>>1359 (OP) D&D 3.5e Runs really well until you cross level 10. That's why most of our campaigns run till lvl 8-12 mostly and my table is completely fine with that.

pathfinder 1e - long campaign) pathfinder 2e - society/league play. There's a community ttrpg program at my local library that I help with. Not my favorite system but the alternative is 5e OSR (B/X) - when I can get people to play it Cyberpunk 2020/RED - when my weekend group's in the mood for it Mutants & Masterminds 3e - or so I'd like to say my main group is also sometimes up for trying whatever oddball ruleset we find like Panic! at the Dojo

Right now we are playing Ironclaw. A group of necromancers attacked a small village outside the capital of Morosia. It woke them up in the middle of the night and they rushed down to stop it. It went swimmingly, they interrogated the necromancer and coaxed out the location of a necromancer hideout. After gathering some help from the local church they are off to go hunt down these blasphemers.

>>1360 What's the campaign about?

>>1378 Our current campaign is run bu our gigachad DM who converted Descend to Avernus made for 5e into 3.5e. You're sent into hell to recover a lost holy city or at least find some way to save as much people as possible before it gets swallowed into the river styx. I've ran an evil campaign before that where the party was employed by a red lord of Thay to stage a border incident so the Thayan lord can come as savior. The campaign revolved around lying and manipulating various factions to destabilize the region so it was more about bluffing and lying than outright murderhoboing. Before that there were a couple of short vetting campaigns I've run too and before that there were very short campaigns because the table was a mess and no body was compatible with each other playstyle-wise.

I'm running Tales of Argosa weekly for a group of friends it's going well, people keep praising it and it's a joy to run. but it is also kind of just a permutation of dnd which suits me just fine, and it might be my favorite one. it reminds me in a lot of ways of SotDL which I also just love running the game's a sandbox hexcrawl set in a personal mishmash of the system's previous edition's setting mixed with my own totally-not-conan not-exclusively-but-mostly bronze age savage swords n sorcery shit and a decent helping of weird science. takes place in a badlands basin with a volcano in the middle that was once a verdant jungle empire in a previous age, now lousy with arcane anomalies, undeath, demon-worshipping cannibals, and dinosaurs. the jungle still exists in about a third of the basin and it holds the seat of power of the serpentmen that engineered the downfall of the empire right now the party's just doing some dungeon crawling (my favorite) in a tomb. they're kind of on the back foot but due to the hazards/costs of reaching the place they're hesitant to just leave and go back to town to regroup, so they're pressing on I'm also playing in a pf2e campaign, one of my players is running triumph of the tusk. we all still constantly air our grievances with the system but it's still fun because rpgs are fun no matter what. one of the players is like never there, though. engagement feels low but I'll take what I can get to actually be a PC we all decided to play monstrous races and are actually playing them more along that line. I'm just playing an orc's orc axe fighter that's about as orcy (traditional) as can be while still functioning as a pf2 PC. a true patriot of orckind that wants to return to the glory days when the pink-skins told horror stories about us. we're not TRYING to derail everything but it's kind of happening on its own. we staged an uprising at some fort and now it's ours, and we definitely eliminated the human paladins that were potentially going to lend their aid against the evil necromancer, but who needs 'em

For the system, it's a ruleslite game based off of version 2.0 of Ben Milton's game, Maze Rats. The most notable feature of the original game was the idea that spells would consist of keywords, and you would spend HP to cast magic through the spell according to its name. As an example, a PC wielding the spell "Pursuing Beast" can use it to create a hawk or an owl to spy on his enemies, make a giant monster of his design to kill his foes, or even use the magic to augment the tracking abilities of his hounds. The only limits are the breadth implied by the name of the spell and the number of hitpoints the PC is willing to spend to create more powerful or long-lasting effects. This idea was so much fun that I expanded upon it. Instead of making spells tattoos (and therefore non-transferable and not able to be found as loot), I made it so that they were encased in physical items that can be bought, sold, and stolen. I also made a bunch of guidelines to help players and GM alike decide the cost of various magics so that there didn't have to be so much "GM may I" going on. Among other things I added included a set of status conditions, many different weapons with slightly different mechanics that I hope are true to real life, and subsystems for called shots and grappling and counterspelling and reactions. The reaction rules I am particularly proud of, because combat is a lot more interesting and fluid when you can do things like duck for cover, block, protect an ally, counter a spell, or flee from or intercept or pursue a foe, all during your foe's turn. It's pretty neat and encourages players to pay attention. So suffice to say, this system is kind of my baby, and I love it dearly. For the campaign itself, we actually just finished it last week, after 50 sessions. I'm tempted to write out an outline, but it'll likely be over a thousand words. I guess I'll give it a shot if no one minds a wall of text.

