I keep all of what happened in one journal, and everything else on the computer. All the maps, the schedules, and the character sheets using a gurps character sheet program (forgot what its called), because I run it through discord using a text format. I hardly plan anything besides what's in my head.

Ive been trying to use different ways to plan besides just pure vibes. like using joplin, or some wiki format or even trying to do use a mindmap? But alas most of what I do is simulating what I believe would happen and keeping character sheets of possible enemies on hand.

So, I'm curious, what do you do?

Our DM uses cards which add a special effect on critical success and critical failure. Some of them are benign, some of them are severe.

There are 4 of us in the group. We walk into the room, and the mind flayer immediately stunlocks 3 of us. My character is a Loxodon Cleric built like a tank, but he can't break the stun because I keep getting shit rolls.

On its next turn, the mind flayer runs over to me. It goes to reach out its tentacle attack which will flay my mind and make me its slave... and crit fails. Crit fails with advantage.

The card that got drawn for the crit fail made it injure its tentacles on my armor. That may not have been a problem, except that they got injured in such a way that they could not be used until the next long rest. Think, like, breaking an arm, or something. But that meant that ALL of the flayer's most dangerous attacks were now unusable.

So we fucking thrashed it in the next turn, because it was completely defenseless. In our world these monsters are extraordinarily rare and most people wouldn't even know they exist- when we brought its body back to the wizard in town he FREAKED OUT and we were just like "yeah this weird tentacle monster was there, it acted like it was a big deal or something but it died when we breathed at it with no problem at all."

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/82851

I thought I'd share this funny story as it's easier to write than the Cutting Black review (coming soon).

It was the first session for a bunch of new players. I did the run I normally do for chummers: kill a gang leader called Chumkicker, frame another gang by copying their signature style. So, they decide to frame the Leather Devils as they have a bike fancy enough to make it work.

Their plan isn't bad, but I spot a pretty obvious hole in it and keep it to myself. They have the decker set up on the street corner to mess with smartlink systems and stuff, they have the mage make a big enough distraction to pull them out of the building, and they have the street sam & rigger do the actual drive-by.

The mage does the distraction (trid phantasm) from inside his car, and drives off as soon as the gang members start coming outside to investigate.

The street sam & rigger come roaring down the street, and while the decker is data spiking all the smartgun systems, they get the mark and roar off.

The decker is now alone, on a street corner, with no exit plan and the entire gang looking around for anybody associated with the hit.

What follows is a looney tunes escape, where he gets shot twice while summoning his scooter (yes, scooter. He blew all his starting nuyen on the best cyberdeck money could buy), and hops on and tries to drive away. Unfortunately, he doesn't have pilot ground vehicle trained, so he's rolling like 2 dice each combat round trying to gain speed. He eventually critically glitches and abandons the broken scooter, and tries to run on foot. He also does not have Running trained, btw.

While all of this is going on, the rest of the party has met up, starts high-fiving (the players knew what was going on, kudos to them for staying in character and not metagaming), and one of them asks "Where's the decker?". They all turn pale as they realize what happened, and get back on their respective vehicles trying to rescue him.

By the time they get there, the decker's been shot a few more times, managed to lose them for a few combat rounds in a crowd but is bleeding profusely, and another shot finally knocks him out cold (burned edge permanently to not die). As he's laying there, with the gang members coming to finish him off, the rest of the party roars in, starts a short gunfight and rescues him.

Moral of the story: have an exit plan for everyone.

I hope this isn't seen as an advertisement, because I think it's just legitimately of interest to anyone who likes RPGs a lot (and I certainly don't work for Bundle of Holding). It's like Humble Bundle if it focused entirely on RPG content and there's a lot of genuinely good deals tossed around that would never show up on Humble.

I keep trying to follow @rpg but I just get a pending status and I don’t see any posts. Am I doing something wrong?

Yo! Played TTRPGs for over a decade, wondering if anyone is scouting out some players for a campaign. I'm free most weeknights.

Great article for everyone to read.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/631499

So, I've been running the PF2E beginner box, which is like a tutorial adventure, for a group of 5 people (we play as long as at least 3 show up). The players had the option of playing any of the pregen "iconic" characters for Pathfinder. So far, we've had a fighter, witch, monk, swashbuckler, and summoner. Of those, only the witch has any sort of healing, and the witch player couldn't make our session last night.

