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rivetz posted:I didn't see a "recommend me an RPG"-type thread, apologies if I missed it. Wondering if anyone has any suggestions for anything matching the following criteria: You can also check out Gun and Slinger, which was designed to be played with a GM and two players. The players play the Gun and the Slinger. The resolution system involves cards and playing go fish. It's not boilerplate fantasy for sure.
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Jul 4, 2021 17:34
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I played a Call of Cthulhu one-shot last night at a game shop and enjoyed it a lot. It was seventh edition and it seemed lightweight and easy to run and easy to learn. Am I missing any secret hidden bastard complexity that would make it difficult to teach to a group that only knows D&D? Any extra purchases beyond the Keepers Manual that are worth it? Hidden pitfalls? Any advice on how to make things feel horrible and alien and otherworldly to modern players for whom Cthulhu stuff is already in pop culture?
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Jul 4, 2021 19:26
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Usual advice for all horror games : atmosphere helps a ton. I don’t mean grogs.txt DMing mask poo poo, but it’s trivially true that people are more susceptible to some spoopiness on a rainy night than a bright and sunny day. Not that you can’t do without it, but it’s nice if it’s an option. Same goes for music or whatever : no do not play The Monster Mash but if you’re running a game about redneck cannibals and had the Ravenous soundtrack right there, use it. More than most genres maintaining tone is key. This involves two things that are counter intuitive : 1) you gotta ride herd to keep people engaged and on edge but 2) you also gotta let players vent tension sometimes so it’s not misery. Those are some initial thoughts from me on my phone. Hope that helps.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:46
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I played a Call of Cthulhu one-shot last night at a game shop and enjoyed it a lot. It was seventh edition and it seemed lightweight and easy to run and easy to learn. Am I missing any secret hidden bastard complexity that would make it difficult to teach to a group that only knows D&D? Any extra purchases beyond the Keepers Manual that are worth it? Hidden pitfalls? Any advice on how to make things feel horrible and alien and otherworldly to modern players for whom Cthulhu stuff is already in pop culture? It has some mechanics I find overengineered and annoying, but a GM can shield newbies from most of them and walk them through the rest. I taught a few complete newbies - we're talking to new to TRPGs in general - to play it and they were okay for the most part. I had to walk them through stuff like filling out all the sanity boxes on the sheet, and what to do when you went insane, and what modifiers to apply to shooting someone at any given situation, but they got comfortable with the core mechanic pretty quickly, even with all the bonus/penalty dice and degrees of success and pushing stuff that 7e has complicated it with. Protip: use the auto-fire rules from Delta Green. Also, adorable anecdote - when I taught one of the newbies 5e after first cutting her teeth on CoC, she thought the checkmarks on the pregen 5e sheet I gave her were just skills marked for XP, so she unchecked them all, haha.
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Jul 4, 2021 20:07
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Reading a book about medievalist views of the world and man I wish Ars Magica finally added a book about India or the Prester John Kingdom because there is a lot of potential for cool and weird poo poo there.
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Jul 4, 2021 22:15
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So I happened across the core rules box of TES: Call to Arms for cheap with my wife, and between how into TES she is and the fact that it doesn’t include minis (which…is whatever, lord knows I have a million random generic fantasy minis with skeletons and stuff already). Is it any good? The back of the box honestly doesn’t do a great job of explaining what kind of game it is, and honestly the quick start tutorial guide isn’t much better (oooh, a whole lesson on moving up to your movement limit aka Using A Ruler 101, super helpful). If it’s kind of like a gridless Descent kind of vibe, I’m 1000% there. Grabbing it either way but just curious if there’s any opinions out there.
