I'm looking for some RPG scenarios for nazi-occupied europe. I was thinking about setting it in C'thulu universe, but not introducing any eldricht horrors before second/third session, focusing on life under occupation and setting it in a small town of about 10 000 people or so. "Nice" SS officers going full Hans Landa, collaborators, partisans, helping (or not) jewish people, moral decisions etc.

all in all, I want scenarios set in Nazi occupied europe that focus on the occupation aspect

I am planning on running a horror one-shot that takes place in the 80s or 90s at a summer camp where the players are playing kids and teenagers.

But I need some help with who the evil horror guy/gal will be and what the story will be, as well as some concrete guidelines for what the player characters must do to escape.

It's brainstorming time, and all ideas are welcome. Do you have any tips or ideas for making this a fun one-shot for me and my players?

I am playing D6 with my son because it seems a simple system, where I dont need to use all the rules and I just need some normal D6 dices. Also, the manuals are free, online.

Nevetherless, I see almost no one talking about it, no D6 videos on youtube (the ones I see are the same since many months ago for example), so I suppose this is a game played by just some few guys.

Latest episode of Dimension 20 (phenominal actual play) had a PC who could only attack once per turn and a lot of her damage relied on attacking, the player expressed how every time they rolled they were filled with dread.

To paraphrase Valves Gabe Newel. "Realism is not fun, in the real world I have to make grocery lists, I do not play games to experience reality I play them to have fun."

In PbtA style games failing to hit a baddie still moves the narrative forward, you still did something interesting. But in games like D&D, Lancer, Pathfinder etc, failing to hit a baddie just means you didn't get to do anything that turn. It adds nothing to the mechanics or story.

Then I thought about games like Panic at the Dojo or Bunkers & Badasses, where you don't roll to hit but roll to see how well you hit. Even garbage rolls do something.

So now I'm wondering this: Is the concept of "roll to see if you hit" a relic of game design history that is actively hurting fun? Even if it's "realistic" is this sabotaging the fun of combat games?

TL:DR Is it more fun to roll to hit or roll to see how well you hit? Is the idea of being able to miss an attack bad game design?

After my last session this past Sunday night I had this nagging feeling that I had done something wrong in my GMing. After some though, I realized that the session had used very little of the system's mechanics that we were playing besides for basic action resolution rolls. At the time, it felt like "if the mechanics of the system are there to emulate genre, and the mechanics were little invoked, then evidently the genre was little/poorly emulated!"

On the other hand, if everyone is having fun and the shared story that's being made is compelling, then does anything else really matter? Probably, but if we're not using the mechanics all that much then how is this any different than playground make-believe?

What do you think about mechanics-sparse sessions? Do they represent a slight failure, or are they nothing to think twice about?

Im making a futuristic apocalyptic Pathfinder 2e campaign but my problem is I have no idea how to set it up, magic will not exist, the apocalypse will be caused by parasitic monsters that take over the human body, and the party will have strengths and be able to control some of these parasites, some of the party will be robots, I only want humans and robots or robotic animals, but every Pathfinder apocalypse had races I don't want, radiation or zombie based, has magic, or is locked behind a 30 dollar paywall, my idea would be that the equivelktb of magic would be crazy things you can do with the parasites, but writing those moves fears and attacks and stuff all on my own is way too fucking hard and complicated

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for solo RPGs. I played Inscrutable Cities and it was really cool but I'm looking for something with more structure. I have dice, playing cards, tarot cards so requirements like that aren't an issue for me. I don't mind paying money but I'd prefer it be like $10 or less.

My favorite genres are fantasy, surrealism, magical realism, horror, stuff like that. If there are any that are worldbuilding based that'd be really cool. Some of my favorite books are Piranesi, Perdido Street Station, Neverwhere, Gideon the Ninth, Annihilation and Mexican Gothic, so I'd love anything that has the vibes of one of those.

Hey all! As the title says, I'm hoping to find DM-less adventures for 3 people (me, my wife, and our daughter) Neither one of them knows the game well enough to DM and I've grown to despise DMing (but that's another post entirely, lol) We enjoy gaming together (except for me if I have to DM!) so I was hoping what I'm looking for is something that exists. Any and all help is appreciated. Cheers!

