I'm looking into acifi games with a focus on galavanting through space going on various misadventures.

Systems I'm looking at using or hacking to fit my needs are:

1. Traveller
2. Mothership
3. White Star
4. Stars Without Number
5. Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells
6. Sword of Cepheus
7. Savage Worlds
8. Cypher System

These are just what come to mind first. I have a few basic ideas I just know I'd prefer something relatively medium lite on rules and is somewhat levelless. By that I mean yes I want advancement but more in the players ability to do things and deal Damage, not in how much damage they can take.

I'm looking for a system that's dark and gritty that would fit a setting where a portal to hell has been opened up on earth. And things are not looking great for humanity. Some magic is okay But I would prefer a darker system if possible.

I avoided being too specific because I didn't want to discount games that may not have fit in my exact idea.

But if it helps people. The setting would be Earth sometime in like the 1900s. Hell has broken loose on Earth most of the population being gone. The goal of the people left would probably be a big war against The forces of hell. Or easily put survive..

Contrary to the title and to the flair this is not a game suggestion. This is an desperate attempt to find a book.

Sometime ago OP wanted a system fo medieval Europe with magic, where demons are real. Someone in the comments said something about a fantasy book he must have red. It was abou a knight, some girl and their travels. They were at some point fighting demons. I looked up the book at Wikipedia and found out that the author has a YouTube page where he reads the whole book aloud!

I was already listening to some other books so I said it would be next. About a month or two had passed, and I wanted to listen to the book. Unfortunately I can't find it. I used Google, searched my history on YT and other stuff and couldn't find anything. I forgot the title! So I desperately want to try find this book asking in the first place I heard about it.

Curious to hear if anyone has played this, hopefully with their kid, and how it was.

My son is 8, and has a huge love for all things mech....Pacific Rim, Titanfall, Gundam etc...And I keep trying to find an RPG that would be up his alley.

I keep coming back to Tiny Frontiers: Mecha and Monsters, but not sure how well the younger crowd fare with it

Has anyone here happened to play with a similar age, and if so, how did it go?

As per title. Something a la Supernatural. If theres no particularly good game for it, what could I adapt? thanks.

EDIT: thankyou all for the suggestions, im going to check out a few of these to start off. Btw, Im aware Supernatural isn't ""punk"" but it does have the idea of random joes fighting entities. Delta Green and CoC sounds way too "survival mystery" and less "Dispose of the entities", which is why i cited Supernatural. Something like random group of people fighting eldritch entities.

SO very many screens I've found... I just want a decent quality screen that accepts 8.5x11 sheets of normal (US-normal) paper that I print so font is larger and darker (schtoopid old eyes!), and I can have art work related to the game system and scenario I'm running on the outside (player facing).

Such a thing exists that is good quality, looks good, etc?

I've been using an old iPad Pro 12.9" to read my PDFs, but the battery is dying, and for what it would cost to replace the battery, I can buy a 12-14" Android tablet. I think that's going to be the way to go with the new year.

Since I haven't use an Android product in about 5 years at this point, I'm curious what people are using the read RPG PDFs, and if some app a "killer feature" that really helps with using PDFs at the table.

EDIT: I'd like something with stylus support, so I can mark up PDFs.

The title is tongue in cheek from the post last week and I will mostly just brag that I finally got a table together with some amazing players. But to give credit to that post, I emphasized hard on what their role as players actually is because of it and I am sure that helped a ton. Many of them, including me, tend towards allowing plenty of silliness. I wasn’t 100% confident we’d be able to make the leap to be mostly serious and somber while moving in and out of character through collaborative narrative that 10 Candles calls for. But they completely beat my expectations. They added to the tone with truths that made me feel that anxious dread - and I don’t have a PC!

