Tabletop RPGs/story-building games - beyond D&D

anyone play starfinder yet? gearing up to gm a campaign and it's a lot to get my head around having only played 5e but i'm pretty excited about parts of it, the ship combat rules in particular have me itching to build some cool encounters. not sure about the heavy magic presence and why it couldn't be handwaved away as telepathy/alien powers instead of explicitly integrating the fantasy and sci-fi settings but that's quite a minor nitpick.

welp, to each their own

when was the last rpg to successfully inhabit the space opera, uh, space

Has there been one that isn't Traveller?

Star Frontiers was the bomb.

Big co-sign on WFRP and The Enemy Within. Sadly we never got to finish the campaign.

Star Frontiers was the bomb.

i played my first game of Burning Wheel on saturday & have signed up for a campaign with the same DM, so we'll see how that goes

i'm looking to run a RP intensive game (or games) around themes of counterinsurgency, civilian urban survival during war, occupation, and small unit combat and i'm looking for a fairly light system that would be easy to run such a thing in -- any suggestions please? (it actually turns out there was a This War of Mine style RPG made but it seems basically impossible to find.)

Haven't played it but: would you dig Night Witches? http://bullypulpitgames.com/games/night-witches/

And from the same designer, Grey Ranks http://bullypulpitgames.com/games/grey-ranks/

it looks extremely interesting and i'd love to play it but i don't think it'll let me simulate what i have in mind from the description... altho maybe. i do like the idea of having separate cycles for interpersonal drama and then mission/conflict.

oh that looks good too. i'll have to watch the gameplay vids after work to see if there's enough of a framework there that i can alter it to take place today.

any ilxors interested in maybe trying a rotating RPG club online through maybe roll20 or fb chat or something? there are a bunch of systems and settings i'm interested in trying and my weekly group is pretty much committed to the current dnd campaign.

already doing one. we use roll20 for the map and character sheets and dice and we use google chat for talking to each other, works pretty good.

plz can i get in?

sure. i'm the GM, we're playing the 1982 edition of TSR's star frontiers, about halfway through the volturnus campaign.

how do u want to connect? i'm on facebook at facebook.com/mordy if u want to talk through there or you can just email me @ mms531 *A*T* nyu *D*O*T* e;d;u;

i&I wanna be playing some call of cthulhu tbh

started a delta green campaign with four friends yesterday. it went pretty well.

i think i'm about to be part of a cyberpunk 2020 group

pretty pumped

I've been having fun running the newer WFRP 4e version of The Enemy Within, just in a discord server with a dice-rolling bot added.

The WFRP 4e rules are a bit of a messy patchwork but the fluff, its so crunchy

only ever played first edition but it's def my fav, both arcane and endlessly strange and grotty, squalid and real

i think i'm about to be part of a cyberpunk 2020 group

pretty pumped

Jelly.

yeah me too. cyberpunk 2020 is one of my favorite tabletop systems i'd love to play it again

lol

Leee i'm going to need you to expand on that, but i like where this is going

the system mechanics are only so-so iirc but the lore material is so good

one of the best card games ever (netrunner) is set in its world

the GM has never really ran a tabletop game of any sort before - are we doomed?

he is also incredibly bad at basic math. i guess part of the "are we doomed?" equation depends on how much i can chill out

no -- what's more important is the storytelling than the mechanics. as long as the GM feels comfortable learning as they go / fudging murky mechanics when they're too confusing and are slowing down the game i think you'll be fine. i suspect you're playing it more as a roleplaying game than a rollplaying game.

iirc and you should google for more current + specific ideas, some of the rulesets are not super fun/functional particularly netrunning but maybe rigging too? ppl have workarounds including just using skill checks/storytelling as opposed to fully implementing all the details.

Karl, one of my favorite gaming YT channels did a (hilarious) mini Cyberpunk 2020 campaign and basically hooked me into TT RPGs, at least as a viewer, I've been looking for my own game to join since then but have only managed to find some D&D/Pathfinder groups, which have been fun but I really rilly want to dive into the a sci-fi world at the moment.

anyone got recommendations for good channels/streams/whatever for non dnd content?

I just realized that maybe you were asking what "Jelly" means? It's jealous in kool kid talk, I'm surprised you don't know it!

Leee, was that Playstation Access?

Yes it was!

