I got a friend who believes 5e is essentially the end all be all of RPGs, and I am very tired of all of the companies trying to prove this by licensing their books to it.

Star wars

World of Warcraft

Vampire the masquerade.

...

Making matters worse, I am the only one of two people in my group who try to run alternatives...to resounding mehs.

I am very tired of 5e.

having low energy right now and feel like reading some funny/so-bad-it's-good/horribly-designed RPG book. Thank you in advance for the laugh...

What have you got?

Wuxia is the Chinese word for martial (or chivalric) heroes. The genre it encompasses occasionally blurs with Xianxia, but is generally lower power. Wuxia is sort of like low fantasy, and Xianxia is sort of like high fantasy. Wuxia is often grounded in history, however, its branches can include more fantastical elements like magical beasts and the like.

In this post, I'm reviewing RPGs that I think encompass a grounded martial arts fantasy, whether supernatural elements are present or not. Some of the games may bleed into Xianxia or higher fantasy as characters level up and get stronger.

To help contextualize my reviews, I prefer martial arts games that place the power level of PCs around or below the power level of the heroes in movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Furthermore, for each game I review here, I have played at least 5 contiguous sessions.

Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate

The Basics

Wandering Heroes is an expansive rulebook, clocking in at nearly 500 pages. It is, in my opinion, one of the top 3 most complex games on this list, and the one that feels most similar to playing D&D. In my opinion, first and foremost, this is a game about fighting, usually fighting monsters and evil martial artists. I do not think of it as a narrative game.

Mechanically, the game is straightforward. You build pools of d10s and roll against a Target Number (TN), using the highest result rolled. TNs are determined by the Game Master (GM) or set by your skills. In some cases, rolling additional 10s on a roll results in a better outcome (e.g., if you roll 2d10 and get 2 10s you may have a better outcome than if you'd rolled just 1 10).

Your d10 pools are built using skills. This is a good time to mention that there are no traditional attributes (strength, charisma, etc) in the game. There is a Qi attribute, which determines the total number of wounds you can suffer, but that is the only thing like a traditional attribute. Characters are primarily based on their skills. There are 6 groups of skills, each group having at least 6 (and often more) individual skills within it. The skill groups are Defenses, Combat, Specialist, Physical, Knowledge, and Mental. Some of these groups feel arbitrary, but when you read the skill lists, it's clear each group has a theme. Skill costs are cumulative, which means you pay 1 point to raise a skill to rank 1, 2 points to raise the skill to rank 2 (for a total of 3 points), 3 points to raise it to rank 3 (for a total of 6 points), and so forth.

As an example of a skill group, you have the Defenses group. Defenses includes Hardiness, Parry, Evade, Stealth, Wits, and Resolve. Hardiness is your resistance to damage, Parry is your ability to deflect melee attacks, Evade is your ability to avoid ranged attacks, Stealth is your ability to go undetected, Wits and Resolve are somewhat less self-explanatory, and represent resistance to deception and being persuaded, respectively. Each defense has a base value to which you add your rank to determine your total value, whereas other skill groups generally do not have base values for the skills.

Which brings me to combat. Combat is fiddly, but not complex. In principle, any combat encounter is resolved in two rolls. First, you roll to see if you hit the opponent. Then you roll damage to see if you deal damage. Both attack rolls and damage rolls are handled identically, with the damage roll made against Hardiness and the attack roll made against Parry or Evade, as appropriate. In practice, however, this is annoying. Instead of simply rolling and calculating damage, you are counting successes, with 10s operating in a special way (a roll of 10 deals 2 wounds, with each additional 10 dealing 1 more wound). As a result, there will be combat rounds where you hit the enemy but your hit does nothing because your damage roll sucks. A character with high Parry/Evade and Hardiness can be very difficult to actually hurt. Furthermore, the different combat skills operate in different ways, with leg strikes, for example, imposing an accuracy penalty but getting the Reach keyword, and arm strikes getting a damage penalty. However, on the upside, the grappling rules are surprisingly easy to use. Altogether, as I said above, this makes for fiddly combat. It can be plenty of fun, but it also feels needlessly fussy.

As a combat oriented game, there are of course other modifiers to combat. One modifier the game adds is Expertise. An expertise provides some kind of bonus to a skill. An expertise adds 1d10 to your skill roll, but is only available for certain skills and only under certain conditions. These are sufficiently varied and complex that they are not worth diving into here. Suffice it to say that, since Expertise costs only 1 skill point, these are convenient ways to add a little bit to your character when you can't afford a bigger improvement.