I'm trying to do some research into a rpgs that use a charge up or build up mechnic for actions/powers/abilities.

By that I mean mechincs were your character performs some basic actions to generate a resource that is used to pay for more powerful actions.

I've something similar in video games, the indie game Casste Beasts use a system like this for action points.

hi! i'm prepping for a Power Rangers campaign right now, already got the city, the basics and the draft of the moving plot for the story, the thing is, i'd very much like to use a vtt, not all the time, of course, but sometimes there's a battle or moment that's better suited to run with a visual guide on wich things are where, how many monsters there are, etc... i've already got myself my roll20 account, the only thing i'm missing, and can't seem to find, are maps to put in there. I understand that maybe there aren't any specific maps for Powers Rangers, but at least some recomendations of modern battlemaps would be fine, like a parking lot, or a school corridor/classroom, or a beach. Whenever i go around trying to find any i just stumble upon fantasy themed ones or something post apocalyptic or cyberpunk (i'm looking for something more akin to our time frame) anyone have any suggestions on where to find these?

I wanted to build a custom 4 panel GM screen. I found this video on Youtube showing you how to build one out of small 9×12 artist canvas panels, some duct tape, and sheet protectors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNElkhIB_y4

In the video, Rob Dunn, used adhesive dots to secure the sheet protectors to the DM screen. I did a little hack.

I bought these 8½×11 magentic adhesive sheets off of Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJJZCL17

I stuck one to the DM screen, and one to the back of the sheet protector.

Now I have 4 sheet protectors with GM screens for Cyberpunk RED, and 4 sheet protectors for Mongoose Traveller. They just smack on quickly and easily.

Cyberpunk REDs Data Screen lacks any netrunning rules on the panel. Well, with this setup, you can have a sheet protector for netrunning ready to go, and just switch sheets out very quickly, or take one panel off and secure any piece of paper to it with a small magnet.

If you have a GM screen that you really love the exterior artwork for, and there is a legal PDF available of the GM side, you may be able to convert the screen to magnetic using this method., assuming the screen is slightly larger that 8½×11 or A4.

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i would prefer something a little rules lite. ironsworn is a little daunting for me as a solo player and i'm looking for something else i can play without an internet connection. thank you in advance r/rpg !

So we're doing this multi level dungeon and the enemy I'm fighting just wacked me in the underside of my jaw braking it and sending me to my back my sword still in hand and I've got no idea how to pull this off without dying any ideas

I'm running a table through a TTRPG club that meets bi-weekly for 2-hour sessions in a mini-campaign. Looking for a system that can be learned easily, doesn't have a ton of rules, and ideally easy to prep. Out of the box ideas welcome, but so are the obvious.

Thanks very much.

So a friend of mine and i are effectively building a story 4 millennia in the future. Using the earth right now as a start. Can anyone recommend a good quality map generator and maybe some tags to get started? -It can be web based or windows based.

-For one thing adding or subtracting rivers that don’t originally exist or no longer exist.

-Receding water around the planet.

-Be able to add the current states lines to reference as well as current landmarks.

-Mostly just north and South America for now, but will eventually cover the rest.

-Change climates of areas drastically. (Change deserts into lush forests, plains or otherwise, etc…)

-Mostly medieval levels of technology

-be able to draw new boundaries.

Thanks in advance.

I personally dislike randomized statistics. The great majority of RPGs I am familiar with have no option for randomized statistics, and that is fine by me. I have never, not once in my entire life, seen someone clamor for randomized statistics in an RPG that does not support them to begin with, whether it is Fate, PbtA, FitD, Storypath, or something else entirely.

I know a few of RPGs that technically permit randomized statistics, but whose player bases seem reluctant to use them: D&D 4e, Starfinder 1e, and pre-remaster Pathfinder 2e. I have heard, second-hand, about D&D 4e games that required/allowed randomized ability scores, but I have never personally come across them myself.

I have seen D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e games require/allow randomized ability scores from time to time, but not too often.

