The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Indie RPG round-up!
robotsunshine
regular
regular
[size=+4]THE INDIE RPG ROUND-UP!!![/size]
Some independently published or little known-of games you may be interested in. Share some of yours! Contact the people listed in the Forum Play section of a game if you want to try it out here on the forums, or elsewhere.
[size=+2]Updates[/size]
Updates You Probably Don't Care About:
Games Added Recently:
[size=+2]Misc.[/size]
If anyone wants to offer to run one of these games for the forum or anywhere else, shoot me a PM and let me know, and I'll stick your name up in the Forum Play section.
I'm taking suggestions from what you guys post, so keep it up! If I don't put yours up, I may be still looking around for more information, or it may be coming in a later update.
ALSO!: If any of the descriptions of games is a little bare, it's probably due to my own ignorance. Feel free to send some more info my way to spice up the description. Or write your own, whatever works.
[size=+2]Forum Play[/size]
Primetime Adventures has four potential players (not including me as the Producer), but there's still space open! Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game, where everyone has to provide input and be tight-knit, the game can't be open to all forum-goers, so we've only got space for about one or two more people. Play will begin Saturday (look for an IC thread explaining the rules and be ready to create the show and characters).
I put people here who mentioned wanting to play. If you don't want to, just let me know.
STARS OF OUR SHOW
However, just like a real TV show, all the other forum-goers will be able to watch and enjoy, and even use the Audience Participation rules and even send you guys fan letters (actual fan letters, not Fan Mail, which is a stat in the game).
I'm looking to grab Universalis or Poison'd (dirty, cut-throat, authentic pirate RPG) and run that for all the forum to play sometime next week, though.
++++++++++++++++++
What are indie games?
Specifically, games published by a person and not a company. Independently published games by people like you and me, instead of the big names like White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast.
Why indie games?
Most of them are made by people with a strong passion for the hobby. This means they're crafted by people with lots of experience with lots of different games, who can bring a unique and creative approach. Plus there's no budget or time constraints, so most indie publishers make what they want, when they want. All told, the freedom and passion create startlingly brilliant and innovative works you don't find very often.
In other words, indie games tend to be really, really cool.
Do indie games have similar qualities?
Depending on the community the designer is from, yes. For example, many designers who participate at The Forge (a big indie games community) share similar design goals and thus similar techniques (for example, player authorship, scene framing, and Narrativist game style are all very common). But overall, it's really a mixed bag. Some are fresh and creative, some expand on aspects of other RPGs in unique ways, and some are just plain fun because of how weird they are.
What kind of games can we talk about here?
It's really up to you, but since the rest of the forum is full of discussion about the big boys of tabletop, it's preferred you keep discussion to some of the more obscure stuff you've come across. Indie games, and non-indie yet still little known-of games are the topic of discussion.
What's the Forum Play all about?
Discussion of these games is all well and good, but they were meant to be PLAYED! And since we have a forum full of gamers here with multiple means of simulating tabletop games, why not actually try out some of the new stuff we've found? If you see someone's name under Forum Play for a game, send them a PM asking if they wouldn't mind running a game here on the forums (or elsewhere). Or, if you'd like to host one yourself, PM me and I'll put you under Forum Play.
++++++++++++++++++
Bacchanal - Wine, sex, and madness in Rome.
Forum Play: robotsunshine [not suited for forum play, but somewhere else is fine]
Dogs in the Vineyard - Really fun dice mechanics and God's wild west crusaders.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
Dread - Horror stories told with a Jenga tower.
Forum Play: (not suitable for forum play)
Four Colors Al Fresco - Roman superheroes.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
InSpectres - Ghostbusters meets reality TV, with a little business-sim thrown in.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
Lacuna, Part I - Freaky game that measures your character's heart rate instead of damage.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
Little Fears - Scared children fighting monsters from the closet.
Forum Play: (none)
Munchkins - Uses a TV as part of the mechanics.
Forum Play: (none)
Primetime Adventures - Bring your TV shows to life.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
Pumpkin Town - The only game that lets you eat real candy!
Forum Play: (not suitable for forum play)
Shooting the Moon - Romance, plotting, and a love triangle.
Forum Play: (none)
Spirit of the Century - 1920's pulp action!
Forum Play: Rankenphile from the SE++ was doing one, if I remember correctly.
Steal Away Jordan - A game of black slavery.
Forum Play: (none)
Universalis - Everyone's a GM.
