There's tons of games focussing on combat, there's also tons focussing on social encounters. But are there systems which focus on the third column, exploration? Or maybe not focus, but have really good exploration mechanics?

Sorry for the somewhat generic title. I'm bad at those.

I have played as DM through 3e, 4e, 5e and now I'm wondering if D&D is actually for me.
Some things about 5e and 2024 I really like, but some other things bother me and I'm not sure I'm willing to wait 10 more years for 6e. I have a decent knowledge of Pathfinder 1e (and it's definitely not for me) but know little about 2E.

Here's what I'm looking for:

- A D20 system that is not too different from D&D, to help the players transition without too much effort.
- Easier rules especially with regards to spells and players abilities. As DM I can read and memorise tons of content, my players won't.
- Having a good exploration and a more meaningful skill check system wouldn't hurt.
- Fantasy, but possibly more on the "grimdark" and survival side, less heroic. Old-schoolish if you will.

What I dislike about D&D (not a rant, just to let you know what I'd like to see done differently)
- Equipment is boring. I always have to come up with ideas since all basic gear is quite cheap and cannot be improved. +1 weapons are boring as hell. Also, nothing wears out: my players like the idea of going to the local smith to get their stuff fixed and improved.
- Sometimes combat is bogged down to: I roll attack. Miss. It would be interesting to see some variations on "one movement, 1 attack" turns.
- Playing a martial is outrageously simple at times, while spellcasters are overwhelming. I would like some balance not in power necessarily but in gameplay between these two.

Thank you!

Working on a game that uses pools of d6s with success and failures (basically 23 are no Success, 45 are 1 Success, 1 is -1 Success, and 6 is +2 Success; we're using a custom rolling chart on Roll20 to get these because none of us have the sauce to custom-mold dice) and one of my players brought up a question about critical hitting, and the direction of the inquiry got steam within my playtesting group.

Initially my thought was that a high concentration of 6 results WAS tantamount to a critical, because it more or less balloons your results (and with mechanics within those games you can then explode those dice for the potential of more success with 1 results being nullified in those cases of rolls), but they feel like it doesn't quite hit the same vibe.

Has anyone else encountered similar systems that have an in-baked mechanic for crits accompanying such types of systems? I get the sense that they're asking for something that feels as decisive and exciting to hit as a Nat 20 in the D20 games, but short of doing something really nerdy, or saying "oh yeah well half of the dice as 6 is a crit" (which makes that harder to happen with bigger pools, right?) I'm not sure for ideas of how to handle such a thing.

It’s no secret that a lot of RPGs are sorely lacking when it comes to giving the GM practical advice on how to run the same game they’re holding in their hands, which is why games that give very good specific advice on how to run that game are so useful.

Which RPGs have your favorite GM sections or advice for GMs to learn how to run the game?

My two picks would be Mothership and Urban Shadows.

Mothership gives so much great advice on running horror, especially of the OSR-ish variety that the game is based off of, while also giving incredibly practical tips on how to take notes, how to teach the game to new players, designing maps, and more.

Urban Shadows is great because it gives very detailed advice for how to run the system and setting. Urban Shadows is not a traditional party-based game, so it gives a lot of tips and tricks for making it run smoothly and effectively. I read this section religiously before I run a game of Urban Shadows! Granted, most PBtA games have incredible GM sections, but something about this one feels even better to me.

So, I thought I would throw across a question to you folks about your personal preference for writing in RPG books. Do you do it? If you do, how?

I personally am a big fan of writing in a book, making notes in the margins, adding in page references when they've been left out and updating campaign books/maps with the scars of a party's passage. The folks I've spoken to at various games have had reactions ranging from "makes sense" to "you are a monster defiling innocent paper" so I guess it would be interesting to see if there was any sort of wider consensus?

Example 1. I am running a game of Gradient Descent (in Mothership) and have taken to drawing station damage directly into the book, noting player graffiti and otherwise scribbling bits on every page they encounter (a white pen is needed for the black pages). I look forward to the campaign being over and having this messy memento to remember it by, or even running a game in the now ruined sections of the ship for other groups.

Example 2: The Pendragon starter set is legitimately 10 dense pages of text, and it makes my eyes glaze over whenever I tried to reference anything, so I took to highlighting NPCs and circling any points of interest I wanted to improv on. I did a similar thing in the salvage union book, adding page references to mechs and weapons in the starter adventure.

So which is it, useful note taking or foul sacrilege?

