For the 'childhood inspirations' blogwagon that Havoc kicked off - I wrote mine last September - because I cheated by starting at 12 so my Appendix N conformed already.
More interestingly - I recently spent a weekend gaming with my original gaming group from back in the day and among the topics of conversation was that in that time and place it was possible to be a universal geek. So little content made it as far as us that you read or watched or went to see all of it. This ties to the open and closed systems thought that Grumpy Wizard laid out - by the time we all sat to a gaming table in the early 90s we had a pretty common open-system to bring to the closed system rules of AD&D or WHFRP.
Through grim curency exchange rates for the punt and shipping costs, things were expensive and often just not available - a seventh TV channel was a big deal as I recall. VHS players and the one video rental store in town meant we'd all seen the same stuff. Even though we had the luck to be reading in English so were not further bottle-necked by need for translation, books were slow to make it as far as us. For these and other reasons, there was not a huge amount of what we would now call 'content' sloshing around and thus there was a much greater overlap between what any two folk interested in the genres would have encountered.
By comparison, since then three great new 'pools' of stuff have opened up -
* Geographic
* Archive
* New creations
04 February 2026
Secret Information In Domain Games - Handle With Care
tl;dr: espionage and information warfare in domain games needs to be handled with care to avoid slowing the game and diminishing player agency.
A point raised in Infernal Pacts Cataphracts retrospective and I saw myself in Empyrean Dynasty - people getting inside other peoples information loops leaving a sour taste with players where they did not know those moves were possible.
Getting false information through from the GM feels bad because players did not know their information channel was lies - same problem with false hydras, red herrings, etc. - it requires very specifically invested players who love being paranoid about their information.
Typically players suspend disbelief to fully trust the imperfect channel that is DM comms and when that is revealed to be lies, then the reaction is "well what is the point?" It is often tricky enough to sweep together the clues and information about a setting to be able to make an in-world reasoned assessment of the situation that players are unenthusiastic to have to sift those clues and information for reliability from there.
Players have only so much attention in the first place for a game, if they did not sign up for an infowarfare or opsec-forward game, then that is just friction before they get to do what they want. I sign up for chess, I might be unhappy to be forced to play rounds of poker before every move. If the infowar game does not excite them, then you will never get to the strategy moves and the game is toast.
Twisted intel has its place, but it is a question to be carefully considered whether allowing one player to lean into that information-warfare layer in a domain game is clever play or will the other players (who are not aware this active information distortion may be happening) consider it changing the rules of the game without players assent.
The Empyrean Dynasty games were clear that information warfare was happening, which made it fine, though the cycles and subcycles of intercepts, precognitives, order revisions, further intercepts, etc. slowed later turns to a crawl - particularly where life happening further delayed the move-counter-moves - leading me to suggest again it is to be handled with care. Time-limits on orders can work.
I think it is essentially a question of PVP - some folk enjoy it, others do not, so being very clear on whether or not it is possible allows people to play with full agency and not end up feeling like near-NPCs in someone elses game.
If players only find out after that fact that there was a whole infowar pvp layer going on, they will feel stripped of their agency, low-level players in a high-level game, or that there is no point in acting because other players are inside their decision loop. Messing with player agency, is to be treated with extreme caution.
I am a big fan of 'the twist' over 'the red herring' - where a new piece of information puts existing information in new context - or a 'big reveal' which is high impact new information. For a masterfully done example, see "A campaign of baits and switches" from Zzarchov Kowolski. I find that you typically have un-equally distributed attention among players, through life intensity, committments, schedules, etc. some will have more capacity than others off the table and allowing those players to run rings around other players because they have time to do so is another thing to be treated with caution.
All told, I think secret information and the like is fine to have as long as it is a known quantity and either everyone is into that or there is some accomodation - players buddy up and one who can works up good information for both to act on - better than "too bad" for those without the inclination or wherewithal to play that layer of the game.
A point raised in Infernal Pacts Cataphracts retrospective and I saw myself in Empyrean Dynasty - people getting inside other peoples information loops leaving a sour taste with players where they did not know those moves were possible.