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Jul 5, 2021 00:22
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Plutonis posted:Reading a book about medievalist views of the world and man I wish Ars Magica finally added a book about India or the Prester John Kingdom because there is a lot of potential for cool and weird poo poo there. Been done in 2e, apparently
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Jul 5, 2021 01:55
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I'm running a feudal mecha RPG in Fate Condensed, and my players are a delight. Their giant mecha are currently up in a frozen mountain range, hunting down a troublesome enemy commander hiding in the snow-covered peaks. They were up against the rogue mecha the White Rose, the Archangel Michael, a pirate ship-turned-tank being dragged by a captive T-rex, and a platoon of pike cavalry riding raptors. I added dual environmental hazards of a blinding blizzard, and a great big gently caress-off dragon-roc who would attack the noisiest/most visible creature on the battlefield every two rounds. The idea was that players were supposed to try and stealthily attack in brief but intense skirmishes. Instead, they: * Sparta-kicked a raptor into another raptor * Bum-rushed a raptor, scooped it up onto their mecha's shoulders in a fireman carry, and threw it directly into a roc's mouth * Deliberately got themselves snatched up by a roc, then cut themselves free mid-air to plummet feet-first onto the deck of the pirate ship. * Scooped the enemy commander out of their mecha, rolled them into a blanket, and tied it to their mecha's spear like a hobo sack * Crumpled the enemy mecha into a ball, then bowled it down the mountain as a distraction while they fled to safety
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Jul 6, 2021 01:29
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Holy poo poo. All of that owns. Wow. Go you guys! PS the hobo stick thing is called a bindle. Just sharing cause it’s a cool word.
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Jul 6, 2021 03:29
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 Last week I released Dicier v1.5, the last regular upgrade for Dicier, my analog games typeface! More details on the 'last regular upgrade' thing here. This one adds rock-paper-scissors icons, more card suits, and a few odd die types, among other things. I also released a tiny upgrade yesterday to help distinguish between two similar icons (swords and wands) at small text sizes). One more thing coming soon and then that's it for (most) work on Dicier for a long while.
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Jul 6, 2021 09:48
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Has anyone played The Skeletons and wants to tell me about it? The pitch sounds like it'll be extremely my poo poo, but I want to know how it plays first.
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Jul 6, 2021 09:56
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Has anyone played The Skeletons and wants to tell me about it? The pitch sounds like it'll be extremely my poo poo, but I want to know how it plays first. The mechanics focus on recovering memories and on the damage your skeletons and the tomb suffer over years and aeons; like I said, combat's pretty much freeform as-written. That means you can add your own combat/action mechanics if you think it'll help.
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Jul 6, 2021 10:51
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Has anyone played The Skeletons and wants to tell me about it? The pitch sounds like it'll be extremely my poo poo, but I want to know how it plays first. I ran it in person once, really enjoyed it. Played well and produced an interesting story. My group enjoys map drawing games and this hit the spot, going back and destroying parts of the tomb and revealing hidden features. Sitting in a darkened room listening to my friends breathe was a bit awkward. Only, minor, criticism would be that the print version includes some extra playbooks not in the digital version so making copies of those is a hassle.
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Jul 6, 2021 16:17
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Rockman Reserve posted:So I happened across the core rules box of TES: Call to Arms for cheap with my wife, and between how into TES she is and the fact that it doesn’t include minis (which…is whatever, lord knows I have a million random generic fantasy minis with skeletons and stuff already). Is it any good? The back of the box honestly doesn’t do a great job of explaining what kind of game it is, and honestly the quick start tutorial guide isn’t much better (oooh, a whole lesson on moving up to your movement limit aka Using A Ruler 101, super helpful). If it’s kind of like a gridless Descent kind of vibe, I’m 1000% there. Grabbing it either way but just curious if there’s any opinions out there. Just an update on this, I still haven't given it a solid readthrough let alone a play, but I ended up with some of the official minis anyway and they are the worst. I haven't had to deal with models sliced this badly since like, first edition Malifaux. This poo poo is monopose, how the gently caress do you even manage to cut a monopose mini into TWELVE PIECES?! And then the assembly instructions are worse than useless, of course.
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Jul 6, 2021 17:34
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UnCO3 posted:I played two PbP games one of which finished. We swapped out 'closing your eyes for X seconds/minutes' for 'locking the thread for X days/weeks' and I added a few simple rules for a rotating GM and dice rolls to help move things along, since the combat's otherwise freeform. I liked it and I think it went pretty well! A tragic blend of slowly uncovering who you are while at the same time losing pieces of yourself one way or another, while fighting battles you're guaranteed to win, but won't necessarily want to. That was fun to read and now I'm trying to convince my regular group to give it a shot.
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Jul 8, 2021 05:01
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This was a question about Pathfinder, but also about foundry, if anyone is familiar with either, could they help me out? (Crosspost from the Pathfinder thread.)Boba Pearl posted:I was thinking of learning and running my own Pathfinder 2e game, but there's something I do in Roll20, and I don't know if I could do it in Foundry.
