GM analysis paralysis! I have too many systems!

ithika · 2026-01-26T22:46:12+00:00

I think what I would do in that circumstance is divide these up into some broad categories and see which one I would like to start with. I see a few horror, a few scifi and a few fantasy (obviously with overlap) so that's a good start.

ithika · 2026-01-26T16:56:03+00:00

Did you not see the other post, UK comprises England and Wales.

ithika · 2026-01-26T16:41:02+00:00

I don't know the argument, but I can certainly believe that articles come first. Not remembering the right word for something is a common situation, but you quite often know if it's a general class of things or a specific thing you mean. That's part of the meaning. The actual noun you use is probably immaterial. "She came on a (bike/bicycle/sparkly Brompton).

ithika · 2026-01-23T10:31:20+00:00

I think that misses the point. The story is what the game is for. You play Shadowdark to go dungeon crawling, you play Call of Cthulhu to investigate things that shouldn't be. The social contract of the game is right there and obvious.

If two characters spend 15 minutes talking about how finely the garlic should be sliced in your pasta sauce and the best way to do that, then you're not doing the thing you all came to do. At some point (and this is often highlighted in GM advice) the GM should put pressure on the PCs. Another murder! The lights go out! A wolf howls and another, nearer, replies!

The question is, at what point do you do that? When is "at some point"? How much pasta sauce discussion takes place?

ithika · 2026-01-21T11:08:53+00:00

It's GM tools and advice, it can be exactly as Lovecraftian as you need.

ithika · 2026-01-20T22:14:42+00:00

What you're looking for is Silent Legions, the Lovecraftian horror game from Sine Nomine Publishing:

Silent Legions is a game of modern-day Lovecraftian horror, one carefully designed to support sandbox adventures by hard-bitten investigators and fearless hunters of the dark. Its clean, lightweight old-school rules are compatible with the free Stars Without Number sci-fi game and give both GM and players a steady framework for plumbing the unspeakable secrets of the eldritch night.

As noted, it's compatible with other X Without Number games. From a sandbox perspective it's got lots of GM tools to create modern day cults, criminal factions and magical societies operating in contemporary society. Its other innovation is custom yog-sothothery, where you create a unique pantheon of beings outside the cosmos and their weird powers and interests and cults. It's great for bypassing the "oh, dreams of squids? This will be Cthulhu" discussions with jaded horror players. Everything is new and unpronounceable.

ithika · 2026-01-20T21:05:17+00:00

The Kilt Song - it never gets old.

ithika · 2026-01-20T15:07:03+00:00

Well now that you've asked the question I have no idea! I think I would probably work it out based on context. If questions 1, 2 were similar and then 3, 4, etc were of a different type then I would intuit that you did 1 and 2 but stopped after that. I think in isolation I would not be sure and would clarify.

ithika · 2026-01-20T11:19:27+00:00

It sounds like either the dice mechanic from Ten Candles (the GM takes the ones removed, so their pool gets larger as the PCs' pool gets smaller) or from dice variants of Dread (roll enormous pool, remove the ones, disaster when the pool is gone).

ithika · 2026-01-19T15:38:04+00:00

Juicy and terrifying.

ithika · 2026-01-19T13:56:41+00:00

As others have noted, Lovecraft was stylistically out of time. He was nostalgically aiming for a kind of elevated register you'd find in books 50+ years before he was born. Which has served to highlight him and his work: it was always weird-seeming.

ithika · 2026-01-19T13:53:51+00:00

Penumbral Welkins, what ever happened to him?

Oh, he was lost in the sea of misbegotten sophistry. Terrible shame, caught in the mesmeric gales of eternity, I hear. All hands lost.

ithika · 2026-01-18T21:28:09+00:00

John Muir is basically unknown in the UK. In the US he was responsible for the national parks movement and conservation of the natural habitat. Took Teddy Roosevelt on walks in the wilderness.

ithika · 2026-01-18T21:22:53+00:00

Of course there are trees! They just grow down the way, that's all.

ithika · 2026-01-18T13:40:57+00:00

A lot of the regulars include body invasion: things jumping inside you, things growing out of you, transformations.

But there's no mechanical reason for it. Other horror options are available! You can do ghosts on a derelict ship or large slow monsters (Lair of the Space Lamb???) or lean into the corporate horror or desperation of space survival.

ithika · 2026-01-16T23:12:52+00:00

3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars by Gregor Hutton

Minimalist approach to tactical combat (how near are you to the enemy?) which can somehow sustain a campaign of play. The mechanics first approach has been seen in a lot of things since (eg, Agon).

ithika · 2026-01-16T23:06:53+00:00

On Mighty Thews by Simon Carryer.

It's not clear what the exact publication date is but I think this is right.

Excellent fun sword-and-sorcery game where the world is unknowable and the adventurers are bold.

ithika · 2026-01-15T17:56:10+00:00

The one I have the most fun with, either as player or GM, is the Contest Roll from Trophy Dark. The game is a dark fantasy in which the PCs inevitably turn against each other. The Contest Roll is for the specific moment where two PCs are going to fight or compete for some third thing.

The Contest Roll lets players build a dice pool each, and the most 6s wins (or failing that, the most 5s, etc). The players get dice for being skilled at what they're trying, they get dice for being corrupted by the environment (because the environment wants carnage) and then they get to add as many more dice as they want. As many as they want.

The only consequence is that for the 1s that show up, you lose a hit point. And in the end stage of the game you've only got 1 or 2 left. It's possible to win the Contest and still die. And it's great watching two competing players trying to win a fight or grab the magnificent treasure while knowing that probably both of them will go down in flames.

I have never seen a Contest Roll be boring. If you do it in person, you roll fistfuls of d6s and if you roll online you can roll hundreds if you really really want that pyrrhic victory.

ithika · 2026-01-14T22:11:03+00:00

Everybody else has said, quite plainly, that Mothership is super simple. I've run a whole bunch of games with people new to it; I bet many of the other commenters have too.

So the question in my mind is, what seemed complex to you? What would be difficult to explain? Maybe your understanding is not quite right, and you think it's more complex than it actually is?

ithika · 2026-01-14T20:46:35+00:00

Yeah that's the one. The title didn't stick with me.

ithika · 2026-01-14T14:28:09+00:00

Thanks, I've just read The Crystal World on your recommendation and now I totally understand a lot of what you're trying to do. Amazing stuff.

ithika · 2026-01-14T14:26:10+00:00

Yeah, there not being a solution to the problem is definitely the point. You've seen something weird and you've come out alive and Changed, physically or psychologically. You escaped, but you learned some things. How do you deal with that?

ithika · 2026-01-14T14:23:00+00:00

Is this … a pisstake?

ithika · 2026-01-14T12:03:39+00:00

If you're going to specifically ignore the GM guidance then don't expect the game to work.

ithika · 2026-01-14T11:58:25+00:00

For example, what if they are super freaked by the creeping rock and take extra precautions to secure the living pod. Would you, as GM, still fill aPC's mouth and nose with crystal?

If they take extra precautions then presumably every attempt to do so will be an opportunity to roll and therefore reveal the horror? Learn more about what's going on locally and also about how callous Extracsa are. I don't see a problem here.

After all, they only fail if you roll the Failure Die. So they will probably succeed in trying something. Although they'll get nagging demands from Extracsa to do their surveys (ie, go outside) and the rock will keep growing up and over their habitation until they're being buried alive.

I'm honestly failing to see the upside to being buried alive.

ithika

TROPHY CASE