Over on Mastodon, RPG fans spent August posting on the above themes, and I decided to as well:

  1. My first RPG purchase of the year was Liars, Friends and Troublemakers by Seedling. I’ve been trying to up my game on how to create NPCs, and this was helpful! My first RPG system purchase was Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn for ideas for robots for my current campaign.
  2. My most recently GMed game was Apocalypse World 2e. It’s been fun to play in the remnants of the known world rather than a completely fictional land. The PCs ended up in Thurmond, West Virginia, looking for a vault. I am going to ask the group to switch to AW: Burned Over 2024, which Vincent Baker just released to his patrons.
  3. My most often GMed systems: 5e (2018-2020, about 90 sessions, 44 of which were an open table!), Dungeon World (2020-2023, ~70), Stonetop (2020-2023, 40 sessions), and Impulse Drive (2022-2023, 28 sessions).
  4. One RPG with great art is Stonetop, with art by Lucie Arnoux.
  5. RPGs with great writing: Apocalypse World for the style it is written in, which conveys the tone and mood of the game; Dungeon World for the advice it provides, which was helpful to me even when I was DMing 5e and then for making the transition to PbtA games in general.
  6. RPGs that are easy to use: While one-page RPGs are easy to use for the players, they require a lot of work for the GM. The system I’ve had to do the least prep for is Stonetop, because it offers an almanac full of tables and ideas, so I definitely consider it easy to use. In general, I find PbtA games to be easy to use because when you are looking at a move, you are typically looking at all the rules you need to consult at that time.
  7. One RPG with good form is Atma, which is incredibly well designed in terms of production values, the functionality and beauty of the cards it uses, and gameplay.
  8. An RPG accessory I appreciate is the Koplow Body Part Critical Hit Location d12. When my PCs failed their saving throw against a medusa, they had to roll to determine the body part that was affected! Which then spawned a quest to find a cure for petrification. Much more interesting than having their entire body turn to stone!
  9. An RPG accessory I’d like to see? A customizable PbtA Discord bot that can read a web page of moves and show the text of any one move.
  10. For an RPG I’d like to see on TV, I hope Blades in the Dark‘s TV series survives the contraction of the industry and makes it to the screen.
  11. For one-shots, One Shot World by @yochaigal is obviously by design great. If you want a little more support, check out Mark Tygart’s dungeon starters for settings and ideas.
  12. For a well-supported campaign, when I ran an open table for 5e, it was easy to put together a campaign from DMs Guild modules. I especially enjoyed Baldman Games‘ Melvaunt modules.
  13. For evocative environments, I’ve found Jeremy Strandberg to be an excellent writer who brings out sights, sounds, and other senses for players. Case in point: I ran his Dungeon World starter “The Paths of Ateşkazé” from Lampblack & Brimstone’s Perilous Almanacs. Two of my PCs swam through a flooded tunnel (using Jeremy’s Drowning move from “Drowning & Falling”) and discovered a huge cavern. I used the Discovery – Difficult Passage table as they explored tunnels looking for an unflooded passage. If they rolled a number they had rolled before, I just read the next unused item from the table. After exploring six caverns they found a chimney which they climbed upward to find the tunnel the rest of the party were waiting in. Two of my players (a married couple) are cavers from the Mammoth Cave area, and they absolutely loved the descriptions of passages: they said it felt very realistic, and a couple times they had to tell us a story OOC about their caving. They specifically told me, “Tell the author how much we enjoyed this! It felt real!”
  14. For compelling characters, I like how Stonetop creates interlinked characters in Session 0 so much that I’ve copied this approach into other games. We did outgrow the end of session question about relationships changing (to mark an XP). In my next Stonetop campaign, once no one takes that option I might swap in Hx from Apocalypse World.
  15. For character gear, I’ve yet to find an RPG with a system that completely resonates with me. Many systems have an aspect I like but none have put it all together: a) magic scrolls usable by any class but adding to encumbrance, b) PbtA systems that offer unique gear to players depending on their playbook, c) Stonetop’s Arcana deck (magic items that have to be unlocked).
