#player arbitration

[naanima]

Well. The list of NHL players that has filed for arbitration.

Morgan Barron (Winnipeg Jets)

Will Borgen (Seattle Kraken)

Noah Cates (Philadelphia Flyers)

Ross Colton (Colorado Avalanche)

Brandon Duhaime (Minnesota Wild)

Vince Dunn (Seattle Kraken)

Cale Fleury (Seattle Kraken)

Trent Frederic (Boston Bruins)

Filip Gustavsson (Minnesota Wild)

Brett Howden (Vegas Golden Knights)

Ryan McLeod (Edmonton Oilers)

Tanner Jeannot (Tampa Bay Lightning)

Philipp Kurashev (Chicago Blackhawks)

Jack McBain (Arizona Coyotes)

Ian Mitchell (Boston Bruins)

Drew O'Connor (Pittsburgh Penguins)

Ilya Samsonov (Toronto Maple Leafs)

Brandon Scanlin (New York Rangers)

Jeremy Swayman (Boston Bruins)

Troy Terry (Anaheim Ducks)

Alexei Toropchenko (St. Louis Blues)

Gabriel Vilardi (Winnipeg Jets)

Puckpedia breakdown the arbitration process.

From HERE - explanation on WHY players might choose arbitration:

Their team owns their (the player's) rights and the two sides must come to an agreement on a new contract. One of the ways for discussing a new deal is going to salary arbitration. Players or teams can elect to go to a third party in order to figure out the salary amount of their upcoming contract.

In conclusion, RFAs who want better contracts (more money) go through arbitration to hopefully get more money based on their performance. I say go for it! Players should get every last fucking cent!

[leafsleclerc]

he’s putting off signing it so he can sign it on my graduation (and the uks general election)

CONNOR DEWAR SIGN THE CONTRACT XX

[literaryvein-reblogs]

concepts related to different professions

Businessperson

abettor, adjutant, adviser/advisor, aid/aide, announcer, apprentice, archaeologist, assistant, auditor, authority, baker, barber, broker, businessperson, buyer, caretaker, cartoonist, chair, chef, client, colleague, conservator, consumer, correspondent, court, creator, curator, customer, dabbler, desk jockey, developer, drudge, employee, envoy, espionage, explorer, fellow, flier, flyer, fortuneteller, freshman, go-between, gourmet, guard, guru, hacker, hand, hawker, helper, hooker, inferior, informant or informer, inspector, interviewer, investigator, janitor, labor, liaison, messenger, moderator, monitor, navigator, newsman/woman, page, patron, picket, pioneer, poet, practitioner, prodigal, protégé, referee, representative, reviewer, rival, sailor, scout, seaman/woman, seller, shopper, speaker, spokesperson, spy, subordinate, tailor, traveler, virtuoso, wayfarer, writer

Educator

academic, adviser/advisor, alumnus/alumna, coach, conductor, disciplinarian, faculty, freshman, graduate, intellectual, learner, martinet, mastermind, monitor, practitioner, professor, rookie, savant, school, swami, trainer

Entertainer

acrobat, actress, aficionado, ballet dancer, character, comic, creator, director, fan, groupie, hero/heroine, humorist, inventor, luminary, magician, name, participant, personage/personality, player, protagonist, star, troubadour, virtuoso, zany

Financier

accountant, bean counter, broker, investor, spendthrift

Government officer

administrator, ambassador, authoritarian, autocracy, bureaucrat, consul, delegate, despot, diplomat, emir, empress, establishment, exile, fascist, figurehead, front runner, informant/informer, intermediary, leader, liaison, magistrate, master, mogul, mouthpiece, officer, oppressor, pacifist, patrol, personage/personality, police/police officer, prime minister, representative, snitch, spokesperson, tyrant, weasel

Legal practitioner

attorney, beneficiary, counsel, heir, judge, lawyer, officer, proponent, witness

Media person

commentator, journalist, newsman/woman, reporter, writer

Medical practitioner

analyst, druggist, nurse, patient, physician, researcher, therapist

Military person

combatant, conqueror, fighter, gladiator, lookout, militant, patrol, recruit, scout, seaman/woman, truant, warmonger, warrior

Politician

advocate, anarchist, apostle, arbitrator, conservative, dissident, extremist, firebrand, idealist, militant, mouthpiece, nonconformist, patron, picket, proponent, reactionary, sectarian

Religious person

acolyte, angel, atheist, chaplain, conformist, creator, deacon, doubter, dreamer, evangelism, father, genie, inventor, loner, minister, monk, pagan, pastor, priest, saint, skeptic, visionary, witch, wizard

NOTE

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary.

Source ⚜ Writing Basics & Refreshers ⚜ On Vocabulary

[intheupside]

@Pensburgh: Pens turn PO Joseph loose to unrestricted free agency

update thanks to @hunterrrs

and from dk pitt:

Not qualifying Joseph is a little surprising -- when I spoke with Kyle Dubas at the combine on June 8, he told me that Joseph "will definitely be somebody that we'll qualify."

But Dubas sounded hesitant at the draft here in Las Vegas on Friday when I asked him which of their pending free agents they're having discussions with at this point. Joseph's agent was still talking with the Penguins as of then.

"There's an arbitration element to it that is important to us, and cap space," Dubas said. "So you're trying to measure the players that aren't going to be qualified, the other players that are going to get to free agency to see if you go down that path, what is that cap space? What type of player do we have? Is it better or equal? Can we get the same for less money? There's all those types of things. So we'll work through that."

