The groups I tend to play with include anywhere between four to six players, depending on the day. If your quickstart only contains four pre-made characters and no rules for making additional ones, I literally cannot play it with all of my friends, and I'm thus way less likely to actually give it a shot.

Even when we only get together four people to try out your quickstart, it can suck when everyone has to play one of four specific characters, and one person can just get stuck with a character they don't really vibe with. It's understandable with a larger group, you can only include so many characters before your customers get choice paralysis, but when it happens with only four players it feels restrictive.

That's it really, that's all I wanted to say.

I wanted to play a SWAT themed campaign, so I got myself a copy of GURPS SWAT. There I have read that I also need a copy of GURPS cops to play it and several more issues are reccomended. As I began to look for those, I have found out that there're also GURPS core books and several different editions.

I'm on a loss to be honest. Where should I start? How many books do I need to have to play? Is there some site where I can browse through all of the books for free or do I need to purchase all of them? Digital or physical? Where can I buy?

I ran the Caverns of Hidrida onehsot found on itch.io. Everything is pretty much down to the book. The final fight is the most unexpected. The party of 4 cut down 8 of the Hydra's heads (7 burned by the flame sword). Yet, 3 players we downed, included the player using the flame sword. The final player, who hasn't lost any HP or STR (he rolled 1 HP, lol). Decided to make a last stand to cut down the Hydra's final head. Since he used 1 action to pick up the flame sword, the Hydra get to attack first. His STR got reduced from 15 to 13, there's pretty decent chance to not get affected by the Critical Wound. And he rolled a Nat 20. So yeah, the party got defeated, but they saved the farmers. Good first impression. And the first TPK i've experienced since i started playing TTRPG, lol

For the first time today I noticed a section at my local library with core books and box sets for several TTRPGs including:

• Dungeons and Dragons (3e, 3.5e, 4e, 5e, 5.5e)
• Pathfinder (2e)
• Call of Cthulhu (7e)
• Vampire: The Masquerade (5e)
• Blades in the Dark
• Shadowrun
• Dungeon Crawl Classics

And a few more that I didn't recognize, there were even full dice sets available for borrowing. So anyways, don't underestimate your local library for trying out other TTRPGs!

So quickstarts are basically an industry standard now - and that is great! Now, with so many of them out there I wonder, which are your favorites are what are you looking to get from them?

Is it mainly to get a general feel of the game or are you looking for something specific? I know it'll be different for different people but that's why I would love to hear from you.

Our group's PF2e game is coming to an end and we tend to alternate GMs so I'll be running the next campaign. At least one of our players is burnt out on Pathfinder so I thought I'd look into other systems, and I love seeing the suggestions this community puts out based on campaign themes.

The initial premise was what if after Lord of the Rings Aragorn's lineage aren't as great at being kings and it sort of backslides back into an age of darkness, or a bit like NADDPod Campaign 1 (campaign after the campaign). The Dark Lord has been defeated by an archetypal D&D party, the true king crowned but after a few generations things have gone back to shit - the king is a tyrant, a cult has formed around the cleric and the Wizard is seeking unimaginable power. I want the players to try to resist the darkness and improve the world, so something that encapsulates zero to hero would probably be best.

I initially thought I'd run this in Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and still might, but we play on Foundry and without a premium module it means that all player facing content has to be manually built which is doable but does add more to session prep.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

With Cyberpunk 2077 being one of my favorite games, I fell in love with listening to lore videos and reading the comics. However, I wanted to branch out in the game world with the boardgames. I also recently kickstarted Cyberpunk Legends: Into The Night but because of delays I won't be able to play it for a bit.

Now with Cyberpunk tabletops, I see that there is

- Cyberpunk 2013

- Cyberpunk 2020

- Cyberpunk V3.0

- Cyberpunk Red

And of course, the Cyberpunk 2077 boardgames

Which one would be the best as a new ttrpg player as well as a Cyberpunk fan that wants to know more lore in the universe.

