A profile of Dr. Rick Barton, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, who developed the megadungeon "The Halls of Arden Vul."

My daughter wants to jump headfirst into playing tabletop games with me and others but she wants to be the GM.

What is out there that can help her run a simple game that she can be at the controls of?

I'm pretty vanilla and am most familiar with D&D but I know of others mostly from listening to actual play podcasts

One of the most common types of posts around here is GMs looking for a system for a specific campaign idea, or just something more tailored to their tastes. We see tons of recommendations, but rarely do I see follow-ups.

So I'm curious; if you ran a game based on a recommendation, how did it go? Were you happy with the recommendation? Was the game how it was described? Was there any pleasant or unpleasant surprises? Any elements of the game that you wish had been highlighted sooner? Are you still playing it?

Hello. Im looking to run a game set in the weird west. I have recently been playing the video game 'Weird West' and I've been having a blast. That game is certainly an inspiration for what im looking but other than that I just wanna have some cowboys fight dark wizzards.

So far I've got a list of a few ideas but each one feel like it's missing some.

● Call of Cthulhu (homebrewed, possibly Pulp cthulhu). Im very familiar with the system and like a lot of its mechanics but it feel a little limited in a few ways like assuming that all the investigators are straight up normal humans who die easily in gun fights.

● deadlands. I know that this might just be the most poster child rpg for the weird west setting but... IDK if it's just me but it seems kinda dead... I dont know how much support it has and I have no knowledge of its system at all!

● weird frontier, dungeon crawl classics. I truely know nothing about this system. A good friend recommended it but when I looked what what dice it uses, I could not figure it out at all it looked Uber complicated.

Those were all the systems that I have heard of, but im open to any new suggestions if any of yall know better. Id also love to hear you thoughts on the pros and cons of each I've listed so far. Thanks in advance.

I'm running a game with some very powerful stun locks in it. I tend to avoid using them. A villain casting a spell that takes a player out for an entire combat isn't fun for that player. Killing them? I’m open to that, because they at least have a fighting chance. But taking them out of combat entirely? I struggle to bring myself to do it.

I'm not looking for advice on how to fix or soften stun locks. The sub has plenty of that already.

I want the opposite. Do you have a controversial opinion that debilitating stun locks are a good thing? Why? How do you keep the stunned player engaged?

This week's RPG is Call of Cthulhu [7th Edition]!

Have you played it? Have you run/GM'd it? How did it go?

What's your favourite memory from the game?

What's the best thing about the game?

What's the worst? How would you improve it?

.

Last week was Ars Magica. Join us again next week for Mythras!

Hi folks, I’m looking for a physical battle map in 25mm scale with Mayan style temples and some basic jungle scenery with ruins. In ideal world, a book with both in would be great. I don’t have the time or inclination to get them printed myself. Ideally something I can get shipped from Europe or the UK. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can wait a couple of weeks for shipping.

I am looking for something where there's still whimsy and is not grimdark. The closest in mind that I've played is Dragonbane and the motto "Mirth and Mayhem" is what I have in mind. I also wonder played straight how dark does Shadowdark get. Sorry for the pun. I only did the funnel "Trial of the Slime Lord" and it seemed alright.

More on this. I do not care for the super power fantasy or saving the world. I want a game that allows me to do normal DnD stuff like dungeon delve in a generic fantasy setting, maybe more playful like with fairies or something. I don't just want a power creep.

I like that magic has cantrips like Mage Hand, Minor Illusion or Prestidigitation. If these do not work as cantrips, they can be regular spells. The more utility, the more fun. Similarly, I like magic items to matter and be cool. I like the fantasy of being someone who is above normal skills but not to a insane level and can use their smarts to get the upper hand. I like exploration to still be worth something. I don't care about stuff like lethality and grittiness. I mean, I don't mind it, but that's not my issue.

I have a lot of experience with NSR, but not sure if I've played any true OSR. But you know, the setup where in Mausritter your mouse goes on small time quests is what I'm going for. I just want to be an adventurer!

I'm looking to pick up a western system for my next campaign and I'm down to both these systems. I have a story idea that could fit both the acid and weird west of both these games. I'm seeing if anyone has played both, or even just one or the other, and which they prefer and why.

What I'm looking for:

• Rules lite - more narrative driven
• Longer campaign length 10+ if possible.
• Can be used to make up my own homebrew world.

Hi, r/rpg! We're Onyx Path Publishing, publishers of your favorite games!

The Curseborne Covenant, the next tier of play for our Curseborne RPG, is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

We're here to answer all your burning Curseborne questions!

