**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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As the title says.

This, this and another post about a GM creating some handmade letter handouts for his players which I can no longer find recently all followed the same pattern. The posts were made by accounts created days ago, usually with multiple posts in very unconnected but popular subreddits. Usually there were some random comments made on other posts, done in french for some reason.

The posts all had a very similar pattern of complaining about some personal issue that demanded either sympathy or advice from their readers, always written in the most self-hating tone possible. If they described players acting badly, they always ruled out the immediate option of talking it over like adults.

None of these accounts seem to have any interest in responding to comments on their post, despite writing posts that are quite long about deeply personal issues. By the way, they seem to have a lot of deeply personal issues, judging by their other posts on other subreddits.

I might be wrong about some of these, but I would advice people to be skeptical about the stories that get posted here, and not let it distort their view of how other people actually play or interact. Bots like these can make dysfunctional groups seem way more common than they actually are.

Is the game good and what kind of games is it mostly for?

Also, if I buy the physical edition do I get the PDF too or is that separate?

Greetings from Brazil, fellow RPG enthusiasts! While exploring the GUMSHOE system—starting with Trail of Cthulhu—I stumbled upon The Esoterrorists, a very intriguing horror and investigation RPG. When I tried to find some content about it on YouTube—like recordings of actual play sessions—all I could find were reviews of the system itself, the rulebook, and so on. Even on Reddit, I’ve seen very few people talking about this TTRPG. Have you played it? What was your experience like? In your opinion, why doesn't anyone talk about it much?

Please tell me other GMs have had to do this, because I’m sitting in front of my notes right now having a quiet identity crisis.

I have been running a gritty investigative campaign for the past two months. Tonight was supposed to be the session where my players finally pieced together the clues and caught the noble who poisoned the city magistrate. They were sitting around my kitchen table passionately debating the evidence for an hour.

While listening to them, I glanced down at my timeline notes and felt my blood run cold. My timeline was broken. I forgot that three weeks ago, I canonically established that my actual killer was on a military barge eighty miles downriver. My own mystery was completely, mathematically unsolvable.

the players, meanwhile, somehow connected three completely random throwaway descriptions I improvised in session two. They constructed this airtight, emotionally devastating theory accusing the innkeeper. Their logic was so much better than mine that I just put on my best poker face and said, "You solved it." They literally cheered and high-fived. They think I’m teh storytelling god of our friend group, but I'm an illiterate hack who doesn't understand calendar math. Do I take this secret to my grave or am I cheating them by retrofitting their theories?

https://stonetop.cc/

Bryan Legend made an interactive web version of Stonetop RPG. I think it is quite nice.

Strandberg put his RPG's text under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this site is legal.

I'm trying to make a list of games that could fit that Gothic horror and violence. I'm thinking

Rippers

Curse of strahd

Maybe Dark Ages vampire

Maybe vaesen if you squint hard enough

Any other I'm missing?

I'm interested in playing the audio of a fake news broadcast that has the news anchor reading a story about my players that I wrote. Anyone know the best way to create that using available online tools?

I'm going to be running Call Of Cthulhu for the first time, running The Derelict. I'm hoping my players will enjoy it and that we'll be continuing with more CoC into the future

Before anyone immediately comments "have an adult conversation with your group" or "this should’ve been handled in Session 0", please hear me out. I’m not angry at them. They’re my closest friends. I just feel deeply, quietly pathetic.

I’ve been running our campaign for about seven months. Last week, I had what I thought was an inspired idea for their investigation in the capital. I spent my entire Sunday afternoon writing three separate in-world letters, printing them in calligraphy, staining them with black tea, and even sealing them with actual red wax. I felt so proud of it.

Fast forward to tonight. They finally breach the magistrate’s study where the letters were. I set the real wax-sealed props in front of them with a grin, expecting some gasp of excitement. The barbarian player glanced at them, didn't even break the seal, and went, "Can I just roll an Investigation check to see if the desk is expensive? I want to chop it up." Everyone laughed, the wizard cast Fire Bolt to distract the guards outside, and they moved on.

They didnt even pick the props up. I just quietly slipped them back into my folder while they spent 45 minutes debating whether to adopt a stray goat. I know it’s just a hobby with plastic dice, but man... do I just have completely unrealistic expectations, or is running a game always just an exercise in emotional masochism?

I'm a forever GM and I've noticed something that might sound too mean, but I say with the bottom of my heart. Most players write terrible characters. It's their characters so I usually don't bring it up to them, but most players write characters that are bad for a variety of reasons.

Common reasons I've noticed are that they mistake elaborate backstory for an interesting character, writing characters that are written with one specific character arc in mind, characters who are too mysterious so nobody in the party ends up caring about them, one-dimensional personalities and etc.

This isn't a post about me venting about players, as I would normally just keep this to myself since I don't want to judge and the good lord knows my players could find way worse things to pick apart about the settings and adventures I write.

But then I noticed, when writing settings and adventures, I have lots of guidance. There's tons of advice on how to write a good setting, adventure design and all that. While a lot of this information can be found in blogs, videos and other sources, it can also be found in the rulebooks of the TTRPGs that I'm actually playing. The Dungeon Master's Guide has tons of useful information on worldbuilding, adventure design, setting up campaigns and all that stuff.

Meanwhile, the Player's Handbook's guidance for writing interesting characters is to just come up with a concept. This extends to almost every TTRPG I've ever read, that players just need to come up with a concept without any guidance on how to make an interesting concept.

No doubt, there's tons of information on writing interesting characters from the perspective of fiction writing, but don't think all fiction and improv advice applies to TTRPGs. I think a lot of the bad characters that I've seen came from assuming a style of fiction that doesn't suit most TTRPGs.

With all this, why do you think there isn't much guidance on writing interesting characters? Am I wrong in thinking some characters are better or worse than others?

Do other people try and run things that are thematic in their sessions related to current holidays/seasons? E.g. spooky stuff around Halloween, running in a cold snowy winter setting during winter, that sort of thing?

I've tried to incorporate these into long-running campaign settings and stories and it just doesn't seem to work out scheduling and pacing-wise. I plan something out , and the spooky session ends up happening in December instead of October, for example.

I think one-shots might be the way to go instead, but it's extra fun for a long-running story to have gift giving happen in game around the holidays, as there's more emotional connection to work with to the characters and story, and then I also don't have to plan out a whole new session and find the right people or take a break from my regular campaign session schedule.