This actually is a valuable lesson for GMs.

Playing RPGs is not about having the players act out the adventure you want them to have. It's all about the players creating the adventure they want to have.

The nastiest thing about lack of oxygen is that the first effect is losing your ability to tell that anything is wrong with you. The perfect killer.

Scheduling

"It is an older meme, Sir, but it checks out."

He has lightsabers, he knows how to use them. And it being post-80s Star Wars, I guess they had to needlessly overexplain everything.

That's max-max

I actually want an undead dungeon filled with toxic fumes now.

No player creativity in my game, you snowflake!

No! You're contaminating all the drink!

I had to look if this was posted in Science Memes or RPG Memes.

That's as mean as it is true.

Maybe go really oldschool again and use drow.

Then the unhelpful gatekeeper on Mastodon was not only extremely rude, but also talking complete nonsense.

Thanks.

And here a presentation of why the above is wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuIIjLr6vUA

It's covered in the first 9 minutes of the video, followed by other fun math stuff related to it.

"Huhuhuhur!"

The main thing I am working on is still my Sword & Sorcery Dinosaurland setting Kaendor. Which is the current incarnation of a concept and set of ideas I started tinkering with 12 years or so ago. A young civilization of humans slowly spreading out into the vast wilderness that used to be the territories of a series of sorcerous inhuman empires that kept destroying each other and left behind numerous ruins from different eras that still hold old magic and treasures. Currently for Dragonbane, which I feel is exactly the kind of game system I've been looking for to really fit this setting for the last 10 years.

I also have a Space Opera setting in the drawer called Iridium Moons, which was inspired by Dune, Cyberpunk 2077, and Prey. A galaxy with an aetshetic similar to classic Star Wars and Dune where the entire exploration and colonization of new star system is being driven by the mining industry. Starships, space travel, and combat are based on early 20th century war ships and ocean liners, and the people in power are like old railroad magnates and oil tycoons who control their own planets like personal fiefdoms beyond the reach of state governments and run their colonies like company towns. But that's even more in the concept phase and doesn't have real content to run a campaign in yet.

But how many of the Rollmaster spells are actually useful?

While I like ranger type characters, the ranger class is the one that could never justify its own existence or explain it's niche. It's always been done better by a multiclass fighter/rogue.

One of the many things I like about Star Wars is how much of the background stuff is still inspiring.

I think one of Star Wars RPG books in the early 2000s ran an ad campaign with shots of crowds in Star Wars scenes, with an arrow "What's this guy's story?"

Now that's stupidly easy.

Explains why there are no guides for it to be found anywhere. :D

I think the best thing to do is to keep it simple and basic.

Nothing too elaborate with many moving parts. No big twists. The goal is to introduce players to the basic principles of playing RPGs, and to let them get familiar with the most basic of the rules of the game system.

Since it's a one-shot, you can start with pre-made characters the players can pick from. If you have 4 players, make it 6 or 8 PCs to choose from. When running D&D 5th edition, make it simple characters like human fighters, halflings rogues, or elven wizards. Dragonborn paladins and tiefling sorcerers can wait until later when the players have had some time to learn what those things even mean. Don't have them choose feats when they don't know the game yet. Either by picking them yourself for pregen characters, or not using them at all. Similarly, if the players do make their own characters, let them assign attribute scores from a fixed list instead of distributing single points between them. Picking which attributes to make highest and lowest will be challenging enough at first. Having to set the specific values makes things more complex than it really needs to be at that point.

Same approach goes for the adventure itself. Keep things simple. Getting a hang of the dice and the turn sequence will be plenty enough workload for new players to start with. Tell them right from the starts where they are supposed to go and what they should do there. But I would send them to do something like "go to that ruin and search for that treasure", since that is a goal that tells them what they are meant to accomplish, but leaves it completely open how they will do that. And then let them get away with most things they want to try. If something sounds like it could work, let it work, even if it's not what you planned to be the solution. We want the players to get in the habit of trying out things for themselves, not make them think that there's always one correct solution they will have to guess. Make them roll when a skill check would be appropriate, but keep the difficulty low so that they will succeed a lot and only fail rarely.

Make an adventure that practices the procedures for using the rules of the game and keep things straightforward to minimize confusion about what's currently going on. Once the players know how the game works, then it's time to introduce them to hard choices, difficult challenges, and unexpected surprises.