Just starting a new TTRPG Castles and Crusades. It looks awesome and I’m very excited Also I just ran a charity D&D 5.5 game for 7 people this weekend. 12 hour high level game with terrain and lots of cool stuff on an adventure I wrote and we raised $1750 for Shriners Hospitals

I want to learn about ways you make combat interesting and reward tactical creativity!

So it just came up when I asked my players for permission to use our game in the workshop. Are players welcome in this community (many of whom also Game Master), or do we want to keep membership to game masters? I think we should keep the focus on game mastering, but wonder if some player perspective would be helpful.

Other than Tristan and Jonah, have the rest of us gotten to play in a game with a GM following these proactive principles? I have not and I wonder if that is one of the challenges I am facing, that I don't understand the subtlely of how some of these principles feel or should feel in practice. I don't have first hand experience with which things a GM does enhances or supports proactivity and which errode it.

Starting Wednesday March 18th, we'll be running a West Marches style, ongoing campaign that anyone can join! We'll use the practices of our books to build an emergent, proactive game, starting with a Session -1 and creating character goals. We're expecting to run a few different games in the future, but to start, we'll be using Blades in the Dark for it's pretty easy-to-pickup rules, and its crew rules (which facilitate a rotating table). Something we've been seeing in the lab a lot is that most of the GMs here haven't actually been able to play in a proactive game (as a PC, that is). So much of this hobby is learned via experience, plus we just want to run more games, so this is our way of getting both. So how will it work? On the 18th, we'll have a Session -1. There will be polls and other events in the leadup for folks who can't make it, so everyone will help shape the variation of the Blades in the Dark setting we'll be playing in. Afterwards, we'll play each Wednesday. Signups for a game will go out two weeks before it starts for our Gold members, and one week before for the rest of the lab---seats are first come, first serve! Our tables will start at a max of five players---this may change as we learn and adjust. The games will be absolutely free of charge to make them as accessible as possible (for reference, StartPlaying games will usually be about 15--30 bucks a seat). This is what's called a "West Marches" game. For anyone who doesn't know this style, it's basically an open table campaign with an ongoing setting. Whoever can make it to a session forms the group, they set their own objectives, and they usually work as some sort of broader organization (in this case, a crew of criminals). A player could attend a dozen sessions, or they could just try once and not need to feel pressured to continue. If you're interested in more info about what this style of game is, give it a google! If you want a longer explanation, this video has a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGAC-gBoX9k