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so i am in a paid dnd game on startplaying and it is going great so far or so i thought ig? i am a player and the DM messaged me explaining that one of the other players isnt vibing with me on an interpersonal level. asking me to limit contact with them both at and above table. and menimize all character interaction. so basically no talking to them OOC or in character or message.

i agreed to it considering i havent even talked with him before in character. he joined us in our ongoing campaign and we hadnt had the chance to speak ingame. only other interactions we had were when i and the others would laugh about his character jokes,when he first joined and talked about himself and i asked some questions about his profession, and finally when i messaged him one time post session just complimenting his RP since he did RP really well. i didnt do a follow up or anything to that message and just assumed he just ignored it.

i am making this post to vent but also because this situation feels really weird and i hope to get some adivce or have someone talk about similar situation they had. thanks for reading!

update: i just messaged the DM after reading the comment and asked to try to talk out the situation here is what i said

actually. thinking all this through this isnt the correct way at all dealing with this. even if it is not talking with one player it goes deeper since this is a collaborate team game. i would rather that i talk with him with you there to mediate and see if we can talk it out or see what issues he has and if there are ways to make it better. otherwise i might decide to leave if i am being honest. not messaging them is very okay, no talking about table is managable but no interaction what so ever is just unreasonable.

edit to some additional info: for the people who are saying the DM is doing this just to keep his money safe you might be onto something considering he is a full time DM(in his own words). i would like to give him the benefit of the doubt that he isn't just thinking of band-aiding the situation since he does genuinely put effort into the game but the way this is handled is just wrong.

edit to add: i have just remmebered something big that happened last session. we were joking before the game about tips and such and the same player immediately went and tipped the DM 30 bucks and sent the image of the tip in the chat as proof. maybe that is why the DM is immediately going with this. since he knew he'd get more money of keeping this player happy.

update: the DM messaged me back with this:I spoke with him about it and he decided to leave the campaign than cause any issues.

And the player send a good bye message in the server chat. They didnt even give me the chance to speak with them beside the message calling out the DM and asking to discuss stuff. i think i might keep playing or at least go to next session and see how it goes. depending on it i'll stay or leave. finally,i want to thank everyone who commented and helped me in standing up for myself regarding this matter. it's nice feeling the support from community.

I love Free League as much as the next reasonable person. Like I think their Twilight 2000 is one of the best-designed games in years, and if you took out a few sentences of copaganda I think Blade Runner would be a completely perfect RPG take on that IP, and one of the most morally complex games out there.

But I keep thinking about the only real criticism that gets leveled against FL—that they're making too many games (especially licensed ones) and not enough scenarios and sourcebooks for their existing ones.

I totally get the business decision. Publishers always say that corebooks outsell other products like crazy. And I get that FL does support some of its games at a pretty steady cadence, especially Alien, Vaesen, and The One Ring. But seeing them expand out to games like The Walking Dead RPG (which I think has some neat mechanics) and Invincible, while Blade Runner has just two published cases you can play, three years into the game coming out, makes me wonder if there's some other way they could get more supplemental material out there. PDF-only Blade Runner case files or Twilight 2000/The Walking Dead setting books would be really popular, I bet, even if they didn't have much (if any) new artwork.

This is a long-winded way of asking if others think FL is focusing too much on more games, and not enough on supporting them. I used to think people with that opinion were being entitled whiners, but I'm starting to see their point. Or I'm just an entitled whiner too.

EDIT: Just want to say this has already been a great discussion. I really didn't post this as clickbait—I think FL is always interesting to talk and hear about, and people are coming in with great insights and points. Especially about my weirdly specific expectations!

Me and my group have been wanting to try it for some time now. What is the current consensus on the game?

EDIT:

Okay, after seeing the feedback here, I think we will like the system, although we'll keep a look at the Feast/Famine effect that may occur.

In general, while I'm more of a fan of Trad games like the D&D-likes, but my friends are 50%/50% on being power gamers and theater kids, with the rest not caring much for either side and just wanting to have a good time with friends.