The players went into this room that is meant to be like an optional miniboss (but there isn't really a way for them to have known that). The miniboss is this fire elemental rat that is supposed to teach you how "persistent damage" works. It's a very tough fight, and the elemental has a lot of defensive options like a cloud of smoke around it. Eventually the rat killed two party members (the swashbuckler and the monk), and one more (the fighter) went unconscious but didn't die. The last player (summoner) got chipped down to like 3 HP but was able to drag the fighter out of the fight to safety.

I think it was a good learning opportunity for the players that you need to be tactical and work together in PF2e, since they basically just all tried to attack the rat in melee. It also shows the value of having support characters in the party.

Going forward we are going to complete the beginner box, the two players who lost their PCs are going to play new pregens (bard and investigator). I'm hoping the players don't get too disillusioned with PF2e because it is very difficult at times.

I'd love to hear other Pathfinder GMs' thoughts. I'm still new, so it's possible I was doing something wrong, but I think I ran that fight the way it's meant to be run.

Organizing your Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is not my main hobby, but I often end up creating some things for RPGs.

The worst thing, in my experience, is that you have a lot of information to deal with at once when you're trying to create a world, and you don't know where to start or how to connect things.

This is a guide on how to organize your worldbuilding, not how to worldbuild. If you want to learn how economics or religion works, that's not going to be what I'm going to explain here.

My method is simple and depends only on two keywords: CIRCLES and CATEGORIES.

1. Circles

Imagine a country. This country is divided into several states. These states are divided into several metropolitan regions. These regions are divided into several cities. These cities are divided into several neighborhoods. etc.

It's like circles within circles within circles. The larger circle is the COUNTRY, with smaller circles called STATES inside it, with smaller circles called CITIES inside that one, and so on.

And the country is not the biggest circle: There can be several countries within a continent, several continents within a world, several worlds within a stellar community, etc. It will be in your interest to know how far to count.

1.1. Tidying up your circles

The names of these circles and their divisions are completely arbitrary.

There is no rule that says your country needs to be divided into "states". Russia is divided into "provinces". Colonial Brazil was divided into "captaincies".

Also nothing says that your "continent" needs to be divided into "countries".

The only constant is this: Things are divided into more things which are divided into more things.

This is a constant in almost every method of organization that human beings have created, because we love to categorize things: Ecclesiastical offices, business administration, division of land, biological taxa, etc.

1.2 Working with your circles

It is extremely important that the worldbuilding GM knows how to work efficiently. The five days you spent making "Ardya's Hell Realm" are worthless if your players are never going to interact with that place. Worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake is fun, but it should be left until after the basics are done.

What you want to do is define which circles are worth working in. A campaign of intrigue among the southern burgos of Southeros may only need Southeros and its neighbors to the south. Within Southeros itself, the southern burghs should be worked out in more detail than the northern werewolf clans. Even within a burgh, some cities should be prepared in greater detail than others. So it goes.

"Circles" are simple but powerful.

2. Categories

The structure of circles is very rigid and completely based on hierarchy. You may have noticed that I've only talked about political organizations so far, and that's because I can't place "the Udri ethnicity", "the ninth burgh of Southeros" and "the cult of Ladilua" within the same hierarchy.

This is where categories come in. Categories are sets of things that you can classify as "inside" and "outside" directly.

2.1. Defining the Three Basic Categories

In general you can work with only three categories for most worlds: Geography, Demographics and State.

Geography is what concerns the natural order of the world: Usually this means "what the place is like" (an archipelago, has a forest, is on a mountain, etc.) but subtly includes also what depends on it to be defined ( such as economics and technology).

Demography is everything about the people who live in that place: what they look like, what rituals they do, what they believe in, how they dress, etc.

State are the structures that govern the people: How they are divided, who are their leaders, how these leaders are chosen, how they control the people, etc.

2.2. Basic Categories Order

Categories must be interdependent: They affect each other. A place's climate affects what things grow there, which affects what people eat, which affects how the local government distributes and controls that food.

You should prioritize them in the following order: Geography, Demographics, State. You must first know enough about geography to be able to do enough about demography to be able to do enough about a state.

You might want to start with an aspect of Demographics or the State. Write the idea down somewhere and work on a Geography and/or Demographics that make your idea possible.

2.3 Changing your Categories

Maybe your techno-apocalyptic dystopia doesn't need a state category so much, because everyone lives in independent communes. It is perhaps much more important to track which of the big five technology branches a region uses and what that technology can do. Take out the "State" category and put in the "Technology" category (before "Demography").

But resist the temptation to make a category for EVERY ASPECT different from your world. The method is meant to be an outline, to help you, not to force you to focus on small details.

