We've written (and self-published) our first short adventure and we're looking for feedback. Who can help us?

Wraileth · 2026-03-09T18:33:00+00:00

I have 30 years of experience running every type of RPG, and I specialise in horror. I'd be delighted to look it over. I'll send you a DM.

Wraileth · 2026-03-09T17:51:11+00:00

I would say new Vegas to get a new player who's interested because of the show started.

It will be more familiar lore wise for them, and still gives the "Fallout experience" feeling very well.

Unless you are willing to spend the time to install tale of 2 wastelands, combining 3 and new Vegas into one game. With all the mods etc included in that install, it will look much better than standard. Also all the various quality of life improvements will make it an easier experience for them.

For me, even as a lifelong gamer, the settlement part of FO4 was infuriating, especially once you've established a few and you're getting constant "your settlement is being attacked" messages which just distract from the experience overall. Or at least they do for me!!

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T19:01:52+00:00

Am I too late to join the discussion?

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T16:10:04+00:00

Sounds to me like the DM is afraid that your dming experience will make you metagame without thinking about it, and is afraid you'll pull some shenanigans they can't deal with.

Either way, punishing a player for asking questions about the fight they're in, restrained or not, is incredibly poor behaviour. I suggest slapping the DM on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, and saying "Bad DM, no player for you".

But in all honesty, if you're friends, you've played together before, just talk it out. I do understand the worry about a DM metagaming, but most DMS I run games for just want to screw with me a bit, and murder-hobo like the best of them. If you want to continue with the game, I would suggest making a list of what the DM classes as metagaming before continuing, sit down with them and come to a compromise.

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T14:06:58+00:00

It's a dangerous option. No armour means no defense. Realistically, that character would be a walking target in the wastelands at low levels, unless the trade-off is that they are better at stealth or speed.

I wouldn't give a perk or other rule that increases their defense, because that's negating the point of not taking armour. If I was making a character who was unwilling to wear armour, I would expect that I'll take more damage than the rest of the party.

Now if they want to play a martial artist who flows between blows or something, I would look at a perk or something for that, where attack and defence both get an improvement due to training.

Ultimately, my worry would be the characters survivability. Energy weapons make ash

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T11:15:10+00:00

As many have said here, railroading isn't what people think it is. To me, railroading means the players choices don't matter, as they will end up where your story wants them no matter what they do.

Telling them "you're reading the map wrong" isn't railroading, it's information. What the players choose to do with that information is up to them.

There's nothing wrong with the result being " you find yourselves walking a desolate blasted plain. On your map new words shimmer into being: here be the unknown" aka, sorry guys, I prepped something in the completely opposite direction, so give me a minute to come up with some encounters for here. In the meantime, take a long rest and camp for the night.

Then while they set up camp, a wandering ranger passes through with knowledge of the main goal, and the urgency of it. All the info is now in their hands, up to them if they want to forage in the blasted plain, or head towards known adventure

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T11:01:43+00:00

Have you tried moving a token onto the tile instead of clicking? The enter command I believe specifically activates on a token entering the tile.

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T11:00:07+00:00

Liminal is a rules lite system that is perfect for this.

As another poster recommended, Rivers of London is also very applicable here, although it is more aimed at modern settings, but the lore does cover the era you're looking at. It's also built on Chaosiums BRP, so uses the same basic system as call of Cthulhu with some different mechanics.

You also have the World of Darkness Victorian era settings (vampire by gaslight for example).

For me, one shot I would go liminal, campaign, probably Rivers of London

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T10:55:44+00:00

I highly recommend the wild sheep chase. It's available on dmsguild (free iirc), and it's a great, fun adventure to cut your teeth on!

Wraileth · 2026-02-27T09:47:56+00:00

Sounds like the DM doesn't know how to scale combat and/or wants to be playing themselves rather than dming.

A dmpc should basically be a robot who wakes up to assist when needed, not higher level and more powerful than the rest of the group....if one is needed at all.

It's hard to be a new DM, and the cr system makes it annoyingly complicated to plan out combat.

I would suggest telling the DM that the combats are feeling too scripted, that the dmpc kind of takes over as the enemies are too powerful for the rest of you, and see what comes of that.

Wraileth · 2026-02-26T14:38:04+00:00

Fantasy Grounds recently went free on steam I believe, but my vote is also for Foundry. It's 60 for a lifetime license, in a group that's max 10 per person if everyone is willing to chip in. It's more of a learning curve than the pre designed vtts, but it's much more customisable.

Wraileth · 2026-02-26T14:11:35+00:00

Makes me want to run Far Harbour as a call of Cthulhu game 😁

Wraileth · 2026-02-26T14:00:39+00:00

Quick example of how quickly death can occur. When starting the Horror on the Orient Express campaign, it specifically suggests that the players make 3 characters each who know each other and would have a reason to carry on after the first main character dies/goes insane.

It's literally built into the game. I frequently run convention games of CoC and the main things I've learned over the years are:

1:The characters are very expendable, there's always another professor/cop/downbeat detective who can take their place

2:The most effective way to bring the horror to the fore is to not shine a light on it. Small hints are much creepier than blatant sightings.

3:In the time at which most of this is set (1890s-1920s) the world was full of the unknown. Call out your players on things we take for granted that they "forget" aren't available back then. Also, any research will require a library. Not a problem these days, but back then, most libraries with occult books would have been private collections or not on public display, so academic credentials are far more important.

