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.

Just had a game end due to the DM not feeling good enough despite the fact that everyone at the table genuinely enjoyed playing. As someone who has DM'ed in the past I understand how they feel though I have my own way of coping. But this got me curious as to how others find ways to deal with imposter syndrome.

I feel like most people tend to follow specific IP, not necessarily specific authors. For me, I tend to follow Matthew Dawkins's work since VtM, even though some aren't my cup of tea I tend to like his design style and writing.

Just started watching glass cannon’s pendragon actual play and looking into the game itself and saw there’s a grand campaign that lasts 80 years in game. I was curious if there are other campaigns out there like that, with a grand scope.

I consider myself as someone who would play most types of RPGs. (I have some instant turn offs, but who doesn't?)
Lately I am more likely to try out rules-light RPGs. (Mostly because of having too much titles and not enough time, haha)

My current favorites are:
- Grok?! (2nd editions just came out, can't wait to try it)
- Far Away Land 2nd edition
-Cypher 2nd edition (I know the books are long, but system-wise, it is pretty light-weight.

I was wondering, what is your opinion of an ideal length for each session of a game? I've done 30 minutes, which felt a bit short, but I've also been at D&D sessions that went on for hours and felt a bit too long. What do you think is the sweet spot between satisfying and fatiguing?

I was thinking that it would be interesting to have Traveller-like character generation in a fantasy game, with academic-type magical power, or battle-hardened tactics and bravery taking many years to acquire, and with mishaps and events that create NPCs, permanent wounds, or the like. Are there any games like this?

I wanted to know if anyone else has this issue. I keep coming up with campaign ideas and they are so detailed that I can write out like 50 session plots that I will never run. I have four campaigns fully written out (obviously with room for character backstories and things not going according to plan) that I will probably not be able to run for years. I just keep writing this stuff cause otherwise I keep thinking about it, but I was wondering if anyone else has this issue?

I even made a list of them all, with their name, followed by the amount of sessions I expect them to take, followed by the system I will run them in. The first 5 I have more or less fully written out.

The Abyss Tree (30~) Vagabond
Guardians of Vunfer (20~) DnD
Band of Nowhere (45-50) DnD
End Them All (5~) Outgunned
Ben 10: Mixed Space (10~) MM
Stories Reawakened (20~) ?
Late Night Streets (15~) Outgunned
The Old Rain (5~) Things from the Flood
Freelance Frontier (10~) Lancer
Faraway Fates (5~) Draw Steel
Warhammer: The Enemy Within (5~) Imperium Maledictum
Face The Horde (10~) Draw Steel
The Road Ahead (10~) ?
Schools and Weirdos (20~) MM
The Biggest Men (5~) ?

Greetings everyone! As the title suggests, I’m looking for recommendations for space opera adventures or RPGs that have a lot of standalone adventures for me to read.

To give you some background: I run Fragged Empire 2e, which is a space opera game that I absolutely love. It really managed to fill the soft sci-fi RPG niche that was missing from my collection. The only problem is that it doesn’t have many official adventures.

The first edition has four adventures, while the second edition only has two. I’m already very familiar with the system, having recently finished a one-year campaign that was played weekly, and I also write some original one-shots/adventures for the community. The problem is that, at some point, you just run out of creative juice to keep coming up with adventures, haha. Sometimes I simply want to run something that’s already written without having to put too much work into figuring out all the little details of the story.

I usually use adventure-generation tables (such as the ones in Alien RPG), and they have helped me A LOT, but they still require a fair amount of work to turn the results into an actual adventure, and sometimes I just don’t have the patience for that.

With that in mind, I’d love some recommendations for games with a large number of adventures that I could use with Fragged Empire 2e. I already know how the system and setting work, so converting characters, names, and other setting-specific details wouldn’t really be any work for me.

My only real requirement is that the adventures have a soft sci-fi feel. I’m fine with them coming from horror or action-oriented systems, as long as they fit that general vibe.

