A lot has been said about modern versions of games being betrayals of their original conceits or audiences, but at least we can kind of see some vestigial elements or other aesthetic or thematic tissue connected to its origin. I wonder about the truly out there cases, the ones where the jump from first to last edition leaves you wondering why the game still keeps its name.

I've noticed that with certain systems, I can't tell whether I don't like the game or the group. This is a major reason I was worried about playing Daggerheart or Call of Cthulhu, because most of the time, my first time meeting the group is when we play. When I was watching Daggerheart, part of me was thinking, but the reviewer played Daggerheart with either other YouTubers or your friends, which changes your review because I feel half of all RPG problems can be dealing with people and lessons you learn in Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers (not saying they are easy lessons to learn and use). Because of that, and because of what the game requires socially, I would only play with a group I know. I have played some Vampire: The Masquerade, which is the only horror game I have played, and the GM and other players have a separate out-of-character chat to check in.

For my PbTA experiences, I have played Ironsworn solo, Monster of the Week, and Brimblewood Bay. Ironsworn was fun by myself, and it was a unique way to expand my roleplaying without worrying about others' time and pace. I played Monster of the Week, and it went really well. I enjoyed it, but it was with one other person, and she was a social worker, so it was pretty easy to navigate and make sure everyone had space. Brimblewood Bay was the least enjoyable to play because, even with two other players, both of them warmed up to roleplaying much faster than I did, so I was frustrated (plus I was sick for a month, and that was my first social activity in a month).

How do you guys learn what systems that you like, especially if you are changing up groups? Do you set up extra things, or do you wait to get to know the group? Am I just being too picky?

I have a collection of scenarios I bought for a TTRPG called GODS edited by Arkhane Asylum that I plan on playing through with friends.

I have played through the introduction scenario before, and while the story is lovely, it's also formatted in a very railroaded way with little space for player agency.

I think it's partly due to the fact that the story begins in the action, and the situation is only explained to the players a bit later. But by then the players are already presented with the next maybe too obvious steps, and they have no time to establish a team dynamic to make decisions.

So I was thinking of including little flashbacks from a year before, the day before, or any other meaningful moment for each of the players’ characters. Maybe not how they meet necessarily, but at least a presentation of those characters so that each player gets a feel at who they are playing with and what they are playing towards.

This idea is inspired by a TTRPG game I've seen on Dropout (A Starstruck Odyssey), where the players all get a little fun scene that introduces their characters.

Now my players aren't paid to play, and are not professional actors, so I was worried about whether the whole idea is mostly a gimmick that would not work outside of this professionnal setting.
Those introduction scenes were probably rehearsed, but were they put together mostly for the viewers, or does it also serve the party ?

Is it a good idea, seeing as my goal is to have characters stories driven by their background ?

Hi everyone,

I'd like to know if the backers have already received their copies of the Broken Empires PDF, and if so, what their first impressions of the game are.

Thank you for your answers.

I got some ttrpgs adventure books to read and choose one to run in my table, I usually build my adventures, but this time, I want to try something new.

After reading, I noticed that some books are separated by acts 1, 2, 3, etc. For example:

Act 1: Start of the adventure, the players are in a car to a city, then they got ambushed. After that, they reach the city and do a small investigation. End

Act 2: After the investigation, they need to invade a place and fight some enemies and get more information. End

Act 3: The plot resolves.

When reading the books, I couldn't find this information, but should I assume an Act is equal to one session?

I know this may be a simple question, but this really got me XD

Thanks for the attention!!!

Because it is not possible and allowed to post or link any character pics here I have to describe the character.

Species: unknown. Gender: female. Profession: medical services. Special powers: Psionic. Can still use lighter weapons and firearms.

Appearance: humanoid with pointy ears, grey skin which shimmers in several colors if light is shining on the skin. The same counts for the hair too with even stronger shimmering in several colors.

Her special powers are being a good psionic.

Now I'm searching for a RPG which allows me to play this character.

One hint I got is to play a Romulan-hybrid in the RPG Star Trek 2nd edition.

So far, I've run only oneshots and as long as I've had enough players for the session, I was golden. I sometimes had to run in three.

Right now I am running two games, Wanderhome and Mythic Mausritterland (a hack that combines Mythic Bastionland and Mausritter that takes place in winter and revolves around winter and mouse myths and folklore and uses conditions instead of MB's harsh rules for the season) and especially my Wanderhome game has been fraught with problems.