For the average D20 fantasy kitchen sink world, you shouldn't need more than the three basic categories unless there's a big spin that changes how this world is perceived by the players (like Eberron and Dark Sun, but not like Golarion or Dragonlance).

3. Conclusion

That's it guys, I hope you like it :)

In your opinion, what are the best RPG sourcebooks/supplements/resources?

So what are you Pathfinder players/dms been up to? Running any adventure paths? Whats your character's build/concept? 1st edition or 2nd edition? Just wanted to make a post for a general discussion.

I have seen many people suggest they don’t use psionics, not because they are a bad thematic fit with their game, but instead as they are hard to understand.

See it here: https://sh.itjust.works/c/battlemaps for all your TTRPG map needs

This looks like rather good advice, and I like the comparison to brutalist architecture. It feels like it fits, because so many seem to think brutalist architecture is ugly.

Personally, I like how functional it is; and similarly, functional (if plain) adventures make for good sessions.

There's a new RPG-related Humble Bundle up.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/24068

---FLOREASCA EMERGENCY HOSPITAL RECEPTION SYSTEM---

--->/root/install_RAT.sh

---sh /root/install_RAT.sh: Permission denied

---DEBUG: Customer approaching. Initializing onboarding

CUSTOMER ANALYSIS:

Orc female

Estimated age: 22-24

Physical description: ['Brown eyes','Inward-pointing tusks','Black hair','Medium height','Possible malnourishment']

Clothing description: ['Tattered leather jacket','Troll rockband t-shirt','Torn Jeans']

SIN Issuer: ERROR

SIN ID: ERROR

Estimated wealth level: Low

Targeted upsell: Premium

--->sudo chown v:v /root/install_RAT.sh

---DEBUG: Initializing transcript

A: Greetings, customer! Please state the nature of your medical emergency

C: Any day now, V

--->sudo /root/install_RAT.sh

---sh /root/install_RAT.sh: Permission denied

A: We do not currently have your SIN on file. Please provide a valid SIN for continuance of medical coverage

C: Shut it, tin can

--->sudo chmod +x /root/install_RAT.sh

A: Please consider upgrading to a Premium package for an ad-free medical experience!

--->sudo /root/install_RAT.sh

A: Sorry about that, noise back home seems to be as thick as I remember

C: Or you're just getting slow. Getting lazy with all that shadowrunning cash?

---WARNING: Unknown voicepack file /tmp/Troll_Female.amr

A: Just started my first job, actually. That's what I wanted to talk to you about

C: Little old me? Was surprised when I got the message. So, what's up?

A: Our fixer, JC, hooked me up with a Johnson. First job, it's gotta be a gimme, right? Met my team just before the meet. Weirdest bunch of oddballs I've ever seen

C: Come on, can't be that bad, we ran with the Vory and they were nutjobs

A: Think less homicidal weird, and more just strange. Some Native American dwarf who won't take his head-dress off called Shaker, an ex-cop called Mother Hen for some strange reason and an ex-racer called Brundy. Anyways, the meet goes ok, but the Johnson was a nervous wreck. Didn't even bat an eye when we almost doubled his asking fee. Some Vory lieutenant called Kuznetsov is leaning on him hard for his gang to "volunteer" to fight their new war with the Triads, and he wants blackmail material to make it go away. Whole thing smells fishy as hell. Why this gang? Why now?

C: So you said no, right?

A: Like hell I did, not for that paycheck. After we're done talking, we realize everyone forgot to put a white noise generator on the table and some guy started blackmailing us.

C: Heh. Chummers.

A: Well, we paid him off and that Hen stole the dude's white noise generator. No idea why. Maybe out of embarrassment or something? Anyways, so we start doing some digging. Brundy knows who the Johnson was: some hotshot racer called Nitro. Competes in the Seattle Sprint, some underground race. I called some old Vory friends and found out our guy is running it. Gotta be connected, right?

C: Uh-huh. And was it?

A: I'm getting there! So, Brundy goes to register in the race to get more info there while I do a bit more digging on the matrix. We find that Kuznetsov's been getting into arguments with some racers. More specifically, a racer named Ferguson who's gone off the grid for a while. while Shaker and I went to make a housecall. Ferguson's car's been out to the Redmond Barrens once a month for a long time now for quite a bit, according to the gridguide on it. Weird as hell. Even stranger was when he answered the door with a gun behind his back. Shaker was absolutely oblivious and started asking about Kuznetsov, and the guy damn near exploded at us. Told us to leave or else.

C: So I'm guessing you beat him up and got him to answer a few more questions?

