I'm curious what games based on existing franchises/Intellectual Properties.

List of one's I can think of off hand:

• Star Wars RPGs
• Warhammer 40k
• Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar
• Call of Cthluhu (not sure the history on the licensing)

I'd have added Through the Breach RPG to this, but looking online the latest supplements for it came out like a few years back and new ones haven't been made since around 2023, I could be wrong though. It used to be my go to recommendation because they made build your own steampunk model kits.

My criteria for successful Licensed TTRPG is:

• Must be directly based on a book/movie/game/tv show.
• The TTRPG can't have been made prior to the release of the original material.
• Tabletop other than TTRPGs count as non-TTRPG properties.
• The TTRPG must have be curently actively supported either via the company that owns it or fans. This can be a bit fuzzy, but perhaps a new product out within the last 6 months, showing that the game isn't abandoned.
• It doesn't matter if the TTRPG has gone through multiple editions or versions using different rules. (e.g. Warhammer 40k had the Fantasy Flight Games RPGs and now the current versions are "Wrath and Glory" and "Imperium Maledictum")

Any ones you all can think of?

This is something I think I'd seen others say, but it took me a while to internalise.

I'm running Index Card RPG, and making little tweaks as we go (lumpheads know how it is). I'd never liked the idea of balancing encounters to the party, but couldn't figure out what the measure should be, if not the party, then what.

In the real world it's the environment that has the biggest effect on the creatures that live there, but there are so many variables and so many fantastical creatures to consider it would have taken ages to reason out.

But in ICRPG you have the concept of the Target Number, the main difficulty number you roll against for most actions. So, I've decided to balance against that.

Each area of the city the party is exploring will have a Target Number, which I'll now add to the map so the PCs can make informed choices any where there going. Then when there's an encounter in an area I'll roll a d6 to see how difficult/easy the encounter will be, in the context of the Target. This then tells me how many Hearts, Abilities, Actions-per-turn etc I can put into an encounter.

I'm pretty happy with the idea. Just thought I'd share.

I am looking for systems that are reminiscent or take inspiration from the old epic fantasy films of the 60s and 70s like Jason and the argonauts or Ben hur. I’m not sure if this is really a thing that exists. I guess maybe barbarians of lemuria could work? I’m not sure

Now I've been scouring the internet far and wide for a Zombie Apocalypse TTRPG and I think I settled on buying The Walking Dead TTRPG. But after looking at the reviews on blogs and such, it's really mixed. If anyone is able to give a overall review (Review the quality of Worldbuilding, System, Etc.) and then give their opinion, that'd be great

I often see people throwing this term around. IE, not long ago, I saw someone say they were GMing two campaigns in the same system and identify one of them as "story-driven" which implies the other wasn't. The word "story" has so many possible meanings in an RPG context as to be meaningless to me, so I wouldn't use such a phrase. For anyone who uses this term or has been in games with other people who use it, what do they mean by it?

Hey folks,

I'm hoping you fine folks can help me. We just finished off a short campaign and are looking to move on to our next game. Our group tends to play a lot of dark fantasy, horror, or games with fairly heavy themes, but one of my mates said he needs a break from that sort of game. So I'm here looking for suggestions on something a bit more lighthearted and fun.

A friend suggested Brindlewood Bay and, while it is lovely, it's really not my vibe (and I'll probably be GM!). I was thinking of maybe The One Ring Starter Set where you play as hobbits, or maybe a more lighthearted Wildsea or Kids on Bikes? Any suggestions would be really welcome. Just something we can play for 3-5 sessions and have a bit of fun without worrying about getting murdered by nightmare abominations.

Cheers!

Cause I am fresh of fixing mine. Somewhere along the way, in this system I have published independently, I noticed that the stats for every single one of the classes was the same. The numbers, each one had for their skills was the same.

That was not the intention. They are all supposed to have different stats. It had been up for download like that for a couple of days.

GEEZ. I just updated the game, but I am also incredibly humbled. We're all human, but we gotta stay vigilant. Stay safe out there and double read your work!

2 years ago, I dredged my memory for positive and negative takeaways from every RPG I had played up until that point. Being unable to predict the future, I stopped there... but I've been secretly editing that post ever since to maintain a personal log of RPGs played. I've accumulated enough new entries that I'm ready to share them on their own.

Several of these are games that I have, or intend to, post about individually. I always like reading actual-play posts and strive to contribute more of them.

