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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 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?

Hello there!

In the past two weeks I've been meaning to make a hack of Cortex Prime to serve for an idea I had, and then I realized that what I meant to do very likely isn't an unique idea and decided to ask y'all first.

I'm looking for a game that's very social intrigue based but one that is set in a fantastical setting. I don't mind the tech level very much, it could be bronze age up to some faux-techno setting (i.e. steampunk, magitech, etc), as long it's distinctly fantasy and not contemporary.

I want it to be accomodating to long-term campaigns. I will consider PbtA games, but I don't think they're very fit for long-term play. It's very important that the character advancement mechanic is not tied to "exploration", travel or combat.

It's a bonus but I'd like for a game to be somewhat more hopeful and optimistic. I expect a lot of systems on the niche will go towards being edgy, though, and I already crossed over so many options (list below) I fear that the sample sizing is now small. Thus, I don't mind if a game is edgy. If anything else because I'd like to learn about it anyway.

I already know of and please don't recommend me:

• Legends of the Five Rings

• World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness

• Blades in the Dark

• Spire

• Houses of the Blooded and Blood and Honor

• Burning Wheel

• Blue Rose

• Anything to do with Game of Thrones (including the sword the crown and the unspeakable power)

• Other generic systems. If nothing else is found, I already will hack Cortex Prime for the job.

We're nearing the end of our Backerkit campaign for "Roots of Soledad", a GM-less RPG set in a South American setting of magic realism. And I just want to say why this game feels important to me. I mean, I love role-playing, so there's that! But there's something about this game that is just fine-tuned to my play style and sensibilities, and after hundreds of games it still tickles a specific nerve.

I was in Italy recently (I live in Norway), and got to play with several groups of fun people I had hardly or never met before. And the experiences, while wildly different in many ways, had one thing in common: The way it feels once the game is underway.

That thing where there's a dialogue or interaction between two characters - whether it be between your proud peasant and her evil doppelganger, or between her and her understanding but dying father - and everyone is paying attention.

Where you can feel the tension in the air, the milliseconds passing after your character just said something intensely dramatic to the other one, and you are waiting for the other player's response. And then they hit you with a twist, or even better, with something just simple and deeply real. And it just feels perfect, and your response comes out and you see the look in their eyes as they digest the escalation, or the emotion, or the tension of the drama unfolding further.

And you know that these moments will happen again, and again. This session, this campaign.

So yeah. I hope you will feel that way too, if you choose to back it. I'm pretty sure you will.

Back "The Roots of Soledad" - last day of the campaign!

I have a recurring problem with tabletop RPGs. I spend a lot of time creating a character, thinking about their class, personality, aesthetic, backstory, everything — but after a while, I start disliking them for no clear reason.

Sometimes I lose interest in the fantasy of the character, sometimes the class stops feeling fun, and sometimes I just look at the character and think ‘this isn’t me anymore.’ It makes it hard to stay invested in long campaigns because I constantly want to change characters or completely remake them.

The weird part is that I usually really like the character at first. The excitement is real, but it fades fast. I also tend to swing between very different archetypes, like wanting a melee fighter one week and a fragile caster the next.

Does anyone else deal with this? How do you make characters that stay interesting to you long-term?

Tales of Argosa, which is billed as Low Fantasy Gaming 2e, but for some reason grabbed my interest in a way that LFG never really did, is DotD on Drivethrurpg.com, and it's now only $7.49.

I'm not affiliated with the game, with Drivethru, or anything. Also, I have to admit I haven't run, played, or even completely read this game. But it's sitting on my TBR pile with Legend in the Mist, Dolmenwood, and Stonetop, where LFG never even got pulled out of the download folder.

I know we have some Argosa fans here. Maybe u/Logen_Nein could chime in with more of the virtues?

It's also got a ton of free online support tools, too, and a great publisher.

For a game that's usually almost $25, this is a great DotD price.

Anyhow, I hope someone who's been on the fence gets a bargain today!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479871/tales-of-argosa

I would like to run a game of Traveller5 but I am finding it difficult to parse. Am I just an idiot or is this game ludicrously hard to wrap your head around?

Maybe you can tell by my name, but I'm a big TES fan. I'm looking for a generic system that can run the TES kind of fantasy well. Yes, I know most people consider it to be somewhat generic fantasy that could be ran in dnd or pathfinder but I think the depth of the magic system, mythology, races, etc. makes dnd or pathfinder (and most elf games) undesirable.

