Hello Reddit!

TLDR: As Gm, how do you make describing more interesting and rich.

First off, I'd like to say I'm not a native English speaker so please excuse my potential mistakes!

Exactly related to this, I'd like to ask GMs who are both native and non-native speakers how they develop their capacities for scene description when running in english. ( I live in the UK so my english isn't terrible, just very basic)

I understand that reading is a helpful step for example. If so any recommendations?

I ran a variety of different settings in games but i generally struggle with varying descriptions of people and places (regardless of if it is in space or in a fantasy forest say). I find it hard to move away from basic adjectives, say to describe a haircut or a type of face. Even harder for me to step away from basic place name like "moutain" or "river". (I recon it's because words that are more unusual i just dont use regularly enough and so it doesn't stick).

Any other type for just making describing things memorable? The more applied advice the better, I'll take everything you got :). Thanks in advance for your time.

P.s: got massively bailed by auto-spell checker :p.

tldr: A new game from the creator of The Adventurer: https://jameschip.itch.io/space-between-the-stars

The Adventurer: Space between the Stars is a solo journalling game based on The Adventurer, but in a Sci-Fi setting of your own creation.

Much like the original game, The Adventurer: Space between the Stars has you split a deck of cards into piles by suit, and then draw them to explore a world; with each suit meaning a different thing. The twist here is that once you feel you have seen enough of the world you are on, you can simply hop in your ship and head out into the inky blackness of space to find a new one to explore!

What causes you to leave the planet you are on?

What draws you to this new, distant world?

Why, of all places, do you land in that spot?

These are all questions that you will be answering in your journal as you explore a galaxy of your own creation.

Before you begin your ramble from planet to planet you must first familiarize yourself with your ship. At the very start of the game you will answer a few questions about the ship you will be spending a lot of your time coasting across the interstellar planes in. Once that is done, the universe, and all its many wonders, and ready for you to discover.

Comes as a pdf with hand drawn ink illustrations by myself. Check it out at the link below:

https://jameschip.itch.io/space-between-the-stars

I heard someone say that OSE has a Mage class that uses scrolls and stuff to cast magic, and it got me curious. Are there other RPGs where magic (or a form of magic) is based around items and not just an inherent magical ability/resource like spell slots? Thanks.

EDIT: I remembered that Cairn does that with spellbooks

1. What is a good system for this type of game?
2. What are so good system agnostic tips for making this a fun experience?
3. How can this be handled well as a one-shot?
4. How can this be handled well as a 10(-ish)-session campaign?
5. What to do if a character dies? Perhaps the player's new character is a game sponsor, and how can that then be handled?
6. Pre-game preparation, how can it be handled?
7. Anything interesting to be done before, after, or outside of, the actual fight-to-the-death game?
8. Something I might be forgetting?

As a group activity, it might not be an official hunger games game and more inspired, so for instance the whole group can win together.

I am looking for names for a Private Military Company that is good

Hey everyone. I got into OSR games via Mork Borg earlier this year, and have been enjoying GMing it quite a bit. I started ttrpg's as a player in DnD 4e, played some 5e (liked it a lot more than 4e), but after trying Mork Borg, and loving the fast flow and rules-light system, I can't go back to DnD. Recently I found the Mausritter system, and it also looks fantastic. My current group is going to be pausing for a while, and so I'm considering a new system when we get going again. I really like Mork Borg, but I do wish it had a bit more depth in terms of gameplay mechanics. Mausritter looks really promising, but I'd like to keep it closer in theme to human adventurers, and dark fantasy.

This brings me to the reason for my post. I came across the Trophy system, and the cover art looks great (art in these books really helps me get into the system), and the idea sounds good (sounds like more of a survival horror approach to dungeon crawling, and I like the forest focus on it). However, other than a basic overview, the books don't seem to offer much information on their actual contents. For any of you who run OSR's, have you tried the Trophy system? How did you like it? Is it one you'd recommend to someone who likes Mork Borg?

PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING

Hello! I enjoy games in this range and its the closest I can get to playing pbta games with my day one rpg group.

