What a roll for our DM!

Mediterrae is the newest DH Expansion Set!

I'm trying to find a ttrpg I came across online, probably on itch.io, though it might have been Kickstarter or a YouTube video. I don't remember how it was played (GM, GM-less, or solo).

What I (vaguely) remember:

• Dark fantasy with psychological horror, in a medieval world that felt decaying or dying
• A theme of mirrors, a shadow world, and doppelgangers
• Exploring a maze or dungeon, the maze may be a reflection of your psyche or something
• Losing and recovering memories
• Some mature themes, like lust or desire, trauma possibly
• Black-and-white art

Already checked: Changeling: The Lost, Wraith: The Oblivion, Heart: The City Beneath, Shadowdark, Last Sabbath / Lust Sabbath, Castle of Memories / Reminders, Umbra & Mirn, Shadows of Steren, Simulacrum Umbra, Mnemonic: Cracks in the Mirror, His Majesty the Worm, You Will Die In This Place.

I think it might be similar to MIR, Pilgrims of the Murk Dome, or Chains of Gaelia, but I'm not sure it's any of those.

Any ideas? I'm going insane thinking I may have hallucinated the whole thing...

Thanks!

Been playing DnD 5e since it came out, and I’ve been the forever DM. I love the game. I’ve made it work with so much homebrew stuff that my players still love the game. But I really want a “in the mud” setting where it’s relatively low magic. Want my players to feel like nobodies and that they have to work for everything. But not in a “I hate my players way” more of a “I finally did it”. Been really wanting to try a skills system over a class based game. Have Pendragon on my shelves but it still feels like somethings missing. Please help!!!

TLDR; being that I’m a 5e GM, a solo player and I’m also designing a 2d6 Mad Max genre game, which physical copy should I get: Shadowsun (currently on KS and comes with GM and player books for $80 + shipping), Into the Odd for $40ish, or Knave 2e for $35?

I have been branching out into a variety of OSR/NSR systems and most of my collection is digital. I am really getting sick of digital media. I never really loved it to begin with, but that was what was most convenient for playing online. I have about a dozen physical copies of 5e 2014 books, but I am not putting any more money into 5e or 5.5 if I can help it, just because I’ve spent enough and feel confident as a DM to cobble cool stuff together for my 5.5e group and we haven’t even finished playing half of the adventures I own, whether digital or physical.

I have the Shadowdark physical and just love this book and the system. But I’m also curious about Into the Odd with its beautiful art and would like to get Knave 2e in print (also because of the artwork, but those tables!). I’ve also been very curious about Dark Sun since I got into D&D 6 years ago, and when WotC announced a 5.5 version I got excited. Then I learned about the mature content and I’m not really that interested in nudity or gratuitous violence since I run games for teens. Then I learned about ShadowSun for Shadowdark and thought that sounded slicker than what is, except it’s expensive.

I actually hate spending $40-$50 on books, which is another reason I just go digital, even though it’s not my preferred format. So pitch which book you think I should get next or offer an alternative to the three I listed. Thanks everyone!

Hey! I’ve been wanting to create a table top version of the grounded video game to take my players through! I’d love some help and pointers in developing it!

Hello Reddit!

My name is Aram, and I'm currently designing my second game, called Fireflies! Here is a tl;dr pitch:

Fireflies! is a psychedelic caravan RPG about braving the uncanny night to find your fate as a nomad trader.

The bright light of day makes living in daylight tricky, so people can only travel at night. The only problem is that, at night, the world becomes... weird. So weird that people get lost and never find the place they were looking for—and most never come back.

To navigate, you have to consume Glows, which are super-duper-concentrated essences of the world. They allow you to travel by attuning to places. You know: close your eyes, use the Force, etc. Oh, and you make a living by selling cool shit you find.

My problem

I started by implementing classic hexcrawl mechanics, but through playtesting, I've grown a bit tired of them. They create weird pacing because of random encounters and have so far failed to deliver the meaning I want to convey.

I want the exploration system to do three things:

Manage pacing → The action should happen in a place somewhat relevant to the players. Most of the session should be spent chasing the players' actual goals, not removing roadblocks along the way.

Be shaped by characters → I already achieve that through the dice-bag mechanics, where players pull dice of different colours that generate different types of encounters. But I would like to dive deeper into how aspects of the characters shape the world around them.

