**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'm Ben Robbins.

I made Microscope, a fractal game of epic histories. And now many years later I'm hard at work on a new edition (which is kickstarting right now).

I also ran the original West Marches campaign. Is it weird that the same person who came up with West Marches makes GMless games of cooperative world-building?

I could talk about Microscope (or West Marches) all day, but I'm also happy to talk about other games I made like Kingdom, In This World, or This Means War. Or about Story Games Seattle, a public meetup I ran for eight years. Or how way back in the 80s I was a camper and then councilor at the Shippensburg D&D summer camp, and all the awesome teen-nerd shenanigans that entailed.

I've also been blogging about all this stuff for 20 years, because I love talking about games.

Ask me, as they say, anything.

UPDATE: I'll be off and on today but I'm still answering questions! If you've got 'em, post 'em!

DOUBLE UPDATE: And as of right now I am entirely caught up answering questions. Let's take a moment to celebrate.

Disco Elysium started out as a tabletop RPG and theirs was pretty neat:

Intellect (INT) — Reasoning & Knowledge

• Logic (deduction and rational conclusions)
• Encyclopedia (factual knowledge about the world)
• Rhetoric (debate, persuasion, and spotting flawed logic)
• Drama (lying, acting, and detecting deceit)
• Conceptualisation (art, abstract ideas, and pattern recognition)
• Visual Calculus (reconstructing crime scenes and spatial physics)

Psyche (PSY) — Intuition & Emotion

• Volition (mental fortitude and self-control; governs Morale)
• Inland Empire (gut feelings, surreal imagination, and premonitions)
• Empathy (understanding and feeling other people's emotions)
• Authority (assertiveness, dominance, and command)
• Esprit de Corps (police instinct and brotherhood with precinct)
• Suggestion (charm, charisma, and subtle influence)

Physique (FYS) — Strength & Stamina

• Endurance (physical toughness and stamina; governs Health)
• Pain Threshold (withstanding physical and emotional pain)
• Physical Instrument (brute force and raw muscle)
• Electrochemistry (cravings, pleasure-seeking, and substance affinity)
• Shivers (visceral awareness of the city around you)
• Half Light (fight-or-flight, panic, and threat recognition)

Motorics (MOT) — Coordination & Agility

• Hand/Eye Coordination (dexterity and manual precision)
• Perception (noting small physical details in your environment)
• Reaction Speed (reflexes, quick wit, and fast answers)
• Savoir Faire (athletic style, parkour, and smoothness)
• Interfacing (repairing, fine motor control, and handling objects)
• Composure (keeping your cool and hiding your inner turmoil)
• (source: gamefaqs)

Ea-nāṣir is a copper merchant from Ur.

Ea-nāṣir sold bad copper.

Ea-nāṣir received many complaint tablets.

Ea-nāṣir made many enemies.

Ea-nāṣir Must Die!

Ea-nāṣir Must Die! is a Bronze Age sword and sorcery old school Tabletop RPG adventure, designed for Mark of the Odd games (playtested using Into the Bronze). A short house crawl adventure for 3-5 players, inspired by the historical figure and meme, Ea-nāṣir.

Featuring:

• A somewhat historical rendition of Ea-nāṣir’s house with 10 rooms fitting for a 3-4 hour one-shot, drawn in isometric style!
• Illustrations for the NPCs, drawn like statues and carvings of Ancient Mesopotamia!
• Portents for the house, inspired by Omens from Mythic Bastionland and Corpo Schemes from Eco Mofos!! Islands of Weirdhope. The house has its own story to tell!

Physical (US): https://plusoneexp.com/products/ea-nasir-must-die

Physical (UK): https://www.copypastecoop.com/shop/p/ea-nir-must-die

PDF: https://davidblandy.itch.io/ea-nasir-must-die

As we get closer to the end of the year, I want to hear about every ones games.

What games have you played this year? What did you like/dislike about it? How are you campaigns going?

I ran:

Dragonbane sandbox hexcrawl for about 17 sessions, it was a lot of fun but my players and myself really wanted to get back into a more narrative focused campaign. We also didn't really enjoy doing a hexcrawl as much as we thought we would, even though Dragonbane is a fantastic system. I did run a 5 session campaign with Dragonbane too.

Orbital Blues: I ran about 4 sessions before it fizzled out, mostly because one of my players had an emergency and had to stop the game for a bit, and I just kinda lost steam on it. Otherwise a great system.

Grimwild: CE Edition: Currently running this system. Love, love, love it. Really found my stride as a GM with this system, players really enjoy the narrative driven games. Only got to run about 3 sessions so far, but love it so much.

I played:

Traveller: Character creation is so fun, I think its a great system but the GM that was running it was not great unfortunately. So I don't think I got to fully experience it.

Nimble: Great, fast paced system, definitely a great alternative to DnD if you want something lighter. Fun campaign with a first time GM.

