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I'd try dungeon world.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:55
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Yooper posted:Looking to run a family game with spouse and an 11 year old who is super into making maps, the Hobbit, and wants to try out an RPG. TOR is not mechanically very complex as long as you help them through character creation or hand them pregens, and is literally the good Middle-Earth RPG with maps and long journeys and pipe-smoking/riddle-making skills. If it's too complicated for an 11 year old, get Fellowship, which is a PbtA game (like Dungeon World) but actually designed for Hobbit/LotR style adventuring. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 00:10
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sebmojo posted:I'd try dungeon world. Cool, Seb vouch is good vouch. Lemon-Lime posted:TOR is not mechanically very complex as long as you help them through character creation or hand them pregens, and is literally the good Middle-Earth RPG with maps and long journeys and pipe-smoking/riddle-making skills. We looked at it but I can't get it on DrivethruRPG anymore and it's ridiculous expensive online. 2nd Edition looks to be out in November so maybe we'll migrate to that come the holidays. I'll check out Fellowship too, that looks cool.
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Sep 12, 2021 00:20
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Yooper posted:We looked at it but I can't get it on DrivethruRPG anymore and it's ridiculous expensive online. 2nd Edition looks to be out in November so maybe we'll migrate to that come the holidays. I'll check out Fellowship too, that looks cool. Ah, I didn't know they'd taken 1E off storefronts - I guess around when C7 lost the license.  Definitely pick up Fellowship, it's exactly what you want for a kid who likes The Hobbit and like all PbtA games it's pretty rules-light.
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Sep 12, 2021 00:28
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Definitely gonna also recommend Fellowship because it has a lot of player creativity and adding to the setting which honestly is gonna be great for a kid to try out.
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Sep 12, 2021 00:37
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I play Fellowship with an 11yo and 13yo and it is pretty great.
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Sep 12, 2021 00:38
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Yooper posted:Looking to run a family game with spouse and an 11 year old who is super into making maps, the Hobbit, and wants to try out an RPG. I'd say run Scarlet Heroes from Sine Nomine games (Kevin Crawford). It's designed for solo or 1-on-1 but can easily used with two PCs without any extra work except maybe adding more monsters. It's B/X D&D (old early 80s D&D) as a chassis but has a nice straight-forward skill system (roll 2d8 against a difficulty, skills are player/GM defined and supposed to pretty broad, like a skill called "Adventuring Thief" would cover all the things that your standard fantasy thief can do,) that replaces things like thief skills or elves rolling d6 to find secret doors and such. Combat can be run with minis or theater of the mind as desired, and all PCs get a special die they roll in combat to be able to take out weaker enemies in addition to their regular abilities. PCs are also all self-healing, to a degree, out of the box, so no one needs to be a heal bot, and there is a mechanic called Defying Death that allows players to bypass a challenge or puzzle they can't solve by taking some damage. There is a free version on Drivethrurpg, as well as a pay version that you can get in PDF or print. I've used it to run a high power regular version of BECMI D&D (also an old D&D,) it's very easy to mechanically tinker with and add stuff to, but it is a complete system and setting all in one book.
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Sep 17, 2021 18:11
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So, I'm looking for GMless two-player RPGs that are more on the upbeat side. Doesn't have to be sunshine and unicorns, but nothing depressing. Any suggestions?
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Oct 6, 2021 02:14
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Haystack posted:So, I'm looking for GMless two-player RPGs that are more on the upbeat side. Doesn't have to be sunshine and unicorns, but nothing depressing. Any suggestions? Are you familiar with the Belonging Outside Belonging/No Dice No Masters engine? Even if you aren't, you might be interested in Wanderhome. It has big tiny-hedgehog-knitting-sweaters energy.
