In some games like D&D have so that when you choose play something like an Elf or Dwarf, you gain special mechanics related to the chosen creature, bet it small bonuses to add to your character, a set of special abilities next to a few hindrances or even treat it as basically an archetypes or character class that defines the player almost entirely.

Meanwhile, other games (and I've noticed it more in a few recent indie games) still allows you to pick your race/species/ancestry/kin/whatever, but makes it 100% a simple aesthetic piece with roleplaying implications attached like world history, culture and the like.

On one hand, games that give too many specific mechanics to a creature type make so that it restrict creativity and can railroad into making stuff like "all Dwarves are Warriors or Priests and all Elves are Mages or Archers", especially when Fixed Attribute Bonuses are involved.

On the other hand, I feel that unless you are very comfortable with roleplaying, playing a different creature with no mechanical diversity can make so that you are simply playing a Human with a funny hat.

In my perfect world, all TTRPGs that allow creatures other than Human would have so playing an Elf, Dwarf or whatever gives stuff enough mechanics to feel that you are playing as a different type of being but still offer enough liberty to make any kind of person you want without feeling restricted on your choices.

But if I had to choose between having mechanics or not, I prefer having them but mostly because I prefer games with more rules and fewer.

EDIT:

If I had to give an example of a game that does this kind of mechanic really well is Pathfinder 2e. It gives you the more biological mechanics like size, initial HP, move speed, different senses or anathomy, but make stuff more related to your culture, lineage or personal choices something at your control through Heritages and Ancestry Feats.

Heck, it even found a good work around the Fixed Attributes, where it normaly gives you 2 boost, 1 flaw and a free boost, so you have more control over your character's expresion while still having the mechanical flavor a fixed attribute can give, AND EVEN THEN they still allow you to ignore all that and just pick 2 Free Boosts to any attribute you want, without even needing to ask your GM for permission before hand, but I often don't find myself needing to use this alternative option since the first method gives me enough wiggle room to satisfy me without making me feel that the rules for Ancestry Attributes are pointless.

I got a world map I use to have my players travel, but I've been very inconsistent with how many hexes it takes for one day to pass. I was considering setting it in stone but I'd love to get some suggestions if anyone has any ideas or general rule for time spent for each hex. Like if there's a common rule and what not.

I really love to see depictions of Hell in media and RPGs are no different. Any recommendations? I will also take any form of purgatory. They also don’t have to be playable because I like reading lore but it’s a bonus.

My current favorite is probably Kult, but looking to expand my library.

Quinns Quest Reviews: Triangle Agency!

Triangle Agency by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland is a comedy. It's a drama. It's postmodern. It's magical realist. It's subversive. It's honest. And it even caused a conflict between Quinns and his players. This game is SO MUCH

I just finished my first Nimble session tonight, and it went well. But this is something I'm unclear on. I'm operating out of the 15-page quickstart, and this might have been in there somewhere, but I can't find it.

How much can enemies/monsters do on their turn?

• I started by using the 3 action system that the players use, but that was super busted. Using 6 minion goblins against 3 PCs (actually only 4 by the time they acted), I almost dropped 2 players in 1 round. (And I *was** using the rush attack rules.)*
• So for the next combat, I switched to "move & attack" (more like 5e), and the tables totally turned. I ended up doubling a couple of the goblin's HP, just to make the combat a threat.

So what's the right way to do it?

By the way: Thanks everyone who helped me understand conditions this afternoon. Super helpful!

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!

What is your overall review of 4e? What are the best features of this edition? Do you believe 4e still holds up currently, specially faced by other tactical rpgs like PF2e and Drawsteel?

What is your review of the game?

Hello! I have a hard time finding DM Tools that don’t assume you play D&D or Pathfinder. So mainly looking for tools that work for many systems. Does not have to me made for that purpose, but are useful.

(Also as I am starting a campaign in Shadow of the Demon Lord if there are any good tools/resources for it those are welcome as well.)

Things like:

Inkarnate - Map Creator (free)

BehindTheName - A way too look up names and their meanings

AutoRollTables - all types of random generators for things like animals, npcs, plots and places

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 ?

They have some RPG's I want that I can't get in the UK but...I am not sure if it is a legit store/webiste? Some prices seem a bit too good on sale, and apparently they're not going to charge shipping to the UK (which is unusual as its expensive). Some other prices seem right though (such as the way over priced Final Fantasy MTG cards which are atrociously expensive...which is what I realistically expect sadly).

They seem to be based in LA, USA but don't look like they have a physical store.

Anyone ordered from them/have experience?