Many games where I’ve done shared full GM-less play, I leave somewhat unsatisfied. I feel like I’d have had more fun in more traditional roles as either a player or GM. But this was one of the most memorable sessions of an RPG I’ve had. I felt like I had nearly limitless ammo of ideas to throw at players. One came up with some safe haven that they were being manipulated towards. And half of them split off and walked into the obvious trap of this beautiful Thanksgiving meal perfectly lit. Even cut the horror music to give this momentary feeling of peace. And I love the juxtaposition of a beautiful dinner in this creepy shack in the middle of the woods.

The candles and atmosphere are really important - I don’t think I would try to do this online. That what has made it take years is that it needs to be in person to get that experience. It looked cool (never have I had several players want to take a picture taken together). And it was very evocative - everything getting dimmer was critical to the mood. I saw the players become more somber. Another bonus is that it's just fun to burn cards.

Not using phones was huge. I believe one thing that truly helped was a strict no phones policy. They so easily divert your attention, you are no longer engaged in the atmosphere and the table loses the energy you could have brought. I am guilty of this as well. But I saw a player who mostly played 5e go from almost zero engagement to bringing to life the madness that the situation causes. It's really important for horror. And doubly so for a game with players working more as writers collaboratively focused on telling a good story. Being advocates and adversaries of their characters. I think this is something I plan to curtail and emphasize with new groups from now on. Faster paced games are probably critical to this. I am somewhat jealous of people who played ~15+ years ago when at best they could just distract themselves with snake on a dumb phone.

Some little Nitpicking

Many players felt underwhelmed using what feels like a very limited Virtue and Vice cards (though in total, they have 8, so it is a lot in total) just to reroll some 1s. When the pool is down to 5 dice, it rarely turns a fail to a success or it's not possible to use them with no 1s rolled. So two of the Brinks never came out and one of the Moments didn’t have time to be lived. Maybe 3 PCs would be better than 4. Maybe 11 or 12 candles to give a little more time for the Vices and Virtues to be most effective when they reroll many 1s. We lost a candle early, but in total it was only 3 hours.

Once the first Moment (these are personal goals to complete before dying) was done, we didn’t have another on top. So I’d prefer a houserule that the table has a new Moment immediately become available, because you have less time than you think when the candles start darkening.

And when one player’s Moment would have been perfect for the situation (completely unintentionally, it was just a well written Moment), the mechanics clashed with what should have been living in the Moment - so I’d probably house rule that the card can come out. But we shouldn’t actively swerve the story to create an opportunity for their Moment until it's available. So I see the reason not to have all active at the same time - we want just one to focus on at a time.

So if I can make this a Halloween tradition, I may make a couple adjustments.

Fun TIL

Lit index cards will melt a hole in a plastic bowl - oops. Also don’t use a high intensity flashlight to light up your paper notes (or maybe organize them better than I did on just a tablet), and just use a dim phone screen for illuminating things like notes and dice rolls. Maybe just high contrast black number on white dice.

Conclusion: This game is as amazing as most people have said

Nitpicking aside, this was easily an A+ experience. This experience is the reason I spend (probably) too much time on this subreddit. To learn about these incredible gems of great RPG experiences. More so, this game convinced me that Writer’s Room style play can be really fun for me especially when you still have a mostly traditional GM in play. It takes some serious improvisational skills to incorporate what ends up being a huge number of ideas, but it really fits my preferred GMing.

If anyone has similar games, I may be interested. The Between now that its backerkit is done is definitely on the list. The Day and Night Move are a great way to crowdsource consequences from the table.

I'm a bit burnt out from 5e and looking for alternatives. After much Google searching, I've gathered this info; let me know your thoughts. Since I'm looking for a game with low or medium complexity/crunch, a lot of official content in Spanish, and high compatibility with VTT/Roll20 in case I don’t want to do in-person sessions, some of the best options are:

Vampire: The Masquerade for epic and complex experiences.

Call of Cthulhu for a classic horror experience. Tomorrow, I'll pick up Arkham Horror.

The One Ring and Legend of the Five Rings offer a more narratively rich experience with slightly more complex mechanics, but still accessible for new DMs.