I'm running a Vampire and a Mage campaign, and can't help but use pentex stuff and corporate deathcults in both of them.

>>1359 (OP) 1. Vaesen (Year Zero Engine variant). Completed 11 sessions campaign + a one-shot. It was a gothic fantasy horror. The system is barebones and there is no real setting. I believe it would be better if it had Blades in the Dark system. So I just took the historical environment of 1885 from some articles from Wikipedia. Players had their personal quests based on their Dark Secrets. There was an overarching plot about the main villain, an evil witch based on Alfa from Men in Black. Players loved it. I didn't like that it is hard to kill someone in this system. It is supposed to be horror. 2. Spire the City Must Fall (Resistance, based on Blades in the Dark) Completed 13 sessions campaign. It was a political fantasy-steampunk thriller about le revolution. I think the system is bullshit, and the setting is graphomania. The campaign was based around seven powerful NPCs which playes are free to bifriend / kill / betray, etc. Only one player succeeded in making the ending neutral. Players liked it more than Vaesen becasue of NPCs, but I liked it less. 3. Expephiles: Sex & Drugs & Dungeon Crawl. My homebrew just for fun like an adult swim version of Adventure Time (based on Year Zero Engine) Ongoing campaign, 5 sessions. That is what my friends like the most. I guess they are too basic. Kind of a people who like jokes about seducing the dragon and read fantasy for escapism. 4. Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (homebrew based on Year Zero Engine) Only two sessions in so far. 5. I want to run Slugbluser and One Ring, but can't find a party. My friends are not really interested as a whole.

>>1471 I see fellow YZE connoisseur, what is your take on framework configuration for games? Going with RAW approach and combining modules (HP/Attribute damage, Resolve/Doom pts., etc.) or swapping things around, developing your own skills, mixing up attributes, introducing your own mechanics? BTW, attaching YZE reference document for those who are interested in it. >>1359 (OP) Last year our large DnD 5e group broke down, so I got a chance to try exotic systems as one shots with few willing players, who did not want to overcommit to larger campaign >Death In Space Major disappointment, even if players were heavy into RP, lackluster core system was simply not enough to keep oneshot interesting enough to develop into more than two sessions. Void/Eldritch mechanics seemed salvaged from other game and therefore felt out of place, instead of vital part of experience. However, there is great potential in that game thanks to lore/settings, if you are willing to go through it and rewrite it to be more mature. Also system would benefit from more in-depth mechanics. Good candidate to be redone as module for Alien RPG, or on pure YZE. I have bunch of home rules and additional bits and pieces to flesh out Iron Ring more. >Alien RPG 1e Solid experience, oneshot developed into multiple session, players enjoyed mix of survival horror and detective adventure on abandoned cargo hauler, piecing together what happened. I was called out for blueballing them, since there was no xenomorph, only androids, company killteam and basic, but fun plot around Company fucking frontier colonies by sabotaging their agricultural deliveries. Currently I am looking at Symbaroum as possible other candidate, not the 5e version, but original.

> I see fellow YZE connoisseur, what is your take on framework configuration for games? My framework is very loose. I often make home rules on the fly when I am not satisfied with the pacing or logic of the game. For example... Vaesen. 1. I removed Availability. The wealth of a PC represents how many income dice he rolls at the beginning of the session. The sum of the roll is the income. Items usually cost 3/6/10 kr instead of 1/2/3 Availability. 2. I added Day/Night Cycle: PCs need to rest, and Vaesen appear mostly at night. 3. Healing was a little different. For example, PCs can get rid of the Exhaustion status (only) by resting at night. You can also be healed once a day, even if you don’t lie in bed for the whole day. 3. I rarely used Initiative. And sometimes I’ve just required a regular check roll instead of an opposite check during an action scene. 4. I improvised some Castle upgrades and PC talents. 5. I didn’t use Experience and Development Points. Character just got Level Up at the end of the session. All the Mysteries were also one session long. If PCs couldn’t solve the Mystery in one session, they failed. If I ever run another YZE gothic horror, I will probably use Stress Dice from the Alien or something like that. Arcanum. I mostly run it like Forbidden Lands, but there are eight attributes and some borrowings from my homebrew of mine. Forbidden Lands. I feel like traveling takes too long, and it is better when you give only one test per two hexes. PCs probably should have one Willpower Point from the start of the session. Lucky Talent / Executioner Talent / Pain Effect probably should be excluded from the rules. My Homebrew. 1. There are Action Points instead of Slow and Fast Actions. You get 3 action points every round. You can’t have more than 5 at once. You spend 2 points for actions that require a check, and 1 point for actions that do not require a check. Heavy equipment reduces how many of points you get at the end of the round if you are not strong enough. You can spend AP on the enemy turn for dodging / blocking / counterspells, etc. 2. There is no Attribute Damage. Characters just have HP/FP as secondary stats. But characters can get Attribute Damage from critical attacks and when pushing rolls with high difficulty. 3. Rolls are player-facing. Base Dice are affected not by attributes, but by the difficulty of the action. 4. There are only 2-3 Skills dice and 1-2 Gear dice. Skill Dice represent rather “domains” of the character than just skills. For example, there is a Soul and a Nature domain. First gives you a dice for social checks, the second gives you a dice for the social checks when you speak with a beast, for example.