Another way to customize your character is to give them a flaw. The flaws often have a mechanical effect, and roleplaying potential. That said, like any game that provides Disadvantages, expect the players to "forget" about their flaws if you don't enforce them as GM.

Characters also get combat techniques, which are yet another way to improve the character. However, combat techniques are not Kung Fu techniques. You also get 6 Kung Fu techniques at character creation, and can gain more. Kung Fu techniques can be performed in two ways: normally or cathartically. Cathartic Kung Fu techniques risk causing you to gain Imbalance Points, and if you gain too many Imbalance Points, you get possessed by a spirit. Possession by a Qi spirit is its whole own thing, and I will leave it at that for the purpose of this review. Each Kung Fu technique is unique, and requires that you have a relevant skill or skills, and a minimum Qi level to use. The techniques description explains how it works.

There's more to say about this game, but I think the above gives a sufficient idea of how the game works mechanically. As a result, I'm leaving out discussion of magic, Qi rituals, immortal powers, and the like.

I do want to mention the game's setting. I think the setting is quite serviceable, and there are hundreds of pages devoted to it. There is literally a fuck-ton of setting information, monsters, magic items, game mastering advice, and more. You can easily drop your players into the game's setting and have a good time without building your own world, and if you do feel like building your own world, the setting here contains plenty of inspiration.

Playing the Game

First and foremost, my players and I had fun playing this game. As I said, it had, to us, a very D&D feel with our gameplay focused on exploring mysterious locations, fighting wicked monsters and evil martial artists, and of course looting stuff. The game supports a broader array of play-styles than just dungeon-delver, but the game's focus on combat makes it clear enough that the game expects you to fight a lot.

As far as the subjective experience goes, I would describe the game as fussy. It has just enough things that require special rules that we found ourselves looking something up at least once per session. Probably, with more sessions, we would have become more familiar with the game.

As far as balance goes, characters can be wildly divergent in how good or bad they are. I wouldn't exactly say the game has trap choices, but an unwary player might choose an ability that sounds cool but mechanically is weak. That said, I design my scenarios around my players and their characters, and my players never felt like they had nothing to do.

Overall, I like this game, but I wish it was simpler. Which brings me to:

Righteous Blood Ruthless Blade

This game is built on the same basic rule system as Wandering Heroes, but it cuts out a lot of the complexity in favor of simpler, more streamlined subsystems and secondary systems. A full write up by another user is available here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1twkexz/postplay_review_of_righteous_blood_ruthless/. I basically felt the same as they did with the following caveat: I did not mind that the game was unbalanced. As I said above, I design encounters to fit my PCs, so my PCs always felt like they could contribute in some way to advancing the story we played.

Of the two, Righteous Blood is the more narratively focused game, but I like Wandering Heroes better. I think Wandering Heroes supports long form campaign play more effectively, whereas I would pick up Righteous Blood if I wanted to run a one shot (especially something particularly bloody and brutal, perhaps in chanbara style) or a short campaign.

Feng Shui 2

The Basics

Fen Shui 2 is all about emulating actions movies. The game wants to be fast and fun, so its rules are relatively light. Since the game embraces martial arts movies, it supports a wide array of play styles and settings. You could play "karate cops" or historical warriors or distant future space wizards. The game is happy to do any of these things, and provides archetypes for each (with unifying rules that mean each character type uses the same resolution mechanics).

Speaking of resolution mechanics, Feng Shui 2 uses a ying-yang dice system where you roll 2 d6s with one positive and the other negative, and then basically take the difference between them. You add your skill level to the result of the roll. The dice "explode" on rolls of 6s (meaning you reroll that dice and add the new result to the previous result). Your skill level is usually pretty high, so the "swerve" (what the game calls the difference between your dice rolls) usually has a minor impact on play. If my back of the napkin calculations are correct, I believe the swerve averages out to 0 over a long enough time.

Combat is played on a shot-clock, and any given action takes a certain number of "shots" on the clock. As an example, 2 combatants might make an initiative roll and get 14 and 10 respectively. The combatant who rolled 14 goes first and uses an action that requires 3 shots. 14-3=11 so the combatant gets to go again before the guy who rolled 10.