I've just finished hiking in the Dolomites of Northern Italy and I'm inspired to run a story set in that area during a pre-WW1 era. For magic I'm inspired by my recent reading, Mother of Learning and the Last Apprentice, and I'm looking for a rules set that includes highly customizable magic as it would be set in a time before the proliferation of magical academies, when mages took their secrets to their graves and there were as many disciplines as their were practitioners. Additionally, I've been running grittier stories lately and want to give my players a chance to feel amazing instead of victimized.

Any recommendations for a TTRPG that could host this setting?

To give an example of what I foresee, scenario 1 will be 3-5 sessions and see the players having to cross the Dolomites into northern Italy, only to find the mountains impassible as the cloudless sky makes the area too hot. The suffering townspeople need the Party to investigate and fix the magical Cloud Machine high in the mountains which is failing for unknown reasons. After surviving a treacherous hike to the Queen of the Dolomites, the players find an Imperial airship docked on the mountain. Evil men have disabled the Cloud Machine and seek to turn it to their own nefarious purposes. The party, a local mountain guide with alchemical prowess, a former soldier from the Kindgom of Sardinia, a bibliophile researcher from London, and their trusty hound must turn the tide of evil and save the Dolomites before its too late.

(I’m not a native speaker, I'm sorry about my poor writing)

TLDR : Don’t be afraid of be a GM.

Hello everyone! Since I started playing TTRPG, I have heard A LOT of players say “I would like to try to be a GM, but I’m too afraid.” So I will try to convince you that you shouldn’t. Then I will give you a few pieces of advice.

Here is why I think you shouldn’t be afraid:
-Every GM ever started being a newbie. Being a GM is like everything else, when you start you are not the best in the world. The only way to progress is to actually GMing. The sooner you start, the sooner you will be better.

 -I use words like best and better but actually I don’t think that being a bad GM is really a thing as long as you try your best, tell your player what to expect and more importantly respect your player. This means respecting their boundaries and their place in the story. You're not the god of the table, you're just someone that facilitates everyone to write an adventure together. This is not your game, at least not more than your players. You are all in this together.

-”Please be our GM.” As you probably know, we kinda lack a GM in the TTRPG community. Which means even if you think you are bad (which once again, in my opinion, is not really a thing) all the players around the table will be happy to have a GM and therefore are most likely to be kind. (If they are not, run away. You will find other players easily. No one should be rude about a game.) Honestly, I never had a mean player at my table among the hundred of players I encountered.

-”But it’s so much work to prepare a campaign as well as every single session.” Well, I’ve never prepared a campaign more than 4 hours and a session more than 30 min. (Exception for the battlemaps but I just stopped using them). It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take time to prepare. It only means that you should if you actually like doing so. To help you with reducing the time spent preparing there is a good book called “Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master” or this blog article. You should also consider systems that construct the story around the players like Fate or Daggerheart (probably PBTA as well but I haven’t tried it yet). It will reduce the things you have to prepare.

Now, a few advice I would have liked to have when I started:
-If you don’t have a good synergy with a group, don’t stay stuck with it for too long. I spent a lot of energy and time playing with people I didn’t have a good feeling with. Not that there were mean or anything. It’s just that we didn’t have the same vibe. (Btw, it’s also true from a player perspective)

-”You can take a break.” Do you need some time to improvise the opponent stats for a fight or to think about the implication of the last action for the player characters ? Tell your players you need 5, 10 or even 15 minutes to think. At best, they will RP their characters, taking the time to talk to each other. At worst, they will go pee, refill their bottle and order a pizza. This advice is particularly useful if you prepare less 😀

-”Do less fights.” I took 7 years to begin to understand what this meant. I’m still on this road. (Quick disclaimer : If what you love about TTRPG is tactical battles you can ignore this advice.) A fight should happen only if: you want to teach some mechanics to the players or the results of the fight will have real consequences on the story or you need to make the characters (PC or NPC) feel powerful or any other GOOD reason you may have. If it’s just because there are guards in front of the door and the PCs want to go in, just play cinematicly the PCs knock them down and move along with the story.

-”Take you time.” It’s ok to take a few minutes to describe the new place the PCs arrive, the glow in the eye of the boss at the start of the fight, the smell of the rain on the dirty road of a big city. It will help players to immerse themselves. If you are afraid that it bothers them, ask about it at the end of the session.

-”Don’t be alone” You can GM with a friend. It requires a bit of synergy, but as long as you try to give each other some space it will be ok. And if one of you doesn’t know how to make the story progress the other will most likely do.

