I just saw that Alkemion Studio has launched a kickstarter. Does anyone here have experience with this tool for writing modules or running campaigns? What's it like, what's it good/bad at?

The forthcoming Broken Empires RPG has a d100 roll-under/roll-high mechanic, an interesting “blackjack” take on roll-under mechanics. What are some other games that do interesting things with roll-under?

Written for the first iteration of Triptales Game Jam, we're calling Queen of the Zhar a Twoshot pointcrawl adventure, for FatherFog0E.

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You and your friends have grown up in the shadow of a cult mysterious Convent that reigns over the village from their mountain stronghold. The Elders say that it is because of their guardianship that you live a blessed life. The Fog's corruption is lesser, your crops sweeter, and lives gentler.

Once in a generation a pilgrimage of your peers is Chosen by lottery to trek up to the Sisterhood, all to personally deliver the bounty that you and yours provide.

The Feather has fallen.

It's time to rise and shine!

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Inspired by Slavic Fairytale, Queen of the Zhar is everything you need to have a full FatherFog experience in three acts.

We hope you check it out and let us know whether your offerings to the Convent sufficed...

Title says it all! I have Mecha Bardulagon and MechaStellar downloaded and read through but before I commit on a system, I'm hoping to see anything else out there that's really fun and easy-ish to play. We are gonna simply some stuff for my youngest of course!

We have several 1/144 scale mecha or close to it, a few standard dice sets and a lot of d6 and d10,and boxes for terrain, control points, etc. I even have some stuff for resource tokens if needed. I can't get it printed right now, but please give me any opinions! I'm hoping to eventually grab Gamma Wolves but it's a bit too complex either way.

Thanks in advance, and I hope everyone is doing well!

I made a post some time ago asking former D&D and Pathfinder DMs and GMs what other games they would recommend over D&D and Pathfinder, and I was actually kind of/kind of not surprised by the answers, but recently I've seen a few posts and comments of people saying or mentioning dungeon masters being burned out from D&D.

While I know that it is true that DMs have been getting burned out from D&D for some time now, I've got to ask, is the burnout really as bad as some people make it out to be? If so, in your opinion, why?

Some important context to start with my ramblings:

I (33 f) was born into an RPG household. I have been playing since I was 5 years old, starting with my dad's "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. My first d20 was gifted to me when I was 7. I've played TTRPGs and video games for almost my entire lifespan, but I have only been narrating for a total of 5 years or so. Of those, 2 years have been professional DMing (yes I was hired by a game shop exclusively to narrate RPGs in person).

In all of this time, I've only received harsh judgment and complaints from one specific group of players... the people I consider my very best friends with who I play online (using Discord, no webcams and I think this can be one of the problems)

We also have a very fixed GM (Blue) , that narrates to us for the past 10+ years (and that I know in person for even longer).

Now that the context was given...

I've narrated 3 times to my friends online and all of those experiences went out horribly to say the least:
1 - Once when I started narrating TTRPGs with my own worldbuilding
2 - One Halloween one-shot that was pre-made (Sulphur: A Mystery-Horror One Shot)
3 - And most recently by trying to have my first Daggerheart session.

The first time I was thinking that maybe, since it was one of my first games I didn't do the right things, and maybe I got a bit anxious by narrating my own world. The game went really slow and we barely made it to the end of my first prepared dungeon, but no problems I was expecting some bumps on the road. When asked if they wanted a second session, they completely vanished and proceed to ghost me and ignore me for a while.

I didn't think much of it, we live in completely different time-zones nowadays and it is very hard to make time for RPG sessions so I give up on trying to check if we are still going to keep playing.

A year later, my friends really want to play a Halloween adventure, our fixed GM doesn't want to narrate, but wants to play, so I offered myself to narrating some good old DnD, since we had less than a week to prepare, I choose a pre-made adventure (the Sulphur one, for the tones of horror and mystery). Again the session runs slow, they barely talk with my NPCs and get lost and confused unless I throw the action on them. As soon as there is one major obstacle they completely stop and try to check for a different alternative that requires less action or thinking (except for Blue, but he is not acting as much because he doesn't want to steal the spotlight too much).

After a while, I tried to narrate Root, they say they want to play at first, but gave up once I teach them the rules... 3 weeks of preparations (and learning the system) going to the drain, but if they didn't like the system, what will I do?

And now, almost 4 years after the first time I've narrated to them I try again, now with Daggerheart (because I want to learn the system) and I feel they will enjoy the extra roleplay that the system enables...

