paradoxGentleman posted:

If my puppy dog eyes still work now that I am the third youngest member of the family, I might convince my relatives to play some board games once I go back home in December.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Is the Dracula Dossier available in PDF? I tried looking in Pelgrane's site but I just got confused.

I need it for ... reasons

Fenarisk posted:

One month closer to blades in the dark being done! That and getting a new set of dice as a chiestmas present, gotta find a real cool one somewhere online someone can order for me.

Elfgames posted:

I'm very (notreally) sad that we skipped thanksgiving, I know a lot of y'all are foreign communists but thanksgiving is the most D&D of holidays where we celebrate invading a land and taking all the natives poo poo and pretending it was mutual.

Helical Nightmares posted:

I agree it's a fantastic holiday and you should be forced to eat turkey at gunpoint you filthy commie. Yams are good. Mmmmm.

Yawgmoth posted:

If you don't like cranberry sauce you're basically Hitler.

quote:

Concept

Ultimum is a tabletop Role-Playing Game that is built around a dramatic, science fiction story about races and peoples that are all learning how to live together in the face of survival. The setting is Earth in the far future. The continents have collided and created Pangea Ultima. New sentient species, both alien and terrestrial now populate the Earth and humanity has just returned. There are galaxy spanning threats to overcome, but for now, we need to regroup.

In Ultimum, the players determine the course of the story. In kitchens, living rooms and gaming stores all over the world, players will be playing out their Ultimum sessions from week to week. Once they're finished, they'll upload their progress to the Ultimum website. The developers will organize and trend the player data and start building the future storyline from there.

Helical Nightmares posted:

Um. Well.

It's ok I guess.


Anyway. Gaaaaaaaaaaaames.

There is this game Ultimum that I stumbled across. It is a far future, optimistic post-apocalyptic scifi game.

Although there is the ruins of two alien empires that invaded earth to explore and scavenging to do; the humans and the crocodile-men, ape-men, robot-men, wolf-bear-men (yes you read that right), elf-men, energy-men, and sort of dwarf-men all interact in a mostly harmonious fashion.

This isn't fallout. To me the tone is more survival and exploration of a vaguely familiar world, rather than say an colony planet that is alien to all the players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TWrTc0d54E




















The tone of the beta rulebook is very much "Heroic, gently caress Yeah!" and it is rather endearing.

For example:






They had a kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409548667/ultimum

The free beta rules (139 pages), character sheet and adventure are here:

http://www.ultimumrpg.com/downloads.html


The other major thrust of Ultimum is "online support". This is suppost to include smartphone app and a computer program of the Ultimum rules.

From the website:

Helical Nightmares posted:

I agree it's a fantastic holiday and you should be forced to eat turkey at gunpoint you filthy commie. Yams are good. Mmmmm.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Is the Dracula Dossier available in PDF? I tried looking in Pelgrane's site but I just got confused.

I need it for ... reasons

Rasamune posted:

Chances are I'll just be playing Scrabble, Love Letter, and/or Set with the family

FactsAreUseless posted:

I got Set banned from a board game club because I was too good at it.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Same, but from the Sucking Men's Off club.

Ningyou posted:

what the poo poo is a "bundle of tentacles"

Swagger Dagger posted:

There's a Bundle of Holding for The Esoterrorists up. https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Esoterrorists

It's not the best Gumshoe game (That'd be Night's Black Agents or Trail of Cthulhu, depending on which aesthetic you prefer) but it is a Good Game and a good introduction to that system. The Esoterror Summoning Guide and The Book of Unremitting Horror in particular are good reads, and are basically system-agnostic.

quote:

U.S. Army intelligence sent two agents to infiltrate Gygax’s war-gaming circle in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in the nineteen-seventies, believing that the group’s tabletop reënactments with miniature figures might be training sessions for would-be anti-government insurgents. Finding Gygax and his cohort to be harmless, they asked to join.

quote:

