rpg

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster is a stand-alone book for lazy and aspiring lazy gamemasters. You don't need any of the previous books to get tremendous value out of Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster. It stands well side by side with other Lazy GM books, bringing new angles to the concept of lazy gamemastering and new tools to help you prepare and run awesome games.

This book isn't a rewrite of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Return focuses on three main lazy GM activities: preparing your game, running your game, and thinking about your game.

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster breaks down the concepts of lazy gamemastering into the following topics:

• The eight steps of Lazy GM Prep expanded by eight years of experiences and feedback.
• Single session, short, and long campaign prep and execution.
• Adventure types – what works well, where the traps lay, and how to customize the eight steps based on the adventures you're running.
• Quest models – those that work well and those that don't.
• The Lazy GM's Toolkit with sixty tools, tips, and tricks to run your games.
• Example adventure scenarios using the eight steps.
• Piles of random tables and maps to inspire your adventures.

I really liked "the return..." I think that one also might be worth reading

I've been playing TTRPGs online with a group of friends for close to a decade and later this year we are planning an in-person meet up. I'd like to find some options for rule-light games that can be learnt quickly, and would play at least mildly well with upwards of 12 players for a mega-session, for 6+ hours of game.

Open to any suggestions to get the ball rolling. Rules-light, big group, go!

Edited to add:

Some suggestions I have received from other places. I haven't looked into any of these but wanted to add for discussion's sake:

• Everyone Is John
• the Borg games (Mork Borg, etc)
• Fate
• Tiny D6
• Kobolds Ate My Baby
• Daethmatch Island
• Dream Askew
• Shadowdark
• Perils and Processes

If you have any experience with these, your input is appreciated!

I've got a bit of a weird situation going on here, and I want to hear what the fellow transes and the fellow RPG players have to say about it. So I'm crossposting it to both communities.

So I started a new Beam Saber campaign, and one of My players came up with the idea of playing as "Egg James Bond". A womanising super spy who still thinks she's a cis guy, and is externalising all her gender dysphoria into being a terrible person to those around her. It sounded like a fun story to tell, especially the moment where she comes to accept herself and transes her gender. So we've played three sessions so far, and Egg James Bond has been exactly the kind of misogynistic A-hole we were promised.

Except, a complication: The person playing as Egg James Bond is the host of a plural system, and Egg James Bond accidentally becomes her headmate. Her brain adapts to playing as this fictional character, and suddenly he's another person inside her head. Believe it or not, this is a pretty common experience for plural roleplayers.

One of the other players is really bothered by Egg James Bond out of game, because Egg James Bond is a complete A-hole. She's mean, petty, doesn't respect women, etc. Personally, I'm not bothered by this behaviour, because we all discussed the character at session 0 and agreed to make it part of our game. And for Me, the behaviour is staying inside the game. But this other player is deliberately antagonising Egg James Bond out-of-character, receiving exactly the kind of replies I'd expect, and seems bothered by them.

So this other player goes to Egg James Bond and their player/host between sessions, and forcibly cracks her egg. Confronts her and makes her realise that she's a woman inside. Guides her through choosing a name for herself. And this other player seems really proud of Themself, and says they've "fixed" ~~Egg~~ Trans James Bond. And that we can still play through the egg cracking moment in the game, Egg James Bond is still an egg in the game.

But I'm unhappy. I feel like our story has been spoiled. What's the point of playing the story if we already know the ending? So I want Trans James Bond's host to make a new character to play in the game. I don't want to put up with the eggy bigoted version of the character to get to a story moment that's already happened out of game. I feel like the character's story in the game I'm running has been ruined. I wanted to play to find out. But now we've found out, and most of us didn't get to play. And I'm bitter that we put up with the misogyny and pouting without getting the payoff. I was fine with it when it was in service to a story we all wanted to tell, but I don't want to tell that story now that it's already been told.

Here are the results from the poll posted in May. (https://lemmy.ca/post/64421437)

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/12yFvkpWgWpSsx200KUUnyVsW2wbfwowf

YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/V7khLevB3wU

Top 7

1. D&D (all editions)
2. Pathfinder (all editions)
3. Daggerheart
4. Shadowdark
5. Draw Steel
6. Nimble
7. Call of Cthulhu (all editions)

Special callout from Bob to Cottagecore Goblin Lesbians Destroy Capitalism RPG.