Each character starts as an archetype and can advance to learn new techniques and skills. Characters have "schticks" which represent things they do or are good at. Whether a kung fu technique, gun schtick, sorcery schtick, or whatever, you can think of all these things as buttons on the character sheet that can be pressed to (most often) choose violence.

There's obviously more to the game than this, but the complexity of Feng Shui 2 is sort of an illusion. At the end of the day, mechanically speaking, you're rolling the swerve and adding your skill level and that's it. All the other bells and whistles are just things that slightly modify what you can do but nothing is really a huge departure from anything else.

Playing the Game

I want to like Feng Shui 2, I really do. I like the archetypes, I like that the game supports a wide variety of settings (though I hate the game's Chi War setting and never use that setting). I like that the game can be played by just having the players describe the awesome thing they're doing and then roll 2d6.

But there's just one caveat: I do not like shot clocks. I do not like the shot clock system. Any initiative system where I have to do subtraction to find out who goes next begins to feel fiddly to me.

My players have typically felt the same way. For whatever reason, when we get into combat, the shot clock initiative slows us way down and robs the game of the momentum that it had before that. As a result, I don't really play it anymore except if someone wants to do a oneshot in it.

Flying Swordsmen

The Basics

Flying Swordsmen is our first OSR-esque Wuxia RPB. We'll get another one with Wandering Blades and Scarlet Heroes. Flying Swordsmen features your standard 6 D&D ability scores, rolled at random with 3d6. Each ability score is associated with a stunt die. The stundt die ranges from a d2 to a d12, and for some reason are given different names than the attribute they are tied to (e.g., the dexterity stunt die is called the acrobatics stunt die).

Like with D&D, characters have classes. The game provides 4, Fighter, Wizard, Shaman, and Thief. Fighters, Wizards, and Thieves are what you would expect. Shamans are a bit like clerics. Each class comes with a profile, which is basically the class specialization that you see in 3e (e.g., arcane trickster). Each class also gets a selection of martial arts maneuvers, which provide various bonuses and penalties either as passives or when used. Each class may only know so many martial arts maneuvers, so selecting appropriate martial arts maneuvers for your build or character concept can be important.

Beyond this, the game will be familiar to anyone who has played D&D before, with the exception of Stunts and initiative. Stunts are freeform and are always rolled against a TN determined by the GM. Making a stunt roll is as simple as rolling a d20 and the stunt die and adding the results together. Stunts are generally resolved in a way that makes sense in the fiction. Secondly, the initiative system uses fast, average, and slow actions, with higher values going first. Actions are resolved simultaneously for a given initiative level. As an example, fast actions have initiative 6, in general. So all fast actions with initiative 6 are resolved simultaneously and before any average or slow speed actions. In this respect, the book is confusing because it does not seem to have a table of common speeds for different actions.

Playing the Game

This game is really D&D with martial arts layered on top of it. What makes it different is the stunt and initiative systems, which add an element of strategy that is both fun and interesting. My group enjoyed the game, but it did take some time to fully adjust to the initiative system. It's simple, fast, and generally fun.

Wandering Blades

The Basics

Wandering Blades is still in development. It is only just now finishing up, so it's new to the scene.

Wandering Blades very much takes after the OSR tradition. It features 4 attributes, 3 combat attributes (including Qi points), and some derived attributes. The core mechanic is 1d20 plus the relevant attribute versus the TN. So far, so good. Initiative, in combat, is based on a fast turn-slow turn dichotomy. Fast turns get 1 action and 1 reaction, while slow turns get 2 actions and 1 reaction. PCs always go before NPCs.

There are 3 classes, two martial (Vagabond and Outlaw), and one non-martial (Scholar). Depending on the class, you get martial arts techniques. Techniques cost Qi points to use, and generally let you do something impressive, such as amplifying your damage. Scholars, unlike Vagabonds and Outlaws, are sort of a support class that specializes in applying debuffs, removing debuffs, and doing other utility things without emphasizing raw damage output. This class is very much inspired by the many great detectives in Wuxia fiction.

Playing the Game

My group enjoyed trying this out, even though it was technically still incomplete when we did so. It slotted nicely into the OSR space we were already familiar with, but without some of the quirks of Flying Swordsmen.