Not qualifying Joseph doesn't necessarily mean he's gone, though it certainly makes things more difficult with free agency opening on Monday and all teams having the opportunity to speak with him. Joseph was arbitration eligible, and if the Penguins wanted to avoid the risk of an arbitration case, not qualifying him would accomplish that. Teams occasionally avoid making a qualifying offer if the required salary would have been more than they wanted, but still re-sign a player. The Penguins did that with Justin Schultz when he was a restricted free agent. Joseph's qualifying offer would have been $892,500 for one year, so it doesn't seem like the qualifying offer scared them off -- just the threat of arbitration.

[thydungeongal]

Truth be told, I'm not resistant to XP/rewards being given out for, like, narrative-based triggers instead of just overcoming challenges. However, the D&D 5e DMG's presented method of milestone leveling is one of the worst ways to go about it in my opinion.

Part of the problem is that D&D 5e presents a choice between an XP system that only rewards combat (which, fair enough, has been the main source of XP since we, but even 3e and 4e had other sources of XP) and a system that removes all incentive structures altogether. Like, it feels like the game itself is reinforcing a false dichotomy of "combat play" and "narrative play."

There's a reason I like XP systems (albeit ones with much smaller numbies) even in my non-dungeon games: they make advancement objective and dependent on player choices instead of up to GM arbitration. Like, this here is an experience point system and it rewards player choice while keeping the XP numbers manageable (the hardest part of XP systems in my personal opinion is XP numbers being too fine-grained: once you start measuring experience in the thousands with very little gradation between rewards of a hundred and two hundred points, you know something's wrong):

And it reinforces the genre the game is going for. That's actually pretty much all there is to XP in the game, there's no hidden secret formula for calculating combat experience because the game doesn't care about fine-grained combat experience. It still gives recognizable incentives to the players with a bit of leeway for interpretation and ultimately rewards play. (By the way, this is from Against the Darkmaster: there are vocation-based sources of XP in addition to these.)

Anyway what I'm trying to say is that XP systems actually own.

[dailyadventureprompts]

The Mechanics of Baldur's Gate 3

As someone who's constantly tinkering with the mechanics of my favourite RPG, I LOVE a lot of what Larian has done with D&D; not only accurately translating the base system but improving upon in ways I never thought of.

Playing BG3 feels good, and I want to see how much of their work I can adapt for my own table. As such, here's a breakdown of a bunch of little tweaks they've made to 5e (taken from the bg3 wiki) and whether or not I think they're a good fit for regular pencil and paper d&d.

Shove is not a part of the attack action. It is a bonus action available to all characters. Shove only pushes the target back an amount that depends on the shover's strength and the target's weight. It normally does not knock them prone unless they are shoved off a high ledge.

This might be THE best design Larian implemented and is instantly going in my games. Bonus action shoving is such a natural addition to combat, gives so many more tactical options. My one protest is that I am NOT calculating the weight of every creature and object ( mainly because I'm terrible at guessing weights for things) so I'd go with the distance calculation based on the creature's size and con score.

Gaining inspiration based on backgrounds

Gee, a mechanical reward for roleplaying your character, one that's way more straight forward than the DM arbitrated "ideals, bonds, flaws," system. From now on I'm going to give each of my players an upfront " You gain inspiration when you ______" note on their character sheet based on their backgrounds.

The party is limited to two short rests per long rest. Short rests restore each ally's hit points by an amount equal to half their maximum HP (rounded down). There is no hit die rolling. Long rests require camp supplies, which are food items that must be looted or purchased. In towns you will be able to rest at an inn.

This is a mixed bag for me only because I like hitdie as a mechanical abstract and I don't want to see them removed. Tbh I wish more mechanics interacted with them and they were called something abstract like "stamina" or something. That said I ADORE the camp supplies idea because it not only gives you something minor to reward exploration with besides GP. On the otherhand tracking all those supplies without the game's inventory management would be tedious as hell so it'd need to be highly simplified.

I especially like the idea of limited short rests/supplies in larger survival based adventures where time isn't at a premium like it is inside a dungeon.

If you hide while not in a creature's sight cone, you automatically succeed. If you try to hide while in a creature's sight cone, you automatically fail. If you are hidden and enter a creature's sight cone, you must roll stealth against the creature's passive perception. This may be a straight roll, advantage, or disadvantage, based on the creature's senses and the level of lighting. Some creatures with different senses such as blindsight may follow different rules

Congrats on fixing stealth rolls Larian. No notes.

LOTS more opinions under the cut.

When a creature is at least 10 ft above their target and makes a ranged attack, they receive a +2 bonus to the attack roll due to high ground. When a creature is at least 10 ft below their target and makes a ranged attack, they receive a -2 penalty to the attack roll due to low ground.

This is fine, and quite inline with a lot of fixes I've seen for flanking rules. I'm fine with a little extra battlefield math in order to make moments of advantage (spending inspiration, reckless attacking etc) shine.

The game does not stop a character from casting a leveled spell with both an action and a bonus action

Mixed on this, on one hand I've played enough clerics to know how much it sucks to have to use your bonus action to do a necessary spell and then be stuck with a so-so cantrip or melee attack for standard. On the other hand there's some design balance issues at play here.

Help is an Action. This ability allows characters to aid an ally in combat and remove negative Conditions. Using the help action on a downed ally brings them back to 1 hit point and leaves them prone.