I have seen D&D 5e games require/allow randomized ability scores somewhat frequently. This may or may not be related to how Critical Role happened to use randomized ability scores.

I have seen OSR and OSR-adjacent games require/allow randomized ability scores nearly every time. Even in Godbound, which is about as far as one can get from the stereotypical OSR meat grinder, randomized attributes seem to be an accepted norm.

What do you personally think leads to any given RPG's player base either liking or disliking randomized statistics?

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After asking for feedback from my players, they said their favorite bit are combat encounters. We've played mostly D&D 3.5, and some attempts at narrative games that were not satisfying.

Both D&D and OSR games are both too broad and too narrow. There are hundreds of character builds to choose from, but most combats and monster stat blocks boil down to 1-2 optimal moves that repeat round after round. Using the scenery or ingenious maneuvers have to be hacked or improvised into the system as they're almost always a worse option than a "5 times a day 1d12 laser beam" or that sword you have a +5 bonus in. Once you lock into a build that's what you'll get for a long while, and it'll take many sessions to build to level 5 and unlock some of the cool parts of the system.

My ask is, what system allows characters to express themselves in combat with a lot of "cool factor", gives a challenging set of monsters of equal might, doesn't need thousands of pages of rules and exceptions to reference them, all while using figurines and maps rather than narrative-based mechanics?

EDIT: And yes, I'm a mediocre GM and need the system to carry me just a bit.

EDIT 2: I'm grateful for all the recommendations. Most are systems very similar to D&D, with different flavors for rolls, damage, classes and such. What I'm after is for something that leans wargame or boardgame without becoming Descent or Gloomhaven, and also uses the open-endness of TTRPGs to help the "rule of cool" in character actions so they're not limited to a deck or a playbook.

I recently got it in my head that I wanted to do a campaign based in a dwarven mountain fortress with my regular group, and one of them joked about playing as a goblin trying to sneak in to kill the king. It kind of lit up some inspiration in me and now I'm looking to run a one shot with them where they play as a whole group of sneaky goblins.

I'm hoping to find a relatively slim rules-kite system that would be easy for the players to pick up and just run with for a day without getting too bogged down in stats and character creation. It would be fun to have a game with the vibes of a forged in the dark game, but without the same level of mechanical crunch.

Any suggestions?

When I started playing RPGs, my three friends and I started with our own very simple, invented system (which to tell the truth, had almost no rules lol, it was very focused on RP with a certain help from dice and rules invented on the spot lol). But anyway, the coolest thing about this RPG is that my friend who was the DM simply created a living world, like where things were happening independently of the characters, there were wars, political fights, intrigues in small villages and he simply made the story according to what our characters wanted to do, often improvising, a completely open world. So much so that our group started together, but soon split up, each character went to do something and having different stories and we divided the sessions into times for each player as if they were different nuclei in a series, you know? But they also met from time to time and the stories intertwined, things one character did, influenced the others sometimes. However, the characters were also nothing special initially, just random people in the world, but who were rising, I remember that my character was rising politically, to the point of becoming an army commander and such. And we played for hours and hours, the campaign lasted a year with us playing almost 6 hours per session and sometimes twice a week (miss having time lol). Anyway, I really want to do a similar campaign these days, but I've tried a few times and it never seems to work. I don't know if the fact that the system was very simple helped with improvisation and creation or something like that. Have you ever had a similar campaign? Do you have any tips for me to replicate this somehow?

Hey all,

My name is Podrus and while I am an experienced Pathfinder/DnD Dungeon Master, having run games for the last ten years, my group recently has kind of all decided (myself included) that we want to broaden our TTRPG horizons. So, we're trying out small little 5-10 session campaigns where nearly everyone is taking turns GMing, and we're encouraging others who are comfortable with it to try other systems.

Our group generally tends to run your standard high fantasy settings, and while it's fun, it's also...getting boring. So we have someone setting up a Sci-Fi Game (Lancer), someone is running Monster of the Week right now for their turn, but what I want to run is a bit more of a horror game (this is something that my group has shown interest in).