Getting false information through from the GM feels bad because players did not know their information channel was lies - same problem with false hydras, red herrings, etc. - it requires very specifically invested players who love being paranoid about their information.
Typically players suspend disbelief to fully trust the imperfect channel that is DM comms and when that is revealed to be lies, then the reaction is "well what is the point?" It is often tricky enough to sweep together the clues and information about a setting to be able to make an in-world reasoned assessment of the situation that players are unenthusiastic to have to sift those clues and information for reliability from there.
Players have only so much attention in the first place for a game, if they did not sign up for an infowarfare or opsec-forward game, then that is just friction before they get to do what they want. I sign up for chess, I might be unhappy to be forced to play rounds of poker before every move. If the infowar game does not excite them, then you will never get to the strategy moves and the game is toast.
Twisted intel has its place, but it is a question to be carefully considered whether allowing one player to lean into that information-warfare layer in a domain game is clever play or will the other players (who are not aware this active information distortion may be happening) consider it changing the rules of the game without players assent.
The Empyrean Dynasty games were clear that information warfare was happening, which made it fine, though the cycles and subcycles of intercepts, precognitives, order revisions, further intercepts, etc. slowed later turns to a crawl - particularly where life happening further delayed the move-counter-moves - leading me to suggest again it is to be handled with care. Time-limits on orders can work.
I think it is essentially a question of PVP - some folk enjoy it, others do not, so being very clear on whether or not it is possible allows people to play with full agency and not end up feeling like near-NPCs in someone elses game.
If players only find out after that fact that there was a whole infowar pvp layer going on, they will feel stripped of their agency, low-level players in a high-level game, or that there is no point in acting because other players are inside their decision loop. Messing with player agency, is to be treated with extreme caution.
I am a big fan of 'the twist' over 'the red herring' - where a new piece of information puts existing information in new context - or a 'big reveal' which is high impact new information. For a masterfully done example, see "A campaign of baits and switches" from Zzarchov Kowolski. I find that you typically have un-equally distributed attention among players, through life intensity, committments, schedules, etc. some will have more capacity than others off the table and allowing those players to run rings around other players because they have time to do so is another thing to be treated with caution.
All told, I think secret information and the like is fine to have as long as it is a known quantity and either everyone is into that or there is some accomodation - players buddy up and one who can works up good information for both to act on - better than "too bad" for those without the inclination or wherewithal to play that layer of the game.
02 February 2026
Shiny TTRPG links #262
Shiny links this week are wholly from a series of conversations on discord pulling up links from the past - see if you can guess the themes.
For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.
Zedeck Siew's gave us DECOLONISING D&D
Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse shared Counter-colonial Heistcrawl: previous high scores
A Most Majestic Fly Whisk wrote An Arrow for the General: Confronting D&D-as-Western in the Kalahari
Goobernuts' Blog gave us I’m Adding Colonizers To My Setting
Cyborgs and Sorcerers gave us A Simple Metric of Player Agency
Rise Up Comus shared Rolemaster-esque Critical Tables, or, "No more hit points"
Beneath Foreign Planets gave us Bodies Shall Be Broken: A Free-Form Wound and Dismemberment System for TTRPGs
Wayspell wrote How I got into D&D
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER shared Advantage and Impact
Save vs Total Party Kill gave us Silent Titans - Mystery
Goblin Punch wrote Just-In-Time Compilation
What Would Conan Do? gave us How to be an adventurer
Signs in the Wilderness shared Better living through alchemy
The Retired Adventurer gave us A Brief Note on Alignment
d4 Caltrops shared One Hundred Holy Taboos
Gorgon Bones wrote On Alignment
Dungeon of Signs gave us Gold for Experience in 5th Edition D&D
Jeffs Gameblog wrote eXPloration
Hill Cantons gave us Pendragon D&D: the Matrix Method
Adam Dray on Obsidian Portal shared City of Brass: A “West Marxist” campaign
Rocket-Propelled Game wrote Marx & Monsters: A Radical Leftist Fantasy Sandbox
Legacy of the Bieth gave us A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR
For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.
