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I definitely see most canon Settings of Despair as per OP not having a ton of space for PCs to fundamentally alter the path the place is on. At best you might hope to escape back to somewhere better or a temporary improvement of the status quo. Some examples that come to mind are Blade's Doskvol...

Whoa, definitely missed this when I was running a game of it haha. I don't think the context is quite the same as the latter which is more about how you want to cheer for characters by giving them opportunities to struggle? One interesting bit we'll get to later regarding characters is that...

The One Ring is pretty clear on how you’re fighting to keep the spark of hope alive until the King Returns & etc. You’re not going to defeat Sauron, but you can help ensure there’s a world to come after him.

Over the last year-ish I've been playing two games focused around community building/sustainment as the fulcrum of play: Stonetop and Songs for the Dusk. The latter is a post-post collapse/apocalyptic setting (Think: Destiny 2), but one where many of the institutions lean towards power-seeking /...

I've been using Owlbear Rodeo because I like the lighter the better and it's been working aight. Edit: the extension for DS! in it is now able to pull from the compendium for adversary profiles, but I haven’t tried that yet.

I’ve got my first one of the season thawing in the fridge to spatchcock later in the week. 99c/LB! Edit: it’s a super cheap tasty bird at those prices. Makes great sandwiches and finger food out of the oven, and I turn a bunch into better-then-chicken chili verde / turkey and dumpling soup /...

I think how games that look more at the wider mystical legend/fiction world do this sort of thing are really cool. Like how Beyond the Wall moves a lot of general purpose magic out into the Ritual section, makes them far more deliberate then quick in-combat cantrips and spells, and adds a longer...

Wait, you didnt see the game explicitly say you’re not supposed to spotlight one adversary on the same GM turn unless it has a specific feature? Leaders, or leader-style multi-activation abilities really help an encounter feel better IMO. With most Evasions and attack bonuses leading to...

Maybe we could move a lot of their utility into rituals or feats that allow them to use magic / arcana in place of other skills with a chance of failure, perhaps the former could be powered by Hit Dice.

FWIW, I would definitely treat minions as a single activation per their group-attack ability for that sort of purpose.

Minions when you want to put tokens down and roll lots of dice or let your players see lots of tokens vanish, Hordes when you want to run ToM and describe lots of creatures but without actually doing the management. It's up to you how you describe a horde - is it a small pack of demonic dogs or...

It's so good, the pre-made characters are delightful in their own way; and the game inculcates teh sort of cooperative relationships it wants right from the start in the direction it gives the GM and players. You get a real solid feel for how the designer wants the game to be played.

A good counter example might be Games Workshop, who has their two main-line games and then a host of side games all over the gamut of mini wargaming (fantasy sports! skirmish size games! high scale battles! mini-based-TTRPG things! an entire publishing and animation house! & etc).

Why not a general ability like the community ones that all players get as a frame mechanic? “Heroes Surge: Once per session when you have no Hope and roll with Fear, you can gain one Hope” or something. Limits it, but helps them climb out of the Fear spiral. Another option could be doing Hope...

Dungeons of Drakkenheim is pretty bleak if you run it as written. It’s based on Mordheim, and that sort of “twisted world” vibe with a healthy bit of Warhammer “everybody is grey at best” shines through. I submit Red Hand of Doom. It’s a fairly heroic adventure, pretty open but with clear...

Ooof, I didn't know that about SoS (they're...not good).

In part because even if the serial numbers were filed off Eberron is way too big of a Thing to be a singular frame. It would be pretty cool to collect together like 4-5 different Frames within the larger world though. Sharn has so many options that could be an entire campaign almost within the...

Gosh, DH works really well for Modern Urban Fantasy. We had to figure out a way to hide redcap corpses in a University Quad before their glamour wore off; track down a drug dealer off his clothes that had been used to disguise a summoned specter (a spirit of delinquency ofc), got stuck in rush...

To be fair, the Essentials classes are pretty terrible.

This ties back into the questions about balance and system assumptions though. In a game like Dungeon World, I may very well say exactly that after the fighter rolls a 6- on their clash and gets put in a spot and hurt by the orc; now it's pivot to the Rogue and "offer an opportunity." But that...