Currently considering GURPs and SWADE. Any others?

I recently watched some gameplay for the new 007 game and it generated an interest in that genre. Specifically I’m looking for a game with a wide variety of missions, some crazy gadgets, and pulpy action. Any recommendations are appreciated!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/gandergaming/grok-2nd-edition

What is Grok?!

Grok?! 2e is a [100% human made] rules-light science fantasy RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world of advanced technomancy and boundless plausibility.

In this world of post-apocalyptic technomancy, nearly anything is plausible.

• Sail across the starry Aether and explore alien worlds.
• Rebel against authoritarian AI alongside trans-dimensional migrants.
• Discover disparate cultures atop hovering isles.
• Survive the chaotic mana-irradiated wasteland.
• Delve dungeons for powerful relics and combat devolved monstrosities.
• Confront the other-dimensional nothingness spawned within the hollow planet.

Inspirational touchstones for the world of Grok?! range from Arzach, Brazil, Discworld, Dying Earth, Fantastic Planet, Flash Gordon, Heavy Metal, Space Team, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Labyrinth, Wizards, and countless others.

The unique game system was developed with inspiration from both OSR/NSR and narrative tabletop RPGS, most notably Fate, Cortex Prime, Freeform Universal, Index Card RPG, Cairn, Electric Bastionland, Ultraviolet Grasslands, and Savage Worlds.

Grok?! 2nd Edition is content complete, and will be printed as a 240-page full-color hardcover, complete with Refined Core Rules, an Expanded Setting, a Full Campaign, Solo Rules, GM Toolkits, and a full complement of add-ons: a Quickstart Guide, GM Screen, Pregen Character Pad, System Reference Booklet, and Coloring Book.

The Setting

• Planet Grok was once a haven for trans-dimensional migrants, and a bastion of advanced technomancy, until a cataclysm splintered the world.
• Now, long abandoned travelers sail across the vast Aether between planets, struggling to survive the abyss of space and the hostile alien lifeforms they’ve awakened.
• Rebel indentured citizens revolt against the deranged AI that controls the deteriorating space station, called the Simulacrum, that encapsulates and irradiates the planet.
• Eccentric and isolated societies maturate within inverted cities that float among the clouds on Hovering Isles.
• Mutant vagabonds traverse the Wastelands for salvage, inundated with phosphorescent radiation from the space station above and hunted by monstrosities from below the surface.
• Devolved monstrosities haunt the labyrinthine Underworld passages, coveting the relics of immense power long abandoned within.
• And all the while, within the Nether megacity in the center of the planet, ancient other-dimensional gods and their eldritch brood offer worship to the Voidstar from which they were cast: an infinite nothingness that threatens to consume reality.

Why Grok?!

• Expansive setting. A world of boundless plausibility and streamlined rules that cater to adventures of nearly every type.
• Rules light. Draws heavy inspiration from NSR/OSR and narrative games alike, offering a versatile and intuitive system for any setting.
• Universal Action Resolution. Uses a single resolution system for all character actions, whether fighting a mechalizard, casting a magic spell, or repairing a flux-decombobulator.
• Description Based Modifiers. Descriptive Aspects are integral to the resolution system, allowing anything to have mechanical impact on an Action's success.
• Player Facing Rolls. Ensures fast action resolution with constant player engagement, where every roll matters.
• Slot Based Resources. An Asset Slot system distills resource management of inventory, spells, damage, and temporary effects, into a single cohesive system.
• Open License. The SRD is licensed under Creative Commons, allowing you to freely hack and publish your work based on the game.

What's In A Name

Grok, both the term and the game, existed before Elon named his AI slop-bot.

Ultimately, I chose to keep the name for several reasons:

• I'd rather ensure that fans of the Zine recognize the 2nd Edition as a continuation and have the opportunity to enjoy it.
• I'd rather keep my artistic integrity and trust my gut, even if the cost is losing out on potential new readers.
• I'd rather stand futilely opposed to the titanic weight of societal influence that the billionaire class has over the world. I know that sounds grandiose and naive, so to put it bluntly: Elon can kick rocks.

I'm an indie developer with a niche tabletop game. My work isn't going to take the world by storm regardless of its name.

I like the name, and I'm keeping it, market share be damned.