Zedeck Siew's gave us DECOLONISING D&D
Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse shared Counter-colonial Heistcrawl: previous high scores
A Most Majestic Fly Whisk wrote An Arrow for the General: Confronting D&D-as-Western in the Kalahari
Goobernuts' Blog gave us I’m Adding Colonizers To My Setting
Cyborgs and Sorcerers gave us A Simple Metric of Player Agency
Rise Up Comus shared Rolemaster-esque Critical Tables, or, "No more hit points"
Beneath Foreign Planets gave us Bodies Shall Be Broken: A Free-Form Wound and Dismemberment System for TTRPGs
Wayspell wrote How I got into D&D
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER shared Advantage and Impact
Save vs Total Party Kill gave us Silent Titans - Mystery
Goblin Punch wrote Just-In-Time Compilation
What Would Conan Do? gave us How to be an adventurer
Signs in the Wilderness shared Better living through alchemy
The Retired Adventurer gave us A Brief Note on Alignment
d4 Caltrops shared One Hundred Holy Taboos
Gorgon Bones wrote On Alignment
Dungeon of Signs gave us Gold for Experience in 5th Edition D&D
Jeffs Gameblog wrote eXPloration
Hill Cantons gave us Pendragon D&D: the Matrix Method
Adam Dray on Obsidian Portal shared City of Brass: A “West Marxist” campaign
Rocket-Propelled Game wrote Marx & Monsters: A Radical Leftist Fantasy Sandbox
Legacy of the Bieth gave us A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR
01 February 2026
Incentivising challenges with tactility (City26)
Like any 'creation project' the tactility of it is important for me; I find myself picking some slightly novel approach to note taking each time to keep things interesting and to make the projects distinct.
Previous examples:
* For the Spelljammer Academy run, it started as a print of the four official adventures held with treasury tags then various odds and ends of loose paper were added to the back, including some experiments with gate-fold-type planetary system overlays. It was messy but a characterful mess.
* My home campaign is a double stack - world notes plus session notes - all done on the backs of scrap paper and old bills.
* My Friday night hexcrawl campaign is a similar double stack plus a GM binder of plastic-pocket ready reference stuff for gaming-on-the-move; one-page monster manual, code of conduct, treasure tables, etc.
For this City26 campaign I actually got started while flying - so I had some boarding passes to hand and started with those. I have a big stack of old boarding passes that were kept with a half-notion of needing bookmarks, now they can finally be used and it makes this project feel distinct.
A personal quirk, working on the small surface of the back of a boarding pass makes the demand feel less onerous; even if the output demanded is broadly alike, I only have to fill a boarding pass so feels less. I also habitually like to write very small which helps.
This also makes the project feel nicely tactile; as observed by many others elsewhere, it can be easier to get stuff done working physically than typing it up.
After a few weeks of working on this I am broadly following a refinement of my NaNoWriMo process:
- following Fleming - set yourself up to start the next session hot by stopping halfway through a paragraph
- this translates to 'create the template for the next session' by blocking out the next boarding pass
- all good ideas get noted onto the master sheets
- starting a session means blocking out the obvious stuff first, principal features, maybe controlling faction
- with that start done, block out some encounters, maybe plot hooks as they become obvious
- flesh out everything more, only a boarding pass of space to be terse
- NPCs are last; they usually are obvious by then - who is evidently around from the encounters, factions and plot hooks
- do not attempt to roll straight into a second session; take a break first
After a break you may do a second whole session on the same structure. Make your restart as low friction as possible, but do not pre-pick it; leave yourself room to be inspired anew.
My other aides I use;
* Some powerpoint image creation to help understand the shape, block-out how many districts in each part of the hive.
* Voice-transcription to ramble away about ideas while doing laundry.
* Reading through the old Rogue Trader book and noting ideas; trying to stay away from the modern stuff and that 'orthodox 40k' approach.
I am waiting for inspiration to slow and then I will sift back over those ideas and tease out the ones not yet used.