Forum Play: (none)
The Valedictorian's Death - Uses a yearbook to tell stories.
Forum Play: (none)
Wushu - It's not IF what you say works, it's HOW.
Forum Play: (none)
Some independently published or little known-of games you may be interested in. Share some of yours! Contact the people listed in the Forum Play section of a game if you want to try it out here on the forums, or elsewhere.
[size=+2]Updates[/size]
Updates You Probably Don't Care About:
- All games are now in alphabetical order.
- Minor formatting is underway!
- Added an official Forum Play section.
- Primetime Adventures is ready to go!
Games Added Recently:
- Universalis
- Little Fears
- Munchkins
- Shooting the Moon
- Four Colors Al Fresco
- Steal Away Jordan
- Spirit of the Century
- Wushu
[size=+2]Misc.[/size]
If anyone wants to offer to run one of these games for the forum or anywhere else, shoot me a PM and let me know, and I'll stick your name up in the Forum Play section.
I'm taking suggestions from what you guys post, so keep it up! If I don't put yours up, I may be still looking around for more information, or it may be coming in a later update.
ALSO!: If any of the descriptions of games is a little bare, it's probably due to my own ignorance. Feel free to send some more info my way to spice up the description. Or write your own, whatever works.
[size=+2]Forum Play[/size]
Primetime Adventures has four potential players (not including me as the Producer), but there's still space open! Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game, where everyone has to provide input and be tight-knit, the game can't be open to all forum-goers, so we've only got space for about one or two more people. Play will begin Saturday (look for an IC thread explaining the rules and be ready to create the show and characters).
I put people here who mentioned wanting to play. If you don't want to, just let me know.
STARS OF OUR SHOW
- JacquesCousteau
- SUPERSUGA
- INeedNoSalt
- Wildcat
- (Horseshoe, want to give it a go?)
However, just like a real TV show, all the other forum-goers will be able to watch and enjoy, and even use the Audience Participation rules and even send you guys fan letters (actual fan letters, not Fan Mail, which is a stat in the game).
I'm looking to grab Universalis or Poison'd (dirty, cut-throat, authentic pirate RPG) and run that for all the forum to play sometime next week, though.
++++++++++++++++++
What are indie games?
Specifically, games published by a person and not a company. Independently published games by people like you and me, instead of the big names like White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast.
Why indie games?
Most of them are made by people with a strong passion for the hobby. This means they're crafted by people with lots of experience with lots of different games, who can bring a unique and creative approach. Plus there's no budget or time constraints, so most indie publishers make what they want, when they want. All told, the freedom and passion create startlingly brilliant and innovative works you don't find very often.
In other words, indie games tend to be really, really cool.
Do indie games have similar qualities?
Depending on the community the designer is from, yes. For example, many designers who participate at The Forge (a big indie games community) share similar design goals and thus similar techniques (for example, player authorship, scene framing, and Narrativist game style are all very common). But overall, it's really a mixed bag. Some are fresh and creative, some expand on aspects of other RPGs in unique ways, and some are just plain fun because of how weird they are.
What kind of games can we talk about here?
It's really up to you, but since the rest of the forum is full of discussion about the big boys of tabletop, it's preferred you keep discussion to some of the more obscure stuff you've come across. Indie games, and non-indie yet still little known-of games are the topic of discussion.
What's the Forum Play all about?
Discussion of these games is all well and good, but they were meant to be PLAYED! And since we have a forum full of gamers here with multiple means of simulating tabletop games, why not actually try out some of the new stuff we've found? If you see someone's name under Forum Play for a game, send them a PM asking if they wouldn't mind running a game here on the forums (or elsewhere). Or, if you'd like to host one yourself, PM me and I'll put you under Forum Play.
++++++++++++++++++
Bacchanal - Wine, sex, and madness in Rome.
Forum Play: robotsunshine [not suited for forum play, but somewhere else is fine]
A free game for adults. You play a roman who is accused of some crime against the state, and must flee the beautiful port town of Puteoli. However, you have to gather your Companion before you can go. The problem is not so much the soldiers out hunting for you - it's the fact that Bacchus has decided to spend time in Puteoli and is throwing a huge Bacchanal, bringing several sex-crazed Satyrs along with him, as well as the Goddess Venus and the God Pluto to enjoy murder, madness, and wine (almost had alliteration there! Damn.) You have to flee the town without getting caught up in the city-wide orgy of wine, sex, and violence.
