I'm just putting the finishing touches on the 9th iteration of my self-designed RPG system (with its own setting), and though it was woefully rocky in its early days I think that it's really coming together well. I'm running a handful of pbp games in v8.3, and have collected some encouraging data, and v9.0 is really feeling close to my initial vision.  Now, however, I'd like to see the game tested from a GM's point of view. When 9.0 is fully written up I'd like to find a group to pick up and use the materials with my input being limited to observation, and question fielding.  Do groups exist who like to playtest different systems? I can't imagine it's the world's most attractive pitch to try someone's homebrew pet project, but I also think this one stands up. If so, how or where do I find them?  Again, I'm keen to hand off the entire system to another GM with his/her own players, observe, and be available in whatever capacity becomes necessary. I'd consider this the next step after GMing playtests myself. And I'd be looking specifically for an online venue, as being based in New Zealand doesn't lend itself to large-scale conventions or the like.
122812
Obviously the first tester group would be your own group. But beyond that? It would seem to make sense to have at least more than one group test out your game, as different groups want different things and play differently. Fresh eyes find different bugs, etc. etc.  Are there resources out there to help aspiring game designers without a lot of contacts find people willing and eager to test out their game?  Or is this in essence a "" issue?  To clarify my own situation:  I have the mechanics finished. The setting is still under development, but in accordance with the motto "fail faster" I want to go ahead and test the mechanics (in a different setting for now) to see if they work and are fun or if I need to go back to the drawing board. I have a sort-of group, but I don't know them very well and they don't meet often, and so I'm not excited about the prospect of presenting the mechanics to them right now (as I'm sure there are a dozen issues I've overlooked). Also, I'd like to test the game (including the setting, later) on more than one group, as mentioned above. I've put out some feelers among my current friends and acquaintances, but nobody's really been excited about playtesting or even really giving in-depth feedback, and I don't want to be that person who's always shoving their project in your face. I'm willing to run something online as well. I'm also interested in having others run a game without me present, and giving me their feedback.  Also, I'm looking for something of a guide-type answer that might help someone besides just me.
96989
As a trivial random encounter is winding down, a player thinks "That was too easy... The GM wouldn't give us an encounter that doesn't give XP," and starts searching for hidden bad guys or other clues. There are four statues in a room, and you use miniatures to represent them. The players think to themselves "Well if the GM used miniatures, these things are definitely coming to life," and get ready to fight. When you lay down a map of a seemingly random part of the forest trail, the players think "This must be important, let's search around / prepare for battle." You roll a 1 for a player's knowledge check and feed them inaccurate information. They saw the roll and know you're full of it.   Even the most disciplined players sometimes will take advantage of "Player Knowledge" over "Character knowledge." Sometimes it's hard to even tell the difference. You know that you should switch to your frost battleaxe against that Fire Demon, but does your city-raised fighter with the intelligence of an old boot know?  What strategies are there to discourage the use of player knowledge, and how can you cut back on perceptions that players have of the genre itself?
90627
Forgive me for not being good at game terminology, but there is one concept that I simply have been unable to fully grasp after reading the core rulebook.  In the book, there are mentions of Character Level, Class Level and Level (just being mentioned as level or "your" level).  Are we talking character level or class level when I'm asked "What's your level?"  Could anyone make a solid explanation that I can remember? The rest of my party are rules- and character-building nuts, and they often get sidetracked with potential combinations when trying to explain even simple things.
59241
There are many go servers but all of them seem to be for player-player games. I want to play online against a computer. I found some but it is not an actual go. I was not able to find a real go brain online. Are there any at all?   PS: In the end, I registered to KGS and later at WBaduk (but liked KGS much more) and I ended up playing against human players only. I found it much more fun than playing against a computer and since I tried it for the first time (online) I never went back to playing against the computer.
5988
Both  and chess.com have the feature to play the variant  live. However, only lichess has a graph showing how your live chess960 rating has changed over time. Lichess also shows other statistics like highest, lowest, best wins, worst losses, average opponent rating, etc. (chess.com does have this for correspondence chess960 though.) I could create my own graph and statistics in Excel/Google Sheets by manually recording each game's date and my rating afterwards indicated beside my username, but... Question: Is there a way to obtain, or what in general is the way to go about obtaining, ratings after each chess960 game using some kind of script that sees a player's public profile and then extracts the data? I have a feeling this kind of script has been done before even if this was not specifically done for chess.com's live chess960. The script doesn't have to graph (pretty easy to do once you have to the data: just use excel/google sheets). I just need the script to collect all the dates and rating numbers for each line of the user's games.  Update 2: Fixed now. see the 'json' vs the 'preformed'. WOW. Update 1: It appears Mike Steelson has an answer , where the code is given as =arrayformula( regexextract(split( substitute(substitute(substitute(getDataJSON(A1;&quot;/games&quot;;&quot;/pgn&quot;);&quot;[&quot;;&quot;&quot;);&quot;]&quot;;&quot;&quot;);&quot;&quot;&quot;&quot;;&quot;&quot;) ;char(10));&quot;\s.*&quot;) )  with an example given here  It appears there's a problem when it gets to the case of chess960 only. Consider for example : Replacing 'gmwso' with the player's username will yield a weird output. i imagine the output will be messier for mixed chess960 and chess.