Am I missing any? I was thinking about FATE, but I don’t see much content. I prefer to run existing campaigns until I master the rules. I also have Blades in the Dark and Ironsworn, but I fear they are less known...

Now, I'd say there needs to be combat for personal style, but it should flow. 5e and PF have too many rules that, although cool and offering much flexibility, slow things down, especially for those waiting their turn. That's why I prefer something with relatively low to medium crunchiness. Thematically, I’m very flexible. Although I’m a geek at heart regarding LotR and SciFi, I want to focus on learning something familiar always to have games and players whenever possible. That’s why I think Lovecraft or classic fantasy is the way to go.

Regarding the story, I enjoy describing environments and creating atmosphere, which is why just doing Dungeon Crawlers gets boring for me. Roleplaying is necessary, even if just a little. But especially for the first campaigns, I want to go with official adventure books to avoid making up anything.

I hope I’ve explained myself!

Hey there everyone!

I know this is a question that has been revisted nearly fourteen trillion times but I am afraid that I must do so once more myself. I am looking at organizing a post-apocalyptic campaign for some friends, very much inspired by things like The Last of Us, The Road, and the Telltale Walking Dead games. Character driven drama and a more stark take to the genre, rather than something a bit more exciting like Dead Rising, for example. And frankly... I've been having an absolute nightmare of a time trying to sort through the myriad of systems out there that exist. Paralysis of choice is a nightmare.

The main issue I've been coming across is that a LOT of the systems I've looked into seem to either be rules-lite/minimalist or intended for one shots/shorter games, which are both not what I'm looking for at all. Not that there's anything wrong with either, they just aren't what I'm looking for. My group tends to prefer systems with a bit more meat on their bones, so to speak, especially when it comes to character creation, and we like our games to go on for quite a while.

I don't exactly need a perfectly simulationist system, but I definitely want survival to be something that has to be actively worked towards. Food/Water, scrounging for supplies, and effective management of inventory are definitely things I'd like to include. Base building mechanics would be a nice bonus, but I can contrive those myself if need be.

Please feel free to toss rocks at me if need be, but I would DEEPLY appreciate any help offered!

Thank you,

Hello, I got some adventures for dnd 3.5 and was wondering If it can be used with another system, I heard that the pathfinder are compatible and better but I don't know much.

Someone have any recommendations?

Thank you for the attention!!

Hello there! So... after playing This is the police 2 and watching Reacher I've got really inspired to create a detective story for my party myself, but... I think 5e is not what I need here, so, could you, guys, help me out here, please? Guess I need something realistic (probably, but if there'll be anything mystical, I don't mind it), and taking place in modern time. If you have anything similar in mind I'd be very grateful for your ideas or words of advice!

Recently, my campaign has gotten a little messy, for a lack of better word. Not in a bad way, just... messy? I will try to explain the best I can without too much rambling.

So, the story is pretty straightforward, the world is ending cause the fabric of the world, Artros, is "imploding". The time is coming for another total reconstruction of the world. It has gone too long without one cause the dragons would always take care of Artros, making it "docile", but they vanished.

That said. There are three sides here, and which of my PCs is on different ones.
1: Find the Dragons and save the world.
2: Let it all go to waste.
3: Join Osiris's cult to take control of Artros and actually make a better world... on his terms.

These three are making a lot of things happen, and it is pretty possible that my 3 players split out on them.

So, any tips on how to handle this situation? I didn't wanna have to ask anyone to let go of their characters cause they are "enemies" now.

Hi there, i am a novice GM and it's my first time posting here. I would like to have some advices about what to do in my table.

The setting is modern day with a few fantasy elements. Basically, the last session ended up with the players screwing things up so hard that they got arested for trespassing in flagrant and accusations of aggression. Obviously, i didn't want to just throw them right away into jail, so i wanted for them to have a chance to defend themselves.

What should i do?