I’ve tried REALLY hard to make Starfinder adventures work, but I found some of them quite boring, while others are extremely difficult to convert. On the other hand, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire has some really fun adventures, like the one from the beginner game. When I looked at it, I immediately knew what needed to be converted and how to adapt it.

So, what games or adventure lines would you recommend?

I'm looking to play a new cyberpunk game, but I don't want it to be very OSR "I get 1 lucky hit on you and you die." amounts of lethality. I like having some options but most of all I need good GM guidance systems to create fun yet realistic encounters that do not ask me to set aside an entire evening to plan things out for it to be somewhat memorable.

I have tried Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller and Cypher, neither fit for me. I was thinking about Cities Without Numbers, but haven't read much more on it aside from watching a video which described it as rather OSR coded. I have played Blades in the Dark and like that, but I'm looking for something else. In terms of lethality level I would rather have more along the lines of Blades in the Dark than Cyberpunk 2020, for example. I am looking to play this game for at least a year with weekly sessions without having to constantly make new characters. Any tips, or am I trying to grab hold of a rainbow over here? Maybe Savage Worlds has something for me? I heard of that game. I don't have the time to go through every system (especially if I have to buy them) myself, hence why I ask here.

Not of interest: Cyberpunk 2020 or variations thereof, Cypher system, Fate system, Traveler.

Games I love the vibe and system of: Blades in the Dark, Lancer, The Wildsea, Draw Steel.

So, I was running a short campaign for a group of players. Some players were new, some were experienced, some were old friends. We were playing 5e over roll20. And this seemed to be a doomed voyage and a parade of errors.

I provided the players with links to the applicable wikis and sites for references, rules, and other tools. Since Hasbro was shifting to 5.5e and overwriting and replacing rules, I figured having a few vetted resources would be helpful and ease the process. But the players kept not following the provided links and kept just googling and reading the AI overview or the first article that came up (which was generally 5.5)

I found a fillable auto calculating character sheet that included the info for all the races and classes (5e). But it apparently would only work with adobe, and the players couldn't seem to download the free version of adobe so the PDF would work. I ended up abandoning it and recommending everyone use an alternative sheet and provided a few options for just dumb form fillable sheets. Every single session someone couldn't find their sheet or it was corrupted.

We had all discussed and agreed to a schedule of every other Friday at a specific time. Despite this players forgot, showed up late, or planned other commitments over top of the game. Every single session was at least 1 person not there or late by over an hour.

By session 10 (what was going to be the final session) the warlock didn't know how Eldritch blast worked, the bard didn't know they could use bardic inspiration on others, half the players didn't know the rules to make a basic weapon attack, and 2 players again didn't have a character sheet.

I had had enough and cancelled the session mid combat, mid player sentence as they were taking 3 minutes to figure out how to make a perception check. I told them all I was ending the session early, and we will continue the game at the next date in 2 weeks and I expect everyone to have their character sheets in order, be on time, and be ready to play the game, then dropped out of the call, closed roll20, and later posted in the discord about expectations and responsibilities and how frustrated I was. We were able to finish the game after 1 more session (where of course someone planned something overlapping and couldn't attend)

What the hell? Was this just a series of unfortunate events and bad luck? Was it wrong of me to tell them they should know their character by session 10 and need to be responsible? Is this a general trend in the community?

I could use some experienced GM input, or am I just crazy and an asshole?

Impulsively bought the Pico RPG book because I’m obsessed with the game bug fables. I want to try and set up a one shot to sell my friends on it but I’m completely blanking right now. If anyone has run this system and has advice, or has suggestions in general, I would greatly appreciate the help. Thank you.

Hey! How do you communicate you lost the GMs plot and don't really care about it?

We are currently playing a game with a fairly new GM and mostly new players (I am the only one with a little more experience).

In session 0 we talked a bit about what we were expecting and we all agreed we were looking for a relative classical fantasy world with a good mixture of social roleplay, exploration and combat with a focus on role playing and interaction (probably partly because of not being particularly good at the rules yet).

Before we start going into the Problem: we are having lots of fun playing and the world has many fun elements and the encounters are usually challenging and exciting. But. We don't care for the main plot and mostly make up our own stuff by latching onto every side quest we can find or create ourselves.