This popped up in my RSS feed and I found it a good read

For some time now I've felt that D&D-like d20 mechanics is cursed to have the problem of inflation. But it was refreshing to see someone else point it out too

I'm currently at a boardgame convention and while I'm pretty ignorant about the hobby, I've seen some nice looking tokens here.

I love the setting of Brancalonia. I love the humor, I love the folklore, and I am currently learning Italian in evening classes to boot, so this is basically a perfect mix.

But I do not love that the authors picked D&D 5E as the rule system for this setting. Don't get me wrong, I find D&D 5E perfectly acceptable for heroic fantasy campaigns (and, in fact, I am running such a campaign right now). And I can understand this choice from a business perspective - it makes a lot of sense to tie your setting to the most popular RPG system out there.

However, Brancalonia PCs are not supposed to be great heroes, but fairly unimpressive never-do-wells. The rules deal with this by capping character level at 6, but I feel that this leaves the PCs with too little room to grow and removes much of the proper D&D experience. I'd rather use a rule system that was intended for weaker protagonists, rather than trying to distort D&D into something that is not.

So, what alternate system would you use for Brancalonia?

That things rarely go according to plan is part of running an RPG. The players will surprise you, and often this is entirely fine - in fact, it might result in a more memorable experience and a better game.

But sometimes, things go off the rail in a bad way - and you, as a GM, did not see it coming until it was too late, resulting in disaster and a non-fun experience for all concerned.

And contemplating some of my past mistakes, I am curious about your biggest GMing regrets. What went wrong, and what would you have done differently if you had the opportunity for a do-over?

I've been running a little RPG meetup group for last two years, and it's been going quite well. We've been using Discord and Meetup to schedule events, and the group is growing.

One thing I'd like to do for the group is set something up where GMs could propose games, both one-shots and campaigns, that they'd like to run. Some kind of online site where GMs could explain what they wanted to run, perhaps adding a few links about the game, and what days they'd be available to run something. Also, players could respond with their availability. Perhaps a polling system to see what games have the most interest. This would just be for face-to-face games in our local group.

Neither Discord or Meetup really work for this. Discord messages fade away too quickly and Meetup events are fixed to a particular date and time.

I was thinking of perhaps cobbling together something using Wordpress, but I thought I'd ask around first.

Has anyone done something like this before? Is there a web service already set up for something like this?

My RPG group just started a new Beam Saber campaign and we already committed war crimes on session 1!

Beam Saber is a game about giant robots and the people who pilot them. Our "heroes" are an asshole secret agent, a bioengineered super-ace, a living airplane, and a mechsploitation hound. We're calling our campaign BISEXUAL DISASTER MACHINES!

First session, command said to go murderise an Exodus Republics Incorporated fireteam and leave no witnesses. Simple enough, except the Exodus fireteam were protecting a building full of Independent civilians from a Jovangellian Empire attack squad.

The team start blasting and lasering the Jovangellian and Exodus mechs, and everyone gradually realises that the building full of civilians are witnesses, so they need to go down. After a brief argument, Hound and Jack Danger start doing war crimes, while Gizmo and Grace use their giant robot laser sword and super missiles to utterly destroy the enemy AWVs (Armoured Walking Vehicles).

I had lots of fun! Can't wait for next session!

Here's a fillable version of the official character sheet for Dicey Tales, the pulp adventure RPG.

It's the same system as Everywhen and Barbarians of Lemuria.

https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2026/05/18/a-fillable-character-sheet-for-dicey-tales/

For anyone who wants to try Sprawl Goons, the cyberpunk hack of Tunnel Goons, I've taken the official character sheets and made them fillable. https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2026/05/15/sprawl-goons-fillable-character-sheets-for-a-cyberpunk-rpg/

crossposting from hexbear games comm:

hey yall need some game balance input that's beyond the scope of my usual hexbear megathread ramblings but also i don't want to wade into reddit. i'm running a campaign that probably would have been better in another system, but it appears i'm locked into d&d 5.5 and i want to mod the things i find most frustrating/unfun about the system out. i mostly stole/adapted ideas from Nimble and Draw Steel, just want to make sure they won't break anything & also have some other clarification questions for those who are familiar.

Anyway thanks for any help yall can provide, nerds! (/affectionate)

Let's share some fantastic, bizarre, and weird real world locations that would make perfect fodder for #ttrpg !