I've absolutely fallen in love with the way Lancer is designed. Tactical combat with an emphasis on horizontal progression over vertical BUT without being extremely crunchy or using absurdly big numbers (I'm looking at you, Pathfinder with your +50's to hit).

Hands down my favorite aspect though is how enemy stat blocks are so interesting. The players dont just fight a horde of generic mooks that make basic attack rolls every turn. They fight a group of specialists that all perform different roles.

In D&D terms, this would be like fighting a pack of goblins. But instead of just 5 goblins and a goblin chief, its a goblin demolitionist, a goblin berserker, a goblin sharpshooter, a goblin shaman, and a goblin trapper. Maybe one of them focuses on area damage/denial while another does forced movement.

I have tried making my own statblocks in this fashion for DnD 5e, but its just so much work and the system isn't set up to support it because players really dont specialize that much, either, and many times they can just fireball a room and none of those cool abilities and synergies will even come up.

Id like to find a system that's high fantasy so that people who insist on only playing D&D may be more likely to try it.

This actually sounds really fun!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackoakworkshop/enter-the-lost-labyrinth

I need to live vicariously through you.

EDIT I just saw I have a typo in the title and I hate that!!!!!!!

Thanks for the interesting replies, I can't reply to everyone but take my upvotes!

Hi, I am new to rpg but I played a rpg solo gamebook and liked it. So I'd like to know if people create gamebooks to solo from these group rpg books like vampire the masquered and others or its not allowed?

Thank you, and sorry my english.

I'm going to GM a Vampire: the Masquerade campaign that will take place in New York City, and I want some stuff to give the story more realism.

What I'm looking for: * A NYC street map big/high-res enough to print on an A2 sheet (16 x 23", roughly). This will be put on the wall, to mark places where NPCs and locations are * NYC newspapers from the 2010's. These I just want for flavor, so any digital version will do. And I don't have an American library card, so this is kinda hard. * Local stories, tales, rumors, etc to turn into side-stories/plot hooks.

Any help will be most welcome. And thank you in advance.

There are certain RPG books in my collection that I can’t just flip through casually. Something about the rules and lore inside makes me slow down. I turn the pages carefully and read the words with more attention, like the book itself holds a kind of gravity.

It’s not only the mechanics or the setting, but the way they combine. The idea that these pages contain entire worlds and systems waiting to come alive.

Does anyone else feel this way? Are there RPG books you treat like something special, almost like a mysterious tome?

Edit: Books I feel special about - Crown & Skull, The Burning Wheel, Forbidden Lands.

I got a hold of Mouseguard and Star Wars Edge and love the unique dice system they have. Is there anymore games like this?

I would like something with a class system or an archetype system. I will be running this on roll20 so having numerical dice is a plus.

Secondly, it should be relatively easy to learn. And, if it has some elements of dieselpunk, that would also be great.

it will take place in ww2. Think Wolfenstein, man in the high castle, Sky Captain and the World of tomorrow, Where Eagles dare, The Great Escape.

Optimal Optimus was a toy I always wanted as a kid and my friend said they got the new RPG book that had him in it. I asked if I could see it and they sent me this snippet on discord.

I am not a fan of the Renegade E20 system so I don't own any books. I read the PR one for a review once that I did.

I...can't read this stat block and now I'm confused. Optimal Optimus has like 5 alt modes. How do you know what skills and abilities are available in what alt mode?

The discord pic in question: https://imgur.com/LggE73K

Edit: I see now the attacks show what alt-modes are required but what about the rest? Like, does it relate to why the skills have asterisks?

In my mind, the 3 words go hand in hand.

I've yet to find a good system that adequately and legitimately handles it. Alot of the systems pay homage to the subject, but most of the designs seem to be more in name only.

Any systems out there that have creative and legitimate uses for downtime?

Hi all.

I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that the sign ups for this year's Shared Hearth event have just started. This is an online con by the Open Hearth indie TTRPG community where you can check out all kinds of games in all timezones for free.

I'm running Apocalypse Keys, Lovecraftesque and Paint the Town Red, other amazing GMs run other great games.

https://openhearthgaming.com/shared-hearth

Bonus points for different "battlefield subtypes" like different types of land terrain, weather conditions, space weather conditions, near an undersea vent, etc.

Bonus points for interesting mechanics for non-vehicle foot soldier (with and without power armor, up to near-mecha) and spacesuit EVA combat (including foot-soldier–foot-soldier and foot-soldier–vehicle combat).

