What do I do with his stuff? I have a garage full of books 📚. Second hand book store will only give me pennies per book. Where can I get better or fair deal.

So I know that the Genesys is the "universal" version of the FFG star wars games. im interested in running star wars games while keeping my options open for other settings. should I get

Hey all. This question isn't system/setting specific, but just to set my experience level - I'm a long-ish time D&D GM (about 5 years), transitioning to Pathfinder on account of the fact that WotC have lost their actual minds. I'm going to be running the Beginners Box Menace Under Otari, and maybe Troubles in Otari if we fancy it in order to get familiar with the system, before I start a proper campaign after summer is over.

To give full context of this question is going to be a bit of a ramble, but the tl;dr is - How do I build a homebrew setting/campaign without getting eaten alive by fun-but-timeconsuming world building?

For my proper campaign, I'm designing something that plays to my strengths as a DM while reducing/removing the stuff I'm either bad at or don't enjoy doing. For the most part, I know what to do with this, but I have one big issue that I'm not sure how to resolve; I don't know how to handle the setting that the game takes place in. I really enjoy worldbuilding, but it takes up way too much time for me, and causes problems for the actual game. For context, I've run two major campaigns; a homebrew, and Storm Kings Thunder. In both situations, I ran into some serious issues.

With the homebrew - I found myself getting so bogged down in designing everything that I got into a position where I just never had enough actual game content ready and my sessions would just be spent chaotically throwing stuff at the wall then reacting to what my players did. To be clear, I do really enjoyed the world building elements, and had a whale of a time designing a complex pantheon and cities that I absolutely love, but I'd end up spending way too much time writing stuff out that didn't actually create gameplay for my players. The game ended up falling apart after other stuff in my life ramped up to the point where I simply couldn't keep up with the work it took.

However, in Storm Kings Thunder - I found myself feeling way too restrained by the pre-existing setting. Things like trying to remember the pantheon of the giants was impossible for me because I didn't find their design particularly interesting. I also don't like playing in other peoples cities, and end up redesigning things to the point where it would be faster if I just built it from scratch.

So yeah, that's my question - how do you think I should handle creating the setting for my game?

I’m going to be running an MCC game soon, and I wonder if anyone have seen any paper minis? Alternatively, has anyone ever run the game and used their own minis?

So I've been working on my own system for a while and it's finally ready for it's 1st alpha test. Woohoo!

Yesterday, I ran my freinds through the system, walked them through character creation, and we had enough time to run through a single combat encounter before it was time to go. About round 2 of combat, we were still chatting about abillities and making sure things did what they thought they did when my pal Jerry suddenly says "Wait. I just realized something." He's playing a character that has a 1/day power to become invulnrable for 1 round because of crazy magic reasons. Since me and my buddy Matt were talking about det-packs and detonators at the time, Jerry came up with the idea that they could theorhetically slap as many det-packs as they want on his character, have him run up and hug a boss, then have him go nuclear at point blank range.

I love my players for comeing up with this stuff and I'm not removing it from my game because this is all working as intended within the game system. That said, I AM going to limit Detonators to only triggering 5 det-packs at a time. It was a greast 1st test to my game.

I know that the Multiverse rpg exists but I'm thinking about something more grounded and low level, something along the line of a White Wolf rpg.

The idea is simple: you and the other players are villains, C/B-list villains to be more precise.

Any ideas?

I'm looking for worldbuilding games in the vein of microscope or the queit year. Specifically I'm looking for ones that deal in hard scifi, of particular interest is the development of technology and factions.

Anybody aware of any games that thread that needle?

I work nights, so my hours are very strange and my best chance at running a game would seem to involve doing one-shots online with whoever happens to be awake from 2 to 6 West Coast time.

HOWEVER, I have NEVER seen a UI as uselessly impenetrable as Discord's, and every "guide to RPGing on Discord" I've come across seems to assume you know all the terminology and understand how to set up rooms, find the proper bots, and do all the other things. I sure would like a guide (or even a sherpa) that could help, with everything carefully labelled and every microstep spelled out. If you help, and are available, I promise to be the GM.

Hello, Folks,

I've been thinking about my feelings on magic in my 5e and Pathfinder games, and have come to conclusion that I might enjoy a game where magic is more esoteric and complex, rather than more formulaic and rote.

The image I have for magic is that the more complex the effect the more complex and difficult it is to pull off, whether that comes from difficult rituals, expensive components, limited uses, or requiring more specific personal abilities or set up to pull off.

To me, something like a Fireball shouldn't just be a snap of the fingers and a recovering resource expense, it should have some requirement of maybe the environment or series of set up steps to pull off. Teleportation should be a complex ritual that lasts several hours to do things like scry the location, attune to the world, and then you can instantaneously move there.

I'd imagine I'm not the first person to have this thought, so I'm curious if there are fantasy ttrpg games out there that treat magic like this.

Thanks in advance!

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So, I've only dmed dnd 5e before, and even that was just 1 short campaign, and 1 oneshot that led to a campaign.

