It's been a relatively quiet month in the lab, and we've had tons of great discussions, but Jonah and I have been working on some projects and changes we're really excited for! Here's a quick overview. We're retiring Prep Nights for now, but we'll be hosting weekly Q&As starting Tuesday, October 29th! If you want to chat with some community members, get advice for an idea you have, workshop concepts, or just hang out, this is the perfect place to do it. If you prefer to join and "lurk" as many of our members have out it, you're also welcome to just join without a camera or microphone on and use it as some background noise. We're excited to see you all there! Several folks have expressed interest in a potential GML Game Jam (thanks for the idea, @Briggs Schneider !) but we don't want to host one without enough interest. We'll send a poll in a day or two to gauge how much interest there would be in designing, reading, or playing games overall. This would be a super fun event where the community can design some simple games, take a look through them, play some, and give a prize to the community's favorite! Finally, we're working on a project we've had in our minds since before the first book came out: TTRPG adventures designed for proactive play. We've got a rough draft for a starter packet meant to introduce proactive play to a group (including new groups met at hobby stores!) and comes with everything you need to run a one-shot. Ever since the book launched, we've had tons of people ask for advice on how to introduce proactive play to new groups, how to introduce it at game stores, and how to use it with pre-published content---we're becoming more and more confident this will address at least some of those needs. The submission process for freelancers is almost concluded, but if anyone here is interested in freelance work, we're still currently considering who our layout designer will be, so feel free to submit here if you have any experience: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHT7zjpzlPtqwYylR3ZxIHTs9rd4Qoa9yt7A8VXAqxgqlblw/viewform?usp=sf_link Please keep in mind that the artist positions have been filled, even though they're still on the form.

We've got a lot of folks here that have played tons of TTRPGs I'd never even heard of before, and we've had a few threads about everyone's favorite mechanics from different games. I'm curious about some examples of incorporating one game's system into another because of something they used that was just too good to pass up. I've started using Blades in the Dark's clocks in everything, especially with how easy they are to integrate, but not every mechanic is so simple. I've run a few games of 5e with 13th Age's Escalation Die, which requires a little mathematical shenanigans, and I spent a decent amount of time converting adventures from previous editions into 5e. What about all of you?

So a few of your were part of either the playtest of my World Building or you have seen me talk about it. A big thing I am working on on the first public test document that I should have out early next year is story seeds. Little jumping off points that can be used indivually or mixed together to help groups think of the kind of story they want to tell together. Anyone want to contribute an idea? I would credit anyone that adds to the post in the publication even if you idea gets cut.

Just ran my first session of Savage Worlds , as an open ended one shot. Two of my normal players couldn't make it, so I offer to run the a game for the other two. It was between Savage Worlds, The Wild Sea, and Traveler, since they were all on the unplayed shelf. They chose Savage Worlds, set in a distant future and one player asked for it to be a heist. I asked them if they wanted to steal "something magical, high technology, sometime of cultural significance like art or historical document, or just straight cash/gold?" The other player suggested... The Krabby Part Recipe. One deep freeze to the future, and a Patty Raid later, and they found that the Computer that can send them back will need another 742 years to complete the calculations needed to do so. So now we are set up for them to go quest for parts, and power to speed that number up. I've been looking for a Generic Setting RPG that I feel inspired to run and I think I may have found to in SWADE.

Jonah and I have been talking a lot about strategies for wrapping up campaigns. Folks have talked about it once or twice here in the lab, but I'm curious about strategies people have used for ending a long-running campaign----how did you prep? Were there things you felt you needed to leave out? What was the highlight? Were there things you didn't cover in-game, but addressed in different ways?