When I was younger, all my characters used to be around 25. Eventually, I grew older and they grow older than me. These days, I am well over 40 and my characters tend to be younger than me but when I roleplay an old curmudgeon I feel weirdly comfortable.

What are your PC's age-ranges?

This week I have played in my last game of 2025, I thought it would be fun to breakdown everything I played this year and some thoughts / feelings about them as a way to close out a year experiancing a whole bunch of RPGs wed never played before. These were broadly speaking, with the same group of people playing in person roughly once a month:

1 - The Wildsea (GMing) Technically we started this back in 2024 but we had our final session finishing off an 8 month game back in February. I absolutely adore this game, and it is what finally got me to move away from D&D and explore other games. The systems are pretty easy to pick up and introduce to people at any level of experience but with enough character options to feel meaningful. Being the first RPG outside of D&D / Pathfinder that we'd played it took a few sessions to get to grips with running it but by the end it was really great to have something so low on prep and smooth to run.

2 - Maus Ritter (GMing) This is definitely one of those games that I want to go back to now we've played some other systems, the really simple rules and tiny critter setting really appealed to our table, but I think coming from some a high octane swashbukling adventure, the players really struggled with the lethality of the system, not wanting to risk doing anything too dangerous in case they lost their mouse. So it fell flat a little bit, with the PCs wondering around getting clues as to what was going on but not really pursuing anything. Only had 2 PCs on that one so might have contributed to it, definitely want to retry again in the future.

3 - CBR+PNK (Gming) Ran the Mind The Gap scenario that is included. Great fun, nice simplified FinD ruleset. This was introducing a couple more players to non D&D systems and they really enjoyed how easy it was to pick up and play. It's a bit of a shame that the system is made with one shots in mind because I think that we could have enjoyed playing more of this with the characters, I know there are some rules to sort of create a slightly longer campaign so we may go back, however...

4 - Scum and Villiany (GMing) Springboarding off from the simplified Forged in the Dark ruleset, we decided to go into Scum and Villiany, running a smuggler / outlaw style game. This was a big hit with everyone at the table, with a sale going south resulting in the PCs fleeing through the streets from mercenaries and assassins, stealing a car and eventually getting back to their ship just as scavengers have broken in to ambush them. All culminating in a tense hand off with the Hegemony. Really enjoyed running this, I did find the balance of effect / threat a bit tricky to manage since players are so keen to do stuff before you can explain potential outcomes etc, so mostly just kept stuff at 2,2 which might have made some bits a little easy, but eh, the players enjoyed it.

5 - Land of Eem (GMing) I don't even remember what madness lead me to impulse buy a £140 delux box set of a game I had heard nothing about, but I think I saw "muppets meets Lord of the Rings" and went straight to "shut up and take my money" futurama meme. Pretty happy I did though, as the game is pretty good. The amount of random tables in these books is insane, in a good way, and made running a hex crawl really easy but with enough variety and interest that my players genuinely thought I'd prepped loads for it when really it was about half a page. We did struggle a bit with the different phases of conflict, people not really liking that you have to decide whether your going to talk or improvise or attack before anyone takes a turn but I think that was just part of familiarising ourselves with the game.

6 - Alien RPG (GMing) I think this actually came after Maus Ritter, but I don't want to go back and change the list numbers. We played the Chariot of the Gods box set, phenominal experience, people all played their objectives really well, the 3rd act was incredible as one of my players, who nobody expected to ever do anything bad, left them all to die was absolute cinema. If I had any criticism it would be that the air supply checks were weird and nobody actually ever got out of their space suits exposing themselves to potentially nasty things, at one point they insisted on finding more space suits to get more oxygen, With hindsight I should have said they were sabotaged or something. I have since got the Evolved edition of the core book and it does make it a lot easier to read and learn, I look forward to playing the new Scenario I got as well.