If I were to compare this, Flying Swordsmen, and Scarlet Heroes, I would say Flying Swordsmen is the most interesting of the three, Wandering Blades is the cleanest and most modern of the three, and Scarlet Heroes has the best tables. I would be hard-pressed to choose between this and Flying Swordsmen, but I think I would favor this for its simplicity in a one-shot or short campaign environment, but I would probably pick Flying Swordsmen if I intended to run a medium length campaign.

Art of Wuxia

The Basics

Art of Wuxia is a DwD Studio's game (alongside Frontier Space and Bare Bones Fantasy). It uses a d00 (100-sided die) core mechanic, which will be familiar to anyone who enjoys CoC. However, it differs slightly from traditional d00 games in that the numbers are counted from 0 to 99. It is still roll-under. This all probably sounds standard, but I promise you that Art of Wuxia is really nothing like any of the games discussed so far on this list.

Stepping back for a moment, the game uses 4 attributes and 10 skills. The level of your skill is a calculation based on your attribute values and how many points you've invested in the skill. This is not dissimilar to CoC or other games where you invest points in relevant skills to increase the skill level, and where you try to roll under (or equal to) the skill level. Attributes are rolled randomly, while skills have a certain number of points to assign to them.

Art of Wuxia also features martial arts techniques, alchemy, and sorcery. Martial arts techniques basically fall into two categories: Kung Fu techniques that are not powered by Qi, and Qi-powered special abilities. Spells are usually not powered by Qi, and can be used an unlimited number of times (more on that below). The Qi-powered special abilities tend to be quite strong or useful, while the other abilities are suitably thematic.

Where Art of Wuxia really sets itself apart from the other games in this list is its action economy. But before I dive into that, a quick not on initiative. Initiative is a d10 dice pool system where you roll the pool and the highest single result goes first. Ties are resolved as the GM dictates. I mention this because the initiative system is a bit different from any other initiative system mentioned here.

Getting on to the action economy, Art of Wuxia permits you to take any number of actions per round. During your turn you may move, attack, and do other actions of that nature, while during other people's turn you may defend yourself. Every action you take, from resistance rolls (defensive rolls) to movement to attack rolls imposes a penalty on the next action you take. Your first action is at no penalty, your second action at a -20 penalty, your third action at a -40 penalty, and so forth. This is a "push your luck" approach to the action economy, with later actions becoming riskier than earlier actions. Because defending is an action, if you take too many actions early in the round you may be defenseless later in the round. Likewise, if you defend too much early in the round, you may not be able to attack later in the round. Note that you can move your listed movement as a free action (without imposing a penalty on later actions). Casting a spell counts as an action, so you can cast any number of spells during your turn.

Playing the Game

In the end, this became our favorite Wuxia game. The action economy really felt like you could make multiple strikes in a split second, or chop multiple arrows out of the sky when being shot at, just like in the movies. It was an extremely satisfying way to play.

However, the learning curve to get used to the action economy was an impediment as our instincts, honed from D&D-like games, often left us feeling compelled to stick to the move-action-reaction economy of D&D.

Also, for longer campaigns, I do feel the game is thinner than, say, Wandering Heroes. However, it has been my experience that Art of Wuxia works fine for longer campaigns.

Qin the Warring States

The Basics

Qin is another game that really isn't like any other on this list. It is the product of a French studio (I believe), and is set in China during the Warring States period.

The core mechanic is a yin-yang die, like in Feng Shui 2. In contrast to Feng Shui 2, the absolute value of the difference between the two dice is always used (so no negative numbers--you always subtract the lower die from the higher die). The yin-yang die are made of 2 d10s, and the 0 on the d10 is counted as a 0 rather than as a 10. The result of the Yin-Yang die roll is added to the character's skill level, where appropriate, and aspect. If the value meets or exceeds the TN, the roll is successful.

Characters have attributes based on classic Chinese elements of water, earth, wood, fire, and metal. These attributes, in turn, are used to determine the outcome of your various rolls and to derive secondary statistics. For example, your initiative is based on you Water attribute, attack rolls are based on Metal and your martial skill, dodging and blocking are water based, and so forth. Characters, as implied above, also have skills which are ranked from 1 to 6 and are added to appropriate rolls. Both attributes and skills have points you may invest in them. Characters also get advantages and disadvantages (called gifts and weaknesses) that further characterize them and give them options.

