I’ve been playing Cyberpunk RED for around a year. Backstory is a huge part of the character creation process and GMs are encouraged to use backstory as hooks whenever possible.

I don’t really like it.

Some players like playing along with the backstory. Other players disengage fairly quickly.

It’s just another source for hooks and set pieces. If players like it, I roll with it, if they don’t, I let those plot lines dribble out. But it doesn’t really change the GMing or creative process.

Commoner here: this is accurate.

I feel like there’s some sort of corollary to Murphy’s Law, where players will think of the one thing I didn’t include in my session prep.

Gotta break into the cult compound? “Let’s use the hot air balloon we saw six sessions ago”

I love it when players do stuff like that, but it’s a pain in the butt. It taught me to prepare less.

Isn’t that where Amazon makes 1/3 of their money?

Agreed, I like the mechanic tho.

what if my fireball wants to cast fireball?

Relationship goals: unmet.

I find that my players take a lot of cues from the scenario. If there’s an obvious way for them to get involved, and a clear benefit to the character, they jump in. If not, they treat it as part of the world and continue about their business. But they are relatively passive, story-wise and expect a bit of railroading to tell them where to go.

I did this for my Waterdeep: Dragonheist campaign. The paper was yellow journalism through and through: they misspelled PC names, misattributed actions, and obviously supported one of the factions. It was a lot of fun. I fully recommend it.

I have to roll in the open, otherwise I’m tempted to lie about the rolls to benefit the players. I don’t want to, it just happens.

You can never have enough doves

A musk concentrator as some call it

I’ve only played rogue once, but they seem to have a niche as being sneakier than the rest of the party. They pile levels into detecting traps, sneaking, and getting those sweet backstabs (or whatever the class feature is called).

You’re right that adventurers often steal liberate, but rogues in D&D have a bit more than that going on.

These are fantastic. The hat+mannequin seems like it would have a lot of RP potential. Ditto for the midlife crisis.

TTRPGs mostly take place in the players’ imagination. They work well online (for me) because I’m a little less self conscious when I’m not physically with people.

Edit: to answer your question, all of them. Recently, I’ve played Cyberpunk RED and D&D 5e online. They absolutely worked.

Anime was a breath of fresh air in the 80s and 90s. The mechs were amazing. The aesthetic was different from what we’d grown up with. The shows were more adult than kids/teens got to see at the time.

I can totally understand why Maximum Mike would have done that.

I ask my players to provide names for NPCs. My Night City is filled with Steves and Daves.

Not just humans, grimdark humans.

My group does weekly 2 hour sessions, so 5e combat can last weeks. By the third session of combat the players are starting to forget the stakes of the fight.

I’ve had similar experiences with 2 hour sessions in both D&D and Cyberpunk RED. I’ve started aiming to have fights done in one session, usually with the opponents having some win/lose condition that will end the fight logically.

For my next campaign, I think I’ll give Blades in the Dark a shot. I also want to try Ten Candles, but I hear that can be tough.

The trick is to say “this is just a practice roll” where the die can hear you, but wink at the GM so they know it’s the real roll. That way, the die will be a spiteful little punk and throw out the nat20 for the “practice”.

But don’t do that too often, or the die will figure out the trick.