There's no GM in Bacchanal. You will need several dice of varying sizes and specific colors, as well as a cheese tray and a wine glass for each player. You put all your dice in your wine glass and roll them. Whichever comes out high dictates what happens in your next scene (if Bacchus is high, for example, there is an escalation of decadence. If a Satyr is high, you narrate a scene of sexual decadence.) It is mainly a vehicle to tell erotic stories, any many people get a bad impression from it because of that. Pick some players who are mature and who you don't mind telling sexual stories with. The game encourages you to push the level of decadence and sex until it makes you uncomfortable - because in that moment of vulnerability, your character ALSO becomes vulnerable, and the best of stories emerges. Yet, at the same time, the game discourages mindless porn - the heart of the story is romance and intrigue, and you should push the envelope in small doses.
The link is to the page to buy it for four bucks, but on the page there's a link to the free version.
Dogs in the Vineyard - Really fun dice mechanics and God's wild west crusaders.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
In the old west, God's Watchdogs roam the land, imposing His authority and laying punishment on sinners. In DitV, players play Watchdogs (affectionately known as "Dogs") who roam the west, delivering mail, and going from town to town to perform ceremony, deliver children, aid the needy, and most importantly, deal with demons. Demons can take the form of bad weather, withered crops, sickness, crazed sorcerers and cults, and just about anything else. Each session is a single town, with players trying to find out what's wrong and where the problem is stemming from, and culling it before the demons get stronger - either by convincing someone of their sins, or dragging the evildoers out in the street and blasting a hole through their head.
The mechanics are dice matching - during conflicts, you declare what you're doing and put forth two dice to represent that roll (say a 4 and a 2, which equals 6). All those affected by your action have to meet or beat your dice (maybe one guy rolled a 6, or else has two 3s). The fewer dice you have to use to match, the better you deal with what happened. The more dice you use, the worse it turns out. You can invoke self-invented traits from your character sheet to roll anything from d4s to d10s to help you out. Lastly, there's escalating - when you're low on dice, words just aren't going to cut it: escalate to fistfights. Or gunfights. Such actions net you more dice. Not all conflicts are meant for you to win - long series of follow-up conflicts are the norm, settling things out with heated debates, fast-paced gunfights, or just tense confrontation.
Dread - Horror stories told with a Jenga tower.
Forum Play: (not suitable for forum play)
No dice. Just straight horror stories told with the help of a Jenga tower. The game builds tension by having players pull blocks from the Jenga tower in order to complete actions - make the tower fall, and your character dies (or somehow leaves the game). It helps build tension and suspense, and is also just really fun. There's no stats on the character sheet - players simply answer questionnaires about their characters.
You can buy the Dread book, which gives lots of useful plot ideas and character questions, or you can download the rules quickstart for free, which actually has ALL the rules in it.
Four Colors Al Fresco - Roman superheroes.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
Four Color Superheroes, done Roman style. In an alternate Rome, certain citizens are Omegas - ignored by one of the forces of the cosmos, and thus granted freedom with that force. In FCAF, good is good, and evil is evil - no shades of gray. Incorporate everything from steampunk (The Daring DaVincis!) to evil mutant animals to god-posessed criminal masterminds trying to bring down the Empire. Free.
InSpectres - Ghostbusters meets reality TV, with a little business-sim thrown in.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
Imagine Ghostbusters, but as a reality show. A comic horror game where the players build not only their team of ghost hunters, but also the company they work for. Part mystery game, part business-sim. Decide what kind of devices you have, your gym membership, what each person's job in the franchise is (all of this is self-invented, there's no set character classes). D6s are used - roll really well, and you get to decide what happens instead of the GM. Roll poorly, and the opposite is true.
You know that part in reality shows where they take one person aside and have them talk directly to the camera? You can do that InSpectres. These are called Confessionals, and they can used to give your team a new item they desperately need ("Things were looking bleak, but thank God Julie brought that Ecto-Bomb."), switch to a different scene, ("Earlier, she was singing an ENTIRELY different tune.") or even give another player a new characteristic they have to roleplay as part of their character ("John's a jerk and stares waaaay too hard at strangers."). It's a lot of fun.
