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A few months ago I asked here for advice on if people would be upset with me (I have anxiety what can I say) if I made my goofy 1990's cyberpunk zines Dead Halt and Grum Hall free, when lots of people had already bought them.

My main thought was that making them free would feel crappy for those folks that purchased the pdf. The comments were mostly "You're overthinking it"

You all were very right!

I made all the PDF's from my now almost 7 years of content free, and the only thing I got back was positivity, and outpouring support, and ironically, more sales. (On Itch.io's pay what you want). Another huge boon is I don't have to worry about it anymore. I get to focus on making the physical books pretty and selling those, and if someone wants to play the game I don't have to tell them to buy it, they can grab it and print and play if needed. That feels really good.

I got into all this because I wanted to make things that my friends wanted to play, and I wanted more friends to play with. After making the games free I started getting lots more folks joining our Discord to try and find games, chatting, and even helping making adventures for other people to play in their games. It's really felt special and I have no regrets from the decision.

Not only that, but I was able to get lots of feedback on Grum Hall and used it as a playtest to develop the game further and make changes without feeling too stressed about sending out new PDF codes, or sending codes with the physical book. It's free right on the website for anyone.

Lastly, I was printing out Grum Hall at home and binding it and all that, and so many people (lots who got the game for free) wanted pretty physical copies that I decided to launch a Zinequest project for pretty physical copies. Its funded well over in the first few days, even with the free pdf there right on the top of the page.

Thats it, thank you all in this sub for your insight, and maybe this helps as a point for others that are tiny creators like me in the future. I don't think everyone should give away everything they work hard on for free, but it worked for me to lessen my stress and build the community I wanted more than anything.

Long story short; if you're a nervous-nelly like me maybe make your digital work free, it may both build your community and paradoxically fund your project.

Been in a couple of situations lately where people have used either Google's AI search or ChatGPT to try to reference RPG rules. These summaries can sound very convincing and even seem to provide page numbers or other citations, but in reality they're just as liable to hallucinations as any other AI (and in my own recent anecdotal experience, got things significantly wrong in each case).

If you're trying to play or quote things as-written, please refer to the original text, not AI summaries.

I'm looking for a system for a Trigun/Anime/Western type of campaign. My players will be legendary figures who have retired and they get the band back together. So I want them to feel powerful with some hiccups here and there, have guns and weapons. I don't want to do space travel or ships, it will be on one planet.

Looking for low crunch as well. Lower than DnD5e, we have been enjoying Dragonbane, if there are any systems with that OSR feel.

My players like having the classic ‘GM PC’ type characters — NPCs who accompany them on adventures and are a part of the party, drifting in and out of the group depending on the adventure in question. In previous campaigns I have maintained stat blocks for each NPC and had them join combat, but when there are often half a dozen or more NPCs filling this role this can get problematic fast. In order to solve this problem I adapted (i.e. shamelessly ripped off) a mechanic from a board game called Aeon Trespass: Odyssey, and its in-the-works sequel “Sins of Heracles”: Ally Abilities (AAs). I'm posting this to share the idea as a resource for other GMs to use in their own games.

AAs are a subsystem which can be included in almost any sufficiently crunchy RPG. I will be using Pathfinder 1e language in my examples because that is the campaign I’m currently using them in, but they would honestly be a much better fit in a system like 4e or Lancer which has a greater emphasis on tactical combat.

What is an AA in fiction?

In fiction, the Ally is typically helping the party in combat, doing damage, fighting enemies, healing, tanking, whatever their role is. But this would slow down combat, especially factoring in the need for additional enemies to compensate for the additional ally characters. Instead we assume that most of the ally’s time and resources are spent fighting abstracted enemies which don’t appear on the battle map, succeeding or failing against them at about the same margin at the same time the ‘spotlight fight’ does. AAs represent the moment where those NPCs spare a moment to help the players in their portion of combat. Alternatively some allies might be too weak to fight continuously, but good at stealth, long ranged, or otherwise able to offer brief moments of support before slipping back to safety, or might have provided the party tools like alchemical extracts, triggered buffs, or advice before combat which then activate later.

What is an AA Mechanically?

At its most simple an “AA” is a party-wide special resource that represents the assistance of a specific NPC, typically but not necessarily in combat, through a mechanical effect that can be triggered by any player character as a free action during their turn. Each AA comes with a usage limit (which is usually daily for my Pathfinder game and should generally share a refresh rate with the typical system mechanics). Each AA lists the NPC providing it, the ability name, the daily uses, then gives a short bit of flavor and the mechanical effect. Let’s look at a simple example from my campaign, representing the help of a druid traveling with the party while they were level 3:

Holly-and-Oak — Crisis Medicine:
Uses: 2/day
Holly-and-Oak rushes to your side to provide emergency healing. The activating character is the recipient of a CLW of a caster level equal to their level.