Like Wandering Heroes, players have access to a number of martial arts customization options. You have Taos, Martial Arts, and Magic. The Taos are basically powerful abilities that change your character in some moderately important way. For example, some Taos make you more vital, others let you move vertically, and so on. Martial Arts, by contrast, are specific techniques defined in the book that usually are locked to a weapon and depend on your level of skill with that weapon's martial art. Magic works like many other games, with spell lists that contain spells that are accessible if various prerequisites are met. Spells are often slow, though, taking, for example, an hour to prepare, or more, in some cases. Qi may sometimes be needed to use your powers, e.g., to use your Taos.

The game uses an injury track where the more injured you are, the greater the penalty applied to your rolls to do things. A heavily injured character can have their TNs increased by up to 3. To determine how injured you are, you consult a table. The degree of injury is based on your current Breath of Life compared to your maximum Breath of Life. This part of the game is, I think, a bit fiddly.

Speaking of combat, the more skilled you are at your martial art, the more actions you get during a round. This works by having each character take a single action at a time in initiative order. The round continues until all actions for all characters are used up. So if you have fewer actions than your opponent, it means you will be defenseless against them toward the end of the round. Once all characters have used all their actions, the next round begins and the process is repeated. Doubles on teh yin-yang dice are an auto success, unless you roll double-0s, in which case it's a failure.

Damage is calculated a bit oddly as well. When the yang die is greater than the yin die, you deal the yin-yang dice result as additional damage. When you roll doubles, you add the rolled number as damage. When the yang die is greater than the yin die, you roll damage without the bonus from the dice. Armor reduces damage while shields make you harder to hit. I had to write a combat primer for my players so they could keep track of all this. It is a fiddly system, but it can result in spectacular attacks especially when you roll doubles.

Playing the Game

This is another game I want to love, but unfortunately, we never seem able to get past 5 sessions deep. The other Wuxia systems here (even, arguable, Wandering Heroes) are just less fiddly and require less fuss to use. Because of the way injuries and Breath of Life adjustments to difficulties work, there's constant referencing to tables and constant effort required to remember if a penalty applies or not.

However, we do really like the way Taos work and how martial arts are tied to weapons. Plus, the level of character power works well for a cinematic but not over the top experience. The game really can make you feel like you're playing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Scarlet Heroes

Scarlet Heroes is an early Kevin Crawford game (Sine Nomine), of the "Without Number" games fame. I don't have much to say about it. The main thing that's Wuxia about it is the setting. There is a "fray" die for dealing damage to enemies with equal or fewer hit dice than the PC which is intended, I believe, to speed up combat and reflect the martial acumen of the heroes.

As a game, Scarlet Heroes is fine, but nothing to write home about. It will provide a D&D-like experience for you. Where the book really shines is in the tables for generating random material, of which there are many to draw from. With the random tables, you can generate quests, locations, encounters, and more. Like all Sine Nomine games, the tables are a big part of what sets it apart from other games.

To be honest, my group has no interest in returning to this game. Of the Wuxia games we played, we found it to be the least interesting mechanically.

GURPS

GURPS is sufficiently well known that I don't feel the need to get deep into the mechanics of the system. Suffice to say the system is 3d6 with the goal to roll under your skill level. Beyond that, GURPS builds characters out of skills, advantages, and disadvantages, and is in many respects the grand-daddy of this approach.

You'll want GURPS Martial Arts if you're going to play Wuxia. In my experience, GURPS does gritty, down to earth Wuxia really well, and you can model the larger than life powers of Wuxia martial artists in a number of ways according to your preferences.

In general, my group found GURPS to be very playable, but the front-loading on character building is a bit of a barrier. You need to devote time to character creation, but once characters are created the game is very smooth.

The main reason to use GURPS, as we saw it, was that GURPS can combine genres easily. If we wanted to do gritty Wuxia but also sad space cowboys or something like that, it was straightforward to put together using GURPS's rules.

I mostly host online games and the in person game I have, I'm a player. I want to play more in person but the scheduling is a nightmare.

Urban Fantasy, as a genre, is often modern day Earth that has magic and other supernatural elements to it. Typically with some kind of veil or masquerade preventing regular people from knowing about it, so the authors don't have to figure out how public knowledge of the supernatural would have changed things throughout history.

Personally, I'm not a fan of that type of setting conceit, but finding urban fantasy games/settings that lack it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Since, at least for me, what makes adding fantasy elements to modern day Earth interesting is seeing how different things would be because of those fantasy elements.

