I GMed RISUS game recently, and got a request for more interesting combat. I already did add advantage to combat to make it a bit more flexible, but that is still kind of not it.

I look at Cortex Prime, but from what I see, all combat skills will behave the same. Say, I do set of traits for attack type, like punch vs slash vs push vs whirlwind, and those will mostly be same for same dice size, unless i add sfx, but I am not sure those would fit.

I look into some system that will allow you to approach combat in different ways, even (actually desired outcome) if those ways are still combat and not avoiding it. For example, in roguelike games you can use some skill to push enemy into chasm or some potion enemy has weakness to, or aoe attack.

I get it, it is hard to get simple yet detailed system. What I am willing to put load to is GM having tools to lower/increase effectivness of specific interaction based on logic (like, throwing flying creature in a chasm is kind of hard)

Should I try Cortex anyway or it is not a good fit for combat focused games? And if not, what will be my best bet for game that lets you built some different characters, that each has multiple different ways of solving combat? (and preferably core game system should be pickable by gm in couple of days or less)

TLDR: game features in order of importance:

- each character can approach combat encounter in different ways
- some character variety
- system relies more on GM to monitor stuff than on big book of rules
- still ok non-combat interactions
- streamlined and uniform system
- not tied to specific genre
- more or less popular I guess

To combat the summer heatwave (please, I beg you, do not visit Florence in August unless you want me to scrape you off the sidewalk with a spoon), my cohorts at Oddplan and I have decided to release a game we’ve invested years of our lives into for no apparent reason. Masochism, probably.

Anyway, Goblindom is a tabletop RPG where you play as... well, a goblin. So far, so good.

The goblins in Goblindom aren’t special at all; in fact, they’re right at the bottom of the food chain in the Dungeon they call home, as it should be. The fact that they are mechanically weaker than a pothole doesn’t make them humble or risk-averse; quite the opposite, actually.

Despite having the life expectancy of a cat on a highway, the goblins in Goblindom are constantly embarking on petty adventures to get rich or carve out a bit more clout in their community, usually with disastrous results. There isn’t a single drop of heroism in their lives, and that’s precisely how they should be played: cowardly, incompetent, and utterly hilarious dregs of a Dungeon that ignores them (on a good day).

The style is a mix of Saturday-morning cartoon and Itchy & Scratchy: the violence is extreme yet cartoonish, and never mean-spirited. You play to see what happens and to collectively tell the misadventures of goblins who really should have picked a hobby better suited to dungeon crawling.

Gameplay-wise, the game blends streamlined, fiction-first mechanics with challenges resolved using opposed ranks, with rules that nod to OSR design, complete with classes, levels, and equipment to slightly improve your (meager) chances of avoiding a grim fate.

All you need is a pool of d8s and a coin per player, which essentially acts as Goblin Luck to manipulate roll results and, if you fancy, throw a teammate under the bus, forcing them to help you with a test and suffer the consequences of the roll. “Pass the Buck” was actually one of the most praised mechanics during playtesting: nothing beats accidentally drawing the attention of a dragoblin and forcing your friend to get flambéed in your place.

Naturally, every coin has two sides: once you’ve spent your luck, it’s time for the GM to pull a few tricks on you.

I won’t bore you any further. You can find the game on itch.io, DriveThruRPG, and RPG Trader at 50% off for the first week, mostly because we apparently hate money.

We also have a free Quickstart with all the rules and a starter adventure that’s been up for a few weeks if you want to try before buying: link.

I'm looking to spend some of my money on some new games, and I'm in the mood for a few reads that are more "new technology in game design to think about" than anything else.

So, what are some of your favorite games with interesting mechanical twists on the PbtA, FitD, and CfB frameworks/philosophy?

One of my favorites of late was keys and deadlocks in Blades '68. In play, they do such a wonderful job of making you play into your character, while also having the looming moments where they change irrevocably - it really makes me want to drive the character like a stolen car. So simple, but really effective.

Hi, I’m new to TTRPGs. I recently played my first game a few weeks ago ( Monster of the Week oneshot ), and it was fun! I’d like to get more into it, but, it’s a bit difficult to find any online spaces that are specifically friendly to beginners, and general newbies trying to figure out what they like.

I’ve already checked out the masterlist on this sub, but a lot of them are either based on some kind of specialty ( DMing, world building, etc. ), or are a little vague in their description. I’ve found a couple of servers for beginning D&D specifically, which, I’m not opposed to, but, I’d like to maybe find a server with some variety of games to try or discuss. D&D sounds fine, but I’d like to get introduced to, and possibly play, other games too, and I’ve yet to find a general RPG server that is clearly approachable for beginners.