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Jul 8, 2021 10:21
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To clarify are you asking if foundry supports drawing on the playmat? (it does) uploading images as maps (also does) or just is it as quick to get a uploaded drawing up and running as a playmat/map (not in my experience if you needed actual tracking) though, it also supports a bunch of cool stuff like defining terrain and LOS blocking objects. Though I also want to clarify I've only been a player on foundry not a GM, and I'm going by a game I've been in that used both. So it might just be my GM wasn't as familiar with foundry or specifically had set up his game files in less than ideal format for off the cuff play.
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Jul 8, 2021 10:30
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Coolness Averted posted:To clarify are you asking if foundry supports drawing on the playmat? (it does) uploading images as maps (also does) or just is it as quick to get a uploaded drawing up and running as a playmat/map (not in my experience if you needed actual tracking) though, it also supports a bunch of cool stuff like defining terrain and LOS blocking objects. What do you mean by actual tracking? Because if I can just put a map up, and set a certain pixels : feet then that would be fine. But yeah, that's just what I mean, can I immediately go from .png to map in less than a few minutes.
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Jul 8, 2021 10:34
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The What System Should I Use thread has fallen off so I’m gonna ask here : So my gaming group is a big chunk of my Immediate family (plague did some things to us) ; we started off pretty light but by now we’ve played through all of Gloomhaven and an expansion to give you an idea. Once we got into the habit, meeting up to drink some wine, eat a mess of appetizers and play Pandemic Legacy for 8 hours on Saturday with my parents and little sister is a pretty sweet deal. Now they want to try RPGs and I want to run them something they’ll like. My first thought was 4e D&D but I’m worried about the crunch load (also the builder doesn’t run on my Mac) turning my mom off (she could do it, but she wants more beer and pretzel levels of reading). And then a lot of my go to games are hippy storygqmes or horror or both. I was thinking something PbtA would be a good start, but they’re not really into post-apocalypses or wrestling or super heroes or teenage romance so I don’t have a game off the cuff. Maybe Blades?
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Jul 9, 2021 00:55
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Can they handle a little weird and/or progressive politics? Heart and Spire are both fantastic games, dripping in flavor. Heart has the benefit of being a dungeon crawl but different and narratively encapsulated and really loving weird in a good way.
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Jul 9, 2021 01:00
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Blades would be good, or Old-School Essentials if you want that classic beer and pretzels D&D setup. OSE is hard to find in hard copy right now though - your local gaming store having ordered a kickstarter package is your best bet for the next month.
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Jul 9, 2021 01:01
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2/3rds are hardcore weird fiction nerds abd we’re all frothing socialists, so that’s a good call. I forgot I even have a copy of Spire.
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Jul 9, 2021 01:02
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Xiahou Dun posted:I was thinking something PbtA would be a good start, but they’re not really into post-apocalypses or wrestling or super heroes or teenage romance so I don’t have a game off the cuff. Maybe Blades? Do they like heroic fantasy? If so, Fellowship is the game you're looking for.
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Jul 9, 2021 01:38
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Xiahou Dun posted:I was thinking something PbtA would be a good start, but they’re not really into Is there a popular setting they might like? Star Trek or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or something? A nice way to ease into an RPG is not needing to engage with an unfamiliar setting - the players will already have a sense of what sorts of characters exist on a federation starship or in Bree or on Tattooine, so they can come to you with a ready concept and just focus on the mechanics a bit and get straight into play. Another option is to use a hyperflexible rules-light system. My go-to has been PDQ, I understand that's kinda dated these days. But show someone four PDQ characters from four different genres and they'll intuitively understand what they need to do to make a character. The rest takes fifteen minutes to sketch out.
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Jul 9, 2021 01:46
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Don’t forget Strike if you want a simpler 4e D&D.