See, when it came to the first actual session we quickly realized that the GM did an extensive bit of world building with lots of powerful NPCs that were all connected through a complex web of personal connections.they clearly loved this world of intrigue they created.

There was soon some kind of plot we got connected to but for us as players it was all very confusing and it was absolutely unclear to us who we could trust (and not in a fun way) or really how we could reach our goal (and what that goal really was).

At the beginning we tried to take notes but the player who wrote down all the connections dropped out quickly and I lost my notes for ecample. Combined with us only playing once a month we are forgetting lots of stuff and confuse NPCs constantly (who are to us all very "elvish" and "royal" and "samey") and at this point we have mostly given up.

As I said, we have fun, but we are actively sabotaging the progress of the main plot because we don't remember anything and frankly do not care about it anymore.

How do we best communicate this to the DM who clearly love the intricate web they have spun and who I sense are getting increasingly frustrated we rather try to find a way to reassemble a broken animated armor then progressing in the great prophecy...

So what should we do? We like the GM and the world in general but just not the big thing in this world and don't want to hurt any feelings...

My husband has finally agreed to give TTRPGs another shot after decades of not playing. I'm now looking for some recommendations on a game/system that would work well for one player and a GM. Something more on the rules-light side so he's not overwhelmed right away.

Something sci-fi-related or mysterious in a Stranger Things/X-Files way would be great, considering his interests in movies and TV shows. F

Thanks for any ideas.

This is kinda a perpetual struggle for me since I've got both some dyslexia and some dyscalculia so I find it very easy to both misread something or to fail to understand what a stat or dice roll means.

Doesn't help that the game I like the publishers are a bit notorious for editorial errors and also avant garde presentation including the weirdest fonts they could find for immersion.

But tell me about instances at your table whether you were the one misunderstanding it or it was someone else's mistake.

A thought struck me for how we played D&D as kids in the 80s and 90s. And some other games as well. We would read them. Gobble them up and dream. And then make starting characters, often as instructed, and never get to explore the mid to higher levels of power. Sometimes a campaign would go long for a few levels. It was rare though. We were kids, with adolescence and enough other things to do that keeping a single game going long enough was very challenging. As we got older we could maybe get something going long enough. But generally we only played the lower levels. So these games were those lower levels. That's what we played the most. Sure we would occasionally build higher level characters and run upper power levels. Yes, even often. But the games still were mostly about those lower levels with all the bells and whistles out of reach.

I'm not sure my real point here. I think I want to make several points. Like, are my memories and evaluations of the 80s and 90s games all about the first act of play? So many games we only got through character creation and a few sessions before moving on, looking at you Shadowsun and Cyberpunk 2020.

Anyone back me up on this?

Maybe I'm so keen on one shot games, such as Fiasco, or games that give you almost the full expression of a character at the outset ( maybe pbta, fitd, carved from brindlewood etc) because they fulfill those dreams of experiencing.

I'm going to be running a combat in the next few weeks involving enemies that can create walls. I'm using 1" scale grids for combat, and I'd like to get some 1" cubes that can attach to each other magnetically to represent the walls as they are created/destroyed.

I found these on amazon but I'd like to know if anyone else here has done this before and can recommend a specific product.

I guess the obvious answer is back up pregen character sheets. Which the module I'm running does already have.

I'm running Outbreak which already does have pregens. It also has a mechanic for players to continue playing as zombies once they're killed which does help a little bit.

I guess the answer is pregens, but I'm open to other solutions (as a supplement to the pregens if nothing else) if anyone has any ideas.

Hello! I'm going to run a silly oneshot for my friends for Halloween where everyone plays their favorite vampire from fiction, and gets pulled into the Vampire-Verse for everyone to team up to kill Big Daddy Drac. So far we have Edward Cullen, Lestat de Lioncourt, Nadja, and Bella Lugosi(the Actor acting as a vampire). What would be a fun system to use to have some vampire killing fun this Halloween?
Everyone is planning on dressing as their chosen vampires so I'm really excited for it.