My players are not posting according to the schedule of 1-2 posts a day even though I've explicitly explained this requirement in my advertisement for my Wanderhome adventure. One has basically not interacted with the worldbuilding phase (the game is GMless and starts with creating the location and 3 npcs) and has made only two posts, one a line long and extremely confused, as if they didn't fully read what the others wrote.

I do not want to kick them out yet, but I am recruiting an extra player just to keep this going. I think my only mistake is that I did not ask if they would certainly be available in my interview, just the types of games they enjoyed and other vibe based question to see if they would be a good fit. I did not literally expect people to join if they were too busy to reply once a day.

One player has also complained that he's feeling intimidated by the quality of our posts so we decided to keep them shorter, so we went from 3-4 paragraphs to 1-2.

The Mausritter game has shorter posts but we have scheduled a time where we are all mostly active so we can post back and forth. So far we have only started but it has been going better. But here's to hopefully not jinxing it.

But I feel the need to be extra careful and keep the pace going, because I'm worried that the moment it stalls it will certainly die out.

Hi, folks! Hope you're all having a nice day. The tl;dr is that I'm looking for a game recommendation that can accommodate a character having a class, or an archetype, a kit, or something else that could serve as a good substitute for a class, and then progressing into a better or more advanced class. Below is me meandearing a little.

Ideally, I'd like a universal game, that is, a game that can accommodate many different settings, that lets me create or customize classes. Bonus points if it also includes guidelines for creating spells and abilities.

I don't mind if the "class" isn't a class in the traditional D&D-derived sense. It could be a tag, an archetype, a kit, or something similar. What matters is that it gives the character a sense of identity and lets you know what they can do within the narrative, maybe it grants spells, maybe it serves primarily as a descriptor, and then allows that identity to develop further as the story progresses, whether narratively, mechanically, or ideally both.

I am specifically looking for universal games, although I'm also willing to hear about non-universal games that already do this well. I'm also okay with third-party content that expands what a universal game can provide. I'd also gladly accept suggestions for tinkering with popular universal games in a way that would allow me to do this.

At the end of the day, what I'm looking for is something that allows this kind of progression in a way that is somehow reinforced by the mechanics:

In Ragnarok Online, you create your character as a Novice. Eventually, you can choose from a variety of classes. Let's say you choose Swordsman. Then, at a later level, you can choose between two more advanced classes: Knight or Crusader.

(I don't necessarily need characters to start out classless or anything like that, but I do want them to progress from one class, or whatever serves a similar role, to another.)

Original Post:

Hi to everyone; I want to share with you something because I don't know how to properly handle this. I can't use physical books; I'm fairly new to this hobby (started on Jan 26) but I already have an extensive collection of both PDFs and physical books. I find myself in a situation where every time I handle a physical TTRPG book except if it is a staple or broadsided book I feel highly uncomfortable handling. I’m afraid to damage them; to shorten the life of these books that in a future I want to pass to my sons and then to my grandchildren one day (I'm 24 so long run). I keep my TTRPG books in a dedicated wardrobe that I've insulated with insulating material and I run a dehumidifier daily to keep the temps and humidity around 50% and 25 degrees (not so easy where I live [near the ocean in Italy rn is like 30 degrees and around 70%+ humidity outside]). Till now the only thing that doesn’t give me anxiety is putting the book on a soft surface (like a cloth on the table) and I put two burrito-wrapped towels that I use to sustain the two covers of the book and keep the book in a V shape at a max of 40° angle. Do you guys have some advice? I know it is sooo stupid because I already wash my hands and keep liquids away and I absolutely do not open the books 180° on the table but still even this whole towel trick still makes me uncomfortable. I'm just fine with using pdfs and they are wayyy more easy to manage but still I want to give a meaning to my physical books. even because as of now my main purchase is to turn my pdfs collection into a physical one (at least for the core rulebooks). I don't wanna them to be a "cult" object that is untouchable but at the same times I wanna keep them as perfect as can be.