My own contribution is "Christ of the Abyss", a bronze statue of Jesus that was deliberately sunk into the ocean off the coast of Italy in 1954. Two other statues were cast from the same mold later on, and sunk at Grenada and Florida.

I find the very concept of religious statues being sunk into the ocean fascinating - and, of course, in fantastic worlds people might have an easier time visiting such statues. Perhaps they have acquired some magic that allows them to breathe water for some time, or perhaps they are naturally amphibious. Or natural water breathers - perhaps there is some trade deal with surface dwellers where land-based religious items are created for aquatic civilizations that they cannot manufacture themselves.

What other such weird locations do you know of?

Bob World Builder (https://www.youtube.com/@BobWorldBuilder) is doing a poll - What is your favourite TTRPG?

I'm posting it here to increase visibility. Data will be open to the public on June 1st. I wonder how many Cypher System will get.

For a character creation game jam, I decided to make a character for Dark Conspiracy, the 1999 action/horror game from GDW.

I had hoped a fillable character sheet was already available, but I was disappointed.

So I've made my own fillable version, available to download here: https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2026/05/05/character-sheet-for-dark-conspiracy/

If you were interested in the DC system and setting, I'd recommend the https://www.darkconspiracytherpg.info/ Dark Conspiracy fan site.

Biomes - environments that fall into a certain category - are a great way to set the atmosphere for a specific adventure. We all know of deserts, forests, swamps, mountains, and so forth, and each of these biomes have their own iconic adventures and adventure sites.

But the real world is full of obscure, unique environments that aren't known to many people - let alone #ttrpg players, which makes them a great option to bring variety to a game - and fantasy and science fiction has come up with all sorts of further biomes that aren't known on Earth. So what are your favorite obscure biomes?

Personally, I am fascinated by so-called "Cloud Forests" ever since I heard of the concept. They are usual tropical or subtropical forests which, due to their geographic locations, are shrouded in fogs for much of the year. In RPG settings, forests often hide many dangers due to their low visibility - and so does fog. It's two great tastes that go well together!

Share some cool historical details you've learned that just beg for inclusion in an RPG!

My contribution is the Man Engine, a sort-of mining elevator I learned about when I visited the Mining Museum in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the Harz Mountains in Germany, where this contraption was invented.

Basically, early in the 19th century the mines in the Harz Mountains were the deepest in the world at the time, with the Samson Pit in Sankt Andreasberg reaching a depth of 800 meters. This meant that the miners had to spend one hour climbing down the mine until they reached their place of work - and two hours climbing up again, carrying their pit lamps in one hand the entire time.

And, unfortunately, this was considered unpaid commuting time, not paid work time - so three hours each day were gone climbing those damn ladders. It became so bad that some miners even asked if they could simply sleep down there - in the damp, humid air, at the permanent 8°C of the deep underground.

But then a foreman and a mechanic hit on an alternative. You see, all those mines needed massive pumps to keep the groundwater out of the mines (a detail that is curiously neglected in most portrayals of mine-themed fantasy dungeons). These pumps consisted of a series of parallel, oscillating wooden beams.

And the innovation was that they installed small wooden platforms on these beams. In this way, instead of climbing, the miners could simply step back and forth between the platforms, using their vertical oscillation to get up or down (they still needed to hold their pit lamps in one hand, though). And thus, the travel time was cut down to a mere 20 minutes in each direction - a saving of 2 hours 20 minutes each day!

Needless to say, I absolutely must use this technological marvel if the PCs explore some dwarven mining complex...

So, what cool historical tidbits do you know that would make for awesome #ttrpg fodder?

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/36488024

This is an almost abandoned project from many years ago. But I thought I'd share anyway.

I also thought I'd share a few images from the process...

What honestly surprised you most when you ran (or played in) your first full campaign?

I've been talking to a lot of indie TTRPG creators lately — people designing their own systems, running campaigns, preparing Kickstarters — and one thing keeps coming up: the gap between what you planned and what actually happened at the table.

For some it's pacing (sessions ran 2x longer than expected). For others it's player attachment to NPCs they thought were throwaways. For some it's the opposite — a carefully built villain got ignored completely.

As someone who builds tools for TTRPG creators, I'm genuinely curious what the community thinks:

What's the one thing you wish someone had warned you about before running your first campaign?

Could be prep, could be player dynamics, could be the mechanics themselves. No wrong answers — I'm here to learn from people who've actually been at the table.