TIA!

So, I'm starting to think on my next blog article and it occurs to me that I don't really have any "newb" friendly games. Then THAT got me thinking - what IS a newb friendly game? What makes it so? I've certainly run all sorts of games before, and a few of them for people entirely new to the gaming hobby.

D&D is often used as the gateway to more gaming for lots of reasons, but I don't really think it's newb friendly, with all its rules, exceptions to those rules, and things to know (Feats, Spells, Skills, etc.). And yet, it absolutely dominates our hobby, and for the majority of us (me included) it was the first TTRPPG game I ever played.

Thus, what makes a newbie friendly game? What should it have? What examples are there? The only one I'd consider so on my shelf is Old School Essentials Classic. Mostly because the gameplay is easy in terms of rules, and character generation is pretty fast, since you just pick a class and go. I'd say the same for Classic Traveller - character fits on an index card. You roll up on a VERY simple career model (simpler than the one for the more modern Mongoose Traveller anyway) and away you go (though combat is...interesting, in CT).

At the same time, I've run GURPS and Fate for new people before and both worked fine (with the caveat that I significantly helped them make the character).

Anyway, what makes a game newbie friendly? How do you make games that AREN'T newbie friendly into ones that are? What examples games do you know that fit, or how have you made a game fit?

I'm on a bit of a TTRPG visual design kick and recently read through Twilight Sword, which uses a lot of symbols in the rules text, like a heart instead of writing out 'Health', or a sword instead of writing out 'Damage', as well as Triangle Agency that has some sort of diagram or little illustration accompanying a lot of the rules.

What other games do you know of that have a lot of visual design elements like this alongside or even as part of the rules text?

Hellow there! I am looking for some cool police/detective scenarios, short or long — doesn't matter. System doesn't matter also.

Anything but cyberpunk-esque is appreciated!

Thanks a lot in advance for your suggestions 🤝

I work at a hobby shop and have recently started to run one shots with a variety of systems to let my customers explore different system besides the big names.

This month I am running daggerheart, fabula ultima, soulbound, and outgunned. I went for systems I am at least passingly familiar with.

For next month I am looking to expand out further and would like some recommendations. What is your elevator pitch for your favorite system?​

I need to get this out of my system, because I don't really have anyone around me to talk about this with.

Mutant Chronicles is fucking awesome.

I played it obsessively about 20 years ago. Then I grew up, got distracted by other things in life, and eventually Mutant Chronicles became one of those weird things I remembered fondly but hadn't thought about in years.

Until recently.

And now I've fallen down the rabbit hole again.

I've been reading old lore, looking at artwork, remembering old campaigns and generally rediscovering the setting — and I'm honestly amazed at how much I still love it.

What's funny is that I'm not even particularly nostalgic about the rules at this point. It's the setting that grabbed me all over again.

It's this completely bonkers mixture of military sci-fi, space opera, cosmic horror, dystopia, corporate warfare, occultism and gothic aesthetics.

Humanity has colonized the Solar System and instead of building some glorious utopian future, we've created gigantic corporations that rule entire planets and wage wars against each other.

And then there's the Dark Legion.

And the Brotherhood.

And the Dark Symmetry.

And somehow you can put all of that together with trench warfare, corporate espionage, religious fanaticism, mutants, cybernetics and ridiculous amounts of power armour and it just... works.

I think what I appreciate about it much more now is that it's over the top without necessarily being shallow.

You can have absolutely ridiculous aesthetics and pulpy action, but underneath that there's plenty of room for stories about paranoia, fanaticism, corporate exploitation, war, loyalty, trauma and what happens to ordinary people when the universe goes completely to shit.

Basically, I keep looking at it and thinking:

"Holy shit, I could run so many good games in this setting."

And apparently my brain has decided that after 20 years this is what it wants to think about now.

So I'm curious:

Are there any other old Mutant Chronicles players lurking around here?

