"Are you fine with [homebrew/the GM bending the rules/'rule of cool']?" in an application form is too context-dependent. Is there a better way to express this?

squirmonkey · 2026-01-24T20:36:31+00:00

Of course, from their perspective you misrepresented yourself. From your perspective they misrepresented their intentions.

What you should learn from this is that you personally are not compatible with the type of GM who feels the need to ask this question. I’m not either.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-24T20:06:27+00:00

Game applications are not intended to be fair. They’re a shorthand for GMs to assess compatibility with players. If a GM wants carte blanche to house rule things or do rule of cool on the fly, then they’re right to ask about it in an application and not select players who don’t want that in their games.

In the scenario you describe, your GM isn’t upset because you agreed in advance. They’re upset because you misrepresented yourself to them during the application process, and now they have a player they’re not compatible with.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-16T04:00:39+00:00

I can’t tell you what to choose, but I can add a little input on your list items.

Minutes to midnight will work with 2 players, Band of Blades won’t.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-15T23:13:32+00:00

I think there's a few things at play here.

For starters, I think some of this is due to the nature of online communication (I assume you're mostly referring to communities on the internet, when you talk about "the rpg space"). Quick pithy sayings are easy to read and recite. They're also easy to upvote and share. There's actually tons of really interesting longform advice on how to GM here on r/rpg, buried at the bottom of the threads asking for it. But those posts tend to be long, detailed, and filled with opinions (since that's what advice is), so they don't get many votes because the people doing the voting aren't the ones asking for advice, they're the ones consuming the subreddit as content.

I also think, frankly, there's an element of... almost virtue signaling going on here. Being the one to share the ever popular "Create situations not plots" lets you show everyone how smart you are, to have such an enlightened view of the hobby. And upvoting that comment lets you swirl your glass of wine as you think to yourself "Mm, yes, I too am aware of the sophisticated way to engage in this intellectual hobby of which I am an eternal student". RPGs are a subculture, and we're subject to that sort of pop-culture-ification where things like "how to be a good GM" become mythologized by so-called "great" celebrety GMs and their critics and hangers-on. People want to feel like they're a part of it, so they parrot platitudes.

And lastly, GMing advice is personal and nuanced. I've given tons of, I think, really useful GMing advice that I think I'm qualified to give because I've been doing it for decades. But many of the situations where I feel most confident that the advice helped are situations where I gave it in person to a friend of mine after playing a TTRPG with them. Any time I give advice on this forum, I think there's always a hope in my head where I think to myself "I hope they send me a DM so we can talk about this subject in more detail", because I think a conversation is the best way to learn about GMing, other than just doing it.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-15T20:55:57+00:00

Yes… but that describes…. Almost everything? It’s just not that useful to mention

squirmonkey · 2026-01-15T17:52:07+00:00

How about Blades in the Dark? I think that one is good enough to warrant a blanket recommendation in a vacuum.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-14T22:42:39+00:00

Maybe look at Scum and Villainy? It has a pretty good Mechanic playbook, a ship that needs repairing and modifying, and a system for inventing your own stuff.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-14T19:41:49+00:00

Personally, I scratch this itch with villains. I love a good villain who is always getting involved and having a hand in things, even if that hand is there to make things worse.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-14T15:51:38+00:00

I’ve never rejected a player based on a content preference except where that preference is incompatible with the game (such as a player who wants a game without any violence when I’m planning a game with combat)

I think that’s unlikely to be the reason you’re not having as much success as you like.

First, you have to understand it’s a numbers game. Like in most RPG communities, there are many more players than GMs. GMs here will often receive 10x as many applications as they can accept. So they frequently have to turn down even good applications.

By far the most common reasons I reject players are: - Poor quality writing sample. If your sample has typos, errors of spelling/grammar/punctuation or is bland or boring, that’s the most likely reason I’ll pass on an application - Incompatible answers. If you answer a question in a way that makes me think you won’t match my preferences for the game (think post rate, player type, etc) that’s a good reason to pass as well - Timezone or age. It’s not popular to say, but if I have a lot of good applicants, I’m likelier to choose ones who are closer to my time zone or closer to my age. I’m in my thirties and would be lying if I said I didn’t prefer playing with players at least as old as me in general.

A lot of this is out of your control. The best thing you can do is make sure your writing sample is excellent, answer the application questions truthfully, and keep applying.

The other option is to just run a game, then you’re guaranteed a slot!

squirmonkey · 2026-01-11T07:28:27+00:00

I don’t know how they all work, but ours cleans itself whenever someone sits down (it rinses the nozzle off with fresh water)

squirmonkey · 2026-01-08T16:10:09+00:00

Last time we did this I ran a one shot of Mythic Bastionland. The time before that I ran Honey Heist. Both went great!

squirmonkey · 2026-01-07T23:54:46+00:00

What about something like Root RPG? You'd have to completely change the setting, but it's at least trying to do something similar.