Specifically, i'm looking for games that have players storytelling as much as problem solving. Story based xp triggers, bonds or flags, a crew/party sheet, devil's bargains, beliefs & instincts, even destiny points. i just love to have a little bit of that flavor, not to mention some help when i'm GMing.

There can be tactics but they should not be the primary thrust of the game. Same with player skill, I want that to be enjoyable but not necessary (as done in blades). I don't like games that are rooted in the win/lose paradigm.

• Minimum is something like an Ironsworn or a Stonetop, PbtA+.
• Sweetspot is blades+. some story crunch with a little tactical/strategic play, maybe some light min maxing. a little synergy is good, a big chunky combat system is not.
• Maximum is burning wheel, but only because how devoted to good storytelling it is. if that was all math crunch instead, i would not be burning any wheels.

Games that are close but don't quite cut it: genesys, symbaroum, age of sigmar: soulbound, 13th Age.

Games that i'm curious about: lancer/ ICON (is it just stapled on? does that matter?). the LUMEN family. twilight kingdoms, heart/spire, ars magica, gubat banwa, cypher & cortex. the stars without number faction turn.

don't get me wrong i love that making a pathfinder 2e character feels like building an EDH deck. But this niche is my favorite way to play and I think many of you may feel the same. Help me out!

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hey guys. What if there was a tabletop Role-playing game based on Dragon's Lair?

what system would it use? DnD 5e? OSR? Index Card RPG? or it's own original system?

I have an idea for a game mechanic where you get four arcade coins that act as a sort of game enhancer for example if your character dies, it costs 2 coins to revive him. Your coin meter is limited to 2 and if you survive a session, it refills.

It would also have the typical races like humans, elves, and dwarves, but also Mud Men, Giddy Goons, and maybe mouse folk and dog folk as a little nod to Bluth's other films, Secret of NIMH and All Dogs Go to Heaven.

Hey, I had a question for anyone trying to make their own game/ campaign etc.

I've been DM'ing 5e for a few years now, and have recently started trying to build my own ttrpg. I have built games in the past just for fun (never published or anything, just for my friends and I), but I would like to take this one to the next step and maybe publish one day.

However, I'm getting very discouraged because every time I try and sit down and really work on the game I get frustrated, put out, and scared to discuss or show it to anyone. Then I start to lose steam on the part I love (building the game) and eventually just give up because it could "never be a financial success anyway."

I know I should probably just get over myself and build the game, but does anyone have any advice on how they worked through this in their own experience? Or something similar?

Thanks in advance.

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Quick Note: The game is in really really really early development and isn't playable yet, but it would be in about a week if I could actually put time into it without getting so frustrated.

I am not going to call this an original idea, because I swear I have read about or watched this somewhere, though I cannot recall the precise source.

In this hypothetical setting, mermaids are all-female. Enchanting pulchritude, enthralling songs, long lifespans or outright agelessness (and eating the flesh of a mermaid confers some of that longevity), the usual deal. The catch is, mermaids are a parasitic, assimilating species.

A school of mermaids swims up to a coastal, riparian, or lacustrine settlement at night, when everyone is sleeping. The mermaids sing. The melodies reach out into the dreaming minds of young women across the town or city. The mystical frequency bypasses countermeasures as feeble as mere beeswax in the ears. Many girls resist, none the wiser, but some succumb. The victims trudge towards the water; some are stopped by their fellow citizens, but a few are dragged down. The mermaids gruesomely hack the legs off the young women, and an implanted parasite (or maybe just a magical ritual) initiates the process through which the girls' memories are wiped clean, through which piscine lower bodies grow from bloody stumps.

This is, of course, a problem for humans, whose towns and cities tend to be by the water. Some take this quite seriously, and tie down young women to their beds. Others post watchers along the waterside, to preemptively guard against the mermaids' tricks. A handful have struck deals with the mermaids, offering tribute to protect their daughters. The waters always beckon.

What other worldbuilding implications would this have?

I'm running a dnd 5e campaign. I really don't want anyone to stumble on my reddit profile, so I don't feel comfortable with too much details.