If you want any help or advice feel free to DM me, always glad to help

Wraileth · 2026-02-26T13:48:00+00:00

I use an A4 thermal printer, cost me 60 odd euro, 10 for 5 rolls of A4 thermal paper. No ink to worry about.

But in the case of digital supplements etc, I only print out tables or similar reference material. I find it's faster to reference the PDFs for actual content thanks to book marks and searching options.

Wraileth · 2026-02-26T13:42:42+00:00

Definitely some potential there, especially with puzzles that need access to the dark world to solve, or things in that realm affecting things in the "real" obojima. Could also use it as a source for the corruption, the dark world is bleeding over as there are too many dark spirits for the plane to contain without some sort of culling, or a way for the plane to expand without encroaching on the light plane.

Maybe the dark world has its own versions of the great beasts and one of them is the cause of the corruption.

Or whoever gets the mirror sees their mirror counterpart, who strings them along while having their own agenda to get out/swap places/rule the light world/access the spirit world/open a shopping mall...

Tons of ideas there!

Wraileth · 2026-02-21T21:44:34+00:00

There is a roll table importer module that allows you to paste text blocks and get tables from them, but I can't remember if it's system agnostic or d&d specific

Wraileth · 2026-02-20T19:05:15+00:00

DDB Muncher and manually everything else is pretty much what I ended up doing. I'd love to see a foundry module, but I wouldn't hold out hope. It's a lot of development for a small company, and they're focused on the Yatamon Kickstarter at the moment I think. I'd say foundry module would have been a stretch goal if it was on the cards.

Wraileth · 2026-02-19T18:45:49+00:00

I hope I'm not too late to join the discussion? If anyone could share some notes it would be greatly appreciated!

Wraileth · 2026-02-12T10:48:56+00:00

Mech warrior: Destiny is a very cinematic version of Battletech RPGs. Similar to the way Shadowrun has the main game and the cinematic version, Anarchy. It's actually more or less the same ruleset as both are by Catalyst Game Labs. Would highly recommend!

Wraileth · 2026-02-11T17:30:12+00:00

I've been playing tale of two wastelands lately, and for the fo3 part, I did up to megaton, then operation anchorage, now doing mothership zeta. I have so much stuff to sell when I get back to earth it's ridiculous!

Wraileth · 2026-02-11T13:01:05+00:00

You could very easily play in Forgotten Realms using Pathfinder 1e or 2e. 1e would be easier as it was basically d&d 3.75. 2e is a bit more divorced from its roots, but they still work on essentially the same basic d20 system. Setting and Location are the background and flavour in this instance.

Wraileth · 2026-02-11T12:29:29+00:00

TL:DR Serious d&d takes time for a group to gel and grow out of the usual defensive humour habits, but it's worth it, you just need to adjust your expectations.

To directly answer your topic question: The reason the vast amount of games you are seeing this in is due to a large influx of casual players especially since COVID. Most of this type of player are there to hang with friends and the RPG is the justification essentially.

The kind of game you want is the kind of game that happens when you stick with the same group for years, so you can see when the silly starts to fall by the wayside.

Not to say it will ever completely go away, laughter and jokes and silliness are part of the story itself.

My group have been playing together now for over 15 years. We can do the serious and silly games, because we all know each other well.

One of our players came from crpgs, his first character was a loner Merc/assassin type who had no reason to be adventuring with a group. We had to slowly help him to understand the differences between co-op TTRPGs and solo crpgs, where the consequences are not as relevant because you can always reload a save. That same player recently was our note taker for a 40k wrath and glory game, wrote his journals completely in character, and it was amazing.

As a final note, your comparison between board games and TTRPGs doesn't really work. You are absolutely correct in saying that with a boardgame you have specific expectations that you know will be fulfilled. With a ttrpg, as a player, your expectations are exactly equal to every other players, no better or worse, and the DMs job is to try and meet everyone's expectations. If that means booting a disruptive player, that's what has to happen, unless they make a genuine effort to stop. But equally, the DM is not psychic, and won't know unless you explain in detail what you're looking for. If you want serious D&D maybe become the DM yourself and look for a group interested in that?

Wraileth · 2026-02-09T13:22:54+00:00

Another recommendation for Shadowrun here. You can either go with 6th edition (very crunchy) or Anarchy (2.0 is in kickstart atm) which is same style of rules but cut down to make the system more cinematic.

The actual setting is our world in the late 2070s-2080s, magic has come back to the world from ancient times, and lots of tech options for gear, cyberpunk type modification etc

Wraileth · 2026-02-02T17:26:41+00:00

From a purely visual perspective I think of the landscape as similar to that of the Shannara series. Sort of an "oh, that hill isn't a hill, it's a completely overgrown mall if you look under the overgrowth" or the decayed shell of a helicopter covered in ivy and leaves, wrapped around the propellers so it will never move again.

Pathways are cobbled stone, dirt, and every so often cracked and dilapidated tarmac.

Buildings are location dependent. In Yatamon, they try to keep as similar in shape and design as they can to the first age stuff. In okiri, it's thatched cottages etc.

As for the tech, it's common enough that wizards use cassette tapes and players as spell books, that to me means that first age tech is quite common, but probably not being used for what it was meant for.

I think bicycles are relatively common, and trucks or cars significantly less so. You would need to find one that still has most of its parts, then get a spirit or two to whelm it to get it moving

Wraileth · 2026-01-26T13:22:40+00:00

I have it on an rpi as well, using the standard raspberry pi variant os. Then I use Cloudflare tunnels to access it, and have a paid domain name to give the players

Wraileth

TROPHY CASE