But of course, Curseborne's not the only game line we publish, and this is an Ask Us Anything, so feel free to ask about any of our other titles:

Onyx Path's games include:

• Curseborne
• The Earthbane Cycle (The World Below, At the Gates, Monster Kingdoms, Jadestorm)
• Scarred Lands
• Scion
• They Came From...
• The Trinity Continuum

The games we've made with partners under license include:

• The Bodhana Group's Branch Riders
• Rose Bailey's Cavaliers of Mars
• White Wolf's Chronicles of Darkness
• Michael Pucci's Dystopia Rising: Evolution
• White Wolf's Exalted
• Caliber Comics' Legendlore
• Pugsteady's Realms of Pugmire
• White Wolf's World of Darkness

As people join in and announce themselves, I'll add their names here so you know who's who:

In-house staff:

• u/richt_op: Rich Thomas, founder and creative director
• u/TheOnyxPath: Ian A. A. Watson, OPP community manager, content lead on the Trinity Continuum
• u/eddyfate: Eddy Webb, executive producer, overseer of the Storypath Ultra system and Realms of Pugmire
• u/MatthewDawkins: Matthew Dawkins, creative strategist, overseer of Curseborne, the Earthbane Cycle, Scarred Lands, Scion, and They Came From...!
• u/chaneyinsaney: Mike Chaney, art director
• u/TravisLegge: Social media manager, production assistant, too many hats to count
• u/DixieCyanide: Editing and more! (Reddit still doesn't let us add her as a co-host but she's legit)

Intrepid freelancers:

• u/fragilebites: Emma Summers: Jadestorm, Curseborne Covenant, Seattle: City of Curses
• u/BoringApartment2408: Chris Jones: Curseborne Covenant
• u/EricZawadzki: Eric Zawadzki: Deviant, Curseborne
• u/PolyamorousNephandus: Jacqueline Bryk: Curseborne, Chronicles of Darkness, Exalted

---

Edit: We've run for two hours, so we're wrapping up. Thanks for joining us!

I’m looking for a BRP, but I want something that still feels like playing D&D. So far, I’ve read the Quickstart and really liked it; it uses almost all the same dice as D&D, and from what I’ve read, it’s easy to add in the d20. I also like how it handles hit points and attack math, it reminds me of the lethality of OSR systems, but I want to know if there’s anything closer to what I’m looking for.

P.S: Sorry for the bad English.

Hi there !

I am pleased to announce that Shadowrun: Anarchy 2.0 pdf is available for all to purchase on DTRPG (where it's currently the best selling book, thank you all for that <3 ) and CGL online store.

Anarchy 2.0 is an alternate, lighter and more narration driven rule set to play in the world of Shadowrun. Developed by Black Book Edition, the French licensee of CGL, it is a fully official product and an alternate entry to the Sixth World.

The physical version has already been seen in some convention, with a retail date expected in November (I've read November 11th somewhere but I cannot confirm).

Don't miss out the free additional resources:

• Conversion guide from Shadowrun 6.
• Interactive character sheet.
• Shadow Amps expanded list. This fan made document regroup all the Amps from the core book + a lot of additional ones.

Furthermore, new books are on their way! Don't miss the new Kickstarter campaign starting November 3rd for 2 new books:

• Companion: Advanced Magic, Technomancers, Alternate character types, magical and technological threats, bestiary.
• Johnson's Call: New adventures, mission briefs, small campaigns and some detailed location with adventure leads.

If you have any question about the game, the upcoming books or anything else Anarchy 2.0 related, don't hesitate to ping me :-)

So whenever I am reading one of my RPG books, I end up always thinking of what else I could use this game for, beyond it's own world, as such I have come up with a few, and I want to share my thoughts on what games I could try running

Goblinslayer with Legends in the Mist - LitM is labelled as Rustic Fantasy, with it's tags and theme books it is designed to usuallybe lower magic, with growth going along 4 theme books that can be changed over time, and even with only having it a short time, I can already easliy imagine making Goblinslayer, Priestess, High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman and Lizard Priest

One Piece with The Wlidsea - now it wouldn't fully give players the same feel in combat moments as a Shonen Manga, but with the ship building, traveling mechanics and the aspects that make up your character, which the core book talks about making your own on, this game would easily give you sailing on the weirdness of Paradise and the New World of the Grand Line

Borderlands with Otherscape - now it wouldn't fit the looter shooter aspect of BL, but with it's mix of Mythos, Noise and Self, along with rules for the creation of cities and world in the core book, you could enjoy a Borderlands game, I personally have made all Vault Hunters using Otherscape myself, so I know it can be done

