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When you buy an RPG core book, do you like it to include an adventure contained within the book itself? Or do you prefer any introductory adventure to be separate? Please give existing examples of your ideal.

I'm sure some people have mixed feelings on Bob's classifications (not sure if I can post the link, but video is called, "D&D Has a Genre Problem") and arguments for against using it, but it happens to be the video that sparked this thought in my head, so that is what I am going to use. Below are from his video sort of explaining each. To get ahead of it, we are not using the literary difference between high and low fantasy (based in a world based on earth vs a world not based on earth), but instead an rpg specific differentiation that Bob gets into.

• High
  • Key aspects: prophecy, dragons (and other epic monsters), notable uses of magic, often a "dark lord" (supernatural enemy), realm spanning conflicts and consequences, often slightly post apocalyptic in that it is following a lost utopian civilization.
  • Players want: dragons/monsters, magic they can use, gods/higher powers, prophecy, and moral clarity
• Low
  • Key aspects: human or civilization centric, moral ambiguity, conflicting factions,
  • Players want: moral quandary and to feel like they can either join a faction or create their own and it will matter to the larger story.
• Superhero
  • Key aspects: default for most modern RPG games, main characters have unique powers, focus of found family, realm saving, extra planar travel,
  • Players want: high fantasy as well as growth via powers
• Sword and Sorcery
  • Key aspects: more about pulp tone than elements, more a fantasy style than a group of tropes
  • Players want: personal consequences and glory, growth via reputation and treasure
• Science Fantasy
  • Key aspects: magic exists (but is near technology), often high fantasy with a lasers and plastic reskin
  • Players want: surreal and alien locations, multiversal consequences
• Weird West
  • Key aspects: western themes of survivalism, lawlessness, and community meet low fantasy style human conflict, vices, and institutions
  • Players want: bounty posters/hunters, corrupt authority, doomsayers, honorable outlaws, and industrial touches like firearms and trains.
• Gothic Horror
  • Key aspects: tragic tone and monsters, varying degrees of horror
  • Players want: decadent nobility, creepy mansions, seances/ghost encounters, tragic romance
• Cozy
  • Key aspects: whimsical, relaxing adventures, slice of life stories,
  • Players want: gardens/farms, festivals/carnivals, local gossip, cooking challenges, talking animals, community service, whimsical mysteries

So what system would you choose to run each type of adventure?

I've run Cy_Borg's intro adventure a couple times now, and ran through it myself solo, thought I'd jot down some impressions for anyone curious about it!

The Mechanics

Cy_Borg is a Mork Borg game, so the core mechanics are basically the same as all the other Borg games. 3d6 down the line for stats, Roll d20 + stat modifier vs a difficulty rating (usually 12) to see if you succeed at a task. The rules are simple and light enough to fit on a 2-page spread in the back of the book.

Since the default difficulty rating for a check is 12, and players often won’t have a bonus, so actions are slightly skewed towards failure. This encourages players to find ways to tilt the odds in their favor and contributes to the edgy, grimdarkness Mork Borg games thrive on. It also means rolls fail a lot, don't expect to have high success rates on your rolls. Things go wrong in Cy_Borg. A lot.

If you've never played a borg game, you can see the rules reference for Mork Borg here. I don't think there's a free official rules reference for Cy_Borg, but the core mechanics are basically the same, so Mork Borg's reference will give you an idea of what we're doing here.

The game’s got some unique stuff going on that isn’t in other Borg games, too. Like...

Hacking and Nano Powers

Hacking is often tricky in Cyberpunk games. You want people to be able to play hackerman, but you don’t want your hacker to be playing an entirely different game than the rest of the party. Here, hacks are handled like magic in other Borg games. You have a deck with slots you can use to activate applications. At first, I thought I wouldn’t like this, but most of the apps are about interacting with tech or people with cyberware. You won’t cast fireballs with your deck, but you’ll do stuff like open doors, take over turrets, and control security cameras. It feels like hacking because all the “spells” are hacking and techy stuff instead of magic stuff.

There’s a similar system in place for powers gained from alien bacteria infesting your body that do more of the traditional affects you might expect from a spell system.

