Hi Proactive friends! Looking for a couple of players for a mini campaign (3-5 sessions maybe) of the dieselpunk RPG Tomorrow City, to start within the next couple of weeks. The time would be UK evenings (ideally start at 6pm GMT or later), cadence to be determined but ideally either weekly or every two weeks on Sat or Sun (one player is in Pacific time).

We've had some great posts this last week about preferred mechanics of a game, and styles of GMing. It got me thinking---what sort of games are people in the lab running? Out of the following, what would you describe as the main focus in the game you run, a combination of your personal preferences and what the system you run is designed for? There isn't room to list every option, so some (like Blades' heists or Cthulhu's mysteries and horror) are lumped under other categories. If something really doesn't seem to fit, pick unlisted and comment yours below!

Hi friends! I was hoping for some advice. In my head, I’ve collected a lot of “settings” some of which are mired in very complicated or just terrible game mechanics. Some were just so niche that I knew I would never gather enough interested people to play (and now are super obscure). So I’ve always wanted some way of bridging them together (also, I like the anachronistic juxtapositions, and potential fun “advantages” characters might have in gathering abilities and things from different realities, à la Time Bandits). I guess a more traditional reference for D&D fans is Planescape? I think the downside to this kind of meta-setting framework, though, is a kind of “analysis paralysis” that happens when someone is presented with what is ostensibly limitless options (I would like to give Players a choice of reality to base their character). The other side of this is goal setting, though. I keep wondering, now that I have lots of Indie TTRPGs that are easily hacked, do I just explore each universe separately, maybe stringing them together thinly, suggesting they’re all set in the same shared multiverse (which ironically seems a bit cliché now in a world that has an MCU, etc.).

If you've been around you probably have seen me talk about the wild amount of games that I have played. I am wondering what rule or tool did you steal from an RPG that you use or want to use going forward? I played Bunkers and Badassses this year and I love the badass moves. For a more cinematic game, you can let players completely break action economy once per session, and you just give it a particularly high dc to do so. Other players can kick in their use to lower the DC if the fictional positioning supports it. For example you can do multiple actions in the same Action but need to balance not only the difficultly to generate the DC but also how many actions it would normally take.

Both Shadowdark and Black Hack add darkness rules. No player races have dark vision or infravision but many monsters do. Light is an important, valuable, and precious commodity. Both systems encourage the GM to put the light at risk - with environmental effects and enemy actions. In the dark player characters are at disadvantage for virtually all rolls while the monsters are not. Maybe my age is showing but I don't see this as adding a lot to the game. Am I missing an opportunity to add something really cool? Or is it just another setting fad?