Call of Cthulhu vibes here. Some rolls you want to fail, because you're better off not knowing.

Word. I'm trying to follow CR, watch through Drakkenheim, and start Oxventure. But my Drakkenheim watching has been on pause for two months and I only manage to keep up with the one odd OX games like BitD and Deadlands.

Yeah, I think if I do end up playing it'll be the newest version. I have the patience for crunchy systems but most of the people I play with don't. And the thought of playing anything more complex than 5e with some of them terrifies me.

Star wars FFG and Deadlands. I love the flavor of both. I doubt I'll ever play star wars, but some of my current groups will probably give deadlands a try.

I felt the same. Nothing in the system made me want to give up the 3rd party supplement I use for property now.

It reminds me of the ship rules from GoS. Technically functional, but boring. It's another C-grade-equivalent ruleset.

If I've got intelligent enemies with ranged attacks they're absolutely going for that thing once it makes its utility known. Though it's not like they generally do much with their reactions anyway.

Toss them a minor magic item. Prep while they squabble over who should take it for 30-60 minutes.

In 3 months, you'll forget they have it and they'll use it to completely bypass a 4 hour combat you planned, leaving you in the exact fake boat you are now but even worse.

But that's a problem for future you.

Thanks! I'm going to check this out this evening, but I think it'll be a great add to an upcoming adventure I have planned.

I've got 4 groups.

Groups 1 and 2 are small groups made of friends and we handle everything over text. We do tend to have a lot of "hey, are we playing today?" texts on the day of.

Group 3 started as a work game and has a larger group with less consistency of who shows up week to week. We use discord. Creating events, hosting lore, and places to stash special/homebrew rules is nice.

Group 4 is a west marches-ish game with about 10 players. Discord for that also, though once a group is set for a couple sessions we switch from the discord channel to a group message for communication.

I've used Teams in the past as well but I find discord to be better for managing the various things I need to organize a game.

It's not malicious. I just can't resist the trope of having that epic spider v. praying mantis battle that's comparably totally inconsequential at standard scale. Makes me giggle.

I mean, if the first clip didn't sell me on it, this one did

"The devil is beating his wife" is my favorite colloquialism for this phenomenon.

Kobolds play minion based puzzle games, where individual units are super expendable. Pikmin, Lemmings, Overlord, etc.

Gnomes have incredibly realistic flight simulators and spreadsheet management sims life Football Manager and Eve

Dragonborn lack a well defined cultural niche so they get nothing.

So it's not exactly that, but if you want a rhythm game with some more nuance, Before the Echo is awesome.

You've got 3 different screens (mana gathering, spell casting, and enemy attacks) and you need to balance which you're prioritizing at any time. Mana is needed to cast spells, spells are needed to defeat the enemy, but you need to block their attacks to not lose all your HP. Each one goes different parts of he music, and as a bonus all the music is from Ronald Jenkees.

It's old, and while funny is also sometimes very cringey, but still a terrific bit of fun.

• Contested succession or political election situation. Give the candidates qualities that appeal to and are disliked by different party members. Expect them to put themselves forward as 3rd party candidates so have a plan for that.

• Hostage situation

• Curse then with something that needs wish to solve. I'm running The Scriveners Tale from Candlekeep Mysteries right now and it's the most heartburn my level 14 party has had in a long time.

• World ending shit where they can't (or probably can't) stop everything bad from happening. Make them choose to save the city or their favored NPC.

They've basically turned into superman by the time they're 3rd or 4th tier so hit them with the line of stuff that makes for interesting superman stories.

It's my go to system for a quick one shot to introduce people to ttrpgs. Always fun, crazy, and simple to learn. And minimal work for the DM so long as you're willing to bounce off whatever your players come up with.

I've run some one shots for more experienced players that have been really memorable and full of creative play, too. The simple mechanics don't hold it back. It excels when you're willing to "yes, and" pretty much everything.

http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/

Also had about a billion hacks https://writingalchemy.net/resources/lasers-and-feelings-hacks/

Cars and Family provided one of my favorite games I've ever run

I've been meaning to make a statement block and encounter for this forever. I should really get around to it.

Excellent points! I suspect OP wants to have the whole caravan in order to not make this a survival/resource management focused campaign so I'll offer a way to do so that would make sense since, as you describe, they shouldn't be bringing a huge trade caravan into the unknown: big old disaster. Some terrible, world changing thing happens and the only way to go is forward, into the now unknown region.

I think letting them be a shot force works just fine but if OP has some crafting or job based thing baked in an act of God could let them keep that and verisimilitude.