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[General Roleplaying Games] It is our Fate to Run the Shadows Bearing Torches
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But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Hail adventurers, runners, heathens, and cutpurses! Welcome to the general roleplaying thread!
By now, you probably know there are imagined worlds that have nothing to do with either dungeons or dragons. You've probably even spent some time in them. Perhaps you've even put together some of your own material. Pull up a chair, and let's discuss specific RPGs and the hobby in general.
Rather than clutter the OP with 578934527894 links to various systems, I encourage anyone who wants to provide a comprehensive set of resources for any particular system to do so in the thread. I will then link those posts here.
If for some reason you'd like to discuss the inevitable train wreck that the next edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game will be, we have a thread for that here. I kid, I kid. It's going to be great. No, really.
So, what's been catching your interest as of late?
By now, you probably know there are imagined worlds that have nothing to do with either dungeons or dragons. You've probably even spent some time in them. Perhaps you've even put together some of your own material. Pull up a chair, and let's discuss specific RPGs and the hobby in general.
Rather than clutter the OP with 578934527894 links to various systems, I encourage anyone who wants to provide a comprehensive set of resources for any particular system to do so in the thread. I will then link those posts here.
If for some reason you'd like to discuss the inevitable train wreck that the next edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game will be, we have a thread for that here. I kid, I kid. It's going to be great. No, really.
So, what's been catching your interest as of late?
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e: more FATE stuff here!
So let's talk about Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, because I need to talk about Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. I've got the start of what will hopefully be an MHR campaign coming in a few weeks. My players have requested that it be an "avatar game" which to them means they play as themselves. I agreed because I want them to have fun, and now I don't have to force them to understand that we don't all need to meet each other at the beginning of every single campaign and come up with some contrived reason to work together.
Anyway, I need advice. Have any of you had a chance to run MHR, or any Cortex-based game? Any general advice on what's good, what's bad, what makes things easier, etc? And have any of you run "avatar" games before? Any comments about how those went?
Currently, I am working on putting together a Legend of Five Rings campaign for my group. I've just started laying the ground work for it, putting together the over all plot structure and creating the major NPCs. I'm rather excited about it, as I've wanted to get an L5R game going for over a decade now. I'm also excited because its going to push me as a DM. The current game I'm running (Pathfinder) had ended up really more of a tactics game with a lose story tying it together. L5R, however, is heavy on the social interactions and relies a lot on character interaction. I am really looking forward to using it to grow as a DM.
I was considering trying to bait a hook with Exalted, but I'm a little put-off by how horrible the combat system seems. I'm less put off by social combat, because it is easier to ignore something wholesale than to fix what is broken.
Needs better thread title. What is "other"?
Should be clearly marked [General RPG Thread] in some fashion.
Anyone ever played Cosmic Patrol? It intrigues the hell out of me, but the free RPG day pamphlet is a little small...
Also, I found a great freeware L5R chargen tool that can help with some laziness issues.
STANDARD FANTASY GAME now becomes STANDARD FANTASY GAME WITH COMPETING, INCOMPETENT GUILDS.
STANDARD EXISTENTIAL HORROR GAME now becomes STANDARD EXISTENTIAL HORROR GAME AS PLAYED BY MEMBERS OF RIVAL CULTS.
STANDARD FOUR COLOR SUPERHERO GAME now becomes STANDARD FOUR COLOR SUPERHERO GAME WITH DANGEROUS, EXPERIMENTAL WEAPONS.
This is doubly true now that it has High Programmers. It's the only game I feel that you a disservice by NOT LARPing, since LARPing for High Programmers amounts to siting around a table dressed like a bunch of Bond Villains sending minions to their doom and passing the phone around to yell orders.
Twitch Stream
- Gaze longingly through the viewing-tubes that litter the dungeon at a cave filled with riches, wondering if it really exists.
- Save their torch-bearer from being eaten by a huge slime-covered snake by blasting him with a spell covering him in slippery oil, letting him slide away while the others beat the snake into a retreat.
