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

I only ran Troika once, when a couple of our D&D group were missing. It was fun. I'd like to run it more. The skill system can be tough - I haven't looked into it, but I bet the fan-community has come up with some house-rules, and the combat & armor systems takes a minute to get used to imo. But I just love the vibe tbh. For skills I think the answer is maybe calling for fewer rolls if possible - if they've got the base skill in something and it's not a difficult task, I'd say let 'em do it w/o a roll and only roll for things that need to be dramatic.

I used to have (but never played) the Star Wars 2nd Edition RPG when I was young--it's also a D6 system but iirc more like a dice pool system?

I loved the Lone Wolf books; they were not super popular here in the US but I read and played a ton of them. I think they are all gone now, lost in a mother's cellar flood. I've managed to replace a couple over the years but they've gotten expensive for nice copies! But, and this could be a few years old, there's a website that has HTML versions of all the books with automatic combat rolling & such - played through a half-dozen or so. I fucking LOVED those books.

Lone Wolf books for your extreme nostalgia -
https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books

I just remembered that in 90s internet time, I was on a Lone Wolf listerv and that was the first time I ever met another I@n J0hn50n!! He was Irish IIRC.

But I just love the vibe tbh.

Yeah, I have a lot of different vibes I can get into if I want and Troika can hit a bunch of them: science fantasy/psychedelia/eldritch horror, etc, etc. I think my players weren't as into the whimsical British psychedelia elements as I was. Also, most of them hadn't played an rpg in 30 years, so they needed more prompting on the character sheet than Troika's system gives.

I don't know if you like the Powered by the Apocalypse games, but there is a 3-page hack of Troika using some of those concepts.

The SW RPG I am running (session 1 will be next week) is the newest one from Fantasy Flight Games that game out over the last 7 years or so. It's about the polar opposite of Troika rules-wise. It uses the narrative dice system, which I haven't used but I am very keen to try. Basically, you roll non-numerical dice - positive dice based on your stats and skills and negative dice based on difficulty, environmental factors, and opponents skills. Opposing symbols cancel and if you are left with positive dice after cancellation you were successful, but there is a wide spectrum of success and failure - successes with drawbacks, failures that give you advantages to your next roll, etc, etc.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2013/2/27/that-star-wars-feeling/

So I ran the first session of the Star Wars RPG and it went incredibly well. My players generally haven't played rpgs since the late 80s and seemed to have some issues grasping the Troika system, which is very simplistic, so I had concerns whether the SWRPG system was going to be too much for them. Ironically, at least so far, the narrative dice system is very engaging for players and GM; there is a lot of back and forth discussion of how to interpret dice rolls which acts as prompts to further the narrative. In essence, it prompts the players to take more authority over the narrative so the GM doesn't have to do all the work. I like it.

The other thing is I've usually run games where I know the setting in more detail than my players, so I would do a lot of work feeling like I needed to convey setting. Running the Star Wars setting with players highly conversant in the setting (more than me even) again takes work from the GM. It's like a shared pool of knowledge you don't have to spend time spoon feeding to the players. I can focus on story.

One of the PCs returned to their home planet for the first time in five years to discover their mother and father had died and her younger brother had left the planet to go look for the PC. Now she has to leave the planet to find her brother. This is good, dramatic stuff.

A friend hipped me to Symbaroum (https://www.symbaroum.com/ a Scandinavian dark fantasy setting with some overt colonialism overtones. Human civilization surrounds a vast, lightless forest which takes up most of the world - the home of an ancient fallen empire and a prime destination for adventurers. Anyone have any experience with this?

Had a few gaps in recent months - 12 sessions out of a possible 16 - but we’re now 36 sessions deep in our WFRP campaign and have finished Shadows Over Bogenhafen! Very exciting. The party saved the town but at some cost. Death On The Reik starts on Wednesday. It’s about a year since I bought the new rule book, and though it’s cost me hundreds of pounds on sourcebooks and dice, I’m very glad I did it.

Only problem is I’d love to play it one day as a PC, but fear I’m stuck as GM forever now...

Didn't realise how mentally exhausting being a GM was until I tried it

Maybe I shouldn't have been nervously slamming cans of shipyard while running the games idk

Scik Mouthy, which edition of WFRP are you using?

We’re playing 4e.

Always was a Tzeentch man, myself.

4e's combat is such a weird mess, one of my group was so determined to aggressively optimise their build I kind of gave up on ever trying to balance the fights and just make it more that they had social consequences if you did it in public

The worst injury anyone got in our playthrough of Enemy Within was actually the halfling losing an ear to a cloud of explosive methane in the sewers

I'm playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay too! But just as a player - I read a lot of Games Workshop guff as a kid and now it's really difficult to remember what still applies and also what my character would be aware of.

13 months and 45 sessions in. Our group has one more child now than when we started, which feels epic.

wow!

irl child = +1 bonus to everyone's key stat imo

I've started playing a ttrpg that is more of a "new school" storytelling rpg. There is still a GM (me), but players have way more agency than in "old school" rpgs. Action resolution (rolls) does not determine player success or failure but who narrates the outcome. If the player makes a certain roll, the player narrates the outcome including adding facts that are true and which the GM cannot contradict. The better the roll, the more facts a player can add. If the player does not make their roll, the GM narrates the outcome.

The game is highly collaborative - the GM can't really determine a plot (meaning a beginning, middle, and end) because the players will likely just go in a different direction at any time. Instead, I just introduce a starting problem/hook, then keep in mind a few potential complications and NPCs that I might introduce. The rest is improvised at the table.

This is a big change for me coming from a long history of traditional rpgs and requires me to unlearn some habits. It also goes against my personal bias toward over-planning. But the nice thing is I don't feel the same responsibility for everyone's enjoyment. There is more of an equal share of the storytelling responsibility. It's early, but I like it.

What’s it called?

Bl00d & Hon0r - A Game of Samurai Tragedy. A name with terrible other uses. The .pdf is on drivethrurpg:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/85815/Blood--Honor

The players make up a samurai clan then their characters who are members of the clan.

There is also a related game called World of Dew which expands beyond samurai and their clans to a later period, such as the Meije Restoration, with noir investigators, merchants, westerners, etc.

It uses particular elements of the FATE game though it is a bit different.

Also, would really love to give Mörk Börg a spin - it's a rules-light death metal fantasy rpg about the end of the world. Imagine an art-punk WFRP with the alienation, darkness, and gore cranked so far up you have to laugh. The doom of Call of Cthulhu with the character survival rate of Paranoia (albeit without clones). Geared for one-shots I would think.

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

what do you mean?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.