The tone I'm trying to set is something based on my characters because the adventure path is bare bones & the setting is a really containable sandbox.

I really like things like scants from Doom Patrol. I think the potential is hilarious.

I was having lunch with a friend last month & we workshopped some of my better ideas. It feels like I have so few ideas and I'm already spent.

I combed through bestiaries and monster manuals all the way back to 3.5. I didn't come back empty handed, but almost everything takes itself way too seriously for the camp I want to convey.

I was hoping for some insight. Thank you.

I am in the middle of running a mini campaign based on the video game "among us".

It is a muder mystery/survival horror. The players are crew on a space ship and one of the NPC crew is an imposted who has been killing the crew.

As backstory, I said that the crew were on there way back from a mission where they recovered an alien artifact from an alien planet. My thinking was that this is where the imposter came from. And the imposter is murdering the crew because the crew stole their artifact.

While one of the players (the scientist) was investigating the artifact, they assembled the artifact pieces together in a way which "activated" it. Because the players expected something to happen, I impulsively said that it started glowing and making a sound, and then suddenly caused the power to go out on the ship (until the engineer flipped the breaker, returning the power).

The complication is that the players are now starting to wonder what the artifact is and what it does. However I never had any thoughts of what it is, beyond it being a McGuffin.

My current thoughts is that it should be something powerful that could be helpful to the players if they figure it out. But with the downside that the imposter really wants it back, so it will target anyone with it.

I need some ideas of what it could be, please!

Back when complexity was preferred in ttrpg! Two must plays from the 80s and 90s respectively.

Old school games that rock:

Phoenix Command

Synnibarr

I am trying to play Blades in the Dark with one friend, but I find it difficult to run and we are getting easily bored. Do you know any small, preferrably free RPG that is fresh but is not too weird? It can range any themes, but I'd prefer not to play grim stories. Thanks!

Hiya everyone, I’ve been worldbuilding this alien planet for a while and i’ve been wanting to use it for something with my friends. I’d like to run a small campaign that revolves around exploration, interacting with the environment, solving puzzles and survivng in a sci fi alien setting. Can anybody please suggest a suitable system I could use for this?

I currently have a D&D 5e group mostly made up of noobies. The only player who is not a noobie has played 5e for 4 years, but has a tenuous grasp on the mechanical aspects of the system. He's plenty fine at the RP and creative stuff (if he knew the rules, he would probably be better than me at GMing). When I told him about advantage and disadvantage, it was a new concept for him. He would probably have a hard time making a character by himself, and if I told him to roll for Dexterity and didn't tell him which die to pick up, he would most likely draw a blank. I'm just wondering... how? I would think that you just kinda pick up this stuff in play, but that's clearly not the case.

EDIT: I plan to switch systems in a few months, after the game is over. The reason I didn't use something like Dungeon World in the first place, is that D&D is easier to sell. It has all the brand recognition. I could just say we're playing D&D, then pull something else out, but that's just a tad bait-and-switchy. I advertised a D&D campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reaperddrpg/reaper-miniatures-dungeon-dwellers-roleplaying-game?ref=discovery&term=dungeon%20dwellers

Reaper’s O5R RPG kickstarter is in its final day. Notes from Reaper:

Four Core Classes: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard
Four Core Folk: Human, Proudfoot Halfling, Wood Elf, Hill Dwarf
Six Ability Scores: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma
d20-based Resolution System: The core of DDRPG uses a twenty-sided die. Whenever a character attempts something with interesting success or failure, the d20 is rolled and modifiers added.
Open Skill System is based on Ability Checks - a character's Background, Folk, and Class define what sorts of Skills a PC is proficient in.
Renovated Spell System - some spells have been revamped, improving utility and effectiveness; Spell Points allow casters to alter spell effects, increasing damage, number of targets, and degree of effect.
Dangerous - When Hit Points are exhausted, a creature is likely to die. When Hit Points are reduced below 0, the combatant has till the end of the round to be stabilized or they die. There are no Death Saves in DDRPG.
Easy to Use - DDRPG is compatible with almost any other RPG product. If you want to add something from a different system, it's easy to fold it into DDRPG's ruleset. 