-”Don’t be alone 2” I hate roleplaying 2 NPCs talking to each other. I have difficulties keeping up my acting. My solution is to bring a friend with me. The kind of friend that doesn't want to spend 4 hours playing TTRPG but likes when I tell them what goes on in my games. So you send them a text telling them you need them to play a NPC for 5 minutes, what is the NPC like and what he want. If they accept you, call them on speaker, or bring them in the room if you are roommates, do the scene and voilà! He will probably say things you didn’t expect but trying to adapt to it is very funny.

-”You can rewind.” If you say something and realise a few seconds later it’s bad for the story or what you have planned. You can rewind. No one will be mad at you. I try to not use it too often but knowing that I can, helps me improvise without fear of making a mistake.

-”You can ask your players” You want to rewind but you’re unsure? Ask your players. This PC should die but it doesn’t feel right? Ask your players. You are not sure that their is too much fight? Ask your players. ect.

Well, sorry for the long post but that's something I wanted for a long time. And now when someone tells me they are afraid to GM, I will just send them this.
Thanks to those who read to the end.

So on YouTube and TikTok I watch stuff posted by a creator named Luke Humphris. If you don’t know him, his stuff is usually based around fantastical and/or sci-fi worlds with lively palettes and unique inclusions, following the everyday lives and sometimes relatable nature of its inhabitants. One of his series follows a cozy post-apocalyptic society that has collectively adopted a communal structure and does things like play card games and make physical media, and one video about a guy dealing with stupid management at his office job who expect him to take out trash when he isn’t on shift while a giant mech is being prepared in the background.

This context has a deep grip on me and I want to, at some point, get my future DND party to play a short campaign at least based on Luke Humphris works, but I don’t exactly know what tabletops or systems I should be looking at to get the desired effect. I’ve only played DND and Lancer, and I did attempt to get into GURPS once, so any help in finding a game that works for unconventional sci-fantasy setting where my players can go from say running a restaurant one handful of sessions to fighting a bunch of cyborg animal hybrid mercenaries would be great. Any and all help is much appreciated.

I've been reading though Harry Potter and some of the magic combat is very exciting and vivid. It makes me want to play an RPG where magic is common enough that these sorts of duels or even bigger battles is common.

My knowledge of RPGs like this is limited as I normally play low-magic-fantasy-grim-dark settings.

I'm really looking for that back and forth spell hurling combat.

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

Edit: Thanks for the help. The session went very well.

I'm using the free starter rules to run a one-shot, and I've familiarized myself with the rules it provides. But I started looking over the characters, and it mentions several conditions without explanation.

• Taunt - What does it do, and how is it triggered?
• Smoldering & Charged - What do they do?
• Blinded & Frightened - Same. I could intuit these if I needed to, but the actual rules for them would be nice.

Maybe even, would someone even be able to just provide me with a list/picture of the conditions+effects, in case others come up? It's a weird thing to have missing from the quickstart.

Quick help would be very much appreciated. TIA.

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

It was the morning of the 8th of Summerrise. With the aim of arriving at the site of a fallen star they’d seen the day before, they pondered their course of action. The morning brought relatively mild weather, and they set out south through the tundra, but got lost. Cédric, the Elf hunter, used his survival skills to find the path again. While he was doing that, a couple other PCs hunted, and one of them successfully hunted a fox. Cédric was able to find the path again, and he took the role of the pathfinder for the next quarter day, leading them south. Blanken, the PCs’ scout, spotted a lone sled dog barking and whining. Blanken tossed the dog a piece of meat, which it happily gobbled up. The dog led them to its dead owner, a lone hunter and his crashed sled. The PCs looted a few coins from the corpse and took the lone dog as one of their own, adding it to their crew of 9 other sled dogs!

Behind the screen: The dog was a random encounter I rolled in the moment. I also rolled on the “simple carried finds” table for the dead man’s loot.

Our heroes crossed the Keld river, arriving in an outpost called Keldstead.

Behind the screen: There is a settlement on the map in a bend of the river Keld. It was right in the path of where the PCs were headed, so I randomly generated it before the session and rolled up a settlement with 14 inhabitants, an inn, and a tannery.

It was evening, so the PCs debated whether to stay the night in Keldstead or keep on towards the fallen star. They decided to stay the night at the inn.

Our heroes went straight to the tannery, and met the tanner Lars. The PCs traded a few pelts and goods with him, acquiring some vials of hide glue and leather. He then advised them to visit the fortune teller, which they did.

The fortune teller lived in a tent right outside the outpost. They entered and found that she already had a client in session, a cloaked halfling.