Previous examples:
* For the Spelljammer Academy run, it started as a print of the four official adventures held with treasury tags then various odds and ends of loose paper were added to the back, including some experiments with gate-fold-type planetary system overlays. It was messy but a characterful mess.
* My home campaign is a double stack - world notes plus session notes - all done on the backs of scrap paper and old bills.
* My Friday night hexcrawl campaign is a similar double stack plus a GM binder of plastic-pocket ready reference stuff for gaming-on-the-move; one-page monster manual, code of conduct, treasure tables, etc.
For this City26 campaign I actually got started while flying - so I had some boarding passes to hand and started with those. I have a big stack of old boarding passes that were kept with a half-notion of needing bookmarks, now they can finally be used and it makes this project feel distinct.
A personal quirk, working on the small surface of the back of a boarding pass makes the demand feel less onerous; even if the output demanded is broadly alike, I only have to fill a boarding pass so feels less. I also habitually like to write very small which helps.
This also makes the project feel nicely tactile; as observed by many others elsewhere, it can be easier to get stuff done working physically than typing it up.
After a few weeks of working on this I am broadly following a refinement of my NaNoWriMo process:
- following Fleming - set yourself up to start the next session hot by stopping halfway through a paragraph
- this translates to 'create the template for the next session' by blocking out the next boarding pass
- all good ideas get noted onto the master sheets
- starting a session means blocking out the obvious stuff first, principal features, maybe controlling faction
- with that start done, block out some encounters, maybe plot hooks as they become obvious
- flesh out everything more, only a boarding pass of space to be terse
- NPCs are last; they usually are obvious by then - who is evidently around from the encounters, factions and plot hooks
- do not attempt to roll straight into a second session; take a break first
After a break you may do a second whole session on the same structure. Make your restart as low friction as possible, but do not pre-pick it; leave yourself room to be inspired anew.
My other aides I use;
* Some powerpoint image creation to help understand the shape, block-out how many districts in each part of the hive.
* Voice-transcription to ramble away about ideas while doing laundry.
* Reading through the old Rogue Trader book and noting ideas; trying to stay away from the modern stuff and that 'orthodox 40k' approach.
I am waiting for inspiration to slow and then I will sift back over those ideas and tease out the ones not yet used.
28 January 2026
A port on the deep astral - Gaus Tschaltis (RPG Blog Carnival )
Hipsters & Dragons gives us this months prompt of fantasy locations and from the long list of prompts they suggest I am going with a "homebrew location that fellow GMs can drop into their games." Find below the astral outpost of Gaus Tschaltis - a leviathan-hunting port on the far fringes of the Githyanki empire.
As mentioned in The Githyanki Main I used the set up of "not enough hands" - a local githyanki regent having to hold down some far-flung reach of the astral with few githyanki and using Letters of Marque and mercenaries to solve problems. This makes this place a great jumping off place for Spelljamming campaigns or a stop-over on astral traverses for Spelljammer or Planescape.
This port is built on the drifting skeleton of a colossal astral whale - the slaying of which was the founding legend of Yvre Tchaltis, first master of the port. These are actual bones not the rocky remnants of a dead god and a roving astral ranger once said it was clear the creature must have been on the verge of death from age if it was this large but noone heeded that liar. The initial butchery and processing of the carcass kept the first crew here busy so long that they did many runs back to other githyanki outposts and the place became known. Some decades of merry anarchy followed before the eye of Vlaakith finally fell upon the activities of her children and since then a Githyanki Knight oversees her will. In practice, Vlaakith mostly wills that the leviathan hunters, pirates and raiders handover a share of their whatever they haul back and otherwise is content to let them about their business.
The port itself has a handful of major locations. The populace is half githyanki, half whatever-came-in-on-a-Spelljammer. Order is held down by House Tschaltis cracking heads if anyone gets too rowdy. The Law extends about as far as Hrin can see. Everything else is at a strangers own risk.
As mentioned in The Githyanki Main I used the set up of "not enough hands" - a local githyanki regent having to hold down some far-flung reach of the astral with few githyanki and using Letters of Marque and mercenaries to solve problems. This makes this place a great jumping off place for Spelljamming campaigns or a stop-over on astral traverses for Spelljammer or Planescape.