Toriko and Monster Hunter with Wilderfeast - this one is kinda a cheat, as both media was an inspiration for Wilderfeast, it is a game where you hunt large monsters with massive kitchen utensils and eat them to gain the monsters power, that works for both Toriko and Monster Hunter, and you could easily shift some parts to better match, you can make your own monsters that fit better, and have the powers be part of your armour instead of your body for MH

Sliders or Exiles with Outgunned - for those who don't know, Exiles was Xmen comic where a group of six were forced to jump between realities to fix them before they go to the next one, similar to Sliders, and with Outgunned's Action Flicks volumes 1 to 3 you have dozens of possible alternate realities for a group of either normal people or supers to be jumping between and having adventures in the strange new worlds with their own rules

so what other RPGs do you all think you could use for certain Media that doesn't have it's own RPG atm?

I wrote a one-evening operation for Halloween, set on the Isle of Man, where Halloween is called Hop-tu-Naa and children go door to door with hollowed-out turnips. At noon on 31 October four cadets fly to the island and have until midnight. In Glen Maye lives a boy who has not grown in seven years, and his mother will not give him up.

It's for my free occult-agency RPG O.D.I.N., uses the four ready-made Quickstart agents and runs three to four hours. 29 pages, free PDF, no sign-up. The illustrations are AI-generated.

https://odin-rpg.pages.dev/en/book/hop-tu-naa

What are you running this Halloween?

As part of my goal to try a system from every publisher with some exceptions, (My friend gave me a very loud verbal warning that scared me off Monte Cook designed games for complexity reasons.) I've been looking into whether I want them on the shelf, or in PDF form.

While I do want to pick up Shadowrun Anarchy 2.0 once they start selling physical copies, one thing I had heard was to avoid physical for Cyberpunk Red. That, regardless of how you feel about the system, the physical layout for Red was very hard to read, and that PDF would be a far simpler, easy to process read compared to the core book.

This got me curious, are there any other books where there's a disparity between how readable it is in physical form, vs how readable it is in digital form? What makes one format poorer to read than the other, beyond things like editing errors and the like?

So I'm sort of new to ttrpgs and my first actual character is a runaway noble druid, who is, as the title suggests, rude, obnoxious and naive. They are a young elf (well a literal teenager in human age) who want to see the world. And as they are sort of young their family is looking for them, and they know that but that does tend to slip their mind. Oh and they are from a very noble family so they were spoiled rotten.

I am looking for a new fantasy RPG to try out. I like our current system, but it is sometimes hard to DM for, and am looking for an alternative where I don't have to do quite as much work balancing encounters. ShadowDark is a great that way, but myself (and my players) really like the Heroic Fantasy feel, and we like long campaigns, and those aren't ShadowDark's strong points. I am trying to decide weather to buy Tales of the Valiant or Draw Steel. There are two things I am looking for.

1. Does the game have some crunch? I don't want a game significantly less crunchy than 5e. My friends and I are left-brained strategy nerds for the most part, and while they like some role-playing antics, they aren't in it for the voice-acting and drama.
2. Does the game has published campaigns?
3. Does the game have that heroic fantasy feel (i.e. are the characters trying to defeat evil or simply trying to grab loot while pushing their hirelings into traps).

Any suggestions between the 2 games I mentioned, or maybe a 3rd game I haven't thought of?

Edit: 5e is difficult for me to DM for, for reasons that probably don't

Hi, I am going to introduce my players to CoC, with the quick-start rules and the One shot adventure within the rules.

I am looking through the books and some things are a bit unclear. (This might be edited )

1. "Call for a library use" - How does the game handle roll piling? If all players want to make a roll?
2. Roll high/ low. Failure etc. - I still have to refresh the rules. But how much does this matter?
3. Do I have to come up with different results for each roll depending on the player result?
4. It says stuff like: Players can use one of the following: ....
5. Do I have to tell them what skills are an option? I assume yes since its only a one shot.

Any overall advice for a new CoC DM?
I remember from reading the rules that its easy on rules, very much theater of the mind and advices against combat.

-----------

I am currently trying to copy the PC characters from the one shot to Roll20. But that doesnt quite fit with the skills or I just dont know what to type in exactly.
In the book it says for example: Charm 15% and 3 empty boxes or some skills with actual numbers in it like Disguise (05%) 60/30/12). In Roll 20 I have to type in a number like charm 15.

I am not sure how to translate this correctly. The fixed 3 numbers are the 3 difficulties, sure. So with Disguise 60, I type in 60 in Roll 20 and it takes that number for a regular difficulty roll.

