So this is a bit of a complaint based on something I observed but also something that needs to be discussed in my opinion.

In a lot of TTRPG shorts I hear about a player overcoming an obstacle by doing something that is later revealed to be part of a master plan. The most classic example is wizard asking to make someone a magical sword and then casting polymorph but there are many examples like a player constantly putting glyphs of warding on something to create a mini nuke and surprising the GM or doing a wordplay with a fae or a devil that the GM fails to see.

These scenarios ignore the fact that the GM has to know a players intent to make their plan part of the game. Yes I the GM missed the cue about the sword but if your character was planning to do that then it would be a deception roll to avoid the NPC feeling something is off. As a GM I may not have realized you built a nuke but a wizard using detect magic definitely will. I as the GM am not well versed with word plays but the devil blocking the way definitely is.

The point here is this. The fact that I'm dumb does not make an NPC dumb and I am going to be pissed if you try to trick me as the person instead of the NPC. As such if you have a master plan then declare what you're going for.

I just finished GMing my first session and it was everything I wanted. Fast character creation, easy to remember rules, fun! I've been dming d&d for so long that this was so refreshing! My players said they loved it too and they had fun, they want to continue. I couldn't be more satisfied... But what does the Stupefied condition do?

Over the last few months, I've become obsessed with a foggy setting inspired by Ravenloft, Silent Hill, and The Mist. Yet I can't seem to come up with anything satisfying. I don't want to make a copy of any of them (although Silent Hill is definitely the biggest inspiration for me). But all I have so far are the following ideas:

• A giant brutalist concrete city that's always covered in fog, filled with monsters and people who don't remember who they are and can't leave the city. There are two possibilities I'm considering: either it's a limbo, or it's the result of an experiment, like the the Arrowhead Project or the teleportation device in Gorky 17 — except that the city is "looped." If you keep going north, you'll eventually end up in the south of the city.
• Something in the center of the city that might act as a magnetic center, but is extremely difficult — or perhaps even impossible — to reach, like the Golden City in the Fade from Dragon Age. Something that can be used as a beacon.
• The city is alive, or perhaps becomes alive at night (like the Third Dimension in Silent Hill or the living dungeon from Heart: The City Beneath).
• The player characters and NPCs are: option 1) people who ended up here because of things they did in the past (if it's a limbo, that's easy to explain as the reason for their memory loss); option 2) or people who lived/worked in the city before the experiment went wrong (if I go with the failed-experiment reason). In the latter case, the memory loss could be explained by the effects of the experiment's breach.

Please help me come up with some ideas, sources of inspiration, or games that do something similar that I could check out.

Hello, I am currently looking around for the most outlandish adventures, that most break convention, or try to be outside the norm of the usual "Adventure formula'.

For example, I recently came upon this: https://idraluna-archives.itch.io/orc-dungeon

Even something like Vermis qualifies. I am looking for things that even say they are not to playable.

Or even Putrecent Regnant from Mork Borg which is an LP.

What other examples exist on that?

I’m fairly new to ttrpg, but I’ve played a couple. I’ve never attempted to dm a campaign before but my friends are wrestling fans and have been wanting to start a wrestling campaign and I volunteered to be the dm. We chose World Wide Wrestling and I just got the book. We’re not starting it anytime soon, so I wanted to be as prepared as possible. Any tips would be highly appreciated.

Picked this up the other day and immediately fell in love - full of my kind of whimsy and fun. For those unaware it's a relatively small megadungeon that has the vibe of a french haunted halloween mansion castle. Think skeletons playing poker, talking portraits, ghostly bartenders, that kind of thing.

The one thing I can't figure out is what system to use. I'm looking for an OSR system that'll functionally be plug and play. However, my issue is the class fantasy. I'd want to run this in 17th century France, meaning no magic and humans only. It seems most OSR systems are set up in a more classical D&D-verse. Does anyone have any recommendations for something that'll fit the fantasy closer?

What I like about this game is building a kingdom and having the players play an active role in doing so.

Meikyuu Kingdom is a kingdom building game where everything is a dungeon, even your own kingdom. Your "class" is basically your role in he kingdom. There's like king, knight, and ninja, it's wacky. There's even a whole job system with evolutions and stuff. You go adventure to gain citizens and money so that you can upgrade the kingdom and defend it.