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Oct 6, 2021 02:35
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Haystack posted:So, I'm looking for GMless two-player RPGs that are more on the upbeat side. Doesn't have to be sunshine and unicorns, but nothing depressing. Any suggestions? Pocket Danger Patrol, pulpy tongue-in-cheek retro-sci-fi played in little episodes. Post-apocalyptic hack called Gamma Patrol (check down the page) that adds another 2 pages (Gamma World or Mad Max-ish). Heaven Nor Hell, fraught romance between an angel and a devil across history. and then some from me: Like Skyscrapers Blotting Out The Sun, writing game of woes in translation where one player's a writer working on their magnum opus and the other's a translator 'helping' by adding explanatory footnotes. The exact tone depends on what you wanna write. Bodyworks, a pair of body-snatchers stealing body parts in dark fantasy alt-Victorian London. needs a copy of the boardgame Operation to play. Pockets full of Stars, storybook-type game about jumping between stars. EDIT: all of these are free or PWYW except Heaven Nor Hell. UnCO3 fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 11:59
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The last holiday special ended with the players successfully navigating the vile inside joke boss, and the special guest flying off with his special lady in the sky in his sleigh. Users were given the choice whether to take the orb the government wanted for themselves, or to signal the troops to extract it for a big reward. Like, I knew they weren't going to give the troops the orb but it felt like it was right to give them the choice, and of course they went with the expected. Originally in my head the orb is what caused so many fixtures from our community to end up stuck on the island in weird sort of loops, but I didn't totally say that out loud so I can have it deus ex machina them into any sort of other genre. Unfortunately I've been really busy or lazy or both and haven't put together the holiday game yet. Last year we played Fate Accelerated, but I'm not so sure it worked out that great, it took us about 3/4 of the session to get a handle on the basics. Also, I had a story to tell, so was very railroady, and plus don't have any great ideas, so I'm looking for a system where the story is player generated. We play a Forged in the Dark game every week though so maybe not that (although I did originally toy with them ending up in mechs in Beam Saber, that's gonna be another year).
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Dec 11, 2021 23:34
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Forgot about this thread. What's the closest game to Burning Wheel (that isn't a BW derivative like Torchbearer). If I want to play an epic crunchy-and-narrative game, am I stuck playing something with a very defined scope like Ars or Pendragon?
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Jan 9, 2022 01:35
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CitizenKeen posted:Forgot about this thread. Have you tried the latest Runequest?
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Jan 29, 2022 23:12
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Vadun posted:Have you tried the latest Runequest? or generic BRP 3e?
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Jan 29, 2022 23:17
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Does anyone know any systems that are specifically inspired by the Oz series? Ideally ones that are more inspired by the later books than by Wonderful Wizard, which has a somewhat different tone.
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Feb 19, 2022 07:57
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Crossposting from TG Chat: What are some examples of RPGs that
I've been playing a lot of Star Renegades and Ruined King lately, and I've been thinking about that kind of weighty decision space where characters don't really move around in combat. I'm okay with #2 having the teeniest bit of positioning (front line versus rear guard, "high ground" status, or somesuch), but otherwise no spatial positioning. D&D 3.X's "you can totally play this theater-of-the-mind" don't count - the game should strongly assume no positioning, but also, be pretty crunchy.
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Mar 9, 2022 17:32
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Not completely sure this counts because it does require at a minimum placing combatants at least between melee/short/long range, but Shadowrun is pretty crunchy. e: nvm, missed the part about combatants not moving around. I guess Shadowrun still counts if you get rid of Physical Adepts and melee-focused Street Samurais. Admiralty Flag fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Mar 9, 2022 |
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Mar 9, 2022 17:41
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Admiralty Flag posted:Not completely sure this counts because it does require at a minimum placing combatants at least between melee/short/long range, but Shadowrun is pretty crunchy. I'm fine with "my character moves from melee to short", as long as "melee distance" is a distance from everybody, not relative to specific characters. I'm wondering what crunchy TTRPG combat looks like when you never say "and I run over here and flank her" looks like.