Should i roleplay a court? Should i just ask them some charisma checks to convince the judge they are not guilty? I thought about using the prisioners dillema in interrogations to spice thing up, but i don't like the idea of the players throwing each other under the bus like that. I really don't want for them to go without consequences for their actions, but, it's getting so hard to decide and kind of out of my expactations for this campaing that i was thinking of just skipping/retconning this all together. Can someone help me?

The TL;DR Cliff Notes version is to get your best friend, each of you to write up a climactic event, and then take turns being both player and GM by performing an action then describe the outcome like you’re a GM to create a dilemma for the other to perform an action followed by a description like a GM in return. Then when you are comfortable doing that, the two of you run a one-on-one session where one is the GM and one is a character and get as much improv as you can in the session. With time, you’ll be ready for a typical group and be able to come up with the ideas you need off the top of your head without fear or doubt.

Full article:

Are you one of the new Game Masters who find it difficult to come up with ideas on the fly while your players are breathing down your neck for the next challenge? Perhaps you have strengths running combat yet, unless you have detailed notes, you find your story plots weak. While it’s easy to write an opening description to get the session started, from there, keeping the details fresh and with a good pace can be challenging. You may feel that thinking on your feet is too much to handle, but consider this: when you are having a normal conversation with someone, you are always thinking on your feet just to have the conversation. You are responding to what the other is saying. You’re answering their questions, you’re commenting on their ideas, you’re giving insight.

So why is it so much tougher during a game to come up with spontaneous ideas for your players? Well, for one, it’s not like the conversation you typically have. There are multiple people who are addressing you, and you are having to create something interesting in response. You are keeping the key points in the story in the back of your head while coming up with pieces in between their actions that chain everything from start to finish without railroading them. Not to mention, players are spontaneous and often change the topic dramatically. A normal conversation usually has some line of anticipation and expectation as to what the two of you are talking about.

The best advise anyone will give you on how to become a better Game Master is to improve your improvisational skills. Strengthening your mind to create the right ideas takes time if it doesn’t naturally come to you. For those who need help, consider this simple and potentially fun exercise that can help increase your ability to pull ideas out of your magical hat no matter what curve ball your players throw at you.

Begin with selecting one of your closest friends. This can be a great gaming friend you have never met but chat with everyday for years. It could be your sibling or parent. It could be your trusty mailman. Whoever you feel most comfortable in front of and can truly be your unique self without self-conscious awareness. You want to be able to act in your skin. Ideally, the other person is another who is curious about becoming a Game Maser, or better yet, has been one.

Next, the two of you settle on a setting for the exercise to take place in. This could be a large fantasy city to a haunted forest. Whatever the case, each of you then writes a significant event that they would normally present as a goal or major obstacle that fits in that setting. This could be a mischievous mage threatening to scorch the poverty district if he doesn’t get a new tower built, or it could be simply a large brawl in the market. Whatever is decided, keep the event secret from the other. Each of you are going to try to non-railroad to these events.

Now, one of you decide to start the exercise, which they will open with a typical brief description of their situation. GM 1 : “You step foot into a dense, lush forest that yields little light, demanding illumination by torch or lantern. Before you is an old, nearly disappeared game trail that is known to progress halfway through the forest. You hope to find the witch who resides somewhere among the twisted, black trees.”

The other person (GM 2) now gets to play as a non-stat character. They have 1 action they can take, but that action is not brief or too focused. It’s more of a broad stroke action, including the result of their action as they switch from player to Game Master. For example, their action could be something like this in respond to the above forest description from GM 1.

“I pull the collar of my coat up around my shoulders as the cool wind from a lack of sunlight brushes over my skin. I am regretting agreeing to meeting with this witch, but I have been told she is the only one capable of brewing the potion to cure my dying mother. More than anything, I’m worried just what it is going to cost me. With my walking staff gripped, I begin with a quick pace into the dark forest, illuminated by my hooded lantern strapped to my belt.”