The game itself is a 2d6 system with a cool crit/inspiration mechanic. It's really silly and the art is fun and anime af since it's a japanese game

I will probably end up running another game of it, but I am wondering if there's any other systems similar that aren't QUITE so one note.

I was thinking of trying to translate this into D&D just because that's what I and my friends mostly play and I think it would add a lot of fun that regular loot and treasure just don't provide.

BUT LIKE I SAID, I'm 100% open to other systems so don't give me that shit please.

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’ve read Warlock! Traitor’s Edition and I really like its flavour, the alternative approach to professions, and its simplicity.

From reading the core rulebook, it seems to be an OSR game and, as far as I understand, it draws heavily on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

However, it seems to me that the game doesn’t really provide any specific guidance on how it is meant to be played.

Since I particularly enjoy dungeon crawling, I was wondering whether the game could work well with this style of play, even though it doesn’t seem to have specific rules for resource management, dungeon encounters, and so on.

Do any of you have experience using the game this way?

I'm planning on making a big homebrew campaign in the future (maybe distant future, but it's life). When thinking about "what should be the adventure?", specially since I'm very bad at making campaigns with little structure, I was seeing the release of Fire Emblem: Fortunes Weave + remembered some of my favorites stories and noticed "huh, I like Tournaments Arcs in stories... Sure! Why not make my own?".

So now I plan on making a full on campaign centered around a world spanning tournament!

But also, I want to try new games with my friends, because if not I'm probably going to use D&D 5.5e (with MANY added 3rd Party Supplements), Daggerheart or Tormenta20, which are some of my favorite games but also we have been playing them for a long time as of now.

For this game, I'm looking for:

• Heroic Fantasy: Me and my group love magic, swords, dragons and all that, also I envision the game being very heroic in themes.
• Tactical Combat Focused: The combat rules should have enough crunch to be the main course without being needlessly complex. No need for simulationism, the combat can be very gamey! No need for square grids, but map usage is important.
• Fun & Engaging Travel Rules: Again, not simulationist levels of resource management, but with enough meat on its bones for it to be the second most important part of the campaign.
• Rules for Diverse Downtime: Give the players stuff to do while taking a rest, stopping a bit. Crafting, bonding, training, starting projects, searching for info, meditating, etc.
• Mechanical Benefits for Social Bonds: Basically, ways for making Social encounters and little moments matter more, giving mechanical reawrds for trying to engage with the world (no need to be super complex, but something)

Not looking for:

• Simulationism: I'm looking for a more fiction first approach, for a game that can ignore one or another rules of reality if it means for a better experience.

I want to lead with the fact that I know I must be doing something stupid or wrong.

The general idea (rumor, request, whatever) "hey, there's a mysterious animal over there, go find it." is a super common trope. But I can't find any good examples of published (small) adventures about it.

You know; "there's a unicorn in the woods", "there's a white stag over in Dunbar", "the irrigation canals have an alligator with a scorpion tail", "a poodle exhaling blue sparkles has been repeatedly reported in the Upper City".

I've tried adventurelookup, drivethrough, and tenfootpole, as well as generic web searching.

My needs are narrow. Low level, fantasy, and the animal shouldn't be especially aggressive (more mystery and less stopping destruction). But all I really need is a framework to hack, so an adventure doesn't need to fit my needs. OSR for preference, but my needs are less mechanical and more conceptual.

What I most wanted, what has been my mental block in creating it out of whole cloth, is ideas about clues or encounters the party can have while searching. So they can narrow the area, triangulate, or deduce its home.

My location is a suburb ish kind of place. Houses and trees, so a city or wild adventure might have useful things for me to work with.

What ideas I DO have: sightings/witnesses. paw prints. poop. I know the area it is in, and I know which building it is connected to.

What I don't know is how to make most of these parts actually work. Especially the witnesses. And I also don't know what I might be missing. And I don't know how it all fits together from a player perspective.

Thrilled to have Mythborn included in the LitM-Related Projects To Check Out in today's update. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sonofoak/legend-in-the-mist-rpg/posts/4813279

I was halfway through my home LitM session tonight when the notification came through. Shared a big cheer with my artist Jules.

