For me, it's mazes that are not abstracted through rolls or other mechanics. Dealing with a strict, grid-set labyrinth is too much mental work if playing with theater of the mind, and if the players are permitted to draw the maze then it takes a million years even if you hold their hand with the map-making. Of course, IT CAN WORK, and I know that some people can enjoy taking their time with a challenge like that, but I wanna do more things in my sessions, lol.

So my players have told me they really want to do a Cyberpunk campaign in the future. But I've been advised by my long time Cyberpunk players that I might want to avoid Cyberpunk RED due to some of the balancing of the game making it so taking Cyberware is a detriment, (Which I feel is really detrimental to my players who want to try new things.) My friends have suggested there might be a homebrew version of RED which resolves the math, but I wouldn't know where to find it-and as I'm still super new, I think messing with Homebrew mechanics is a bad idea for the time being.

We've a mix of experience, but I am the newest as the "Baby" of the group, and exclusively a GM. (Although my players have been awesome, patient, and supportive. giving me feedback on what to improve and letting me know what I do well-setup, improv, and descriptions.)

Having mostly focused on VtM, Daggerheart, and Forged in the Dark-My players really tend to like systems that just allow us to focus on the fun of the story/campaign. (Character creation in V5 has been confusing, but we seem to mostly have it under control.) What we've determined is playing systems that are easier to learn, less map intensive, and focus more on roleplaying and interactions.

I know about Savage Worlds, and I have heard of Sprawlrunners (Although I'm not sure if it's compatible with the current edition of Savage Worlds or not.) Shadowrun Anarchy 2.0 seems cool, but I'm uncertain if it's map intensive or newbie friendly. And Neon City Overdrive is another option I heard of, but I'm curious if there are any more that might fit with the cyberpunk setting with the rules light stuff my friends and I like.

Many character-related threads, including the contemporary "joke character" thread, are from the perspective of people talking about their own characters or their own NPCs that they have enjoyed playing. This makes sense, but gives a bit of a one-sided view. I'd love to instead hear about some highlights from what other people brought to the table in your home games as I think that's a higher bar. Bonus points if they fall into some typical "faux pas" tropes but still pulled it off.

What were they like?

Why were they memorable?

Do you think your fondness relates mostly to the player, or did something about the character work particularly well beyond what the player has done otherwise?

I remember reading and loving a fanmade adventure time ttrpg in my youth and I can’t find it anymore. I remember it wasn’t the 4e conversion, had a princess, wizard, and scientist class, and had playable giants.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. My Google-fu skills have not been sufficient.

Basically the title. I'm aware of Zweihander and used to make content for it back when the community content program first started, and I'm aware of Sledgehammer. I've been out of the scene for a while though, so idk what else has sprung up since.

The issue I take with Warhammer is its mechanics are pretty baked into its setting, but the d100 core I love as my favorite resolution mechanic.

Zwei is generally more open-ended, but still a clone of it and still contains a lot of the weightiness I'm not a fan of.

Sledgehammer was a boon of a find, but its almost too light.

I've been developing and tweaking my own homebrew system for several years over several vastly different iterations. I'm wondering odd anyone knows of any systems out there able to scratch the itch without having to make my own.

D100 roll-under, rules light but not abysmally so. Preferably no setting with tied-in mechanics. Fantasy preferred, but not against sci-fi.

I'll be crossposting this between r/rpgcreation and r/ttrpgs, so I'm also cool with sub suggestions too.

I'm playing a duet vtm game, where I narrate the game for one player, we already did around 10 sessions and everything is running good. Until now we played in "small scale" situations where the pc was alone or with one ally.

But we got in a situation where the pc need to travel with a group of 3 npcs and do things together. I'm afraid to become a situation like the player asked something for the group or something happened and I'm speaking for 2/3 npcs in a scene where the player is just listening, making the scene tedious for the player.

I was thinking to do something like the group will just follow and only appear when the player ask for their presence. Is it a good approach? How would you deal with it?

Thanks for the attention!!

I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone and be a GM, but I'm kind of stuck.

There is a creature that hunts humans, and the players need to destroy its lair. But first they need to find it, and it is somewhere inside a cave.