My experience/additional info based on the betas over the last year or two:

Much like shadowdark it’s a 5e OSR take in may ways..but I think…seemingly compatible with most 5e material (I don’t feel shadow dark really is)…it’s based more on AD&D and C&C rather than something like BX. While I don’t think they set out to attempt to fix a lot of the perceived issues some people have with the siege engine and it’s conflicts when dealing with class based skills…I think they do.
Saves and Skill checks are ability score based checks, either proficient or non-proficient, (add level or 1/4 level) plus ability score bonus.
Characters have one proficient stat save from their Folk, and one they choose.
Skill proficiencies are more OSR/open in nature..it’s a combination of the folk, class and background (culture, upbringing and pre-class trade). The game provides examples of backgrounds to select and their characteristics, but players and DMs could come up with their own. Based on those descriptions in the book of the type of tasks the players are proficient at, the DM and Players make a game time decision if the task at hand would be proficient for the character. In practice it’s pretty easy and fast given the examples of the types of tasks each folk/class/background would encompass.
Spells have been reviewed and rewritten based on input from multiple revisions of TTRPGs and try to produce old school effects while taking some improvements from the modern game. An example is find familiar…without going into too much detail, caster can share senses with the familiar up to a certain distance, death of a familiar can cause hp loss and another familiar can’t be summoned for one year…makes familiars more companions like they were in previous iterations of D&D rather than disposable tools like in 5e.
Simplified slot based encumbrance. Movement and distance based on paces so that it works well with either grid or theater of the mind. Armor with max dex bonus similar to 5e, weapons with some 3e/5e/C&C characteristics like finesse, penetration, versatile..etc.
Overall the attempt was to take elements from many D&D versions, games like C&C and others and put together a good mix of fast game play at the table with some modern lessons learned. I suppose it will be up to individual opinion on if it’s the right mix for you..they’ve been play testing it and developing for quite a long time however. For me I think it will be my go to now if people want to play 5e material or a more modern game with a unified mechanic. I still like C&C but I’ve had too many people voice their dislike of siege engine (Trust me..like many of my other RPGs…I’ll personally still play a lot of C&C). For years I’ve wanted to merge many of the ideas from 5e with C&C that I like for a game that is more my tastes but I’ve been too lazy to do that…these guys did it for me and they have nice quality traditionally bound and printed books to boot, which would be far better than my printed word doc of house rules.

I am looking to get back into play by post rpg games. I used to find games on the Giantitp forum, but I notice there are far less activity than before. Has people moved on to other forums or is the interest just reduced?

So I have an idea for a new campaign. I think the PCs need to be a little more powerful before we begin, so I have 4-5 adventures to go before we begin the campaign. That'll be a good 15 sessions.
A solid six months in real life (every other week sessions) and a few months in the game world.

Since I have time, I had the idea to sketch out a bunch of dreams that reveal the back history and the plot hook of the campaign. Then break those up into fragments and present them out of order as dreams or visions one of the PCs are having. The idea being, the players need to piece the dream fragments together into a coherent story to understand what is going on.

I have some further ideas on how to take it to another level of immersive roleplaying, but not sure if it would be "cool" or "frustrating".

One, only reveal the dream fragments to the player of the PC having them. He then needs to describe them to the other players. This is how it would work in "real life", so brings that element of the role playing into the game. The obvious problem here is you might lose some details in translation. The solution would be to make sure the dreams aren't too subtle when it comes to the critical details.

Two, use disappearing messages. We play in Discord, so either manually or bring in a bot, have the messages available only for a short time. Five minutes say. Again, this brings in the immersive nature of dreams, but could also easily lead to confusion.

At the same time, could be interesting to see where confusion took the PCs. Once I have the framework and timelines established, tweaking them a bit to coincide with the players actual choices should be reasonably simple.

So other than discussing the idea in general with my players and getting their buy in, anyone have any thoughts, comments, suggestions on this idea?

Here are some pics:

https://i.imgur.com/JFcOfxv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mMf8eYO.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/fzXFyKB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/iOt85aO.jpg

So, some background on the Kindle Scribe.

