they aren't superheroes. This campaign is more geared towards ending with a fistfight in the mud than with generals commanding fleets of starships. Ideally, I'm looking for a system that has progression within a smaller scope.

- Starship Combat - A system that keeps starship combat interesting. Also something that allows for upgrading a ship.

Other considerations:
- A good system of spending/gaining money.
- I generally create my own lore and governments, though a good basis for how FTL travel works and skeleton for politics to work off of is helpful. Additionally, the world I'm writing has no sapient aliens. Humanity is alone in a dark universe. It's easy enough to remove aliens from a system, but it's more ingrained in some than others.
- This will be an online game, so something that has a lot of number crunching (i.e., time where it's much more difficult to keep the other players engaged during combat) is less ideal, but I can manage.

This is going to be a very character-focused, character-driven campaign, heavy roleplay. My tentative pick at this point is Stars Without Number, but I worry about how powerful the players get, especially with psionics (though I have removed large swaths of systems before to great effect with my players), and that it's a bit rules-light? It might still be the way to go. In my research here, Traveller also stuck out to me, but I haven't had a chance to fully dive into that yet.

I play vtm v20 with a group of friends every other weekend. We are playing for about 1 1/2 years with some breaks where we couldn't agree for a date to play because of jobs etc.

I think I should tell you guys first what happened so far.

When we started it was my second time playing a ttrpg. Before that I only played 1 relatively short campaign of DND. So when we started I had the most basic character who was basically a mixture of spike and angel from buffy. He was that way to righteous guy who from what I heard a lot of peoples first character was.

At the start his whole character was about not hurting innocent people and that cool Coat he got. (Totally not because spike has one) Eventually I wanted to play him differently and after a few fights were he never got hit because of extremely lucky rolls he turned into a way more cocky version of himself who didn't prioritize helping innocent anymore. Instead he wanted to get a spot in the primogen (I hope that's what it called in English as well) and become more powerful.

We as the group eventually decided to see what the Sabbath had in store for us. But because we fought one of the members (Zorya) a few sessions earlier she was not the biggest fan of my character (mostly because I mocked her for fleeing... Like I said cocky). One thing led to another and we agreed that we would join them but only if I got to fight Zorya.

I was almost killed in the first round of combat. But because another member of the group went to one of the primogen in advance and made a deal that we wouldn't get in trouble, join the camarilla completely, hand the Sabbath to them and our 3 great favors that we had I survived.

So now to my question. That was maybe 6-8 sessions ago and I don't know where to go with my character now. He was so cocky because he never got hit in a fight. Should I just keep playing him like that or should he be more careful and planning his actions more?