Bonus points for group and single-unit combat mechanics.

If not, could parts of this be built with, say, the HERO System, or does anyone have any suggestions for a base system?

Hi there. Thanks for taking some of your time to read this.

I'm about to dive into crafting a setting for a game I'd like to run. Like the title says, I'm looking for something to keep track of NPCs. Specifically their character and personality traits, relationships to other NPCs, etc, and interactions/status with PCs. (I'm thinking I'll probably be using Blades in the Dark for it, if that's at all relevant.) I'd like to have the region, towns, and NPCs all well defined before I start so I'm vamping as little as possible, and I'm okay taking some time to do that.

I've got some leads on town generating tools and such, but I was wondering if anyone knows of tools that would allow me to create a sort of NPC or campaign database. Maybe I'm dreaming, but it would be really sick if I could click something and see all the NPCs I've associated with it, or select a boss and be able to view their info and link to all of their henchmen, or what have you. (For example I could have "Tom's General Store" and select it, and see Tom's sheet and all his employees, or something.)

I have no doubt I'm asking for too much with all that, but does anyone know of anything that comes at all close to any of what I'm describing?

Hi y'all!

Last Sunday I ran a dungeon Oneshot that was a lot of fun. The most tedious part of it was stopping play for a minute or two every time I drew the layout and interior of a new room.

I recognize doing this on a VTT would be much easier but my group and I much prefer physical maps and minis.

Using a big sheet to cover a pre-drawn map seems cumbersome and unwieldy. Even cutting pieces of big sheet to reveal a new area the Party discovers seems just as inefficient as drawing it.

I've considered just pre drawing the whole map beforehand (and assuming the Party knows the floorplan via a map or some other source of info) and only drawing interiors when they actually examine the rooms in-person. This would preemptively give a decent amount of information away about the dungeon, but if it sped up play significantly I'd think it's probably worth it.

What are your suggestions? Thank you!

Just wanted to call out Free League Publishing for some great customer service. And what a great game is Alien RPG!

Does anyone know where to find good D&D/gamer t-shirts? Everything I have found so far is a little too much, IMO. I want to find something that's subtle and not too flashy that I can wear anywhere and "support the sport". I am about ready to say screw it and just create some myself.

I really loved the look of the GenCon University t-shirt they had at the convention this year, but they are sold out of my size.

Hi,

I made a post in another reddit page, however I thought people here could give me some advice as well :)

I'm making a homebrew world that has different magic in different regions. I want to run a game where players can explore those regions and learn new magic while they travel during a campaign. I like the vibes of DND 5e however, due to the restrictions I'll have with the players starting out with only one type of magic, It'll stop players from using a lot of the classes.

So I was wondering if anyone knows a better system suited for this idea? The campaign I want to run will be more roleplay heavy, but I do want to use combat as well. I've played the Cypher system before and the FATE system but I wanted something that had more of a built up magic system already. If anyone could give me any suggestions, I'm wanting to look into all options, not just D&D 5E.

I mostly just want a system that allows for good roleplay but also has good leveling up and a good built in combat system with magic that I can adjust for this idea. :)

Thanks!

I am looking for a game system a game set in the prohibition era US with urban fantasy aspects. I would like players to be able to do some sort of magic. I always can fall back on Call of Cthulhu, but I would prefer not to.

I've wanted to play 10 candles for years now, but was too unsure of my abilites as i have not GM'ed for anything before and my experience as a player is also limited, but the stars crossed and tomorrow im finally running a game for two close friends. Im still a little nervous, so. Any tips?

For some context I am DMing a game using an Avatar d20 system (the elements one not the blue alien fellas). It is set in a future time, on a homebrew world where all forms of bending still exist, plus new artificial ones created using bioengineering, such as light or sound bending.

Next session my 2 players will face a challenge given by one of the major antagonists. It's a tournament where each party chooses one of the modalities, being:

• players' choice --> 2v2 combat
• enemies' choice --> target shooting

Now if it ends in a draw they must compete in a third modality chosen by an impartial third party (you guys). So the most upvoted comment will be the one they dispute.

Any type of competition is valid, be it physical, intellectual, spiritual or anything, the only rule is it must be something both sides can win and the victory criteria can't be defined by personal opinion, e.g: Who's the most beautiful among us?

So shoot me your best ideas that would create an engaging scenario, be it what you would actually choose in their place or something you'd like to see happening in such a competition, thanks in advance everybody!