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I often have heard people dismissing D&D 4e by saying "its a MMO Tabletop RPG", a Videogame trying to be a TTRPG.

So I then bit the bullet and did a quick overlook through its pages, and I found some stuff that I can understand it turning people away:

• Mechanics with little flavor text
• Squares instead of Feets or Meters
• Classifications like "At-Will", "Per Encounter", "Daily" and other more gamey terms

But funnily enough, I also found some of these things in other games like 13th Age, so it isn't necessarily just a "Oops! Sorry, this will never happen again :3" and more so a "Its not everyones cup of tea, but other LOVE IT".

I for example, comming from a background of videogames & boardgames first, am very okay with most of these more gamefied mechanics, so long it makes for a good game, I'm okay! But even then, I prefer exact distances in Meters or abstract one like "Near/Far" or "behind the boulder/above the tree" over measuring everything in fictional quantities like Squares.

As a GM for 8+ years, I've grown to dislike D&D a lot. While I love running other TTRPG systems, D&D always feels like it's built against me having fun. It's like I have to take the system into my own hands and push against it in order to enjoy the system. That being said, this isn't just a venting post to spread D&D hate. I'm more interested in the GMs who really like or love D&D. I genuinely want to better understand what parts of the game keeps GMs coming back.

What do you love about the system specifically? Why do you run D&D over other systems? Do you ever get that "pushing against the system" feeling?

I am specifically talking about one shots at conventions, events, rpg clubs and stuff like that (no matter which system). It's not an issue at my own table and if it was, I could just talk to my friends about it.

But I have noticed that no matter what kind of character I am given (or quickly roll up) for one shots with strangers, I always end up playing the straight man to the bit. I don't mind that in principle, but being chaotic is fun and I'd love to do it at least some of the time. One shots are often a good opportunity for hightened chaos and comedy compared to a long term campaign in my experience, and I have played funny/chaotic/wild characters before. It's not like I can't do that.

It just seems like everybody else always goes off the rails harder and faster than I can, and I get kind of forced into the role of the sensible one. Because somebody needs to do it, right? Somebody needs to gently get the group back on track so that the adventure can happen, and somebody needs to be exasperated at the crazy antics of the chaos gremlins, that makes it funnier.

I've tried simply not doing it and just also being chaotic, but it ended up being less fun and almost kind of... awkward. People would comment "wow I wouldn't have expected your character to also be this stupid" or "that seems more like something [other character] would do". It felt like everybody had just already decided that my character is the one with the brain cell, or the group mom, or whatever you want to call it. Even if I intended to play a totally different kind of character.

And look, maybe this happens to me because of some trait I have that isn't just the fact that I'm a woman. (Like, I've heard that people with more GM experience often tend to be the character that keeps the plot moving when they are players, and I have done a lot of GMing.) But I do think it's probably partially because I'm a woman.

Has anybody else also felt like this? Do you have any ideas how I could try to counteract this trend?

By that I mean that a lot of players naturally feel quite attached to their characters, and so death and the prospect of having to make a new one from scratch can be a turn-off from certain systems. What can one do to ease them into it? An idea I had was asking the players to think about three broadly-defined characters, instead of a detailed singular PC, and that group would be their cast of PCs ready to rotate whenever one of them bites the dust.

I have love for this game, I've run it two or three times and played once. I really enjoy the ideas, the vibes and the story focused mechanics.

However. I have no idea how to run delves procedurally. It always feels either railroady or too vague. Besides ideas to better express the travels, how can I make the delving and exploration more concrete in terms of game mechanics? I've felt my players are lost about what they are supposed to do.

I get the feel that the delve is basically a creature and the exploration is like fighting the road. But I'm looking for tips to make it work better.

It has come to my attention that besides All flesh must be eaten, a supplement of Savage worlds, and an adventure for Lamentations of the Flame princess, there is a tremendous absence of zombie apocalypses in fantasy rpgs.

Am I missing something noteworthy?

I personally like crunchy games when focused in Combat (specially more action-y + tactical), Downtime (doing projects and searchs, building bases and domains, fabricating items) & Exploration (specially more structured and fun travel, mystery-solving & puzzle-cracking).