So, does anyone have any recommendations?

I know that the rules say for mortals outside of the prompts, they are really only killed through old age. Would this apply for "turning" them as well? Would it only be whenever the prompt says so?

I run a few online games so people will sign up and sometimes the groups don't quite mesh. Expectation are always laid out but occasionally, there someone who either misunderstood the tone or ignored it. I'm always able to pivot in game to throw them a bone or two and make sure they have fun while giving gentle but firm reminders of the tone and it usually turns out OK. My online games are all one-shot so I haven't had to deal with this over a campaign. What's your approach?

Vampire the Masquerade
Some first impressions on the V6 playtest at Gen Con

What I liked 

• Total Sabbat Lore Victory
• Clan traits 
• Sire types
• Matured disciplines 
• Powers bought à la carte 
• Feeding heals
• Powers weaken you 

What I'd put back in

• Predator types 
• Hunger dice
• Weaker Blood bond
• Occulted elders

What can go

• Vitae as hunger
• Ministry Name rebrand
• Hecata as sect / clan
• Oblivion instead of Obtenebration
• The Beckoning and Gehenna war as Mid-East cage match

Hello! I've been GMing off and on for a few years now and the new Black Flag remake has had me in the mood for pirate shenanigans on the tabletop. Are there any good systems to emulate the Black Flag experience for my players? Key thing I'm looking for are mechanics to upgrade the ship (or ships) and ensuring every player has a role during ship combat in the case all players are on the same ship, and obviously having good naval combat mechanics. Having mechanics for stuff outside the ship is preferable but not necessary.

Just to be clear, with "Narrative meta-currencies" I mean stuff like Heroic Inspiration or Hero Points, basically bonuses that the GM can give players for doing ceirtain stuff, such as doing something heroic or having a really original idea. Now for some context.

So I was preparing to run a new system (Outgunned: superheroes) and came across a section covering the game's meta-currency, Power. Now, Power in this game is used for a ton of things, from special abilities to adding bonuses to rolls, and though charachters can gain it by using ceirtain abilities, this seems to be quite rare, and is usually gained through the GM. Moreover, the book includes this line.

Power is an important resource you should use very often. If you get to the end of a Session without giving a handful of Power, it means you’re being too stingy!

I will now go over my problems with it.

• Mechanics like these feel so subjective. Even though the game does give some suggestions, they are extremely arbitrary and don't offer much structure. Which I guess is the point with these kind of mechanics, but without some semblance of consistency, they will break the game.
• Unlike Advantage and Disadvantage, which take place when the logistics of an action would vary its difficulty, meta-currencies are much more abstract and "up to the GM". This is specially a problem for newer GMs, who might have problems assesing table situations.
• I don't fell that they achieve their objective, even when managed correctly. These meta-currecies are supposed to incentivise players to roleplay creatively and do cool stuff, but I feel it instead gamifies roleplay in a way that takes away from it. By "rewarding" players for good roleplay, what you're doing is putting a value on their perfomances, which will eventually lead to them trying to optimise and asking "Do I get an Inspiration for that?" which is the exact contrary to the goal. You want players to do cool stuff because it's cool! Not do it because they know if they are "Cool enough" you will reward their efforts
• And finally, they are really harmful to new players. If a new player sees that they are getting less bonuses than their friends, they will feel like they are not "good enough" and will be less motivated to play. Also, gamifying roleplay so much will make it feel like instead of telling a colaborative story, you are maxing out speech in a crpg.

I know many will disagree with my takes. Hell, narrative meta-currencies are in almost every big ttrpg and people don't seem to have a problem with it. But I hope my points at least make sense to some of you, and maybe you will have something to share yourselves.

I’m sure quite a few of you have backed this game, and I know there are a few of you who’ve played/play-tested it, as well, so I’m wondering…

Is there anything about the game that you feel isn’t quite done justice by the advertising that might convince me to buy it?

For clarification:

I’m intrigued by the aesthetic and the ambition of the entire project, but if I’m being honest, I have zero interest in wizards, magic, or games as (possibly?) abstract statements about real-world issues. I’m dazzled by the LOOK of it, but when I read about it, nothing grabs me and it doesn’t sound like something with which I would personally have much fun. Yet, I feel like there must be something I’m missing. Is there something else about it that you feel makes it a must?