It's Amazon's largest eInk device, with a 10.2 inch 300 ppi screen. It's expensive, but it's on a Black Friday deal right now. I got the 32 GB model for $279 instead of the usual $389.

Kindle devices use a front-lit eInk display, which is WAY easier on the eyes than the LCD/LED in a tablet. But the screen is greyscale, so you're not getting any color.

Here is my pro/con list for it.

Pros:

1. eInk is so legible. The 300 PPI display is very easy to read, even though it's smaller than an RPG rule book. To my aged 55 year old eyes, I am able to read the books that I have very well.
2. You can fit a lot of rulebooks on this thing with 32 BG of storage.
3. It has a stylus for taking notes. So, you can markup a PDF easily, like you would a rulebook with a pencil.
4. Because of the eInk display, the battery lasts WEEKS instead of hours.
5. The screen is 10.2 inches, which is a great size for reading a PDF.
6. You can use this for more than just PDFs. It's a kindle. You can put any Kindle book on it.

Cons:

1. It has all the limitations of eInk. Page turns are a tad slow compared to a tablet. On a tablet I can easily zip through 10-15 pages of a book by just continuously swiping on the screen. On this, that's just not going to happen. The page needs to turn, refresh, and then you can turn to the next page. You can breeze through a book with the slider.
2. It's a pricey unitasker. This things is designed to read books and PDFs. You're not surfing the web or checking your email on this thing. You're also not installing any apps for additional functionality.
3. The best looking PDFs have black text and a white background. Those look AMAZING. When you get PDFS with complicated background colors, the text can be a tad harder to read sometimes.
4. There are no physical page turn buttons. You need to touch the screen to turn pages.

The only thing that drew me to this device was the sale price. At the original list price of $389 I would not buy this. At $279 I was willing to take the plunge and use this for RPG PDFs and to replace my 4 year old Kindle Paperwhite.

What would I change about the device? Not a lot. I would prefer physical page turn buttons. What I would like to change is the PDFs publishers are creating. I'd like RPG makers to make eInk friendly PDFs. Make a PDF with no backgrounds on the pages. If you're using shading on a table, please use light colors, so it has really good contrast between the shading and the text for easy reading.

Ok, my usual attempts to source this through social media have fallen pretty flat, so maybe reddit can help.

Are there any GMless Superhero games that you know of? Belonging Outside Belonging/No Dice, No Masters style might be a plus since I'm thinking of doing a PBP game, but other GMless systems are worth looking into.

Me and my players loved playing CoS back then and I'd love to run something in a similar tone again. The major points I'm looking for:

• It was great that my players didn't know about the land itself, creating a fish out of water experience.
• I had many opportunities for the villain to interact with my players during the whole campaign from start to end.
• The overall darker tone.

Would love if you fellow redditors might have some suggestions for me :) Game system and edition is not that important tbh, I'm mostly looking for a good blueprint to build our next campaign on.

Thanks in advance and have a great day! :)

Hi Y'all.

I'm looking for system suggestions. I'm thinking about running a campaign where the players a mercenary group in a large renaissance era city run by a complex web of conflicting factions.

I'm looking for a system fast and light and facilitates narrative and drama.

The campaign will focus on character drama and political intrigue, with combat optional tool to problems rather than the focus of play.

BTW I've already played Fate to death, so please suggest something else.

I Was wondering, could like, for a final bossfight, players fight agaisnt the master? How would that work? It seems like such a 4th wall breaking concept for the characters to fight agaisnt the master of the world they live in but it also seems like it would do for a fun event,

So i kinda like them mostly as a training tool to my imrpov skills, i believe that the Best way to learn is by doing and a solo one puts me in a scenario where i need to think and improv whatever the oracle says i have to do.

I wanna do the same thing magic the noah does with my friends, does anyone knoe the name of the software he uses or what he does basically?

