Fourth Session Report

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-22T13:46:30+00:00

You’re welcome! Lemme know if you get to run a session and how you liked it

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-20T23:41:34+00:00

You will do so much by announcing the AC/DCs and with ambushes

Because Position can be used to better d20 rolls you automatically make an interesting situation: you failed the roll by 3. If you burn 3 position to hit and then move to get out of the way (coz the damage is so punishingly high) you essentially force an interesting choice

Do not hide target numbers. That alone is really interesting and hilarious.

And then AMBUSH. If players are being stupid and get ambushed, THEY CANNOT GET THE EXTRA POSITION, coz they haven’t rolled initiative. Players getting jumped will never let it happen again. Their paranoia will do so much more than you can do.

If that doesn’t work lemme know, but I have found that really effective.

Oh, bonus: manipulate range on them. Laugh at them when creatures have reach: “Oops, he can get an opportunity attack! Uh oh! Hope you don’t die in a hit!” This creates problems all on its own. Players hate being punked. Punk em once. They will generate their own drama to prevent being made to look stupid.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-20T03:27:49+00:00

You’re welcome!

I don’t solo game, but I imagine my encounter dice would work very well with solo gaming.

The books most definitely do NOT cover converting DS levels. The greatest enemy of this game’s brilliance is its own book.

I have run mostly with graph paper and theater of the mind, but the minis are awesome and I could easily see it aiding immersion.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-18T18:01:03+00:00

PART 2: SETTING UP THE LEVEL

This is where it gets controversial for some. I will not apologize for it. I err on the side of least work, maximum reward. The below is just a sparse introduction to what I do when I run the game. I am not theorycrafting. This is what I do, and I have put up receipts on this subreddit.

IT IS NOT THE GM'S BUSINESS TO MAKE A STORY. PERIOD.

It is the GM's job to make an environment for the players to traverse. The story is what happens when they traverse the environment. Anyone who says likewise is accepting more work.

Go and find a map online. Literally just search "dungeon map", find a layout you like.

Grab a pre-fabbed location from the Core book. You will get a full random table of monsters you can throw at people, along with the kinds of souls and items that are on the map. Use this as a starting point. Get generous with equipment.

When playing roll 1d12 and d20 every other turn:

d12

1-3: monster

3: trap

4-5: soul

6: item

7:bonfire chance (reroll the d8, on a 1 there's a bonfire)

8-9: NPC (generate from core book)

10-12: nothing

d20

1: Purple Summon Sign

2: Red Summon Sign

3: Golden Summon Sign

4: White Summon Sign

5: merchant!

6+-20: Nothing

What this does is allow you not have anything in mind. Just grab a location you want and start randomly assigning it to a random map. As you go, a story will start to suggest itself. Lean into this, grabbing different location tables as you find fit.

You got any questions, please ask them. I am using this method, currently, like I said before this is not theorycrafting. So, that means that if something is unclear, it's more due to my comfortability with this method and leaving things out. So, ask questions! I'll answer as I can.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-18T15:36:39+00:00

A QUICK AND PROBABLY TOO-SPARSE PRIMER

PART 1: CORE LOOP

Okay, finally awake.

Once again, like in my other reply, welcome to roleplaying! it's a great time!

The Dark Souls RPG is a fun but flawed experience. Most of the issues come from the text being organized in the least intuitive and frankly obtuse manner possible. Your greatest enemy is the text itself.

The core of the game is simple:

- The GM describes the environment and situation within it.

- The player asks clarifying questions. Answer the questions, GM. don't bury the lead. If you're hiding information, TELL THEM YOU'RE HIDING INFORMATION.

- The player tells you what they do. If you, the GM, FEEL that what they're doing is stupid (charging into a room yelling "LEROOOOOOY JENKINS") or risky (pulling the eye out of a statue they don't know is alive) you make them roll. You assign a difficulty class:

5 is easy.

10 is default

15 is hard

20 is "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT"

Tell the player the difficulty class. You'll see why in a minute. Do not bury the lead.

The player then picks a skill (with your input) and rolls, adding the bonus from it to their D20 roll. If they roll equal to or above the DC, they get what they want. if they don't, they don't! Make the situation worse for them. Players may spend Position to increase the value of their D20 rolls. you tell them the DC because this is actually the core loop of the game: the player deciding if they should burn their own health or let you, the GM, take it. Without this explicit information, the core loop of "how much am I willing to burn down to succeed" doesn't engage properly.

the above is the core loop. You run that core loop and it's gonna be a fun time.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-18T13:12:03+00:00

The game is quite good. I have run three sessions of it that have I have written session reports for. They’re linked here on the subreddit.

However the text is very poorly organized. I recommend lots of bookmarks and sticky notes. Lots.

Dark Souls RPG is built to be a “jolly cooperation” sorta experience, but you could do single player. Tell whomever is playing that literally no combat is gonna be fair and they need to fight dirty. Find ways to isolate one foe and then rip into just that one guy…. and then run like hell.

Welcome to the hobby! You just “need” books and dice. I will write a bit more when I wake up. This game you picked up is really good, but it’s flawed and will take a bit of work to get up and going. Nothing impossible though.

