The Deriny cycle by Kurtz is actually pretty great. You have some super human having access to some magic. And throagh the books they go for m super elite to persecuted minority before being accepted again.

Magic being either genetic on ea random birth gift would indeed have a major sociological impact. But in a setting where we have high magic, elves and dragon the whole sociology is anyway impacted

The Irony, is that while at least in my local community, the young generation includes a lot of openly neurodivergent gay/enbi players, I feel like that the reason why the theme is so sensitive for older player is that many of the older player never thought the time to question about-it, you know, the 50 year old “straight” conventionally attractive long term single who always play the other gender, may not just be too busy to date

Actually it’s hard to keep politic out of RPG.

In game, politic is what makes the game more than just killing random person you know the Princess who want to escape a political marriage, the advisor looking to become the lord, the church and and the merchant guild trying to gain influence ? All of that is politics. and all of that is what makes your campaign fun.

In real-life, like any other social activity especially if you get wider than a closed circle, politics get involved, your club need to talk with the mayor to get a slot in the municipal culture centre or rent a room in a school. Moreover, RPG tend to have a bad reputation and be not correct according to conservative which make it even more political than tons of other RPG, if you let church and right-winger tell you which hobby are acceptable you won’t be able to play RPG

And we’ll also have a lovely game of chicken as players try to gauge whether they need to move on or face being caught in the inferno.

This is actually the part I was looking for, why do you want complex mechanics to deal with something which is part of the storyteller job ? and indeed, it can bring some games

In my upcoming megadungeon Inkvein, each of the 4 factions has a 10-step event track. Which faction advances and at what time is randomised via dice rolls. This creates an unpredictable and evolving situation that even the GM gets to discover as it unfolds.

One more example why I feel like OSR gamers and narravtive gamers are closer than what they claim, because it sounds like a narrative clock (Which actually is way older than the narrative trend, I’ve been using them as homebrew variant of long term actions for decades)

May be not the answer your looking for, but the universal answer to the looking for idea question

Ask your players, if you take the habit to ask your player what are your plans for next time ? They’ll do most of the game prep for you. In your case you can straight up ask we’re reaching a point where the story can go in multiple direction, can you tell me the one you choose so I can plan appropriately can help you a lot

Honestly nowadays, even with fancy pdf, my 200€ Xiami does it. It’not 2015, even simple tabs have a lot of ram

French rpg bloodlust is famous for God Weapon having their own urges but not being able to indulge them without a human bearing the weapon.

Leading to the poor human getting some power based on what the weaponk let them do, while having a weapon begging them to indulge in violence, lust or any other awful sin.

Having a player having the weapon and another one the bearer open the road to pretty interesting roleplay

I once had a GM whose house rules included every battle receiving enemy reinforcements each d4 rounds.

he end there were four factions in the ruckus and it was taking about 60 minutes per round for him to run it.

Actually if combat are long enough that re-inforcement have the time to come you’re doing something wrong. NPC aren’t stormtroopers who always miss, and PC aren’t doing practice shooting. A combat shall be quick and deadly, if you’re lucky one hit shall cause an injury, but usually an opponent doing a successful attack roll will at least incapacitate a PC.

PCs that hit 0 HP aren’t dead, they’re just helpless (disarmed, KOed, socially cowed, etc.) Make it clear that nonlethal options are always on the table. [Spiceomancy]

In the same category, once a character lost enought HP to get maluses, I ask them to roll endurance (whatever how it’s called in your game) to simply stay conscious, not only it helps preventing stupid death, but make combat faster. I believe some OSR games have a morale roll acting a bit similar

Main issue is the extra GM workload, which is why I like the GM never roll trend, one less stuff to do means more time to focus on GMing

with randos off Discord or Roll20 and not actually in person with people they know.

I know online rpg changed a lot in 20 years, but when I was playing online around 2010, playing on teamspeak, also meant be part of community, and ask others GM about new players before having them joining your table (No show, cheating and other bad behaviour would quickly be known by everyone) . Moreover, because you don’t know them, it’s easy to kick them out.

Remind me that larp when my character ended-up being an Eunuch. Use it as a resistance against a mass orgasm spel, that was a hilarious moment, and didn’t changed much the outcome

While I never GMed Blades in the dark I have some forged in the dark XP and GM an old game about thieves a while ago, so I may have some pointer

Mechanics

forged in the dark is IMO at the sweet spot between rule light and rule heavy, while the core rule are simple, the stress mechanic, the position/effect, and the special playbook action adds a certain layer of complexity, do not advertised it as a rule light game it’s not.

Another important thing, ask the player to roll the f… dices. As a GM, I tend to skip roll for “common action” that the player would be able to do no matter what. In Forged in the dark, “everyting is a clock” that you fill with failure/success. So rolling the dice is what make the games move forward (and the whole partial failure means that the dice result matters). In general I keep a large macro clock the plot thicken/alarm level when I’m getting rid of short term idea to materialise time lost letting NPC move in the background

While I am less happy with the downtime phase, it’s a key part of the game, depending on your game style it may evolve to the main game, but I use it as a fancy purchase/XP/Heal phase

Urban Thieve campaign

Remember, as the player are stuck in the city, their action matter, treat it like a political game, they’ll quickly need to find allies

Actually, it sounds like a great design choice, D&D has been way more focused on combat than regular rpg, and has never been the proper choice for roleplay, politics, horror, investigation story.

It seems that at least 4th edition was doing combat right

Gender-swapping has been a common theme in fictions/legend for as long as we had these. And my hot-take is that RPG didn’t started to attract LGBT player in the last decade, but society didn’t let these player be open with themselves before the last decade, and that some of these players who in the 80’s/90’s/00’s used gender swapping as a theme in their stories would actually come-out/transition if they were 20-30-40 years longer.

The whole game dynamic is incredible, and the secret roles being different from the main roles gives some replay potential at least on GM side.

As usual, make sure players know what they signed for, if they’re into miniature combat it’s not the game for them. If they look for a emotional role play heavy game about a family dynamic that’s a must play.

Note that the first act feels a bit slow, but it really helps building the dynamic to have a strong game during second act and tears during final scene

The space between us, https://wiborawildfeuer.itch.io/the-space-between-us

A video conference nordic larp play it, you’ll thx me latter

Not that much special tools. I try to keep my game prep short, at a point I found out there is no need to write long text when I am the only one reading them, so I keep some bullet lists

I recently switched to a *cloud note taking app (anytype) as it syncs well between PC and tablet, rather than good old Libre office.

Stable diffusion when needing illustration and in the mood to play with image generators.

Illwinter map making app, that I got at some steam sales, when I want to do a map. So maybe 10% of the case

For pregen characterà my goto is now Libre office impress to fill a character sheet + backstory + goals, this assume that I don’t find a sheet at another format

A small paper notebook, for my ongoing notes, and usually I ask the PC to do the session recap while writing down the stuff they want to develop and finishing the game prep at this moment

Having the traitor in the party, has a binary result, it’es either one of the best campaign you’ll play, or a horror story, no middle ground

Is there any rpg where you need to do so? May be Fatal?

Math? I don’t think that rpg talks about computing an integral or spending 2h arguing on whether we’re on a Hilbert space and can compute a scalar product.