Love the idea of help doing multiple things AND being a solution to minor status conditions. and giving everyone the ability to help means I can be a lot more aggressive when it comes to knocking character to 0. if I had to further patch this, I'd say that this also allows for a medicine check to allow a creature to spend a hitdie when they're downed, or allows the helping character to make a "SNAP OUT OF IT, WE'RE YOUR FRIENDS" charisma roll for charmed allies.

Jumping is a bonus action which consumes 10 ft of movement speed. With a Strength score of 10 or below, a creature can jump 15 ft, and this increases by 5 ft for every two points in strength above 10. At 20 Str a creature may spend 10 ft of movement speed and a bonus action to jump, and can travel 35 ft effectively increasing the creature's movement speed by up to 25 feet.

This, combined with the prone rules (see below) is JUICY, as it allows for risk-reward battlefield mobility . That said I'd add some caveats/clarifications: The jump always succeeds in moving you, but if you're taking damage, jumping up or down more than 10ft, or into rough terrain you need to make an acrobatics check not to beef it and fall prone (ending your turn). Your jump is likewise a buffer for how far you can willingly fall before taking damage, but if you fall after your jump, you always land prone.

Weapon actions, 'nough said.

It's more complexity than I'd give to first time players but HOT DAMN if it isn't a great idea to give the martial characters some options instead of just making the same attacks over and over again. I've actually been sockpiling 3rd party versions of this for a while now and I can't wait to add them in.

All The conditions are great:

Blinded: In addition to the other effects, ranged attacks are limited to 15 ft range. Blinded creatures can also make opportunity attacks.

Frightened: Creatures which are frightened are unable to move at all (rather than being unable to move toward the source of their fear), unless the effect instead makes them "fearful" which gives them the frightened effect as well as making them flee.

Prone: Being prone gives disadvantage on Strength and Dexteritysaving throws, attacks against a prone creature have advantage out to a range of 10 ft rather than 5 ft, and ranged attacks against a prone creature do not have disadvantage. Your character cannot do anything while prone. Starting the turn while prone will cause you to automatically use half your movement to stand up. Becoming prone during your turn automatically ends your turn.

Wet: This is a new condition that prevents the character from burning (e.g. from Searing Smite) and grants resistance to fire damage, but also makes the creature vulnerable to lightning and cold damage

[txttletale]

Your analysis of dnd is so spot on... I found it hard to pick up (and remember) bc of the complicated mechanics that don't even really relate to the role-playing. Many of the dense rules feel like they were created to arbitrate players/DMs playing against each other, rather than cooperative storytelling. Like... you're playing a game with each other it doesn't have to be VERSUS anyone

yeah. literally the play culture of D&D is so fucked it is so normalized to just not even be capable of talking about things that people do. like people will say 'oh mage hands needs all those restrictions otherwise players would just mage hand out the trachea of every big bad' and its like. why. why would they do that. do players not also want to have fun and experience a story and build up to a climactic battle. furthermore could you not just tell the other players with your mouth like an adult that you think that would make the game unfun for you. every single segment of this game is written like that, for the worst kind of player who's here to get one in over everyone else. Sucks! design your game for nicey people

[anim-ttrpgs]

Epicenter Initiative, a Better Way for Combat to Flow from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

So, plenty of games do it their own way, but from our experience, there’s two main ways to do turn order in TTRPGs: “Rolling for initiative,” and “freeform turn order” is what i will be referring to them as for

These both kinda suck.

“Roll for initiative!” is an inescapable pop culture meme that invokes the excitement of a sudden combat encounter and action scene, but in reality, rolling for initiative is not really very exciting.

You know that I have always been a proponent of rules in TTRPGs, and frequently say that combat and mechanics don’t stop the story or the roleplay, they are the story and the roleplay, but rolling for initiative in the traditional D&D5e sense is an exception to this. It stops the scene dead while the GM has to wait for everyone to grab and roll their dice, go around the table one at a time getting each initiative value, organize them into a list, and then the combat can start. Those goblins that jumped out of the bushes have been standing around waiting for the adventurers to get ready for like 5 minutes and the momentum is gone. Some games do this better and smoother than others, and earlier D&D editions do it better than later ones.

A common alternative to this problem is what I’m calling freeform turn order, which is the total opposite. There is no turn order, characters just act whenever their players say they act. This easily carries the momentum of a scene as it flows into combat, but is not without its own slew of problems, such as the fact that it means that the fastest characters are not the ones with the best speed/dexterity/initiative/whatever stats(as in, something in-universe that makes them faster), but rather the characters with the loudest players, and this really doesn’t work for any game that is trying to have combat with any stakes.

A GM can try to manually arbitrate this to bring it closer to fairness for the in-world parties fighting and the our-world players playing, but that means paying attention to and mentally keeping track of who has acted when and how much, which players are keeping quiet, which players are taking the spot light, and deciding arbitrarily how much spotlight they’re allowed to take, etc. This is a ton of work for a GM who is already also trying to roleplay 10 bad guys attacking the PCs and possibly a dozen other factors. This is something that an actual turn order does for a GM rather, taking the burden off them so they can focus on their other duties.

So we have two ways of doing things that offer their own strengths, but also each have major flaws. How do we get rid of those flaws while keeping both the strengths? This is a problem that we set out to solve for Eureka’s combat. We needed a way for there to be an actual mechanical turn order so that the GM doesn’t have to spend brain power making one up on the fly, but have that mechanical turn order be so obvious as to present itself instantly, with no rolling or around-the-whole-table stat checking necessary to determine it.