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Jul 9, 2021 06:40
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hyphz posted:Don’t forget Strike if you want a simpler 4e D&D. or 13th age EYES OF TEH STONE THEIF
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Jul 9, 2021 06:51
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hyphz posted:Don’t forget Strike if you want a simpler 4e D&D. Or Gamma World 7e for that matter
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Jul 9, 2021 06:53
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Xiahou Dun posted:2/3rds are hardcore weird fiction nerds abd we’re all frothing socialists, so that’s a good call. I forgot I even have a copy of Spire. Yeah I'm definitely gonna suggest spire then. My friend group is pretty lefty, but they all knew spire was the game for me when I pitched it to them. Two bits of advice I'd go with: use the alternative rules for "more heroic play" with siloed stress, but if you do that also require a bit more dice rolls than the core rules suggest. Also heart added a few good rules that I imported to spire 1. NPC bonds as a way to burn off stress. If the players can justify it, let them say a bond helps patch them up, loans them money, covers for them etc, they then roll a die size of their choosing based on how much the bond is helping them, remove the result from a personal stress category and add it to their npc stress, 2. Copy Heart's Dungeon Delve rules for extended projects scene/mission stress. So by default Spire doesn't really have a baked in system for bigger projects that require more than 1 roll. Heart added a "treat a dungeon delve/adventure like an abstracted NPC with a big pool of stress" So every success on something outside of combat fills out some of the scene/delve's stress, and you can have a few big deal setpieces or problems that halve the successes needed. So like if the cell is doing a hiest to ruin an art show, you might say the scene has 15 stress, but if they manage to make the noble hosting it look bad, they can reduce that to 7 stress needed. We've also got a thread for Spire worth chatting in, though it slowed down: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3882764&pagenumber=2&perpage=40 Heart also is a little more of the traditional d&d experience in Spire's setting if "dark elf revolutionaries fighting against an occupation" is less your group's cup of tea. Though Heart still has Spire's politics, and is more inspired by Stalker/Roadside Picnic than Gygaxian murderhobos. In closing, Heart rules, Spire rules, and low effort simple systems where you largely react to player choices like pbta rule.
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Jul 9, 2021 07:10
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Heart's a little more refined mechanically, and while I quite like Spire's fluff, Heart is exactly my thing when it comes to venturing into the unknown. Also there are subway paladins.
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Jul 10, 2021 03:13
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Hey! So I've actually never played a role-playing game but I've been plenty interested in them for ages now. I've done some of the video game equivalents, Baldur's Gate and similar games, but I think it'd be nice to play with people, either by post, or even fancier means (I guess Discord?) I would probably have to invest some money in guides and stuff, but I'm up for it. Hopefully my European hours wouldn't pose too much of an issue. There were two moments irl, where some friends tried to get things going, one a Vampire: Masquerade thing, and the 2nd was so long ago I don't remember, but despite preparing myself none of it ever came to be. Is there anyone running first-timer games? And I suppose it's premature since we'll all be going on summer vacation to some degree, so may I should check back in September huh?
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Jul 10, 2021 15:26
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I'm EU as well and people here who run VTT (virtual tabletop, so like playing at the table but online, opposed to play-by-post) games are all Americans who do it at like 2am+ EU time. Play-by-post is cool, but it's kind of it's own thing and a) most games die before playing through what would be a session's worth of content in a VTT game b) really hard to get into. Realistically, your best option is to make a free account on Roll20, which is the most popular VTT, and start applying to games there. You'll also need to install Discord, yes - Roll20 is used for sheets and maps and stuff and Discord is what everyone uses for voice in combination with Roll20. This link is a preconfigured search for all systems, non-paid games, mature content on, starting at 7PM your time +- 3 hours. You can just, like, save it as a bookmark and click it every few days until you find something that looks good. Personally, I have a few of these searches saved as bookmarks, one for 5e, one for all of the less popular systems that are supported on Roll20 that I wouldn't mind play, and a couple more separate ones just for systems that I *really* want to try at the moment. If you're worried about summer, just apply to 'one-shot' games which should last a session or three at most. (Although if someone is recruiting for a longer game and you think you'll be reliably available in that time slot for the duration of the campaign, then apply anyway.) I've run introductory games for absolute newbies and it can be pretty fun. Are there people reading this who've never played before? If there is more interest, I might run a one session intro game on a EU evening/EST afternoon.
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Jul 10, 2021 16:14
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Great, thanks for the info. The whole vacation thing is I'm off from the 23rd of July to the 10th of August. Nothing crazy, but it'd be a bit rude I figure to just disappear for 3 weeks like that. So when you say System, it's the different rules and structures used by a game right? I've heard of some, like Vampire: Masquerade and the ubiquitous Dungeons and Dragon. I figure that before purchasing a rulebook or whatever, I should look at what games are offered and what world may interest me then?
