So many. And the answer to all “why nots?”. Time. It’s time. So off the top of my head

Eat the Reich - “The year is 1943. You are a team of crack vampire commandos with one mission: drink all of Hitler’s blood”

Conan 2d20

Legend of the Five rings (5e)

Stoneburner - Deep Rock Galactic the TTRPG

Vaesen - Call of Cthulhu but rooted in nordic mythology

Heart the City Beneath - an award-winning complete tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process.

Depends on the system. Classical fantasy adventuring? Most if not all sessions. Adventure and Sword&Sorcery? Sometimes, half perhaps. Character drama? Very seldom.

I look at how the system spends its page budget and use that as a guideline. If there is a chapter for combat, one for harm and recovery and one for combat magic then the system wants me to focus on those parts. Also I look at how the players/characters are rewarded and try to have each session hit several of those criteria. So if the only (reliable, non gm-fiat) way to earn rewards if through combat then you bet your sweet ass there will combats each session.

Or why not simply have degrees of success on EVERYTHING? But as you say it would be a lot of work. Folks have done it, just look at yhe various dicepool system or even Pathfinder 2e.

On a sidenote I find saves boring. I enjoy actively rolling skills much more engaging. And all spells being “attack rolls”.

The way DnD is built does require the counter dance. Big abilities are part of its features. So there need to be ways to counter those abilities. That is the (modern?) DnD way.

Very sparse with such abilities and those that exist generally don’t apply to Monsters. Some only apply up to human sized targets. No hypnotic patterns, hold monsters etc.

Dragonbane leans a bit into OSR aporoaches here in that you will have to work with the GM and the fiction to get things capable of trivialising encounters. But then the encounter vs the Monster wasn’t fought in battle but in strategizing and preparation.

In Tencent’s favor I haven’t really heard about them mismanaging properies or being too heavyhanded when it comes to squeezing out profitability.

Do I want DnD to be owned and controlled by another multinational holding company? No. Will it matter to me? Not really. But I do enjoy the drama.

It could be that Hadbro only licence the “video game” part or all dynamic electronic content (beyond, vtts etc). But I’m not sure how much of a cash influx that would give Hasbro.

Both my favorite systems makes my GMing job easier and they do it in the same way - they give the players responsibility though their character’s goals to drive the game forward. And they have explicit rewards helping in this matter.

Ironsworn (a PbtA) is the more direct of these. The characters swears vows and once they are fulfilled they get XP. Starforged, the SciFi version, adds more ways to earn XP through Bonds and Exploration. But we’ll stay with the base Ironsworn. The vows are essentially quests but what makes them different from just any random quest is the mechanics surrounding them. First a tracker to measure vow completion is created, then as progress is made it is filled depending on vow difficulty. Now this sounds fairly standard except the only way to mark progress is through triggering moves, primarily the move “Reach a Milestone”. Since Ironsworn is a PbtA the moves are player facing, it is the player through their character’s actions that triggers them. Second awesome part is those trackers, each being ten segments long. They aren’t automatically completed when they are filled instead there is move “Fulfil your vow” that states

When you achieve what you believe to be the fulfillment of your vow, roll the challenge dice and compare to your progress.

That is when the player thinks their character is in a position to have completed their vow they make a roll and see what comes out of it. It lets the player decide if their little work is enough (not much progress marked, high change of complications) or if they should work harder on it. Awesome pacing tool. Ironsworn is also made for GM-less play which gives so may tools to the GM they can almost go on autopilot.

Burning Wheel has an awesome feedback loop called the Artha Cycle. The very short of it is

• Player states their character’s beliefs (goals)
• Player have their character try to achieve their beliefs possibly spending Artha (a player-facing currency used to manipulate rolls) to increse chance for success
• Character earns progress in tested skills slowly increasing their proficiency in them
• At regular intervals (often end-of-session) the players earn more Artha for their character’s progression on beliefs
• Player states their character’s beliefs (goals)

And so it goes on and on. Often all I have to do as a GM is to keep track of the world and put obstacles in the way of the characters, as in challenge their beliefs. With players working the system I often not only get stated what their character’s goal is but also what the obstacle is. Then all I have to do is play the world.