Lacuna, Part I - Freaky game that measures your character's heart rate instead of damage.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
In a collective dream world, there exists a large trench called the Lacuna. Dip an evil soul in there, and they'll be "cured" of their vile nature. The government puts this to use, abolishing prisons and instead having special agents (the PCs) enter the dream world to find the evil avatars of felons and criminals and dip that avatar in the Lacuna. The problem is that the dream world is a scary place, and each time you roll dice, you add to your rising heart rate. Get too high, and you'll suffer cardiac problems and need to be ripped out of the dream world. Fail too many rolls, and the world gets even weirder - doors melt, your Home Team starts to give you incorrect orders (or seems to be out to kill you) and let's not even talk about the SpiderMen. Or the Girl.
Little Fears - Scared children fighting monsters from the closet.
Forum Play: (none)
Play a small child from ages 6 to 12 and do battle with the terrible things that lurk in the dark. An amazing looking game that deals with that which children fear, and even confronts issues such as child abuse and neglect. Characters are being hunted by the minions of Closetland, ruled by the Demagogue and his Seven Kings (which all personify the seven deadly sins). The children fight back with a special kind of magic called Belief, which can cause stuffed animals to spring to life and defend the children, or other impossible things - yet, through that same power, old superstitions and childhood fears become reality.
Munchkins - Uses a TV as part of the mechanics.
Forum Play: (none)
A free game about short little creatures who live in the walls and cracks of houses, living their idiotic little lives. They worship the Great Glowy Box (the TV) and intrepret its words as divine truths, despite not really understanding what the hell is going on. Munchkins may, for example, watch an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger and associate Chuck Norris as the devil, then attack the family teen when he tries to grow a goatee. Play utilizes an actual TV which is flipped on every now and then, and the players interpret what they see through their munchkins.
Primetime Adventures - Bring your TV shows to life.
Forum Play: robotsunshine
All the players and GM get together and create a TV show - plot, premise, theme, cast of characters, etc. Then they each pick a character and plot that character's story arc across an entire season of the new show. Everyone then takes turns pitching scenes and playing out an episode of the show. Characters can have a Screen Presence of 1, 2, or 3 each episode - 1, and you have a bit cameo role in that episode, and exist to add variety or help supporting characters. 2, and you are a feature of the episode, but exist to support the main character. 3, and this is your star episode of the season, all about you. The scenes are plotted accordingly. Task resolution is taken care of with cards, all dealt face down. Whoever has the most red cards win, and whoever has the single highest card gets to narrate the scene.
You can make any kind of show, from cartoon to sitcom to sci-fi drama to crime mystery to anything at all. If you only play one thing from this list, pick Primetime Adventures.
Pumpkin Town - The only game that lets you eat real candy!
Forum Play: (not suitable for forum play)
The Nightmare Before Christmas if all the characters were little cartoon folk. This game is free to get from the above fellah who made InSpectres. In it, you use dice and actual physical candy. Using any special powers requires you to eat candy, which is the main reason everyone who plays this with us loves the game. Cartooney, spooky fun.
Shooting the Moon - Romance, plotting, and a love triangle.
Forum Play: (none)
A game for two-to-three players. Players are involved in a love triangle, bickering over the affections of a loved one (in a two player game, both players play the bickering lovers. In a three player game, one player plays who the other two are fighting over).
Spirit of the Century - 1920's pulp action!
Forum Play: Rankenphile from the SE++ was doing one, if I remember correctly.
Players play Centurions, born on the first day of the Century. They are endowed with special powers and abilities, and work against an array of odd villains. Uses the FATE system.
Steal Away Jordan - A game of black slavery.
Forum Play: (none)
Quite simply, it takes place during early American slavery. Players tell stories not only of slaves, but of how slavery affects the ongoing generations of those involved.
Universalis - Everyone's a GM.
Forum Play: (none)
Imagine Calvinball as an RPG. There's no rules unless someone says there are. The only characters are the ones you introduce. Setting? You tell me. Universalis is an engine rather than a game itself. Players are given tokens called Coins, and they use those Coins to affect the game world. At the start of the game, everyone bids Coins to decide facts about the setting: "It's high-fantasy!" - "Dragons rule the nation's largest kingdom!" - "The plot has something to do with romantic intrigue!" - "Most of the world is ocean, and large islands are the norm!". From there, players bid to introduce elements, paying a Coin for each fact they introduce. "The pirate captain Archibald fires his Troll Cannons at the pier," costs three Coins - one for naming and introducing Archibald, one for giving him Troll Cannons, and one for setting it in a pier. Introduce something, and you control it when mentioned in scenes, though others can affect it.
