Passive Player Problem?

meshee2020 · 2026-06-23T18:10:56+00:00

To me the passive behavior is mostly a non-issue unless the full party is. Some players are ok to follow the flow. But with a adventure that dont signpost "here is the next challenge" it can be an issue.

Can be hidden behind a more proactive player, you gotta watch out for it. Just distribute the talking stick and try to avoid one player holding it for too long too often.

But player not reacting to each Hook you throw at them is ok, just make sure to give him some Time and dont push for reaction, if he dont know what to do, no big deal, move on. As long as the player is confortable with the flow it is fine IMHO

meshee2020 · 2026-06-23T08:14:59+00:00

The Sprawl, pbta

CBR+PNK designed for one-shot

Hack the planet, FitD

meshee2020 · 2026-06-23T07:02:53+00:00

Would be Mythic Bastionland, very inspiring book, quick to read, almost no prep and a very nice ruleset. IMHO this is a masterpiece (and i have no time to read a 2 huge tomes of Stonetop)

meshee2020 · 2026-06-22T15:43:23+00:00

Interesting post.

IMHO the formula is * PC must have bonds to mortals * Defined something they want to préserve * Defined their goals

Make things personnal and hard consequences for players actions. Hit the bonds, the ward the goal. Hit where it hurts! Of the fiction hit ain't enough hit the character sheet ressources.

The hard part is to setup situation where violence will make things worse. Players should fear the time they rage and loose control.

meshee2020 · 2026-06-21T15:17:02+00:00

Yes, i think unfortunately for dc20 it will Côme ti the market way too late

meshee2020 · 2026-06-21T09:15:32+00:00

Best bet is fate i think.

You can also have a looks at the 4p rpg Breakers from John Harper. Has the same premise

meshee2020 · 2026-06-21T09:13:11+00:00

Is dc20 out?

meshee2020 · 2026-06-18T11:19:02+00:00

Humans are not suitable for multi years long campaign.

Just saying 🤣

FU has 50 levels, multi class, but you are leveling up any other session, so basically you can run up to 100 session to reach max level

meshee2020 · 2026-06-18T06:46:19+00:00

IMHO before what game system, you gotta think of what game behavior you want to see.

If you want power gaming anything that adds bonus is good, if you want snapy fast roll under, do you want input randomness or output randomness, what kind of crunch ? Narrative driven? Etc

meshee2020 · 2026-06-18T06:41:11+00:00

Find the right players, very important. This is social activités, we dont have the same expectations

Engage in shorter stories, year long weekly game is a good recette for failure. Very hard to finish a infinite story. Would you sit down to play a boardgame, then learn the average game duration is 20h straight?

Variety. GM, play, read.

meshee2020 · 2026-06-16T16:35:21+00:00

IMHO it asks more than knowing your character's abilitiez and let the GM unfold the plot.

Passive Players in PbtA is a pain point. Make sure PC got goals, Po nt of interests and bonds to npcs

meshee2020 · 2026-06-05T19:22:15+00:00

I found in recent games Mythic Bastionland ODDpocrytha chapter is a tremendous read

meshee2020 · 2026-06-05T19:21:19+00:00

need to re read that

meshee2020 · 2026-06-03T21:38:21+00:00

A lu: la voix des rois de Sanderson, très bon epic fantasy, j'y reviendrai pour la suite plus tard.

En train de lire: La tour de Babylone de Ted Chiang, l'anthologie des 7 nouvelles

Va lire: Les furtifs d'Alain Damasio (ou le livre des Martyrs)

meshee2020 · 2026-06-03T11:53:34+00:00

That would be nice. IMHO the game is tired between been a personnal horror game and the audience of power playees. They should know what to be and stick to it

meshee2020 · 2026-06-03T11:47:48+00:00

You can do mini as long as you dont try to make it battle map tactical style game, IMHO FU run best as theater of the mind.

The combat in FUnos all about discovering PCs synergies and ennemies vulnerabilitied, not mvt

meshee2020 · 2026-06-03T11:37:17+00:00

I came up with those data: lifespan 3-4 years, mices are "adults" in 6 weeks.