That is their (GM 2) action. Then they switch to a Game Master and give the result of their own action, speaking in 2nd person as if the first Game Master (GM 1) is now the player, which they are.

“Over countless fallen trunks, past haunted yellow eyes, and endless dead ends, you stumble upon an old stone cottage deep in the forest. A thin plume of smoke twirls up from a cylinder chimney, carrying with it the fragrance of holly and persimmon. The front door is dutch style, split horizontally in the middle, with the top portion swung open into a dark room. As you approach, the sound of liquid boiling riddles the air.”

GM 1 now becomes the same character as GM 2. Keep in mind any personality or characteristic either person might create for them on the fly, but don’t write up a character. Don’t bring dice, don’t create stats. Ignore the temptation to give the character a race or class upfront. Let that occur in the spur-of-the-moment when the story deems that identity to be decided. Be spontaneous and carefree with the character. However, if something unique comes up during the session about the character, such as a limp or a weapon, both GMs write that down and keep it in mind.

Have GM 1 come up with an action much like GM 2 just did followed by another resulting description of their own action. This goes back and forth until both of you have reached one or both of the events you two came up with.

This exercise provides a variety of benefits. First, you are able to get multiple “reps” or “repetitions” in one sitting to generate off-the-cuff ideas to the story you’re creating. Normally you might only be meeting your friends once a month or every other week. That may help, but at that rate, you could be a year or two down the road before you get enough practice in, especially when “real life” interferes and postpones a session. Meeting your one friend is far easier than getting all of the group together as often. Through this, with only one other playing, you are able to give descriptions more frequent, which “nourishes” your brain to be more spontaneous.

Second, it allows for your skills to develop at a beginner level because your Game Master descriptions come from your own actions. Your actions come from the other GM’s description, which is the easy part being the player. Since the tougher part that you are wanting to focus on comes from creating descriptions, challenges, and interesting developments to the story, it becomes far easier to bring those to life if they are in direct response to your own ideas. You know what’s coming from the action because you are the creator of it. So you have a sort of “advance warning”, if you will, of the action, and your brain can adaptively come up with reactions to it – similarly to having a conversation with yourself.

A third benefit from this exercise is that you get to look at the game from both a player and Game Master perspective. Too many “forever” GMs lose sight of how the players are viewing the game, what they seek, and what makes them excited to play. When a GM marries their story or the “power” of creating their world, sometimes they forget the fundamentals of playing the game and what their players truly are hoping to experience. This exercise puts them in the driver’s seat of both sides of the table, able to switch back and forth, and see from their own actions how they felt about it. They might also feel more motivated to describe and create the next segment of the story in favor of the “character” more than they typically would. This will benefit the players when the GM focuses more on presenting the story that fits their forte better.

And this exercise has an advanced version for when they want to increase their skills further. When they are comfortable enough that descriptions from their actions are coming easier, it is time for a one-on-one session with the same person. This time, one is just the player and rolls up a character much like they would in a group. The other is the Game Master and runs a similar scenario where they only have a final event hidden away and work towards that goal without railroading the player.

This is no different really than running a full group session, but, again, it is all about building confidence, understanding, and awareness of how to improv your game and adapt to the player’s spontaneity. You could jump right in to this advanced level instead of both of you being Player/Game Master, but this method might not be suitable for beginning GMs or those who really struggle with improv. It’s doubtful you would jump into this and skip the first step if you are struggling. It’s a multi-step process that builds you up to an experienced level where you can comfortably run a session with 3-4 others and not skip a beat.

Source:

https://nanookofthenerd.wordpress.com/2024/11/

I had a question this morning. In almost every system, we have a defense value, where the enemy has to beat or overcome it with a dice roll. But what if there was a "defense test", like, let's say that according to the sheet you have a defense bonus equal to 8, when the enemy is going to perform a blow, you make a defense test adding your defense bonus?

I personally don't know if there is any system that is like that, but my question is how this would influence the game. Would it be more realistic, time-consuming, fun? That's the question.