The more traits something gets, the more important it becomes in the story. In order to completely remove something from the story, you have to bid Coins equal to the number of traits it has. This means that, in a quirky way, wounding something makes it harder to kill (Archibald getting his left eye poked out becomes a new trait, and thus a new Coin needed to get rid of him). Conflict of interests regarding story are settled first through negotiation, then through d10s.
With Universalis, you can do anything.
The Valedictorian's Death - Uses a yearbook to tell stories.
Forum Play: (none)
Free game! Find an old high-school yearbook from decades past and let all the players have a few days to familiarize themselves with the students. Decide who the valedictorian would have been. Now, each player submits a cryptic clue about her death, which starts the story. Each player takes on a character from the yearbook and must do their best audience participation - the goal is to seem extremely likely to have killed the valedictorian, but ultimately not be the one who is found guilty.
Wushu - It's not IF what you say works, it's HOW.
Forum Play: (none)
Wushu is a free system for action-movie style gaming. Whatever a player says happens, happens. This helps portray over the top violence and action, with mechanics determining the overall effect of what you described. Players (and the GM) can Veto a detail of a player's description, forcing them to re-word it in some manner.
robotsunshine on
0
Posts
I would add Agon, though. It's a indie game made for combat and showing up your buddies, instead of interaction and immersion like most other indie games (very generally speaking). Great monster-bashing fun.
Also: Trollbabe. A mean, lean roleplaying machine. This thread sums up why I love Trollbabe.
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!"
~ Dr. Emilio Lizardo
So much inspiration for sessions in such a tiny book.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
SoogaGames Blog
This is a good thread.
Lacuna and Dogs both sound really cool, but my group is very 4e-bound :P Which is good, but will mean no time for side stuff... Lacuna makes me want to plan a dream world though
the good thing about them is that character creation takes MAYBE 10 minutes, if you demand detail. the rules take about the same amount of time to grok. you could run a quick session for about an hour, hour and a half, and it won't intrude on the "main game" (that's how i do it
i haven't tried, but i imagine it'd be no different than playing anything else on-line. other than intimate collaboration and a deck of cards, there's no special requirement.
our last PTA game was a cartoon called Kitten Pile, which featured talking kitties attempting to voyage to the moon and collect its moon cheese, in order to appease the vicious mice who had taken over the kittens' farm. each episode also had a moral that it tried to teach kids, like sharing and manners.
what i liked is the simplicity, which even the ditzy non-roleplayer of the group understood and managed to RP her character (a clumsy goose) very, very well. sorry if i sound like a plant for the game, it is just my favorite.
also: more games coming to the list soon!
Come on
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
Oh man, good times...
That seems interesting... plays like a Pan's Labyrinth rpg?
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
But Little Fears seems close.
specifically, any game published by a person rather than a company. but for this thread, anything that isn't too well-known is fair game. it's essentially the community proposing obscure games to one another, assuming not many others are familiar with it.
oh my god why have i never heard of this
wonderful
Basically, imagine you are two inches tall, live in the walls of someones house, stupid & incompetent, love beer and worship the television.
It seems to be a simple and shallow game with a surprising amount of potential for unexpected game play. It sounds like it'd be easy to run on-the-fly in person, and I bet it's be there'd be room for fun with a large group to play by post, pulling clips from YouTube in lieu of a real TV.
I made a TD for iphone and windows phone!
SoogaGames Blog
here's some ideas, though:
- the surprisingly good basic cable drama about wild west monster hunters
- victorian era political intrigue, Showtime channel style
- 1970's syndicated tv show about a double agent in world war 3 who can't decide what side to be on
- the adult anime that for some unknown reason was heavily edited and presented as a kid's show in america
- controversial sitcom "that everyone is talking about" about serial killers
pitching ideas is half the fun
also, updates to the OP coming tonight
are the characters, like, actual stratego pieces, just man-sized, and talk by wiggling in the direction of who they're talking to? because that's the best.
and if it's any consolation, PTA seasons only last 5 episodes (you can do 9 if you like, but 5's pretty much better)
yes but you must pay an unfamiliar player's tax
like a jillion dollars
the rules are really simple, it's mostly just player collaboration and discussion. we'd probably stick all that in an OOC thread, and the actual roleplaying in an IC thread. as long as everyone's willing to share ideas and aren't too protective of their characters, we're set to go.
unfortunately i get that role. the GM is called the producer, and he puts forth his big budget versus the characters' story arcs and fan mail.
i'd be up for either this or InSpectres. inspectres is more comedy but gives you guys tons of freedom (GM takes mostly a backseat), whereas PTA can do pretty much any setting with a TV slant, yet requires everyone to actively participate.
also, in order to stop me from posting a thousand times in this thread, here's a big infodump on the possible game to be run.
the game will either be primetime adventures or inspectres (however, if considerable desire for another game from the list that's been ***'d is there, we can do that instead). players do not need to be familiar with the rules, i will give out a very basic summary of what you need to know in order to play (for the full stuff, obviously, you need to buy the pdfs). character creation and learning the rules for both of those games takes all of ten minutes.