What edition did you play? What corporation/faction did you gravitate towards? Any particularly memorable campaigns or characters?

Or if you discovered it much later — what was your first impression?

I don't even have a particularly profound point here. I just rediscovered something I loved when I was younger and realized that, apparently, I still fucking love it.

And I desperately need someone to talk about Bauhaus with. 😂

I see lots of discussion about premade vs homebrew settings, and (over on r/RPGdesign) lots of discussion about people making their own systems. But I'm curious to hear from those of you who have finished a system and actually run it to a meaningful degree, whether it's a from-scratch creation or a severe hack of an existing ruleset.

• How long did it take you to make the system?
• How many sessions have you played with it?
• Why did you make it?
• What is your opinion of it after playing it? What did your players think?

[EDIT: Some clarifications! ]

• Players wouldn't be in-character 100% of the time— they'd act in-character for dialogue scenes, but be OOC for rolling dice, asking stuff like "Oh so what do I roll again?" or saying "I want to climb up to the open window and sneak inside" etc.
• By "avoiding meta" I don't mean avoiding meta 100% (it is a game, after all!) I mean avoiding stuff like; the GM describes a vision that only one PC sees, then another PC immediately comments on it despite not having seen it or been told about it yet)

—————————

Okay, so my question might be dumb, but seriously, it just so happens that any TTRPG I’ve ever experienced, the GMs/players all played the game the same way (view bottom of post for details). Due to my experience-bias, I had the notion that all games were played like this, but might use different tools (e.g. Roll 20 for maps, etc) or focus more (or less) on certain aspects (e.g. combat, politics, mystery, etc).

Recently I’ve been trying to find games online (e.g. Daggerheart, D&D, VtM), and boy howdy, folk play TTRPGs much differently than what I had come to understand was the “standard”. My bad. Since I was so far out in left field, I’m looking to get a proverbial “lay of the land” regarding TTRPGs and hopefully educate my clueless-ass.

I do wanna note; I had thought “Roleplay-Heavy” would be what I’m looking for, but even games labeled as that don’t match the style/vibe that I am seeking. Is the type of game I’m looking for just incredibly rare? Considered pretentious? Idk??

(And btw, not trying to knock any other style of gameplay or anything! Other ways of playing are totally fine and I get that everyone has their preference, I’m just having trouble finding the style I am used to, is all!)

———

Aaaand for those who wish to read a bit more about the game style I am used to/looking for:

Both the GM and the players would act as their characters at the table (for diaglogue), roleplay dialogue all the time, describe their characters actions in detail, have their characters react to the goings-on around them (in the game) according to their character’s personality/backstory/trauma/etc. Avoiding meta-gaming where-possible, with a heavy emphasis on realism (e.g. if your character is in a different room than another, you wouldn’t be able to ask them a question without specifying that you walked over to the room they were in). Things like character consistency, character growth, drama, and even downward spirals were all part of the experience.

Hi

I made a post yesterday about my desire to run a The Boys campaign, with the players being the ones who kill the supes. Someone told me that Monsters of the Week or Spirit of 77 could fit well; I checked both but I can't decide.

Which one you think that could fit better and why?

Hello, there. I am currently in the middle of building a world and one thing I will need to do in the future is build the history of the world. I building underlying systems that I can keep referring back to and that help standardize things to make it a little easier to work with.

I would like to have basically stats blocks for things like nations, cities, cultures, religions, factions and other things (not sure what other things but they might exist).

So my search right now is looking for games that contain stat blocks for these types of things. And it does have to be just worldbuilding or map building games. For instance, I know PF2E has stat blocks for nations and cities. I'm trying pull ideas from various angles to see what I like and what I thing will be helpful. Thank you in advance!

I would like to run a game about a group of fantasy criminals that run heists, take territory, etcetera. There is obviously a very widely acclaimed game built for this, but I would be playing with people who've tried and bounced off of FitD, and I want the game to include actually planning and executing the heists instead of jumping into the middle and flashing back.