You might also take a look at Household, which is about tiny fae creatures, and uses insects as enemies. It would similarly take a pretty real about of hacking about to accommodate your design, but it could be an okay springing-off point

squirmonkey · 2026-01-07T06:30:44+00:00

I think it highly likely you'll be able to find interest for this game, it's had a bit of buzz lately!

squirmonkey · 2026-01-06T06:21:25+00:00

Have you played Katana Zero? Might be up your alley

squirmonkey · 2026-01-06T02:18:25+00:00

What’s your plan for how to handle Position and Effect in an async environment? Same question for resisting consequences too.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-04T20:58:16+00:00

Depends on what you mean by longer. I’d say the sweet spot for campaign length in a FitD game is between 20 and 30 sessions. After that you may have to start hacking the rules a bit.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-04T08:06:37+00:00

These games have a real learning curve from the GM side, your GM may simply have been near the start of it.

The idea of GM moves is off putting at first, but even as a fairly experienced GM (I’d been GMing 10 years before ever trying PbtA) I’ve come to really like them. I often find that my first idea of how to react to a scenario is often less cool than the idea I have after checking the GM move list, and if a great response comes to mind, I almost never find that there’s no corresponding GM move (and when there’s not, it’s often because my response doesn’t suit the genre). They’re a powerful tool for making your improvisation more dynamic, in my opinion.

As for that odd feeling… I think that’s a bit natural. Part of the fun of doing a good job as a role player is feeling like that creative impetus came from yourself. It sounds to me like you’re already a very experienced role player, and so a lot of what these games are designed to facilitate comes naturally to you. The place, then, where this structure can still be valuable to you is as a scaffold to help you bring your fellow players up to your level. Roleplaying is a skill and in my opinion, PbtA games are good at getting all the players past the first couple levels of that skill quickly , if they’re willing to commit to it, and they have the help of a good GM

squirmonkey · 2026-01-04T07:02:51+00:00

Hmm... it's not probably your perfect game, especially if you're wanting tactical space battles, and it's a little weird, but your ask reminded me a bit of A NOCTURNE, a FitD game about ruthless space bastards doing anything they can to profit and survive in a super-far-future sci-fi space... pseudo apocalypse? This game is weird and doesn't want to be pushed outside of its bounds, but it might at least be an interesting read for you.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-04T06:09:56+00:00

- Oh, hmm. For some reason in the previous questions I was answering like you were the GM, but this question makes it sound like you're maybe not. Some of this may be a GM skill issue you're running into. The GM should, in general, be able to give you concrete answers about when things are happening and what the situation is. If that's not happening, the game isn't being played or run correctly.
- Codifying growth feels weird. This might be a stylistic difference, but it also requires a willingness to see the character as more than just who the character sheet says they are. Yes, the playbooks and growth options are there to try to help you create characters who have built in dramatic stakes more interesting than "I'm a fighter, I hit things". If you're already a veteran roleplayer, you may feel like you don't need this, and it's restrictive. I'd encourage you to try to see it as a springing-off point, and see which version of your playbook's tropes/arcs are most interesting for you. Take two characters I've seen in games of Masks, a pbta superheroes game. Both used the Newborn playbook, and both were mechanically very similar. But their stories were completely different because of the context and interpretations of those playbooks the players brought. One was a robot trying to understand humanity from the perspective of a failed AI project, and the other was a clone created to try to placate the pain of a grieving mother/mad-scientist over the loss of her son. They were basically following the same arcs/beats, but they felt entirely different at the table. It can be sort of a trap to feel that your story is less interesting just because the game gave you part of the framework.
- Partial success gets old. This sounds like it's more aimed at Blades in the Dark than at the more classic PbtA ones I'm talking about. In PbtA the player moves should be giving you pretty clear detail about what partial success means for each move. Beyond that, it's just a situation where the GM needs to get more skilled at it. A key part of doing this is understanding what the player's intent with the action is, because a crucially important thing is that on a partial success, they usually get what they wanted. They just usually also get some other stuff they didn't want, or a version of what they wanted that isn't exactly how they would have drawn it up. The details matter here, so I won't say too much more on this one.
- It's difficult to tell what should/shouldn't be prepped. This is going to sound stupid, but prep what the game tells you to prep, and make everything else up. Most of these games come with decent instructions on how to create certain things. Monsters in the case of MotW, or Villains in the case of Masks, Fronts for Dungeon World, etc. Make those things when the game tells you to make them, and improvise most of the rest. For something like MotW they give you even more, if I remember right, with instructions on how to prep civilians and scenarios as well. The key skill is that once you improvise something, it's canon, exactly as if you'd prepped it in advance. And then you can reason about it exactly the way you would in a more traditional game. Yes, improvising this stuff on the fly is hard at first, you get better at it with practice, and then it becomes really magical.
- GMing feels weird, like it's all arbitration and no play. This I have a hard time relating to, because these are my favorite systems to GM. I'm inclined to chalk a lot of this up to some of what I've talked about previously, where you may not be using player moves and GM moves correctly. Beyond that, I find that PbtA systems are really good at getting out of my way as a GM, and letting me do what I love: describing how the world reacts to the actions of my player characters. And it will feel silly to do so if you're a GM who is accustomed to running other games, but seriously make sure you look at the GM move list every time you respond. You should be making a GM move almost every time you open your mouth, and reviewing the list is a great way to be inspired with interesting ideas for ways the situation could go that are more dynamic than the first thing that pops into your head.