WHICH WEIRD-ASS GAME IS RIGHT FOR YOU?
=================
+ PrimeTime Adventures will be the creation of a TV show. considerations include genre (sci-fi, fantasy, modern, etc.), format (sitcom, cartoon, drama, etc. - reality shows and game shows are not an option because they have rarely ever worked with this type of game), channel (FOX tv shows are a lot different from HBO shows, for example), and basic premise of the show. anyone wanting to play will sign up and we will have a group chat session and decide all of that stuff, as well as create and assign the characters.
play goes from scene-to-scene until the episode ends. there will be five episodes. scenes are given a basic run-down but no clear resolution (that's determined through play!) sometimes, not everyone will be in a scene (you can pay from a personal pool of points called Fan Mail in order to enter a scene, though) and the focus of the game will be on that episode's star character - which means your character may not be able to do much at all until a later episode. focus instead lies on the story as a whole, not the individual characters.
PTA is your kind of game if you like to focus on character advancement and conflict, enjoy sharing ideas and having others help shape them, and don't mind taking a backseat in order to promote someone else's drama.
+ InSpectres is a mystery game, a basic whodunnit, where the antagonists are ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other such supernatural baddies. a basic mystery is supplied, but the GM does not resolve it for you - the players actually develop the clues from scene to scene and come up with the answer. everyone gets to help with each other's characters and help build the InSpectres franchise you all work at. characters are normal, every day people who happen to have a knack for ghost hunting (the game is meant to be comical, and the thinking is that normal people are funnier than weird ones). you'll be given lots of freedom with the setting, be able to change a few things on a moment's notice, and might even have some bizarre trait applied to your character out of nowhere.
InSpectres is your kind of game if you like Ghostbusters, mysteries, loose and simple business simulations, and don't have a problem with taking control of the story FROM the GM and making it your own (it happens quite frequently)
any additional questions regarding playing these games on the forums can be sent to me via PM, in order to keep this thread on-topic. if necessary, i'll tack on a little notice to the OP about it, but otherwise, let's get back to the indie games
Somebody finally responds to my suggestions of Munchkin, and by putting it into an indy game OP.
Robotsunshine... have my retarded babies.
that game sounds a lot of fun... my friend's apartment where dnd games tend to happen there are a lot of toys on shelves as well as two cats... it's perfect for this game.
i gotta try it sometime.
MEXICAN STANDOFF! or, the Reservoir Dogs game.
all players put five or ten actual dollars in the pot. then they make a gun with their hand (only one is allowed) and point it at another player. you can switch who your gun is pointing at at any time.
at any time, any player can yell BANG! when that happens, anyone who has a gun pointed at them is shot dead, and out of the game.
players all tell a story about a heist that went wrong. you can interrupt at any time when the narration references your character in order to say, "No, no! that's not what happened! THIS is what happened..." and then you start telling the story from there.
aside from changing what happened to your character as above, you cannot detract or change the story in any way, only add. the idea is to discover what went wrong with the heist.
once play gets down to two players (through BANG!-ing), both those players split the pot. the end. if it's just one player, he gets all of it.
i've waited for so long
Eclipse Phase has some buzz on other forums, but their opinions don't matter to me--yours do! Eclipse Phase is a Sci-Fi/Transhuman/Post-apocalyptic/Post-singularity RPG.
A limited number of books were available at GenCon (see the Let's Read thread at rpg.net). Books should be available to the general public this fall and PDF is rumoured to appearing "soon."
It uses a percentile dice system, which I've never used before. Beyond that, system mechanics seem somewhat hard to come by, but with books in the wild we should quickly learn more.
For more setting fluff, the main EP site also has a free story, titled Lack. They've also posted a character sheet, sample character, art and reading lists for more information on Transhumanism.
Oh, and the game is being published with a Creative Commons license!
Has anyone played successful games in this (or a similar) setting?
Have you strong feelings about percentile-based games?
Who wants to play an uplifted nano-enhanced space octopus?