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

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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.)

Mordy, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 17:31 (five years ago) link

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

I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 22 January 2019 17:33 (five years ago) link

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

I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 22 January 2019 17:34 (five years ago) link

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.

Mordy, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 17:35 (five years ago) link

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.

Mordy, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 17:36 (five years ago) link

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.

Mordy, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 16:34 (five years ago) link

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.

the late great, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 18:46 (five years ago) link

plz can i get in?

Mordy, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 18:47 (five years ago) link

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

the late great, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 18:50 (five years ago) link

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;

Mordy, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 18:59 (five years ago) link

one year passes...

i&I wanna be playing some call of cthulhu tbh

ian, Sunday, 19 April 2020 19:06 (four years ago) link

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

the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Monday, 20 April 2020 04:29 (four years ago) link

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

pretty pumped

let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Monday, 20 April 2020 05:22 (four years ago) link

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

Dadjokke (Sgt. Biscuits), Monday, 20 April 2020 09:55 (four years ago) link

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

ogmor, Monday, 20 April 2020 12:43 (four years ago) link

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

pretty pumped

Jelly.

Triceratops Vowell (Leee), Monday, 20 April 2020 17:20 (four years ago) link

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

Mordy, Monday, 20 April 2020 17:23 (four years ago) link

lol

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

let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Monday, 20 April 2020 17:24 (four years ago) link

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

Mordy, Monday, 20 April 2020 17:24 (four years ago) link

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

Mordy, Monday, 20 April 2020 17:26 (four years ago) link

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

let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Monday, 20 April 2020 17:26 (four years ago) link

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

let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Monday, 20 April 2020 17:27 (four years ago) link

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.

Mordy, Monday, 20 April 2020 17:27 (four years ago) link

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.

Mordy, Monday, 20 April 2020 17:29 (four years ago) link

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.

Triceratops Vowell (Leee), Monday, 20 April 2020 17:51 (four years ago) link

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

ogmor, Monday, 20 April 2020 17:57 (four years ago) link

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!

Judd Apatowsaurus (Leee), Tuesday, 21 April 2020 19:06 (four years ago) link

Leee, was that Playstation Access?

Pinche Cumbion Bien Loco (stevie), Tuesday, 21 April 2020 19:22 (four years ago) link

Yes it was!

Judd Apatowsaurus (Leee), Tuesday, 21 April 2020 21:16 (four years ago) link

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

Pinche Cumbion Bien Loco (stevie), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 09:17 (four years ago) link

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?

Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 09:19 (four years ago) link

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

Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 09:31 (four years ago) link

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

the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 09:59 (four years ago) link

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?

the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:01 (four years ago) link

i'm... not sure!

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

Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:08 (four years ago) link

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.

Pinche Cumbion Bien Loco (stevie), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:33 (four years ago) link

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.

Pinche Cumbion Bien Loco (stevie), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:33 (four years ago) link

that sounds amazing!

Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:37 (four years ago) link

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

ogmor, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:49 (four years ago) link

I would go to this witch school

zoomer death circus (sleeve), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 14:09 (four years ago) link

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

let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 14:46 (four years ago) link

Thirding for your wholesome witch school!

Judd Apatowsaurus (Leee), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 15:39 (four years ago) link

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

Mordy, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 16:19 (four years ago) link

Do it guys, it's a lot of fun and also it keeps em busy when they wake up too early on a sunday morning and you can't think of anything to keep their spirits up.

She calls it "cave game".

Pinche Cumbion Bien Loco (stevie), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 16:47 (four years ago) link

One of them I essentially just stole the main maze element of the old UK kids TV show. Another I gave her a bunch of word-search type things to solve, and another was a series of "my first is in fire but not in dire" type riddles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYvoWFBoEeM

Pinche Cumbion Bien Loco (stevie), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 16:49 (four years ago) link

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

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 10:08 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

look at dungeon world! it works really well for silly fun. most of the world is improvised in play, but it has kind of useful mental metrics for running a game in non-frustrating ways and not stymying players. everything is 2d6 rolls with some simple modifiers.

the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Thursday, 23 April 2020 12:01 (four years ago) link

that sounds perfect. i will check it out!

Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 23 April 2020 12:02 (four years ago) link

stayed up later than I planned last night, wistfully reading the Amber Diceless Roleplaying rulebook.

lukas, Thursday, 23 April 2020 17:47 (four years ago) link

two weeks pass...

just sharing my cyberpunk 2020 progress! we met for the first time, via Roll20. we ended up just creating characters, setting up abilities, figuring out how to use Roll20, and buying some equipment. Our first actual session is two weeks from now, and after that we should be playing every Thursday night for as long as Coronavirus lasts, I guess.

i posted this on another thread, but i'll leave it here too:

I'm playing Ten Ton Heat, a Fixer that also plays drums for an up-and-coming band that has a gig on a pirate radio station barge near Seattle in a couple weeks. I'm not quite sure what i look like, other than my Attractiveness level is 6 (making me the third hottest member of the band; we have a pair of identical twins from Chechnya that are incredibly hot and charismatic, with very low intelligence), and I've purchased a set of SmartGoggles with 3 CyberOptic modules: Teleoptics (20x zoom), MicroVideo Optic (I can record up to 20 minutes of video), and Infrared.

let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Friday, 8 May 2020 15:34 (four years ago) link

what system are you using?

sleeve, Friday, 8 May 2020 15:35 (four years ago) link

I'm imagining a Tinder for rpgs. It's hard.

move over GAPDY, now there's BIG THIEF! (PBKR), Tuesday, 22 March 2022 22:45 (two years ago) link

what do you mean?

Kompakt Total Landscaping (Will M.), Wednesday, 23 March 2022 20:28 (two years ago) link

When you’re not in junior high, life makes it hard to find and maintain an rpg group for an extended period. I was just fantasizing (and joking) about an app that would make it easier to find a game.

move over GAPDY, now there's BIG THIEF! (PBKR), Wednesday, 23 March 2022 20:54 (two years ago) link

that makes so much more sense than what i was imagining, which was swiping left and right on rulesets

Kompakt Total Landscaping (Will M.), Wednesday, 23 March 2022 21:49 (two years ago) link

five months pass...

For a couple of months, I've been playing a GM-less version of The Pool, an early story game. It's been fun and a really interesting demolition of some of my conceptions about rpgs. It's one of the oldest new school games - your character is just a 50 word short story from which you assign dice from your pool as traits (i.e "lost his family +1"). Every few sessions you add 15-30 words to your story and can introduce new traits or change existing ones. If one of your traits applies to an action, you get extra dice in the roll. If you make your roll, you get to narrate the results - if not, the other players narrate the result. Everyone can introduce NPCs and play them at various times.

The biggest change is trying to play this game GM-less, which has really pulled back the curtain and exposed what it is a GM actually needs to do or not do. The game is so rules-lite that the only structure, the only game part that isn't pure imagination, is when you roll dice. The hardest part is trying to introduce new plot points without a GM - once things get going the improvisation takes over and things flow pretty well, but it can be difficult to get the ball rolling when there is no leader (GM) to tell you when to roll. Still, it's been great.

Still want to give Mörk Börg a try sometime.

i need to put some clouds behind the reaper (PBKR), Wednesday, 21 September 2022 11:53 (two years ago) link

Still going with our WFRP campaign. About to hit our two year anniversary and session 65.

Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 05:23 (two years ago) link

eleven months pass...

I've never been interested in PBP rpgs, but I've been playing in one (actually we finished one and are on the second) on Discord for the more than three months. It's maybe the most fun I've had playing an rpg in a long while.

Right now it feels like we have a long way to go in this one and it's going to be a perfect winter activity as it's set in a sort of 1930's alpine setting with some Balkan flourishes, fantasy elements (spells), and pseudo-dungeons with ancient technology. The vibe is alternating between cozy and brutal.

il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, 22 September 2023 22:26 (one year ago) link

that should say, "fantasy elements (spells and undead)"

il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, 22 September 2023 22:27 (one year ago) link

six months pass...

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, 27 March 2024 23:17 (six months ago) link

two months pass...

Free RPG Day happening this Saturday, June 24th

https://freerpgday.com

Happening a lot of places on the globe, check your FLGS

Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Friday, 21 June 2024 20:37 (three months ago) link

three months pass...

Anyone played any of the ttrpgs in this bundle?

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

reggae mike love (polyphonic), Tuesday, 24 September 2024 01:46 (two weeks ago) link

Wanderhome is supposed to be good.

il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Tuesday, 24 September 2024 16:31 (two weeks ago) link


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