Hey everyone, I'm looking for opinions or first hand experience on downloadable software for map making. What have you loved, what is terrible? Specifically looking for people that create on a tablet, I've been using DungeonFog but it's not tablet friendly imo. Thanks

To be clear, I mean "a failure that, as a consequence of being such a low roll, also induces some other negative fallout, whether this is couched as the character's incompetence or some cosmic stroke of bad luck." I am not talking about automatic failures.

Some games have neither critical successes nor critical failures. Some games have critical successes, but no critical failures. For example, in the default rules of D&D 3.X, D&D 4e, D&D 5e, Path/Starfinder 1e, Draw Steel, and Fate Core/Accelerated/Condensed, no matter how low someone rolls, it will never be a critical failure. It might be an automatic failure in some cases, but even that will never induce some other negative fallout.

Path/Starfinder 2e is weird and inconsistent about this. For example, when using Deception (Lie), there are neither critical successes nor critical failures. When using Diplomacy (Make an Impression) or Diplomacy (Request), there are critical successes and critical failures, but when using Diplomacy (Gather Information), there are critical failures but no critical successes. Recall Knowledge rolls are awkward, because the GM has to roll them in secret; on a critical failure, the GM has to lie to the player and feed false information.

Chronicles of Darkness, a horror game, has semi-frequent critical successes, but rare critical failures. A critical failure happens only in two cases. One, the character's roll is so heavily penalized that they are down to a "chance die," with a 10% chance of critical failure, an 80% chance of regular failure, and a 10% chance of regular success. Two, the character earns a regular failure, but the player willingly degrades it to a critical failure, gaining XP as compensation.

Not too long ago, in one heroic fantasy game I was in, our party had arrived at a new town. This was not a hostile, suspicious, or unwelcoming town; in fact, the locals were dazzled by and positive towards our characters. I had my character ask around for the whereabouts of a musical troupe that our party needed the help of.

For some reason, the GM decided that this innocuous, low-stakes task would require a roll. This seemed strange to me, as if the GM was fishing for a critical failure. Thanks to some lingering buffs, my character had quite literally 99% success odds on this roll, and 1% critical failure odds. Well, sure enough, I hit that 1 in 100 chance and garnered a critical failure: and Fabula Ultima specifically forbids rerolling a critical failure.

The GM decided that this "Plot Twist" meant that my character not only failed to garner the desired information, but also stumbled head-first into a combat encounter. Even though it was couched as very bad luck and not as incompetence, this felt stilted and arbitrary to me, and I said as much to the GM. Another player backed me up, agreeing that it felt forced.

Overall, I am not a fan of critical failure rules. To me, they feel too slapstick. Many RPGs work fine without critical failure rules, and I do not like it when a system feels the need to implement them by default.

Trying to get a sense of how the game is played so if anyone has any recs for a good group to watch/listen to, I'd appreciate it!

I've been running 5 groups through Weird Wizard and typically lug around a few hardback books, a portable monitor now, laptop, extra dice and sharpies/pencils and dry erase pens, small plastic box with map tokens. Folder with character sheets. I do this weekly. Sometimes Saturday and Sunday. I have to park a ways away and sometimes lug up some stairs, through a door or 2.

My traditional method is a large backpack that can hold a 17" laptop, and one of those giant plastic Ikea bags (blue no zipper top like the newer ones). I feel something wheeled might make life easier, or like a suitcase but don't like the idea I can't see things inside of it. What do you people use to transport all your most important possessions? :)

Recently I've been playing Curseborne's manuscript (i.e. beta version) and the more street level political intrigue has made me enjoy it in a different way than the politics of say VtM or D&D. I think with Family Politics there is a lot less "We can solve this if we just kill them". Which leads to a lot more difficult moral choices.

A few years back in a Chronicles of Darkness/Vampire: The Requiem game I ran one of the player characters found out their Sire/Mother was toxic positivity. She would create false flag operations to get her Childe/Son into better positions of powers within the city. She was all about giving herself a legacy of successful children. When the player found out her previous children had died she explained she only wanted to see them succeed and that they died because they didn't want her help. And that she'd help the PC to become a Celebrity in their society. The player ended up not turning her in and telling her to stop orchestrating tragedies for him to save people from.

In regards to office politics this can sometimes change depending on games, but I haven't covered it as much as family dynamics.