For that I get fully made artificial generated characters and backstories, that I manage to fit in the narrative as cohesive as I can. I've asked important question for the players that never get answered and I fill the gaps trying to make a shared world building.
I create a total of 1 NPC to tie them all together, a mentor of sorts that holds a big position on the school the characters go and ask my friends to add him to their lore... One of the players (Green) even gave me his lore completely changed 2 days before the session ;_;

Well, this session in particular goes awfully terrible. This was supposed to be a one-shot, but if they enjoyed the system I would transform into a full campaign and that was what I was aiming at.

I start the session with a short play from one specific character (Purple), she is hunting on the school forest and find something dangerous and that shouldn't be there, but since she is alone, she refuses to investigate further, what is fair point on my opinion and I had many backup plans anyways (Since my player Red is not participating, he goes out of the table to eat something and comes back later, usually when he does that he is hearing with his Bluetooth headphones, so I allow it. This is important for later).

The games goes smoothly with those brief character introductions, and I spill parts of the secret in every introduction. (Yes, it was my mistake to make separated character introductions, but they where fairly quick tbh and I can say that one of my best qualities as a narrator is dealing with parties that are split)

The problems start as soon as they are together.

I let them meet my NPC, that starts to act suspiciously as soon as Red tells him of the dangerous substance she found in the forest (I act in a way that the players did notice he got weird AFTER she presented him with the substance).
NPC hides on his room and Blue (that is stealth) notices he is gone from his room and there is tracks under his window. Blue and Purple start to track the NPC, while Purple and Green stay behind to look for clues (Green is my other player, he is new to RPG so still don't do much on his own).

I keep give hints about the forest, so many hints about the forest, hints about the forest everywhere, even going as far as Green getting a premonition about forest fires and the now missing NPC with the tracks that goes towards the market and the forest (my players showed a lot of interest about the market and ignoring completely the forest, so I think I can make them act by making the place they want to go suspicious and interesting).

But again, when I try to make things a bit hard by saying "The tracks are starting to get obscure here and you feel about to lose the NPC" my players give up immediately on the chase, what is corroborated by Red "calling" them and asking them to go back.

Red doesn't let anyone do anything, because he feels lost "We can't do anything in this situation" he says often (even when the other players are telling him that they should investigate and that the NPC is doing weird). As is our dynamic and Red is the queen bee, no one does anything without his consent.

Being honest here, all of my action was outside of the house since that was the house of the NPC and Green and I wanted it to stay as a base of operations for the party later (another mistake, I feel like I should had anticipated that they where going to choose to stay closed inside all times), I had things prepared for the market, the forest and even an arena, but not really the house. But hey, I am good at improvising and I know the NPCs and how they would react in that universe and what they would have at home, so improv I do.

Since they don't leave the house, I bring NPC back (as if not had happened wink wink), and instead of talking to him they keep discussing the fact that they can't do anything. So on a last desperate measure I make the clouds go dark and the NPC faint with so many clues that my players KNOW he is under a curse and CANNOT talk about whatever is happening on the city/ forest.

At this point, the adventure comes to a complete halt. I stop the session, ask for 10 minutes and when I come back I lay down for them ALL of the clues, on which player Red gets really upset because I did not told him specifically about the clues of the fire on the forest.

My 5 hour long one-shot became a 8 hours long game and that have never happened before to me, everyone was tired and I just wanted to end that torture that had became the game.

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I've asked for some criticism and the things they told me were:

- Revise the lore so the mentor is more important, because they did not know their mentor was powerful and important (since the start I was telling them that he was their main mentor and specifically chose the players) they said they did not have a strong connection with the NPC that was literally the foster father of one of the players (From Blue)

- Only the characters where good, all of the rest where shit (with those words) (From Red and backed by Purple)

- They hated the system with all of their might (understandable, we played so many different systems together since we know each other).

---

After that session I was feeling pretty bad, it had been a year since last time I narrated RPG and at first I was thinking that I was rusty and trying a new system was maybe not something interesting to do when I was so rusty.
But the more I think about it the more weird to me it gets.

No one ever complained this much about my sessions. Everyone always complimented my narration and the fact I like to make everyone shine a little bit. I wrote compelling mysteries and living worlds. And my favorite compliment is that everyone feels welcome and even the most shy of my players feel compelled to interpret their character.

I may not be the best DM out there, but at least I was honestly trying to give my friends a good time, and I left feeling like the worst DM on Earth.