Here the effect is simple. While Holly-and-Oak is in the party, they have access to two free-action casts of CLW across the adventuring day. While the healing isn't much even at that level, the value of being able to gain some emergency hit points without sacrificing action economy was appreciated. Because AAs are not actions taken by player characters they are not subject to the character’s action restrictions (like CC effects), nor benefit from player characters’ abilities or buffs.

I also recommend giving the party an AA limit which they can increase over time or via specific means up to the GM. If you do this, at the start of each day/whenever abilities refresh, the party selects which allies traveling with them will be providing AAs up to their AA limit. (in my case they have gained +1 AA limit every couple levels, and had a side quest to hone their party cohesion to gain +1 AA limit).

Here’s an example suite of AAs that my party might have taken with them during a battle during their campaign, showing some typical and less typical AA designs. Of special note is the Infusion Supply, which they actually upgraded by buying Ninnec scrolls to copy infusions from when they needed specific spells:

AA Limit 5:

Ember – Dazzling Display (Literal):
Uses: 3/day
Ember makes a LOT of fire happen. She always wondered why other people need a feat for this. Each visible enemy within line of sight is dazzled for one minute.

Ninnec – Infusion Supply:
Uses: Special
Ninnec provides you with infusions as a 5th level alchemist. He can offer two first level or one second level infusion for your use. Selecting this twice lets you select each option separately. The infusions Ninnec can supply are:
1st: Shield, Bomber’s Eye, Enlarge Person, Reduce Person, Long Arm, Cure Light Wounds, Crafter’s Fortune, Heightened Awareness, Anticipate Peril, Keen Senses
2nd: Vomit Swarm, Invisibility, Lesser Restoration (B), Delay Poison (B)
[Party picked this twice selecting a Shield and Anticipate Peril infusion, and an Invisibility infusion.]

Apollyon — Ancient Wisdom:
Static
Apollyon provides helpful, but slightly condescending, advice from its time of study under the Sher’tul. Whenever you attempt a monster knowledge check against enemies which can be identified by Knowledge: Arcana or Knowledge: Engineering, Apollyon answers an additional question on any creature you successfully identify. If you successfully identify attacks, defenses, and special abilities by yourself you may spend a spare question (your fourth) to have Apollyon instead identify a weak point, causing the first critical threat against each identified creature made by an ally to be automatically confirmed.

Wendy – Wind Beneath Your Wings:
Uses: 3/day
Wendy provides a well-timed rush of wind to help cushion a fall or spring a leap, granting a +10 circumstance bonus to an acrobatics check. Alternatively, in response to suffering falling damage, reduce the damage by half and you do not fall prone.

What are AAs good for?

AAs let NPCs ‘do their thing’ in combat without taking a turn each round. They make the party gain mechanical advantages from taking even lower level/weaker NPCs with them on adventures, and give the party a reason to be excited when a new NPC joins their cohort. An NPC’s AA can highlight character traits as well as their talents (a wizard NPC who is more interested in learning about the world than combat might grant additional information about enemies’ abilities instead of casting magic missile), and create heroic moments where they save the day with a clutch activation of their AA.

What are AAs bad at?

AAs are fundamentally an abstraction, and players who are focused on the rules maintaining exact models of the fiction will dislike them. They are also designed to let the NPC have a few seconds’ spotlight while keeping it mainly on the PCs, therefore arcs where an NPC is expected to be a prominent figure, consider having them actually fielded in combat. They add additional decisions and complexity to both the players’ turns in combat and their daily preparations, where the party will have to, as a group, decide which AAs they are ‘bringing with them’ each day. This means that players need to be interested in this additional complexity.

What makes for a well-designed AA?

A good AA should be simple to resolve. Try to avoid complicated ‘flow charts’ like saves for partial effects, and indeed try to avoid saving throws or attack rolls all together. AAs should be useful in a multitude of situations and strong enough to have an impact: Most NPCs will only have one or two AAs they can offer, and you want the party to be excited to have a cool moment where their friend helps them in combat. AAs should be useful for multiple characters: The entire party decides on an AA load out, and so they should all be a party resource to greater or lesser degree. (You will notice that the AAs used in this post don’t all follow these principles.)