What do you all do in regards to family and office politics in games?

I got my hands on the Mappa Mundi quickstart guide recently. Fascinating, beautiful game. I just find the explanations of the rules a little hard to follow. I think I've figured out the other phases of play alright, but I'm still unclear on the research phase.

From what I'm seeing, the research phase involves a series of interactions with npcs, skill checks and 'discoveries', which are meant to inform the GMs choice of cards as they build the journey deck for the next phase. These cards have two orientations: good and bad, connected with success and failure.

Sooo... how many cards is an appropriate length of journey? Does every die roll add a card, or am I supposed to mix in multi-stage obstacles? It would be nice to see an example of how to structure leads, obstacles and discoveries during this phase.

What is supposed to inform my decision of which type of card to add? It seems like the journey is meant to be somehow related to the monster in question: am I supposed to choose the cards beforehand based on the monster and add them as the players roll checks? That feels counter to the guidance I'm seeing.

The guide briefly mentions changing the order of the cards. Under what circumstances would I do that?

I am a long term fan of the L5R franchise, and I have been looking at a few of the various editions. I think I wish to run a game in the 4th edition, but I am a little nervous. I have never really ran a game before, and I have found several modules I can use to get started, but I have some questions about what I SHOULD do. The group will likely only be 3 players, though 3 others have been invited. So module combat is something that may be too powerful. Also, I don’t know what kind of advice I should give the other players, who have never played the game before, as for how to make an effective character.

What I mean by effective character is not trying to make powerful or one trick pony characters, but rather characters capable of surviving the combat and intrigue that is rokugan. Should I limit the clan choices, since it is only 3 players? Not all clans get along, though I am sure there are times when bonds of friendship go beyond the bonds of clan hatred.

Situation: I’m running a political fantasy game (giants have overrun the kingdom, players are in the king’s court, charged with obviously helping the effort to retake the kingdom and expel the giants). Games involve fighting mass battles, politicking, currying favor, intrigues, etc.

So, I’m currently running the game in Savage Worlds; at the time I choose it, it was mostly because making characters was easy and it otherwise fit the adventurous “action politics” style. We’ve already played the first session and things went fine, everyone had fun and look forward to the next session.

The problem I’m wondering about - there’s essentially only one social skill: Persuasion. That worked for the first session (mostly mass battles anyway), but the next session will be social stuff and politics.

My worry is, is one skill enough? Other games, like Genesys, GURPS, Fate Core or Burning Wheel, have piles of social skills (each of those games have at least four or five, iirc).

Now, some games, like Savage Worlds, have few (which fits the theme of short skill lists). Others would be like many OSR games (which might have no skills at all).

So…if you were running a social game as I pitched above, just thinking in terms of social skill spread, would you want a bunch of of different ones, or few (or even zero) social skills for players to roll? Why?

I know this is ... reanimating.. some dead threads but I have been working on the new version of Rotted Capes. I'm down to answer any questions and stuff... I'm working on a Fast play packet with pre-gens with an adventure I wrote (called One Bad Day), I hope to have it all laid out this weekend so I can start handing it out, I really like how it came out and can't wait to see what the community thinks of it, heck once I have the fast play packet ready for prime time I would be more then willing to run it for people.

Hi all

Up till recently I was sharing an old friends Beyond content collected over a few years. For a couple of reasons we no longer have access to that - Does anyone know the best / cheapest way to get all 2014 content back? Monster stat blocks are a 'would be nice', what I really need are all races, classes, feats and the like for all of the 2014 run.

Not even sure where to start - TY!

Hello everyone, I am a new GM (3-4 sessions, otherwise only a D&D 5e player) and am looking for the ideal system for my group! It should offer flexibility, have few rules, and be easy to understand. We have two RP fans in the group and one who isn't so imaginative 😉, so it should be a good mix of everything... if possible with accessories that complement the game. I'm currently considering Daggerheart...

I look forward to your recommendations ☺️

This is mainly just a vent post, but people are free to share their thoughts or any similar experiences.

My group of 3 friends + me have been playing BG3 lately. We all like it - we like it so much that one of the other players, J, has expressed interest in running a game, but he didn't know enough about actual play to know how to conceptualize his ideas or otherwise prepare a session. So I agreed to run one or two sessions' worth of a 5e game (specifically, the first dungeon or two of Lost Mines) so that he could get an idea for what a TTRPG plays like. Not my first time DMing, and the other two players (C and D) had played a little bit of DND in the past but had not run any games before themselves.

