Hi Game Masters, I've really been enjoying the new Campaign Chronicles tab and reading through what's happening at your tables. That's one of my favorite genres of forum post, and I feel lucky to have a direct line to some great games so I can get my fix a few times a week. We've been working on a few things that I wanted to tell you about - if it's been a while since you checked in on this group, now is a good time to come back and see everything! Here's what we'll be adding this week and next week: - Tristan's excellent packet of Proactive Roleplaying-aligned resources for people who want to dip their toes in - a faction, locations, and encounter that you can drop into your existing game to see how a proactive approach feels without doing all the setup yourself - Finally finishing the Notion template video guide for people who want to set up their campaign that way - A live call where we'll workshop community members' games (mostly helping people get the party's goals aligned and help design some encounters around them) - An interview with Rob Heinsoo, author of the 4th edition of D&D - Some paid resources going up for sale Those and more will be released over the next few days, with the premium resources coming next week. We don't like sending mass emails, so remember to check back in this week if you're interested in any of these!

I know Dnd 5.5e is not popular with a lot of folks, just wondering why. Also curious what systems are your favorites and why? I'm in my first year of ttrpg-ing and don't feel I can take on learning a new system yet but I'm just wondering in this group what factors influence your likes and dislikes about various systems. I have played some independent systems at conventions and enjoyed them, and I do like the combat mechanics of Pathfinder, but Dnd is really big where I live and I already have a lot of the physical materials so I'm pretty invested in it for awhile. Open to any thoughts though, thanks!

I would love to see examples of how you prepare notes to be useful for you while running the game. How can notes support proactive gameplay? As an example, here are notes I have thinking Twilight (a cleric) might go back to the clinic where she used to work, some reminders of goals, npcs, ...

The last two weeks, I’ve been trying out a new game called Public Access—it’s an ongoing game, but I expect it to only run 10–12 sessions. I tried it out after watching this truly excellent review from Quinn’s Quest (who, if you haven’t watched, makes what I think is pretty much the best reviews of TTRPGs on the internet) https://youtu.be/DI8fUgSdgZg?si=ieolVb190wGzz_ag The game is an absolute blast. "No on remembers this children's show you watched growing up, except all of you. Something was...not quite right with it...what happened to it?" The explicit goal of every character is to find out what happened to this unsettling children's program that no one seems to remember called TV Odyssey. It’s inspired by analog horror and creepypastas, using the Brindlewood Bay system to facilitate a very cool storytelling system (rather than a puzzle heavy system like some mystery games). Brindlewood Bay and its offspring have a clue system where there’s no set answer to a mystery—instead, players collect clues, then make a role to create their own answer to the question with as many clues as possible. If their roll is a success, their answer is right. This concept bothered me a lot at first, but when it works, it works GREAT. It’s really nice for a game like this where the story, tone, atmosphere, and characters is the focus, and not actually the main mystery like in a Sherlock Holmes game or something like that. The mysteries build tension but never slow down the game from theorizing, which is nice. Other interesting mechanics include Keys, these boxes you can check to improve a roll. They effectively make characters unkillable, which is important for encouraging them to split up and get into danger. They're also all connected to either narrating a flashback to childhood, or mechanically entwining yourself deeper with the forces of horror, which is cool. All of this to set up the games I’ve run! We’ve had two virtual sessions, and I’m running with three players (friends from high school!). In the first session, we spent about an hour making characters, and two hours on our first mystery, the House on Escondido Street. The campaign has a cool narrative structure I won't spoil in case someone plays it, but it comes with a bunch of premade mysteries that are really well laid out. The group spent the day digging around the house, butting heads with the HOA, and otherwise engaging in investigative antics. They spent the night (which is its own phase where all rolls are more dangerous) watching a tape of the mysterious kids show that they found. Very good time.

Since I started running proactive games, and especially with some collaborative worldbuilding, my games tend to be very fast paced. There’s always something going on, and my players are always sprinting forward as fast as they can. I’ve had a few groups say they want to turn down the speed a bit and have some lower stakes sessions, which they always call beach episodes lol, some time to just chill, talk to people, shop, engage in some tomfoolery, downtime, etc. I highly recommend incorporating that, especially if your players mention it. At first, it really went against my instincts—as a GM, I tend to prep by adding as much tension, raised stakes, and drama as I can cram in my notes, and I prep by specific encounter using a PC v NPC goal structure. So the more free form, laidback stuff made me nervous that it would be boring for my players—I felt like I had so little prepared! But it’s always resulted in a great time. My players will have the opportunity to do stuff they never would otherwise, and the Freeform format makes it so they really steer the story themselves. I’ll do very little and relax, and they’ll talk amongst themselves, form more goals, make allies and enemies, etc. anyone else had some good seasons this way? How did you prep for it?