#for those who are interested: i'll be a GM in a one-shot i'm running for me and my significant other

[liltaireissocute]

preparing for my first ever dnd one-shot so I have no time to do art really BUT I saw this Vax on Twitter and simply knew that I need to draw him with this hairstyle

[tabletopgayventures]

So how do you decide what system to use when you know so many? I still default to dnd but I wanna branch out, specially for more sci-fi stuff

I only know a fraction of the games I own xD Some are easier than others though. I take recommendations from friends, youtubers, and the people who work at my FLGS. A lot of time though, I'll just see a book and say, "That looks cool" and buy it. But I haven't read all of them yet. I'm working on it though!

Last year my DM wanted to take a break from his campaign and be a player. I offered to be the GM for the group but I wanted to try out Starfinder. I had run it once before and offered to run it again as a one shot to see if the group would like it. They did so I started up a full campaign. Starfinder was an easier switch because both games are D20 based, have the same stats, and action economy. As we've played over the past year we've made a ton of modifications to the rules. It's been working out great so far!

Now that worked because I wanted to run Starfinder, my group was interested in trying it, and we've made the system work for us. That might not work for you for any number of reasons. I know you want to run Sci-fi but what style of game do you want to run? Are you more into tactical combat, roleplay, world building, or narrative? Realistically any game you choose to play can fulfill any of those goals but some are better than others.

What style or styles of game do you want to run? Are you going to do more horror, sci-fantasy, space exploration? Want a pre-established setting? If you don't want to heavily invest in a game system that you don't know will catch on I suggest looking for starter sets or quick start guides. They're usually cheaper in physical and sometimes even free if you get a digital one.

[cloudshoregames]

Schematics Acquired: BTE Pregen Pack 1 Now Available! (+updates)

Greetings, Dan Here!

The BTE Pregen Pack 1 is now up and available for download. This pack of pregenerated mechs is meant to help GMs looking to run a quick one-shot whether that be at a con or friends who just want to try the system before signing up for a campaign. The mechs were directly pulled from the series of Mech Construction Showcases that had been posted here on the devlog with four additional builds that were not featured in the showcase series. These have been organized into Starter Mechs, Mid Tier Mechs, and High Tier Mechs. I'm not sure we'll be going back to the Mech Construction Showcases, but I may drop one of those on here from time to time.

Some of you may be wondering why there is a #1 in the title of the pack. When creating the PDF, I noticed that while there was a good variety across all the mechs featured in the showcases, some of the sub-groups, particularly the Starter Mechs were heavy in one style of combat. As such we'll likely put out another pack or two in the future with more playstyle variety. Heck perhaps at a later date when more people are playing we might even put out a community mechs pregen pack!

In other updates, professional layout has begun on the Premium/Print versions of the game. We're still aiming for release in early 2024. As soon as I have some page previews I can share I will post them here. In the meantime I am continuing to build our Community Discord Server. Thank you for your patience on that while I work through that process. To tide folks over you may have noticed that community posting has been opened up on the itch.io page. Feel free to discuss your games, ask questions, or share any homebrew you might work up.

Lastly for today, the DriveThruRPG shop has been created; though, naturally it is pending products. I will be uploading the Beneath Twisted Earth Free Version, Pregen Pack 1, and the Preview Book there in the coming days. While the premium version of the game will be available on both sites, the print version will be availably on on DriveThruRPG. I'll post more news regarding that as it becomes available.

As always, thank you for your continued interest, and I look forward to seeing you all at the launch of the Premium/Print Versions!

[maximumzombiecreator]

I think adventure paths provide a number of useful things for both experienced and novice GMs.

For experienced GMs, good adventure paths (which is certainly not all of them, but, y'know, Sturgeon's Law) provide a lot of good ideas that can be taken out of the more linear context of the adventure path and reused. When I use an adventure path, I'll generally pick out the interesting characters, locations, and events and remix them into something more open and more my style. I think often doing your own spin on someone else's idea can result in more unusual and creative outcomes than coming up with something from scratch. And it can save a lot of prep time in more mechanically-dense games to have a lot of prepared creatures, maps, items, etc. to use.

For novice GMs, adventure paths provide a scoped-down version of the GMing experience that can be useful for developing confidence and experience. A blank slate can be extremely daunting. Good adventure paths give a novice GM space to develop the skills to adjudicate play on the scale of a single scene or a single interaction, while not needing to know how to structure play on the larger scale of a campaign. As long as the players are game and happy to go along with what is obviously expected of them, good adventure paths run very smoothly, and that can be huge for developing the confidence to feel like GMing is something you can do.

I do realize I'm disagreeing with OP by saying that, so let me say that there are a lot of aspects of this where I do agree with OP. For example, it would be much better for novice GMs to gain this experience by GMing one shots or small adventures rather than committing to a whole adventure path. Unfortunately, a lot of current play culture really valorizes running long, epic campaigns, so I think some starting GMs are unwilling to run a few learning modules first. In those cases, starting with a good adventure path is probably more likely to be useful and successful than starting from a blank slate.

Second, starting novice GMs with bad adventure paths definitely does harm. Bad adventure paths often require specific outcomes and specific approaches in a way that requires the GM to invalidate player choices, and developing that habit is a disaster. Similarly, if the players are not happy to go along with what is expected of them (and if the adventure path is bad, it will often not make doing what is expected of them logical or desirable) then the GM is put in the position of railroading them or the adventure path falls apart, and this is definitely worse than starting with nothing.

I guess the final place I'd say adventure paths are useful is for people who just want a beer and pretzels game. If your players are just here to goof around, roll some dice, crack some jokes, and aren't taking things any more seriously than a game of Zombicide, then running an adventure path with minimal prep might be the best use of that GM's time. I personally am not capable of doing anything less than The Most and so haven't played at such a table, but I am aware that they exist, and I guess this is good for them.

TTRPGs' strength as a medium is their flexibility. In a video game, every eventuality any player might run into has to be plotted out ahead of time by the developers, or (as in the case of procedurally-generated content) made out of parts that were each plotted out ahead of time, fitting together in ways that were planned ahead of time. This is why you see things like dialogue trees, why plot decisions tend to be narrowly constrained even if the tactical and strategic space is wide open (e.g. side with this faction or that faction, but then the game gives you a number of ways to do it depending on your inventory, abilities, etc., and none of those details impact the plot), why video game characters' that get injured during gameplay tend to make miraculous and instantaneous recoveries before the next plot beat.

In a TTRPG, the "designer" for your campaign is right there at the table with the group, reacting in real time as the players come up with novel solutions, or face setbacks both planned and unplanned.

This makes it sit very weird to me when people recommend adventure paths to novice GMs. Adventure paths that tell the GM what to do must, necessarily, be narrow in the way video games are narrow.