But what about the empty skills where it only says Drive Auto (20%)?
Does that mean the PC has a 20% chance to make it? And I have to type in 20 in Roll20?
- But then it says: Fast Talk (05%) but follows with 60/30/12 ? so the 05% isnt the chance to make it?

B) The Characteristics (STR,DEX...) do not change the skills from what I can tell. at least nothing is coded into the R20 character sheet. ^^

Thanks.

I really wanted to like Blades in the Dark. I became interested in PbtA games after running OSR and DnD for many years. But after running Blades a few times, I just found it a bit tiring. I can explain why in greater detail, but I don't want that to be the focus of this thread.

Long story short: It has an evocative setting and really cool gameplay ideas, but I felt like the narrative system got me further from the roleplay than I wanted. It's like every narrative moment of this game is wrapped up in a clockwork of mechanics, discouraging freeform play. And ultimately, the rules felt equal parts dense and opaque. I was constantly pouring over the handbook trying to keep it in my head, more than any other game, and I got the overwhelming feeling that it made less sense if taken whole. As one Youtuber mentions, the rules feel implicit (and sometimes self-contradictory). It's as though people do not run this game, but they let the philosophy of the rules wash over them and they run their own version. Which is totally fine, make the game work for your table, but I would rather just run a different system if it can't be followed prescriptively.

So I left it thinking "I've actually had better roleplay moments in 5e." Still, I really liked the partial successes, stress/bargain system, the unique playbooks, the evocative setting, and the promise of the faction system. Are there any games that scratch a similar itch outside of Forged in the Dark?

I have read through Spire and really want to run that, but my friends don't really want to roleplay an oppressed racial minority in a resistance group. Does Spire (or Heart) work well if repurposed for a totally different campaign? Or does the advancement system kinda fall apart?

**Edit**

Since people have asked for details on why we bounced off Blades so hard. We loved the urban setting, evocative classes, fast action, engagements/consequences, and who doesn't love building a gang?

But the frustrations had nothing to do with being a narrative system or letting players contribute to the story. A big part of it was just specificity in all of the wrong places, leading to awkward play without tweaks.

• The book is just laid out poorly, and that does make your job as a GM way harder as you will be working overtime to clarify the rules.
• This game has a weird way of having several mechanical ways to do the same narrative task, but then giving different bonuses or disadvantages depending on which mechanic you choose. This creates a weird segregation of rules.
  • For instance, you can get information from something called "Gather Information", which is treated in the rulebook like its own special thing even though it's identical to freeplay. But you can also get information from long term projects if getting that information is more involved. Are Hounds good at both? No. They are only good at the first one. They don't get bonuses to project progress for tracking a target. There's no narrative reason this makes sense.
    • Side note, why is Gather Information its own separate mechanic in the first place? That seems like something that should just be freeplay.
• Tier sucks. It feels half baked, and is better replaced with judgement calls from the GM.
  • It modifies some fortune rolls, but outside of that, nearly every mention of Tier in the rulebook is just how to temporarily increase it.
  • Tier is kinda used as a formal way to say "this is harder/easier because these guards are well trained, or this equipment is rusty." In DnD, you would just sprinkle this into different rolls as relevance dictates, often using "Advantage." But being this casual about it in Blades is bad, because there are many features the players can engage with that temporarily increase their tier. So ignoring it half the time means throwing away the players reward for paying attention to their character. By encoding this type of "advantage" system in such roundabout, indirect rules, this makes Tier an annoying bookkeeping system.
  • Furthermore, the few example plays referencing Tier imply it should be consulted in overly convoluted ways. There are several examples in the book of Tier for lockpicking, of all things. Using tier for equipment feels uncharacteristically anal for a game like this. "Arlyn is picking the lock...Her crew is Tier I and she has fine lockpicks—so she’s effectively Tier II. The Circle are Tier III. Arlyn is outclassed in quality, so her effect will be limited on the lock" Are we really expected to be consulting Tier on this level of minutia? This implies we just constantly roll with increased or reduced effect no matter what we're doing.
• Downtime was cool at first, but because it's so rigid and predictable, it feels like horribly paced mechanical paperwork. And it's a huge part of the game. It's like they put an hour of leveling up in each session. Yes, the book encourages you to actually roleplay certain scenes in your Downtime, but it's just inherently duller.
  • In a regular RPG, when you walk into a bar to interrogate somebody, there's a wide swathe of possibilities. You might roll to intimidate, you might have to dodge a punch, combat might start, etc. There's a sense that the momentum could move in multiple directions.
  • But in Blades, you are picking a very specific Downtime action and making a very specific roll, with bounded results. You don't get complications during Downtime, it's separate from regular play. You do not get extra downtime actions or anything from creatively roleplaying it. This creates a disjointed, board game style of progression that makes it more boring to roleplay until Downtime is over. I see people just homebrew this problem away.
• People are going to disagree, but the concept of "Limited effect" is unfun and antithetical to the design of this game. A success with limited effect is one of the dullest things that can happen. In a game that evangelizes fail forward design, what role does success with limited effect play? It's effectively a limp version of "you failed." I don't like it, and I don't think the game even likes it, because example play of limited effect is sometimes indistinguishable from regular effect, which is why people complain online about "effect," as a concept, being poorly described.
• I think having some players in Prison and some roaming free is a fundamentally unfun way to play with friends, no matter how much influence they have, and building a bunch of playbook and crew skills around being in prison feels like a waste.
• The stuff I have listed might not seem like a big deal, but here is the main issue: These things that Blades tries to mechanically formalize (Downtime, Tier, Position/Effect) were not issues I had in RPGs. I felt they could be handled just as easily with a short aside to my players. A desperate roll to push someone could just be "He looks tough, it might be dangerous to get that close to him." In fact, that is usually the sentence you'll be saying anyway when a player asks why the roll is considered desperate. I didn't need a whole formal system for that, and I don't think the rules really add clarity to the conversation, because it is up to each table what controlled/desperate even means anyway. Codifying this into position and effect feels like a semantic muddling that actually gets in the way of the conversation Blades encourages. And it does it all with a big, hard to navigate rulebook.
  • But because Downtime, Tier, and Position/Effect are tightly coupled with playbooks, crew upgrades, engagements, etc. It feels like you can't do away with any of them.