69668
Some friends and I want to start playing D&amp;D (5e), but none of us, DM included (not me) have played before to any great extent. The DM and I have some cursory experience with 4e, but have never been able to play to any great extent. Is this advisable, or should we play with existing groups first? We live in a relatively remote area, making it hard to find experienced players.
23829
I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice or anything on a GM situation.   My current GM is running a campaign and it is very video game/anime like. It started out super fun and the deeper we get the less fun I have. The reason is, it feels like GM is telling us a story but we cannot interact or change anything during his, "cut scenes". No matter what any player does he just says, "No it didn't work," or, "Yeah you do that. See if you roll a 20." We also can't damage any boss he has until we reach the point in the story that he has planned, so our interactions we have with villains don't matter.  I feel like he is making us sit there and listen to an anime he has come up with in his head. Since the players can't change or react to the key situations. I find my self sitting there thinking, why would I react, it doesn't matter.  It's not just me either. Another player feels the same way. I am going to talk to my other fellow players soon about it and see how they feel.  Side note: the GM as a person is very defensive and I am afraid to confront him about it because I know he will throw a fit. We have also caught him straight lying about abilities and stats on his own PC in other campaigns, and he doesn't take to kindly when you call him out.  He is new to GMing. This is only the second game I have played with him as a GM. The first one had one session the he just never wrote more for.  Is there anything I can do to maybe get him to more lenient with his story? I really enjoy the story for the most part and if he would just let our characters do things and give us a chance at stopping his villians or letting us change the story based on our actions, everything would be cool.
101531
I am looking to find out if solo RPGs exist, and which you'd recommend.  I do not mean "one-on-one" 1 player + 1 GM games. I really mean "1 person."  Update: After receiving two (fine, up-voted) answers that indicate Choose Your Own Adventure solutions (which rocks with nostalgia), I should add that I'm not looking for simple linear decision tree gaming. A counterexample: I've got my own little creative-writing mini-game where I write out a story, but once every 5 sentences a series of dice-rolls forces my written sentence into something else, and I have to adapt as writer. Not really an RPG, but also non-linear.
107420
I have played and tried to GM games since I was in elementary school, beginning with games like Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and Champions. Recently, I've gotten dack into gaming with a variety of other games (newer Shadowrun and Earthdawn, plus TOON! and Outbreak:Undead).  I've found examples of actual play and advice on how to actually GM a game in games to be lacking. I can only help but feel I am not alone as someone who isn't already a LITERAL dungeon MASTER.  I fully realize that there are an unlimited number of GM styles, personalities, etc. I do not think I am a very good GM though. No one else wants to be the GM, and few care enough to learn the complex rules that I often have to assist with and explain AS WE PLAY. Being left with the responsibility is quite overwhelming unless I create dynamic encounters or make it all up on the spot. I'm often left having no idea what to do.  Examples of Why I Think I Need Help  This question isn't about these examples so please don't dig into them in the answers - they're here to explain the basic things that leave me feeling like I don't know how to proceed as a GM.  I've read preparation is important, but last time I tried to make a story, the players immediately killed the primary character (a friendly person.) within about 2 minutes of starting the game. While I realize now that I let the dice take control over the story, it was rather difficult to continue a story that relied on this friendly character, with the players making enemies with the character's faction. It is still discouraging when my only other attempt at a prepared story ended with the players wanting to go in a complete opposite direction of where I planned. Both times, the hours of work I put into it were completely wasted, leaving me as ignorant as I always was before.  My group often wants to play Shadowrun, Earthdawn, or L5R- but I feel as though I am a horrible GM. The last time we played Shadowrun, I was bored out of my mind as we rolled hundreds of dice to do an obvious straight-forward "kick down the door" mission.   If I make security as I believe it should or as the forum threads describe their security or a few example missions I can scrounge up (examples of stories, not actual gameplay), my players literally feel completely hopeless as to how to achieve their mission without total failure.   One time when I was a teenager, I had players blow up at me saying "We have no idea what would work. You're telling us that our character's experience or the ally operative says that would get us killed, but what else can we do?" Since there are no examples of what players can do - I am left with the same feeling as the players. As an adult, I've had a similar occurrence where a player said to me, "I don't know what to do. I don't think we can even begin this mission." I had to make something up and just go with it, creating an NPC group (that fit in with the story) that goes in before the players to do something stupid so they don't have to. Mainly because I ALSO didn't know how to accomplish the mission, so I acted as the players would using my NPC group. Extremely boring and IMO a failed dungeon run.  I've had successful stories, but I've had more boring encounters than successful ones. Seeing as how roleplaying takes endless hours to complete a story, I do not see benefit in an activity that wastes more time than is enjoyable.  How Do You Learn To GM?  Where are the resources? Books, blogs, gameplay examples? Am I missing them? How did YOU learn to be a good GM? Or do you feel as bad at this as I do, even when it's a successful, fun encounter?