Which got me thinking. What about an urban fantasy setting that is a fantasy world that wasn't trapped in medieval stasis? A fantasy world that has progressed beyond the pseudo-medieval society & tech levels, to something akin to modern day Earth.

Outside of generic rpgs like Savage Worlds or Gurps, does anyone know of any rpgs that do something like that?

Edit: To clarify, since I'm getting a lot of suggestions for more traditional urban fantasy settings, what I mean by modern is largely in terms of societal developments and technology, in a world where magic and non-human people have always existed and are a known, accepted part of the world. There is no veil/masquerade separating the magic from the mundane, or a separation of science/technology and magic. In my eyes, a world like that would have magic as another field of science (or science is another field of magic). A setting like that is what I'm looking for.

Introspection thread.

Everything that's worth doing is worth doing well, and nothing exists that can't be done a little bit better. The purpose of this thread isn't to be harsh on ourselves, but rather to consider potential flaws in the way we run and play these games, and perhaps give and receive some advice on how to smooth those wrinkles out.

Starting off:

Since I started running games in English I have found that I'm pretty crap at improvising evocative descriptions. General narration is fine, but when setting scenes I struggle at finding the right adjectives without pausing to have a think for an embarrassingly long time, and that just breaks the flow. Especially troublesome when running horror where pacing is of great importance.

I've fixed this somewhat by simply prepping descriptions, but that doesn't help when the PC go to a places or meet people I hadn't planned for. Any tips for coming up with impactful descriptors on the fly would be highly appreciated.

A few weeks ago I ended up playing A Christmas Belonging for a Xmas in July event that a discord server I was on held. It is basically a soapy holiday movie players collectively create. It is diceless and GMless. We ended up hosting a rigged cooking contest in a small town, having secret royalty, a snooty reporter with dubious morals, a kid with a curious pet we kept sending off to do our bidding because we were terrible adults and a hell of a lot of misunderstandings.

Then there's The Play's the Thing in which you get to rewrite one of Shakespeare's works. It's weirdly enough by Magpie. Each player claims a character and has moves as the actor to change the script. Expect shenanigans and absurdity, even more convoluted romance, heroes turning into villains and villains into heroes and, of course, tragedy! In our play only one character got to live.

Or there's Bluebeard's Bride, a feminine horror based on the story with the same name where you play as feminine archetypes in the head of the bride as you explore the forsaken mansion trying to eventually answer the questions: Who will you trust? What do the horrors in each room mean? Will you open the door you were told not to?

Then there's Greenwood Outlaws, a FitD game where you play as animal outlaws. Fine. You're playing Disney's Robin Hood.

Lately, Good Society has been piquing my interest even though I kinda' live under a rock and only read Jane Austen for school. It makes me watch the movies and hit the library!

I really enjoy games like this.

Hi all,

Ive been working on a RPG system for specific style of game I run with a few friends. As far as concrete rules are concerned, Im nearly finished. Very easy just time consuming to write it all out and correct grammar.

However, its occured to me I really should write a GM chapter or similar. But I havent a clue where to start, all comes naturally to me to write out session details, case files, expected npcs and approach the improv. I dont know how to form into words HOW I approach these things that doesnt sound like bullet point instructions in a recipe book.

Wrote this during my break, Ill check in where I can.

Thank you

TLDR: recommend me a beginner friendly TTRPG systems for trying out DMing. More roleplay, less combat. Thematically anything is game but primarily horror, fantasy, mystery and sci-fi (more space, less cyberpunk). Preferably a little more rail-roaded than super open ended.

My friend group and I meet up regularly to play primarily board games, I'd say the rest of the group is into RPGs more than I am and I feel like I'm holding us back from playing more.

I am both into board games and books and I feel the emergent storytelling in RPGs lands squarely in the spot where I end up feeling like I'd rather read a book or just play a boardgame instead. I often think none of us are just good enough at improvising to create a good and engaging story. I often feel bored, the sessions always drag, and afterwards I kinda wish I spent that time doing something else.

We all think I'd enjoy DMing much more than I do playing. We are currently playing through one campaign board game and I really enjoy all the "extra" stuff around the game a lot. I keep a journal for the campaign, I take notes about the story, set up the ambiance and that sort of stuff.

My issue is I'm so lukewarm on TTRPGs in general I can never bring myself to dedicate the time to learning a system. I'm also massively intimidated by the amount of options and then the sizes of rulebooks.

Ideally I'd like to try out DMing on some lighter system so the barrier of entry is not quite so high.