What do people think? Let me know if you have any ideas to iterate upon the system or if you use something similar.

I will probably catch flack for this but for those that have done it or used the services, own does lulu and drivethru and those do for printing old wizards stuff or just books that are out of print?

Would they email you or flag you for copyrighted content? How does that all work?

"Dammit, Jim, I'm an english major, not an architect!"

Bioshock and Dishonored are major influences for me. I also like the idea of taking an archeological or anthropological perspective on dungeon design, where the party can identify the evil wizard, dungeon architect, or pattern of traps based on patterns of architectural motifs through a single complex or across multiple dungeons in a region.

Now, I know players aren't looking for complete, logical realism in their underground complexes, but I still think I can offer a more immersive, interactive experience if I could learn more about some principles of architecture and engineering (especially with underground complexes), or at least have a lexicon of architectural features (dias, parapets, buttresses, when and where to build a pillar or build a dome, that sort of thing).

What are good texts, channels, or blogs, RPG-related or not, where someone can learn a broad range of architectural features, and broad common sense principles of underground construction?

Before I start doing a bunch of homebrewing work for something that may already exist, I thought I'd ask you guys if you know anything. I'm looking for a game system/setting that includes the following elements:

-High Fantasy: Lots of Magic, playable spellcasters, fantasy ancestries, etc. ; I'm not looking to just roleplay a regular or low magic Earth setting.

-Arthurian Elements: Once and Future King, Knights of the Round Table, chivalric elements, adventure

-British/Celtic Folklore: Fairies, the Other World, random portals, etc.

-War and Political intrigue: William the Conqueror, 100 Years War, War of the Roses, Crusades, etc.

Mechanically, I prefer medium to medium-heavy crunch and tactical combat elements, but nothing super overwhelming. I enjoy 5e and PF2e, so something similar to that, or just settings for those systems if they fit. I don't just want generic fantasy, I'm really looking for something that feels specifically is inspired by the Medieval Era of the British Isles. Tone wise, I like something that can be dark, but still have a sense of hope and agency. Let me know if you know of anything that fits.

Hello!

I hope this is the right server to ask in, I’ve been coming up with a campaign inspired by the game Dispatch that I want to run, but am struggling to find an easy ttrpg to learn that’s superhero focused. I’ve looked at some ttrpgs already, such as mutants and masterminds, for example, but finding myself getting confused and having to start whatever I’m trying to learn at the moment from scratch.

If it helps, in terms of ttrpgs I’ve either been a player or GM in the past, I’ve played MotW, D&D, and Cyberpunk Red, although I don’t think I ever fully grasped Cyberpunk Red.

Specifically I'm looking for a system that has low crunch but decent robustness, is fairly lethal, and is item/skill focused rather than class and class ability focused - extrapolation, the core interactions are through bought/found gear and items and universal skills.

The kinda vibe of, in a fight its your gun and your built up skill with it that matters not special/unique abilities, and every single bullet counts. Every hit matters, and where you hit matters, and what you're hit with matters.

Edit - To clarify somethings, when I say low crunch but robust and hit locations - I mean in the sense of not having a focus on number micromanagement, but having robust rules for "actions" focused combat. I don't like to run "move attack heal" combat, I like to run combat where you can interact with it in lots of interesting ways. Maybe you need a guy alive, so you shoot the knife out of his hands then kneecap him, or instead of just swinging a bat at a mf for 5 turns, you grab him and start smashing his face into a window or a running stove. Robustness to me means "lots of viable options", and ones that are laid out and (hopefully) easy to follow.

Maybe this idea won't work at all, but i'd like to hear opinions. I want to start running a "Dungeon Crawler Carl" inspired game and found this Dungeon of the Mad Mage add-on that fits just perfectly.

I'm quite experienced with 5e, as are almost all of the players except for one newcomer. Despite that, I've grown a bit tired of 5e as a whole, while having lots of fun with Wastoid recently. It's a lightweight system, similar to 24XX but with more meat on it.

I think it somewhat fits quasi-decently. The Wastoid system works well with Dungeon Crawling, deadly combats and scavenging. But from what I've seen adapting DotMM to another system (especially one without magic) could be just not worth it.

I would love to hear opinions of DM/players who played the module. Or also people who tried something similar.

Im looking for games where players have and immediate goal from the beginning. For example, in Blades in the Dark PCs have to do criminal activities to gain power, in Eat the Reich PCs are looking to kill Hitler, and in Spire PCs want to rebel from the elven government.

In contrast, games like D&D or Call of Cthulhu or VtM require supplements or the game master coming up with a story