You could just say that PCs always go first, or that NPCs always go first, which is a solution, but doesn’t really mesh as well with tactical combat or with the kind of believable tone that Eureka is going for.

It took us a long while to perfect, but we came up with what we call Epicenter Initiative. In the actual Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook (which by the way you can get monthly updates on from a $5 subscription to our patreon or FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME by joining the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club) you will find a more detailed breakdown of the rules and how they change based on specific circumstances (such as how they work when most combatants have melee weapons vs most combatants having ranged weapons), but here’s the most basic gist.

When an attack is made, combat is started, there’s no special procedure for that. Whoever attacked is taking the first turn. The second turn goes to the person they attacked, and this fighting pair becomes the Epicenter of the combat encounter.

The remaining characters act in order based on their proximity to the Epicenter, with the closest characters acting first and farthest characters acting last.

This way there is a mechanical turn order that clearly dictates which characters act before other characters, and this turn order is also created instantly, with no need to roll dice or check character sheets in most circumstances, allowing the combat scene to play out uninterrupted from beginning to end!

If you’d like to steal these rules for your own group or even your own TTRPG, please consider a small donation to our ko-fi or subscription to our patreon, and/or at least crediting where you got them so other people can come check out the work we do. We are an incredibly small team busting our asses to keep ourselves and the world of indie TTRPGs afloat beneath the intense and insidious economic pressure of WotC’s monopoly, and any assistance at all goes a long way.

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[wosorabbitholes]

Ok, can someone please write this fic? I tried but I'm awful at it.

Reader just got a new job as a referee in Spain not knowing anything about Liga F or the players, and trying to keep it that way because she wanted to be biased. All her friends from back home kept mentioning their favorite players, but she turned a deaf ear. The day that she was going to arbitrate her first game, she decides to stop at a nearby coffee shop before getting to the Johan Cruyff. She orders and gets her coffee but gets distracted by a call bumps into a blonde literally spilling her whole coffee on the (extremely attractive) blonde. She swears at reader in Spanish and even when reader tries to apologize and offers to pay for her order, the spaniard completely ignores her and flicks her off. Reader forgets about the coffee and leaves. She gets to the stadium, pissed off, but excited to run for 90 minutes to sweat the anger off. Gets ready in the referee locker room and heads to the tunnel without looking at any of the players. Once on the field, when it's time for the coin toss, you go to shake both captains' hands and that's when it hits both, you and the Barça captain, at the same time, shocked, pissed and a little intrigued. She was the blonde from the coffee shop. And that is how it all starts, from anger and hate to getting a little flirty on the field, to a drunk one night stand, to falling for la Reina, Alexia Putellas.

I literally have the whole idea on my head but don't know how to word/assemble it. It can literally be so so so many parts. There can be parts on jealousy, smuts, angst, fluff, etc.

Can someone bring my vision to life? 🥴🫠

Oh and this is what inspired the whole thing:

[imsobadatnicknames2]

top 5 ttrpgs for beginners

Sorry that this one took me a bit longer to answer than all the other Top 5 asks :p i wanted to explain a bit of my reasoning behind it and this gave me q chance to ramble a bit about something that bothers me lol

So, first of all I want to talk about what TO ME makes something a good beginner RPG.

Ramble:

I've talked a bit in the past about how I have sort of a bone to pick with the way so many people, when asked for recs for beginner TTRPGs, immediately decide to recommend extremely rules-light/minimalist/one-page RPGs (Hacks of Lasers&Feelings in particular seem to be somewhat popular on this front), when IMO these types of RPGs are at their best when played by an experienced group (or at the very least with least one very experienced player/GM who can provide some guidance to the others). I think a lot of ppl seem to have the impression that simpler mechanics inherently make a game more beginner-friendly, and that thus the most beginner-friendly games are inherently gonna be the ones with the simplest mechanics. And while this is true to an extent (a 700-page RPG with tons of complicated mechanics to remember is obviously gonna be inaccessible to beginners), when you consider that mechanics exist to DELEGATE decisions about the fiction away from the players and the GM so that they don't have to manually arbitrate them every time, there is point where less mechanics are gonna make harder for new players because it means there's more thing they're gonna have to find a way to arbitrate on and decide by themselves, and that's a skill that takes time to develop. An experienced group can probably get a ton of mileage out of a system that essentially ammounts to "the GM describes the world. The players describe what their characters do, and the GM describes how the world reacrs. When the outcome of a player action is uncertain, then [simple resolution mechanic]" but a beginner group is gonna be a little lost. Especially if the game, like many of these types of games, includes practically nothing in terms of GM tools. So I think recommending beginner RPGs solely on the base of how simple they are is well-intentioned but misguided.

(Ramble over)

So, some of what, to me, makes something a good beginner RPG is

Rules provide enough support that the group won't have to constantly be figuring out how to adjudicate stuff on the fly, but they're simple and flexible enough that they're easy to remember and learning them doesn't feel like a daunting task like it does with a certain game (*cough cough* D&D)

Relatively short and uni timidating. Maybe between like 20 and 100 pages. Players should be able to read through the rules and mechanics in one sitting.

Plenty of examples of play, often a good example of play is what makes a game's rules really *click* for a new player.

Relatively quick and painless to start running for the first time. Character creation should be quick and snappy, and if possible a short pre-written adventure (hopefully with some room to be expanded into something larger) should be included within the same book and ready to run out of the box. Even if your group doesn't like using prewritten adventures, having a *good* prewritten adventure can be a huge help in understanding how to write/design them.