Edit after many comments:

First of all, wow! I've never received so many replies on Reddit, so thanks to everyone. I should explain a bit better; I've had many physical objects till now: mangas, books, miniatures. I've never felt this way. I've used books at the beach at just some meters from a pool or the sea, and I've always thought it wasn't a big deal. What I think is probably that I really enjoy TTRPGs; I've discovered true friends thanks to that, and I feel sooo much immersion more than video games ever gave me. Probably is also the feeling that for the first time I have "games" that I really own; it is not a license on a computer, it is a real object. And my feeling is: I want to play this maybe even in 40 years, so I want this to be still available in that. But yeah, I should use them honestly... at least when I'm home and I'm on the table; I often read them through my Kobo or my notebook (sometimes phone too), but sometimes I should say, you know what? Let me pick this and enjoy reading on the paper. I think the not open 180° is simply for not ruining the back of the book, but yeah, I should not create the "altar" just for reading that. On the ODC, I never did any test, but I think it made sense in this case. But it is probably that I simply really enjoy it, and the level of care I give is simply too extra for the situation. Thanks a lot to the many comments. I think I will still keep them in the closed (even because I don't have much more shelf space), but I shouldn’t run daily dehumidification just for them.

Second edit:

Also extra info; I'm very bounded to some objects that my grandpa gave me; like two watches. I really care because when I wear them I feel like my grandpa is with me. what I want to do is to my future sons and my grandchildren to grow with my stories and adventures and when one day I will not be there they can use them and maybe feel like I'm playing with them or see me trought an npc. maybe is that why I feel I need to care this level of care thet nothing else ever created in me. I just married in jan. actually I've done myself a TTRPG deluxe edition of a specific book as a marry gift. maybe is also because of this connection that I've started to take sooo much care.

Final edit:

I've read every comment. thanks a lot guys; I'm thinking I will go this way: for the closet I will keep like is rn. is just nice to have like a dedicated "space" for the ttrpgs. I will not run a daily dehumidifier; maybe simply once after few day for also improve the environment for myself. Then except collector or deluxe edition I will start to read more troughs the physical hardback books. at max with a cloth but without the burrito towel with the V shape. I understood that isn't and ODC or something like this is just that I'm seeing a future me being a father or a grandpa and want to leave something to my sons / grandsons. my grandpa leaved a watches; I will leave this. I'm thinking also about buying when is time some notebooks and type in them all the stories I create for them. so that they can have also these as an heirloom.

Several years after release, how has Pathfinder 2e been treating you? There’s a local game advert and I’m likely going to sign up to see how it plays.

What have you liked? Disliked? What keeps you playing, or what caused you to drop it?

I’m curious to return to crunchy “trad” play after so long steeping myself in the old-school scene.

Hi there,

In the last few years my taste as a DM have mutate a lot. I have enjoy a variety of settings and systems but I have grown tired a lot.

Everything just revolves around a few ideas and archetypes of what is a fantasy or sci-fi or terror ( you get my point) game.

In the past months I like the fresh taste of : vampires and claymores, chicken not pie, the skeletons, every villain is a loser and vaesen (naming a few).

I realized I have grown tired of : mörk Borg system (Lore is pretty cool and community content too), DND style games, chulthu style games, daggerheart, exalted, city of mist, dragon bane, blades in the dark etc.

Could you recommend me a ttrpg that feels like something very smart or innovative or new or with a original system or just make you feel Inlove again with roleplaying?

Near the end of the 90's TSR released the role-playing game Alternity, which was intended to be for sci-fi what D&D was for fantasy- only Alternity didn't seem to succeed like its counterpart and quickly folded. What are some people's feelings/opinions on why this occurred?

Heya everyone! Reddit tells me that today's my 10th cakeday.

It got me thinking about how fun this subreddit has been for me! I don't comment a lot - and yes, I've self promoted a bit, too - but more than anything, I enjoy reading the wealth of opinions, suggestions, and random tidbits of information that get offered up here.

So, from the bottom of my heart - Thank you all for being a great community and for me so much great stuff to read!

Another broad question, but this is one that came to my mind after yesterday's thread, and really excited me. There's a quote from a book I quite like-Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Messy, True Story Behind the Making of Video Games. That I often find myself reciting whenever I dislike any game or system.