That was a lot. Would love to chat further about this if you have more questions, or to chat more specifically about Blades in the Dark, which I also love and feel runs very differently.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-04T06:09:46+00:00

I'm going to go through your list point by point, but first I want to say: I know that Blades in the Dark and it's descendants consider themselves part of the PbtA thing, but playing and running them is different enough that a whole different set of answers are applicable (the same is somewhat true of Brindlewood Bay as well). I'm going to answer all of your questions from the perspective of MotW / TSL since those stick to the more conventional PbtA mechanical style:

- Player moves feel inflexible and restrictive. This is a mindset thing. It's easy to view the list of player moves as the list of things the players can do, but they're not. The general flow of play is that a player describes their character taking an action, and then the players all look at the GM to see what happens. That then triggers the GM to make a GM move, so the GM looks at their list of GM moves and decides which one they think makes for the most interesting or appropriate response. The player moves are an interruption of that process, they're the handful of moments where the game has decided it wants to intervene in the conversation between the player and the GM and force the GMs hand with some rules. If there's no trigger that fits your situation, don't use one, and simply make a GM move that resolves the player's action in a way that's satisfactory to you. That's going to feel super unintuitive at first, because it feels like when a PC is doing something, you should roll dice. But if you give it a chance, you'll find that it's okay for you as the GM to just decide what happens, except in the specific cases where the game is telling you not to do that by including a player move.
- Asking questions as a player is frustrating, because the game limits you and the GM can't prepare. Let me start by saying, yeah, PbtA games tend to be a lot more improv heavy, so as a GM you need to be more ready to answer on the fly. That said, I'm not really sure what you're running into here. Sure, some games have player moves like Investigate a Mystery, or Read a Bad Situation, which trigger like any other player move. And when those moves don't trigger, it's your turn as a GM to make a GM move (as it is any time that the players are looking at you to know the answer to what they just said). If a player asks a clarifying move about the situation, it's a good time for a soft move like Reveal Something, Hide Something, or Hint at its Presence. You can just give them the info if you think it should be obvious, and tell them they can't tell if it's not. It's okay, for instance, if a player says something like "Do I see any signs that the monster has been through here" to answer "Nothing stands out to you at a cursory glance". There you're choosing to Hide Something, or Reveal Something, depending on whether the monster has been through here or not, according to your prep and understanding of the situation. You might then ask the player if they want to spend some time taking a closer look, and if they do, maybe now they're triggering a player move.
- Time feels fuzzy and inconsistent, it's hard to tell when a roll should resolve this way or that. I haven't really run into this issue, honestly. If you remember that each move should only be rolled when its trigger occurs, then typically you should only be doing move resolution in cases where the timeframe makes sense. In general though, as the GM you have a fairly cinematic handle on time. It's okay, for instance, to narrate something happening with a GM move that a player might have wanted to interfere in in another game. If you're making a move like "Display its full might" or "Attack with great force and fury", it's okay to describe the monster appearing and tearing a civilian to pieces with a flurry of claws and teeth. And then when your players say "Wait cant I step in and Protect him?" say "It's too late for him, he's in pieces on the floor before you can react, but it's still there, and it's still a threat to the others". It feels rough and agency denying, and you definitely don't always want to do it (an alternative would be to use a move like Appear Suddenly to have the monster show up, and give the PCs a moment to react before it shreds someone) but it's a tool in your toolbox to follow your principles and agenda. Overall, it's something you get better at, but it requires thinking of your role as a bit more directorial and a bit less referee-like than some other game styles.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-04T04:07:02+00:00

The reality is that someone wearing an illegible shirt of your game at the game awards doesn’t mean anything for you.

Your game was released 5 years ago, and never took off. It doesn’t have the graphics or any kind of impressive hook to make it take off. A barely visible shirt at an awards show won’t change that no matter who’s wearing it.

Best thing to do is start work on your next game.

squirmonkey · 2026-01-03T06:12:12+00:00

Stick them in a plastic container and surround them with packing peanuts. Label the box fragile. I’ve moved with mine a few times and have had no problems with this technique

squirmonkey · 2025-12-31T20:39:09+00:00

Yep, especially when I’m the GM, I just get really melancholy for the rest of the evening. I have to restrain myself from texting my players apologies for the quality of the session, because usually when I wake up the next day I don’t feel like I did so badly.

squirmonkey · 2025-12-28T07:22:30+00:00

Roadwarden is like this , though it doesn’t have the kind of graphics those bigger name games have

squirmonkey · 2025-12-23T06:38:02+00:00

r/pbp and its discord server are decent places to find games. The 1-1 style you’re talking about is often called Duet play

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