Solid set of GM tools and resources (if it's a game with a GM, of course)

Optionally, plenty of compatible material to either use or take inspo from.

So, I think my recs would for beginner games would be...

Mausritter

If any of you have EVER heard me talk about RPGs you knew Mausritter was gonna be here TBH. I've repeatedly talked about it being one of my favorite RPGs and also that I consider it pretty much an ideal introduction to the hobby. I think the woodland critter theme is extremely charming and attractive for people of any age, while the slightly darker elements that rear their head from time to time keep it from feeling too childish.

The mechanics are simple and flexible but still provide enough structure that even a new GM will rarely if ever be at a loss about how to resolve a particular action. They're familiar to anyone who's played a dungeon game while still being extremely streamlined. 3 stats with the main action resolution being roll-under tests, no classes, characters are defined mostly by their inventory, all attacks auto hit and initiative is extremely streamlined, which keeps combat quick and dynamic, etc. And the mechanics are pretty short and esy to digest too, the players' section of the rulebook only takes 18 pages, including stuff like inventory tables and examples of play, and the website features a handy one.page rules summary (which also comes with the box set)

It's super easy to get running: character creation takes a couple minutes at most, and it features both a simple adventure and hexcrawl that can be used right out of the box with plenty of interesting directions to expand for further adventures.

Now, Mausritter takes most of its mechanics from Into The Odd, so a lot of its virtues come to it, but I think the few changes it made DO make mausritter most beginner-friendly, such as its inventory system which makes inventory management into a genuine challenge without having it devolve into a slog of tedious book-keeping, and the incorporation of a streamlined version of GloG's magic system, which manages to still be simple and easy without being as loose and freeform as the magic system from a lot of OSR games of similar complexity (which can be initially daunting to new players)

But what REALLY makes mausritter shine IMO is the extremely solid set of GM tools. In just a few pages mausritter manages to provide simple rules, procedures, generators and advice for running faction play, making an engaging hexcrawl, making adventure sites, and generating stuff like treasure hoards, NPCs, an adventure seeds and overal just a ton of useful stuff that takes a huge load off of the shoulders of any beginner GM.

Cairn

Lets say you're into Mausritter mechanically but your players aren't into the whole woodland creature theme and want to play something more traditional. Cairn is also built on Into The Odd's system, and takes inspiration from some of the same sources, so it's very similar mechanically. It does feature some significant differences regarding magic, character advancement, and how injury and healing work, but overall it's still mostly the same system under the hood, so a lot of what I said makes Mausritter a great introduction to the hobby mechanically still applies here (quick and flavorful character creation, dynamic and streamlined but dangerous combat, etc). It's also a classless system that features msotly inventory-defined characters, but aside from the option to randomly roll your gear, the game also offers the option of picking a gear package in case you wanna emulate a particular fantasy archetype.

Now, Cairn is a much more barebones document, and doesn't even feature examples of play or an explicit GM section with resources for running the game, which breaks with the things I said I look for in a beginner RPG. However, in this case I'm willing to forgive this because, first, Cairn's website features a plethora of first party and third party stuff that isn't featured in the book itself, including examples of play, GM procedures and tools, modular rules, and a wealh of conversions of creature stat blocks and adventures from D&D and other fantasy adventure ttrpgs.

And Second, something different that specifically distinguishes Cairn as a good example of a beginner RPG is how it explicitly outlines its philosophical and design principles, and the principles of play for both the GM and the players before it even shows you any rules, which is something that I think more games and ESPECIALLY begginer games should do. IMO the whole book is worth it just for that little section.

Troika!

Troika is a game built on the Fighting Fantasy system (which originally was less of a TTRPG system and more of an engine for a series of choose-your-own-adventure books) with a really interesting pseudo-victorian space opera weird gonzo setting which is a load of fun. It has very simple 2d6 mechanics, with characters having three stats (Stamina, Skill, and Luck), and being mostly defined by their inventory and the special skills from their background. Character creation is quick and snappy. The game gives you 36 weird and extremely creative character backgrounds, but creating a custom background is as easy as coming up with a concept and the names of a couple special skills that support that concept. It also has a very unique initiative system which might be a little divisive but which I DO find fun an interesting.

While it lacks many of the GM tools I praised Mausritter for, it makes up a little bit for it with an initial adventure that does a wonderful job at naturally introducing the weirdness of the setting, and which at the end presents a ton of opportunities to segway into a variety of urban adventures.

Now, a lot of beginners come into RPGs specifically looking for a D&D-type fantasy game (which is a problem because D&D is a pretty bad option for a beginner RPG) so for those types of players I would recommend

The Black Hack

The Black Hack is probably my favorite game for doing D&D-style fantasy roleplaying. It's a game that at its core uses the original 1974 white box edition of D&D for inspiration, but modernizes, reimagines, and streamlines every aspect of it to be one of the most simple yet elegant D&D-like experiences out there. For example, TBH uses the six stat array that all D&D players know and love, and with the same 3-18 point range, but does away with the attribute score / attribute modifier dichotomy, instead building its entire system around the attribute scores, with all rolls in the game being roll-under tests for a relevant attribute (including initiative, attack/defense rolls, and saving throws). It also innovated some extremely elegant mechanics that went on to be very influential for other games, such as its Usage Die mechanic as a way to streamline keeping track of consumable resources. Basically, it's like if D&D actually played the way it looks in cartoons and stuff: character creation doesn't take 3 hours, every combat encounter doesn't take five hours, and you can place some emphasis on resource management without the game making you want to tear your hair out with boring bookkeeping.