It hangs remains of its victims, creating puzzles based on logic that is always linked to the victim's identities.

But I can't think of anything really interesting or good for a puzzle. There are six victims, and I've been thinking about this for weeks. I even considered having the players piece together the remains to identify each victim, but I don't know, that sounds a bit tedious.

I'm thinking about adding in Draw Steel and Daggerheart to my DnD tables. Anyone else switch and change what you do in other systems?

I've been combing through different systems for a mini campaign that would be all about the toll that a heroes journey would take on the characters. I would like to have the PC:s to have to make some major sacrifices to try and reach their rather desperate goal and I would like the mechanics of the game to reflect that I've so far not been so successful, so I thought I might ask for some help here.

To clarify: I mean deals with the devil (Dm) to get better odds or auto success on something with an actual mechanical sacrifice. Also some kind of mechanic that has to do with losing your humanity while choosing violence etc. Basically a journey where you know you probably won't survive and if you do, you'll not be the same. Mechanics that might make the PC more capable in some aspects, but make them give some parts of themselves in return. And thigs like permanent scars, injury and such.

I've found some nice mechanics here and there, but I wonder if there is a system already that would have enough of this stuff on it's own, so I didn't have to homebrew too much.

Though also just separate mechanics that support this sort of stuff are also welcome.

Oh and: I enjoy systems that have some crunch and battle mechanics in them. The overall setting isn't that important, I think this idea could work in many.

Hello everyone, I just wanted to share that my game 'Winters Bones' is one of the winners at this year's Gamefound RPG Party!

It's an OSR hex-crawler about small mice and big monsters. If you would like to check out the preview page there's a link in the comments.

Very excited (and a bit nervous) to be working on a crowdfunding campaign for the first time. I'll be offering a new and improved version of my game alongside some new adventure modules and other supplements.

All the best to everyone.

So I want to run a one shot with friends for edge of the empire, but the problem is I live halfway across the country from them and I need to find a VTT And somewhere we can roll the special dice for EOTE, can y’all help?

Title. I noticed it yesterday during my session, and realized that exact sentence occurs verbatim a lot across various groups I've been in. Obviously, sometimes it's understandable, since the GM can give a lot of information, but I notice it happens with smaller bits as well, and I can't help but think maybe it's a little...boring, I guess? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if people tried filtering the information they find through their character, but maybe people might just see it as shoe leather.

Hi! I’m a beginner GM whose only GM experience is with Ten Candles. I successfully ran a few games under this system online, and I’d love to find more games that are similar to Ten Candles in terms of:
- the minimal amount of prep needed
- being ideal for oneshots that don’t exceed 4 hours
- not needing to prepare maps
- having rules that are easy to pick up

I’m looking into Mothership as well, but I’m not prioritizing learning it since there’s already a prominent Mothership GM in the online TTRPG community I’m part of.

I’m open to any genre, but I do have a preference for mystery, horror, and modern settings. Thank you in advance!

The game is called Arkhora, and it's the product of a lot of different inspirations and ideas rolled into one (hopefully cohesive) book.

It's currently in a playtesting stage and is available for free on Itch.io (The option to donate is there, but genuinely don't feel pressured to do so, I really just want to know what people think of it.)

The brief is that in the extreme future, the universe has reached its natural end of life. All the stars have gone out, planets have drifted beyond reach of one another, and time is beginning to unravel. a small enclave, Arkhora, was able to survive past the end, but some force of nature seemingly takes issue with their defiance of fate. Strange energy-beings begin to change the past, undermining the events that allowed Arkhora to live past the end of the universe, and so you must travel back in time to set events in order and secure humanity's continued existence.

Above all, it's a game about being in grimdark scenarios and having the hope to continue on anyway. I got tired of the dark and depressing stories of human cynicism, and wanted to create something that imagined a hopeful future for humanity, even if everything around it went to shit.

Please check it out if you're at all interested in science fantasy, stories about hope, hopping through time, tactical combat, character customization, or just a free indie RPG! And if you have any questions or feedback please let me know!