This port is built on the drifting skeleton of a colossal astral whale - the slaying of which was the founding legend of Yvre Tchaltis, first master of the port. These are actual bones not the rocky remnants of a dead god and a roving astral ranger once said it was clear the creature must have been on the verge of death from age if it was this large but noone heeded that liar. The initial butchery and processing of the carcass kept the first crew here busy so long that they did many runs back to other githyanki outposts and the place became known. Some decades of merry anarchy followed before the eye of Vlaakith finally fell upon the activities of her children and since then a Githyanki Knight oversees her will. In practice, Vlaakith mostly wills that the leviathan hunters, pirates and raiders handover a share of their whatever they haul back and otherwise is content to let them about their business.
The port itself has a handful of major locations. The populace is half githyanki, half whatever-came-in-on-a-Spelljammer. Order is held down by House Tschaltis cracking heads if anyone gets too rowdy. The Law extends about as far as Hrin can see. Everything else is at a strangers own risk.
26 January 2026
Shiny TTRPG links #261
A punchy set of links to start the week. For more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.
A shrike for my dreams gives us Overloading the reaction roll
Anxious Mimic asks Marks: What if Saves, Stats, and Hp were all the same thing?
Jonas-Merlin Schumacher creates The Met Collection Hex Tiles v0.2
Revivify Games gives us Running a City, the Ultimate Sandbox
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER shares Mythic Bastionland: Overloading the Wilderness Roll
I Cast Light! gives us YOUR BACKPACK IS A SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Don't Let Monsters Steal Them
Goblin's Henchman asks Can we de-quantize D&D? | … did Heisenberg’s Hobgoblins just enter the chat?
To Be Resolved gives us Reliability and Fatigue as Random Processes in Tabletop
Press The Beast shares Prepping & Running Super Adventures
Permanent Cranial Damage gives us Memory Problems
Blog of Forlorn Encystment asks Which Version of Palace of the Silver Princess Should You Run?
abandonedhireling gives us Iron Kingdoms: Full Metal Fantasy Core Rules Review
A shrike for my dreams gives us Overloading the reaction roll
Anxious Mimic asks Marks: What if Saves, Stats, and Hp were all the same thing?
Jonas-Merlin Schumacher creates The Met Collection Hex Tiles v0.2
Revivify Games gives us Running a City, the Ultimate Sandbox
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER shares Mythic Bastionland: Overloading the Wilderness Roll
I Cast Light! gives us YOUR BACKPACK IS A SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Don't Let Monsters Steal Them
Goblin's Henchman asks Can we de-quantize D&D? | … did Heisenberg’s Hobgoblins just enter the chat?
To Be Resolved gives us Reliability and Fatigue as Random Processes in Tabletop
Press The Beast shares Prepping & Running Super Adventures
Permanent Cranial Damage gives us Memory Problems
Blog of Forlorn Encystment asks Which Version of Palace of the Silver Princess Should You Run?
abandonedhireling gives us Iron Kingdoms: Full Metal Fantasy Core Rules Review
24 January 2026
Community creation - getting that second DM, trying that other system.
Challenged by Trick the Giant to commemorate the founding and server-activation of the Vienna DM Supergroup with a post on the theme of Community - I was brainstorming what I could possibly add to the topic with the in-house testing team and they suggested talking about how in the group and era I started out, everyone was a DM and that this bumps just a gaming table up to a gaming community because it is not just hanging off one DMs effort and availability.
Half of the intention of the Supergroup was to create a game design community - and for thoughts on that I direct you to the excellent A Quick and Dirty Guide to Building a Local RPG Design Scene by Brackish Draught - their checklist of ideas maps almost perfectly to what we did and what worked.
The other half of the purpose of the Supergroup was giving forever-DM's a chance to play and that is more likely to be the more useful thing for more of you. We short-circuited this by gathering existing forever-GMs, but what about the case where you are the only one?