Awesome! I went in search of the videos you were describing and that was the one I found - they're really entertaining!

i've been thinking about starting up a DnD type game with my kids.. i've never really been a DM before though. any tips?

my strategy, if i were to start it right now, would be to find a game, read the..... manual (??), get them to make characters, and roll percentile dice for everything

Dungeon World would work, though the guy wrote it turned out to be a creep, so avoid buying it with money

idk how old are your kids? are they the type to get into ~~system mastery~~ or ~~character-driven storytelling~~ or both? are you looking for swords and sorcery in particular or other genres? do you want to make up the world and have them be characters in the world, or do you want it to be more directly collaborative?

i'm... not sure!

they're 11 and 8 - they want to be silly and have fun

i've been thinking about starting up a DnD type game with my kids

I've been running a VERRRRY simple d'n'd type game I came up with for my 5yo daughter, where she's a witch at witch school, and I come up with stories and adventures she helps tell, with dice rolls, and puzzles and riddles to solve, and if she wants to use a spell, she has to come up with a rhyme to make it work. She loves it, and it's ever-so-vaguely educational, and I've found myself putting huge amounts of time and effort into coming up with scenarios and puzzles.

the main focus is communal story-telling, which was an angle I missed when I was a kid playing RPGs who thought it was all about rolling the dice and winning.

that sounds amazing!

yeah that sounds excellent, communal story telling beats game mechanics every time imo

I would go to this witch school

me too - that's awesome stevie, she must love it so much

Thirding for your wholesome witch school!

that's such a great idea. i've wanted to start a dnd game with my kids and my 8yo is about to finish the first harry potter book so it might be perfect timing

Anyone played any of the ttrpgs in this bundle?

https://itch.io/b/2295/ttrpgs-for-palestine

Wanderhome is supposed to be good.

Still playing the alpine/Balkan PBP game. What a journey.

I have really enjoyed running Trophy Gold, which is sort of an OSR-ish story game. It feels like an early D&D game where death is around every corner, but it is zero prep and no stress. It turns out I am much better as a high-improv GM than I ever was as a high-prep GM.

We had a lot of rolls last night - maybe 8 in three hours - but I have also had sessions with a single roll. Every roll is high stakes and can change the story dramatically.

The highest complement I can give is that it's the closest I've felt to what gaming was like as a young kid since that time.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Wednesday, March 27, 2024 7:17 PM (ten months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I played that alpine setting pbp rpg for at least nine months. The game climaxed with us visiting Winterwhite, the goddess of winter and death, who a century or two ago had made a pact with the rulers of the valley that required each generation of rulers to sacrifice one of their children. The latest generation had broken the pact by failing to make the sacrifice, so Winterwhite brought a devastating supernatural winter to the valley that was on its way to killing everyone there, including the PCs. We ended up kidnapping the baron and his daughter and sacrificing them to the goddess to save everyone else. I voted against it and even offered up my character as a sacrifice instead. The game was very satisfying and also troubling. I kept thinking of the Star Trek line, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few", which is all well and good until you are holding the knife in your hand. One of my favorite gaming experiences ever.

We are 2-3 sessions away from finishing a campaign of Public Access, a game where you play adults who grew up in the late-80s/early 90s and return to their hometown in New Mexico in 2004 to investigate a Public Access TV station that disappeared and nearly no one else remembers. It's a premise with a very hard framing, but within that frame the players really shape the narrative. It's probably been the best ttrpg experience of my life.

whoa that sounds great. definitely gonna check this game out!! can you elaborate on why it is one of the best experiences? is it tension, or character moments, or the in-book plot or what?

guess i haven't posted in here for a while which is wild bc ttrpgs have become a pretty big part of my life again in the past 2ish years. joined a steady table where we've been able to play 2-3 times a month (we aim for every tuesday, but... life). i think i actually took a seat from someone who just couldn't commit to it anymore, and since my weekly thing had ended (ran a pub quiz for 9 years before the pub finally axed it), i had time in my schedule! it was with the same GM as the cyberpunk game i spoke of above, but with mostly different players. 5 years is a long time!

initially she was running another cyberpunk-inspired game, CY_BORG (cyberpunk offshoot of mork borg) which we didn't run for tooooo long because i don't think the borg ruleset really worked for the crew we had. didn't really end up making characters we particularly cared about. so we ran i think one pre-gen module of some sort, started some homebrew, and GM said you know what, let's try something else. and that's when we tried...

MOTHERSHIP

good lord what a game. will avoid getting too "let me tell you about my game" about it (what next, i tell you my fantasy football team? what i dreamed about yesterday?) but GOOD LORD. we ran this for about a year with 4 players + GM (up from 3 players cyborg) (and eventually added a 5th for the back half). We ran through Another Bug Hunt, lost our first couple of PCs and really took it hard. Another Bug Hunt is a WONDERFUL module, excellent for learning the Mothership system. That was about six sessions to get through, then we did a short little pamphlet module, Haunting of Ypsilon-14, which we all survived (and credit to this crew, all people who really want to develop their characters as people. by now the surviving members are so COOL.) then we moved on to Prospero's Dream and ran A Pound of Flesh which... wow. Another Bug Hunt is very linear, but APOF gives you a sandbox and a few threads to pull... we spent a lot of time there. Then it was on to VR Dead, which was B R U T A L -- of the five characters we had, one was sent home early to warn the universe of this cursed place, one died mid-mission, and two more died on the VERY LAST ROLL in the escape. there were tears.