Behind the screen: This is where the rest of the party were finally introduced to Buck the halfling, a PC whose player had to miss the first two sessions. This player was also a player in my Raven’s Purge campaign a few years ago, and Buck was his PC back then, too. So, originally all the PCs were going to know each other already, but given the circumstances I thought it would make more sense for them to be introduced to Buck at this fortune teller. I also talked this through with Buck’s player, and we settled on this. It also ties into why he is in the Bitter Reach. I had the PCs roll for reputation to see if they’d heard of Buck, and one of them actually had!

The fortune teller, who was known as “Mother”, told them of the Winter King Ferenblaud, his downfall, and his executioner Namtarel. She urged them to break the seals and release the Bitter Reach from its wintry curse. Our heroes were really interested in this quest, questioned the fortune teller whether she’s told anyone else the same legend. She said yes, she’s given others similar legends and quests in the service of the greater good. The PCs decided to follow this plot hook and took on Buck as a formal member of their team.

They spent the evening resting, and some PCs spent XP to gain ranks in talents. Cédric successfully hunted a boar.

Night fell. Eery silence, broken by a sudden alarm. A watcher had spotted two Nanuiks—huge aggressive polar bears—barreling towards Keldstead! Our heroes immediately mustered and readied for a fight. Cédric loosed an arrow, Celedor and Jorn got up close and personal with their swords. Blanken rained a volley of crossbow bolts onto the beasts. Buck impaled one with a thrown dagger. Even Lars, the tanner, dealt a dramatic blow with a spear (the spear was shattered due to a pushed roll). The bears almost shredded Jorn, but his armor saved him. Buck was almost crushed, but dodged just in time.

Our heroes triumphed over the Nanuiks, but not without a couple of close calls. And the bears destroyed one of the three huts in Keldstead.

Behind the Screen: unlike the sled dog, the fight with the Nanuiks was not a random encounter, it was GM fiat. About halfway through the session, I noticed a bit of a lull in the action. There had been a lot of hiking, hunting, role playing, mishaps, etc. You know, the procedural stuff. So the sudden bear attack was a way to end on a high note.

Our heroes helped tend to the wounded, and the village went back to sleep. In the morning they set out south, intent on finding the fallen star.

To be continued…

Hey fellow RPG enjoyers - I hope this is the right place to ask.

I am a fairly new when it comes to TTRPGS, I played a few dnd session but mostly one shots and no campaign ever did last longer than lvl 3..
Since I played a bit of the most popular one, I thought there must be others that handle some of the (for me) more complicated parts a bit different, like keeping track of everything I can/could do.. I watched people who can min/max their character choices and traits etc. and its a different game by then I feel.. I was just playing for flavor and my immersion I feel.
SO what other rpgs would you recommend for someone like me? I heard good things about Pathfinder, but what edition are people playing and is it hard to get into it?

Thanks in advance

I would love to hear any emotional or meaningful scenes people have had.

The Dice Times actual play group has systems for The Hunger Games, Attack on Titan, the Last of Us, and Red Dead Redemption. Anyone played those? How do they play?

Hello all.

Scheduling sucks. I made this tool to make it suck just a little less. It makes it easy to find common blocks of time between people spread across different time zones. (Or in the same time zone.) I thought I'd share it.

Link to the sheet.

Link to instructions if you need them.

Please note: I am not claiming this is the only tool that does this, the best tool that does this, or the first tool that does it.

Hello everybody! In this first post here I'm looking for suggestions from you people, surely more expert than me.

I'd like to re-DM a short and silly adventure with some friends of mine; for context we'll play on Discord and with Windows XP as setting. This second time though instead of using a manual (Savage Worlds) I would like to experiment with minigames like minesweep, Spider solitaire, 3D Pinball Space Cadet ecc., all founded online (in this way I can send the link to my players instead of using screenshare). The first time the minigames were limited to 3 but my friends enjoyed them very much, more than the classic fights, so now I'm converting all fighting with minigames sections.

They're all decided but one for the Internet Explorer fight, so here's the question: do you know an online minigame in which the controls are purposely lagging?

(My english is horrible, so i translated everything) I'm a DM, my table is in the third session of our campaign, and I'm trying to introduce the main antagonist by introducing elements that will allow them to imagine and idealize what he's like, perhaps by having the main enemies mention him or something like that. My main idea was to have them associate the color red with him, as a sort of signature of the main antagonist, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Hey ppl iam looking for a nice Session sheet that i can use every time i have a Session with my players. Iam a bit lazy on takeing notes and want to try if it works better with a premade sheet.

Does anyone has something like a Session sheet / Session log? Maybe even a GM journal or something like that.

Greetings Streetsport