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All good stuff! But yes, that, specifically, too. Once I know if I'm going with war times or spy thriller or Harry Potter school stuff, I fill up the world with appropriate factions and NPCs and locales and agendas... and then I pick a faction for the PCs to belong to, which then determines more...

Replace "achieve goal" to "resolve goal": the goal can be achieved or failed, but it gets resolved in a dramatically satisfying and fun way. Ending up lost in the woods and giving up, going back to town to find another mission, is not a very good resolution IMHO. Finding the Necromancer's hidden...

With my previous group (who really liked GURPS), they didn't do it that way. First, at character creation, they felt incentivized to make complex personalities (as opposed to being "forced to take 3 flaws" or something like that) in the form of point credits to spend on other stuff. During play...

@Allistar1801 I think you've got a great backdrop for a good campaign -- don't be too hard on yourself. From what I can tell, you have a general idea for a world, but what you're missing is the premise of what the adventures are going to be. Robin Laws likes to frame premises as "The characters...

I don't think you can get away from any hand-wavey explanation for a flat world... I mean, that's why flat worlds don't exist :) Discworld and Glorantha are great examples of flat worlds. The first one explains it with funny bits and vague stuff, while the second explains it all with deeply...

Haha yes, I can see how that's totally misleading

While I think a lot of people (including me) tend to agree with your list, I have a suspicion that if we were to specifically name some games and accuse them of such things, a lot of differences of opinions might suddenly surface :) (especially since I can't really come up with any game that...

It's funny to me that people talk about not having a clear idea of one's chances of success when, in my experience, the vast majority of D&D DMs I've seen in action would not tell the players what DC they're shooting for. If you worry about making chances of success clear to the players...

I believe the OP was motivated by the classic situation of "the game-master wants to play some new game, but the players don't want to". In that case, the GM usually has already bought the book(s), and is waving them around in front of uninterested friends. The only financial factor in play at...

Any kind of roll under? Regardless of whether it's a percentile roll under or bell curve 3d6 roll under or dice pool of D10s roll under? Either way, that means you're in a different situation than I thought: you do have experience in many game systems already but you just don't like many of...

Funny I was just making a reference to that in my previous post above. I have no idea why so many people have problems with "roll under" resolution systems... Is it because they grew up playing D&D and have a "beat the score" reflex ingrained? For me it's weird, it would be like refusing to...

I'm replying late, but yes, I totally agree, it's fairly easy for me to pick up a new system too, and it feels like it should be for almost everybody. But I was just communicating about what my experience was of other people at my table(s). Maybe half of them would get it quickly, while the...

You gotta be careful when taking people out of D&D for the first time and dropping them in CoC. If it's for a one-shot, then it's perfect. Go for it! I'm a big CoC fan. Get the totally amazing Starter Kit box and have fun! However if it's for a campaign, you're facing 2 paradigm shifts: The...

Did you like the T5 rules? How did they compare to Mongoose Traveller (if you've played that)?

I don't hate any system. There's no system I would never play with. There are systems I'd rather not play with but depending on who I'd play it with, it might be quite irrelevant in comparison.

Yes, trying new games is a lot of fun! (I'm the GM 99% of the time so the work and money spending is on me anyway) From my experience, people who don't want to try a new game are reluctant because of a mix of various reasons: 1. They're the kind of player who likes to buy the rulebook...

Link: High Colonies Kickstarter "Earth has been ravaged by nuclear and biological warfare known as the Earthome War. Now a barren and poisonous wasteland; humanity is thought to be extinct here. Remnants of humanity are scattered on planets, moons, and space stations throughout the Solar...

Since I live in Vancouver and I discovered the existence of a pretty good local dice maker, I figured I'd advertise their stuff! They're called Adventure Dice They do no-frills dice sets whose main selling point for me is that they're always very readable. Other than that, nothing much to...

Ah, I didn't know where that term came from. Thanks.

The more I'm reading about narrative RPGs, and the more I'm confused about what they're supposed to be. This post above is the first I've seen in a long time that actually makes sense to me! I'm wondering if it's more a matter of incentives to follow established tropes, or something? I mean...