I'm a psychology student currently exploring tabletop role-playing games as a potential subject for my undergraduate thesis. I've been reading academic research on the topic, particularly regarding wellbeing, self-confidence, and personal development, and I believe there's a lot more to understand about the psychological processes involved.

Through my own observations, I've seen players become more confident, less inhibited, and more comfortable expressing themselves. I'd like to investigate what might explain these experiences and whether they extend beyond the gaming table.

I'm looking for a focused, researchable question that goes beyond simply asking whether RPGs are beneficial, while remaining grounded in psychological theory and evidence.

For those familiar with tabletop RPGs or the existing research, what aspects of the hobby do you think deserve more serious psychological investigation?

I am running a game of Lancer Battle Group. only one problem, out side of ship to ship engagements characters and roleplay is almost comically basic. I want to run a game similar to classic star trek or battle star galatica. With ship/fleet politics and commanders hashing out issues over call rather than exclusively through guns. I also want to occasionally do ground expeditions with a potential for science and brutal but quick combat. I've thought of completely homebrewing something basic but wanted to ask around to see if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks in advanced!

I'm planning my <edit> online <\edit> group's Halloween one-shot/two-shot, and I'm seeking out underrated or lesser-known sci-fi horror adventures (and systems, too). Specifically:

• No official Mothership modules (third party's fine).
• No official ALIEN adventures (fan-made ones are fine, if there are any).
• No official Delta Green operations (fan-made ones are fine, since there are literally over a thousand of those).

One lesser-known sci-fi horror game I'll nominate is Laughing Kaiju's The Zone, an online (and physical) Stalker/Annihilation-like GMless game about traveling (and losing yourself in) an alien Zone in search of a wish granter hidden in its center. Half a decade after playing it, my players still rave about and reference the strange and dramatic encounters.

See title

Hey Party People,

I want to manifest something into the world, and I don't know how to do it, so Im going to post on reddit, pat myself on the back, and tell my therapist I did all I could. Mostly because of the back pat.

The folks at MCDM released the 3rd core book for Draw Steel. Its called Encounters. I wish every game had this book.

For those not in the know, Encounters is a 300 page book in 5 sections: Delves, Montages, Negotiations, Heroic Tests, and Dastards. Its all modular content. So there are 20ish short dungeons complete with room descriptions and monster stats. They are for all levels of play. You can just dump one into your game. Done.

Do you need a montage scene to get through a storm or whatever? Page 225. Read. Make a note in your prep. Run that thing on game night. Want to spice up a monster for a set piece combat scene? 276.

This isn't a post about Draw Steel, though I do love the game.

The Encounters book is a functional. Need a one shot? Grab the stuff. Go. Want to design your own one shot? Look at how they do the things, adapt your stuff to fit that.

I want this book for any game before I want a setting guide. I want a book of 100 clocks and the various elements needed to progress them. If your game has shopping and commerce, I want a dozen item shops stocked with items and ready to go. I want monster foreshadowing stuff for narrative games. Show me what your game looks like with muscle and skin on those bones.

But Mike, you say, in a narrative game, this stuff is up to the players at the table! Having 100 clocks doesn't give you the clock you need - and even if it did, who's to say your players won't find some weird work around and completely nullify the clock itself?

Well, strawman, I think you're wrong. If I have 100 clocks, I certainly have one close enough to the one I need to run, and if the party finds a way around it, awesome, I can hit them with the next scene and I'll be more prepared to improvise that with the book of Frankenparts (terrible name for modular content) for your game.

Set your game masters up to run your game. I'm going to run it anyway because theres so much cool stuff out there, but when its easy to run your game, everyone wins.

Please do this.

Okay. Now it's time for that back pat.

Since Seven Havens started I've been rewatching both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra and toying with the idea of a game in those worlds.

However the official game is not for me/not for our group, so I'm wondering what else people would recommend?

Kickstarter Page

13 Omens, the new rules light RPG from Paizo, launched it's Kickstarter today. The rules have been available for a couple of weeks now, and there's a foundry module as well.

I've skimmed through the rules, and it seems like a solid system. It's actually way more rules light than I was expecting given it's published by Paizo. I really like that it's designed for 1-shots, since I find 1-shots are the easiest scenarios to find time for. Plus I find 1-shots and horror go really well together.

The thing I find most interesting is the story aspects. If you haven't read the rules yet, each character has 10 aspects (aka their skills and attributes). Five of those aspects (Courage, Evade, Fight, Luck, and Perception) are part of every character. The other five aspects are called story aspects, and they change from scenario to scenario). It seems like a really nice way of bringing the more "narrow" or "thematic" skills you see from more rules heavy systems into a rules light system.

I'm thinking of backing it, but I've already got a few horror RPGs in my collection, so this might just get thrown into the pile and never played.

I'm very curious to see what people think, especially if you've already found the time to try out the system.