So for context I’m running Dungeon World for my group and most of them are converts from 5e. I’ve run into a small problem where I don’t know the exact way to explain to them that they have way more control over their characters than I do. It’s my understanding that Dungeon World has the GM more as a guide for the story instead of an arbiter of the rules and world. It’s only my second time running this system so I may be missing the ethos of how it all works lol.

For example, I have a druid who has bonded to a spirit, and she comes to me and asks if when she met the spirit would be OK if the spirit had given her food when she was hungry. My instinct in the moment was to say yes, of course and move on, but what I’m realizing is that in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter if they gave her food it more matters that she was coming to me to ask if something that had very little bearing on story or plot or inter character relationships was OK. She didn’t feel comfortable just stating that this part of her character happened that way.

Am I overthinking this and sort of psychoanalyzing my player too much or have I not given her the opportunity to explore the spirit of this game as separate from a system like 5e where I would’ve been way more in control of that backstory because like mechanically getting food technically has Game Consequences and stuff like that.

TLDR: Basically my question is how do I tell my player that it’s OK to just decide something about her character without my input?

so i played this game on my mom's phone way way back. i was so young when i played it so i clearly don't remember the title of the game but i vividly remember that you would wake up as a knight and then you travel. you have your robot buddy with you, then you go to the forest and meet an elf princess maybe then a long the way i think you'll get separated. then at the end of your journey, this robot buddy of yours will turn out to be an enemy so you'll have this kind of boss fight and then they die.

it was one of the games i played as a child that stayed with me until today. i tried searching for it but to no avail, i've exhausted my remaining options in finding it and this probably would be my last shot at it. hopefully someone knows and answers this. thank you! 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Hi all !

First of all : this ain't no commercial question, I have no intent in selling the final product.

I hope I don't break any sub rules, if so I'm sorry.

I play some RPG with a bunch of friend (currently running a Deadlands campaign but we also tried some others), and I happend to also have woodworking as one of my hobby.

I found it could be a nice gift to my friends to design and make wood dice boxes so we can all, well, put our dices.

So I thought I could ask the community about what would be the cool features you would like in a dice box (not sure I can do all of them, but worth the try!).

Here are my thoughts so far :

- I want it to contain only the bare minimum we need for playing, and easily movable. We can all have a bigger box at home for our dice collection but the idea here is to have something we can just take and bring to our GM house easily, and which won't take to much space on the table.

- According to the first point, I was thinking something may be like 30cm long, 15 cm wide, 10 cm height

- I like the idea of having a compartment for the dices, and one for the pencil, character sheet, eraser, pencil sharpener, a small notebook... The basics.

- Either one of the compartment or the lid could be removable so it can be used as a dice tray.

- I'm not sure if I should partition the dice compartment so we could store our dice per size?

- Again, not sure about the height of the dice compartment, I have some weird big D100 that I never use for exemple, but what if someone wants to put some weird ass sized diced in it?

So I think what I'm imagining mostly right now is a 30x15x10 box, with 2 compartments one above the other. The top one would be for storing the essentials (notebook, pen...), the bottom one would be for dice storage (with or without partition).

Either the top compartment or the lid could be easily disassembled and consist in a dice tray.

In your different game experiences, would you see other cool features?

Cheers

Hi all,

Back in the early 90s played a hilarious one shot based around a group of adventurers being sent by Mordencainen on a little beach holiday. All I can remember of the adventure is,

I played a thief with no CHR who had the aim of having a "holiday romance" who had to woo female NPC with suitable pickup lines.

The Burly Paladin always standing next to me took all the attention though.

Another character had the goal of collecting as many souvenirs as possible including rolled rock candy.

We were attacked by deck chairs we sat in to enjoy the relaxing beach view.

At the end of the adventure Mordencainen confiscated all our treasures.

Would love to play it again if I can find the docs.

I was a player, not the DM and don't know what the source was.

Posting in the hope someone else recalls it or better yet, has a secret horde containing the character sheets and DM guide to it.

It was a one shot, this feels like a long shot.