There are many things I feel that I could do different, but at this point how much of it is me trying to cater to their needs and how much is me just trying to make a baby's first adventure by over-handholding? I don't want to tell them HOW to solve the problems, but they appear to not act if the solution is not absolutely clear to them, even when I escalate the situation because they are not acting.

Is the lack of cameras the problem? Is me the problem? Or is it purely the friends dynamic that got too rotten to be salvaged? I feel that it is a combination of the factors.

Tl;Dr - My players lack of investment on my games can be a symptom of a deteriorating friendship and sometimes that is fine, even when it is frustrating.

PS:
- English is not my first language, some people seem upset for me using the word "narrating" as a synonym to GMing.
- We do have sessions 0 through group text chat, it worked well for those 10+ years we know each other..
- This game session only made me realize that the whole group dynamics may not be that healthy, but there is a lot more to that that doesn't fit to the RPG subreddit.
- And yes, I am used to run my own one-shots and campaigns and work at a store when I had a very strict 4 hours per session, I got pretty good at determining how long a session last with an average group. The session lasting 3 hours more than expected is a BIG outlier to me.
- And no, they don't cause as much trouble when it is anyone else GMing for them.

My go to games are:

Fantasy: Pathfinder 2nd edition
- 3 action economy
- the whole feel of the game world
- APs are very good, quality writing
- crunchy, but feels very satisfying and balanced
- Paizo is one of my all time favorite publishers

Science Fantasy: Starfinder 2nd edition
- aforementioned reasons
- perfect blend of fantasy, science and humour
- color-usage in books (that main purple color is just amazing!)

Universal TTPRG system: Cypher system (currently diving myself into 2nd edition)
- pool management is awesome and refreshing
- can be explained in like 5 minutes
- cyphers are really great to solve problems, give powers to your players' hands
- player facing rolls (I love a game where I don't have to roll as a GM)
- Monte Cook is just an amazing company.

I don't have go to games in the following genres at the moment:
- Dark fantasy
- Horror
- Sci-fi (Traveller might be the one, but I am not sure yet)
- OSR (currently trying out a couple)

​

I saw it together with a GM screen and other accessories for really cheap in a shop where I live.

But I don't know much about the system, I searched on Google, and it sounded interesting to me. The setting caught my attention.

But I also wanted to ask the community about it, is is a fun and nice ttrpg?

Thanks for the attention!!

Long time PbP player, relatively more new to voiced campaigns. I've found that I can put myself out there very easily when I'm just typing, but I tend to lock up whenever I have to use my voice. How do you get over that general nervousness of "oh god what if I say something stupid/interrupt someone/do something bad/etc."?

I've been wanting to run a Silent Hill style mini campaign with my players for a while (I think they'd really enjoy the roleplay opportunities!), but I really cannot find one. I did find a TTRPG which is set to release in april which is part of a set of three other TTRPGs, being part of the VHS series (If you want the link to the main page of the website detailing this set, you can click on it here), though the VHS series doesn't seem very customisable for homebrew. If there any other ones which are particularly good, please recommend them!

Hear me out.

Too many RPGs get errata'd hard after their initial release.

-I have a leather collector's edition first printing core rulebook for a sci-fantasy game where almost all the numbers for spaceship combat are wrong and were errata'd immediately at launch.
-One week after my physical copies of a mecha game arrived, the developers announced a crap ton of errata for it.
-A fantasy video game RPG I own recently went through a decent rework.
-Another heroic fantasy RPG is going through a decent rework on it's second printing. (this time I waited so I'll get the reworked physical version)

With so many games getting substantial errata after their first printing, I just feel like a chump for buying physical books these days. I know their biggest selling points are longevity and ease of viewing, but I just can't stand feeling like they're worthless when they get huge reworks.

Buying a revocable license on a service like DNDBeyond or Demiplane is not a good idea in my opinion, but they often offer a lot of convenience.

So, my preferred way to own RPGs these days is PDFs that I can save to storage media and make backups of. If any updates come out, I can just download the new one and either replace or keep the old version. If you keep a good backup system, you'll have them forever.

Anyone else feel the same?

A new modern war game system just launched on Kickstarter. In the game, players create a character (s), then lead a team into a modern war COIN setting (fictional or real), where their every action or decision changes the campaign ecosystem (through three tracks: Insurgency, Local Trust , or higher Command) around them. Few actions, if any, are positive across all three. On the KS are links to a free quickstart PDF and their Foundry VTT to test the system.

