**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.

Is there a TTRPG publisher you’re so consistently satisfied with that you buy their books with little to no hesitation?

Publishers like Paizo, Chaosium, Free League, Modiphius, Goodman Games, etc...

Who’s that publisher for you, and what made them earn that level of trust?

This week's RPG is CBR+PNK!

Have you played it? Have you run/GM'd it? How did it go?

What's your favourite memory from the game?

What's the best thing about the game?

What's the worst? How would you improve it?

How does it compare to other Cyberpunk RPGs?

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Last week was Warhammer FRPG. Join us again next week for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons [2E]!

As much as I root for my players and try to support their initiatives and ideas, sometimes they fail. Do you have to make them succeed at all costs for the sake of the adventure or just accept that every module cannot be successful.

I am asking because for the first time, an adventure that I ran wasn't successfully completed. It wasn't a bad session but it clearly ended in an unconclusive dead-end. They did not save the day.

I am not entirely set but I went with "if they screw up, they screw up". No everyone is a hero.

What's your view on this? Success at all costs? Go with defeat?

XP, milestones, character points etc…. What is your preferred method of character advancement?

I was on Giants In The Playground today and I saw a thread on their forum that caught my eye. It was about casual perspectives that are often lost when discussing games online.

Most of the thread got hung up on mechanics so I decided to just jump to the end and give my own take. I thought it may be an interesting conversation starter here:

A casual perspective easily lost is that many casual people don't really play D&D as a game.

As a game dev, one bitter pill that I had to swallow was the reality that most people do not actually care about game mechanics. Which hurt, a little.

The 5e wave -- emboldened by Critical Role & COVID -- are mostly casual gamers who see D&D akin to Fortnite, Dead By Daylight, Fall Guys, and other social games. Sometimes, insultingly called "Friend Slop."

There is a first layer of casual where players are pretty much fine as long as the game is a good enough excuse to hangout with their friends. They just want to hangout with an activity to drive conversation. All the "friend slop" titles are no different to them than a poker night. It's just an excuse to hangout.

These mega casual players are probably the majority of the current hobby.

After that, you got the people who do care about it as a game, but only surface level. They want to make a cool build or have some fun specific to D&D...but, if you sat there and got really deep into game dev, they'd tune out.

Want to chat about making Toph Beifong in 5e? They'd love that. Want to talk about class balance and the game design philosophy underpinning 5e that means you can't ever actually feel like Toph ---- because the game can't let any one person be that good, especially at low levels, since it ruins the point of team balance and challenging combat design & D&D uses a specific effect system when compared to the freeform nature of bending so you'd likely need to borrow Star Wars Saga's Use The Force Check OR play a game with freeform magic like Fate or Cortex or PbtA ---, they tune out.

That group is smaller, but probably the second largest group of players.

We are in the third, fourth and fifth groups. People who really get in the nitty gritty on games, people who play games other than D&D, and even people who make our own games. And we are probably the smallest groups. Our encloypedic knowledge of gaming history, our discussion on mechanics, our lists of game recommendations, etc. is weird to the other two groups.

Not that we should divide nor should there be animosity. Just a reality we like this game and hobby for different reasons. And that can preclude us from enjoying things that they can easily enjoy. And they may not appreciate the things we enjoy because things like ludonarrative synergy or more engaging gameplay is not why they are in the hobby.

Edit: Inb4 we go on a tangent on how to do Toph in 5e.

Inspired by this post and the endless deluge of videos talking about them. I don't think I've ever actually seen or heard of one being used, it's always endless hypotheticals about their "storytelling potential" or whatever, when the format (when kept to a strict 5 rooms) seems very limiting.

Hell, even the smallest dungeon I've personally ran was 6 rooms (Bloat, from Mork Borg). Idk I've always thought they were a silly idea.

Hello,

I am very new to this whole thing, i started playing some DND last year with friends but probably only know half the rules and kind of make up the rest. The one thing i always struggle with most is making combat engaging and fun, with a big group (7 players) it always seems to get boring for some.

Now to my understanding most people here think that DND is quite a bad system and there are way better ones with better combat, so i wanted to know if you could recommend me some of those. The only problem is that i mostly only understand half the words being written here.

I don't know what ogla or 5e or actually any abbreviations mean so it would be nice if you kept that in mind. Thank you

Hi. I'm fully aware that my request might sound silly or absurd, but it's been haunting me for a few weeks now.

I had a dream where I went to a flea market and found an old RPG rulebook with a black cover, a drawing of a castle in thin silver lines, and the name in Gothic script. Very understated.

Inside, the yellowed pages contained complex rules in typewriter font, interspersed with detailed drawings of corpses or menacing goblins.

Does this description ring any bells for the old-timers here? Even remotely similar?

And we're back with the next episode of our Chuubos Exocolonist actual play:

Episode 8 - (YT, Podbean) - Our Exocolonists celebrate Vertumnalia, compete against kids five years younger than them, and try convincing the adults that breaking the rules was actually a good thing they did and they should totally be trusted for that...

Previous post

Mothership is going to be my group’s first foray into sci-fi and horror, and I’m so excited! However, in the Quinn’s Quest review (in which he showers Mothership with praise), his biggest complaint was that the game doesn’t do anything to support character growth.

I figured this is because Mothership feels more well suited for a one shot (or multi-shot) since characters will die, but…I’m sure there’s something I can do about this?

I want my players to not play caricatures or horror stereotypes because I want their deaths to feel BIG when it happens! So what would you do?

What tools or strategies do you use to give more character care and muscle to systems that do nothing to support that beyond what you can bring as a GM?

I've been looking for a good place to go for video reviews of TTRPGs. Any suggestions?