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Mar 9, 2022 17:49
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So something like Flying Circus' air combat, but for people. Don't know of a system that does that specifically though. (In FC, positioning is entirely up to your rolls and doesn't last beyond a single action. Combatants "appear" and "disappear" to simulate the chaotic nature of air combat.)
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Mar 9, 2022 18:29
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CitizenKeen posted:I'm fine with "my character moves from melee to short", as long as "melee distance" is a distance from everybody, not relative to specific characters. I'm wondering what crunchy TTRPG combat looks like when you never say "and I run over here and flank her" looks like. Comedy answer to your question: 3:16 -- Carnage Amongst the Stars
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Mar 9, 2022 23:51
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Admiralty Flag posted:What would crunchy combat look like if you took out options like that? Wouldn't that just be complexity instead of crunchiness? I... don't know that I know the difference.
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Mar 10, 2022 00:01
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I've seen space games use nothing but a relative velocity track for positioning. I'm specifically thinking of a hard sci-fi mech game from ~20 years ago. Jupiter something or other, I can't remember the exact name. It had a single-system multipolity setting, with Earth Natives, and some folks living on Jupiter's moons and colony ships "orbiting" in Jupiter's L4 & L5 points being two of the major powers. I think there have been some sword-fight/dueling focused games with extreme crunch that just assume everyone is within stabbing range at all times, and tactical decision making is instead about picking the correct stances or even specific swings.
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Mar 10, 2022 04:11
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LLSix posted:I've seen space games use nothing but a relative velocity track for positioning. Jovian Chronicles?
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Mar 10, 2022 10:57
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DigitalRaven posted:Jovian Chronicles? Jovian Chronicles tracks range as well as inertial velocity.
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Mar 10, 2022 17:50
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DigitalRaven posted:Jovian Chronicles? That's the one. Tsilkani posted:Jovian Chronicles tracks range as well as inertial velocity. I guess I forgot about that.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:03
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cheetah7071 posted:Does anyone know any systems that are specifically inspired by the Oz series? Ideally ones that are more inspired by the later books than by Wonderful Wizard, which has a somewhat different tone. Heroes in Oz -- FUDGE based Adventures in Oz -- Custom but simple ruleset Both available on Drivethru Battle for Oz -- Savage Worlds Oz: Dark and Terrible -- crunchy and very dark published by Emerald City Expeditions
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May 17, 2022 14:49
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Alright friends. My last TTRPG group we played 5e because it’s accessible, popular, and I knew it well enough to GM. Now we’re looking at playing again and I want to find something that I can have as much fun with the narrative as I did D&D, but with combat that’s not a slog like 5e can be. Also we’re doing this via zoom so something that can easily be Theater of the Mind. My first thoughts were Dungeonworld, but I know it’s 10 years old and thought something more modern might have sprung up. Monster of the Week seems neat in concept, but I don’t know how it plays. Blades in the Dark also looks cool but it seems more all heists all the time (I’ve read the book)
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Jul 21, 2022 22:35
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BitD is basically heists most of the time. Sometimes it's "Defend your turf" but most of the time it's "Pull a job". If the PCs are a smuggler or assassin crew then things might be a little different in that jobs might not mostly be heists but it's still jobs all the way down, but that's not to say it can't be entertaining -- after all, no two jobs have to be alike. I'm running MotW right now and my two main difficulties are 1) having enough mysteries to go on tap because sometimes the PCs will short-circuit your best-laid plans (Tome of Magic, the add-on book, has a bunch of adventures in it that help with this) and 2) appropriately challenging the PCs, because they tend to be somewhat fragile...it's either nick them a bunch (which can lead to slow combats) or they're burning luck points to stay alive. The only real problem I've found is making low-damage combats stay interesting. The third potential problem is a PbtA problem, which is the mixed success (this also applies to BitD). Some players see a mixed success as a failure and can't accept that they're "failing" most of the time.