  16. For a quick-to-learn RPG for players, most PbtA games just involve a playbook (character sheet with class-specific rules) and a handout with common moves. But even simpler than that is the PbtA game Atma, which uses cards for everything. So far, Atma is the quickest game to learn that I’ve GMed or played.
  17. An engaging RPG community? One of the many ways to judge this is to focus on creative outputs—and inputs. The OSR and NSR bloggers often share many ideas intended for others to use in their own games, but unfortunately these are not usually explicitly licensed. In contrast, a handful of PbtA games have fully embraced the Creative Commons and have created a rich collection of playbooks, adventures, custom moves, and advice, all licensed for reuse.
  18. A memorable moment of play: In Impulse Drive, the PCs had been seeking the secrets of the AI being used against them, and the Warhorse was shocked to learn it was actually the brain of his ancestor, the first Emperor!  One of those reveals that blew away the player, changed the rest of the campaign, and is a highlight still referred back to. It emerged from a GM move I try to use regularly: Bring in character’s backstories.
  19. A sensational session was based on “Dark Flowers,” the adventure included in Coriolis: The Third Horizon – Quickstart. It was the first assigned heist for the crew, who had to try and find out what happened to an archaeological team that was investigating a recently rediscovered derelict space station. There was an element of horror, evocative of Alien. And a rolling firefight through the station that became one of my favorite combats ever.
  20. An amazing adventure for us was “The Cleaning of Prison Station Echo.” My full review.
  21. For a classic campaign, since I prep solutions, not plots, and “play to find out,” early sessions don’t necessarily foreshadow the overarching goal of the campaign. This can frustrate players, until they decide what’s important. If my campaigns were TV shows, they’d be episodic rather than have story arcs. So Stonetop stands out as my classic campaign, since PCs knew from the start they wanted to improve the prosperity of the village, and all efforts from the beginning went towards that goal.
  22. Our most notable NPC was Perg, a 12-year old boy from a village raided by lizardfolk. He guided the PCs to the lizardfolk lair, where they rescued the captives. Later a crocodile bit off his hand. He said, “I can feel the crocodile’s heart in my missing hand! I will squeeze it and stop its heart.” He was metal. The wizard grafted a lizardfolk hand on him to replace his own. The PCs decided Perg was actually the hero, and they were here to help him, renaming the campaign “The Ballad of Perg”!
  23. Peerless players in RPGs are generous and mentoring. When I ran an open table for 5e at my FLGS, it was great to have players who had mastered all the rules of all the supplements and supported new players. I appreciate players who take and share session notes with everyone. It’s a great way to remind us what happened at the start of a session and to look back on past sessions as needed, such as when an established NPC makes a reappearance or the PCs head back to a prior location.
  24. Acclaimed advice: Seven years ago, Yochai Gal compiled the Dungeon World Syllabus as a tool for new DW GMs. Alex Leone has since taken over as editor, keeping ~180 links current. While I had read many of these articles over the years, I decided to systematically read every single link, to improve my own GMing. I then curated those that were licensed under the Creative Commons into a single, easy-to-read volume, as a supplement for others to use.
  25. Desirable dice: I bought Rory’s Story Cubes to use for improv, but then lockdowns hit, ending my in-person play, and I’ve never used them.
  26. For a superb screen, the most frequent players at the 5e open table I ran at my FLGS bought me this hefty wooden screen!
  27. Miniatures are great, but are they just sitting on your table…?
  28. …or are they battling atop this great gamer gadget, a home-made tower that lights up?!
  29. During lockdowns, I regarded Roll 20 as an awesome app, for both 5e and Dungeon World campaigns. The DW character sheets and integrated rules are really well done. We’ve now shifted to Discord with a custom bot that is easily configurable with whatever rules we are currently playing with. It works best for systems with named rules (e.g., the moves in PbtA games), and I’d love a less hacked-together bot.
  30. People I’d like to game with—Vince and Meguey Baker, since they invented the style of TTRPG that I most enjoy right now, and I’m currently running an Apocalypse World: Burned Over campaign. They have other priorities right now though but you can buy this and help them out. 
  31. Games I miss—At the moment, I’m just GMing Burned Over, so I miss GMing Dungeon World and Stonetop. I GMed M*A*S*H*E*D but would love to be a player next time.