Both hacking and infestation powers are dangerous. Botching one risks triggering alarms, burning your psyche, or causing radiation damage to people around you (this one is for botching an infestation power).

It feels setting appropriate. Hacking massive corporate entities is risky but rewarding. The reward is tantalizing, but there’s always the risk of getting burned off the internet like Case in Neuromancer, which is clearly a big inspiration for the game.

Plus, this means hacking and powers never trivialize mundane challenges. Sure, you could use your deck to open a lock, but you'd rather pick it the old-fashioned way if you can, as that doesn't have a chance of burning you to death.

Cyberware and Gear

It wouldn’t be a cyberpunk game if you couldn’t attach cybernetic parts to your body. They’re pretty straightforward here; they are just extra features that you have to pay to have installed. There’s a pretty wide variety, ranging from wolverine claws (lovingly referred to as either “Mollies” or “Logans”), to fashionable Smart Hair that lets you change your look at will.

Installing Cyberware mostly has no drawback, except that if you go down (from hitting exactly 0 HP), you might get back up and go into Cy Rage. This is more likely if you’ve installed more chrome on your body. I like cybernetics not coming with a downside, I want to chrome up and I want my players to be encouraged to chrome up too.

The gear is pretty meaningful in this game. In one session I ran, the party rolled heat vision goggles, a pair of motorcycles, a crossbow grappling hook, and a grenade launcher.

This gear massively changed their approach to the dungeon. They used the motorcycles for fast entrances and exits, the grappling hook to swing from the ceiling, the heat goggles to find targets, and the grenade launcher to blow holes in the environment. So, gear is not trivial. If I ran it again even with the same group, they would approach the adventure differently because they wouldn't have the same tools.

Life and Death are Cheap

Characters have single-digit health and die as soon as they go below zero. Depending on what you roll, that can easily be a single attack. In my experience, there are two ways players respond to this. They either play super cautiously and defensively, or they go, “life is cheap, and character creation is fast, I’m driving my character like I stole ‘em.”

I have the most fun with the second approach. My players going guns blazing, blowing shit up, and managing to complete their mission with just one of them left standing was fun and dramatic. It also ties in well with the Cyberpunk themes. Life is devalued by the mega corporations, so too do the mechanics devalue life by making characters mechanically interchangeable and easy to put down.

There’s also a resource each character has called glitches that they can spend to reroll, reduce damage taken, or dodge a crit. You don’t get a lot of them, but they do embolden players while they’ve got 'em.

Simple to Run

Ultimately, the rules of most Borg games aren’t anything crazy, but they largely stay out of the way and give you an easy way to resolve actions. 90% of the time, a player asks the GM if they can do something, the GM just has to figure out what stat to tell them to roll. Making up a monster is super easy. All you have to do is decide their HP, armor, how much damage they do, and maybe some special attacks, if you want. You can do this on the fly, no problem.

The flipside of this simplicity is that it requires the GM to make lots of rulings. In our session, we noticed this with the heat goggles. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing clarifying how far they can see or if they can see through walls. You’re left to make this decision on your own. This doesn’t really bother me, but I suspect some people will wish there was a little more clarity on how some things work.

One thing I like about these games is that players do most of the rolling. When enemies attack them, they make a check to dodge, when they attack, they make a roll to hit. The GM only ever rolls for enemy damage and for enemy armor when enemies are hit with attacks.

The only caveat I'll place here is that the book doesn't really hold your hand on how to build a session or adventure. There are tables for generating mission ideas, but not much in the way of GM advice or procedures to fall back on. I think a new GM might struggle to find their footing here. If you've run any OSR adjacent games before though, you'll be fine.

My Gripes

Armor is one of my two gripes with the mechanics. Armor acts as damage reduction. Every time you get hit, you roll your armor die and reduce the damage of the attack by the amount rolled. So, if your armor is d4, and you get hit by an attack that deals 3 damage, you roll your armor die. On a 1, you would take 2 damage, on a 3 or more, you would take 0 damage.