What was largely unknown or omitted from this brouhaha is that Gygax was an intermittently observant Jehovah’s Witness. This startling fact crops up about halfway through Witwer’s biography, when he notes that Gygax’s “controversial” game, along with his smoking and drinking, had led to a parting of the ways with the local congregation. Up until that point, the matter of Gygax’s faith had gone unmentioned in the biography, and it is barely discussed thereafter. (The book’s index does not have an entry for “Jehovah’s Witness” or “Gygax, Gary—religious beliefs.”) Given the furor that D. & D. caused, the absence of a deeper analysis of Gygax’s faith is a glaring omission. In a recent interview with Tobias Carroll, Witwer acknowledged that Gygax “was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. He would go door-to-door and he would give out pamphlets. He was pretty outspoken about it, as a matter of fact.” The reason for almost completely excluding it from the biography, Witwer says, is that “I couldn’t find it [as] a huge driving force in his life.…I didn’t want to be too heavy-handed with that, because I’m not clear that, especially with his gaming work and even his home life, how big a factor that was on a day-to-day basis. But I do know he was practicing.”

Gygax was enough of a believer in the sect’s dogma to post a note in the International Federation of Wargaming Monthly informing its readers that he did not celebrate Christmas because the Bible commands “that the followers of Jesus refrain from having anything to do with pagan religious celebrations.” This from a man whose company would go on to publish books called “Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes” and “Deities and Demigods,” in which beings from numerous pagan religions were codified for inclusion in Dungeons & Dragons.

quote:

Likewise, there are only passing mentions of Gygax’s years of work as an insurance underwriter. But one needs only to browse the Advanced D. & D. “Player’s Handbook” or the “Dungeon Master’s Guide” to see how similar the books’ numerous charts are to actuarial tables.

gradenko_2000 posted:

This in particular stood out to me for putting context as to why D&D was designed with such a "realistic" bent to its "milieu", such as using stat requirements combined with stat rolls to generate an expected distribution of "how many Paladins per thousand PCs", which would then be emulated by games where you need to randomly roll for your race and you might only have a 1 in 100 chance of being an elf.

inklesspen posted:

I ran a session of Masks on Sunday, playing fast-and-loose with the Halcyon City canon (that is, I haven't bothered looking at it, except when my players bring it up because they liked something they read). So I have a planetary elemental Nova who has more in common with the Delinquent playbook than she'd like to admit, Legacy with the "wrong" powerset (she inherited from her supervillain father instead of her superhero mother, which isn't good PR), and vlogger Outsider who likes to pretend she understands Earth culture less than she actually does, and I had "Captain Halcyon" hook them up with the old mothballed base he and his friends used when they were the Junior Freedom League back in the 80s.

For their first mission, I sent them up against a teenage supervillain "Mister Mesmer", who had really discount-rate mind control, and they handily defeated him. But he turned out to have diplomatic immunity (son of the Ruritanian ambassador) so all that happened was he got deported. (Obviously he is going to come back later, with much stronger powers, in the season finale.)

Next mission, I'm thinking of having the Junior Freedom League's "Danger Room" having woken up due to a Y2K bug and gotten very angry at being neglected for 15 years, so it harasses the team by meddling with their electronic records (school schedules, bank accounts, etc) and then traps them in the Danger Room.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Is the Dracula Dossier available in PDF? I tried looking in Pelgrane's site but I just got confused.

I need it for ... reasons

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

What's the TRPG where I can have such a variety of skills?

inklesspen posted:

quote:

Editions Icare is proud to present a French role playing game with a truly original theme, already loved by players for the quality of its writing and its illustrations, now in English language for the first time ever. This funding campaign aims to back the professional translation of the work, and its distribution in the USA and the United Kingdom. Our publishing company, now eight years old, is specialized in publishing independent role-playing games with strong themes. We would therefore like to invite you to discover Würm, a role playing game that takes place at the very origins of humanity, which will surely strike a chord with both new and experienced players alike.