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Jul 21, 2022 23:12
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Saxophone posted:Alright friends. My last TTRPG group we played 5e because it’s accessible, popular, and I knew it well enough to GM. 1: All PCs are on a relatively similar power level in a lot of BRP games, you are all generally Just People. Helps keep things balanced. 2: the skill lists in a BRP game may be a little too exhaustive but they also tend to allow for both players to invest points into them more directly based on their interests and also suggest a substantially wider field of things your character can do or is at least baseline competent at. The skills in D&D are all basically focused on Adventuring while BRP skills, again, can go too deep in the weeds but. 3: It is tremendously easy to just pull understanding of character ability and resource at a glance at your sheet. It's solidly wonderful to just grok "roll equal to or under/above this percentile" with the occasional additive/subtractive modifiers or other minor dice tricks, this speeds play and resolution up substantially. Plus you're no longer just a Fighter whose job it is to hit poo poo and then stand around, thumb up your rear end! You have depth in skills that aren't all just necessarily tied to Strength! You're some dude with breadth of ability. 4: it is tremendously easy to pull enemy stats right out your rear end. They're bad at it? Give 'em low numbers in fighting skills. Coin-flip? 50% in a skill. Give them as many skills or as little as you think would make sense at a level you feel would be applicable, bam, boom, slap a few HP in there, bellissima, that's a loving complete enemy right there. 5: speaking of HP, HP is lower than D&D and that both makes weapons more potent, hits more powerful and fights move quicker. 6: for the love of god give them resources like Fate Points to expend so they can feel a little more in control when they get some bad rolls as opposed to just being like "god drat it, 70% in a skill and three misses!". 7: d100 number feel good Am I just unrepentantly a fan of this model of system, yes yes I am, but if you're moving from the mechanics of 5e into something else, d100 is simpatico enough to help get people going through the flow of feeling the process of gaming, there's a lot of content and older editions of games that are already doing high-fantasy adventure you can draw from or use for ideas, and I cannot emphasize how much it just works with throwing ideas and fights off the cuff at your players with less effort and expenditure of attention/brain on your part.
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Jul 21, 2022 23:37
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Saxophone posted:Alright friends. My last TTRPG group we played 5e because it’s accessible, popular, and I knew it well enough to GM. If you're good specifically at telling fantasy adventure/dungeon-crawling stories because you've got a lot of love for the medium, Dungeon World is still kind of your best bet. You might want to track down Inverse World if you feel like getting all Laputa/One Piece about things, maybe consider Fellowship (though I consider it a little more advanced a GM step) if you want to have a big champions of the world vs. the Evil Overlord showdown. The upcoming Stonetop has a strong Dungeon World-y core in it, but is focused on the big names in a low-fantasy frontier village, helping the whole thing prosper. If you're good extra-specifically at the gritty part of things you might want to pick up Torchbearer, which focuses in on hauling food, water, light, and tools into the dungeon and hoping to haul treasure back out. Or if you're not good at those things, what are you good at, and what kinds of media do your players like? PbtA games are often best considered as fellow entries in the genre they're trying to let you play a game of, so if you like telenovelas or YA supernatural romance or urban fantasy intrigue or monster-of-the-week shows or thirsty sword lesbians, there might be something out there that lines up even better with your deal.
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Jul 22, 2022 04:24
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Man so far all of this has been super helpful. Honestly, 5e is fun until combat hits, and then it gets real sloggy and my players forget poo poo they can do and no matter how much describing things I do, any and all fun had is because of descriptions and dice telling stories rather than the crunchy combat. Thirsty Sword Lesbians was a fun read but I’m not sure if I want to run it. Honestly I’m not a particularly serious person and I had some serious plot beats, even a massive betrayal of everyone they loved and trusted, but at the end of the day it was like 60% laughs describing all the incredulous poo poo a group of skilled, if not frequently inept, adventurers can do in Sharn. Combat slowed fun to a crawl, and all the fun of combat was had in descriptions. Otherwise it was a lot of ‘I do 2d12 damage. Done.’ Basically streamline and take some crunch out of combat, but leave all the fun magic and narrative shenanigans that go on. My party had an utter blast blowing up a tower and causing a huge ruckus in an underground fighting ring and then they fought a Nargacuga and during combat everything slowed down, it took like an hour and a half, and then bam they were on the other side having a blast escaping.
