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And can't afford it :D

But seriously, it's just so easy to do! As with all digital media these days...simple click of a button and a book's on your HDD!

Gone are the days of going to the impressively under stocked FLGS to find they don't' have the supplement you want. Or lugging a ton of reulbooks to a session on the bus (surprisingly inconvenient actually!)'

EDIT: for the avoidance of doubt, i am NOT looking for pirate stuff.

Hello everyone. Here's the situation: in two weeks, my boyfriend (who's the gamemaster) and I will start hosting D&D sessions at our house again. Years ago, we started a campaign in the underdark, which then stopped, and now we're about to restart it. The party will be made up of the same people as last time (including me), plus some new people who my boyfriend couldn't bring himself to say no to. So, in total, we'll be seven players. The fact is, the last time we had sessions at our house, it was difficult for me mentally to manage, mainly because I think these guys we play with are rude. I'll give you several examples: the appointment was at 6:30 PM, and almost every time someone arrived at 6 PM. Once, someone called me at 4 PM saying he was free and asking if he could come over right away. I said yes, and then everyone else arrived at 5 PM, but my boyfriend hadn't finished preparing for the session yet, so they stayed at my place for hours doing nothing. Another example: we placed a power strip in the middle of the table because my boyfriend needed to keep his PC charged while we played. It ended up with everyone plugging in whatever electronic device they had in their pockets, sometimes even asking me to borrow chargers: e-cigarettes, cell phones, etc. All stuff they could have charged at home. Another example: one of them called me several times in advance to ask if I had anything in the refrigerator to give him, since he'd be hungry. Another example: they often arrived with unprinted cards, and since we have a printer, they asked us to print them before starting to play. I could give many more examples, but I'll stop here. The point is this: since we're starting again now, I'm afraid the same conditions will arise and I'll go crazy. So I thought I'd post a series of rules on our WhatsApp group, like asking everyone to bring their own dice, pens, and paper. Because, even though these guys have been playing D&D for 10 years, no one brings their own dice! And every time they come asking me for dice, pens, paper, etc. I mean, is it too much to ask that they come with all their stuff to play every time? Is that a bitchy? I think they think, "Well, they have dice, pens, and paper at their house, so why should I bring them?" But for me, it's a pain in the ass to have to give stuff to everyone, especially since setting up the house is already a big deal. What do you think? Should I soften up, or am I right?

I like exploring different systems, but I buy the PDFs or even physical books and then never play them. I get really close to playing them or fleshing out ideas, then lose focus for a new system or get super sidetracked on small details in my worlds. This always inevitably leads to me getting burnt out and dropping a system. What advice would you have to help me manage the desire to play new systems while never actually following through with it?

Hi everyone! I’ll soon be organizing a West Marches campaign for several local game stores in my area. I’ve run two of these before—one at my old job as a DM and another with friends. The first one went pretty well, the second one not so much, and it’s true that it’s been a long time since I last ran one.

I’m writing this post basically to ask for advice, guidance, tips, and any methods you’ve found useful for keeping players engaged and having fun in this kind of open‑table campaign. I’ll be using my own world, one I’ve been developing for years and still mapping to this day, and I’m very attached to it. I’m a DM who really enjoys both roleplay and combat. I loved classic dungeon‑crawling back in the day, but I’m running this with D&D 2014 to make it more accessible to a wider audience.

What I’m aiming for is something with a good hook but not overly complex, because my business is going through a rough patch right now and I can’t invest too much time into this. Thanks in advance for any advice you can share.

TL;DR: I have a group of friends interested in TTRPGs. I’d love to GM. I have a TTRPG set. I don’t know where to start. Can I get a checklist of what to do or something?

I have a group of friends, 7-8 of us, who already meet weekly just to hang out. It’s me, my 3 childhood friends, our wives, and another friend who we recently brought into our weekly dinner. I’m typically the initiator for communication and planning in the group. I also happen to currently be the “unemployed” friend since I can’t start my job for a few months due to bureaucracy and licensing. I figure this is as good a time as any to get into this.

