Cairn seems like an obvious one. It's classic fantasy that will be pretty familiar to people, it has a good number of adventures as well as adventures for other systems that have been converted, and also all the rules are totally free.
Mausritter (modern, but nice) and liminal horror (modern, but horror) are also good. These are all Into the Odd games, there are a lot of hacks of this system for different settings and I feel like you can't really go wrong there.
I'll also recommend Fallen, especially for solo games. It's more like gothic fantasy. It has some really good random tables. I use the oracle deck for other games all the time.
I really like this. I come at this from a more NSR than OSR perspective, but I feel like I wouldn't go so far as to say that the difficulties of parleying and fighting should be matched - the situation is what it is. And even if not fighting is always the better choice, the players won't know that and won't always make the best choices.
I generally play these types of games with combat being what happens when things go wrong. Unless one side has a very clear advantage, combat is high risk for everyone involved and usually it's better for everyone to avoid it. Combat happens, not because either the player characters or the NPCs would choose it as their first choice, but because you play games about situations in which everything is likely to go wrong.
Itch is great, I'll second that recommendation. It also has some really indie stuff you can't find anywhere else. I think it's DRM free in the way GOG is, in that the platform doesn't support DRM. A good number of games are free, and some are open source as well.
Yeah, I think one thing I like about it is that the distance between people making things and people playing the game is not that far. Lots of hacks and creativity, lots of sharing ideas, a good amount of creative commons stuff too.
I'm working on something for the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon game jam and it's been cool to see a lot of other people making something for the first time for the jam
Oh yeah, Vaults of Vaarn looks really cool, there have been a number of great science fantasy settings recently (ultra Violet grasslands is the other one that comes to mind). I haven't gotten to play either though.
I guess if this is the aromantic thread, I'm curious: how long did it take people to figure out they're aromantic? I realized I was queer at like 12 but it took till my 30s to realize I was aromantic, maybe cause I didn't know that was a thing until then and I thought I was just, like, failing to live up to my responsibility to find myself a relationship
I have a weekly game of Blades in the Dark right now! It's maybe actually my longest running campaign - stretching the limits of the system - also we're playing as cultists
there are some, but they tend to quickly become spam and nazi instances. I'm guessing even those ones defederate from the instances that only serve malware though
Hi everyone! I was born in Canada, live in the US, and Asian and mixed race. I'm generally a little vague about my real world identity online though beyond that. You can find me here on Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@seedling although it's basically all my TTRPG stuff.
I really like Mastodon, so much so that I have several accounts for different purposes. You do need to invest a bit of time into following a good number of people who post stuff you like, though. I was pretty active on Twitter and now I'm pretty active on Mastodon and I like Mastodon better, but I had to spend a little time searching hashtags for people posting cool stuff.
One thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is moderation - your experience will be better with a well-moderated, well-run server, otherwise you'll have issues with spam and maybe worse. Generally a medium-sized server based around a subject of interest or a geographic location works well, where the admins are actively involved in the community.
I really like it, although I keep it to people I know IRL. I'm considering making a TTRPG-specific public one though, does anyone know if books absolutely need to have an ISBN to work with that system?
One thing that I really like about it, vs say Goodreads or any site that is tied to a corporate bookselling system, is that you can use a rating system that works for you, using the full 1 to 5 stars, without worrying that you are causing financial harm to any authors, especially if you keep everything followers-only
This is all going to be more NSR
Cairn seems like an obvious one. It's classic fantasy that will be pretty familiar to people, it has a good number of adventures as well as adventures for other systems that have been converted, and also all the rules are totally free.
Mausritter (modern, but nice) and liminal horror (modern, but horror) are also good. These are all Into the Odd games, there are a lot of hacks of this system for different settings and I feel like you can't really go wrong there.
I'll also recommend Fallen, especially for solo games. It's more like gothic fantasy. It has some really good random tables. I use the oracle deck for other games all the time.
I'd probably join, but also I feel like I'm in 5 different rpg communities that don't get a lot of posts.
Just throwing this out there, but what if we had like weekly themed threads for different types of games or something?
I really like this. I come at this from a more NSR than OSR perspective, but I feel like I wouldn't go so far as to say that the difficulties of parleying and fighting should be matched - the situation is what it is. And even if not fighting is always the better choice, the players won't know that and won't always make the best choices.
I generally play these types of games with combat being what happens when things go wrong. Unless one side has a very clear advantage, combat is high risk for everyone involved and usually it's better for everyone to avoid it. Combat happens, not because either the player characters or the NPCs would choose it as their first choice, but because you play games about situations in which everything is likely to go wrong.
I haven't looked at that one yet, but I'm waiting on the kickstarter for issue 2!
Cairn (https://cairnrpg.com/) is free and fairly simple. I play it solo sometimes, though the rules don't give any particular guidance for that, though someone has made a third party set of solo rules: https://manadawnttg.itch.io/barrow-delver
I've had some luck finding people online to play with, usually over discord, which is also an option.
I just discovered !osr@lemm.ee which seems NSR friendly!
Itch is great, I'll second that recommendation. It also has some really indie stuff you can't find anywhere else. I think it's DRM free in the way GOG is, in that the platform doesn't support DRM. A good number of games are free, and some are open source as well.
Also it has tabletop RPGs!
Yeah, I think one thing I like about it is that the distance between people making things and people playing the game is not that far. Lots of hacks and creativity, lots of sharing ideas, a good amount of creative commons stuff too.
I'm working on something for the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon game jam and it's been cool to see a lot of other people making something for the first time for the jam
Oh yeah, Vaults of Vaarn looks really cool, there have been a number of great science fantasy settings recently (ultra Violet grasslands is the other one that comes to mind). I haven't gotten to play either though.
Do snakes like knitwear? Is it still cozy if you're cold-blooded?
It is a monastery! Just maybe less historical
I've seen temporary ones in libraries. Like they're only on certain days but are somewhat regular
I guess if this is the aromantic thread, I'm curious: how long did it take people to figure out they're aromantic? I realized I was queer at like 12 but it took till my 30s to realize I was aromantic, maybe cause I didn't know that was a thing until then and I thought I was just, like, failing to live up to my responsibility to find myself a relationship
👋
I have a weekly game of Blades in the Dark right now! It's maybe actually my longest running campaign - stretching the limits of the system - also we're playing as cultists
there are some, but they tend to quickly become spam and nazi instances. I'm guessing even those ones defederate from the instances that only serve malware though
Hi everyone! I was born in Canada, live in the US, and Asian and mixed race. I'm generally a little vague about my real world identity online though beyond that. You can find me here on Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@seedling although it's basically all my TTRPG stuff.
oh I hadn't thought of doing that, but that's a great idea!
I really like Mastodon, so much so that I have several accounts for different purposes. You do need to invest a bit of time into following a good number of people who post stuff you like, though. I was pretty active on Twitter and now I'm pretty active on Mastodon and I like Mastodon better, but I had to spend a little time searching hashtags for people posting cool stuff.
One thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is moderation - your experience will be better with a well-moderated, well-run server, otherwise you'll have issues with spam and maybe worse. Generally a medium-sized server based around a subject of interest or a geographic location works well, where the admins are actively involved in the community.
I really like it, although I keep it to people I know IRL. I'm considering making a TTRPG-specific public one though, does anyone know if books absolutely need to have an ISBN to work with that system?
One thing that I really like about it, vs say Goodreads or any site that is tied to a corporate bookselling system, is that you can use a rating system that works for you, using the full 1 to 5 stars, without worrying that you are causing financial harm to any authors, especially if you keep everything followers-only