7 - D&D (Player) Somewhere in the middle of the year I felt like I wanted to play D&D again, but I absolutely would not be GMing it, so I went and found a local in person group near me and joined up. Annnddd... I hate it... I absolutely, completely hate it. now I'll accept some blame, I did decide to play a totem path Barbarian, which is probably one of the least exciting classes possible, but it really made me realise how having played a few different games, how boring character progression is in D&D, you essentially make all your decisions when you create your character and then just wait to level up. And Combat is so painful compared to the likes of Wildsea or S&V. Even compared to Land of Eem or Alien which have slightly slower combat, it's just aweful. You take your turn and then basically wait 20 minutes for it to come back to your turn (if your lucky... it took nearly 40 minutes when we had 3 indecisive spell casters who didn't start looking at their spells until it was their turn)... I also have a lot of gripes with the DM, who's adventure philosophy is basically edge lord rollercoaster... I've stuck in there though and good news is there is some interest in that group for me to run some Wildsea for them, so hopefully they can be shown the light.

8 - Nice Marines (Player) Joined a 1 shot at a convention, I actually owned the Grant Howitt 1 shot collection but hadn't got any to the table, so was a happy accident that I stumbled into a game being run at a convention and managed to slot myself in. Was a blast, my Marine tried to tell a joke and ended up Orbitally Bombarding the City hall because I suceeded too well... We then went on the strap rocket launchers to a herd of cows and parade them through the street (because you can't not use the "organsing a parade" skill. Much Death Insued. 10/10 would serve the imperium again.

9 - Goblin Quest (Player) At the same event as Nice Marines, a game being run by a chap who actually worked at RR&D, so that was cool. our hapless goblins went on an adventure to have a party in Human Town, much scatalogical humour ensued, including using our knowledge of animals to lure a Poopoise out of a river of poo to swim us across, and summoning a pack of pidgeon, which gave one poor goblin the ability to fly upwards, about 100 ft before dropping them to their deaths. Actually intend to run a game of this in the new year, was supposed to be a Xmas gathering but plans had to be cancelled sadly.

10 - Heart The City Beneath (GMing) As a funny accident, Heart was the next home game I had planned before going to a gaming convention, so ended up playing 3 RR&D published games back to back. This game is just so cool, my only dissapointment was that we only played 2 sessions, so didn't progress to the point of getting Zenith abilities etc. We played the quick start adventure and while the table did really enjoy it, I think we rushed through it a bit too quick, I think it could have been better with a bit more open exploration rather than just heading straight for the Drowned Queen. The Fallout system is really interesting but a did realise after running that I had maybe slightly messed up, assuming that a maxed out stress bar meant automatic Major stress, which I think rereading afterwards it should have still been a dice roll, that could have resulted in no fallout on an 11-12 or at least miinor fallout on 1-6 this did result in some very hurt players when a Butcher ambushed them and crit 2 characters... As a whole the players enjoyed it, although I did find one player struggled with feeling like the fallout system was too punishing (but that is probably more my fault).

11 - Eat the Reich (GMing) Okay 4 RR&D games in a row... This was a suprise game for the table for Halloween, I didn't tell them ahead of time what it was, describing the Paris City Scape and panning up to reveal airships and and AA tracers lighting up the sky before panning way up into the sky into an allied bomber with metal coffins suspended from the cargobay before finally revealing the book. Sadly I don't think the game was quite as good as I'd hoped, possibly just the wrong group, but the roleplay sider quickly fell away as people worked out how to consistantly maximise their dice pool and just focus in on hitting objectives. Some unfortunately dice luck on my part didnt help, I seemed to be particularly cursed and rolled very few successes against them all evening, meaning they didn't even have to defend themselves that much. a kid you not, at one point, a had a pool of 11 D6s and not one of them rolled above a 3. The evening was good and we all cheered as they drank Hitlers blood, but I was a little dissapointed.