And one of the coolest things about it is the way it handles compatibility. Despite taking loose at best mechanical inspiration from D&D and playing very differently from it, TBH is intentionally designed to be compatible with a wealth of old-school D&D material. While it very clearly stands as its own distinct game, it's designed in such a way that you can prety much grab any creature stat block or adventure module written for any pre-3e version of D&D and use it in The Black Hack with little to no effort in conversion required.

The first edition of the game is a pretty barebones 20-page booklet that just describes the basic game mechanics, since it was assumed you'd probably be using D&D creature stat blocks and adventures with it anyway, but the second edition was significantly expanded with a bestiary, expanded GM procedures and advice, and tool for creating anything you could want: Hexcrawls, towns, dungeons, quests, treasure hoards, NPCs, dungeon rooms, traps, secrets doors, etc. plus a short premade adventure and even a few premade unkeyed dungeon maps that you can take and key yourself if you're in a pinch for a map, which as you all know, I think GM tools are an important part of a beginner game.

The game only includes the 4 basic classes from old-school D&D (fighter, thief, cleric, magic user) but the community has made several supplements adding back more modern classes.

Now, if you're that type of player that wants a D&D-like experience and you want an alternative that's still beginner-friendly but doesn't deviate as much from D&D's design, I would suggest:

either Basic Fantasy, or Old-School Essentials (or any good retroclone of Basic D&D tbh)

BF and OSE differ a bit from each other but at their core they're both attempts to repackage a relatively faithful but slightly modernized version of the 1981 Basic/Expert D&D set, retaining mostly the same mechanics while ditching a few of the aspects that might seem counterintuitive to a modern audience (such as descending AC, which I personally don't mind but I udnerstand why a lot of people find it confusing). I'm recommending these bc I think if you're gonna play any actual D&D product, the B/X set represents D&D at its most beginner-friendly (character creation is at its quickest and simplest, combat flows faster and remain itneresting due to doing side initiative rather than individual initative, the mechanics forsurprise, stealth, and dungeon exploration actions such as looking for traps are streamlined to simple D6 rolls) while still being recognizably D&D and these retroclones put in a bit of an extra effort to make them even more accessible to modern audiences.

Now, just like The Black Hack, these retroclones are limited in their race/class choice to the classic old-school D&D human/halfling/elf/dwarf and fighter/cleric/thief/magic user, but in the case of Basic Fantasy, the community has made several race and class supplements, some of which are showcased on the official website, and in the case of OSE, the OSE: Advanced addon reintroduces many of the modern classes and races that were originally introduced in the Advanced D&D line.

Have in mind that this list is pretty limited by my own tastes and experiences. I'm very aware that the very specific type of game I tend to play and like and experiences inroducing some of my friends to the hobby completely color the scope of what I can recommend as a good beginner RPG, and that that scope is significantly limited. I also like more narrative storygame type stuff, and I don't doubt that some of them would also make a fantastic introduction to the hobby (some PbTA stuff like Ironsworn, Dungeon World and Monster of the Week comes to mind) but my experience with them is not significant enough for me to feel confident in telling which of them are good beginner RPGs.

Also note that there are several games that I consider to be more MECHANICALLY beginner-friendly than the ones I listed here, but that I avoided mentioning specifically because they offer extremely little to no support in terms of GM tools, which I think is an important and often overlooked aspect of beginner-friendliness for any game that includes a GM! But they still might be worth checking out. These include games like DURF, FLEE, OZR, A Dungeon Game, Bastards, Dungeon Reavers, Knave 1e, and Tunnel Goons.

[monster-musings]

I'm not in touch with the YouTube Monster Hunter lore scene, people are smart enough to have made the distinction that the Guild classifications for monsters are not the same as scientific classifications right?

Guild classifications are purely practical, they're there to inform the hunter (player) what kind of fight they should expect from a monster based on its body type; by no means should every Flying Wyvern be actually lumped together on the family tree.

A prime example are Paolumu and Tigrex, both represent basal 'Flying Wyverns', but both are from two separate and distinct lineages. Paolumu represents a lineage descended from Bird Wyverns (its fur is actually feathers, synapomorphy with Pukei-Pukei), whereas Tigrex is clearly one descended from a Fanged Wyvern (or vice versa). How about the arbitration between Brute Wyvern and Bird Wyvern? Many of which are definitely theropods regardless of Guild classification.

Just some food for thought. Cladistics can be a messy thing, and I certainly wouldn't trust any official material on MH cladistics to do it justice.

[saintlyguy]

NEW WAR SPOILERS: I had a nap dream where The New War got retconned and it was wild.

Most of it was the same, except Veso and Teshin live. During the Drifter portion, they have to unite the resistances formed by Kahl, Veso, Teshin, Little Duck, and Hunhow. Since your Warframes are gone, Stalker begrudgingly allows the Drifter to link with him to hunt the Archons.

After healing Lotus and the Drifter meets the Operator, Cy flies them and everyone else to help Lotus beat Ballas. In a power of friendship moment, the Drifter and Operator use Transference with Lotus to give her the power she needs to beat Ballas; here the player takes control of Lotus. Somehow my dream decided to set this new boss fight to Stronger Than You from Steven Universe and everytime Lotus hits Ballas, it syncs with the chorus’ lyrics. After laying out Ballas, The Man in the Wall appears as usual except Lotus is then backed up by the player’s allies.