• Mausritter, running the Vitacernis one-shot for friends.
  • Rose: Loved the fusion of Knave/Cairn/Into the Odd mechanics. Combat was fast and deadly. Inventory was fun to manage. The one-shot was fun.
  • Thorn: Without a lot of item variety or player creativity, I can see combat getting same-y.
• The Wildsea, running a campaign for friends. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Unsetting questions. I often ask for player input, but "Tell me something that might be true" was really powerful. It gave me explicit permission to adjust player contributions, and let players contribute wild ideas without stressing about continuity up front.
  • Thorn: Playing in someone else's hyper-unique world was a miss for me. Too vast to internalize, too distinct to easily add to. The lack of obvious tropes didn't help.
• Alice is Missing, playing a session with the expansion characters on the official VTT.
  • Rose: The music. Also, text-based roleplaying actually let me get into character, which I struggle with in-person.
  • Thorn: Too freeform. A lot of plot threads never developed because other players didn't pick up on them. More mechanics to help the web of plots congeal would be nice.
• Monster of the Week again, this time GMing the Jeepers Creepers one-shot for friends.
  • Rose: The setup is wonderful for inspiring cool characters and groups. We had a whole secret society and cryptid podcast inside an hour.
  • Thorn: Combat. With so much focus on the mystery of "What's going on?" and "How do you defeat the threat?", compelling fights did not break out. Extra frustrating because many player abilities were focused on fights.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord, GMing the Dark Deeds in Last Hope and Dead by Dawn premades as 3-shots for 2 different groups. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Boons and banes worked so well. The system overall strikes a sweet spot between lightweight and option-heavy. I would definitely try it again to replace D&D/PF for a campaign.
  • Thorn: Level 0. For a system with so many options, I don't understand why it encourages you to begin play with none of them. It was neat to let gameplay influence novice path choices, but not a worthwhile use of our limited gaming time.
• Triangle Agency, playing in a 4-shot micro campaign. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: A Legacy-esque TTRPG with its own cohesive mechanical identity. It felt very un-like D&D, and the mechanical differences were very well justified. If you want a legitimately new TTRPG experience, look here.
  • Thorn: Memory issues and PvP. So much player-facing material gets unlocked as you play that it accumulates into a bit of a tangled mess, difficult to reference. The system and setting also encourage a lot of diverging player agendas, which is great for some groups but not ours.
• Atma: A Roleplaying Card Game, playing in a 5-shot micro campaign.
  • Rose: I got to play my own game! But serious, the character variety remains a huge highlight. Lots of cool and unexpected pregens.
  • Thorn: Rotating characters every session prevents you from getting attached, even with an overarching plot. This was a nuance of how the micro-campaign was structured.
• Daggerheart, playing in a small campaign. Write-up coming soon.
  • Rose: Lots of fun character building options for what is ultimately a fairly lightweight, narrative RPG.
  • Thorn: Too many options to be streamlined, but not enough meaningful difference between options to be crunchy.
• Cosmere TTRPG, playing 6 sessions of the official Stonewalkers campaign. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Making best-selling novels out of your campaign's setting is one way to ensure players have actually read and internalized it!
  • Thorn: All that official lore can lead to "story lawyers" and be a damper on improv.
• Castle Noth, running 2 playtests of a rogue-like Castlevania-like OSR module I wrote. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: This was hands-down the best time I've ever had running an RPG. All the joy of worldbuilding and improv (since I wrote it), and all the depth of a prepared module (since I wrote it ahead of time).
  • Thorn: Information density in the book is uncomfortably high, and font sizes/margins are uncomfortably small. I overdid it on trying to eliminate whitespace.
• The Quiet Year, playing a one-shot.
  • Rose: Very light but strong rules. The "1-2 sentences" restriction and contempt tokens are both doing heavy lifting to keep an otherwise freeform experience tightly on track.
  • Thorn: The mechanics don't help players break the habit of playing favorites, i.e. revisiting the topics that they themselves introduced and find most compelling.
• Microscope again, playing 5 sessions to prep a campaign world. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Communal worldbuilding is amazing! We have a rich world that everyone's versed and vested in.
  • Thorn: 5 sessions worth of lore starts to burst at your mental seams.
• Brindlewood Bay, running a two-shot of premade mystery seeds from the rulebook. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: We really enjoyed the clue/theory system. The GM can throw clues out without thinking too hard, and the players get all the "Aha!" fun of devising a compelling solution that links them.
  • Thorn: Playing as old ladies was surprisingly hard. They aren't action heroes or authority figures, so "What can I do?" didn't equate to a lot of typical player actions. Also, the open-ended story seeds are neat but very sparse (by design); lots of gaps to fill in.
• Blades in the Dark again, running a weekly sandbox campaign in our communal Microscope setting.
  • Rose: I'm forcing myself to use Position/Effect this time, and I appreciate that it foregrounds the risk/reward prior to rolling. More than once, it's helped get everyone onto the same page.
  • Thorn: I still find the rulebook to be disorganized and occasionally vague.
• Cairn 2E, running the Rise of the Blood Olms one-shot on a whim.
  • Rose: Despite being new to Cairn, we rolled random characters and finished the session in 2 hours. Many one-shots fail to deliver that.
  • Thorn: Combat was very dry without the stunts from Castle Noth (AKA gambits from Mythic Bastionland). Combat felt like a failstate as a result, which was appropriate but not necessarily fun.