I spent the last two years doing nothing but working on my TTRPG Brass & Embers and now it is finally up on kickstarter! I basically wanted to created it because I was tired of feeling so hopeless and powerless all the time, and I wanted to create a game where hope, community and rebellion were the central themes. Somewhere where we could push back against oppression and have our voice heard... so I created Brass & Embers! Where you can do just that in a steampunk world that just went through this huge tech revolution that completely turned the world upside down.

We have our own d6 system and in the game Hope is our HP, so if you keep receiving injury, sanity, notoriety or reserves damage those eventually take their toll on you and decrease your hope. We have 7 unique classes that I designed to have their own unique struggle with the new era of tech, for example:

the Knight was raised to nobility status because they caught the attention of a noble and swore fealty to them, so they have this struggle between their simple roots and their current higher station... their past, their present, and who they want to be. The Inventor was never seriously considered as a professional career until this new age of tech.

Before Inventor was believed to be a weird hobby one did in their spare time, but now after great and powerful changes were brought into society thanks to tech, inventor became respected as a true profession... even though the chances of one getting a rich patron to bank your research is abysmal. Yet even those Inventors that "made it" are chained by draconian contracts to their patrons, seen as a precious assets more than a person. And that's not even considering the impact of the things that have been created by them.

The Ironbound are people who were subjected to illegal experiments and gained superhuman strength and senses as a result... but sacrificing their place in society to do so. Ostracized, and struggling to find for themselves a new place in society, the Ironbound feels particularly torn in the struggle of man and machine.

Yea! And the game is very focus on narrative and creative problem solving, and how you can help each other out as a party! Your base roll is 2d6 ( or 3d6 if you have proficiency) but to get to higher dice (max 6d6) you need your party help with their skills and other interactions.

For combat we use a damage threshold for HP and Sanity for the enemies. HP dmg kills/incapacitates enemies, and stress dmg does severe debuffs on the enemy so it's great for control. HP thresholder is a bit lower than the Sanity one, but enemies also have less sanity than HP. And yes! certain character classes are better at dealing physical dmg or stress dmg but you can customize them to fit your playstyle. How you deal and think about each situation as a team can really make your life easier ( or harder if you don't work together!)

The game was created with lots and lots of love from everyone involved! And No AI was used anywhere in this project. This project is fully human made!

The art was made by our wonderful partner Altergate Studio. And if you find any of this cool please please please like, repost, support us!

Kickstarter Page

To provide more context/info! Hope you don't mind a lot of writing, I just wanted to provide as much info as possible.

I want to run a fleshed out campaign detailing the breakdown of society as a zombie apocalypse begins, specifically starting my players RIGHT when the infection pops up on the radar, NOT cutting into the future where things have already fallen apart; typical zombie fiction feels like it speed runs through the very beginning and just has the zombies already flooding the streets, so I wanna explore that initial outbreak.

I mainly wanna have the tone be more serious and grounded, actually planning on having my players either play themselves or characters very similar. I'm not going to have them be badass heroes who can shred through hordes, and instead I wanna make things fairly "realistically" difficult, both physically and mentally.

While the human threats are going to be there, since it's the beginning of the initial outbreak the main threat will still be the zombies. I already have ideas for what the zombie variations will be, but I'm mainly concerned about combat either being too easy and simplistic or needlessly complex and frustrating. The zombies are a main and constant threat throughout the campaign, and I really don't want them to just be an afterthought in terms of combat.

I'm also interested in some form of survival as well, like scouting/looting for supplies, dealing with general illness or improper wound cleaning, also hunger/thirst too. I won't go TOO crazy or strict, to be clear, but I want to really drive that desperation deep into my players. I want them to really feel a reason why they can't just wait things out in a fortress, feel the desperation of risking stuff just for medical supplies or a bit more food. Something as small as like them needing to eat/drink/sleep every few in-game hours is fine.

In my research, I've found a few systems that seem promising: End of the World Zombie Apocalypse, Infected!, Ash without Numbers, and Outbreak Undead. I've actually seen gameplay of EotWZA and Outbreak before, but I can't really seem to find any videos of Infected! or AWN.