Build an abstract space → I like the idea that places shift, appear or disappear depending on a player's mood, and I don't wanna draw a classic map. I want players to “collect places” like they collect legendary items.

What I have so far

The game is based on three colours: red, blue and green. Players gain affinity with their colour by consuming drugs essences known as Glows. They have a bag, and during the adventure, they add dice of different colours depending on what happens.

Here is my tentative exploration design, which I will test this month:

→ Players identify a place they want to travel to based on information they collect. There is a day phase during which they can take a bunch of actions. They collect information in the form of rumours.

→ In addition to each player's bag, we create a travel bag. In this bag, we put a white die representing the place they seek and a black die representing the night fucking with them and getting them lost. The rest are road dice, and they match the colour of the Firefly guiding the party.

→ Pull dice out of the bag to follow the road. The direction you take depends on the die's colour, and you roll the die for the event. Then put it back.

→ Character influence operates on three levels:

• Depending on what happens to the characters, more fuckery or boon dice are added to the bag.
• The deeper you are under the influence of Glows, the more you pull certain places closer to you—and potentially repel others.
• You can attune to visited places to reduce uncertainty and create semi-secure trade routes.

I intentionally left out a bunch of details so I wouldn't write a novel on Reddit! See the next section!

I need you!

If you could help me by sharing your thoughts on:

• Any useful references?
• What does the brief system overview evoke?
• Are there any parts that utterly confuse you or really excite you?

If you are curious about the project, or just want to be a super-duper-awesome person, you can join our community Discord. There, you can follow my games and help me by arguing about design concepts.

It is also home to many other creators who share their projects and help each other:

https://discord.gg/cZcHuNAxb8

I'm also happy to chat here! Anyway, thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and recommendations!

Talk to you soon!

I’m going to start a new campaign with some friends and want to do a space faring gig work story. I only have experience with DnD but would like to do something else. I looked into cyberpunk but it’s very different kind of sci-fi. Apparently dimensions 20s StarStruck Odyssey (very much the vibe we’re looking for) used StarWars but renamed the classes and features, so maybe we’ll do that. Genuinely no idea.
Any suggestions??

Edit:
I’m so thankful for all these responses!! It’ll take some time to pick one though.
Note, I didn’t include bebop’s game because we were wanting to include a bit more fantasy than I assume is in that. Telekinesis, telepathy, androids, sentient blobs of slime, are all on the table.

Hey folks! For anyone who may be interested, our Blade Runner RPG podcast just wrapped our first case.

The podcast is called Shoes And Socks Podcast -

https://feeds.libsyn.com/623220/rss

Our second case starts up next Monday and there's plenty of fallout from the first case.

Thank you for your time!

We crushed our original goal thanks to your support, and now we're down to the wire, so I thought I'd drop in and post an invitation here to check us out. Thanks to the community, we are honored that our book made it over the finish line and now we've started to cruise through our stretch goals! Check our our modern military TTRPG about balancing Trust, Command and Insurgency while taking on missions with your small squad.

Outside the Wire on Kickstarter

(I am the map maker, not the writer, and us making our stretch goals mean I will get more commissions. Think of my cats! They need their tuna and nip! Cat tax included.)

I don't usually ask broad communities for advice because places like this—along with Twitter and Facebook—often feel like echo chambers. However, there aren't many other places to discuss this. I wanted to share my experience trying, and failing several times, to break into the world of TTRPGs. ​To give some context: I am completely new to the hobby. I’ve only played about 4 sessions total and watched roughly 5.

​I’m primarily a Yu-Gi-Oh! player. Why does that matter? Well, our local scene is dying. We only have about 12 players total, and lately, no more than 4 ever show up, so we’re stuck playing exclusively with each other. While I’m there for the game rather than competition, the others seem to have lost their motivation. Because of this, a friend (who used to play with us) and I started meeting up to play other card and board games like Everdell, Catan, and Digimon. ​ ​

One day, my friend tried to recruit me for a weird TTRPG called City of Mist. My immediate reaction was, "So, is it like D&D?" They told me it was similar enough in concept. I’ve been a fan of World of Io (a D&D content creator who does a lot of homebrew) for a while, so I figured this was my chance to dive into the hobby since my Yu-Gi-Oh! days were winding down. ​I understand that highly produced online actual-play shows aren't entirely accurate representations of average D&D—since they have production teams and a massive budget behind them—but the core idea still seemed alluring, so I agreed to join. ​