Why it matters
One DM and their table, no matter how large the roster, is just one gaming group and it thrives or fails based on fate allowing that DM to continue to run their games. It also has a ceiling for activity based on when that one DM gets saturated and needs to fit in other things like sleeping, work, etc.
Should that DM have to quit for whatever reason, then while you might have a circle of friends, with no DM you do not have a gaming community.
A community forms when the gaming is no longer dependent on any one person - when you have multiple DMs. What I often see, with the people who come to our open tables, is that people want to play and few decide to run their own games - maybe 1 in 6 people through the door DM even once over the year and that includes all our existing DM cohort. There seems to be an apprenticeship approach which takes a while. There seems to be a much more solid divide now between DM and players compared to when I started.
Every player a games-master
When I first got into things, pretty much everyone who played at any of the tables also ran something. This was the mid-90s so the games in play were AD&D, WoD in all its flavours, WHFRP, Dragonlance Saga system, Shadowrun, and Conspiracy X. Everyone had their own thing they ran, according to taste, and we rotated. It meant there was never a shortage of folk ready to run things, the load was much more evenly balanced and the group as a whole more resilient to any one person being away.
I think it was also beneficial because everyone got some time at the head of the table and so knew first hand about the challenges of marshalling a table of players, running a session, and all the various chores of a DM. Thus folk were easier players, less inclined to grief a DM as they had been there too.
I suspect that the range of systems we played also made folk a bit more relaxed about the DM not being the single source of truth, with others around the table checking rules and picking up minor tasks that would otherwise all be routed through the DM. This made everything quicker, cutting down dead time since some 'DM tasks' were being solved by the players.
Since everyone was less familiar with the systems, prior to the internet being universally available in the palm of your hand, there was a higher tolerance to things being 'good enough for now' - making a ruling in the moment and moving on. Min-maxing was less, since all systems were less familiar and any one exploit was more tolerable because you were not dealing with it all the time.
To be fair this also meant that any given campaign progressed more slowly because it was not the continual focus of a groups game time but this is a feature not a bug. Rapid progress in a campaign is not what we are optimising for with these ideas.
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Becketts line is one of the things to hold as a north star in getting from just a one-DM gaming group to a gaming community. If everyone involved can get relaxed about trying new things and these things maybe being a bit squeaky but with the anticipation that together, everyone will get better, then you have the fertile ground where a community will grow.
There are greater online communities one can participate in, those are their own thing and not my field of expertise so I defer to the better advice of others. For your local table however, getting together an in-person or hybrid group - any one where there is a good chunk of in person meeting up - then I would suggest that those folk, your local micro-environment, is what you want to be adapting to. There is a torrent of advice and opinion online, a firehose that will occupy all your time if you attempt to take it all in - sip from the torrent, take what works usefully for your table and ignore the rest.
The best thing that can come from online sources - or more slowly through books - are ideas, pointers to possible ways - and being open to trying those things with an attitude of testing to see what works is helpful. That test-and-keep or test-and-drop attitude is a great one to have collectively; it both expands the range of sources from which you might draw that one great idea that makes your games better and makes everyone more forgiving for hiccups and rough bits in games where you are trying something new.
Having an attitude of 'try it and keep/dump' is great - openly acknowledging 'we are going to try these rules for a bit then decide if we like them' is good. It takes the pressure off any set of rules being flawless and lets you test how often game-breaking edge cases actually come up. If some marvelous exploit allows the PCs to massively succeed one time, that if probably fine, a great story - if it happens twice per session and is making the game hard to run - tweak or remove it.
People as a whole are much more willing to give things a go when it is a short-run thing - a new system for a one-shot or a short run campaign is a much easier sell than trying to get people to commit to a weekly slot for an indefinite amount of time. In particular when you are trying to wrangle a group of people, no time will work for everyone so rather than locking in on one time forever and losing some people, try things and then adjust.
Thoughts on community
In the same way that the 90s gamers when I came up were pretty omniverous the mid-2010s local lot here used to have an Indie games night where they ran different things every week. This, with a local board-game bar as the venue and a classic forum has formed the backbone of a community that has now been running for over a decade.
