Hi all. Was wondering if there are any creators out there that would be at all interested in helping to contribute to/participate in/or be a guest on (particularly if you have. project coming out etc) a podcast project I (and several others) have been working on over the past year. We interview guests and generally just talk about TTRPG related content in a silly and open ended way though not without getting into the proverbial weeds as it were. Anywho, anyone who might have a project coming up or has any interested said me DM or reply here.

The whole thing about factions had eluded me for a long time. But after reading both Proactive and Collaborative books it really made it simple and explained how everything revolves around factions! So I decided to make a tool for myself that helped me track factions and their relationships with other factions (threads). This turned into a “conspiracy board” type visualisation… thus Conspirita was born! It now does a lot more! Secrets was a big deal for me. I’ve added ability to track secrets, who knows them, and if they’ve been revealed; NPCs, locations, PCs, maps and more. It’s been so helpful! You can share a view of it with players too - just a brief outline of a few things. It can even integrate with things like Claude via its own MCP Server! I'm trying out building session plans with Claude since I like to ideate on a bunch of random stuff and then draw some structure from it all. So now Claude and I just chat about what's happened in the last session, I share what I’m thinking for next session, and Claude asks me clarifying questions. Now, rather than Claude trying to constantly remember all about the factions, npcs, locations and stuff from it's own memory (and regularly getting confused about things), it just references my Conspirita board and we're both clear on what's what and who's who. I'd love for anyone who's curious to check it out and let me know what you think! If you want to check it out, you can find it at https://conspirita.com. Once you're signed in to Conspirita, add this URL to your Claude instance: https://conspirita.com/api/mcp If you have any feedback I’d love to hear it! I keep tweaking things when I find myself wanting something more.

Hello all, since I've been in the process of moving and starting a new job, I haven't had as much time as I'd like to run our weekly game here. For the time being, I'd still like to do some community events, so I'm going to start holding an evening Happy Hour (much like Jonah's Coffee Hour) at 7:00 PM ET on Wednesdays! Even though I don't have a weekly game to prep right now, I have some GenCon prep to do, some freelance work for a few systems, and some personal projects for future campaigns that I'd love to work on and talk shop with folks about. I also have an endless pile of grey shame in unpainted minis that I want to get to. Come grab a beverage of choice and talk about planned and ongoing games! Excited to see you there.

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!

Hello Game Master's Laboratory! My name is Michael (like many of us) and I've been playing RPGs beginning with but not limited to D&D (like many of us) for many years. Although I played in the "good old days" I'm only somewhat nostalgic for them. I like almost everything that has evolved in roleplaying games. I joined Skool to build my own community around teaching the art of being a "Dungeon Master" and I was delighted to find this group because I'm already a fan of proactive roleplaying. It actually comes pretty close to my own philosophies in a lot of ways, and in the past I have had similar thoughts to putting that in a system. "Player-centric" was one term I've played with before. But you guys have done a lot better with proactive, because I realized along the way that we need to involve the players in the creative process, but there is more to game than just satisfying the player's needs. What I think about, these days is in terms of the whole table is working together to serve the needs of the world, itself: a world in which nothing is real (or canonical) until it happens at the table. The GM may have ideas about the lore and background of the setting, they may know about plots and agendas going on behind the scenes, but the output of playing, the living world, is the result of those ideas coming together with the actions of the players, one scene or encounter or adventure at a time. Well, there's my grand philosophical statement. That was the assignment, right? "introduce yourself with a grand philosophical statement on the deep structure of Tabletop Roleplaying Games?" Or did I make that up?