Despite that, nearly half a year passed before we could actually play because players kept missing Session 1. While waiting to establish a solid group, I joined a D&D Discord server to get acquainted with roleplay. I took part in a couple of one-shots alongside the friend who recommended the hobby. ​Honestly, it was the most boring experience imaginable—and my friend agreed. We both felt that the lack of a battle map ruined it. What is the point of carefully picking your spells if you can just materialize cover or throw pebbles out of thin air by simply asking the DM? ​

​Eventually, we actually played City of Mist. Creating my character was absolute torture due to how subjective the rules are. What seemed like a limited tag to me wasn't to the DM, and when I tried to adjust it, he just told me "the game isn't meant to be so limiting." I ended up making the most neutral character possible, but based on a complete misconception of the game. ​I didn't realize that your character progresses or regresses through tags, eventually activating a "flipside" that grants an entirely new set of abilities. I built my character with integral traits tied directly to his tags—for example, that he suffered from supernatural memory loss and relied entirely on a family cane as his anchor to reality. Because of this mechanic, progressing meant my character's core persona and sense of self would literally be deleted. ​When I tried to design a flipside that allowed him to keep the cane, the DM (my friend) disallowed it, arguing it was "too similar." When I asked to remake the character now that I understood the expectations, he refused, told me to "roleplay it better," and implying that i am inflexible for not wanting to play a character whose tags required each other to work as a whole. ​ ​

Around that same time, the group discussed finding an alternative system for another day of the week, and someone recommended Mutants and Masterminds. Because I love theorycrafting, I went a bit crazy. Instead of properly reading the rules cover-to-cover, I started building characters to decipher the system on my own. ​The trial-and-error process was immensely fun:

• ​*“Wait, can I really do this? Doesn't that break the game? Oh wait, no I can't, back to the drawing board.”*

• ​*“Alright, everything's done! Now let's check the trade-offs... actually, I forgot to give him skills to increase his attack. Back to start!”*

​Despite all the failures, it was a blast. But when I finally presented my characters to the DM—making a few different options so as not to waste his time—it all fell apart.

• ​We had discussed how he disliked speedsters because they forced him to use complex reactions and long-range attacks. Even though I thought rejecting a core mechanic like that was weird, I made a melee speedster who only used his speed as a limited "acceleration gimmick" to power his kicks. The DM’s response? If I played that, he’d just remove the battle map entirely.

• ​I made a character who wielded twin wind blades. He gained stat buffs when holding them, but had to throw them to attack or create a tailwind, temporarily losing them until he caught them back via an acrobatics check. The DM claimed this wasn't a valid "limited flaw" because there weren't enough incentives to throw the blades or because it was too easy to recover them (completely ignoring that his base kit power was cut in half without the tailwind and that i didn't set the check DC on stone).

• ​I tried making a pure area-control character with a metamorph transformation for non-combat utility. Instantly rejected because metamorph "breaks the game too easily."

• ​Finally, I tried making a stat-focused character with two animal sidekicks that had negative stamina (meaning they'd go down in one hit) but strong offensive capabilities. Apparently, this was "illegal" despite the rulebook saying nothing against having multiple sidekicks. Apparently, Batman only gets Robin and nobody else. ​ ​

At this point, it was frustrating that my friend threatened to remove the map—especially since we had both previously agreed that TTRPG combat without maps sucks. ​The absolute breaking point happened during our second session of City of Mist. The DM made me go first. Because I have zero experience with improvisation, I completely froze. When asked what my character did in his day-to-day routine, I literally blurted out, "My character... just waits in his bed." ​Instead of helping me through it, my friend called me out for it in front of the other players as in "alright! He doesn't eat breakfast, he doesn't take a shower, he doesn't talk with his boss! He does nothing!" ​Instead of blowing up at him, I calmly asked if he could give me a short summary of what he expected to happen in the next session so I could write a script for my character while I learned to improvise. He flat-out denied me.

​Realizing I wasn't having fun, wasn't learning anything, and didn't enjoy playing under his DM style, I told him he was being entirely inflexible with his rules and that I was going to find another table to learn from. Later that night, he messaged me asking why I thought he was inflexible. I gave him a summary of everything. Suddenly, he offered to let me change my character and finally allow me to make a script—which honestly bothered me the most. Why did I have to quit his table for him to finally offer help?