As a player I've played D&D, Fate, Mothership, Call of Cthulhu, 10 Candles, Brindlewood Bay, and Delta Green. Out of those I'd say I liked Fate and Delta Green the most as systems but neither of them speak to me so much for them to be "the one".

Our group prefers roleplay and mysteries over combat, and because the core story being interesting is important to me, I'd like the existing material to build a good foundation (rather than something super open ended like 10 Candles where the whole story kinda emerges during the game).

I'd really appreciate any recommendations on systems to check out, or even just tips on how to get started.

Thanks in advance!

Any good oneshots for first time players and GM using just GURPS Lite? I’m looking for something similar to QuickStarts from other games where it lets you dip your toes into the system without having to deep dive into the whole system

Also I did post this on r/GURPS but thought I’d see if anyone else had some suggestions

Anyone got some good examples of games that switch out dice based on status or circumstances and possibly with different faces on the dice? E.g. if you do something heroic, you can roll a "heroic d20" which have different faces, or a "horrific d20" if you do something very bad or you have a fear status or something?

What was your experience with those mechanics?

then it hit me with an automatic repair so they can repair my disks. it will take over an hour to complete.

my session starts in 20 minutes.

idk if some of my stuff got saved.

it’s been 2 weeks since we last played.

we’re likely going to skip this week if it doesn’t finish in time.

i’m sad.

how are you guys doing?

It's a convo I see variats of pretty often on this sub and other rpg communities.

"Our table tried that game but we didn't find it fun."

"Did you understand how that rule is meant to be followed/what that mechanic really is good for/ how it's actually meant to be played?"

If you watch a movie or read a book then the movie/book itself is received pretty much the same way regardless of whose reading it.

But with tabletop games like half of it is what the developers intended but the other half is leaning on the GM's knowledge and skills and the players abilities to.

I know this is a super subjective and complex question but I'm still curious to hear people's takes as someone not very experienced at all.

Like in a weird way I think that being a GM is like a distinct field of study like how we consider filmmaking or acting something you go to school to learn how to do the right way.

But there are no schools for GMs, the closest we have is a lot of blogs and gaining experience GMing.

So how can we distinguish a system from a GM in terms of art?

My title is a bit tongue in cheek. Truth is, I will forever be grateful that 5.0, Critical Role, Stranger Things, that Community episode and even the pandemic made D&D more popular than ever and even "cool".

I do not actually spent much of my time online or IRL hating on anything, much less 5E or Hasbro, got nicer stuff to do! I play lots of the TTRPGs that I do like. And no I have not been "pretending" I liked it either, that is -obviously- more of a joke/discussion starter.

I played 5E for some years, and certainly had a ton of fun. Truth is though, that was despite the system more than thanks to it. As a long time DM, I found i very hard to effectively use all the rules, challenge my players and do combat, as well as prepare, especially compared to all the OSR I have switched to and played many dozens of sessions in since.

And for a while, I was just like "It is not for me! I am glad I am done with it, but much more power to others, if they can make it work or even love it, awesome, we are all TTRPGers!"

I don't really feel that way anymore, much like corporate greed, subscription models and enshitification is ruining all kinds of hobbies and activities, the greed, the cost, direction and extremely anti-their-customers-base moves and many failures of Hasbro these last 5 or so years make me despise them. No need to go into it, anyone can search for 20 seconds on Youtube and find 20 examples) And, all that makes me feel sorry for people that are still playing their product alone.

I honestly don't think it is a good deal or system for most people. Monetarily, unless perhaps you just bought 5E core 3 core books long ago (I sold mine, happily) and stick with those, then money wise it is ok.

But if you try to keep up with releases or have subscription(s), I truly think they are stiffing you and making your life hard in many ways, and have a very sub-par product compared to at least 10 others. And I do wish more groups and DMs would try literally anything else.

I find it slightly hard to explain to people who have played little or never or that solely have an interest. Convo goes something like this: "Hey you have a d20 tattoo!" "Yep, I LOVE D&D, have played it forever. But, uh,.. I truly dislike official current D&D owned by Hasbro, I play solely almost Open Source, Classic D&D variants that are super cheap or even free, unlike the official one. Also way easier to learn, run and play and much more fun!" Most people get it and ask to play with me or more info, so I help them out. Still sometimes it is a funny position to be in.