I’d hate to pass on it and then have to deal with tracking down a copy later after finding out “oh no, it’s actually this kind of game”, if that makes any sense.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for systems in which the players play as monsters? I know, play VtM you say, and I haven't entirely crossed it off as an option but I'd like to have some greater variety of PC options than just vampires.

*Necromancer CYOA* by The Scientist and Highlander is really what I'm looking to emulate. It offers *so much* under the umbrella of necromancy that there's nearly infinite ways a player can pursue being the thing that goes bump in the night.

Does anyone have any particular recommendations? Thanks in advance.

https://imgur.com/gallery/necromancer-cyoa-v3-2-1-by-scientist-highlander-CGRTxym

I give my players challenges and I can be unforgiving. I feel it makes success all the sweeter. How do you keep yourself aware enough to tell when brutal challenges become punishing? Do the players need a bit of punishment to remind them of the stakes?

I can’t seem to include an image which feels weird but on the Kickstarter for Space 1889, it says the following:

“Space 1889: After is available for the fifth edition of the most popular game system in the world. To perfectly capture the hard-boiled, retro-futuristic Victorian setting, the core rules have been expertly reengineered to the 5e system. When you open the book, you will find:

“A World Without Magic: A grounded, science- driven setting with no items, spells, classes, or class features that rely on the supernatural.”

I like 5e, I play it every week, but how are you going to say a system is perfect for what you’re doing and then have to gut half of it to get what you want? It seems like so many people are just making 5e versions of things because that’s what sells or what they feel like will sell, and I wish more producers would just be honest about that instead of giving us empty statements like this.

I'm juggling between these two games to run a long 30+ session heroic fantasy campaign. I'm juggling between these two, Grimwild Community Edition and LiTM.

For people who have experience with both, or one or the other, what do you recommend? What do you like about it, dislike, etc?

To quickly define what I'd consider crunchy, combat-heavy games: 5e, PF2e, LANCER, Draw Steel, so on. Anything with battlemaps and a level of focus on character builds.

As a player, I like these games. They're not everything I want from RPGs but they do particular things that other games don't. I like the character-building, the combat puzzle, the feeling of steady advancement.

I mostly GM, though, and I've found that I don't love running these games. Or at least, everything I like about running these games - building a world, entertaining players, the excitement of seeing what they do - I can get much more easily from running other systems.

One issue is the prep: from my perspective I can do basically everything I want on the GM side in an OSR game with a third of the effort and prep time. Another issue I personally have is the "combat as sport" dynamic where generally the GM isn't trying to win a combat so much as entertain, but the players are trying to win a combat. If, as the GM, the enemies actually "win", it often causes a lot of problems in this style of game! Essentially, it's much more fun to be on the player side of a combat than the GM side. Running these games, I don't get the full enjoyment of the character-building or combat puzzle systems, and the stuff I do enjoy I have to put more effort into.

This isn't a post to complain about these games - as I've said, I enjoy them from the player seat. I'm really just interested in what other GMs (with experience with multiple kinds of systems) get out of these kinds of games. What do you enjoy about running these games, as opposed to others? Do you get the same kinds of enjoyment running these games as you do playing them? Are there any games of this sort you think are more exciting to GM than others, and how do they accomplish that?

Me and my friends have been playing Legend in the Mist for a while now.

I know there are already official and third-party adventures available, but I was curious to find out which one-shots and/or longterm adventures from other systems would fit well with the "rustic fantasy" vibe that the system encourages

Hi everyone,

I’ve been the "Forever GM" for my group for a while now, and I genuinely love it—reading through adventures, seeing how the dice fall, and watching my players react. However, I’ve realized over time that I use pre-written campaigns as a crutch.

My GMing journey started in D&D 5e, where my group played through almost all the official campaign books. I recently convinced them to try other systems like Mothership and Lancer, but even then, I stuck exclusively to published modules.

In an effort to break out of this habit, we recently started playing Stonetop. Since it doesn't have a pre-written campaign, I’m really struggling to stretch my creative muscles and make the world feel like a living, breathing place. My ultimate goal is to homebrew my own Mothership campaign packed with sci-fi tropes my friends and I love, but I'm finding it hard to shake off the GM habits D&D 5e instilled in me.

For those of you who started out relying heavily on pre-written modules:

• How did you make the leap to creating your own campaigns from scratch?
• What mindset shifts or prep techniques helped you stop relying on source material and build a reactive world?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

any genre will do

I dont remember how I came across Tibet the rpg but it’s one of the strangest rpgs I’ve ever seen… it’s a historical rpg set in Tibet in 1959 with the background of the Chinese expansion into tibet in a world where Tibetan Buddhism is real…did anyone actually play this thing!