None of my players have played sword lesbians before, and I have no clue where to start!

Any tips would be appreciated, though campaign suggestions, or rule changes (I've heard they might be a lil difficult to use), just plain ol anything, please!

Hey guys!

What kinds of abstract generators for RPGs do you know and use? I mean generators that can help create content for sessions on many levels - from "how the plot should go" to "what's the layout of this dungeon.

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An example of that would be cyclic dungeon generator: https://dicegoblin.blog/making-meaningful-dungeons-with-cyclic-dungeon-generation/

Or 5 room dungeon generator: https://www.roleplayingtips.com/5-room-dungeons/

So, i talked to the players and we decided to just keep the game simple and shorten the campaign.

They said they thought it'd be more like a video game and just aren't as into roleplaying. I respect their honesty and so we decided we'll finish the game and just steamroll ahead to the final BBEG.

Thanks to everyone for the advice in the original post.

My players are about to fight a (very weak) lich-bard that has a magical "electric" guitar and overpowers people with the pure volume and complexity of the riffs that he plays. I m looking for some music that could work as background for this fight without overwhelming or taking away from the fight itself. I plan on them having to fight him multiple times, I would like a strong intro for the character and I have noticed my players put a pretty heavy stake in music.

Online if that matters :)

Suggestions welcome.

Topic, I’m a inexperienced player and de facto GM in my group , and I struggle with my ADHD when reading through books, modules, making adventures, etc. Any other players/GMs with ADHD out there, do you have any advice or tools you use for staying on task or organizing your thoughts while creating or reading up on the game systems you play?

If i really prefer running star wars games with little to no focus on the force, focusing on the war stories (clone wars) or the western stories (Mando). Am I better off just using Traveller intead of a star wars system like FFG's. since FFG have three core rule books conpaired to Travellers one core rule book. Traveller is also in print unlike WEGS star wars or the DnD star wars system. Thoughts?

So I knew that FFG star wars system has three diffrent core books focusing on the main types of star wars stories told (han,leia,luke). Between edge of empires and age of rebellion is there a stand-out? which is better for a wider range of stories? is EoE really only good for crime/hiest? is Age of rebellion mainly for war storys? thoughts on duty vs obligation?

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Ps Im not really interested in the Force focused core book so thats why its not mentioned as I prefer the war/western parts of star wars the most.

Hi folks. This is perhaps an insane question, but I'm headed to the beach next week and in lieu of a beach read I thought I might bring along a copy of Thousand Year Old Vampire (and maybe some other solo games if y'all got suggestions).

I'm a little worried about trying to wrangle dice, and possibly dropping losing dice in the sand, or toppling a tray. What's out there that doesn't require a table? Or, even better, doesn't require more than one hand?

Anyone know of a mechanism that might allow me to roll dice on the beach?

p.s. my backup is a roller on my phone, but I thought something physical might let me leave the phone behind.

I have no preferences in price or complexity, as long as it creates good hexcrawls.

In a campaign I am running I have gotten the players into a scenario where they are in charge of a war that just broke out, are there any extremely simple rules I could use so that the players can both lead the war, and act as a powerful strike force, letting them interfere with the battles they plan to take place. Right now the setting is a fantasy steampunk mix where they are fighting in a massive archipelago, anyone know a way I could run this?

So, a new Humble Bundle offers 22 PDFs from the "Ultimate Guides" series for about 17 € (that would be...about 18$?). They sometimes appear in my searches in Amazon, when looking for RPGs in general...and that's all I know about them! So...anyone familiar with them? Are they any good? Mind you, if they're just even half good, or even a quarter good, for that price I would probably give them a try!

I'm creating a campaign for me and my friends, and I would like some suggestions of your favorite sci-fantasy / Sci-fi campaigns so I can draw some inspiration.

I want my players to start at a high level, and reach max level (15-20), and my idea is to last something between 8-12 sessions (4h each), so they will level up fast too.

Any suggestions for one-shots or longer campaigns, in any level range are welcome since I just want to get some ideas.

Before anyone asks, I'm creating one instead of using one because we are testing our own system, and now we just need to test the balancing/fun of high-level characters, that's also why we will level up fast, so we can test more things. If I find a campaign that is good for my purposes and sounds fun I don't mind just adapting it to our system.

Thanks for the ideas!

I've always loved Dex heavy characters in RPGs, particularly medieval/medieval fantasy. I mostly play video games RPGs, but have been also interested in getting back into tabletop. Character/class templates like the Assassin vocation in Dragon's Dogma, the Breton Hero from the ESO cinematics, Pit/Dark Pit in Smash Bros, the Black Hands from Dark Souls 3, Kerillian from Vermintide, Eradan from LOTR: War in the North, etc. are some examples of this sort of Ranger/Swashbuckler type of character archetype that I enjoy playing the most

Ig I was just wondering some advice on what kind of weapons/equipment I should use to emulate this kind of character type. I love the versatile intermixing of melee and ranged weapons, personally I'd say I lean towards using melee slightly more than the ranged, preferring a bow as a backup weapon. I suppose like 70/30 for melee/ranged. I also would say I usually am more offensive and head-on in combat versus stealthy and hit and run, not to say I don't use stealth at all if it's to my advantage to initiate a fight like that.