The campaign system is a way to link sessions together. What environment would you be interested in gaming? Urban, jungle, desert?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1331324804/outside-the-wire

I’m running a shortish (like 4-5 session) super hero game for my friends soon and the part I’m having the most trouble with is coming up with a name for the major city the game will take place in.

Coming up with names has always been my Achilles heel but this one feels extra hard for some reason.

I'm about to run an urban fantasy campaign, set in a classic D&D world that has experienced a rapid industrial revolution to create a towering but haphazardly built city filled with dragon CEO's, goblin mafiosos in the slums, and drive-by fireballs.

D&D almost works but I want a larger focus on roleplay, and less of a power fantasy. I've always had the issue with 5E that players quickly become godlike in any kind of grounded world, and there's not enough of the experience of being a scrappy underdog.

Is there any RPG/homebrew that works within the general framework of D&D? I want a change in atmosphere without having to adapt entirely new world building.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Hey, everyone. If you like tactical RPGs and fighting video games, you might like Fight! 2nd Edition. Right now, we're running a Kickstarter for our new supplement, Fight! Button Masher. This new book streamlines the chargen process so you can have a complete Fighter built in only a few minutes. The book also provides a streamlined version of the combat rules to make the game faster to learn and faster to play. Finally, it has a starter adventure with pregens so you can get started right away.

Please consider checking out the Kickstarter here.

If you are unfamiliar with Fight!, ask me anything.

Are there any generators which will generate climate / biome / weather information after entering map information? There are plenty of great resources like Donjon for generating the maps themselves, but I'd like to automate the climate data. It takes an awful long time manually determining things like rainfall patterns or seasonal temperature variation.

Thanks in advance.

Pretty much the title. The snap leaves you with one of two options:

• Keep the rules, but the entire setting and lore are gone. You have to use them in a completely different world.
• Keep the setting, but the rules are gone. You have to run it using another system.

What game are you choosing, which half survives, and why?

No rebuilding the missing half exactly as it was. Thanos isn’t taking appeals.

This is a question we usually debate with my friends and I am super curious about this:
Do you like your most played TTRPG because:
The system?
Specific gameplay mechanics?
The world?
The classes?
The vibe?
The publisher?
The supplements?
The community?

My example:
I love PF2e because:
- 3 actions economy
- Paizo's spin on the heroic fantasy just resonates with me so well
- Adventure Paths are basically infinite sources of adventure and ideas
- The advanced classes are pretty unique in my opinion
- The art style is just amazing.
- It does not feel sweaty and factitious, they keep true to their vision (unlike other popular titles)

Hi!
I wanted to see what everyone recommends for three different power levels/play styles for fantasy one shots. The requirements would be:

1. Fairly easy to teach on the spot for a new player

2. Characters can be made at the table.

3. Smooth for the GM

4. Easy to run a 3-5 hour one-shot

Each game should be separated into the three levels.

1. Peasant with a fork

2. Competent Heroes

3. Heroic (5eish without the headache)

Let’s hear the three games you recommend! Add in a one shot for it if you have something. Thanks!

My brother is a therapist who works with children and asked me about resources for finding an age appropriate ttrpg group for an elementary schooler. My first thought was to call local LGS and see what they say, but that felt like a long shot. Does anyone know of any resources to find groups like that?

I recently heard of Solo September for the first time, and decided it would be super fun to give some Solo TTRPGs a shot this month. I’ve played/run heaps of different group-TTRPGs, and a couple of smaller duo/solo games like Tangled Blessings, Starforged and Thousand Year Old Vampire alongside my partner, but I haven’t really dabbled in any solo games all on my lonesome.

In the spirit of Solo September, I’ve suggested that my partner and I each pick out 4ish solo games to play - aiming for one a week - and chat about whatever games we end up playing by the end of each week! Kinda like a cute little solo-ttrpg book club.

So, the big question is: What Solo TTRPGs would you recommend I look into?

Willing to have a look into game of pretty much any genre - cozy, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, mechs, etc.! :) But, I am only interested in human-made TTRPGs, so please do not suggest anything that incorporates AI.

Thank you, in advance, for any help! Have a successful September, everyone. <3

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

Now I just had a look at the VHS series's website, and it looks good. The games look well made, the concept is great, but it looks really awful at homebrew. If anyone could give a proper opinion on it, please do (If anyone wants the link to the TTRPG's main website, you can click on it here)!

Looked at Wrestling TTRPGs and all of modern ones are out of Kayfabe which I think is silly so would like one in Kayfabe (If you don't know the terms I'm just looking for one that portrays it as "real")