Or if they have robust invention rules the player playing the inventor knows exactly everything about them and how to exploit them.

Another thing that makes Oracle / Seer / Diviner characters difficult to GM for is that you need to know things in advance, where the adventure leads to etc. As one whose GMing style leans heavily into Play To Find Out that sort of characters is kind of counter to it.

That said it is highly dependent of what the player want out of such an archetype. If it is a flavour for how the character solves problems I’m all for that. Touching an item to get a vision/impression for something (adventure) related to it go ahead. That is not too different to other ways of investigating. But the player who wants those powers to get “quest markers” or to completely negate obstacles (“hurr durr I have foresight so I’ve seen the ambush”) gets hard noes from me.

Also agreeing with @dumples@kbin.social, D&D 5e Divination wizards are very well made and the divination spells work well in those kind of worlds.

Wrapped up a Torchbearer campaign about this time last year and now a long term player have taken up the mantle and is GMing some Burning Wheel.

Did very little GM-ing. Just some sporadic Blades and a few sessions of Swords of the Serpentine. Like the core of Serpentine but they have added on too many auxiliary systems for me to enjoy it. It doesn’t really know what it want to be - light or complex.

Gotten into OSR adventures. Have no liking to the systems but truly love the adventure designs. It is the openness of them that calls to me, an invitation “here is the situation go wild”. And they seem so plug-and-playable, and descriptions seldom last longer than a paragraph, and there are tables instead of words, and hooks are listed without fuzz. Am I smitten? Yes!

As the year draws to a close I’m starting up my first campaign in my native Swedish - Drakar och Demoner. Will sound so incredibly geeky to do roleplaying in Swedish. Corny deluxe.

Anything compared to Duskvol is sunny. That city and its atmosphere is so oppresivley dark and dreary. The sun literally doesn’t shine and no stars illuminate the night sky.

I don’t find Cthulhu horror that dark. Damp and misty sure. With the cosmic/existential horror being rooted in ones insignificance and the ungraspness of the infinite existence there is little explicit need for darkness. It can be dark yes, just doesn’t need to be.

On DrivethroughRPG.com you can browse by rule system
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?ruleSystem=100226

Itch.io has a Forged in the Dark tag
https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-forged-in-the-dark

And I found a list of fan creations on the blades webpage. Not sure how maintained that is but it is there.
https://bladesinthedark.com/fan-creations

The setting of blades is while well crafted utterly dark and dreary. Personally I cannot stand it. So anything that is forged in the dark (what the generic mechanics are called) but with a bit more sun is in my opinion pretty much an upgrade. So if you are interested in the forged family of systems and you find CO’s setting/premise go for it.

Can also recommend you to have a look at the larger FitD ecosystem as there are plenty of goodies.

Larger and/or gamey games 1€/h. Here I put games such as the Tomb Raiders, cRPGs etc.

Narrative experiences 5€/h. Stray Gods and other high quality intense experiences. Often short and with limited replayability. Like seeing a movie a second time.

My Swords of the Serpentine have become absence-cursed. We have had a few weeks now where we haven't been able to play. Bit sad as it sucks energy and I really want to give a GUMSHOE system a good run for its money.

The ICON game I'm in is marching slowly ahead. Emphasis slowly. We are so very new to it that combats takes just so much time. On the other hand fighting is what it has going for it. And the combat is good, really good. So not complaining too much.

Also playing in a Burning Wheel game where things are marching on. Good group and good play but sometimes wish we would have less roleplay and more rolls to close out scenes. Next session we do start with a Duel of Wits, possibly a three way duel of wits.

With desperation.

Not completely a joke unfortunately. Often if someone is interested in the niche game I want to try running and is available when I can run it I'll take them. There is of course some vetting: a light conversation about the system, their interest in it and then I'll judge their reaction and openness to safety tools. After this I can be fairly certain they aren't complete asses.