it was around then that i started getting really interested in writing my own material for the game. found out about a trifold pamphlet game jam thing, figured fuck it, why not?, and wrote my first-ever own TTRPG thing. Which was approved by the company so it has their logo on it and everything! and then i won an award for "most favoured" pamphlet??? and now i am developing other stuff for this game! first one was strictly free, next thing i make i might try and sell!

after the near TPK of VR Dead, where 3/5 died, 1/5 left early in an escape pod and 1/5 "survived the campaign" (me!), i took over as warden and ran the game i wrote. it was hilarious how much i had to make up to keep it moving, because the stuff on a pamphlet is... not a lot! gave me a lot of ideas to expand a 2-pager into maybe a 20-pager. players all re-rolled except for escape pod lady, who after a time jump had gone from young and naïve to jaded and hardened. i think everyone got out of that game alive, but the emotional exhaustion of VR Dead had dulled the table's taste for the game a little bit, and two players ended up taking an indefinite break and we switched systems.

So now we are playing a Warhammer 40K RPG called Imperium Maledictum. I have avoided learning 40k lore my entire life because WHO HAS THE TIME but now that i am getting into it like this, in a way that's bottom-up, i love it. really realizing the thing that makes me phase out when learning this kinda stuff is when it's all structured top-down like a history textbook or something. do it like CRPGs! start me in the equivalent of a village and let me learn my way out! it's only been a few sessions of the 40K RPG (imperium maledictum if that matters to u, dear reader) but... damn. our GM really is amazing. she knows how to walk the line between making it all about the players and making it all about the world/rules/lore/simulation/etc. helps that our table is all primed on making characters that grow and learn and feel and all that kinda stuff. my silver-tongued, pragmatic, cynical preacher character had a divine intervention scene in last night's game that completely changed the trajectory of how i intended to play her, in a way that feels earned and appropriate and exciting to continue with.

i love ttrpgs!!!

also wildly late lol, but

Anyone played any of the ttrpgs in this bundle?

https://itch.io/b/2295/ttrpgs-for-palestine

i haven't yet played, but i have been reading FIST Ultra Edition lately with the intention of maybe running it in the future. it'll probably take some tweaking to make it what i want -- a sort of "metal gear solid 2 but you're playing the badguys" kinda thing (the game seems to want to veer a bit harder into the silly, mechanically, than i think MGS does, which... yeah i know how that sounds. MGS is silly. but it's different silly! it takes ITSELF seriously). but the general idea is government black ops super soldiers with weird powers.

while im typing about games i'm reading and not yet playing, here's some stuff i have been reading/thinking about/preparing to play:

- TRIANGLE AGENCY: i bought the box set the second it was available, and read much of the core book with great interest. as a book it is fascinating. wonderful world, easy to imagine a lot of the beats... but the reality of running it is kind of impossible to imagine? it is described as a kind of supernatural workplace horror -- think X-files meets the video game Control with more than a sprinkle of that excellent but short-lived sitcom Corporate -- and a lot of it nails this vibe (the character sheet is TEN PAGES lol, because paperwork?????) -- but then it also has this huge section that is "playwalled" -- not even the GM is supposed to read it til players unlock it via XP paths. there are SO MANY MOVING PARTS. i imagine it collapsing under its own weight. i still wanna try it.
- WALKING DEAD RPG: don't really care for the tv or the comics. it's fine. but what really cracked something in my brain is the economy of building a colony, saving npcs, dying, and rolling one of those npcs -- a game where player characters can be disposable without "ending the story." the gears are turning and i am now developing my own (in space, no zombies) take on the idea with generation ships.
- MOTHERSHIP: yeah yeah i'm mentioning it again because there is so much material out there for it, the game is lightweight and easy to learn, it's pretty much all percentiles so you actually know your odds when you roll, great kind of stress/sanity mechanics that don't feel as fatal as e.g. cthulhu, (dont get me wrong the game is still lethal!), and two big books coming out sometime between "soon" and "a really long time from now" in Wages of Sin and a sequel/expansion (?) to A Pound of Flesh... good time to get into this game!!
- HIS MAJESTY THE WORM is an OSR inspired megadungeon game which isn't usually my cup of tea, but it's bursting with awesome ideas -- like every PC has an explicit relationship with each other PC, and you "earn" the ability to rest/heal/grow at camp by developing those relationships during stressful moments! tarot deck instead of dice! gotta get back into reading this one.

Mothership!

I've not played but hear some great things about it. The Warden Guide is supposed to have some of the best GM guidance around. I think it also has the most third party material for any rpg except Mork Borg. Some people in my extended group have talked about playing.