I don’t like this. First, it feels like a superfluous roll. I get that it’s meant to add a little more variance to attacks, but I think the to-hit and damage rolls have that covered. The added roll is a minor thing, and honestly, less annoying in practice than I thought it would be on paper, but it feels silly to me. Also, I don’t like hits potentially getting reduced to 0 damage. There is an optional roll for hits always dealing at least 1 damage, and I use that.

My second gripe is that when an ability gives a character a bonus on certain actions, it’s expressed as a reduction to the DR of the check, rather than a bonus to the roll. I would prefer it as a bonus to the roll, so players can just add it to their rolls themselves, rather than having to remind me to lower the check's DR. My players also found this way of writing bonuses to be unintuitive.

These are both minor complaints. They don’t matter too much, but they’re in every Borg game, so they annoy me a little bit each time I see them.

Layouts

Borg games are known for crazy, beautiful layouts, and Cy_Borg is no exception. There is sick art on every page, and I like how they didn’t shy away from including elements of the grotesque. In the starter adventure, there’s a guy wired up to a computer, and the art is an awesome mixture of cool, and gross. Including gruesome visuals helps the reader stay in the right frame of mind. This is Cyberpunk. Some of the tech is cool, but it’s a harsh, difficult world.

Borg games are often criticized for being difficult to read, but I think there’s an art to it. Some Borg games can have really difficult-to-read pages, while others manage to be highly readable without sacrificing the cool visuals. Cy_Borg does a good job here. Even the busiest pages are pretty easy to read, and I like how they use fonts and highlights to give pages the feeling of reading an old website or forum. The only area where readability suffers for me is that some page headers use fonts I struggle with.

The book also has a quick reference in the back containing every game rule, and an index you can use to find any tables you need to, so even if you struggle with the layouts, it's easy to reference rules at the table.

Flavor

Cy_Borg takes place in the city of Cy, which is pretty standard Cyberpunk fare for the most part. Rich folks live in the hills, separated from the highly polluting corporate district and the slums where the regulars reside.

I do appreciate that Cy_Borg makes a point to paint corporations as unambiguously villainous. You can do whatever you want in cy_Borg, but Corps are the enemy, or at best, a temporary ally that will stab you in the back later. That’s how I like my Cyberpunk.

The setting feels very Neuromancer-inspired (as does the art), plus a healthy dose of cybernetics. The big addition Cy_Borg makes is the nano infestations. Basically, there are alien bacteria that can get into your body and give you weird powers, horrific physical ailments, or both!

I like the weirdness the infestations add, and it helps the setting feel fresh rather than just a retread of popular Cyberpunk ideas.

Tables Tables Tables

The book is loaded with tables, most of which are practical and useful. You’ve got NPC generation tables, aesthetic tables, job generation tables, and random pocket find tables. Most of the stuff you’re likely to need has a table.

I also appreciate that they use the tables to expand on the setting. The aesthetic table is full of stuff like “Acid Panda” or “NuGoth” that help ensure you keep the punk vibes going when you make NPCs. Most of the time, even if you don’t know the terms being used, you can figure out what they mean, or make something up, but there are occasional table entries that I barely know what to do with. What is hexcore style? Like you wear 6 of everything?

But barring a few results I can’t make heads or tails of, the tables are evocative and functional.

Overall

Pretty cool game. The highlights are the art and layout, but I don’t want to understate how the inclusion of powerful gear and cybertech makes Cy_Borg characters feel more powerful than in other Borg games I’ve played, without losing the vulnerability Borg characters are known for.

It also hits a Cyberpunk vibe I like. High tech low life is well supported by a squishy bag of meat wrapped in chrome and techwear. You’ve got to be comfortable making rulings on the fly, and your players need to be comfortable with you doing that and not be afraid to die, and they've got to be ok with failing a lot when they roll. But if you’ve got that down, then I’d try Cy_Borg!

Wife was getting a lot of ads for it and suggested it so I figured why not.

Never shipped, never responded to emails. Did a charage back succesfully but wanted to warn others.

I was reading this discussion about the need for dice mechanics to be always fun or innovative, and some posters brought up some games which they didn't expect to like, but had great fun and/or showed them that a given approach was a solid design choice.