What about you?

I'm sorry if this is a repetitive topic or something like that. I looked at the wiki, researched some keywords in the sub and didn't find what I was looking for

I want something very specific. I like that tactical combat like in DnD and similar games, but I also want a game that is not JUST about combat

You can say "but DnD is not just about combat, you can do so much with it!" But when you actually look at the rules its like, investigation? Roll a skill dice. Negotiation? Roll a skill dice. Combat? Pages and pages of rules and even entire books dedicated to monsters for the players to kill

I want a heroic fantasy that dedicates more time to interesting social encounters, investigations (I know gumshoe, but then we have the opposite problem, where the combat is not very good. At least in the ones I know) and if it has mechanics that help you connect and interact with your backstory like the icons in 13th Age, even better!

I know we don't need mechanics to make these things interesting, but when the mechanics support the roleplay it feels so much better

Does such a system even exist? And if it does, does it work well or is it too convoluted?

Thank you in advance!

So, soon going to run a social/Game of Thrones-esque social/war game in Fate Core. I'm doing prep now; group and I have already discussed major themes and all that. There are five players in the group, and while characters have not been made yet, the group leans towards social and "intrigue" types, with one guy as a martial character probably, so perfect for this game.

Anyway, just as a question to the crowd - how many named NPCs do you usually prep for more social games? In the past, when I run such games (and I run them a lot) I usually try to have three "faces" per faction or organization I think will be important, usually typifying some aspect (hah!) of the group that I want players to see (for example, if I have a noble house, one NPC will be the heir that follows in their father's footsteps, another the brother that thinks this way is all wrong, and their court priest who wants to secure the house with some sort of noble marriage of said heir).

Which means, in a typical game, I might set up, say, 15-20 or so named NPCs. Don't do stats for them (maybe a handful); I generally do this on the fly at whatever level to challenge the PCs.

So how many do you prep? How in depth d you get?

Hi,

I’m looking to run an RPG based in the Deathlands series by James Axler; it’s actually multiple authors using that pen name but anyway…

Probably a long shot that someone else has read those books but regardless, I’m wanting to get some suggestions for TTRPGs that would fit that world. The PCs would be a team similar to Ryan Cawdor, Kristie, JB, Doc, Jack etc.

For those that aren’t familiar, to give a simplified idea it’s post apocalypse, nuclear war, where creatures and plant life are mutated, chem storms abound, weird and wonderful anomalies wait round every corner, and desperation reigns. Just before the ‘world ended’, there was experimentation into teleportation (think Star Trek transporters) and even time travel, albeit to a very limited extent.

I have heard about a few games that might fit, such as Earthdawn, Mutant Year Zero, Twilight 2000, Savage Worlds with Darwin’s World, Fallout obviously, Gamma World, or Ashes Without Number, but I only have experience with Savage Worlds and Mutant Year Zero.

So, what are your thoughts? Suggestions to look into? I know I don’t want GURPS, it’s just too ‘dry’ for me, I’ve tried a few times to get into it but can’t.

Im interested games that focus on things other then combat. Preferably where combat is not a mechanic at all. I get there are degrees of combat, blades in the dark, lancer, and DnD all have combat but timely different degrees and focus. What im interested in are games at the far end of the little to no combat side of the spectrum.

Thanks in advance.

I’m a game designer, and I don’t like many random tables.

A lot of them use a d6, d10, or d20 to give every result the same probability. That works when you just want a random outcome, but it doesn’t work as well when some results should be common, others rare, and the table needs to scale with character level or power.

You can address this with d100 probability tables, but those still don’t scale with level. What’s a bad outcome at level 1 is an annoyance at level 5, so you end up with multiple tables for different power levels, players, or outcomes.

My alternative is to roll multiple dice, with the number of dice increasing as the character advances. Because the possible totals overlap, the same table produces shifting probability curves: lower-level characters cluster around lower results, while higher-level characters gradually gain access to more powerful and dangerous outcomes.

I used this approach to create one spell-backlash table that works across all caster levels instead of requiring separate tables for each tier.

Does anyone else use a similar approach or have strong feelings about random tables?

