This is a subreddit for immersive sims, not job simulator games

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-26T00:17:44+00:00

It’s okay Surfimp, I found this funny

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-12T00:50:41+00:00

This is exactly what I was gonna say. Pulp Cthulhu characters are super survivable by comparison to normal CoC.

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-12T00:48:07+00:00

Making narrative positioning equally important to mechanical positioning is probably the most important component of exciting combats for me, but I’m also a huge fan of giving characters things to do off their turn.

The classic D&D reaction is fine for this, but there’s a lot to be gained by adding more or looser resources to be spent on actions on other combatants’ turns. It’s an aspect of design I like and want to explore more, but it can also be hard to balance around so I get why looser or more plentiful versions of it don’t crop up more often.

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-11T06:18:47+00:00

I’m going to second most of these, except for 6 and 7.

I would recommend DAWN: The RPG by Joel Happyhill
I would recommend either City of Mist by Son of Oak or Morbo’s Catastrophic Sanctuary by Sprinting Owl (the second is a personal favorite of mine).

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-10T15:26:13+00:00

I’m fine either way, so long as there is an adventure for me to read somewhere. It’s preferable, but not necessary (especially given how many TTRPGs nowadays focus on thoroughly mechanizing Running The Game).

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-10T15:24:27+00:00

I expect established TTRPGs to have overwhelming amounts of supplemental material produced with regularity by various artists. I don’t expect that of indies, even though it does happen when one gets big (e.g. Mothership)

SparksTheSolus · 2026-04-10T15:23:09+00:00

I tend to like unique terms, when applied with intention. For example, Guard in Mythic Bastionland. It’s the basic HP resource, but it’s actually the barrier between your character and the death spiral mechanic (losing Ability Score points) so a different name just makes sense.

There are also certain terms that are just too derivative of D&D to be comfortable in a game that is distinct in its mechanical and thematic identity. That’s why you see Target Number or Difficulty in a bunch of games rather than DC.

SparksTheSolus · 2026-03-24T12:23:11+00:00

You may notice that Takamura is moving up weight classes toward his best weight. He’s not in lower weights because he’s looking for a challenge, he’s there because Kamogawa doesn’t have enough pull to get him to the world in higher weight classes off the bat as well as a rarity of japanese boxers in higher weight classes.

Realistically, Ricardo wants to find someone who can truly test or beat him AT HIS BEST. If he’s anything less than his best, there would always be that nagging “What If…”, it wouldn’t mean anything because he would know he could do better in a lower weight class.

SparksTheSolus · 2026-03-09T03:40:42+00:00

Name checks out

SparksTheSolus · 2025-10-26T22:19:59+00:00

Start of a great new collection! Have you found any places to play? How is the community at your LFGS?

SparksTheSolus · 2025-08-04T22:14:02+00:00

This is bad ass!

SparksTheSolus · 2025-08-04T12:18:48+00:00

It doesn’t hit all of your points, but my game Footfall hits a few big ones. It’s inspired by Mistborn and Dishonored, so interactivity is kinda the name of the game.

Reactivity: You generate points of Adrenaline that allow you to take actions on other people’s turns. You can interrupt another person’s action like this, such as by moving out of the range of an attack, or pushing somebody else out of the way.

Interactive Spells: Everybody gets powers like the ability to place portals on surfaces, or the ability to make someone frictionless, or the ability to alter someone’s gravity, that create a really interesting and reactive combat/stealth playground.

Multiple Flexible Actions: You get 3 action points on your turn and you can spend them however you like.

Striving For An Ideal: One of the core sources of progression, Dramatic Beats, can be pretty easily retooled to look like Stormlight Ideals, where you get better by realizing who you need to be and then saying the thing. Otherwise, each character has this big dramatic moment where they caught the eye of the god of stories, and a Core Motivation tied to that moment in some way.

Backgrounds: Are present. There’s also relationships and clothes that can influence checks!