Humanity before history began, thirty five thousand years ago, in the middle of an ice age…

Link to Kickstarter Campaign




When you play Würm, it will be up to you to imagine what life was like for our ancestors, and give YOUR OWN vision of this time before time. During your adventures, whether simply surviving or going on perilous hunts or legendary quests, your characters will gain strength, wisdom and prestige by exploring unknown territories, daring to enter the darkness of mysterious caves, seeking out the powers of ancient spirits, or challenging the creatures of the night, the ice and the fire…

All the rules you need to play Würm are included in the core rulebook, detailed over nine chapters. These rules were designed to be simple and clear. For the most part, they only require a few 6-sided dice. Most of all, they were designed to be well adapted to the atmosphere of the Stone Age. For example, to develop the characters, you won’t need skills and stats, but a number of Strengths and Weaknesses that are connected to specific totems. Additionally, Talents and Secret techniques represent the abilities that a character will have to learn, such as painting, shamanism or certain combat techniques.

The game rules have been developed to be as close as possible to established archeological sources, carefully relaying what we know of the technical knowledge, the environment and part of the culture of our ancestors. However, the world of Würm also leaves room for a touch of fantasy and adventure: you will therefore find rules that allow you to play with the real powers of totem spirits, as well as a whole range of fantastical creatures living along side the mammoths and the cave bears, such as fire spirits, witches and glacier giants…

To let you dive right into the prehistoric adventure of the world of Würm, the core rulebook ends with four introduction scenarios, each one providing a specific atmosphere, such as adventure, investigation, melancholy, or humor. One scenario is especially designed for the initiation of younger players!

So prepare your flint or ivory-tipped spears, and make sure your clan and your totem spirits are behind you. The adventure begins the second you step outside your camp…Editions Icare is proud to present a French role playing game with a truly original theme, already loved by players for the quality of its writing and its illustrations, now in English language for the first time ever. This funding campaign aims to back the professional translation of the work, and its distribution in the USA and the United Kingdom. Our publishing company, now eight years old, is specialized in publishing independent role-playing games with strong themes. We would therefore like to invite you to discover Würm, a role playing game that takes place at the very origins of humanity, which will surely strike a chord with both new and experienced players alike. Humanity before history began, thirty five thousand years ago, in the middle of an ice age… In this long-forgotten time, many powerful creatures roamed far and wide over a vast territory covered in steppes and taiga, reaching from the white mountains to the raging sea: mammoths, aurochs, bison, giant deer, cave bears and cave lions. Among these huge creatures, two species of humans live in small communities of hunter-gatherers: the robust Bear Men (Neanderthals) and the taller Long Men (Cro-Magnon, or Cavemen).



All the rules you need to play Würm are included in the core rulebook, detailed over nine chapters. These rules were designed to be simple and clear. For the most part, they only require a few 6-sided dice. Most of all, they were designed to be well adapted to the atmosphere of the Stone Age. For example, to develop the characters, you won’t need skills and stats, but a number of Strengths and Weaknesses that are connected to specific totems. Additionally, Talents and Secret techniques represent the abilities that a character will have to learn, such as painting, shamanism or certain combat techniques. The game rules have been developed to be as close as possible to established archeological sources, carefully relaying what we know of the technical knowledge, the environment and part of the culture of our ancestors. However, the world of Würm also leaves room for a touch of fantasy and adventure: you will therefore find rules that allow you to play with the real powers of totem spirits, as well as a whole range of fantastical creatures living along side the mammoths and the cave bears, such as fire spirits, witches and glacier giants… To let you dive right into the prehistoric adventure of the world of Würm, the core rulebook ends with four introduction scenarios, each one providing a specific atmosphere, such as adventure, investigation, melancholy, or humor. One scenario is especially designed for the initiation of younger players! So prepare your flint or ivory-tipped spears, and make sure your clan and your totem spirits are behind you. The adventure begins the second you step outside your camp…



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