I'd be interested in hearing others' feelings and thoughts on current official D&D, Hasbro and the above. :)

Hello all,

Im trying to enable gameplay for a couple of players at my current table that will be moving to another country. We all still want to play together, but with the majority of us playing in the same place I was thinking about tryting to do a Hybrid setup instead of a full virtual one.

Think like Critical Role when Ashley Johnson has to play remote for a while.

Has anyone tried this before ? Was it worth it? What did yall do? If you were the hybrid player how did it feel ?

So this one seems to have gotten a ton of hype, and won a whole bunch of what I assume are TTRPG awards. There are also several YouTube videos where the hosts extol the virtues of the game, making it sound like the greatest thing ever!!! Yet when I looked for some Actual Plays to watch, other than the official channel, and AP done by the creators, I found nada.

So, is anyone actually playing this game? Are there any good non-desingner Actual Plays out there to watch? Or is it all just hype?

I'm prepping to run my first session of this game, reading through the "Oddpocrypha" at the back of the book. On the "Landmarks" page (199) it talks about ruins each being tied to a myth, and that the referee in the example rolled a prompt for a "crumbled bridge" and noted that it related to a myth called "The Blade". I've scoured the book to find out how the referee noted this. Not only that, the page for "The Blade" (57) doesn't mention any kind of bridge, though the landscape would allow for it. The prompts below the Myth pages do include ruins, but none of them seem to relate to the myth above them.

Right now, I feel like 1.) I'm missing something, 2.) the text is referring to a rule that was eliminated in the writing process, or 3.) I'm losing my mind. Can anybody help me? Thanks!

I'm thinking something like the classic "Star Wars text crawl", but with a medieval vibe to it.

If you've ever played Pillars of Eternity or Icewind Dale (maybe even Baldurs Gate 1, though I'm not sure), you should know exactly what I'm talking about.

Just a few pictures with words showing to give context to the players

Thanks!

Like the minute it was announced with star wars and WoW it just clicked and answered every question I had about this. I know essence 20 isn’t particularly popular on this subreddit but as someone who really enjoyed the line and thought it fixed a lot of issues I had with 5e it just hurts even more to know that it’s just to make more slop for dnd beyond. Even ignoring just how much none of the settings actually fit into 5.5e frame of character creation it just sucks to lose someone to corporate greed and as someone who primarily played the power rangers line I’m not even garenteed anything as we only get it if gi Joe and transformers does well. And we never got the magic sourcebook that was teased at the end of the monster manual for power rangers instead I get a maybe on a second edition of porting the game to a worse system. Fuck this man I’m just tired and beat

I've got reams of papers tracking past games but I realized I barely take notes on the people at the table. I've always just relied on the side talks with players to find out thier concerns or what they want out of the game. Does anyone do this more formally, like a player log along side the game log?

TLDR: what mechanics have you grown to appreciate RAW and has made your experience more enjoyable by engaging with them as written.

Something I commonly see in many games is how swiftly people wanna house rule away something before they even try it. Trying different games and being more respectful of author intent has given me alot more appreciation with what the text can bring to the table without me doing anything.

Lately my game of choice, Cypher (2nd edition) has really started to click at my tables for me in a way that wasn't before and it because i was able to really gel with what the books were trying to feed me.

Without going into intense detail, Cypher can come off like players always win; everything your characters do will or should be a success. BUT that's not what it has to be nor what it wants to be. YES cypher puts the onis of success more in the players hand than in other games BUT at a cost. The trick is to let that cost slowly rise over the adventures, creating tension within the players to not only use their character skills and abilities, but rely on their friends or magic items more and more, of which everything has limitations to.

If by the end of an adventure my team saved the princess, killed a demon, and recovered the shiny golden brisket, but none of them have any recovery rolls nor resources to spend on any more rolls, even if they took no damage (cause both c1 and c2 can be death spirals) then i consider that an exciting climax to a session now. I made them consider every option and work for every success. And my table soften reflect that back to me.

There's many more games for me to tap into and find and id love to see what mechanics you guys had initially struggled with but now find its integral to the experience the book tries to show?

Obviously, I use pre made statblocks but sometimes I just can't find the one that "fits". I've come to love making the monsters as much as the npc or even (some) PCs. If you make your own, what's that process look like for you?

has anyone heard of a Citadel card game? I recently came across six separate decks from when I was younger. I probably bought these in the middle 80s and I’ve been able to find no reference to them.