- Crawl into a a stinky tunnel after the snake, recovering a novelty sword-shaped bottle of medicinal tonic. Rumours indicate this has roughly equal chance of blinding you as settling your stomach.
- Find themselves unable to resist stirring a crater-pool that seemed to cause hallucinations, eventually creeping themselves out too much and scurrying away.
- Attempt a potentially suicidal mission into a huge pit-trap to see what was thrashing around in the water at the bottom, only to be ambushed by a mole-person, one character chasing him down and cutting his throat.
- Nearly die from venturing into a smoke-filled room that seemed to burn their lungs with each breath.
- Discover a possible way to cheat death with one character's weird magical chalk.
- Head back to town to see if anyone's invented breathing-equipment yet and lament another expedition returning with pocket change.
Might not sound like it, but we all had a blast. Google Hangouts is the most significant addition to my gaming life since I first picked up a Fighting Fantasy gamebook.
SoogaGames Blog
I don't intend to pre-order an idea especially for full cover price.
Regarding MHR, our group was really excited about it until we actually got a hold of the book. Some parts are super specific about what you can and can't do, while others are just "Whatever makes you happy, man." It also seems geared toward one-shots and using existing Marvel heroes. I don't need a book to tell me I can say "Nuff said, bub." and roll a handful of dice that may or may not matter.
We're going to play Mutants and Masterminds instead.
My main technique was to make sure everyone had a reason to kill everyone else. So their secret societies or whatever would give them horribly flawed intel on the other players.
It's actually the easiest game to GM I ever found. The players become so active that you are essentially providing an arena for them to pick on each other.
Oh, and send lots of notes to players. Sometimes the note is just 'This is a note to make you look suspicious', or 'Please reply to this note'. Sometimes just send the same note to all the players save one.
If I had spare cash at the moment, I would be buying Marvel Heroic and the Lord of the Rings RPG. I was originally going to play a LOTR campaign using Legends of Anglerre (a fantasy FATE RPG) and The Atlas of Middle-Earth, but the actual LOTR RPG looks great, and the designer has an excellent reputation.
it's more leaning towards FATE style games though
There are snazzy threads on RPGnet and SA that make it sound pretty cool. One of the PP guys has dropped into the SA thread a lot, which is cool, but both have enough to give a pretty decent idea of how the playtest has looked so far.
Anyway 13th Age is what I'm excited for. The preorder PDF is coming any day now.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
It is a terrible game, but for some reason I still love it. Or the ideas in it, anyway.
Does Car Wars count as an RPG? Because Car Wars is fantastic, especially if you set-up a long-running campaign where players earn money for winning matches, expend their clones, build-up celebrity personalities, etc.
Another vote for G+ Hangouts, by the way, especially the Tabletop Forge app. Has anyone checked out roll20 yet?
Do you have your sig enabled? I can't see it with your posts.
Also 13th age is going to be amazing because it is Rob Heinsoo's love letter to D&D.
D&D 4E wasn't Heinsoo's love letter to D&D?
So, anyone using G+ Hangouts, Skype, Roll20 or whatever video chat stuff to play campaigns?
I find I often have trouble recruiting for games when the system isn't D&D, same for other people?
Bloody hell, the character generation is complicated when you're not sure what you're doing. I appreciate the lack of a class system makes it more flexible to play what you want, but it's nice to have guidelines beyond the template characters. It's taken me over six hours to create my combatless, socially inept dwarf with a passion for machines and showtunes.
I thought Ars Magica was complicated, but at least it's laid out logically and you don't have a brazillion bit of gear to look through while not being fully aware of what System Ratings are.
The book could be laid out a lot better though, even the 20th anniversary book which is supposedly an improvement on the original 4th book.
MHR in my experience runs best when you relinquish narrative control to the players. You as the Watcher are there to provide conflict, not to govern the entire worldspace; there's a certain degree of cognitive dissonance that anyone playing in a comic book universe is likely to apply that takes care of the general "rules" of the world. This is slightly unusual compared to many systems so it can throw people sometimes.