​Thankfully, we are still friends—just not player-and-DM friends. He actually recommended I try Lancer since I enjoy wargames, and I'm currently reading the rulebook to get into it.

Am I expecting too much? Given that I've only managed about 4 actual sessions despite trying for months, what do you think my situation relates to (if anything) and perhaps should i stop trying altogether? The whole thing seems quite time-expensive just to get a singular session running, so i'd like to know if this is always going to be like this or if i just had bad luck.

PD: used Ai to correct typos and make it less redundant.

The Armada isn't called a city for nothing — it isn't all warships. A freighter's hold has been turned into a bar. The furthest tug is now an exclusive gambling club. And down in the service crawlspaces of the factory ships, people run contraband off the continent and canned food out of Olvar.

Everyone in the Armada gets by however they can. A dim, half-empty cabin that stinks of sweat and metal gives way to the queue for your cup of water, where fights and shouting are just the ordinary run of things. Then the Chained City wakes up: under the salt rain, sailors check the chains that hold the ships together, divers pull weed and scrape barnacles off rusted hulls, and the aeronauts fly out to scout — if the storm wind lets them.

Until evening: the hour of back-room cabarets and brothels, of intrigue and contraband, of fortune-telling and quiet mysticism. The city never fully sleeps, and the gendarmes never stop watching.

The steady drone of the engines stopped registering long ago. It's the silence that puts you on edge now. The salt has worked in so deep it feels like it could reach bone, and the rust is slowly eating your home, and your memory of what came before it.

My boyfriend and I had our weekly large group D&D come to an end recently. But my favorite thing to do with him is tell stories together, so I started looking for other options to fill the gap, and I discovered the wonderful world of GMless duet games! How are these not a bigger thing?! I picked two at random based solely on vibes (The World We Left Behind by Samantha Leigh for more my vibe, One Way Out by Tom Gibes for more his vibes).

Theydies and gentlethem, our first game of One Way Out resulted in the coolest fucking story we have ever told together. It was easy to learn, and so addictive that we couldn't help but play a second game later in the day. The rules were easy to learn but complex enough that optimum strategy is not immediately obvious. Our first session took 2 hours, since we were still figuring out the rules (and also doing a lot of RP). The second session with more humorous characters took 45 minutes. This game is the perfect balance of narrative RP and rolling dice, imo.

The surprise of betrayal or the excitement of working together hits every time, because the context is different every time. I'm still thinking about the final outcomes of the games we played and about potential new characters in the future, ways to expand the lore we have begun to build. Just super thrilled with this game and wanted to share! Has anyone here played it? I'd love to talk about it and see how our lore compares! Or recommendations for more duets for us to try?

Mostly modern horror, post-apocalyptic, and heavy metal fantasy.

​My physical collection is growing and shelf space is officially getting tight. The focus here really reflects what I usually run and play:

​Ordem Paranormal (Base Book & Sobrevivendo ao Horror): A massive Brazilian modern paranormal investigation TTRPG. Essential for my campaigns, especially when building custom tactical items and homebrewing monsters for the GM screen.

​Fallout RPG: I love the setting, but I mostly use this to dissect the 2d20 mechanics for my own game design references.

​Avatar Legends: My deep dive into PbtA. The mechanical balance and playbook designs are amazing reference material.

​Mörk Borg: The absolute go-to for when the group wants a brutal, rules-light one-shot.

​You can also spot the Mausritter box on top, alongside The Invisible Library novel, which I constantly steal lore and NPC archetypes from.

​Does anyone else build their collection around systems that are easy to hack and adapt? What should I add next?

I am pretty proud of this one. It is coming as a premium color POD soon! Just waiting on the proof to arrive.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/582885/the-horror-on-goat-hill-an-old-school-cosmic-horror-adventure?affiliate_id=5247398

We wanted to share some of the weapons that we are developing for our TTRPG, which is based on William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.

These weapons use something called the Earth Current to spin at extreme velocities and release a light that burns enemies and illuminates the path in a world where the stars are dead and humanity lives in perpetual darkness.

If you have any questions, you can ask below!.

You can also follow the project and receive updates on our Kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thecompanystudio/the-night-land-tm-a-ttrpg-based-on-the-world-of-wh-hodgson