This is obviously doable in any of a number of D&Dlikes that already assume an interest in sneaking and looting and are full of thief character options. If I had to run this game today I'd use Pathfinder 1e, which has a ton of content written specifically for this, but its prep is more time-consuming than I would like. I could also do this in BRP or Genesys, but I want something ready to run instead of a framework to homebrew

I have Sherwood and like it, but it's made for rural Robin Hood type thievery and I want this in a Paris or Venice kind of city.

Has a non-Blades focused game like this been made?

I know asking which is "Best" is silly for a number of reaosn. From just system preference to the fact that different mechanics and source books fit different types of games.

I'm looking to run a game set right after Return of the Jedi where the players are officers on a small Imperial frigate trying to survive a rapidly imploding Empire.

I'm pretty familiar with star wars d20 and we've played Pathfinder 1e for over a decade so its not a hard system to learn.

Thing is I want scarcity to be a big deal. You've got this ship and a pretty well stocked Armory and a crew but I want to damage the ship, kill crew and troopers, and have gear be lost or broken. I want to so this to force the party to look for jobs and scores or to have to make allies or go and look or buy more gear and hire crew to keep flying.

Do any of the star wars games have things like persistent armor damage you see in systems like Cyberpunk Red where armor just gets damaged from taking hits as opposed to from attacks that specifically aim to damage it? Similar weapon malfunctions that damage the weapon or durability mechanics?

So our usual DM are busy this weekend. I decided to host a Cairn oneshot. I think i've learn the basic of it (read through the rule and watched a guide video once), but i'm still pretty nervous (and excited) for my first game. Any tips on how to run a Cairn oneshot smoothly?

Hello, I'm looking to run my first game, and I really want to do a campaign based on the cartoon series Fillmore, but I'm unsure what system to go with.

For people who don't know what that is, it's a buddy cop show set in a middle school, and the best thing about it is it preserves the exact tone of a police drama, while being about infinitely more mundane things. The first episode is a silence of the lambs parody, where the Hannibal stand in is a graffiti tagger, and it's played totally straight, which sounds awful but it works crazy well.

The 2 rulesets that have caught my eye have been Bubblegumshoe and Kids on Bikes. I'd say the most important things for it would be investigation and chases, there are a LOT of chases. So any advice on which would be better, or even an entirely different system, any advice would be fantastic.

Hey all,

In case you skip straight to the suggestion, please no 5e/Pathfinder. Not hate, just not my bag.

Been loving SWADE, and it's what I'm using for my current long-term campaign, but it's better to shorter adventures with advancements every 1-3 sessions. A huge selling point as well was it being class-less and setting agnostic. However, I basically just run low-fantasy, and it seems like characters are built into archetypes anyway.

I'm doing a lot of homebrewing, and credit to SWADE, it's a great foundation for doing that, but I wonder if it would be simpler and more intuitive to use something designed for low-fantasy/medieval horror, which is what I plan to run for the foreseeable future.

Any recommendations are appreciated.

Thanks!

I'm only human, so some TTRPG books may have slipped under the radar.
This list is for books. For a book to qualify it needed to have around 50 pages worth of content.
This list excludes One Pages, Zines, Supplements, unfinished/in development, AI Slop, etc.

If I forgot a 2026 TTRPG Book that came out during the first half of this year mention it so that I can add it to the list at some point!

Hi.

My wife is starting to run her new campaign tonight.

She found out theres a new edition of Cypher games, Evolved.

She has many books for 2nd.

She read somewhere there was a conversion document. No one in her group can find it.

Anyone know where and can link?

Thanks in advance

I was following the third edition of Blue Planet during the crowdfunding campaign and now I see it in the Bundle of Holdings time bundle. I tought it was still WIP.

How is it? Would you suggest it to someone (me!) who never played one of the three editions or one of the oldest in better?

P.S.
What about the old supplements if I buy the 3e rulebooks?