With this playstyle in mind, idk what kind of weapons would suit someone from a roleplaying and gameplay perspective. For example, should I dual wield shortswords, or maybe scimitars, or use a single longsword/arming sword with a free-offhand? Should I use daggers, either for parrying or maybe dual-wielded for general combat? Should I use a heavier longbow for long-range since my close-range is covered by my melee options, or a more mobile and agile shortbow to complement an aggressive playstyle and character? Should I wear light armor, or medium armor? And lastly, what would these equipment changes say about the personality and combat style of the character?

I appreciate any and all advice, sorry if I'm obsessing about this lol I just love this sort of power fantasy of a dextrous, aggressive combatant :)

So, i'm running a fire emblem themed campaign for a couple of freinds. In the campaign each player is going to habe a number of followers (around 4) With 3 players thats around 12 pcs Any suggestions on how to run combat?

Books, guides, posts, videos. I'm looking for anything

I'm fairly new to GMing, but from my experience when I'm being guided by pure logic and common sense the game doesn't work out well. And, honestly, I'm afraid to imagine how much work it would be to create and maintain realistic world or even one complex structure

So after some thought I came up with the idea that one thing in TTRPGs that matters the most is an encounter. Neither a story, nor a world, but an encounter. An encounter is the basic (and often the only) way for players to participate in the story GM is telling. And ability to do so is basically the only reason they selected TTRPG over any other way of entertaining themselves

In order to prevent the misunderstandings I'd mention that under the term encounter I mean any possible situation when PCs get to use their skills

But, as I saw repeatedly, encounters are viewed more like an obstacle for players to witness the GM's plot and therefore an obstacle for GM to tell their story. Like you should always think how to return players to the road if they for some reason lose to a wild encounter that jumped out of the corner. And even if they aren't viewed as "necessary evil", they don't get enough attention. Like only things that gets mentioned are "put them here and there", "keep them diverse", "let every character shine". I haven't found anyone talking about hardness, quantity, rewards, penalties. But if you're looking how to write a story or make a world or draw a map then there are stacks of guides everywhere

I could go on and tell a lot about pros of designing encounters prior to the story, but if somebody's already written a guide on it, then I see no point. So, please, let me know if it exists or if I am a weirdo cause of thinking this way Thank you in advance!

Hello everybody, I'm planning to run a 4-5 hour one shot for a group of friends, some thing we've done many times in the past. Satisfying multiple requests, we are going to be playing in a PbtA game (MotW) set an a summer camp in the late 70s, where all the players are either young counselors or kids. The request is for a Kids on Bikes vibe, so the players don't want supernatural characters

The system and setting are set in stone, but as I look through the playbooks I realize I'm going to have to do a lot of fictional adapting of some of the more supernatural classes - or do some mild hacking.

Playbooks like the Flake and the Mundane seem easy enough to adapt, but the anything past Professional and the Initiate would need a big fictional rewrite ("My Dad is a cop"), and some Playbooks just won't work at all.

Am I missing an obvious hack?

Should I let them double up on the more mundane Playbooks for a de-powered party?

Should I just give them the basic moves, and let them pick a stat-line and a look, and have the Playbooks be more of a Vibe?

One more wrinkle: We now have six players... Thanks for all your help!

Hey! I’m heavily considering running a long-term pirate campaign soon. I’m going to be using the Honor+Intrigue system, but I saw someone suggest using 7th Sea for the setting. I was just going to use the default 1600s Golden Age of Piracy, with the real world nations and such, and probably with the same level of supernatural stuff as Pirates of the Caribbean, or maybe slightly more (so a majority of enemies are regular humans, but maybe every 3rd adventure there’s a big supernatural element/monster).

I did a very superficial look at 7th Sea’s setting, and it seems like the nations all correspond to the real world powers of the time. That made me wonder why I’d use them instead of just using the real nations and adjusting them when necessary; it would probably be annoying to have to say for each nation, “This is (name), but basically it’s just Spain” rather than actually just having it be Spain.

I realize I’m very ignorant on the setting, so apologies if I’m way off, but what makes 7th Sea’s setting different/better than just using the irl 1600s setting?

Edit: Thank you everyone for the thoughts!

Hello

I like tabletop rpg and sekiro. I love how sekiro plays with its posture meter and parrying. But Im not knowledgble about that many tabletop rpg systems. I want to make sekiro style combat system, but dunno where to start.

Sekiro uses parrying mechanic in which when you parry successesfuly then enemies posture meter fills up, if its full then they get stunned and you can deathblow them which is an instakill. But you also have posture meter and if it gets full you get stunned.

So my problem is how do I keep track of it and how will it be calculated. Like who keeps track of posture meters, do you use actions for parrying or attacking, do your actions refill after your turn, so you can defend and so on?

Hope you can help me.

Thank you for reading.

Cheers