A: This is Seattle, not Bucharest darling. We do have to be a LITTLE more subtle than that. I just put a mark on the commlink in his pocket and we left. Just a burner though. We all gathered up to figure out what we had so far. Hen had talked to his friends in the Knights Errant, no luck there. Brundy found out the favorite to win the race is some guy called "Zone" and that Kuznetsov has been strangely successful in his bets for a very long time now

C: Insider urban brawl kinda successful, or rigs the races kinda successful?

A: We're thinking rigs the races kinda successful. Just as we were about to split up, the commlink goes active. Wouldn't ya know it, he's using this burner to call his wife and kids out in the East coast. Sounds very much like he got them to safety. No idea why, or safety from what.

C: So what happened next?

A: What happened next? What happened next is I sent you a message. Listen, ask around any Vory contacts you have left over there, see if anybody there knows him. I feel like I'm going in blind here. JC, our fixer is sending us some backup.

C: I mean, sure? What are you expecting to find?

A: No idea, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Take care

C: Screw you too

--->sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / &

--->sudo shutdown -H now

01001001 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110000 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100101 01101110 01101010 01101111 01111001 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101001 01110010 01110011 01110100 00100000 01000001 01000001 01010010 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01110010 01101001 01100101 01110011 00100001

I'm thinking of starting a hybrid campaign online, a live weekly session by video with a Discord forum for 24/7 sideplay. Has anyone tried anything like that? Any tips?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/12397

The crazily developed world of German Shadowrun

Story Points

Story Points let a PC start without any backstory - instead you get 5 Story Points, and spend them to:

• know an obscure fact
• know a language/ culture
• introduce an ally to help with the current mission
• et c.

By the time players spend them all, they should have a chonky backstory which was always relevant to the current mission, so no info-dumping required.

• If all your points were spent introducing cousins and siblings, we have established the character has a big family.
• If all your points were spent knowing languages, and knowing highly obscure knowledge, we have established the character as a very clever, and well-travelled person.

Good features

• Speeds up game (no lore dump!).
• Players are less pissed about their characters dying early on session 2 they haven't invested the work of writing an essay on their origin story.
• It's probably the most popular part of the game whenever I receive feedback from someone reading (not playing) the game.

Bad features

Nobody spends Story Points

It doesn't replenish, so players hoard the points, refusing to spend them.

So far, I've tried:

• granting 1 new Story Point over a long Downtime period.
• granting XP in return for spending Story Points
• adding a one-page rules summary to the table, including notes on what you can spend Story Points on.
• demanding all new characters come from the pool of allies created through Story Points, meaning that:
  • it's better to have more allies, so new people have a wider pool of characters to select from, and
  • new PCs are never entirely new - they're known to the party.

...nothing works. Everyone likes it in theory, nobody uses it in practice.

The only idea so far is massively raising XP rewards for spending Story Points.

Is there another rule, or a better way to present this system, which would encourage actual use?

Just trying to start a conversation and see what people are interested in. Nothing special about the categories - add anything you want to talk about.

Favorites limited to ones I've played.

Overall: Fallen by Perplexing Ruins. Love the setting, atmosphere and mechanics. I have some quibbles about healing in the default rules but want the Fear mechanic in everything. It's great for both groups and solo.

Combat: Lancer by Massif Pres

Solo: Broken Shores by BlackOath Entertainment. I haven't managed to keep a PC alive for longer than an in-game week, but it's awesome. Runner-up is Riftbreakers, also by BlackOath. Much less deadly and more heroic. Also the best run-a-group-solo that I've seen.

Magic system: Path of the Aram Thyr by BlackOath, again. Another solo, and I'm not a fan of the game-play loop, as written, but that is easily fixed by making your own narrative/PC goals. And the magic system is so cool.

Supplement: Lots here, but from what I've used in games is a tie between Into the Cess & Citadel and Into the Wyrd and Wild, both by Feral Indie.

I've got a large TBR/TBP pile, so a couple of things I'm very excited about: Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (BlackOath), Salvage Union (Leyline) and Goblinville (Narrative Dynamics). The current top of the TBP is Pirate Borg, Runecairn and WWN.

Which RPG(s) have you always wanted to play but could never find a group that was interested?

Some of mine are Space 1889 and GURPS Discworld

Been on a binge of Pathfinder 1e 3rd party content after finishing up writing the current chapter of my campaign. What are your opinions of Dreamscarred Press' Psionics? Comments online seem to universally love it, and I think im starting to as well. Any personal experience with the ruleset?