We recently finished a disappointing 10 session run of Scum and Villainy (S&V), "a game about a spaceship crew trying to make ends meet under the iron-fisted rule of the Galactic Hegemony." 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐈𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 Coming off a 2 year 5E Curse of Strahd campaign (and primarily a 3 year homebrew 5E campaign before that), we wanted to do something different. We chose S&V because space opera ship crew seemed radically different than heroic fantasy and gothic horror and because I wanted the group to try a FitD game. S&V aims to emulate Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, and/or Firefly. The group was the most excited about emulating Firefly so we decided to create a "mostly mundane" setting and use the "Stardancer" ship template. We decided the provided setting was too big and varied for our tastes so we set off to create our own. We played a game of the Quiet Year and in the process created 3 sectors with 8 planets and a few notable space landmarks (giant satellite laser, asteroid belt, Remnant ruins, etc.) as well as 14 factions of varying strengths. Everyone had a great time authoring the setting collectively. After that session, I spent far too long filling in additional details for the setting. Every player created a great character with their own goals and significant ties to the setting. We were excited to play. Checking over my notes, the campaign primarily consisted of 5 different jobs: - Stealing medicine (that treats an alien parasite that turns victims into rage monsters) from a "Hegemony" warehouse. - Recovering an encrypted drive from an abandoned mining station in the asteroid belt where the alien parasite originated. - Prison break to free an ally's ship captain and recover their confiscated ship. - Stealing an advanced robot (augmented with Remnant tech) from a party attended by nobility and high-ranking military officials. - Transporting the stolen robot through military blockade to an interested party.

So who is ready to turn a bit in a game? @Jay George , @James Willetts , @Tristan Fishel ? Someone joked about a Brindlewood Bay based game , which is totally possible with their "carved by Brindlewood Bay" license. Brindlewood Bay has investigor abilities, so who are some famous fisherman? Ahab, Quint from Jaws, Jeremy Wade from River monsters?

...and justify why you have it, if you dare haha. I moved recently and gave away or donated about 70% of my books, including the hard copies I had of the Game Master’s books. I kept only the essentials for games I'm actively running (from left to right) - Ideas notebook for all campaigns, mostly for plotting arcs and world building ideas - Core rules for 5e - I get asked to run this from time to time, usually in person, and I don't really know the rules very well so I keep my copies around. They're first printings and in really bad shape - Tomb of Annihilation for 5e - my next big published module campaign that I am running, probably next year - I am working on a 13th Age conversion for it - 13th Age core rules and some extras - my favorite fantasy game and the Bestiary in particular has some fantastic monster ideas in it - My collection of vintage and modern Conan comics, mostly used as bookends but occasionally for ideas - A few books on writing and storytelling generally - I STRONGLY recommend Lajos Egri's "The Art of Dramatic Writing" if you haven't read it yet Post a picture of your shelf! (PS. It is easy if you have the Skool app on your phone)

If you've been around you probably have seen me talk about the wild amount of games that I have played. I am wondering what rule or tool did you steal from an RPG that you use or want to use going forward? I played Bunkers and Badassses this year and I love the badass moves. For a more cinematic game, you can let players completely break action economy once per session, and you just give it a particularly high dc to do so. Other players can kick in their use to lower the DC if the fictional positioning supports it. For example you can do multiple actions in the same Action but need to balance not only the difficultly to generate the DC but also how many actions it would normally take.

What was the first system you played (or ran) that wasn't DnD? (The purpose of this post is to give people a few ideas of games they could try if they are going to skip D&D 5e 2024. It isn't for D&D bashing - that's how nearly all of us started!) For me it was GURPS. We wanted to run a Halloween game about shapeshifters infiltrating our friend group and DnD 3.5 didn't fit the bill. In hindsight, it was way over engineered and not the right system for the game. Should have gone with something simple and freefrom (next year I ran the same thing with RISUS).