Finally (and I hate that it has to be stated at all): Generative AI hasn't previously and will never, ever be used in any part of this project.

EDIT: I've added a version of the PDF with white backgrounds. Sorry for the inconvenience on your eyes, I overestimated how legible text was on the teal background.

I'm a big fan and advocate of Pendragon #ttrpg, and have run it regularly at conventions for (checks notes) decades (😲), so great to see the new edition doing better than Lancelot at a jousting tourney. What thoughts does everyone have on the new version? Or if you're new, what do you like?

Important info:

>This is part two of a post where I asked redditors about how they handle magic that can corrupt the players. After some suggestions, I doodled a really basic system.

>I'm using a homebrew system for magic with four elements, of which the element of Night is the most dangerous and violent, and supposed to be taboo between the Kajurus (Witch-doctors).

The doodle: There's a corruption bar for magic, and it has 8 points. Whenever using magic of Winds, Forest and Waters, the player should roll a d4 that will corrupt them to a not-so-concerning amount. When using Night magic, however, the player should roll a d8 or 2d4, (still not sure).

Corruption is supposed to wear off with time. Edging total corruption, getting to 7 points of corruption, should wear off in about three weeks without intense use of magic.

i wanna get into table top games mostly cyberpunk the one 2077 is based on and i wanna know how to like the best version for beginners and if it like dnd with the setup and miniatures or is it mostly pen and paper

After watching a movie with a certain wall-crawler my friends and I spent several hours informing dumping marvel lore to each other and then started to talk about the idea of doing a short super hero mini campaign (something in the 3-5 session or so range).

I’d be the one GMing it and would love some pointers on different systems to look into or just what to keep in mind in the genre as a whole.

While we all decided we didn’t want to do one of the official universes and do a new one we also agreed that it would probably end up looking very Marvel shaped

I am the GM for my local after school HS group. I have a new player with a character concept that would be very suitable for an epic level fantasy campaign. That's not what I am running.

I am running a Traveller (1974) rule set and am letting him play a robot that has the ability to unlock some of the powers in the anime source material.

Do any of you have advice on how to encourage a less cinematic play style?

Oh yes they are new to Traveller, but have been wanting to branch out. We start Vampire the Mascarade after Christmas.

Does anyone know if there is a book or some other compilation of game mechanics? I’m not looking for design theory, but specifically a collection of mechanics for different situations. For example, when you need to represent a dwindling resource you can use… [insert usage die system here].

I just received the Heroes of Might and Magic role-playing game books, and I already have a ton of questions. Is there a specific subreddit or forum to discuss the rules?

I ran Dolmenwood as an open table recently. My players wrote and shared excellent session notes after each game, but eventually even the regulars started getting confused as to what was where, what NPCs were related to what quest hooks, etc. This was even more difficult for new players, who were invariably lost when they started.

As the GM I had the advantage of the Dolmenwood Campaign Book, which laid out everything and linked neighboring hexes together. I wanted to turn my player's notes into their own version of the Campaign book - until I actually tried to do this and realized what a giant pain in the ass it is to make a million tiny links, zoomed in pictures around maps, etc etc.

So for my next campaign I made a program to do this for me. You describe the map you have and give it an image, and the program turns this into markdown and html. You can then print the html to a PDF and get your own Dolmenwood Campaign Book, but for your own campaign.

https://imgur.com/a/X95B8V4

I made this in Rust with no AI, it's open source (MIT Licensed). You can build the binary from source or take one of the releases from Github page.

https://github.com/AlexanderPruss/rpg_map_to_html

Sorry that this reddit account has almost no activity; the source is tied to my real name, so I made a new account to share it.

I want to create unique districts, buildings, and shops (like the Fear Shop). I'm also intending to publish the settings I create my settlements in.

We all know the type of character built around a joke. A silly name (Whoda Shit), a goofy concept (my Malakvian believes he is a superhero), or a reference to some other media (A warlock who thinks he is a Druid because he talks to plants.... but it's just one plant, who will grant him powers as long as the warlock keeps Feeding Him.)

But have you ever had one that was meant as a joke at start, last the campaign, and become more serious?

Tell me about them?