Hello o/

I am looking for suggestions for a game system to use to run silly, lighthearted short-ish campaigns in for a group with some very specific requirements.

My group started with DnD and transitioned to pathfinder. As a dm I have fallen out of love with DnD, but pathfinder doesn't click with about half my players as it has so much to keep track of. We have tried monster of the week and city of mist but everyone got frustrated with the openness of the rules where a lot of work falls onto the dm to come up with responses on the fly.

We are also all tired adults with jobs and kids who play on sunday evenings and just want to have some fun with friends. We don't have the brain power for complicated plots or intrigue and most of my players don't care for combats. They just want to be silly and joke around, teasing npcs about their crushes or throw poop around (alot of poop related bits). At the same time as a dm I need to present them with a clear goal to strive for or a purpose for why they're a group adventuring together.

So now I am looking for a system that has clearly defined rules like DnD, but isn't too complicated, focused mostly on silly fun but with some kind of story going on / goal to strive for... you guys are the experts right?

I would really appreciate some recommendations, even just pointing me in a direction, as I don't really know many systems bar the named ones and big ones like CoC. I'm open for pretty much any genre.

Small bit of context, this post is mostly venting, I've been a GM for about 5 years now, I have a good amount of experience with all types of games, systems, players, combat etc.

On this particular session, playing my own system (which is a fantasy arcanepunk setting) the players were facing off against an undead dragon and its rider. Only one of the players has acess to a flying mount, and the rest are earthbound, they lured the dragon and its rider towards a mountain top where they would try to pin and chain the dragon once it got close.

I usually have an incredible time with these really high speed, high intensity battles and whenever I do them people seem to enjoy them a bunch, but with yesterdays session it just felt off, and I know it was mostly my fault.

It started off really fun, the dragon and the wyvern having a "dogfight" while he took them towards the trap, but I think this is where I messed up. I started feeling like the rest of the group wouldnt participate so I purposefully went low with the dragon so as to give the players chances to trap the dragon, hop on, etc. And when I did this, it kinda got disjointed because I slowed the dragon down, stopped doing flyby fire breathing, and generally made it feel like a very clunky and slow encounter, which im not accustomed to... I dont know exactly how to explain it, but I just feel I was off my game, narration-wise and decision-wise.

All this to say, I take it as a learning experience, so any advice? Have you had a bad GM days?

Years ago I came across a particular GM tips video that mentioned a specific author. The content creator said this author's style in describing combat would be a great source of inspiration for GMs.

Problem is, I don't remember the author or even which GM coach content creator made the video.

Do any of you well read GMs have an idea of which author(s)/novel(s) are a good fit for that advice?

I started gaming in 1988. That's...36 years. In that time, I've run the gamut of play styles and philosophies from "I'm gonna use EVERY DAMN RULE IN THIS BOOK" to "I'm gonna make this an ART!" to "whatever, man, I'm old, let's just play" to...all of those again, several times. Right now I'm kind of more laid-back and mellow about it, while still being, you know, dedicated to running a good game, just without sweating it. Kinda zen, almost.

You?

I mostly only have experience with 5e and have played a few games of pathfinder. I'm really at odds with how 5e progresses at higher levels and wondering if there's a better system for me.

I really enjoy gritty survival horror and building systems for characters to interact with that aren't combat driven. building small sandboxes for players to explore without having to focus too much on writing narratives is what I mainly try to do with prep. Things like heists, surviving in alien landscapes and dungeon crawling.

I love the first ~3-5 levels of dnd and starting characters out with no resources or equipment. every piece of gear or gold or food you find has a significant impact. I detest how as 5e progresses things become more abstract and meaningless. Gear and treasure gets thrown onto a massive list that you hardly look at and you have too many resources that feel too easy to recover.

I also like heaving very customizable classes.

Title is vague so let me elaborate.

I want to run a game where the entire campaign takes place in a largely unexplored "endless" dungeon, where the players are tasked with trying to go as deep as they can, even reaching the end if it exists.