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Jul 22, 2022 05:52
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I'm gonna second Monster of the Week, it's my favorite PBTA by a country mile.
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Jul 22, 2022 11:34
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Saxophone posted:Man so far all of this has been super helpful.
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Jul 22, 2022 12:05
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Saxophone posted:Man so far all of this has been super helpful. Worlds Without Number? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348809/Worlds-Without-Number-Free-Edition?src=also_purchased free version so you can preview it
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Jul 22, 2022 12:10
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Saxophone posted:Honestly, 5e is fun until combat hits What are the out-of-combat parts of 5e that you most like? That might help figure out what systems would preserve them. (I generally find that 5e is all about combat, plus minor magical narrative power, so I’m having trouble guessing what bits you don’t want to give up.)
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Jul 22, 2022 14:31
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Subjunctive posted:What are the out-of-combat parts of 5e that you most like? That might help figure out what systems would preserve them. (I generally find that 5e is all about combat, plus minor magical narrative power, so I’m having trouble guessing what bits you don’t want to give up.) I think that’s it. Persuasion checks, investigating, interactions, mostly the RP. The one time we had a blast in combat was because they were fighting the Eberron equivalent of a tech bro and I was monolguing goofy poo poo like cryptocurrency being monetized zombies and stuff. I’m not well-versed outside of D&D though I’ve read a bunch of TTRPG books. My party has fun using spells in non-combat settings and I enjoy having lots of cool magical items for them to use.
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Jul 22, 2022 15:11
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My friends and I only play "crunchy" traditional systems like Pathfinder, but I like to read about the more narrative systems from time to time and then sneak those rules into my games under the guise of/along with making up my own rules. So, is there anything interesting anyone has seen regarding letting all the players have a lot more control over the game world? I'm specifically thinking of a D&D style game where each PC is strongly aligned with a faction (a bandit ring leader, a researching wizard in a remote tower, a petty king etc) and the players actually spend time interacting with each other and playing the part of the DM. Like, if the Wizard wants to visit the castle of the petty King, it's the Petty King Player describing the castle, the reactions of the castle's staff, etc etc. I'm imagining them being a bit more adversarial than a normal party, having competing goals, kind of fleshing out and pursuing their own goals with the "real" DM being much more of genuine rules referee and possibly providing background events like an orc invasion.
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Jul 26, 2022 14:51
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Jack B Nimble posted:My friends and I only play "crunchy" traditional systems like Pathfinder, but I like to read about the more narrative systems from time to time and then sneak those rules into my games under the guise of/along with making up my own rules. The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power is pretty much fantasy Apocalypse World, where everybody is some major player in local politics.
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Jul 26, 2022 17:10
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Glazius posted:The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power is pretty much fantasy Apocalypse World, where everybody is some major player in local politics. "Reminiscent of the A Song of Ice and Fire or First Law books, SCUP focuses on power, politics, and intrigue in a setting you create using a unique world building exercise" Yup, yup, that's it right there, thank you!
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Jul 26, 2022 17:23
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I want to run a superhero game for a long term campaign. I've done so before with Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition and I really didn't like it and only did it because I kind of inherited due to circumstances. I struggled with the crunch that game has but I was able to lean their of user support and forums but it was really hard and not fun for me to run. I would like a modern setting game game that can do superhero superhero stories including meaningful out of combat scenes. I was really hoping that the Sentinels RPG would work for what I want but it doesn't have a lot of progression progression or out of combat systems. Any advice?
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Aug 9, 2022 04:32
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