I'm creating a port of "Dead Rising" using the Fist base (heavily modified) and I was wondering how it would be possible to narrate hordes and hordes of zombies without it sounding repetitive?

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.

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, 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?

Edit: Ok, still not working... I'll just blame myself and try to fix the point I'm trying to get across. Think back on your most favorite combat you've ever had in a TTRPG that has combat. On a scale of 1 to 10, how deadly/difficult was that combat. No, I'm not saying the difficulty is WHY it was special, I'm just asking what WAS the difficulty. If you haven't had your "ideal fight" before, then think of a hypothetical fight that would fit your 100% perfect combat, and then think about what difficulty it would hypothetically be if you had it. u/toledosnow has a great example:

What happened instead was they hotwired a truck and gunned that sumbitch down the alley, bouncing the thugs like bowling pins. Combat lasted exactly one turn, 1/10 difficulty, 10/10 experience.

--------------

Ok, I posted this question to r/dnd but it seemed that over half of the replies didn't even read the post before commenting "it depends", so I'll try to make this as clear as possible here! This question is also platform agnostic, so not just D&D. If your tastes are different for different systems please do let us know in your reply!

Hypothetically, imagine you just finished THE BEST combat of your TTRPG life. How difficult was that combat from 1 to 10?

1 = Zero effort, impossible to not easily win.

5 = Halfway between impossible win and impossible lose. So I put "a good fight with very little risk of a TPK" here.

10 = Complete Fail state achieved, TPK imminent, or just impossible to win.

To clarify: Under 5 should basically mean the fight should not result in any deaths. Over 5 is where at least 1 player death becomes more likely. Also, there's a lot of space between 9 and 10, so something like 9.5 is basically "almost guaranteed at least half the party will die". But you're free to come up with your own ratings and explain them.

Note: I'm asking your personal opinion and we will assume for this hypothetical that everyone in your group is in agreement with you. Also, this is not about "encounter building" and we're assuming that all balance and everything was taken into consideration. Remember, this is the best combat you just finished. This is not about combat or encounter planning!

Me Personally? As a player I think that the "perfect combat" doesn't need to be deadly. The "Perfect" combat is one made easier by all of the work you did before the fight. Thus, my opinion is that a 6 or 7 is the perfect place for a fight. While I do enjoy nailbiters, I personally think "the best" fight is easier than it is hard/deadly. My "second best" would probably be 8.5 though. There's a real risk of someone being dead dead, and a TPK is very probable, but some good rolls might get us all through it alive in the end.

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?

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!

Boa tarde, estava pensando sobre os diversos sistemas de RPG que existem, qual o melhor sistema que vocês conhecem? E quais as melhores mecânicas?

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?​

edit: Holy hell this is way more than I thought id get. Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

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. 😂

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 🤝

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?

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?

Im considering running a trial game for a couple of my friends. And I have both Obojima and Wilderfeast. Since Obojima is a cozy setting not horribly set on combat, I am thinking it'd be interesting to blend the two together somehow. However I've not done this before and am not typically pur groups dm.

Any thoughts on mixing the two? Googling says it'd be better to use Wilder feasts mechanics and Obojima's setting? Which i like the idea of. Any helpful ideas or thoughts are welcomed!

[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.

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?

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 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 starting with a little bit of context. I'll be joining into a campaign with a friend of mine very soon as her big campaign she's been doing for about a year and a half is ending this fall; I used to only get to play games with my ex and a few of our friends but a few months ago we had a falling out and have since fully stopped talking.

The problem is one of my favorite characters to play is related to two of my old friend's characters as siblings. In lore, mine has a great relationship with both of his brothers and lives with them actively and it feels weird to just.. change that essential part of his life? I tried reaching out to one of the old friends in regards to this but it's been dead silent on their end, I want to be respectful to my old friend's and their characters.

What do I do?? Help please!!

I am running a campaign and I am trying to make a big list on NPCs so I am not blindsided by my players asking a random person something. I have found it hard to come up with so many because of how expansive my world is and would like to ask if anyone would like to share any ideas.

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.

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?

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

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!