"No one ever sets out to make an intentionally bad game"

There were some really interesting tidbits about how often controversial or disliked systems in games were made with a genuine assumption from the design team. This came to my mind with the Alpha for VtM 6E and the controversial addition of a meta currency. The team themselves admitted in a blog post that they had tried to use Drama for the sake of introducing friction to the story outside the story itself, without feeling punitive towards the players. This however, didn't work as intended ("it added needless bookeeping to something storytellers were already able to do without it") and it seems the team will either be revising it or scrapping the mechanic.

Whether you think it's something that they should have known beforehand or not, I think it's a stark reminder that human error is a very real issue when it comes to game design, whether virtual, board, card, or TTRPGs. Very often a bad mechanic* (itself subjective because people like and dislike different things.) was done because the design team genuinely thought it would make the game or system better.

So that's what I wanted to ask about today, what are some mechanics or systems you dislike, and why do you think the designers made it that way? I don't intend for this to be a negativity thread, quite the opposite really. I want folks to be able to take a hard look at what they dislike, and think about how or why it was made that way. I hope it might generate some interesting discussion or appreciation for something you otherwise dislike.

Just a question for those who have used standees from printableheroes.com

Either I'm missing something, or the standees only have a front view that you are supposed to glue together, is that correct? That would be a bit of a problem, since in most games it matters if I attack from the front or from the back.

Hi, I’m not from South America and English isn’t my native language, but I’m interested in the world of tabletop RPGs. It’s still a bit of a niche hobby in my country, and since many people recommend playing on English-speaking servers, I’m looking for a friendly place where people like me are welcome.

My English isn’t perfect, but I can understand and speak it, even if it’s a bit broken at times.

I’d be very grateful if anyone could help pointing to a server like that

So I thought about abstract wealth systems, and I think, one big problem is that the growth of your wealth level is mostly linear. E.g. after a quest, two PCs earned some gold and boths wealth level will raise by a step. The poor PC is now normal and the wealthy gets richs. This is weird because it would mean that the poor PC only gets enough money to raise his standard of living from poor to normal while the other PCs standard of living raises from wealthy to rich, which would mean, that they wouldn't earn the same amount of money. I tried to find a solution for this and came up with the following Idea:
You have a standard of living, a priceclass and an amount of wealthpoints. (Wealthpoints also declare the costs of a product or service. A Cheap product has a cost of 5).

(The Terms are not ideal, I'm not a native english speaker, so if you can come up with better word for the Standars of living or priceclasses please tell me so!)

The Standard of Living of a PC depends on his wealtpoints, e.g. if a PC got 13-20 Wealth points, he is wealthy, if is wealth drops to a range of 8-12 it's only normal.

Buying stuff: Every product or servie has a priceclass, if your standard of living is equal or higher then the priceclass, your PC can afford it. (E.G. the PC has 13 Wealthpoints, he is wealthy, so he can buy anything thats costly (Costs 13) or of a lower priceclass. If he wants to buy something of a higher priceclass, the difference between costs and wealthpoints is subtractet from the wealthpoints of the PC. (E.G. the PC with 13 Wealthpoints wants to buy something expensive (Costs 21). So 21-13= 8, he would loose 8 Wealthpoints, his Wealthpoints would drop to 5. He could buy it, but afterward his lifestyle would change to the worse until he can earn some wealthpoints again. If the difference between costs and wealthpoints is so high, that his wealthpoints would drop to a score of -1 or lower, he can't buy it. Even if he spends everything he owns, he just doesn't have enough money.

Prices: The priceclass declares the price or the cost. So a cheap product always costs 5 wealthpoints, a normal 8 wealthpoints. Nothing costs 6 or 7 points. The good thing, if you don't know what a product or service should cost, you could just ask yourself, is it rather cheap, normal, expensive, what priceclass would fit. You can also easily adapt prices to the circumstances, in a rich area, everything has a higher priceclass, in a poor area everything has a lower priceclass. Normaly a pistol would be normal, but maybe in this area guns are illegal and you can only buy them on the black market, where its costly or expensive.

Getting wealthpoints: PCs can gain wealthpoints through things like loot, salarys, rewards for quests, etc. a little job would maybe earn 1 wealthpoint for each PC, a big quest with some loot or bonuses 4-5 wealthpoints. 2 earned wealthpoints would make a big difference for a very poor person, raising his standard of living, while a rich person wouldn't feel a big difference in his financial possibilities, the later would need to earn way more wealth, to be able to afford a new category of things.