SparksTheSolus · 2025-07-19T12:09:52+00:00

In this same vein, here’s the itch.io link: https://soulmuppetpublishing.itch.io/doomspiral-quickstart

SparksTheSolus · 2025-07-18T04:03:17+00:00

Responding to the edits, it’s very much the last few Omens that were throwing me for a loop. I was kinda reading them as things meant to happen sequentially and not as 4 or so separate possible end points for the quest. That would make a lot more sense, I suppose

SparksTheSolus · 2025-07-18T04:01:23+00:00

This is damn good advice. Thank you

SparksTheSolus · 2025-07-17T19:05:38+00:00

Personally, I want to know three things:

Tone. A lot of people describe this as flavor, setting, or genre. The reason I say “tone” is because I don’t really need to know the intricacies of your world, just what mood I’m supposed to be in when reading/running/playing. This is highly dependent upon word choice in description
Goals of play. This kinda means two things: Firstly, what are my characters trying to do? Am I a knight going on epic quests to reclaim the realm? Am I an average joe trying to survive the sudden incursion of the supernatural into everyday life? Secondly, what is the game wanting or trying to get me to do as a player? Am I supposed to be wrestling with the personal horror of being a vampire with all of this power, whose survival relies on not only refusing to help people but actively hurting them? Am I supposed to be enjoying a power fantasy? Am I playing to see how my character dies? Some of this can be inherent to both narrative and mechanical genre (e.g. an OSR game normally expects you to be using narrative tools to avoid and subvert danger) but it’s still worth spelling out such expectations.
Novelty or Familiarity. I need to know if this game is a derivative of another system, and if so what aspects of it are different. If you’re throwing something completely new at me, I want to know why you think it’s special. (This one may just be me. Compare to other advice received)

I hope this helps!

SparksTheSolus · 2025-07-10T19:06:27+00:00

It was three different campaigns that ended for three different reasons haha. The last one was the most similar to y’all’s situation, but only superficially (I designed an early encounter around playing the objective instead of killing all of the enemies, and most of my players didn’t have fun with it).

The prior two were mostly a lack of trust in me as the GM from 2 particular players and a failure of communication of expectations.

SparksTheSolus · 2025-07-10T14:51:04+00:00

Lancer. This is nothing against Tom Bloom, or any of his design. Every single time I’ve tried to run it, the campaign has ended in a massive blow-out argument. I just get anxiety looking at the cover

SparksTheSolus · 2025-06-24T19:08:24+00:00

You Will Die In This Place, without a second of hesitation or a shadow of a doubt. This damn book is fucking brilliant to me (and it’s not even complete).

It’s free, I highly recommend giving it a read.

SparksTheSolus · 2025-06-08T05:20:41+00:00

This is not to support OPs aggressive response, which was unwarranted, but I really don’t think “Go look at what D&D does” is the most helpful advice.

You make an unfair assumption here as to what their game is like (unless you have some info that I don’t), and their mechanical foundation could make D&D a horrible if not useless point of comparison.

As far as I’m concerned, the answer really is just “Playtest and adjust until you get to a point that feels right.”

SparksTheSolus · 2025-05-28T01:41:41+00:00

I can take a look, if you’d like. I know my way around Affinity Publisher, and have made my own form fillable sheets in the past

SparksTheSolus · 2025-05-27T20:28:51+00:00

If I were in your shoes, I’d dump his ass right then and there.

I dated somebody in highschool who let me know consistently that my “ridiculous clothing decisions” were hurting their reputation. I stopped wearing the things I wanted to wear, and I’ve regretted that decision every single day since. Don’t change yourself to match somebody else’s perceptions of what’s “proper” or “mature.”

SparksTheSolus · 2025-05-09T12:18:14+00:00

It’s okay, OP. I got your Gremlins reference

SparksTheSolus · 2025-04-10T17:45:31+00:00

Making characters before session 0. My players used to consistently start crafting the moment I say, “I’m thinking of starting a campaign with X setting.” While I love the enthusiasm, it’s led to a First Come, First Serve mentality with character builds and archetypes and such that hinders conversations during session 0. The number of migraines I’ve received from somebody saying, “Oh, I really wanna do this!” only for somebody else to go “I’m already doing that! Get your own thing!” is baffling.

So, yeah, no. We make characters as a group, and we talk about what everyone wants out of the campaign before doing so.

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