My general idea is to do something akin to Disturbia or Summer of 84 where the neighbor is a monster (whether a real monster, a human, an alien, whatever) and that there's a bit of a mystery to uncover in order to save whoever he's got, protect the characters, save the day etc.

My issue is I have no idea what system would be good for running this? I thought about doing some World of Darkness stuff, since I've played in a Vampire game once, but not sure if that fits. And while I've heard the elevator pitch for Kids on Bikes, I'm not sure it can handle those themes.

I would love any advice.

All i know is i really enjoy pathfinders stats and combat, but i want to make my own story own monsters etc, maybe my own classes, its going to be a futurisitc society with robots and no magic, (EDIT: I DONT WNAT RADIATION i have my own plan for what the enemies are whats causineg it all etc, so advice on how to chnage your suggestions to my own story) so i need some advice,

Sup guys, do you have some tabletop rpg systems that are suited to cover about any kind of setting / adventure, or in general can manage a wide variety of them? I already know systems like GURPS and Savage Worlds, and I think that something like d20 Modern could be classified as "universal", at least for, well, modern or low sci-fi settings. I'm not looking for any OSR, but if you have one that you think it's worth to mention feel free to suggest!

Hi everyone, I am a DM and i wanted do play Heart: The city beneath with my players but i don't understeand how delves work.

if i am not wrong delves have resistance which is like hitpoints/healt and by doing actions the players can finish a delve when they beat the resistance and i get that, what i don't understeand is how can the actually do so? like if they are in a fight with a HEARTSBLOOD BEAST(5 resistance/healt) and they defeat it how does killing the monster affect the delve's resistance?

I was building a fantasy world where magic does exist, but is quite rare, subtle, kinda dangerous, and mostly feared by the populace. One of the themes of the campaign would be war, so I was wondering if there was a system that allowed for a more strategic sort of combat (not of the mass variety, although the option could be interesting), similar to Pathfinder 2nd edition, but without depending so heavily of spells and enchanted items, etc., while allowing the players' characters to be somewhat heroic, although not exactly super powerful. What system do you think would fill this sort of vibe?

I have scoured the internet, and I can't seem to find a form fillable character sheet for Hollow Earth Expedition or a downloadable pdf for that matter. Does anyone have any links to one?

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Curious if folks think the HERO system would provide a good combat only skirmish game?

The ongoing kickstarter for the box set of Cairn 2e, and the recent Pathfinder 2e remaster, have me questioning my feelings on this.

I always thought WotC splitting their introductory game material into 3 separate books was a cash grab. With PF2e, Paizo had their Core Book with both player and GM content sufficient to run a game, but also made a GM's Guide with a lot of optional rules for campaigns, and a Bestiary. The huge original Core rulebook made me feel I was getting my money's worth, and that I didn't really need the other books. Unknown Armies 3rd edition initially confused me massively with their seeming 5 books of core content, none of them named in a clear way to tell you what they contain, or are for (I've figured it out now).

With the PF2e remaster, Paizo has split and shuffled content around all their books to create the Player Core with no specific GM content, but player content every GM needs, and the GM core with necessary GM content. If I wanted to start GMing the game at this point, I'm basically required to buy the two books, costing more than the original single Core book that I used before. Thankfully, I don't need to buy those books, or else I'd be a bit pissed.

I've always liked only having to buy a single book that contains a fair amount of content for players and GMs to start a campaign with, and have additional books come later to expand on each pillar.

The Cairn 2e kickstarter is doing something fairly interesting, however. They've created a Warden's Guide separate from the Player's Guide, but they have also included two stretch goals to include additional Player's Guides in the box set. These goals have both been met, so the box set comes with 3 Player's Guides and one Warden's guide. The point is obviously so you have more than one player's guide to hand out to the table, reducing the amount of book sharing that needs to go on. I think I like this.

It's somewhat following a trend I've been noticing recently with smaller publishers and some indies, where they have a small Player's guide of 5-30 pages explaining the rules the players need to know, and then having a full GM's guide with all the rules. I also like this, because it's way easier to get players to read a small self-contained guide with the most important rules, than to tell them to open a 600+ page book and go to pages 10-23, 60-61, 112, 334-427, and 520-560 to get a full overview of the rules.