If you are trying to get a community off the ground, in particular if you are starting from a single gaming table, then intermixing your big stuff with one-shots gives a great opportunity for others to shine. Switch the main campaign from weekly to every fortnight and have others run something on the off week, or maybe last week of every month is a one-shot - something like that opens up slots for others to have a go under relatively controlled conditions.
Some folk who turn up will only want to play, some will only want to play 5e, this is fine but do not let them stop you. Geek Social Fallacies say 'friends do everything together' but if one person does not want to do a thing and you've got a potential fledgling DM ready to run something and help take that step up - ask the naysayer to go catch a movie that night. As the DM who is putting in all the elbow grease you get to make the calls that help you cultivate a back-up DM. Go forward with the willing if you have enough of them, do not waste your energy trying to get unanimity or convert the unwilling.
Getting your group on board in general with the goal of learning collectively - figuring out how to run the best games, ideally more folk running good games for each other - is a great attitude to have. It makes everyone a participant and responsible for the collective enjoyment. When folk are just turning up to be entertained, the DM competing with whatever is on Netflix. TTRPGs are the place where people get that social interaction, lean into that part of it.
Not everyone is going to be on for this - some really do just see their DMs as wetware running their entertainment - but don't worry about those folk and do not bother to cater to them. Get one or two people to come along on this journey, encourage them to try new things, try some things with them, then expand the circle and do it again. After a bit you will have tables running in parallel, players swapping about, DMs get a chance to play and the whole group becomes resilient to something happening to any one DM.
Not to say this is a journey for everyone, nor that there is anything wrong with declaring "this is a gaming table that is reliant on this one DM" if all are satisfied with that. But if you find yourself wishing there were others to bear the load with you, then I would suggest some of the above.
Half of the intention of the Supergroup was to create a game design community - and for thoughts on that I direct you to the excellent A Quick and Dirty Guide to Building a Local RPG Design Scene by Brackish Draught - their checklist of ideas maps almost perfectly to what we did and what worked.
The other half of the purpose of the Supergroup was giving forever-DM's a chance to play and that is more likely to be the more useful thing for more of you. We short-circuited this by gathering existing forever-GMs, but what about the case where you are the only one?
Why it matters
One DM and their table, no matter how large the roster, is just one gaming group and it thrives or fails based on fate allowing that DM to continue to run their games. It also has a ceiling for activity based on when that one DM gets saturated and needs to fit in other things like sleeping, work, etc.
Should that DM have to quit for whatever reason, then while you might have a circle of friends, with no DM you do not have a gaming community.
A community forms when the gaming is no longer dependent on any one person - when you have multiple DMs. What I often see, with the people who come to our open tables, is that people want to play and few decide to run their own games - maybe 1 in 6 people through the door DM even once over the year and that includes all our existing DM cohort. There seems to be an apprenticeship approach which takes a while. There seems to be a much more solid divide now between DM and players compared to when I started.
Every player a games-master
When I first got into things, pretty much everyone who played at any of the tables also ran something. This was the mid-90s so the games in play were AD&D, WoD in all its flavours, WHFRP, Dragonlance Saga system, Shadowrun, and Conspiracy X. Everyone had their own thing they ran, according to taste, and we rotated. It meant there was never a shortage of folk ready to run things, the load was much more evenly balanced and the group as a whole more resilient to any one person being away.
I think it was also beneficial because everyone got some time at the head of the table and so knew first hand about the challenges of marshalling a table of players, running a session, and all the various chores of a DM. Thus folk were easier players, less inclined to grief a DM as they had been there too.
I suspect that the range of systems we played also made folk a bit more relaxed about the DM not being the single source of truth, with others around the table checking rules and picking up minor tasks that would otherwise all be routed through the DM. This made everything quicker, cutting down dead time since some 'DM tasks' were being solved by the players.
Since everyone was less familiar with the systems, prior to the internet being universally available in the palm of your hand, there was a higher tolerance to things being 'good enough for now' - making a ruling in the moment and moving on. Min-maxing was less, since all systems were less familiar and any one exploit was more tolerable because you were not dealing with it all the time.