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Jul 10, 2021 16:19
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Well, you could start by asking yourself what kind of game you're interested in. I played D&D for a long time, but the system itself (i.e. the way the mechanics work and core concepts of the game) didn't really interest me much. I found a lot of appeal in Call of Cthulhu instead, for example, because it's much more narratively focused and heavy on atmosphere, and likewise I've found other systems that I found very interesting for different reasons. Knowing what you're drawn to the most would help to identify which games might be for you.100YrsofAttitude posted:I figure that before purchasing a rulebook or whatever, I should look at what games are offered and what world may interest me then? A lot of games (most of the big ones) also have a free quickstart guide that you can check out before you commit to a purchase.
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Jul 10, 2021 16:49
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That's pretty accurate! You'll want to find a game that looks fun and interesting to you and you're comfortable with playing. You'll also want to let GMs know that you're brand new; some will be okay with that and some won't.
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Jul 10, 2021 16:50
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Freakie posted:A lot of games (most of the big ones) also have a free quickstart guide that you can check out before you commit to a purchase. There are also small free games like Lady Blackbird, Honey Heist, Nice Marines, etc that you might as well peruse for ideas.
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Jul 10, 2021 17:12
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100YrsofAttitude posted:
Yeah, 'system' is the rules and information, basically. Since you're going to be applying to other people's games online, this cuts down the list of options for you to explore quite a bit. 9 out of 10 games that you can apply to on Roll20 at euro hours are D&D 5e games and realistically, that's probably what you'll be playing, at least at first. I'd recommend reading the free Starter Rulebook to learn the basic rules. You don't really need to buy anything else as a player. If you need to consult any specific rules, just go to 5e.tools. Some other systems that you might actually see people recruiting for every once in a while at hours euros can play in, include Call of Cthulhu, various World of Darkness games like Vampire, City of Mist, Pathfinder 2e, Star Wars Edge of the Empire. Impossible Journey is an excellent site made for newbies like you which has descriptions of a lot of the most popular systems as well as links to free 'quickstart' documents for a lot of them, which companies release for you to use to read the basic rules and get a taste of the game in question. Most of the systems I listed have quickstarts available. That said, if you want to actually find an online game to join for most of them, you'll have to spend some time searching and waiting.
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Jul 10, 2021 17:14
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This is all really helpful. Megazver posted:Impossible Journey is an excellent site made for newbies like you which has descriptions of a lot of the most popular systems as well as links to free 'quickstart' documents for a lot of them, which companies release for you to use to read the basic rules and get a taste of the game in question. Most of the systems I listed have quickstarts available. That said, if you want to actually find an online game to join for most of them, you'll have to spend some time searching and waiting. This link is excellent! Being a huge Tolkien geek, fantasy/high fantasy would be a fine place to start with, so D&D's fine. I've always wanted to play a ranger or monk, or both! I see a lot of Cthulhu stuff, what exactly is that?
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Jul 10, 2021 17:28
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Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying system based on and set primarily in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. It's a cosmic horror game where character sanity is a major feature and your characters are very vulnerable, and investigation is also a really important aspect of the game. It's kind of the complete opposite to D&D, mechanically and tonally speaking.
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Jul 10, 2021 17:35
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Being a huge Tolkien geek, fantasy/high fantasy would be a fine place to start with, so D&D's fine. I've always wanted to play a ranger or monk, or both! I see a lot of Cthulhu stuff, what exactly is that? It's based on Lovecraft, so it's usually set in the 1920s and you're usually playing a bunch of paranormal investigators and/or Action Archeologists! investigating a haunted locale, a strange disappearance, a bizarre murder or some creepy cult. Oh, one more useful tip! Another resource that's useful to newbies is Actual Plays. Basically, whatever game you're interested in, there are some good groups recording themselves playing it and posting it either on Youtube or a podcast. For D&D, I'd recommend Dimension 20. It's more of a 'watch paid professionals do the activity you enjoy at a level you won't ever be able to achieve' than 'here's something for you to emulate', but it's very entertaining and you'll get the idea of how to play from it.
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Jul 10, 2021 18:05
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Yeah, it's worth noting that the vast, vast majority of streamed (i.e., non-podcast, and many of those too) Actual Plays don't really resemble normal RPG tables more than superficially. Between having to adhere to strict time slots that warp the flow of a session, and having the groups be comprised almost entirely of content creators or actors/comedians with outsized personalities and a need to self-promote, streamed games almost always have a very different table dynamic than you'll see at home, and IMO it's for the worse. You can find GMs who run their streamed table like a home table, and with normal-ish humans instead of rabid content creators and comedians, but they're rare as hen's teeth.
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Jul 10, 2021 18:21
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