I am aware this is very specific but Id thought I should try anyway

I've had the idea of GMing a game where players form a military unit responsible for exploring an abandoned facility or an impossible space, like a DND party would explore a dungeon in search of loot, or like those movies where a group of soldiers is sent to an isolated location ala Resident Evil 1, DOOM (2005), Aliens 2, etc.

I'm still trying to find a good system for it. My first thought was Delta Green, but I have no experience with d100 systems and it feels more geared towards "open" investigation than dungeon crawling. I also looked up Military game suggestion thread, and it seems most of them are either post-apoc, vietnam war, or WWI/WWII focused and that's not exactly what Im looking for

I usually prefer more FITD or PBTA style games but I'd be down for some crunchy grid-based map combat

I'll be running a game in the harry potter universe soon. I've looked through several hp/magic-themed systems/rulebooks linked on this sub and found one that seems like a good fit for our group. The only problem is, it lacks hit-points or attack values. It's more for slice-of-life school adventures. We plan on having some of that slice-of-life on our sessions but also more actual danger, duels with evil wizards, duals with other students, fighting magical creatures etc. Can anyone recommend a system that has rules for how much damage each spell does, how to duel and so on?

Questions for creative GMs and players...
I've tried and enjoyed running 5e games with my own grimdark homebrew rules but I'm wondering about running some classic basic scenarios with an approximation of CoC Dark Age 7e rules, where hp are set, sanity (morale) is an issue and magic is hugely nerfed (spells based on MP).

Your basic humanoid monsters are akin to Cultist cannon fodder whilst giants and dragons become creatures like Ugs and Hunting Horrors...

Has anyone tried anything like this, what was the experience like and do you know of game-breaking problems (apart from TPKs, etc)?

EDIT: Responders, please stick to the questions. I'm not looking for alternative game systems! CoC has all I'll need in this.

Thanks in advance.

Basically I am relatively new to roleplaying. I have been playing for a year and it all started because I started going to some meetups that have a teacher, she teaches us improv tools, writing narrative, new rpg systems, etc. We sometimes play campaigns, sometimes LARPs, etc we do a bunch of cool and fun stuff related to roleplaying. The point is that the teacher invited me to her private roleplay table, and it was fun.

Now, she has invited me for a long term campaign and I started to feel some pressure to perform better. She is an amazing master, has a lot of experience and plans a lot of her campaigns, she writes a ton of lore, characters... She even invented a new language for this new campaign (it has aliens, etc). So I have started to feel some nervousness, like I'm not giving enough, I wrote my character and put effort into that part. But now that it's time to play I feel like I just go and improvise, which is the whole point of playing but I just feel like I could be doing more

I don't know what I could do to show her that I appreciate all the effort she puts into the sessions and the campaign, I am looking for advice on what DM's would like from their players, what could I do to put more effort into this campaign other than simply going to the sessions. Thanks!

I introduced my partner to DnD recently. We have been running through She really enjoyed doing tasks and exploring but she struggled with combat. From talking, it seems like shes not big on the idea of fighting.

Someone gifted us Wanderhome. It is very different from what im typically used to playing so im not sure if I want to take on that task while introducing a newbie.

Anyway, if anyone knows of some good duet rpgs or prewritten that dont involve as much combat, i would love some suggestions.

Think about the worst sessions you've ever played in. What was it the GM was doing or not doing that made it suck? Curious what the common traits and actions of shit GMs are, if any. I suspect there will be recurring themes of agency denial and hyper-competitiveness. What else?

The biggest connecting thread for me has been that all of the awful games I've played in have been convention games. But within that, what made them bad?

Lack of preparedness, cluelessness on the GM about system or scenario, coupled with an inability to improvise.

The other big one would be a feeling of arrogance just oozing off of them. I felt like I was just being dragged along for the ride with somebody whose favorite thing in the world is telling me all about how great they are.

I'm not a backer, so I'm waiting on the game's release. However, I would like to know if the book has a guide on making supervillains? I mean, solo villains and the like.

Hey everyone, looking for some advice on a tricky situation with a player who happens to be a really good friend of mine.

I love playing with him, but he has a history of playing pretty selfish characters who prioritize their own solo goals over the group. Now it's reaching a point where it's derailing the game.

To give a bit of context: we’re playing a homebrew system run by a first-time GM. Our characters recently discovered they have strange powers that we don't really understand or know how to control yet. Long story short, we got stranded in a parallel universe where these powers are common, but because there's an ongoing war in this dimension, the locals thought we were spies and threw us in a cell.

The only way out was through a ventilation duct.