12 - Mothership (Gming) Closing out the year with a bang. Ran a one shot using the 1000 Jumps Too Far scenario from Hull Breach. I think it goes without saying that Mothership is fantastic, super straight forward to learn and run. I liked the scenario as it wasn't typical space alien horror but about navigating 3 factions and getting to grips with what is happening annd how to survive the next 24 hours. Strangely though, my players only really spoke to the first faction they met, learned some tid bits and came up with a pretty terrible plan that ended up getting someone killed to boobytrapped air vents before fatally irradiating themselves in the engine room because they didn't talk to anyone. (In fact I gave one of them a Giegarcounter since they were looking like they were going in that direction and the player literally gave it away to an NPC for no reason). It was a good bookend with Mausritter at the beginning of the year though as they definitely wern't precious about their characters by that point. One player giggled in delight as their character burnt to death in a firey explosion.

2026 and beyond: So as mentioned above, on Jan 3rd I'll be running a Xmas themed Goblin Quest, which should have been at xmas but got pushed back. And hopefully I'll be introducing a new group to The Wildsea. Besides that, I have a few other games so far that I'm excited to play, including Triangle Agency, Veasen, Paranoia, Slug Blaster, Alien Evolved Edition, Pico and The Discworld RPG when I get the physical books from the Kickstarters. Also looking at Tales from the Loop, Outgunned and probably a few others that caught my eye. I'm really glad that I branched out from D&D, I don't think I'd be playing anything at this point if that was all I had!

And that's where we are now. technically speaking I have maybe 1 more D&D session before the end of the year but that hardly counts... Not sure if this is of any interest to anyone, but if you did read through to the end, well done! If you have any recommendations, I'd love to hear them and add them to my ever growing collection.

I've been reading through a ton of systems recently and have been curious to hear people's perspectives on their respective "favorite generic system." Open D6, Cortex Prime, and Savage World have all been a blast to read through, though they each have aspects that may appeal to some people and not others. What really draws you to that system? What is its strength/Weaknesses? I won't lie though. So far, my favorite is Cortex Prime.

Following up on a previous post where we discussed single core book systems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/s/FnAEoetPyo

What are some examples on the opposite end, games where the essential rules or GM tools are frustratingly split across multiple books, effectively forcing you to buy several just to get started?

Not talking about optional expansions or lore splatbooks, but cases where the core experience itself feels unnecessarily divided across multiple volumes. Curious to hear your examples and experiences.

Where do people in the Sac area like to shop for RPGs? Most places I've shopped at cater to trading cards and war gaming, which makes sense because those are the money makers. But I long for a shop that is more like a book store, because I would like to browse all these wonderful RPGs in person instead of just online. But does such a place exist?

I'm looking for any RPG adventures (though system suggestions are welcome too) about surviving on a hostile planet, like a crew crashing landing there or something. Exploration and survival, weird alien wildlife, secrets of the planet, etc.

I'm specifically looking for vibes along the lines of Predator: Badlands and Metroid Prime (seeing and playing those really sparked the need), or even something like Riddick/Pitch Black or Returnal.

If the adventure has an old race/ruins that's definitely a bonus.

I've tried searching but haven't had a ton of luck so far.

This one is a short review, because there isn't much to rant about. It's one of those books that does exactly what I expected, nothing less, and only a bit more. Which is exactly what I like about it.

I'm currently running a Grimwild campaign with a group of four. It is working well, however the system's roots are in typical DND-style adventures and dungeon delving, whereas I'm running a long-term epic narrative campaign. Sometimes the two don't align. Here's what I'm looking for:

• Low-Medium complexity/rules
• Global-scale, PCs travel from continent to continent and the BBEG is basically Jesus
• Freeform PC action
• Freeform/easily homebrewed magic with opportunity for interesting downsides (ie dangerous magic can cause you to lose control, etc)
• Mechanics on making alliances and bonds. The PCs are meeting a variety of different cultures and communities which they will need to assemble and lead against the BBEG
• Mechanics that incentivize character arcs or complications is a plus

I'm currently looking at Fellowship 2e, as upon first glance it seems literally perfect as the campaign matches the description of the Revolution supplement. However I am seeing some big criticisms of it (challenges not posing an actual threat, lots of unnecessary bookkeeping, mechanics feeling unplay-tested). I'd try it out but the common consensus is it takes 4-5 sessions to click and I was not able to find too many other thoughts online. If anyone has any suggestions for these, please let me know!