Instead of bringing Lotus back to Lua, the Drifter and Operator bring her to Cetus to chill. The choice where Lotus could keep or change her name to Margulis or Natah is replaced by a cutscene where the Drifter and Operator wish for her to do what she wants. From here, the Lotus steps down as the leader of the Tenno and live life. The Tenno are self-governed now but are guided by a tribunal of Teshin, Kahl, and Veso. Teshin handles Orokin and Infested missions, Kahl handles Grineer missions, while Veso handles Corpus missions. Lotus will then have missions similar to the ones for Maroo and Clem, but will change depending on who she feels like being for the day. If there is a Margulis mission, the player will simply hangout with her; she’ll tell stories that reveal more lore while playing the Shawzin, competing at Komi, or just having tea with the player. If she feels like being Natah, you are fighting by her side as if it were an Arbitration Defense mission. Lotus missions are like Kahl missions where you take control of her but also fight alongside your character.

This retcon dream was pretty fun and makes me want another one about Warframe 1999.

[alianoralacanta]

I expected the FIA to let the Norris/Verstappen decision stand. I half-expected it to say there was insufficient evidence to hear the case.

I did not expect it to be so foolish as to say a stewarding error did not count as sufficient evidence to hear the case.

Part of the agreement that allows the FIA to have a monopoly on European motorsport requires it to abide by the law of the land from which the organisation is run (in the FIA's case, that is France). Governing body error is in fact sufficient evidence for a fresh hearing in cases that aren't in-the-moment on-the-field situations - this is why it's possible to have appeals against penalties for football teams being charged with selling clubs to the wrong people but not against a red card for fielding 12 players on an 11-player-per-side pitch.

If this was a true in-the-moment on-the-field situation, the FIA would not have allowed the appeal at all, it has a regulation for that category. This did not fall under the category, so plainly the FIA believed that this was a matter that should be possible to appeal.

What the decision sets is a precedent that stewarding error is not considered sufficient for a case to be heard. Even deliberate stewarding error, for there is no way to interrogate which is which in a way that allows the call to be amended.

This is against the terms under which the FIA is permitted to run motorsports. It is also against FIA precedent. At the 2001 US Grand Prix (the last time a case I know to be appealed on stewarding error, apart from Abu Dhabi 2021, of which more later), Jarno Trulli was disqualified for the car being underweight. Jordan appealed the case, which initially confused everyone because the weight limit is generally open-and-shut.

However, there was also another open-and-shut element: stewarding decisions were only valid if all stewards were present to sign the decision. Eddie Jordan had got an early plane home to see his family and was rather surprised to find one of the stewards in the same departure lounge. Shouldn't he have been in the stewards' office, given he was getting text messages to say his driver was still having his case discussed? It turned out someone had forged the steward's signature (we will never know who). At that point, the FIA was forced to overturn the case on appeal.

Abu Dhabi 2021 cannot be used as precedent for the stewards' call either. The case got rejected on similarly spurious grounds and Mercedes dissuaded from challenging the governing body's later-admitted misconduct. The FIA's report showed that the only reason the result did not get changed to reflect the reality of the race, was because the FIA didn't want to break its own regulations, despite the misconduct causing it being from the FIA (thus continuing to open the FIA to legal challenge). A sensible governing body would have closed the loophole. The FIA has (apparently deliberately) opened it up further.

The FIA needs to reverse this decision as soon as possible, and will most likely be obliged to simply cancel Norris' penalty (strictly speaking, it would have to give Verstappen a penalty as well - if it wasn't a legitimate defense, then it has to be a wrongful forcing someone off the track - unless the FIA chooses to reconvene a stewarding panel to consider whether this can be considered a racing incident where nobody needs a penalty). Failure to do so leaves it open to legal interrogation in the French courts (not the FIA/Swiss Court of Arbitration ones) for breach of the 2001 settlement that allows the FIA to hold its monopoly, and breach of contract to both McLaren and Red Bull (yes, Red Bull could make money on this even if Verstappen gets a penalty).

[thydungeongal]

Hey, I've been wanting to run a dungeon crawly west marches style game where I include some optional, off to the side, way-overleveled "guardians" that players can return to fight for extra treasure once they have some more levels under their belt.

My problem is that many of my players initially bounced off pathfinder 1e for being too crunchy, and have been playing mostly dungeon world. And while I do enjoy dungeon world, it's got two features that makes it particularily ill-suited for this campaign:

1. Characters tend to gain more options when they level up instead of becoming numerically better at surviving and killing.

2. Combat is Very free flowing. That's great when I want to dynamically change how difficult combat is, but when the feeling I want to ellicit on lower level is "you're in way over your heads", it feels a bit too much like GM fiat to me.

All that is a long-winded way of asking, do you know of any dungeon crawling fantasy RPGs where characters get Stronger in addition to/rather than growing more versatile, that has more black-and-white combat arbitration, *and* that's on the more rules light side of the spectrum (especially on the character creation side of things)?

Okay, so it actually sounds like you might benefit from one of the older editions of D&D! No, don't run away, come back!

But seriously, let me explain what I mean:

If Pathfinder 1e is too crunchy for your players they might benefit from something that has less crunch. While some older editions of D&D can be quite crunchy (basically, both AD&D 1e and 2e are pretty crunchy, albeit in different ways than Pathfinder), there is the whole Basic D&D lineage of games that are very much simplified and streamlined.