The only problem I have with the way the Cairn 2e box set is doing this: The player's guide is 90 pages compared the Warden's guide 110, and the Warden's Guide might have some material that makes sense to be in the player's guide like spellbooks, character advancement, and relics. Edit: additional context about this has been added by yochaigal below. The content in the Warden's Guide is specifically GM facing content, rather than player-facing.

Maybe my feelings of annoyance are driven by the big publishers frequently splitting their content in a way that requires one person to buy 3 separate books to run a game. Is creating a small free PDF Player's guide to go along with your full GM's guide the future? How do you all feel about this?

I have been running a PathFinder campaign for three years that started at level 1 in Falcon’s Hollow (Andoran) where the PCs were investigating the ancient dwarven ruins in the area until level 4. During this time, I introduced news of the “Elven Crisis” which is that for the last 140 years, no elven births or pregnancies had occurred. In fact, the elven ranger (128 years old) in the party, was one of the you youngest elves known.

From there, they moved to Olfden (Andoran) and helped fight against werewolves and primal druids for levels 5-8. During this time, they discovered a strange purplish glowing hole in the ground that they called the “Arcane Well”. My actual name for it was “The Conduit”. Around this hole, was a strange “wild magic” area. The hole mysteriously vanished during a total eclipse. Also, during this time, the Cleric of Pharasma PC was getting information from his temple about increasing undead activity in the Gravelands.

Levels 9-12 involved the PCs researching a series of manuscripts revolving around the nature of magic and something being wrong with magic. Some kind of magical taint. The PCs traveled to Kyonin seeking scholarly help. The manuscripts were taken to study by elven scholars and the mages’ guild.

Levels 13-14, they begain fighting in the crusades with the temple of Pharasma until they learned that some elven scholars had studied the manuscripts and were in agreement that something was in fact wrong with magic. There was an unknown and unexplained energy combined with normal magical energies that crossed the traditional boundaries of Arcane, Divine, Natural, and Primal magic.

Level 15-16 opened with rumors of a purplish glowing hole in the ground that was fueling the undead with magical energy. This hole was located behind the undead front-lines, which had advanced to the western border of Kyonin. The PC’s, with their previous experience, volunteered to investigate and try to close/destroy the hole. After a hard-fought journey and reaching the hole, they find a large cabal of Asmodeus Clerics performing living sacrifices into the hole. The wild magic area was crazier and larger than before with purple energy streaming from the hole like threads of light dissipating into the sky. A battle ensued and the PCs were forced to teleport away with the bodies of three of their dead companions.

Levels 17-18 involved resurrection of three PCs which proved difficult due to increasing taint with magic. The PCs traveled to the elven home planet Castrovel, via an Elf Gate, to find someone to perform the Resurrection rituals there. When they returned, the undead had taken nearly half of Kyonin lands and things were looking bad for the home team.

Levels 19-20 began with the revelation by elven scholars that the magic taint was bleed-over from another plane. The effects were currently limited to about 100 leagues of the hole. But if not stopped, it could eventually corrupt all magic on Golarion. The PCs once again volunteered to visit the Arcane Well, but this time to travel through it to see if they could close it or destroy it from the other side. They fought their way to the hole and jumped inside where they found a nexus of some sort guarded by a contingency of devils commanded by a pit fiend. Trying to fight against the devils without access to magic, proved too large a task for the heroes and one by one, they fell. With a final act of desperation, the cleric of Pharasma unleashed a massive burst of divine energy with a plea to his God. The nexus was destroyed and PCs souls were shunded into the other plane where they were reincarnated in the bodies of the recently sacrificed and discarded in a heap.

Retaining only broken and partial memories of their previous lives and no memories from the bodies they now possess, the PCs crawl away from the heap, flee the temple of Asmodeus, to begin their new lives at Level 1 in a brand new campaign.

FYI - The new world is The Forgotten Realms campaign using the Burning Wheel system. All this began over three years ago with me realizing that Asmodeus was in both campaign worlds and pondering what would happen if Asmodeus bridged the gap between the two worlds with some sort of conduit.