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So I have only occasionally lurked this forum on SA, despite being a massive roleplaying nerd and at this point reasonably experienced tabletop gm as well, but I was recently pontificating nostalgically and wondered if forum play-by-post roleplaying was ever very popular in this community? I mean of the purely creative writing-based variety, as I see there are a number of play-by-post games running, but more inclined towards mechanics and incorporating actual game elements. Recently I was thinking about how I used to do a lot of that kind of roleplaying as a teenager, and how it seems like it was such a weird and mid-to-late 2000s thing that the Internet captured, as all the forum roleplays I know of are dead or dying, except for a few run in specific very popular fandoms that always get an influx of new players, and it seems like something that could have existed on SA at some point over its history. Sorry if this is off-topic. I tried to use the search engine to find any mention of this stuff and only found a few random posts in a previous incarnation of this thread.
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Jun 25, 2021 13:45
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 19:53 |
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Thanks for all the answers, everyone! I've made a few attempts to embark on different games-based elements of forums culture, like CYOAs or the Battletech thing or the Lone Wolf playthrough (which I think are in the Let's Play forum and not here), but haven't quite gotten caught up in one yet as I've mostly just been reading through backlog. Cool to see people are more than familiar with the concept. It's very true that, as a hobby/subculture, it loaned itself a lot to often cringey fandom, and there has been a lot of garbage tier roleplay across the Internet in all formats, but man there was some fun stuff going on back when there were more original settings and different systems in use. It was also really interesting how there was enough overlap between communities that it wasn't common to randomly come across Internet people from one forum somewhere else. Boba Pearl posted:Honestly, I think if you posted in the TG Game recruitment thread, you'd get some bites. I used to do a lot of roleplaying online as well, until the RolePlayersGuild put a nazi in charge as an admin, and the politics forum became super anti-trans, pro-nazi, and then there was a lot of uh "weird" RPs, about exterminating the unclean. You can also find non-nazi content on SufficientVelocity, a CYOA and Roleplay community. For example, I've roleplayed once or twice on Roleplayersguild way back in the day, and I know that it's been the "fallout" site for a lot of people I've known from other places that have died, shut down, etc. This was all prompted when I randomly came across this ancient fossil from 2006 while I was looking for some old writing projects, which describes the history of one such place on the Internet and generally reminds of how weird the Internet was in the mid 2000s. A lot of people who I knew from there eventually ended up on RPGuild, I think. Leperflesh posted:I think most goons like to have at least some semblance of an adjudicating ruleset that allows a GM to, say, give players a very high or very low chance of success at something, which is very hard to do with totally freeform RP. I think this is kind of what inevitably kills freeform roleplays. There's always a constant pressure between the idea of freeform and the need to implement systems so that there's a logic to everything, and it's impossible to satisfy both ideals, especially on a community scale. Hilariously, combat roleplay was super popular at the site I linked and was literally conceived out of that very blindsight, where people basically tried to write each other into a corner describing their characters' actions abstractly with very loose rulesets. It was as hilariously awful as anything else involving the e-peens of two nerds on the internet crashing together, and basically always ended in flame wars or one person trolling the other into submission and was generally incredibly toxic.
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Jun 26, 2021 00:46
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I don't browse this subforum as much as I should, but I was wondering if there any particular threads, discussions or effort posts about pre-session prep or even DMing in general that anyone cares to link me to? (or, failing that, maybe we can talk about it here) I'm working to bring back a 5e campaign that I've had on hiatus since the end of 2020, basically a heavily reworked version of Descent into Avernus, taking a lot of cues from here on ways to modify the campaign book to make everything more generally coherent. I usually like to DM low fantasy systems, in particular Mythras/RQ6, so I found this necessary to ground the game and soften some of the more 'cartoony' vibes of the campaign. That site has a few other articles of the blogger's thoughts on what I'm talking about, like this one on what they call the three clue rule, which I've found useful in my games.
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Dec 29, 2021 16:24
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Thanks, sorry I didn't catch that before I posted!
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Dec 29, 2021 16:48
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Does anyone play Mythras around here? It was one of the first systems I ran way back when it was Runequest 6 about a decade ago. I remember they had just started their Mythic Earth line with Mythic Britannia and it boggled my mind that they wanted to release an entire sourcebook about Mythic Constantinople. This is a d100 system, in case anyone has never heard of it before. If anyone isn't sure what to run for their fantasy homebrew that they don't wish to constrain with Vancian magic systems, or because they're going for a different fantasy vibe than DnD easily provides, I recommend it! I've been running 5e for awhile now and I'm starting to chafe for the crunchier, but also far more interesting combat and magic systems from Mythras. Back in the day the magic systems were so intimidating to me as a new GM that I pretty much just used it to run a very low fantasy quasi-realistic game and it was excellent. My players don't have that much experience with ttrpgs / video game logic and are mostly just nerds, and they chafe a bit at the class structure and arbitrary restrictions of DnD, so I'm thinking of running a oneshot soon to gauge their interest in a campaign further down the line. I specifically remember having to homebrew a couple things to make my game run with the flavor I liked, so just thought I'd see if any goons play with Mythras and what kind of house rules they use.