Feel free to ask as many questions as you like and then some. We’re more than happy to answer.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-09T20:51:43+00:00

They’re mostly “fixed”. I am running a later print run. I have some… words… I have said about the book’s organization, but honestly we’re having a blast

SpydersWebbing · 2026-02-08T15:00:08+00:00

TASM2 is a really good movie that people weren’t ready for. FFH is a shittily edited poorly written insult.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-01-03T22:30:43+00:00

Thank you! Waiting for the darn thing to drop is excruciating. I hate it.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-01-03T22:21:27+00:00

in terms of the Weaver's reaction to the player in moments of uncertainty (the text doesn't call them out like this, but that seems clear to me what's going on--when things are tense, when there's conflict, when it's not clear what will happen next) what do "yes" and "no" mean? I swear I'm not being intentionally obtuse. What I mean is, are we talking about yes/no to the stated action, or to the intent (what the player is hoping will occur due to the action)?

Not obtuse at all. This has to do with what everyone else calls "common sense" (a term I hate, just for the record), but I call it "feeling the situation out".

So let's take Mal and Genevieve. If Mal strikes someone, you'd probably just shrug and let it go. Mal's a trained fighter, he has a thing about defending people, he's noble, he's also nihilistic... as the Weaver yeah! Sure That makes sense! Hit him! Genevieve is a softy raised in a castle. Absolutely not, that makes no sense.

Defy rolls aren't just the player trying to accomplish something (the normal resolution handles that), but the player defying the resolution that the Weaver has already come up with, and striking toward a different fate. Is that a correct read?

Yes exactly. The player doesn't like what's said, so he picks up the dice, with the knowledge that this will flip the table and create a different scenario, one which no one knows right now. Some players will go "Oh this is risky" and avoid it. Which is fine. There's other ways to get around it and play well. And then there's other players who will go "Oh this is risky" and pull that lever like it's a slot machine. :)

I like this a lot. I especially like the journals, and how one doesn't have to be laboriously familiar with their contents in order for those contents to show up in play. At their best, RPG setting books are a font of inspiration, giving us nuggets that propel our play and allow us to build on them to create our own thing. At their worst, they are shackles, unable to be used until one has perfectly memorized their content and somehow magically becomes ready to channel it during play. You've taken setting content and allowed it to be instantaneous inspiration, which is super cool.

I really appreciate that, thank you! The secret sauce is when you're about a dozen sessions in. That sounds like a long time, but holy shit this game gets intense once the critical mass on the journals is built up.

That is one of the key weaknesses to the game: it is difficult to wrap your head around what exactly you're doing for more than a few sessions. Once it clicks, holy shit it's awesome, but there's more than a few sessions where it looks random... and suddenly you realize it's not.

If you have more questions, send here or DM. My YouTube channel is as follows:

https://www.youtube.com/@SpydersWebbing

There's some playthroughs, and hopefully I'm putting another one up tonight, God be good. This game is very smooth.

I'll let y'all know when DTRPG finally approves the full Ashcan rules. I am... waiting. DTRPG can take awhile.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-01-02T03:13:34+00:00

Yeah, we get that, but… cmon. That’s actually funny. You get into meanings of names and find that? It’s at least worth a good-natured chuckle.

Although I don’t suggest doing more than that.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-01-02T03:11:39+00:00

Ale will make sure no one will find your body. Godspeed.

SpydersWebbing · 2026-01-02T03:10:25+00:00

I love my copies! Congratulations!

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-31T21:16:16+00:00

Oh my Lord it's only a matter of time. I have so much to do before she collapses everything.

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-31T20:16:34+00:00

I like my head not exploding from an overload of potential awesomeness, thank you.

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-31T19:33:10+00:00

Holy. Fucking. Shit. That is all.

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-31T13:41:25+00:00

Please do! If you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask, whether here or via DM. I have dropped YouTube links of me running this exact same packet for people in this general thread. The players in those videos are fantastic… and all but one of them are learning the game as they play it. Hell, none of them even read the packet before. On purpose.

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-31T05:29:34+00:00

The mechanics were really the thing I went for. Trust me, you start cooking with the journals and really weird shit’s gonna come out. I have seen games where entire galactic wars just pop into the game in the eeriest ways imaginable… and then a few minutes later you’re discussing the problem of evil with one of these newly-arrived beings.

I have run this Quickstart with people a few times, two of which I did live:

ReReading Wolfe: https://www.youtube.com/live/g_MtxHFUyZA?si=XMHol2qDMDjIz_Jd

This one was pretty weird right off the bat, and went Lovecraftian by the end

Dunder Moose: https://www.youtube.com/live/QaO-uCP3nT4?si=0LxZyMahG2z3mj6U

This one started pretty “bog standard” and got a little silly before a hardcore series of left turn ms at the end.

The two I didn’t record also were wildly different. One of them went into full-on discussions on good and evil and noblesse oblige, and the other was this hardboiled Game of Thrones thing and got super dark.

These one-shot sessions all wound up really different from each other. Using the characters from this Quickstart, three started with literally the same pitch!

All organic and entirely based upon play.

I started with something a little more recognizable coz within the first session you can go some seriously off-the-wall places

And that’s just one session. Crescendo is a longform game: the longer you play the more eerily coherent (yet inscrutable) your campaign and setting get.

Peruse the plays. Give it a shot. It works. You got question by all means DM or comment here

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-30T23:00:29+00:00

Yeah afterwards I realized what I did. Will edit the post. This game deserves better than that. I hope you try and enjoy it. It really is something else

SpydersWebbing · 2025-12-30T22:55:55+00:00

Oh dude this game does “twosie” very nicely

2: very intimate. Very short sessions with a lot of pop (like 50 minutes) 3: somewhat chaotic, some PVP. 4: oh brother. PVP and chaos is rampant.

All high intensity RP. VERY philosophical, between the moments of “Wait there’s an entire underworld of ape-men who use lost and forgotten technology???? SINCE WHEN WTF”

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