This community is for meaningful discussions of tabletop/pen & paper RPGs
Rules (wip):
Some of my plan
Run a Mecha campaign, still not sure on the game, currently reading beam saber, which looks quite heavy for a "rule-light" game
Play a heroic fantasy larp, Since covid I've been more in high immersion parlour game
Find a seat at a World of Darkness table
I haven't played it yet but Girl by Moonlight is a forged in the dark game that has a space-mecha setting. Could be worth checking out.
Girl by Moonlight's space mecha setting isn't much about mecha fighting, it's more about politics in an enclosed space (I was a playtester and have run a pretty number of games between all the playsets there was).
Beam Saber is more about mecha fighting, and it uses the same engine
Neat, I'll have to look into Beam Saber as well!
Have you been listening to the Glass Cannon's Blood of the Wild actual play of QftFF? It just finished book one and was good fun I thought!
I didn't. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll have a listen.
It's subscriber only but you could just sub for 1 month and the harvest all the legacy content. Their best stuff is blades and delta green but the majority of that is free to download anyway
I think they get the PF2e rules pretty wrong in places but it's a good listen anyway
My goal for the year is to get my game published, as well as find more non-D&D folks in my area. I find too many that only know that one game, and I want to find more who knows more.
I am from Europe and it was really a surprise during the WotC/Hasbro's fuck up to discover that for a lot of people in the US, DnD and TTRPG are co considered to be the same thing.
WotC/Hasbro did so much marketing in the wake of Stranger Things and Critical Role to bring in new players, but they never got a chance to see what else is on the market. And there are so many 5e clones and hacks that it's hard to break through the noise with some people.
@phase @psion1369 Some of the issue is simply that a lot of people don't have the slightest idea that D&D is a single example in a larger category called TTRPGs.
For most people outside the hobby, "TTRPG" draws a blank stare, and "RPG" conjures thoughts of video games. "Like D&D" gets some superficial comprehension.
And then there are the people who drive the rest of us nuts calling *ANY* TTRPG "D&D", whether it bears any resemblance or not...
I heard someone if France saying that DnD has nearly 90% of the market in the US while only 40%-50% in France. Fantasy still has 70%.
I really need to buckle down and play through BG3 though I'm pretty stoked for Dragon Dogma 2 in early 2024!
Not quite the right kind of RPGs for this community but exciting nonetheless!
Definitely running more games since there are still a ton of people that need to be welcomed to the hobby. I'd also like to start running character workshops. That's where I feel I can make an impact.
Going to finish off my Pathfinder sandbox campaign and get into space RPGs. Anyone got any recommendations?
If you don't mind something more OSR, Stars Without Number is a good sandbox space game. I've played it a couple of times and enjoyed it.
get into space RPGs. Anyone got any recommendations?
I played a lot of Fading Suns at the start of the century, we're closer from Dune/Babylon 5 than from Star wars or Star treck in term of concept. The game isn't new (well there was a 4E released recently), and Is a game from the late 90's whose authors worked on Werewolf the Apocalypse this simple sentence tells a lot about the game (Faction who hate each other, imminent doom and more) if it's your stuff go for it.
I played a couple of one shots of Alien and Coriolis, worked fine but I don't know enough the game to have a hard advise on it
and as I said, I plan a Mecha campaign, Lancer seems to combat/crunch heavy so I plan to try Beam saber soon
I never read why the suns are fading. But I found a potential hard-scidence explanation in Project Hail Mary (I haven't finished it yet).
Unrelated question but for my culture
Set in the near future, it centers on junior high (middle) school-teacher
Is the Junior-High / Middle difference a regional split ? Or a administrative/legal jargon versus everyday's dialect ? thing ?
@Ziggurat @phase @rpg “Junior high” is a school with US grades 7-9. “Middle school” is a school with US grades 6-8. School grade divisions have changed over the last 30 years in the US due to population changes mostly. Middle School is the more recent division of grades. Some schools are even going to an “international jr/sr high school” format of US grades 7-12 which is more akin to gymnasiums, “high schools”, in Austria and Germany.
Project Hail Mary? The hero is a former researcher and a junior/middle school teacher. It is used in the fiction as an excuse to make science understandable. I understand this level of science so I am biased but I think it is good enough.
Blades is excellent. Would highly recommend.
I want to try See of Dead Men but I need first to clarify how the factions have to be handled by the GM off session/during downtimes.
I think I'm going to leave my Friday group. I wrote a long post but it was too long and detailed. The tldr is one of the players kind of sucks (nice, but sucks), and one wants to play a game and style I don't.
My main goal is to GM again! I haven't done that in too long. Step one is to just pick a game already. I think I've narrowed it down to three options:
Something OSR, probably OSE (or Dolmenwood, when I get it).
Pathfinder 2e, especially with the new update coming out.
Burning Wheel. It's a White Whale of mine—my favorite game I've never played, despite owning for over a decade.
Too many games, not enough time!
I wish there was enough time.