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Sep 27, 2022 15:16
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I hadn't browsed that thread before! I'm currently reading a copy of the update to Mythras (I was still using a pdf from back when the game was Runequest 6 and I think the rebrand was in 2016) and I'll try my hand at a review afterwards!
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Sep 27, 2022 16:33
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It'll work for me to refresh the rules and mechanics of the game, so I went ahead and started a write-up for it
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Sep 28, 2022 16:08
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Mythras (aka the game that used to be Runequest 6) doesn't see a lot of discussion on SA (I did one post of a fatal and friends and never got around to continuing it) and it's slightly crunchy, but if you mesh with it I think it's a great replacement for D&D. The magic systems and melee combat are both very good, but the power scale maxes out much lower than D&D and combat can be very lethal, so that's something to keep in mind as far as whether it will fit your group or not. Nowadays there are quite a few supplements fleshing out premade settings, mostly mythical versions of historical Earth. The Mythic Britain campaign is one I've really always wanted to run but have never gotten around to. There's also a Classic Fantasy book that is basically a hybrid of Mythras and AD&D which was very well received and I've thought about running sometime. edit: this wasn't particularly in regards to heists although I think you could probably make one work pretty easily in Mythras! Tosk fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Mar 25, 2023 |
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Mar 25, 2023 12:00
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What are some of the better sci-fi games? I'm familiar with Shadowrun and I've played a bit of FFG Star Wars way back, but otherwise not much. Is Traveller a good game and if so what edition? What about any of the other Star Wars games? I have a few players who have expressed interest in something more space opera in the future and I would kind of like to myself, but I've never known what system would be good for it. I used to love Eclipse Phase for its setting but it seems impractically crunchy for 90% of people.
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Mar 25, 2023 13:52
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:as always the question is "to do what" To avoid a more longwinded answer (edit: that became a little longwinded anyway) to that question I would say I'd like a system strong enough to stand on its own without focusing on combat. In D&D I don't mind the occasional random encounter that leads into a fight but my players don't always go murderhobo and they like to interact with the setting and chew the scenery a bit with the NPCs, so in another system the combat might happen less often. In D&D I like to base my prep a lot around coming up with factions and NPCs and connections between them. As far as vibes, if I run a sci-fi campaign then some of my favorite media are Babylon 5, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, KotOR and the original trilogy of SW, Dune and Foundation, etc, so probably something that could support a political narrative but also give the players cool powers to play with. As far as other considerations that occur to me off the top of my head, I've never played anything more rules lite than D&D and that could be fun but I do like games with structure to them that won't require me to ad lib every mechanic. Something popular enough that it might have a splatbook out to get inspiration from the setting, or that I can Google and find the journal of somebody else's campaign would be nice, that sort of stuff has been really useful to me when I DM something new. Tosk fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 25, 2023 |
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Mar 25, 2023 15:01
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There's a game I think a lot of people in tg would enjoy, but I don't see much discussion surrounding it. I'm not sure if this is because it's unknown, the consensus is that it's bad and I haven't heard, etc. Last time I mentioned it seemed like it might be the former, so I started a fatal and friends about Mythras and promptly never continued because real life sidetracked me pretty hard. It used to be called Runequest 6 before a licensing issue changed that. However, I currently have a 5e campaign and constantly find myself thinking how much more I like the design of Mythras as a game. would continuing the fatal & friends be the best way to drum up discussion about it? otherwise, has anyone happened to have read or even played it? Just curious. I haven't actually played it in years, as I try to introduce new players via D&D and have never had the chance to segue into a Mythras game (it was still RQ6 last time I played). However, I want to start slowly developing a campaign and familiarizing myself with the rules again, so I'm thinking of continuing my F&F anyway as an excuse to get a firm grasp on how the systems work.