Anyway, we have all been the “yeah I’d love to play DnD or whatever. I just don’t know where to start.”-kind of folks because nobody in my group has ever played. We like games like Betrayal at House on the Hill and play those frequently. We just don’t know where to start with true TTRPGs.

This past year my wife got me the Stormlight TTRPG for my birthday. We are both huge fans of the books and honestly got our money’s worth out of the world guide. There’s only one other person in our group that has read the books, but I still think this would be a good place to start with TTRPGs.

This is all leading to my question:

How the heck do I GM? I’ve watched a dozen videos on it, read a few articles, and I still have no clue where to start. Can someone just give me a quick and dirty way to get started, so that we can learn and go from there?

Hey folks,

I’m currently on the hunt for interesting DIY / indie / small-press pen & paper RPGs — not primarily to play them, but to collect, read, and admire them.

What I’m really into:

• strong graphic design & layout
• unusual or coherent worldbuilding
• clever rules as concepts
• zines, booklets, weird formats, lo-fi or super polished
• stuff that reflects gamer culture more than “perfectly balanced gameplay”

Vintage and newer things are welcome — roughly early 2000s up to now. Old forum-era indie RPGs, heartbreakers, art-RPGs, obscure Kickstarter stuff, photocopied zines, risograph prints… all that good nerdy material. I need a good starter point. Thanks a bunch!

With as little homebrewing as possible.

I could reskin Anima: Beyond Fantasy, but I'd rather not do that. And anyway I've left all my books at my family house before moving abroad.

I'm personally looking for something that's not as crunchy as WoD, but feel free to suggest whatever even if it doesn't fit my tastes, maybe it'll inspire someone else.

Hi everyone.

I have a physical and PDF copy of Not The End by Mana Project Studio, but when I follow the link in the book for the hero and narrator sheets all i can find are a the names of the Kickstarter backers. I have contacted them via email about a week ago, but they are yet to respond. I can only find Italian versions online. Does anyone know where i can find copies of the Hero and narrator sheets?

Thank in advance for any help.

Lately, I have been interested in LUMEN 2.0, a system that specializes in narrativist noncombat mechanics and heavily gamist, randomizerless, tactical combat on a small grid (e.g. 6×6). The one implementation that has caught my eye the most is Threadcutters, a 184-page game about playing superhuman, occult assassins.

In Threadcutters, there are four discrete worlds: Coins, a world of smartphones, sleek suits, and an international assassin underworld; Swords, a world of M1 Garands, cipher machines, and eternal war; Cups, a world of neon, pagers, and secret societies of vampires, werewolves, and urban magicians; and Wands, a world of fantasy, fairy tales, ballrooms, tourneys, and fey.

Each world is ruled, whether openly or clandestinely, by a court of four "royalty": a page, a knight, a queen, and a king. Unlike relatively immobile queens and kings, pages and knights can travel across worlds. Pages handle peaceful missions, while knights are killers.

The PCs are the sole survivors of the fifth world, which was destroyed. They now work for the Arcana: 22 gods that weave reality from Centro, an interstitial not-world. One Arcanum, randomly determined, has tasked the PCs with assassinating several royals across four worlds.

PCs are mechanically defined by allocating three non-tactical-combat statistics (Weapons, Gadgets, and Magic) and picking three Arcana. Each Arcanum grants a narrativist non-tactical-combat benefit, and a tactical combat ability.

A mission starts with non-tactical-combat, narrativist challenges. This is mostly randomizerless. PCs call upon Weapons, Gadgets, Magic, and their Arcanum benefits. When they run out, the PCs need to either pay terrible prices, or leave things to random resolution by drawing and interpreting tarot cards. (Success, partial success, fail. The interpretation tables are there to create context on how the character succeeds or fails.)

Finally, a mission caps off with randomizerless, tactical combat on a 6×6 grid. Each target has unique tactical gimmicks.

Does it sound like a decent game?

There is one boss whose gimmick I like a fair bit.

This enemy is the King of Coins: some guy who rules the John Wick expy world by being so inhumanly intelligent that he sees everything coming.

The King of Coins is very fragile, and will probably be one-round-killed.