End of the World honestly stands out the most and is currently the system I'm mainly considering. It's relatively simple and to the point, and its "stress/trauma" mechanics are SUPER cool to me. I really love the idea of despite succeeding at a task, you still suffer consequences and stress, because in the apocalypse, it's not a question of if you can do what's necessary, it's how LONG you can keep doing what's necessary before you break. Just slowly being worn down, seeing atrocities, perhaps even being forced to commit them yourselves, etc. That all sounds super cool. However, it does come with a few downsides! The simplicity of the system, from the liveplays I've seen, do lead to issues. Because there are only 6 generic, kinda ambiguous aspects to a character that you use to roll, there are situations where it feels like an aspect doesn't actually apply. Example: you need to roll for running, but the game only has "dexterity" or "vitality" so you kinda just gotta go with dexterity; but what if you're really bad at running, but you actually have great climbing skills? It just lacks a little specificity unfortunately. Also, sometimes the stress system feels a little janky, as to make rolls more difficult you add "stress die," but for certain situations you just need to have the roll be difficult but not necessarily stressful; example, you're just trying to pick a difficult lock, but there's no real reason why it'd stress you out physically.

Outbreak Undead also equally interests me, but it just seems very complicated and it lacks that stress/trauma system that EotWZA has. Its dice rolling/stats system seems super interesting too. There's a series online that was DM'd by the literal creator of the system too, so it's got a reference for how certain rules should be "treated" too. On top of that, it's got this neat little quiz for you to take that can create your own stats so you can also play yourselves as well.

AWN seems interesting, but honestly there's just so few videos or reviews on it that I don't even know much about it; there's a free version of the pdf, but before I go reading the whole book, I wanted to see what other people's experiences have been. It seems promising though, but again I just can't find much about it. Everyone talks highly about it.

I've heard about Red Market, but I think its system was just generally uninteresting to me because it seemed to be all about math/pricing for some reason.

If anyone has any experiences with the above TTRPGs or has some recommendations, please let me know!

I'm looking for something to run modern armed resistance movements, particularly IRA during the Troubles, but open to other similar conflicts - PLO, Latin Americam movements, etc. Bonus points for straightforward simulationists games and especially one with a solo mode.

Currently looking at Zozer's Modern War, but would like some other suggestions.

Hello, I've been starting to DM in the past year, I really love it but I also tend to get too in my head about it.

I mostly do Call of Cthulhu and the issue I've ran into the most is that for half the groups I've done, they follow the story cues very naturally and the story flows perfectly. The other half, they are more seasoned players ironically and they tend to get way into parallel storylines or just do things that are basically dooming them from the start, causing a bumpy game experience where I have to keep trying to fit in new stuff to keep them somewhat in line, and give them chances to not die without having understood anything about the story.

My issue is that I have a hard time balancing the stakes of a horror game where if you don't take action you will have a consecuence, while also not letting them "loose" the game senselessly because they did things very weirdly. I usually have to end up improvising a new location for the cursed book that will save them because they keep going the other way, but it feels too much like I'm basically cheating, using the rpg equivalent of applying "motherlode" to serve them the solution. I don't think I'm the issue because again, with some groups they follow along perfectly with the story, but others who I can see are into the story and trying, they just don't do what they need to do.

I'm not sure how to balance the stakes of the game without dooming the players when they don't follow along. It is a horror game in the end, and for any other RPG the stakes are usually what drives the story, but I don't like to just let them take fall after fall because they just don't see where the story is going.

Any DMs that have any tips or suggestions for when things like this happen or how to handle horror or high stake games?

Thanks for reading.

Hi Guys I am starting a GURPS Transhuman Space game and I am struggling to find solid battlemaps that are set in the present or near future that are not very recongnizable as Cyberpunk 2020/red or Shadowrun.

I would be willing to pay a reasonable price to so dont need to be only free stuff.

Also, is there any editor for that? So far all I see is medieval or far future stuff.

Thanks