Ah. Are you aware of Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening? Both World of Darkness books; mechanically crunchy with a strong focus on magic as a solution to all situations. Looking at established systems that have already done something similar can help with ideas.

For a slightly different spin, I just picked up the Black Sword Hack yesterday. In terms of combat items, there are actual listed combat items but it’s all fluff really; every weapon is d6 damage. Maybe that would be another thing that interests you: weapons are abstracted to the point of players being able to buy/find “a weapon” which gives you a basic action.

I tend to focus on products which go against certain “maxims” of play; having alternatives to some of the more strict rules inherited from Gygax offers insight into the philosophy behind certain rules and whether such rules are actually fun at the table.

The Black Hack is my go-to book for this purpose: distances are relative, consumables are abstracted to the usage die, experience is based on stories told and not treasure dragged back to town, and all of the dice rolling can be made by players if the GM so chooses. Such a free system allows for easier hacking; You don’t need to compare relative power of classes when determining how much XP your homebrew needs in order to level up.

For supplements and splatbooks, I particularly like Wonder & Wickedness and Marvels & Malisons as magic supplements. It’s easy as hell to slap together a sorcerer class from these two books and staple it onto the Black Hack. My favourite setting books are Ultraviolet Grasslands and Hot Springs Island; both offer perfect sandbox adventures for the Black Hack. Both offer some manner of departure from the traditional tropes of TSR adventures. I have had to modify some aspects of the latter, such as the

There are a stupid number of blogs and zines that I could namedrop, but the one I find myself agreeing with the most is The Alexandrian.

Some of my favourite systems are light on combat rules or feature combat as some kind of fail state. If you’re leveling a shotgun at an ancient void-dweller that may or may not be immune to conventional weaponry, you’ve messed up somewhere. Maybe the better plan is to douse the floorboards in lamp oil, smash a lit lantern, and run.

Would I play a game with no combat items? Absolutely. I’d love a game that invests as much pagespace into intrigue or stealth systems as some D&D-like systems invest into combat.

I just go for completed series nowadays. It’s just not worth the time ranting and actively waiting for the completion of certain series. I’ve made a conscious decision not to start on Rothfuss’s trilogy until he finishes the final book.

I also find that recently I go for books with more mature themes; not gore- and sex-fests where everyone is morally grey for the sake of it, but stuff like Robin Hobb’s books which explore feminism through a fantasy lens, or stories with characters who confront their flaws rather than being some ideal version of a character archetype.

The same for me. One of my favourite settings.

I’m looking for community engagement without the homogenised superculture. I’d like to be able to discuss books on a small book community without someone jumping in with “I also choose this guy’s dead wife” or “not my proudest fap” because it’s a low effort way of garnering meta-points. I also like the lack of an account-based point system.

So far Lemmy is delivering and so I’m engaging here a lot more actively than I ever did on Reddit.

At the university I run Halloween sessions for new players, and by far the best scenario I’ve run is the first one: House of the Midnight Violet. It’s a 3 hour scenario for a party of 4th level. I’ve run it twice for a party of 3rd level with no adjustments. It’s plays very well as is, though I’d personally suggest running the groups of dolls and cats as swarm creatures rather than individual creatures, for the sake of your own sanity.

I’m running an in-person Quest for the Frozen Flame campaign with Foundry for maps/bestiary. They’re about to come to Rimecrag Pass tomorrow. I did have an oracle ready for Strength of Thousands but that fell through in the planning stage.

People have already mentioned my two suggestions: 4E DMG2 and The Lazy Dungeon Master.

This isn’t a specific book recommendation, but I would recommend reading a diverse range of RPG books, across a breadth of topics which interest you. In particular, reading the storytelling sections and how those guidelines interact with the delivery mechanics of the specific game can offer a new perspective on how to run your games.

For example, I enjoy horror roleplaying in particular, so books I may read are Call of Cthulhu for Cosmic Horror or the World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness books for Personal Horror. While I run Call of Cthulhu a lot more than World of Darkness, the tips on storytelling personal conflict from WoD offer some interesting insight into running sanity conflicts in CoC.