For instance, somebody mentioned Loot, by Spencer Campbell, which takes the Lumen 2.0 system and makes it diceless, making combat grittier and more compelling (in their opinion).

Tangentially, that thread brought some games to my attention, some of which I'm quite curious about. And since lately there's been so many new games taking some hyped chassis (PbtA, FitD, Borg, D20, etc) and tweaking here and there to try to deliver something fresh, I wonder what games are actually delivering new and exciting experiences.

What is a good system for running an adventure set in modern times where the PCs are ordinary people trying to escape from a large building like a mansion or mall while surviving against an extremely strong killer? Something w/ a slasher movie feel, with gameplay like Dead By Daylight, Little Nightmares, or Resident Evil 7. It doesn’t have to be combat-free but I’d like a system where teamwork and using the environment to your advantage are more important than combat. The closest I can think of is Call of Cthulhu, but I’m looking for a more straightforward supernatural/slasher feel than a Lovecraftian existential feel.

Many, if not most rpgs have degredation of your character on a per session basis.

Sure you level up and improve after a session or maybe even during if level ups occur the moment you hit a certain amount of exp or similar points.

But what about a during gameplay improvement? For example: the very beginning of each session, you start off with the least resources, the least access to your powers and abilities. As you use more and interact with the game more you get stronger somehow until the rest period/next session or whatever it may be.

That way the end of each session feels like the moment your character is at their peak conditioning. I'm not saying they can't have any degredation, like obviously there still needs to be risk involved, be it HP or what have you.

But I feel a common problem with many games is that players either hold back all their good stuff and don't get to use it, or they blow it and then run out of options, and the climaxes are always a up-hill battle or just boring due to limited options, rather than the most engaging parts.

I've played games that have something like this;

Double Cross for instance has an encroachment meter that starts pretty low each session. The more you use your abilities the higher it gets. Certain abilities have an encroachment minimum to use. Also higher encroachment will give you ±1 or +2 dice to your rolls. The risk is that if your encroachment gets TOO high, you lose your character(they essentially become mad/feral or die depending on circumstances)

I know I kind of answer my own question with that one system, and I know it's not everyone favorite game, but I like it. It's just not appropriate for all type of games as it's very married to it's general setting and types of abilities and circumstances, and I feel like there have to be other games that progress in this kind of way for other genres.

Hello everyone

I'm looking for this game that I (may) have read couple of weeks ago. It was a quick start rules, one of the reditors linked it in a comment. The thing is I'm not sure that I have read it... It's a long story...

Anyways, what I remember about it:

• D6 dicepool system with successes on 5+. Bonus alows for 4+ succeses; penalty makes it 6+.
• Initiative in three 'timings' - fast, enemies, slow. Player characters go into fast or slow depends on number of successes rolled.
• I think it was fantasy rpg.
• 6 on d6 was an exploding dice (if I remember correctly...).

That's all what I kind of remember. If you tell me that this game doesn't exist I have to get my head checked...

Any help will be apreciated.

I've unluckily not really got the time to visit my nearest game story so much, and most of my IRL friends are not interested in these types of things.
Before, I played TTRPGs mostly via discord, either joining communities about specific games/campaigns or meeting with groups on there, nowadays though after the recent discord policies I stopped using and after a couple of months I've yet to find a good alternative:
-Stoat seemed the best at first, but nowadays I find that pretty much every TTRPG community I've joined is dead.
-I can't seem to find communities dedicated to these types of things on neither Matrix, nor Fluxer.
-I tried Telegram as well, but finding groups is really hard, and most of those I got were inactive or after finding players moved everyone to discord.

I also tried some resources for pbp like Rolegate, but the site didn't really click for me as I end up finding either campaigns that were already started or died shortly after.

Does anyone know of any actual places with a semi-active community where you can play online?

Imagine a guy, now in his late 50s stopped playing TTRPGs at age 17 (1986) due to a lot of remote work.

He played AD&D, Traveller, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, RuneQuest, Judge Dread, Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia. (prob a few more they have forgotten)

What would you say were the biggest Games he missed in his Hiatus from TTRPGs?