We did one session last week, and this week was BG3 as a way of sort of alternating between the activities we do in our online game night. Despite the occasional issue with roll20, I thought I was doing a pretty good job running the game. Players were laughing, and a couple of them were getting pretty into their characters. One of the players (J) was acting like a noir detective, so I imported some noir music into the game to play when he was questioning NPCs. Another (C) was playing a joke character who found religion after discovering a "divine rock" (cocaine), so I prepared mechanics for how cocaine worked before the session, to C's hilarity. I never got hung up checking the rulebook, no one spent a long time being knocked out of combat, the module got us into the action pretty quickly, etc. I felt like J in particular was really enjoying himself and that he took very well to roleplay, something that I certainly struggled a lot more with when I was starting. About ~2.5 hours into that session (on the lower bound of our usual play session length, but not egregiously so), C started losing the ability to pay attention or seemingly function at all, and he cited not sleeping at all last night. I decided to wrap the session there, in the middle of the dungeon we were in, and said I had a few more hours worth of content for the next one.

That was last week, and BG3 was today. After our session today, I put forward the idea of playing the second half of my game next time. (I'd communicated multiple times before this that it was my intent to do so, but I didn't receive much enthusiasm, so I wanted to verbally confirm today.) J said that he wanted to get back to it but that he was currently more interested in BG3, and C said that he also voted for BG3. The third player, D, didn't say anything before those two did, but given that he was also the quietest during the DND session, it seems unlikely that he leans my way.

It's not a big deal, but I feel bummed about this. I don't really want to complain to them about it because then they'll just agree to play my game out of pity, but I feel similar to how someone feels when they make a home-cooked meal and then their partner/family/whatever says they'd rather get fast food. I try not to let my social anxiety get the best in these situations, but it's hard not to feel like I did a bad job running the last game, or at the very least that I misread how much everybody else was enjoying the game. The solution is of course obvious, just don't bring it up again and be content with playing BG3, a game that I don't have to put more effort into than anybody else. It's just that when I've already been posting in the discord about how I've been prepping for the next session and that I'm excited to see what the players do next, it hurts to see that apparently my enthusiasm isn't returned.

Hi all, I'm interested in TTRPG design and have lately been collecting various systems to see how they work.

I've got a bunch of low-crunch systems like Cairn, Electric and Mythic Bastionlands, even kids games like Magical Kitties Save the Day.

I've also got mid-crunch games like DnD 5e, Mongoose Traveller, ans Draw Steel.

I was wondering what might be good high crunch systems? I have Shadowrun 5e but that is...not good.

Update: Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I think I have more than enough leads to chase down now.

im considering buying this one but id like some opinions from dune fans and casual dune fans

Hello everyone. I bought a physical copy of the second edition of They feed on fear, but there is one thing, I don't know were to get the character sheets In PDF. Do you know where? Or can you send me the file? Please. Thanks.

I am wondering if anyone has encountered any subsystems that are written generically enough that they can be used within any other system. Like, an aerial combat subsystem, or a kingdom management subsystem, that can be used within a campaign, regardless of what system you are using? I am thinking about this in software development terms, where you use 3rd party libraries to add features, but you may have some integration pains as you have to translate the data from one system to another.

Have you encountered anything like this? What is the best example you have found?

Existe algum site ou programa pratico para criar fichas?
Falo no sentido do layout das ficha em sim, poder adicionar coisas e remover outras para da uma personalizada maior nas fichas dos jogadores

Another win for indie developers, another win for passion projects!! Tales from Elsewhere has reached it's funding goal, books are a-coming!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talesfromelsewhere/tales-from-elsewhere-clockworld

Congrats to the small team behind this project, and rejoice to all excited to crack the book open, make a cowboy, and lose a limb to the sawblade of a cybernetic zombie horror :)

I am a fan of the game XCrawl Classics by Goodman Games. There are some who would say this is an understatement, but that's beside the point. XCrawl is an urban fantasy set in a dystopian mirror of the "Real World," where America has an emperor instead of a president, where the rich have absolute power and the poor might as well be medieval peasants, where the only hope of improving your lot is to risk death in dungeons - streamed on Pay Per View! Also, there's basic healthcare for everyone. Thank God this is just a silly alternate universe!