To be fair this also meant that any given campaign progressed more slowly because it was not the continual focus of a groups game time but this is a feature not a bug. Rapid progress in a campaign is not what we are optimising for with these ideas.
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Becketts line is one of the things to hold as a north star in getting from just a one-DM gaming group to a gaming community. If everyone involved can get relaxed about trying new things and these things maybe being a bit squeaky but with the anticipation that together, everyone will get better, then you have the fertile ground where a community will grow.
There are greater online communities one can participate in, those are their own thing and not my field of expertise so I defer to the better advice of others. For your local table however, getting together an in-person or hybrid group - any one where there is a good chunk of in person meeting up - then I would suggest that those folk, your local micro-environment, is what you want to be adapting to. There is a torrent of advice and opinion online, a firehose that will occupy all your time if you attempt to take it all in - sip from the torrent, take what works usefully for your table and ignore the rest.
The best thing that can come from online sources - or more slowly through books - are ideas, pointers to possible ways - and being open to trying those things with an attitude of testing to see what works is helpful. That test-and-keep or test-and-drop attitude is a great one to have collectively; it both expands the range of sources from which you might draw that one great idea that makes your games better and makes everyone more forgiving for hiccups and rough bits in games where you are trying something new.
Having an attitude of 'try it and keep/dump' is great - openly acknowledging 'we are going to try these rules for a bit then decide if we like them' is good. It takes the pressure off any set of rules being flawless and lets you test how often game-breaking edge cases actually come up. If some marvelous exploit allows the PCs to massively succeed one time, that if probably fine, a great story - if it happens twice per session and is making the game hard to run - tweak or remove it.
People as a whole are much more willing to give things a go when it is a short-run thing - a new system for a one-shot or a short run campaign is a much easier sell than trying to get people to commit to a weekly slot for an indefinite amount of time. In particular when you are trying to wrangle a group of people, no time will work for everyone so rather than locking in on one time forever and losing some people, try things and then adjust.
Thoughts on community
In the same way that the 90s gamers when I came up were pretty omniverous the mid-2010s local lot here used to have an Indie games night where they ran different things every week. This, with a local board-game bar as the venue and a classic forum has formed the backbone of a community that has now been running for over a decade.
If you are trying to get a community off the ground, in particular if you are starting from a single gaming table, then intermixing your big stuff with one-shots gives a great opportunity for others to shine. Switch the main campaign from weekly to every fortnight and have others run something on the off week, or maybe last week of every month is a one-shot - something like that opens up slots for others to have a go under relatively controlled conditions.
Some folk who turn up will only want to play, some will only want to play 5e, this is fine but do not let them stop you. Geek Social Fallacies say 'friends do everything together' but if one person does not want to do a thing and you've got a potential fledgling DM ready to run something and help take that step up - ask the naysayer to go catch a movie that night. As the DM who is putting in all the elbow grease you get to make the calls that help you cultivate a back-up DM. Go forward with the willing if you have enough of them, do not waste your energy trying to get unanimity or convert the unwilling.
Getting your group on board in general with the goal of learning collectively - figuring out how to run the best games, ideally more folk running good games for each other - is a great attitude to have. It makes everyone a participant and responsible for the collective enjoyment. When folk are just turning up to be entertained, the DM competing with whatever is on Netflix. TTRPGs are the place where people get that social interaction, lean into that part of it.
Not everyone is going to be on for this - some really do just see their DMs as wetware running their entertainment - but don't worry about those folk and do not bother to cater to them. Get one or two people to come along on this journey, encourage them to try new things, try some things with them, then expand the circle and do it again. After a bit you will have tables running in parallel, players swapping about, DMs get a chance to play and the whole group becomes resilient to something happening to any one DM.
Not to say this is a journey for everyone, nor that there is anything wrong with declaring "this is a gaming table that is reliant on this one DM" if all are satisfied with that. But if you find yourself wishing there were others to bear the load with you, then I would suggest some of the above.
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