Also it is easier to endure that player if you don't plan for the campaign to last beyond 5-10 sessions. A dip into the system to try it out and then onto the next one.

I feel Ironsworn is a good mix of PbtA and BW. At its core it is a PbtA, moves and all that jazz. But it hands over narrative drive to the players in a direct way. Ironsworn demands Vows to be sworn, essentially telling the Player that if this matter for your character a vow need to be made. Its progress then tacked and when fulfilled rewards given. I see parts of the Artha Cycle there (minus the meta-currencies) but one not as active as BW’s.

I find a simple way is to relinquish control of the game and let the players drive it. Once you, together with the group, have set up the Situation and Big Picture hand over the reins to the players. Saying

Ok, you have your Beliefs. Anyone wants to begin trying to achieve something?

It may be slow in the beginning, lots of questions and hesitation. But be a bit careful using this technique as it can devolve into a bunch of solo games. Nothing wrong with that but it may not be what you want.

Second method is a bit more directed. Between sessions look at beliefs that weren’t touch upon and figure out a scene where you can drop the characters straight into. Or if your players are active and send you their new ones take one of them. Drop them straight in, no fuss, full in media res. If they want to poison the king drop them into the castle kitchens and ask them where they got the poison from. Use that information, with perhaps a test, to set up their immediate obstacle. I also call this the Blades method (as I’ve take it from Blades in the Dark).

Instincts and traits I seldom get a chance to actively engage when GMing, have so many other things going on then. Leave these things up the players.

Sometimes though it really helps to see how others do it. Jump into a few actual plays, I would skip around in their character burning sessions to see if their flavour warrants more in-depth dedication.

Read it and I have to say I vehemently disagree with the author’s conclusions. Only the third point I can a bit agree with, but not the others. Not saying it is bad advice but for the goal of “three methods to get the magic of BURNING WHEEL’s approach in your game, no matter what it may be”* the mark is missed. My methods instead would be

• THE
• ARTHA
• CYCLE

It is in its Artha Cycle one finds the magic of Burning Wheel, everything else is just fuel for the fire. The Artha Cyle then…

1. The player states a Belief their character has. It is good, but not required, to include a goal in this Belief.
2. The player has their character try and achieve said Belief, if the test really matters Artha (player-facing meta currency) is spent on the roll to improve the chance for success. Perhaps they get a bit on their way, perhaps they succeed. Or they fail. Regardless…
3. The player is awarded for playing their character’s Belief with Artha (meta currencies) and the character is rewared by getting better at the skill.
4. Update Belief and start the cycle anew

That there is Burning Wheel at its core. You can find more about it in the Hub and Spokes (free), or just ask if you want to know more about it.

Relationships, which the author so focuses on, are a tool for the player to write Beliefs about and use to achieve them. They are also excellent tools for the GM to challenge Beliefs as at the beginning of the game every relationship the characters has are someone the player spent points on to create when they burnt their character. So they matter because the Players have said so. But you can remove them and still have Burning Wheel.

Lets talk a bit about the Author’s third point

III: Build Massive, Compound Stakes on Dice Rolls

I agree that Burning Wheel really wants the tests to matter. Spamming tests are not the way. Let’s circle back to the Artha Cycle. Players and Characters are rewarded (mainly) for having their Beliefs in play, which on the other side says that if the scene isn’t about a Belief of theirs there is barely anything in it. Instincts, Traits, other PCs, relationships etc may be there using the character to get involved. But back to big tests. The less you test in Burning Wheel there more those tests matters and the more the player can make those tests matter through spending Artha on them. The player is also more inclined to spend Artha on tests if they don’t feel they have to spend it on several minor tests. What I’ve found this leads to at the table is a test or two to set up the big test. Also there is a focus around the test, a focus to better position their character for it. So once the test comes around it already matters, the table has invested in it and we are all eager to see it play out.

That is all I have to say about it for now. Read Burning Wheel, at least the Hub and Spokes. There are good things in it.

But since I cannot shut up - if you are running a more classical fantasy game implementing the Artha Cycle from Torchbearer may be a better idea as it is a bit scaled down.