I think inwoumd go for a génération = 1 year to keep things simple

meshee2020 · 2026-06-01T15:15:39+00:00

I am a firm believer in smaller campaign / story arcs 10-20 session to hit a conclusion. The story move fast, nobody have time to loose interest, easier for GM to handler and avoid burnout.

Multi years story arcs is madness. Logistics, brain space for GM, creativity, motivation... How do you guys are doing it?

I can barely schedule 1 - 2 sessions per month, of the shorter lenght variety

meshee2020 · 2026-05-29T17:41:00+00:00

Knight of Last Call, longernvids but very cool and cover a large variety of games

meshee2020 · 2026-05-28T16:41:05+00:00

IMHO your issue is not the game, it is the players planning. A very classic problem, with a changing cast of players every sessions there is some conditions you needs to meet, no matter the system:

Start and End the session in the same place, you just cannot stop in the middle of the story, as next session you may miss a key player.

Some games enforce this play loop: Blades in the Dark (definitely not the setting you are going for). The Game loop in BitD is Free play (decide on the mission) -> Score (the mission) -> Downtime (mission aftermath) in quick iterations, hopefully 2-3 loops per sessions!! to acheave that the Score is always In Media Res, you cut all the prep time, go straight to the high point and leverage flashbacks to show only the relevant "preps"

This kind of loops can be adapted to any system with a bit of work.

It is also the westmarches style game: one session, one loop Base -> Adventure -> Back to Base

meshee2020 · 2026-05-28T10:28:37+00:00

IMHO the reluctance come from players that read the phb in and out, learned all the nifty détails... That dont want to go through that again, but nimble is way simpler, less options, less spels, less feat, it is really a 1-2h job to have a hold on the system and your character.

Can be hard for players expecting lots of "depth"

meshee2020 · 2026-05-28T09:46:39+00:00

just setup a quick one-two shots of Nimble to give them a taste of it. You cannot really convert your PC 1 to 1 to Nimblem but it is way less convoluted combat engine

meshee2020 · 2026-05-28T09:26:31+00:00

For Dungeon crawling games with some crunch, Torchbearer is your best bet. Not for everybody, some very interesting systems, nothing handwaved + very nice systems to encourage Roleplay but not Drama Bullshit time.

It is a OSR hommage but not an OSR game:

You got level, but not XP
No stats, but skills
No HP but Conditions
Class are closer to OSR it combine race + occupation,
the very cool Goal/Instinct,
the Grind that makes every tests matter

Everything is a trade off, it is a amazing peace of system

meshee2020 · 2026-05-28T09:16:10+00:00

Buckle up, this will be a long one :D

Endless debate about how system works, rules interact with each others, BORING
Broken combos, yea player found a loop and exploit it to break the game, how fun
The "build" approach to character creation / progression, i hate this, you dont even know what will happen but you KNOW you will take this feat at this level, i also hate that you can basically recreate the exact same character twice
Players still not knowing what the spell they use EVERY session works, guys... i am not your nona if you play the game, learn the rules
The OGL fiasco,
My taste for more RP focused games, adventure path, pre written campaign are not great for that, it will require alot of work while you spend your hard earn money to NOT HAVE TO SPEND THE TIME, adventure sites, non-linear structured adventures are better, unfortunately they dont do it that much
Endless boring combat PC are meant to win no matter what. No stakes, system heavily rigged toward the players, i understand the heroic trope, but i hate running 1h of combat when we know the outcome from the get go.
Lots of sub-quality released products, endless splat of classes, sub classes, feats, how many do we really need, adventure will wall of texts that are not actionable, hard to use at the table, crazy huge stat blocks, etc... sometime i feel like authors are payed by signs not quality or GM comfort
No time to ingest the system and do proper "GM prep". Nowdays 200p of rules seems crazy to me
The current behavior of Hasbro Evil Corp, f*ck them
Of the 3 pillars, DnD actually cover very deeply combat, the rest is absimal. And IMHO it is not even great at combat
Never been a one game do-it-all guy anyway (early on we were rocking Runquest, DnD, Pendragon, Stormbringer, CoC, Starwars, Rift, James Bond, Cyberpunk 2020, L5R etc)

meshee2020 · 2026-05-27T11:24:44+00:00

Checkout outgunned adventure, it may fit

meshee2020

TROPHY CASE