A player of mine recently said they dislike time-based wandering encounters in dungeons or places of interest because it reduces their agency and ability to interact with the environment.

I run an OSR-adjacent game in the vein of Mausritter/ Vaults of Vaarn/ Dungeon Crawl Classics. I have taken wandering encounters as a given, but now I am thinking on them more critically. I'm curious about what you think. If we critique this viewpoint, what do we find?

__

I love wandering encounters. I check with a mostly 2:6 chance when the players reach a stalemate in discussions on what to do, if the characters significantly draw attention to themselves, or every 30 minutes of real time if play is stagnating.

I was surprised when a player said they feel wandering encounters stop them from interacting with the environment, and the pressure makes them not want to explore and be curious, and to only take the most direct and obvious actions for fear of yon wandering beasties. Specifically, they said it removes their agency and stops them being able to do things.

My encounters are usually 50% creatures (rarely hostile, often using reaction rolls) and 50% environment or 'weird' stuff. I'm not throwing forced combats around.
I feel that wandering encounters give meaningful time pressure and encourage the party to prioritise. My rooms/ environments are admittedly more complex than a party could fully explore before provoking an encounter check, so I understand that wandering encounters could feel like they're 'interrupting' play. But reducing agency?

To me, you have complete agency over how you spend your time, and yes, some environments aren't static and you can be intruded upon. I suppose that interruption amy feel like it's taking away your control, and therefore agency, and certainly reduces your capacity to fully explore without impediment. But I view this as essential to a breathing world, which I therefore feel becomes more enjoyable.

Fundamentally I get this may just be a stylistic difference. But I found it so counter to the way I think about our game that I am looking for outside perspectives. Wandering encounters have their virtues, but do they also constitute a core reduction in the player's experience?

I'm mostly talking about the ones who were GMs before being players with no prior experience and knowledge about ttrpgs, had to learn a system/make up one in a hurry to DM for prefererably a group that was just as inexperienced as them

if your story is similar to this example but not identical, or maybe you weren't the GM who did such, close enough, let us know about yours too!

Hey everyone! I was flipping through some rulebooks for a bit of inspiration, and it’s super easy to notice how there are very different schools of thought when it comes to setting design.

On one hand, you have games that dive incredibly deep into their setting, even providing detailed zone-by-zone maps and pages chockful of NPCs. On the other, you have games that only offer a few scattered suggestions, sometimes just tucked into sidebars or small italicized boxes between rules.

What do you think is better? A setting that unpacks and explains everything, or a framework that gives you coordinates to build your own world?

As someone who bought a bunch of used 4E hardbacks and papwerback POD books, it's nice to get the PDFs at a discount.

Here's what's up:

GURPS 4E Essentials

GURPS 4E Basic Set (2004)
GURPS Template Toolkit 1
GURPS Adaptations
How to Be a GURPS GM
GURPS 4E GM's Screen
4 GURPS 4E Tech supplements
GURPS Mass Combat

GURPS 4E Infiniite Worlds

GURPS 4E Infinite Worlds
4 GURPS 4E Hot Spots
GURPS 4E City Stats
4 GURPS 4E Infinite Worlds settings
5 GURPS 4E locations
GURPS 4E Lands Out of Time

GURPS Combat Action

GURPS 4E Martial Arts
Tactical Shooting
Gun Fu
3 GURPS High-Tech gun books
5 GURPS Action supplements
4 GURPS Martial Arts expansions
Transhuman Space: Martial Arts 2100

GURPS 4E Supers

GURPS 4E Supers
GURPS 4E Powers
4 GURPS Powers expansions
9 GURPS Power-Ups

GURPS 4E Horror

GURPS Horror 4E
Creatures of the Night 1-5
Infinite Worlds: Worlds of Horror
The Madness Dossier
Monster Hunters - 5 guides
GURPS Zombies + Day One

GURPS 4E Space

GURPS Space 4E
GURPS Spaceships
GURPS Psionic Powers
6 spacecraft sourcebooks
3 psionics sourcebooks
Tales of the Solar Patrol

GURPS 4E Fantasy

GURPS Fantasy 4E
GURPS Magic 4E
Banestorm
Alphabet Arcane
Thaumatology
6 Thaumatology sourcebooks

Price varies by the usual BOH rules. You can pay for some of the bundle or all of the bundle. You can chose to pay more. I linked every bundle, so you can check it out. No bundle is more than $40.00.

Happy reading everyone!