It's non-traditional in that all weapons, abilities, and magic come from special artifacts found in the dungeon. There are no classes, instead the players can play however they want according to their item loadout. Combat is not meant to be fair, players will be weak and the monsters very strong. The encounters are more like puzzles where clever use of items will lead to victory, and running away is usually the preferred option. I guess you can liken it to a horror game in that way, but it's not explicitly horror themed. What I'm trying to say is that most of the emphasis is on exploration and creative puzzle solving, with combat being secondary.

Not sure how to handle this. Due to the free-balling nature of the game, I want the players to have a lot of freedom and not be bound by a strict ruleset.

I'm not familiar with that many games which is why I'm asking for recommendations. Thanks!

I wouldn't mind a distraction tonight. Looking for a game system I could use to run a game for 4 or 5 people. We really liked Alice is Missing, but would prefer something with a lighter theme.

Please tell me if this is the right place to post this btw!

I'm looking for a specific dark and low scifi rpg about a humanity that is governed by corporations discovering mysterious gates in space that link different points in the universe, and sending them through to explore.

The colors were primarily black, white, and red (though there could be more).

The name of it had something to do with ash or graveyards. Definitely something associated with death. or ""passing on"".

The mysterious ancient aliens that made the gates were referred to in the Gaelic word for ""ancients"" (though I am unsure if the devs used the correct word, I know they used a word with those phonemes and accents). This is because the scientist who discovered their artifacts was Irish/Scottish.

I recall it made the rounds on the home screen of drivethrurpg occasionally. In particular it seems to share a lot of aesthetic and subject matter with Candlenaut games, though it is not one of that studio's works.

All your input is welcomed!

Ich suche nach vorgefertigten Charakterbögen für die Katzenvariante von Call of Cuthulu. Gern auch einfach nur Scans von euren alten Charakteren. Danke.

I recently watched a 30 minute review video about a game product I was interested in. At the end of the review, the guy mentioned that he hadn't actually played the game at all. That pissed me off, I felt like I had wasted my time.

When I look for reviews, I'm interested in knowing how the game or scenario or campaign actually plays. There are many gaming products that are fun to read but play bad, then there are products that are the opposite. For example, I think Blades in the Dark reads bad but plays very good - it is one of my favorite games. If I had made a review based on the book alone without actually playing Blades, it had been a very bad and quite misleading piece.

I feel like every review should include at the beginning whether the reviewer has actually played the game at all and if has, how much. Do you agree?

If Mork Borg is for black metal, what game is for doom metal?

For that matter what music genre has the vibes for 5e?

And what's your favourite game x music genre combo?

I’m considering running a mecha-themed TTRPG campaign for my group, but I want it to have a more "grounded" feel – think gritty combat, realistic pilot limitations, and a focus on resource management rather than super flashy, over-the-top abilities. I’m aiming for something that can reflect a bit of the wear-and-tear, tactical thinking, and the risks and sacrifices that come with piloting mechs in high-stakes environments. In general, I'd like a game that prioritizes the following.

• Grounded Mechanics: Something that keeps the players thinking about resources, ammo, fuel, or heat levels, and where every move matters.

• Realistic/Low-Scale Combat: I want the mechs to feel powerful but not invincible. Ideally, the system would also allow for more strategic combat with movement, cover, and terrain playing important roles.

• Pilot Emphasis: While the mechs are the stars, I'd like the pilots themselves to also matter in a significant way, whether through skills, backstory, or specializations that impact their effectiveness.

• Potential for Long-Term Campaigns: A system that supports campaign play rather than being one-shot oriented would be a huge plus.

• Setting Agnostic: A system that isn't heavily married to a setting or implied setting (eg. Lancer). I enjoy making my own homebrew settings for my game for maximum flexibility and creativity.

I've considered the more popular systems like Lancer and Battletech/Mechwarrior, but I'd ideally prefer something that's more setting agnostic.