>>1476 >>1515

>>1515 Nice! I was also playing with idea of introducing action points but ended up with fast action economy, where you basically started with 3 fast action and could convert 2 fast action to 1 slow action, or use fast action as reaction during enemy/ally turn. The whole idea was that you can have equipment/statuses, that add/remove fast action from your pool. >If I ever run another YZE gothic horror, I will probably use Stress Dice from the Alien or something like that. I found out that Resolve is good replacement for Sanity/Stress, at least my usage was: >Resolve is hard to recover >You bet Resolve points, when pushing rolls >Current Resolve value is used for resource rolls, when sanity is checked >Exhausting Resolve results in mental collapse, breaking the character

>>1529 Well, it seems we came to somewhat similar mechanics. Your Fast Actions sound like my Action Points, and your Resolve sounds like my Focus/Fatigue Points. It is indeed nice. I just like the idea that, for example, you can have from one to three Stress Dice, and when 1s are rolled, there are consequences regardless of whether the roll was pushed or not. I would home rule that, let's say, when all three 1s are rolled, the PC is doomed. He will die immediately or at the next suitable opportunity. It brings a kind of Hitchcockian tension. When the stakes are high and your stress reaches maximum, there is always a doom looming over you with every action, making you anxious, not just depleting a resource.

>>1540 >>1540 >I would home rule that, let's say, when all three 1s are rolled, the PC is doomed I would be cautions with this, since on one hand, it can help to build up tension, on other hand statistics are against you: >1 stress dice ~ 16% chance of doom >2 stress dice ~ 2% chance of doom >3 stress dice ~ >1% chance of doom >4 stress dice ~ >0.1% chance of doom >etc. So more dices you have, less chance of doom, but higher chance of panic, I would suggest to give doom points a read. Failed stress and Pushes would generate doom points, which slowly accumulate, but are never removed, unless cashed in, imagine it as mounting failure. You recovered your health, healed your injuries, stabilized your sanity, however, all the botches you made in last session are still there, ready to impact your future.

>>1684 Yeah, it may be a good idea. I will consider it.

>>1359 (OP) I'm currently in a Lancer campaign with some bros. I'm playing a genetically modified, uplifted corvid named Dak, callsign B.A.D (Born Again Dinosaur). Pic related. His mech is called the "Double Deuce" So far we've dealt with some space pirates, awoke an ancient evil? IE a race of cybernetic mollusk aliens, engaged in corporate warfare, and broke up an illegal cloning ring. I'm also currently working on a Traveler campaign. I managed to get my hands on a senario book called Beltstrike and I'm currently writing in the details for it. >>1373 I've always wanted to try Ironclaw. I don't think my group would want to play it though.

>>3009 >I'm also currently working on a Traveler campaign. I managed to get my hands on a senario book called Beltstrike and I'm currently writing in the details for it. Care to share some details? I wanted to try Traveler for longest time, but never had the chance.

Besides homebrew, a whole lot of AD&D 2e.

>>3009 It can be hard to introduce Ironclaw just because of the subject matter. Just reassure them that it it a fantastic system underneath.

>>3220 I posted some of the details in another threads >>2235 (1871) >>2778 (793). I plan on running a pre-FTL campaign where the PCs are stuck in a system where shit is about to go down. Since this will be my first proper campaign as a GM, my thought on making it pre-FTL is that it would be easier on me since then I'd be able to control the Tech Level and introduce things as needed. I've still got to finish up some details as well as rewrite/cut some content that I originally wrote that I don't think the players will either care about nor play a role in the game. Most of it is stuff that's going on in the background. The thing is OG traveller games are really just a frame work and a general plot outline and they expect GMs to fill in the details themselves. Makes a lot of sense when you think about it as it allows GMs to work in modules and scenarios into their games as they see fit. This has been a good exercise for my writing skills.