Conflicts (i.e. dice rolls) should never come to a basic pass/fail, because there's nothing interesting about that. You almost always want to have situations boil down to degrees of success and consequences for failure. A pass/fail stagnates the narrative and the scene loses excitement.
Beware of counterattacks; they can stress a target out quickly if you have enough large dice to throw in as effect dice. (This applies both to you counterattacking the heroes as well as the heroes counterattacking you)
Don't be afraid to buy out a ton of PP to keep your doom pool large and threatening. PP are what keeps the narrative awesome and players will burn through them (and find ways to generate more) no matter how many you throw out. The more dice you have and the larger they are, the more you'll be able to beef up your rolls turn over turn.
If your players are smart they'll pick up on this quickly, but going last in the turn order is a huge advantage for the Watcher, because it means you can make team bad guy then go first in the next round. As such, you want to try and pawn off the turns to the PCs as often as possible so they don't have a choice but to pass the turn back to you at the end.
I absolutely love the system. It's a lot of fun to play in and really works your creative muscles. I just wish I were a better writer (and comic book aficionado) so I could make my own scenarios for it instead of relying on the event books to give me something to play :P
Edit: Oh, something to help anyone's frame of mind when reading the book or playing the game; MHR is not a "Supers RPG". It's a "Comic Book RPG". The entire game is structure to take advantage of the scenic aspect of comic book panels, and when you start thinking about it that way I think it really amps up the narrative power.
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
There's a pretty good first impressions look at the game here, if you're so inclined:
http://critical-hits.com/2012/06/20/first-impressions-preview-13th-age/
I can vouch for it since I was at the table :P
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
I had a 4th edition shadowrunner called lucky that got himself 8 edge at character creation. He used all the rest of his character points on stats of 3 and skills of 2. The idea was he wasn't really good at anything, at all, but he was incredibly lucky, so things just tended to fall into place. 8 times per session he could basically do literally whatever he wanted, since 13 dice with exploding 6's will rarely net you a failure.
In combat he preferred fully automatic anything, so he could "spray and pray," (full auto, narrow burst). That tactic was supposed to be prohibitively inaccurate, but with a huge return in damage if you managed to hit. However, with the way of the mechanics in SR4, he would hit with the burst basically every time, which would typically instagib even something as tough as an armored troll.
It sounded balanced on paper (only able to really do 8 things per session), but in practice it was incredibly overpowered.
Fiasco is great. For a similar sort of play experience but with more of a dramatic story instead of a gonzo one, keep an eye out for Our Last Best Hope by Magpie Games.
(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktruman/our-last-best-hope-an-rpg-to-save-the-world)
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
-The Raft is being renamed The Locker and is being turned into a secret underwater cryogenic prison at the bottom of the Monterey Bay.
-The heroes don't know that there are other people with powers in the world, though it is common knowledge that superheroes and villains once existed.
-What starts as a series of disasters (fires, earthquakes, floods, sinking skips) that the heroes have to avert evolve into a series of attacks by a villain that escaped The Locker.
-The identity of the villain and his powers will actually be determined by the players. I'm going to let them fill in the blanks and make assumptions, which will ultimately be correct.
-After dealing with the first villain, the players will find out that all the villains have escaped, and they'll be recruited by not-SHIELD to form a new super-team.
It really isn't very good. There is two interesting and potentially fun ideas in there: Giant Mechs vs. Monsters from Cthulhu and people who turn themselves into monsters (Tagers) in order to fight monsters.
It's just... the system isn't that good, the setting is boring, and the books are really, really uncomfortable to read (rape camps? seriously?). Add into that that all the metaplot books and adventures seem to miss the what the CoC RPG understood pretty well (No chance of victory in the long run doesn't mean your battles are pointless. You can have small victories and successes, you just can't ever win forever.), and you get a depressing, clunky, and boring game that's more trouble than it's worth.
Twitch Stream
One of the best parts is the forward in the Aberrant Players Guide that basically says, "This game is not a four-color game; if you're playing it that way, you're doing it wrong."
Also check out Durance, made by the same folks as Fiasco. It too has a collaborative creation system, except this time, it's sci-fi drama set in a far-future penal colony.