80221
I am trying to testfor a player holding a diamond sword named Notch's Legendary Sword. How can I do that? Who ever gets the best answer will be able to get the first look at my NEW adventure map!
106686
I've GM'ed a few Pathfinder games, and while I really enjoy the setting, I just can't wrap my head around some of the crunchy mechanics. In particular, how do you (quickly) deal with effects like drain level in a pen and paper system - doesn't each player have to COMPLETELY recalculate their character sheet (feats, spells, skills, BAB) each frickin' time the mummy lord hits them? It seems like that would just grind the game to a smoking halt. How do other GM's handle this?
109232
As a GM, what kind of techniques could I use to help a player re-join the gaming session after their character dies? I want to avoid any major interruptions to the flow of the adventure. I would also like to avoid having to end the session immediately or making them sit on the side-lines for the rest of the session.
84127
I've heard from several places that the  is generally a bad place to find information about the rules of the game.  I don't really understand this distrust, since it's an official document from the company that makes the game.  Why is it that many people feel that the D&amp;D 3.5 FAQ is not a valid source for rules clarifications?  I'm not necessarily looking for a list of every single thing that's wrong with the FAQ; such a list could be prohibitively long for this format.  I'm mainly looking for an overview of the main perceived issues with the document.  If such a list exists elsewhere, I wouldn't mind a link to such a list, though.  I've spent a few minutes trying various google searches for this topic, and everything that I could find was either not applicable, clearly biased, or required reading dozens of forums in order to find anything useful.
77498
Recently some of my friends and I grew nostalgic about the original Diablo and realized we've never truly tried the multiplayer aspect of that game. So we set up a modern VPN LAN solution via tuungle (using the appropriate IPX Wrappers) but the problem is, while any of us can manage to create session in Diablo FULL, others cannot find a way to join my IPX/LAN game.  There are no "join" buttons in the game itself.  I've read somewhere that Spawn version is a trial version but can be used to join Multiplayer games. If they can, is it possible for them to play the entire game on LAN or is trial restricted from choosing some classes/accessing some areas?  Or are there some other ways to join?
44311
Is there an interactive web-based character sheet for Dungeons &amp; Dragons 4E like there is for  I'm not looking for a character builder.  Mod note: Several of these answers refer to services which no longer exist (or have moved), but as we  they will not be fixed and are kept up primarily for archival reasons.
34053
Rule Zero: All other rules can be changed by the GM.   I appreciate that there is a massive amount of work that goes into being a GM and the last thing that any GM wants or deserves is to have his players constantly questioning everything they do. However, a group I am currently playing with has been having a huge problem with a GM who has been using rule 0 to deny virtually every skill check and give all his custom enemies powers that have either no save or unbeatable DCs. Then, whenever he realizes he has made the fight unwinnable he brings in one of his level 60+ GMPCs to instantly win the fight, making us feel even more helpless.  We try to hold our tongues and not be the dreaded Rules Lawyer, but he keeps pulling out stuff so ridiculous that we have to question it… and every time we do we find that he is either misunderstanding or completely disregarding the rules. When this happens he always jumps immediately to rule 0. He probably cited rule 0 around 6 times in our last session (and we only had one combat encounter).
109179
I'd like to get a test cloud up and running in preparation for a possible deployment of 12.04. I messed with the UEC a bit, but have had a much harder time finding anything helpful as a primer for the new stack. There is generic documentation on Diablo, but there are likely to be a lot of pieces already handy in Ubuntu that a specific guide could save time with.  Also, as much as I would love to, my budget doesn't include the $4-6k to get a small cluster running with the Canonical support.