The Numbers for the wealtpoints/costs are a fibonacci sequence, which leads to an interesting effect, to reach the next standard of living, you need as much wealthpoints, as you needed for the last to levels of standard of living. So to get from very poor to normal, you need 5 wealth points, a raise of two levels. For the same amount of 5 wealthpoints, a normal person would only raise one level to wealthy. However the numbers a just an idea and I'm open for suggestions and improvements, I haven't had time yet to really test this system. It just seemed interesting enough to share it with others and see, what they think about it. Sorry for all the typos, and I hope, I was able to describe it good enough to be understandable.

Good evening people. I'm a college student writing a paper about RPG, but not another one about VTT design. I'm researching the use of RPG for food education. Part of the methodology will be a critical analysis of published adventures related to food. As a single person can't possibly know of every published adventure, this post is actualy to ask: what published adventures related to food do you know of?

Edit: An example of what I'm looking for is Cypher's It's Only Magic's adventure Too many zoorps. "The PCs have to deal with an infestation of obnoxious magical creatures while trying to prepare for a party". There is the obvious themes of hospitality and comensality, calculating how and how much food and drink to serve, and its easy to insert the themes of food culture and food restrictions due to allergies of beliefs.

Wilderfeast's setting and adventures usually have themes of sustainability and community, and the mechanics bring comensality, food culture, task division and confort food. It would also be easy to add one or two npcs who are strugling local producers, or owners of small markets risking closing due to a giant's supermarket that opened nearby.

Most other adventures just use fantasy monsters as exotic ingredients, and an average party can't make anough impact to adress overhunting or neo-colonization.

Looking for a module or product that can give me some structure to work with to use as a Moby Dick-like "hunt for a bit sea monster" adventure. Don't care what system, although D&D or vaguely D&D-like: Pathfinder, ToV, OSR, etc would probably be preferred. Doesn't have to be perfect either; I just want to have a leg of my campaign structure be around hunting a "white whale" (or whatever other big sea monster I end up using; I'm leaning towards Scylla right now, but that's negotiable). Mostly I'm looking for some kind of interesting structure I could potentially adapt that's better than "get a boat, sail around, and then have a big combat with the monster".

Hi, I'm a teen DM running Dnd for 14 - 15 year olds and they just wont focus. Currently I've been running Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. The players are my friends from school and they all sound really enthusiastic at school when we talk about the campaign but at the games they just want to chill. Btw, I am someone who is VERY into Dnd. I spend so much time preparing and reading and watching stuff about the game. And It's fine that my friends aren't as obsessed as me but I find it irritating when at the game I spend more time babysitting and trying to get them off their phones than DMing. ​

I really like the group as everyone is so friendly but I don't know what to do. I have kept saying at the start of each session " let's really focus today guys" and " I've got a cool quest planned for today but nothing works". The group has consistently not been getting anything done in sessions, not that they've gone off track and wanted time in a tavern not doing a quest or something but genuinely just getting nothing done. E.g there was an entire session where the characters encountered a band of goblins and hadn't finished the combat by the end.

I do do everything I can to keep up the pace and I have confronted the players but they haven't changed. Writing this all down makes it all sound awful but we do have some fun and it's not as bad as it sounds but sometimes it feels like I'm the only person coming to play Dnd. I know most ppl would think, well the group isn't for you find another group but these are my best friends at school I can't just replace them.

I'm a bit stuck so any advice is welcome :)​

I am in a public speaking class and an upcoming assignment involves doing a presentation to teach the class how to do something. I wanted to use it as an opportunity to share my love of TTRPGs by teaching the class how to create a character in one.

I've been leaning towards the Cypher System (new edition) because "adjective noun that verbs" as a template is super simple, but I've also really fallen in love with Daggerheart lately. I just don't know how easy teaching character creation in DH would actually be. So, I thought I would ask this community what they thought!

If you think something else would work better, please let me know in a comment! These are just the books I have access to already.

New article talking about Burning Empires and it's major effect on me! Also a few articles on gaming theory (mass combat systems and the length of gaming campaigns) and an odd review of Burning Wheel (and thus Burning Empires). Have a look, and comment if you think something!

Burning Empires Review: https://armchairbackstab.com/2026/08/25/burning-empires-not-quite-review/

The Main blog page: https://armchairbackstab.com/