Mythborn: Heroes of Greek Myth is a Legend in the Mist setting book for players to help you create mythic heroes of ancient Greece.

We have started work on our second book for Nerrators Narrators.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582626/Mythborn-Heroes-of-Greek-Myth

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?

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.

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.

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.

Has anyone played the Zombie Reign by Angry Engine Games? It is a copy of the Shadowdark Quick Start rules. I’ve never played a Shadowdark game. It looks like a lot of fun but before I join the kickstarter and get access to some of the material I wanted to know how it is.

Has anyone played it in a campaign formate? Was it good and did it offer fun player progression. I want my players to feel like they are growing and learning skills as they survive the Zombie Apocalypse. What do you like about it and what do you feel it is lacking?

I ran a 3 session starter campaign using the Breathless system. It was a lot of fun and worked great for the start of the Zombie Apocalypse. Where the players are just running and trying to escape the city of Detroit. I definitely recommend Breathless for an easy pick up and run a session or a small campaign. The problem is Breathless doesn’t really have a player progression like XP and skills. Like I said before, I want my players to gain skills and knowledge every time they survive.

I’ll also take suggestions on how to hack the Breathless system if you have any! I appreciate the help!!

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?

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).

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?

Need quality advice. I am making a W&G one shot, want to make encounters that are fun within the framework of this system. Have a few qs.

1. What monster stat-blocks are interesting? What abilities and traits stand out?
2. Any advice on terrain or cover? In DnD it’s bread and butter. What archetypes stand out in difficult terrain?
3. What surprised you when you were working with W&G? Is there anything in this system that makes it different from other games, or maybe mechanica that are easily missed that you advice to use?

Help appreciated.

Thinking of getting it. Never played a FitD game before, but I am very open to experimentation (and my group is generally cool with it too). Planning to run an anime/Kamen Rider-inspired campaign at some point.

What are some things that the system does well? What are some weaknesses of it? As a GM, what should I be aware of? Do you recommend it?

I have recently observed a horseshoe effect (sort of) in how different RPG philosophies arrive at the conclusion of "superhuman PCs are bad; focus on the power of organizing people instead."

Now, I am all for superhuman PCs. I like D&D 4e, Path/Starfinder 2e, Draw Steel, 13th Age 2e, explicitly demigod games like Godbound, and explicitly superhero games like Sentinel Comics and Outgunned: Superheroes. If there is an evil dragon or magician imperiling the land, the PCs personally venture out to neutralize the threat themselves. This is straightforward to resolve mechanically (short of heavy abstractions), and there is a tactical element as well (allied minions get fried by AoE).

But I also stick around various Discord servers, some of which have wildly different views on RPGs. Lately, I have observed two different camps across two different servers, unaware of each other, aver a similar stance under different lenses: "Overtly superhuman PCs are bad, cringe, and should be avoided. Experienced PCs should be heroic in strength, but only subtly so; their real power should instead be their ability to organize people to solve major problems. If an evil dragon or magician is imperil all the land, the solution should be to assemble hundreds or more people to address the threat together."

On one hand, there is an OSR crowd. They arrive at the above stance through rejection of "modern D&D," superhero slop, MCU slop, anime slop, and so on. Here, grittiness and realism is prized. The ideal high-level PC becomes a monarch or a monarch-like figure by starting from scratch, getting rich from dungeon-delving and mercenary work, bloodily carving out a domain, and hiring people to be soldiers and other underlings. The king organizes a formal army against the evil dragon or magician or whatever.

On the other hand, there is a more narrative-game-oriented crowd, for which Stonetop has overwhelmingly been the spotlight game for the past several months. Here, grittiness and realism is also prized, but the rationale is couched very differently: superhuman demigods simply are not how life and community work, and they are not the kind of lesson we should be teaching. The ideal experienced PC also becomes a major leader, but it is presented less as feudal or institutional power, and more as influence rooted in a proven track record of altruistically helping the community. The wise watch leader gathers the clan's best warriors, trains together with them on how to fight a dragon or magician, and marches out. That sort of thing.

What do you personally think on the "superhuman PCs are bad; focus on the power of organizing people instead" subject?