We recently started playing Torg Eternity (something one of my players had wanted do for a long time), and we’ll stick with that for a bit. But, I am also itching to do some world building of my own and use either the new gold book edition of BRP or the recently released Dragonbane. Annnnnd the entire new Enemy Within is burning a hole on my bookshelf…
Chaosium will release The Lunar Way in March and the pull of high-quality Glorantha material will certainly be felt…
There simply aren’t enough weekends.
EDIT: Corrected spelling on Torg Eternity, although, damn, I think I am going to start calling our campaign "Torn Eternity".
We're on hiatus for about a month while the DM for our 5e game is in India. He's also a player in my PTU (Pokemon Tabletop United) game. For PTU, we're only a couple sessions in. My players are exploring a secret underground mushroom forest. In a few sessions, they should be ready to meet the fairy ruler of this hidden land, the legendary Pokemon Diancie, who will task them to clear a dungeon, and defeat a Mimikyu that is trying to steal her power. Afterward, Diancie will be introducing the main plot of the game, which is that players can become champions of the gods (the legendary Pokemon) by impressing them, and be granted powers to help them complete their quest to journey to the end of the world.
That'll be the end of Act 1, or maybe technically the prologue, but it feels weird calling it that when it's going to be like 10 sessions, and then they'll emerge in the untamed wilderness to embark on their journey
That's also when I'll be able to have guest characters join. One of my players recently introduced to a friend of his that is a huge Pokemon nerd, and we really hit it off. I can't have a fifth player, because 4 trainers with 6 Pokemon each is already a lot for a TTRPG, so he's going to be a recurring guest every so often
Lots on this year for games I play in. So plans are to continue: WFRP: The Enemy Within - we are two years in and finishing up Death on the Reik at the moment. Also playing Pirates of Drinax for Traveller, we have been playing for over a year. A different group is planning to play Deepnight Revelation once we finish up current campaign. Get as much Call of Cthulhu as much as I can. Currently playing Berlin: The Wicked City. Finish up colonial marines Alien campaign and beg the GM to run the new colonists campaign out.
I personally GM Delta Green, I plan to run God's Teeth. I would also like to have a go at running Blade Runner, as I have played the two case files available and they are really good.
I would like to play more Twilight 2000 and Scum and Villainy.
I haven’t played anything regularly in a few years. My board game group is finishing up an Imperial Assault campaign and there’s been talk of maybe doing RPGs next (though lord knows I have no shortage of board games that I have bought but not yet played). Would love to run Blades in the Dark, Mothership or maybe something OSR. I think all those could be good fits for our group.
Finishing RotRl in PF1 (my first campaign gm'd) and getting as far as possible in Tyrants Grasp (PC). Even though I'm not a huge fan of PF2 I might see about GMing some society games at a local shop. I've just been playing online since 2020, and I kinda want to roll some real dice. I am also planning to continue collecting mech ttrpgs with the hope that I'll eventually get a group that wants to play one.
We are in the last few weeks of our five year 5e campaign, which is pretty emotional. We'll play something else next, but unclear what.
I played a few sessions of Humblewood and Odyssey of the Dragon Lords - might pick those back up.
Odyssey is pretty lackluster after a certain point (authors really overdid selling their names on the cover, while the actual adventure is... well, a little better than WotC ones). But at least it has a brilliant active community around it on Discord, so should you run it, you'll have tons of support from fellow DMs.
I had two gaming groups basically fall apart this year that's ending. I think I can revive one if I replace a problem player. The other should have enough people to schedule something, and yet it hasn't worked out the entire year. I'd like to try to revive one or both if I could.
Also, my goal is to play a game in general. Don't care if it's DnD or whatever. I'll probably get into online gaming just to be able to find a group, or maybe start hitting up my local FLGS. I prefer with friends, but I just miss the hobby right now.
Other goal is to get through and finish reading the non-DnD game books I have, even if I don't get a chance to play them, including Blades in the Dark, PF2E, and the Avatar PBTA game.
Well, I have just finished an elite dangerous table top game in person, but for the past several months I have been preparing a pathfinder 2 campaign with a homebrew setting. I have 7 players ready, session zero Is next week. I'm a bit terrified but also excited because this is by far the most I have put into a campaign.
My first game in 2024 is tomorrow, and we're finally playing a oneshot of 13th Age. I wanted to check this game out for so long, and it finally happens. I won't run a campaign (no time for another game with statblocks and maps), though.
Second plan is to finish our Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign. We're getting closer to the 'canonical' ending with 30 sessions behind, but I also wanted to run additional post-ending content, so I feel like we're here for another half a year or so.
Third plan is to completely and utterly stop running campaigns on 5e, saving it only for the paid (and very expensive) games for people who're willing to pay for the brand, basically. I'm tired of prepping it, and I'm tired of WotC's shenanigans and bad book quality.
Fourth is to finish our Forged in the Dark game, working title Edge of the Blade. It's a basic Pondsmith-like cyberpunk game without any shenanigans which is somehow still not present on the market, except for the new release of CBR+PNK which I've yet to check out (but the one-shot edition was brilliant). Every FitD cyberpunk I saw were either weird or unfinished, or, most often, both.
Fifth is making my paid GMing portfolio. Sixth is to run my paid GMing service to connect good hosts and new players, but that two is yet to come.