Example: https://youtu.be/8Xp8317orKY?si=g5UBbhuB3ScYBQJv

Hello everyone, I am fairly new to the RPG world, and I am here for your suggestions and insights. Recently my boyfriend wrote an investigative TTRPG story for me to play on my birthday. Needless to say, I loved it. I have never played RPGs and have spent the last few days trying to gather as much information as possible (much thanks to this subreddit!) in hopes of convincing him to publish it. The principle is simple, the player is a detective called to a crime scene and must solve the crime. Clues are discovered by dice rolls to which personal points are added depending on the attribute used in the roll. For example, the detective can guess intentions if they use wisdom, or they can convince or intimidate a witness if they use charisma etc. Each story begins and ends in three to four hours of play.

In my research I didn't find anything like that. I've read a lot about Gumshoe which seems to me to be the main basis for any investigative RPG but their principle of connecting clues rather than finding them makes it very different from the story my boyfriend created. The problem that clues can be lost if the roll fails is solved by him in two ways 1) each clue can be discovered in different ways and/or times, 2) crucial clues that are missed, because maybe you didn't look under the couch at the crime scene, are revealed in the forensic report after a certain number of hours. However, this does not mean that every story is always successful because there is a notion of time and minimum amount of evidence needed to convict the suspect(s).

Also it seems to me, but please correct me if I'm wrong I'm really here to learn, that traditional TTRPGs require a huge amount of preparation for the GM and campaigns could take months. This story, on the other hand, is better suited for casual players who just want to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Now to my questions:

1. Do you know of anything similar? Do you think the concept might be interesting?

2. If so, do you have any advice on how to publish it? We thought about the amazon self-publishing system but as we understand it in the US you have to go through a copyright attribution process(?). We are European so we could publish it anyway, but we don't want to close off an important market, also because the game is written in English. Do you know of any specific publishing platforms?

Any other advice you can provide beyond these questions of mine is really appreciated!

I am currently playing D&D 5e as a DM, but i'm finding the work behind it excruciating. We play once per week and i just can't find time to prepare everything (we currently playing a homebrew story).

since i ran out of official starter adventures (i reuse to find time to run bigger modules, which look way too complicated), i would like to switch to oher games where, in exchange for a bigger amount of money even, i can have more material and most of the things already prepared.

What i had in mind was:

- The one ring: a few small adventures, the world is pre-built (duh) and includes a lot of stuff (yes i'm a sucker for stuff, but so are my players)

-Tales from the loop: again, a pretty circumscribed game and a lot of the world seems to be pre-built

-twilight 2000: that is almost a board game considering all the stuff it's giving you, but that's probably what m looking for.

I would rather have a game that allows me to do 10 adventures, but does most of the world and adventure building, rather than a 300 pages tool-kit tome to create infinite "endless" adventures, which sadly always end up with me not playing at all.

Any help is appreciated.

Having a neutral referee setting up and presenting the adventure is so common as to be an almost unquestioned part of most TTRPGs but due to the way I have interacted with the hobby the reasons for this are slightly opaque to me.

I have only recently taken up RPGs and I've played a few different systems, but all of my games have been solo. This is partly because of practical reasons and partly because I'm not sure I would like being GM'd. At least not the way I understand it from reading way too many forum posts out of context and watching some early Critical Role. The obvious soloution is of course to be the GM myself, but as my introduction to the hobby has been GMing myself I don't really see why GMing is not commonly a team role for everyone in the game.

On the other hand I did see a very interesting post in the OSR sub the other day talking about attributes where made the statement that stats were only of use to inform the player what kind of character you might want to play and that in play you should always be doing what you the player would do in that situation which made it more clear to me that some kinds of games would require an uninvolved adjudicator more than others. There was also a post on here yesterday asking about people's experience with GMless games and the overall consensus there is that they are best suited to shorter games, which I suppose I can agree with since I have only finished a few of the games I began solo.

I can imagine situations where GMing was a team responsibility working quite well but I can also easily imagine the opposite case, however as that is true of traditional GMing as well I assume there are other contributing factors in this being an unpopular way to play. I'm considering trying to set up a Traveller game like this because I think it would be fairly well suited to the style but I'm worried I am missing something that makes this a disastrous idea.

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