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I'm sure this is just going to be a downvoted rant, and most of it is stream of consciousness. But I just need to express it to be able to find some kind of peace of mind, I guess.

Has anyone else been struggling to find players that... actually care about the game? 2025 was an extremely rough year for me as far as gaming goes; my partner and I lost a gaming group we had played with for a couple years when one player had a tailspin of behavior which ended in everyone parting ways, and then both of us attempted to start 4 separate campaigns between us, all of which either flopped or are in the process of flopping.

Both myself and my partner put a lot of effort into our initial posts, describing what we'd like in players (active, communicative, collaborative, invested), showcasing what we'd like to do outside of game sessions like play video games or downtime text roleplay, and including as much detail as we can on the tone of campaign we're presenting. But it feels like the volume of interested applicants has gone down; that's fine, as long as there are good people who want to play. But they aren't.

Each game has been met with players with absolutely no interest in collaborative storytelling; they want their own private special narrative told where they win all the time and never get told no, or they offer absolutely nothing for us to work from to suggest stories, tropes, or attachments to the game plot. They don't interact outside of game sessions, and quite frankly only barely chime in during sessions either. We leave space for players to dictate character actions only to be met with silence, and when we move the scene along with some encouragement we still get nothing.

Multiple times now players will not describe their backstory or personality until the last minute, only give barebones details, and play cold-shouldered asshole loners who do nothing but make sardonic remarks about the other PCs, their actions, or the plot points presented. Like they don't want their characters to be involved in the plot in any way, and think it's stupid to do so.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. I pour heart and soul into my campaigns, and so has my partner, and we actively chime in and poke and offer whatever we can to get some interaction going, but after more than 20 different players across multiple game systems and mediums it just feels like no one cares.

Rant over, I guess, but if anyone has advice on how to structure ads, interview, or just validates the feelings a bit to know we're not alone then I'd appreciate it greatly.

I want to be the bad ass Uncle who runs a game for his eight-year-old nephew, and then leave the book/box for him.

To clarify, this would be his introduction to the hobby, so whatever I give him would need to be relatively easy to run and preferably have good advice. Knowing him, I’m pretty sure he will love the hobby.

I was thinking…

ICRPG - easy to learn, great advice, hearts as health, etc.

Dragonbane box set

EZD6 maybe? Super gonzo might appeal to him

what do you think?

I often struggle to find as much art as I would like for my games. For my most recent campaign, I've been leaning heavily on public-domain art. Those who came before us have provided! Plus, you can even use it in published work/actual plays if you do either of those.

The public domain is an especially strong resource if your game is strongly inspired by a certain historical period. My game is inspired by 1500's Japan, and it's awesome to have a bunch of historical artwork from Japan to use as the aesthetic base of my game.

It's also great inspiration. While digging through public-domain art for specific characters or locations, I run into a bunch of other art that I'll throw into a folder as inspiration for later. And then I use it as key art for hexes, magic items, whatever. If you're feeling really spicy, you can even do a bit of editing to make a picture just right, or bash two pieces together. It's easy enough to make transparent images, or transpose part of one image onto the background of another. Here's a couple of fun page layouts I did by editing and using public domain images.

So use more public domain in your work, and save yourself some time and money. Here are a few sources I like for finding public domain art. If you have others, I'd love to check them out if you share them!

The Met collection - Tons of art and a search feature that lets you sort by medium, region, and year. I liked looking at paintings and prints for character and location art, and other mediums for magic items, armor, and clothing. There's even an arms and armor department that is perfect for TTRPG inspiration. I particularly like the Met because many pieces come with a little background information on the artist or context on the piece.

Wikimedia Commons - A bunch of free-to-use assets, including videos and sounds as well as images. I've mostly used it for images, but the video section can be useful too, I used it to find an example of a Kagura to show my players! The only thing to note about these is that they include many sources published under Creative Commons Share-Alike licenses, so make sure your project is also share alike if you're going to use them!

Creative Commons search portal - This lets you search a bunch of different sites (Google Images, YouTube, etc.) for specifically free-to-use assets. Like Wikimedia Commons, if you use this one, make sure you check the asset's license before using it! Some can be used with no strings attached, some require credit, and some require that you also share your work under a Creative Commons license.

Ukiyo-e - This one is a lot more specific, but Ukiyo-e is a database of Japanese woodblock prints; it's awesome for character art!

As a P.S., if you aren't planning on selling your work, I highly recommend publishing your content under a Creative Commons license! Just as we can build on the work of those who came before us or share our work with the community, we can give back in the same way.

I’m a fan of RPGs with an XFiles vibe: horror and mystery that involves a government and/or scientific conspiracy.

What recs do you have?

Anything postWW2 through today is welcome.

I’m already familiar with Delta Green (my fave), The Laundry Files, the Esoterrorists, and the occasional Call of Cthulhu adventures that are in modern times.

In OSR there is a lot of games that focus on exploration turns. Lightsource matters, inventory size matters, etc.

In your opinion what system ruleset have THE best rules and guidance for GMs for this? The absolute "must read" or... Just your favorite ones (that would do as well)

Here is my personal insight and perspective to the Indonesian Tabletop RPG scene.

Folks, this might be a dumb question, but does anyone have recommendations for good game journalism that’s easy to subscribe to?

The goal is passive delivery: sitting at work, inbox pops up, and it’s game-related but still feels like “I’m reading something real and thoughtful,” not just scrolling feeds or hot takes. Less actively hunting for articles, more passive delivery. Ideally newsletters. Ideally free, or at least with a decent free tier, because, well… yeah.

Also curious if anyone else has this same “just send it to my inbox” brain. Not expecting miracles, but if there are any go-to newsletters, writers, or places that bundle the best reporting, drop them.

I've only ever played heroic TTRPGs like Pathfinder 2e, Lancer, Draw Steel, Masks and the like. I have no experience or reference point for OSR games, but this announcement has piqued my interest. How does Crows, at least on paper, sound/compare to existing systems? Trying to decide if I should support the eventual MCDM backerkit, or pick a different OSR game.

Hey all, was just curious for anyone with a solid knowledge of Traveller if [https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/traveller-classic-rpg-collection\](this bundle) seems like a good buy, if it'd be appropriate material for someone who really doesn't know a great deal about the system, if it's the version that's most advisable to get into for someone new to the system, and just any general thoughts.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I'm planning on doing a homebrew campaign for my first time DMing, with my own rules, NPCs, races and classes.

The main idea is for it to be a medieval campaign with taverns, castles, the whole package, BUT I'm terrible at DMing magic and mana so I wanted to somehow dodge it, be it included in the storyline (such as 'what if all the magic disappeared') or not.

I was also thinking of maybe including a god to the storyline, perhaps one that helps the players throughout the campaign.

However, I do not know how to come up with the main story/theme, and wanted some help with yall's creativity. Can you suggest me some ideas? I refuse to go to AI for it 🙏