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Apr 27, 2023 00:20
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mllaneza posted:RQ 2e was better than any D&D version available in 1979, and the gap hasn't closed since. :post: I honestly haven't played any other Runequest games but Mythras definitely has a lot of Gloranthan DNA in general, even since the rebranding. I don't doubt that it's better than D&D, at least for a lot of tables. There seem to be so, so many people trying to shoehorn their campaigns into the structure offered by D&D when it would be better served by other games. Splicer posted:Are there any games (apart from the Nain REIGN supplement) that have decent do it yourself spell rules? Not just comprehensive lists of possible effects with points attached but also the surrounding structure needed to make them easy to use in-game? At the risk of sounding like a broken record giving I posted about it one page ago, I feel like Mythras does this really well. The very first section of the chapter on Magic is about how you can pick and choose any of the 5 different "flavors" of magic to plug into your setting depending on how modular or how fantastic you want your game to be. These 5 systems are folk magic (the kind of day to day stuff that villagers might use to tidy their homes, or a hunter to sharpen their tools), animism (everything related to the spirit world, and binding spirits to fetishes), mysticism (basically wuxia stuff), theism (divine magic) and sorcery. I think Sorcery would be the example closest to what you're looking for, so I'm going to just quote some text from that chapter to give an idea of what I mean. quote:Manipulating the Cosmos Then, to give two examples of random Sorcery spell ideas that the book gives around which you can hang these ideas: Wrack spell posted:Wrack (Substance or Harm) Animate spell posted:Animate (Substance)
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Apr 28, 2023 12:51
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My current campaign is on pause and I want to run a few non-D&D (or one D&D and then other systems) one shot adventures to try something new. Does anyone have any recommendations for oneshots established as "good" that I can mine for prep as far as plot and set pieces go? It will inevitably become its own thing but I'm looking for anything designed to be run in 1-3 sessions. I've played a handful of systems besides D&D and Pathfinder, mostly d100 stuff. I'd like to survey adventures from 4-5 different systems but mostly just wondering if anyone has any resources or suggestions to throw my way. edit: The setting/genre is essentially irrelevant, maybe leaning away from pure grimdark fantasy which I personally kind of like but my players probably prefer something lighter. I'd love to try something scifi for example Tosk fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 14:32
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I had a player drop out of my group awhile ago (6 of us counting myself) and have been thinking about a replacement. How do you guys feel about this process? Two of my players have a friend that they had mentioned to me as someone interested in playing awhile ago, but 5 players is my upper limit, both to host at my house and to handle in-game as the DM, so at the time it was a no. They mentioned that person would still be interested, but I have another friend (who happens to be friends with the same two players and therefore this will probably not be an issue, but that is beside the point) who I would prefer to invite to the game. I'm mostly used to playing with close-ish friends or acquaintances. I currently mostly host the game at my place, although we occasionally rotate, and definitely have the largest time investment for obvious reasons as the DM. I notice this makes me feel "entitled" to choose who I want to play with, but I also don't want to be a despot. I plan on talking to my group about it, but I'm the only forever DM and this has been their first group with the exception of one player, so I'm curious about how other people feel about this kind of thing with regard to their groups.
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Sep 23, 2023 22:24
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I'm waiting on my players to give me concepts for a Mythras Classic Fantasy game I'm going to be starting soon. Mythras used to be Runequest 6 and was rebranded as such after some licensing things with Chaosium happened and they stripped put all the Glorantha. It's a d100 game in the BRP family and it ticks a lot of boxes for me - Vancian magic and D&D's class and level system always felt super restricting conceptually to me. It surprises me that I see so little discussion of this game because it nails the "gritty low fantasy" vibe so well. It has some magic systems that are kind of crunchy but they're also totally modular if you want or don't want to include them in your campaign. The Mythras line itself has some cool supplements detailing mythical versions of historical civilization - Mythic Britain and Mythic Constantinople that I'm aware of and I think there's at least one more, but Classic Fantasy is a halfway point with AD&D that I'll be playing for the first time and it looks really good. I just felt like giving the game a shoutout because I really like it and they released this free starter book for Classic Fantasy recently. Anyone who has been wondering how to shoehorn their historical low fantasy game into D&D might be interested in it or especially core Mythras.
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Sep 30, 2023 02:33
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 19:53 |
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What do people think of as "well-written" campaigns? Regardless of system. I think the two I hear most about are Masks of Nyarlathotep and Griffin Mountain, the latter I think for pioneering the idea of a sandbox setting splatbook (I could be wrong, I haven't run it). I haven't read Masks. I'm one of those people doomed to be forever DM and intermittently trying to run games before life gets in the way. I've always tried to do in person, however, and I've recently decided that virtual gaming definitely seems to be the way forward and feels a lot easier to schedule and plan around, and most of the 'tools' I use while DMing would work better anyway. I often play with people who are new, so frequently I've fallen into the trap of DMing D&D despite not loving it, for the convenience of having prewritten campaign materials to revamp into whatever I want, and because new players in my experience like to start there because it's more familiar. Anyway, I've decided that if I end up playing a module again that's fine, but I'd rather play my homebrew campaign in another system (Mythras). I usually don't prep more than a few sessions at a time, but if I'm not going to lean on D&D I think it could be a good idea to do quite a bit more prep for this campaign, so I'm looking for good examples to see if they give me any ideas for how to structure my prep edit: this probably should have gone in the DMing thread, but oh well
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Mar 25, 2024 17:47
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