I don't have His Majesty the Worm but have heard high praise for its combat system, which supposedly has no turns/initiative and is totally open anyone can do anything at any time. I think someone in our group ran a one-shot of it.

can you elaborate on why it is one of the best experiences? is it tension, or character moments, or the in-book plot or what?

Since getting back into rpgs during the pandemic, my tastes have shifted toward more collaborative storygame rpgs.

In Public Access, the players gather Clues as they investigate Mysteries, like a haunted house or an abandoned amusement park. The Mysteries pose Questions like, "Where is the Monster's Lair", but there are no canonical answers and the Clues are just little phrases like, "strange patterns in the sand" or "a tromp l'oeil door painted on a wall". The GM just picks one that makes sense when the player gets one because of a roll. When the players have assembled enough Clues, they have to brainstorm and agree upon a story that answers the Question posed by the Mystery. Then they roll. If they succeed, their Answer is correct and it unlocks an Opportunity to resolve the Mystery. If they fail, their Answer is wrong, something bad happens, and they have to search for more Clues. There is a bunch of other stuff going on that teases out the back story of the characters via flashbacks. You end up with an experience not unlike a prestige TV show.

All of this is just to say the game is highly improvisational and collaborative. The feeling of working with the other players to come up with the Answers is just amazing, like when someone poses an idea and you just know that has to be the answer. It's exciting!

Also, this sounds amazing:

Then it was on to VR Dead, which was B R U T A L -- of the five characters we had, one was sent home early to warn the universe of this cursed place, one died mid-mission, and two more died on the VERY LAST ROLL in the escape. there were tears.

wrote my first-ever own TTRPG thing. Which was approved by the company so it has their logo on it and everything! and then i won an award for "most favoured" pamphlet??? and now i am developing other stuff for this game! first one was strictly free, next thing i make i might try and sell!

This is so cool, happy for you, Will.

there are no canonical answers and the Clues are just little phrases like, "strange patterns in the sand" or "a tromp l'oeil door painted on a wall". The GM just picks one that makes sense when the player gets one because of a roll. When the players have assembled enough Clues, they have to brainstorm and agree upon a story that answers the Question posed by the Mystery.

Oh, this sounds like the mechanic for Brindlewood Bay, my bf bought me the gamebook for it but I haven't had a chance to play it - it's elderly women detectives a la Jessica Fletcher investigating Lovecraftian horrors.

Honestly not managed to play very many ttrpgs since I started this thread nine years ago. Am thinking about forcing some friends to join me for a one-shot session for my birthday next month, but I fear it might end up with yet another round of me GMing Ten Candles (which I love, but I wanna play some other stuff too!)

Yes, Public Access is the same designer and publisher as Brindlewood Bay, which I also have, and The Between (which is basically Penny Dreadful, the RPG). The mechanics are all very similar with some important differences. I am bugging my GM to run The Between after we finish the current campaign.

i feel like i should clarify that the ttrpg thing i wrote was for a game jam so the award i won, while i am thrilled to have won, was among other a handful of ppl who made a thing within a month and not hundreds over the course of a year or something haha. still cool! but kinda forgot to write that important detail.

do ppl on this thread fw quinn's quest? started watching it only recently and i guess he's like the main guy ppl listen to for ttrpg stuff. i like his stuff! he covers things i am interested in! wish there were more ppl doing this!

One of the Discord's I am on are kind of strongly divided by Quinn's Quest.

I haven't really watched.

Also, Will, missed your game jam thing earlier. That's very cool. I had an Incursion for Trophy Gold I wrote and was going to submit it to a fanzine publication but life stuff got in the way. Doing that would scratch an itch I've had since I made up my own games at age 10.

I want to also big up the rpg Trophy Dark. It's a horror-fantasy rpg based on Cthulhu Dark about doomed treasure hunters exploring forgotten places and encountering terrible things. It's really for one-shots (1-2 sessions) as your characters are not expected or even intended to survive and there is a PvP element. It is a high improv game with a structure a bit like The Blair Witch Project: sort of typical fantasy party enters the woods, encounters strange, unsettling things, gets lost, starts blaming and betraying each other, until there is some kind of final confrontation. Against this structure, you also get brief deep dives into the backstories and drives of each character via flashbacks. The two times I've run it have been some of the most fun I've had on the GM side and you end up with a little story that would make a great 2 hour movie. A very satisfying game.

well that strong divide is only going to get more relevant to your crew, because guess what he just dropped a review for yesterday? that's right it's public access

he being quinns quest

Ha, there was some PvP violence on our Discord yesterday about that review! This one guy hates Quinns apparently.

I watched most of the review because of my prior experience with the game. Quinns was very enthusiastic and touched on some really subtle reasons why the game really works. I really had no idea Quinns was such a big deal, but I am happy his review is giving the game a big boost for the upcoming kickstarter. They reported one of the actual play videos got about a months worth of views overnight!

really really really = my god