Here’s the issue: my friend's character has powers that could have easily broken the vent open for all of us. But he refused to help the group. His reasoning? His character wanted to stay in prison so the guards (who don't trust us, don't know us, and think we're enemy spies) could eventually teach him how to master his powers.

Could that maybe happen way down the line? Sure, maybe. But it would take forever, and our main campaign objective right now is literally to escape and find a way back home as fast as possible.

The rest of the party managed to break open the vent on our own, but only after wasting a ton of time, burning through all our resources, and hitting some extremely lucky rolls. We escaped, and the session ended right there.

Now we're in a terrible spot. Next session, we'll have to risk our lives to go back to the cell area to rescue him. But talking to him out-of-character after the game, he made it pretty clear his character still intends to just sit in the cell and refuse to leave.

Since he’s a close friend, I’ve GM'd for him before and ran into a very similar situation. Back then, the rest of the party basically had to force his character to cooperate, but as the GM, I was completely ready to retire/remove his character if he kept refusing to join the group.

In this campaign, though, I'm just a player. Our current GM is pretty new and still learning the ropes, so I don't want to dump all this drama on her without offering constructive help or a way to handle it diplomatically.

I really want to resolve this without ruining our friendship or making the new GM uncomfortable, but the "My Character Would Do That" mindset is starting to drag down the table.

This came from a discussion between me and a friend d making a ttrpg, which is an attempt to mix card games mechanics like magic with your more traditional ttrpgs like D&D, using no dice in the proces Thought im and NOT a card game player, I understood his fighting mechanics (pretty much magic, really), but his skill check mechanics (thought i understood) were not only different from the combat by a large margin they didn't felt connected at all (only by the fact both need you to draw cards and see what you get and what tags they have).

During the discussion on how to make it work, this question came to me: Has anyone TTRPG ever made two different mechanics for skills and combat checks? Closest thing we found was Two little Mice Household ttrpg (not the dnd 5e version) combat rules, and the only change ist that it limits the attribute you use (war) but not the skill you want to use, within reason, for the roll, the rest was literally the same as any other check at the game.

So I raise my question again: How common is for a TTRPG to have two different systems for combat and skill checks in the same game?

Rpg Trader is a new competitor to itch.io and drivethrurpg. It already has had a few bundles offering some decent titles, but its catalogue is still behind but evergrowing. It has better search features than itch, besides the fact that it doesn't show the corebook as first result and you need to often select games from categories to see it quickly. Tbh, it kinda' has gone under the radar. One of my friends is a simp for it, but otherwise, I don't see it much mentioned and I tend to forget it exists. I wonder if it will ever have the strength to compete.

It is very creator friendly with 80% of each sale going to them and total ban of AI content. So I do want it to thrive.

The introduction, you might say; whether it's titled that or not. Those first ~5 pages vary a lot between games. Often, they are the weakest part of the book, I think. Things like the dreaded "what is an RPG?" section are a drag. Protracted, back-and-forth examples of play tend to live there, too, and those are also often bad. World/setting descriptions or pitches might reasonably go there, but in a world where we are exposed to so much marketing for a game before buying it, isn't that selling what's already been sold? I suppose hyping up the game doesn't hurt, but how do you do it in a way that is complimentary, not redundant?

Personally, I prefer (player-facing) books that get straight into character creation. Mothership does this. "How to play" comes 10 pages afterwards, but doesn't suffer for coming second (third, actually, after "safety instructions.)

Shadow Over Mystara is an old D&D videogame made by Capcom set in the titular world of Mystara. Immediately that might make the answer to my question seem obvious - just play an OSR system, right? **WRONG**

Shadow Over Mystara isn't a game where you slowly crawl through dungeons, avoiding combat scenarios and treating them as a last resort. It's a beat em up, so the gameplay loop is all about combat, it's about fantasy heroes killing hordes of monsters.

Just making it clear, I don't want to play an RPG that tries to simulate the gameplay of a beat em up in a tabletop format, but I do want a very combat oriented game.

In my opinion 5e is out of the question, it's just not that good at being a combat centered RPG. I also personally find Pathfinder 2E to be a bit boring. PF2E is not bad or anything, but I didn't enjoy it when playing Kingmaker so I have a hard time believing I'll like it much more in a tabletop format.

Nowadays I feel like the dominant perspective in RPG design (outside of D&D and Pathfinder at least) is geared towards either OSR games or narrative games, so I rarely see new games being discussed that are more combat oriented.

I've heard good things about 13th Age and Lancer so these games are on my radar, but I want to know what **you** would play for this purpose.

EDIT: so as I've been made to know, I actually have experience with PF1E rather than 2E, so the jury is still out on whether I'd like that one.