A while back I asked for some good podcasts under 5 people and while I found some good ones, most of seemed to focus on dumb jokes and ooc talk, which I am not into at all. I want to listen to a ttrpg and be invested in a story, not listen to some guys talk about gencon. So, any suggestions for me?

Earlier this year I had an idea for a convention game: two people who don't know each other sit down together, play two criminals who don't know each other, rob a place, and leave the game changed for the next pair. No GM, no dice, not a whole lot of trust.

That became We've Never Met and We're Robbing This Place, a short GM-less heist game for two players.

One is the Architect, the other is the Operator. You alternate between playing your character and GMing for the other person across three scenes – the Approach, the Job, and the Getaway. The characters are competent, so the GM doesn't block actions but instead introduces costs, danger, fallout and hard choices.

Each player also has hidden goals, and the GM role has its own goals. Fulfilling those while GMing earns tokens that become leverage when you're back on the other side of the table. After the third scene, everything comes to a head in a final moment of truth.

I originally made it to run continuously at Ropecon at my booth with strangers cycling through the table. People played it, people had fun. Now I've cleaned it up into something other people can run. Diceless game, one run takes around 20 minutes.

It’s free: https://mesolitgames.com/wnm

If you want to hear about future Mesolit Games releases, there’s also a mailing list on the site.

Hey everyone,

I picked up Mothership a bit ago because I really liked their skill tree. However, every time I propose it to my table there is a bit of a meh response due to it being a little thin on skills while also having some oddly specific ones. We play games that are skill heavy typically so it's a point of discussion.

Are there other ttRPGs with similar skill set up that have more depth? We've played Cyberpunk Red which has skill trees but they're not interconnected which was the interesting part of the Mothership skills to me.

Any and all suggestions are welcome but a modern day/sci-fi setting would be preferable for the game I want to run.

I can usually tell what a game expects us to do when somebody draws a sword. I'm much less sure what it expects us to do the morning after.

A few sessions into a recent campaign, our group helped evacuate a flooded town. Great session. Next week we wanted to know whether people had come back, who was running things now, how far word of what we'd done had spread, and whether the damaged bridge would be repaired before winter.

We had very specific rules for what happens if you fall off that bridge. Almost nothing to help us figure out what happens to the town when its only bridge is gone.

And sure, we could improvise all of that. We did. But it made me realize how much of the actual experience of running a campaign lives in the gaps between the procedures the book gives you.

I'm not asking for a tax return minigame. I just wish more core books showed what an ordinary week looks like in their game. Who decides what changes offscreen? How much time passes? What happens to relationships, obligations, factions, livelihoods?

Blades in the Dark's downtime and Pendragon's winter phase are two examples that come to mind. Even a game whose answer is "skip that stuff and start the next job" is telling me something useful about how it's meant to be played.

I don't need every game to simulate daily life. I just want to understand its rhythm without having to invent that part myself.

Which RPGs do you think handle the time between adventures particularly well?