Even though character growth in older editions of D&D wasn't quite as pronounced as in WotC editions, there is still a clear power growth as characters level up, and it is mostly expressed via the numbies going up!

D&D has always been About Combat to an extent, so the combat is still heavily structured.

Character creation in older editions is VERY simple, with only a few choices.

Other benefits include the fact that older editions of D&D come with lots of procedures built in for making a sandbox setting come alive. Random encounters, procedures for populating the world, you've got it all! There's even treasure maps that point to random locations on your campaign map!!!

Now I also understand why you might be hesitant to take me on this idea: those older editions have lots of weird rules and significantly fewer character options. Which is often true. But there's also a burgeoning scene of new games that are taking the aforementioned benefits of those older games and applying some modern sheen to them. Many of which are free!

Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game is a Creative Commons licensed free old-school D&D clone that is not a clone of any specific edition of D&D, but sort of a best-of of old-school D&D. The game is literally free, and if you wish to increase character options beyond the ones in the core rules (which has Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings, and Fighters, Magic-Users, Clerics and Thieves) there is a vibrant community of people creating free supplements for the game.

The Microlite20 family of games are a set of simplified D&D clones that often take more after modern D&D, but there is a separate old-school edition of the latest version! And if you end up missing some of the "new-school" options the Microlite20 family of games are all broadly compatible with each other!

FORGE is a free RPG heavily inspired by the Basic D&D lineage of games but also some modern old-school clones like Knave, and it basically presents a classless version of old-school D&D (but where levels are still a thing and there are still some character creation choices that echo throughout a character's career). It also has fantastic gameplay guidance and GM tools!

And the best thing about all those games I just mentioned: they are all broadly compatible with each other! So even if you end up running one game, you can easily poach procedures and ideas you like from the others! These games are all basically in the same lineage, and because of that they have lots of points where there's a lot of room for modding and borrowing!

If you would like to talk about this some more, don't hesitate to DM me! I love talking about these sorts of campaigns and if you still have questions and specific wishes I would love to help! :)

[dailyadventureprompts]

I've never had much patience for any game that expects a dogmatic, unquestioning adherence and memorization of the rules, especially when those rules are sprawling enough that it makes trying to internalize them a chore.

When I'm playing a ttrpg I'm playing it like an instrument, not a game of chess, my goal is to above all create good art.

System mastery is part of that, it helps me get the results I want when I put in the right stimulus

Gameplay balance and understandable mechanics are part of that, it lets my players join in with the jam session

Arbitration and homebrew are part of that, it lets me tune the instrument just how I like it

[anim-ttrpgs]

It was mentioned that EUREKA would be the easiest DM-able system ever. From a newcomer's perspective, how is it so?

Well, firstly, it strongly encourages the use of prewritten adventure modules, which just already take a lot of work off the GM's shoulders, and maybe others can elaborate on how much of a burden that is lifting, but it isn't exactly very unique to Eureka.

What Eureka does do however is have rules and play advice which enourages, or even necessitates, players and player-characters taking initiative and driving the story themselves with their own deliberate actions, rather than sitting back and asking the GM "okay where are our characters going next?" The game in general both encourages and facilitates a very hands-off GM approach where the GM's main job is to be a referee for the rules and a voice for the NPCs, not a novelist that inserts the names of the PCs into their plot. There's a lot of similarity here between this approach and a lot of OSR type games' "situations, not plots" approach. This makes feel more like playing a game than being a full-time job.

None of the character abilities in Eureka necessitate that a certain NPC exist for them to work, meaning the GM will never have to come up with a whole character on the fly that has a whole believable relationship with the PCs. In fact, there is an optional system in Eureka by which the players are the ones who come up with NPCs their PCs know, using a series of questions to formulate their relationship to one-another and then handing that over to the GM.

Many things that are traditionally up to the GM in many other RPGs or RPG-groups such as note-taking and in-game time-keeping are instead explicitly assigned to a player.

The system just also has a lot of rules for helping GMs make calls in many different situations, rather than having to arbitrate a bunch of mechanical effects on the fly, and has very simple and easy-to-work-with NPC stat-lines.

All of these things and more add up to a lighter workload for the GM, so that instead of the effort investment in a 1-GM-4-player group being split 80-5-5-5-5% like in D&D5e and many other popular systems, in Eureka it's split more like 40-15-15-15-15%.

Check out our Kickstarter page for the best accumulation of info on what Eureka: investigative Urban Fantasy even is! The Kickstarter campaign launches April 10th 2024!

Check out our Patreon to get the whole prerelease rulebook + multiple adventure modules and pieces of short fiction for a subscription of only $5!

If you wanna try before you buy, check out our website for more information on Eureka as well as a download link to the free demo version!

Interested in actually playing this game, and many others, with the developers? Check out A.N.I.M.'s TTRPG Book Club, a club of nearly 100 members at the time of writing this where we regularly nominate, vote on, and then play indie TTRPGs! At the time of writing this, we are playing Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and sign-ups are closed for actually playing it, but you can still join in to pick up a PDF club copy of the rulebook to read and follow along with discussion, and sit in on and observe sessions! There is no schedule obligation for joining this club, as we keep things very flexible by assigning multiple GMs with different timeslots each round, to try and accomodate everyone! This round, we had over thirty people sign up, and were able to fit in all but one! Here is the invite link! See you there!