However, once he is killed, combat resets to the start. That was just yet another one of his calculated outcomes, and he has already taken steps to forestall it. At the start of the new iteration, he picks from a list of extra advantages to help tilt the odds in his favor, like an extra elite goon to block the way, or a body double.

Once he is killed a number of times equal to the number of PCs, that last death is the real one. The PCs have overcome all of his preparations.

Threadcutters is a LUMEN 2.0 system, so it works much like other LUMEN 2.0 games. It has its own unique spin on the mechanics, of course.

In Threadcutters, each mission is called a "hit." Each player distributes 2/hit, 1/hit, and 0/hit between Weapons, Gadgets, and Magic.

Weapons solve problems with violence, destruction, and intimidation. They excel in direct removal of obstacles, but they aren’t subtle.

Gadgets are sneaky, low-key ways of doing things. They’re not going to blow up a bridge or anything like that, but if you want a little help coming at a problem sideways, gadgets are what you need.

Magic covers all the minor branches of arcane power: alchemy, sympathy, illusion, and the lesser arts. It’s slow, intricate, and delicate, and often requires a price of some sort – but it makes the impossible into the possible, and that’s not nothing.

• You can’t do anything peaceful or gentle with a Weapon.

• You can’t do anything big or flashy with a Gadget.

• You can’t do anything quickly with Magic.

If you want to overcome an obstacle using Weapons, Gadgets, or Magic, just describe what you are doing and tick off an appropriate use.

As a general guideline, each "hit" should have a number of obstacles equal to [total number of Approaches spread across the party] +33% to +50%. Thus, Approaches can solve most obstacles, but not all of them.

Although a given campaign has only one patron Arcanum, each character is blessed by three of the 22 Arcana: the gods of the cosmos who control reality from Centro, the interstitial not-world between worlds.

Here is the Emperor, for example:

Signs

Things arranging themselves into hierarchies, normally chaotic events following rigid patterns, fathers, powerful executives, militaries, police.

You are touched by the Emperor, so these things appear around you more often.

Blessing

Once per hit, give someone an order and they have to follow it. This affects anyone of less stature than the royalty of the four worlds, but it has far greater effect on those already accustomed to following orders.

This helps you during non-tactical-combat scenes. (Note that pages and knights are considered "royalty" in this setting.)

Gift: Command The Physical World

The Emperor’s authority doesn’t stop with people.

Range: 1–4

Effect: Create up to three obstacles in empty squares within range. They block ranged attacks if a straight line from the attacker to the target passes through their square. Moving into one, whether voluntary or not, does 1 Harm to whoever moved into it, stops their movement, then destroys the obstacle.

And this helps you actually fight on the 6×6 grid.

Nothing actually obligates PCs to use guns in this game. You can fight with bare fists, raw magic, or whatnot in this game. There are no concrete equipment rules. Indeed, in the world of Wands, gunpowder explicitly does not work, so characters need to flavor themselves as fighting with alternative methods.

Is it weird to fight the Queen of Coins (world's richest woman, rules the world through sheer wealth and market manipulation, the embodiment of capitalism) or the King of Coins (world's smartest man, rules the world by knowing everything and having information on everything, the embodiment of the surveillance state) in the John Wick world with magic rather than guns? Probably. But nothing is really stopping you.

I'm doing personal research on dungeon crawling rules, and I'd like to read as many different examples of dedicated dungeon crawling rules and subsystems as I can find. The more specific, the better.

I know that Ironsworn has Delve, and that either Basic Roleplay or Old School Essentials has a section on dungeon delving. Bonus points if it's not just d20/OSR, but anything distinctly and explicitly about it would be appreciated.

Hello everyone! I am currently running a game (Wanderhome) and was hoping to get some ideas for harmless pranks that a fae-like creature can pull on players if they choose to step into a faerie circle (a circle of mushrooms). Nothing permanent, just a bit of temporary fun before a giant snail eats some of the mushrooms and breaks the circle. Any ideas? I'm really struggling to think of anything beyond "pie in face" gags.

Edit: It's worth mentioning that the characters are all animal-folk.