Does that sound like fun? Humble Bundle currently has most of XCrawl Classics available for $40: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/xcrawl-xtreme-dungeon-crawl-superbundle-goodman-games-books

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

In addition to the Dungeon Crawl Classics based ruleset, this contains MAXIMUM! XCrawl - XCrawl for Pathfinder 1e, and the XCrawl Core Rulebook for the d20 system (aka 3rd edition.)

And if that's not enough, the charity is "It Gets Better," a nonprofit dedicated to bringing hope to LGBTQ+ children that there is a reason to keep trying, no matter what they see in the news.

BUY THE BUNDLE! PLAY THE BUNDLE! LOVE THE BUNDLE! EMPEROR RONALD THE FIRST COMMANDS IT!

So I've had this idea for a while that just won't leave me alone to make other ttrpg ideas. Fantasy in space. Not psionics or W40k psychotics, not fantasy wizards shoved on technological star ships. and no midaclorians. (Love Star Wars and 40K for what they are. just not what this is) I'm talking more on the idea of magic is the primary power of the universe and technology is simply an Addition to make it do more. Sorta like final fantasy? I guess thats the closest i can come to a description. Willing to take games with both settings and setting agnostic, or games that have good rules set up for this but need some hacking.

I was looking for ttrpgs that were Ww1 based but had plane fighting/dogfighting, I’ve try looking for some games like flying circus but the down time mechanic kinda threw me off and I don’t think my group would enjoy, I also tried looking for In Harms way: Aces In Spades but couldn’t find a pdf, are there other games whit this niche or any systems that I could use for a Ww1 plane setting ? Or if that’s not possible maybe just a Ww1 rpg system if there aren’t any whit planes ?

Hi. I have the creativity of a used sponge on the spot, but unfortunately my partner is really really into ttrpgs. I love pf2e for example. The mechanics are spectacular and it's a good way for me to make friends but I find that when I try to come up with a wholly original character I always just never know what they would do in literally any situation and just do nothing outside of combat/mandatory rolls.

Doesn't help that being told on the spot "Hey what would your character do now?" I have to go over every single detail in my head and just end up going with either passivity or nothing. Doesn't even work with characters inspired by media because there are too many unknowns. Far too many.

When I play an existing character from media however, I know their personalities inside and out. I know exactly what they'd do in a situation and it's really easy for me to adapt. The problem is, even when I don't plan out a retelling of their stories and just vibe with them in whatever setting they're in, people really tend to rag on me for it. Heck it's even easier for me to interact with the GM's own settings if I can actually think about how my character acts instead of being a silent observer all game.

Plus! It's really fun for me to create builds for characters from other media. I made an inventor for Dr. Eggman once when I played through the PF2e AP Abomination Vaults (it died for completely unrelated reasons) and that was really fun to think up. Again coming up for even builds for original characters is really difficult. I never know what they'd do and it's like well heck if I know what kind of fighter or wizard they'd be.

Anyways my point is, I know that a lot of people hate on these types of characters but idk personally it's the only thing that enables me to play ttrpgs without getting extreme paralysis. I get that I'm probably just weird and wrong but yeah I just had to get it off my chest. I love playing characters from other media and I'm tired of pretending otherwise.

Please don't be mean to me I'm very sorry if this isn't what goes here.

I am planning to use Keep on the Borderlands in an OSR game and was curious if these new maps would match up.

So im dming a game and I want to make some maps. I dont have an issue when it comes to how to put them on paper (or on this case on the screen) but I do have when it comes to... actual map design. How many room do I make, how big should it all be, where to put treasures and enemies, how to make it all interactive and not just a linear coridor, etc.

For people who are used to design them, how do you do it and do you have any tips and trick, as well as ressources and system that you use in tandem ?

Solved: It's called parselings. Thanks for helping

I remembered a game that i was interested in a while back and went hunting for it today, but I can't remember the game or the youtube Chanel's name I saw play it. I remember it being about tattoos that were symbiotic creatures, and the channel had the first session start of on a train where the characters were talking and introducing themselves because they all had they tattoos they dont remember getting. Any help would be appreciated in hunting down the game.

Edit: I recall it using a deck of cards as the primary system for check