Anyone playing D&D (or other RPGs) these days?

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Who's got an ongoing tabletop RPG campaign going? Tell us about it and/or your character. D&D optional, any game will suffice.

I recently started a new 4.0 campaign with some local folks I've known since college. This is the second try I've had at 4.0 and I've been much happier with this campaign than the last one. 4.0 still feels a little scripted with regards to character development, but it is certainly a lot easier to work with than 3.5.

Anyway, I've got an Elven Avenger of the Raven Queen who is pretty much a glass cannon. I teleport all over the battlefield doing lots of damage to the squishy mages and big targets alike, but as soon as I get focussed on I drop pretty quickly. We just recently completed an adventure which culminated in a battle with an adult green dragon, who we intimidated into leaving its lair forever. It was cool.

So geek out with me. Who's got stories?

[Tortilla]

I've got a regular 4e D&D game with the same guys I've played with weekly since the early 90s. We are on our third 4e campaign after a few attempts got abandoned and we are finally starting to appreciate the subtleties of 4e. The bitching and unfavorable comparisons with 3e have mostly stopped.

I just finished taking a ranger up to 13th level in an accelerated XP campaign which was giving me a level a week. It was a little fast as I was sometimes getting new powers and not even getting a chance to really play with them until the next level. Still it was fun to play around with a paragon character for the first time. I then got to play a 13th level sorcerer in a one-shot throwaway adventure and that was even more fun. Sorcs are silly with lots of unpredictable randomness that I really enjoyed.

[Lunch of Kong]

We alternate weekly between Spirit of the Century and Star Wars Saga Edition. Before, we alternated between D&D 3.5 and Champions, and before that, between Shadowrun and Runequest.

[Pogo]

I'd love to play some new D&D online via IRC with calculating programs or some kind of interface. I'm kinda itching to try out the new system. I don't have any D&D friends near me so I don't get to play anymore, and haven't played since 3rd Ed in college.

[sinfony]

I'm playing a 4e campaign with some friends. It's my first D&D experience, and we've only played a handful of times so far. Very enjoyable thus far.

[Griddle]

This makes me homesick for my old D&D home group, we used to drink tea, and play well into the night. Now that we're all old and stuff we don't play any more. I still miss it though, I wanted to get my paladin into a few more scenarios.

[Wallapuctus]

I'm running a game right now, with 5 players. Since we only have 3 hours to play every other week, our sessions are either all roleplay, 2 combats, or some roleplay and 1 combat. Combat takes too long in 4e, because there are too many combatants with too many options.

It really needs to be automated with a computer. Shuffling 20 papers, 4 books, piles of minis, drawing AoEs on the map, and tracking a dozen conditions with different expiration are so much work. I've delegated half the combat duties to my players, one guy tracks initiatives with delays and triggers, another tracks conditions, and another moves minis on the board for me so I don't have to get up.

[Mightynute]

I run a bi-weekly D&D 4e game here in KC, as well as playing in Matt "the poster formerly known as Kid Socrates" Bowyer's D20 Final Fantasy campaign over IRC.

The party in my D&D campaign is a fun bunch of tactically-minded guys who (surprisingly) manage to avoid min-maxing in favor of actual fun. They've just hit paragon tier, and are having a great time on their way to liberating a hobgoblin capital city from its storm giant oppressors.

Avengers are indeed glass cannons - our paladin of the Raven Queen took the avenger multiclass feat for the once-per-encounter Oath of Enmity ability that comes in rather handy when the chips are down. We joke that he's basically Medieval Jack Bauer, and when he figured out how to use a Leomund's Secret Chest ritual as his "portable Guantanamo", I think he earned the title.

[Jon Rowe]

I play 3.5e and Pathfinder (which is basically 3.75e). We actually have the first game of our new campaign tomorrow night. I am really looking forward to it. I will probably write an AAR for the forums, as my character is the main character of the campaign.

[Tortilla]

I'm running a game right now, with 5 players. Since we only have 3 hours to play every other week, our sessions are either all roleplay, 2 combats, or some roleplay and 1 combat. Combat takes too long in 4e, because there are too many combatants with too many options.

It really needs to be automated with a computer. Shuffling 20 papers, 4 books, piles of minis, drawing AoEs on the map, and tracking a dozen conditions with different expiration are so much work. I've delegated half the combat duties to my players, one guy tracks initiatives with delays and triggers, another tracks conditions, and another moves minis on the board for me so I don't have to get up.

It's still better than 3e. My group has picked up speed in 4e overall. 3e encouraged readies and delays and playing games with the initiative. We had people who would to this every single round so they could get their trip or disarm or whatnot in at the most advantageous instant. In 4e there's generally no incentive to do that crap unless something odd has happened, so most people just hit something on their turn and the play marches on.

Tracking all the effects and saves is a nuisance though.

[Matt Bowyer]

I run a bi-weekly D&D 4e game here in KC, as well as playing in Matt "the poster formerly known as Kid Socrates" Bowyer's D20 Final Fantasy campaign over IRC.

Yeah, that's me. I've been running a homebrew Final Fantasy d20 game since 2004 for four players. We went down to three when one went to law school, took a year and change off, and then got back into it last June. The game's gone for almost 150 sessions, plus a lot of smaller solo sessions or smaller group stuff. While it started in-person, we shifted to IRC as schedules and life demands changed, and now we run with a dice-roller script, as well as background music (every FF game has music!) and generally fun is had by all.

The system itself started out as a smattering of 3.5 with Final Fantasy names grafted onto it, and then that changed and got more streamlined as time went on and I re-geared the game for my players, who aren't the tactical battle type but are the flashy special effects type.

The music is fun -- IRC lets you play music if everyone has the same track, so each week before we game I upload a zip file with the new music to Adrive.com and send an email to my players to get the music. We have character themes that play during limit breaks, city themes, villain themes, about 40 different battle themes, and a lot more -- probably around 140 individual tracks at this point. I've started doing very limited remixing, syncing up tracks and having one flow into another for particular moments, as well as recording voiceovers for dramatic scenes to make up for the fact that I can't do my silly villain voices in person anymore. Our current sidequest arc is a large tournament (there's always a tournament) for which I've done one-minute introductions for each team/competitor, complete with professional wrestling-inspired announcer stylings.

Character class-wise, we have a heavy swordsman with Chaos-themed powers, a summoner/technology specialist, a light dual-wielding swordsman, a ranged debuffing gunman/conman, a dragoon with guardian-esque powers, and a battle summoner (what you get if you cross Tifa with a druid, with aeons). It's probably not balanced but no one really minds. I built the classes largely from scratch, and used a 4E philosophy when I rebuilt them this summer but made up all the numbers and abilities myself, trying to pull from Final Fantasy as well as other interests each player had outside of the game.

The plot is deep and confusing enough that, when we relaunched it, I had to write about 100,000 words to sum up the plot and the 125+ NPCs. I couldn't run it for anyone but these guys -- everything's built around them, it's very character-focused. The player who left is still on the update mailing list and chimes in with comments to me when he has time to read the sheer amount of stuff I put out.

Oh, there are airship battles, too. Not that those work too well in my opinion, but they're fun as hell thus far and I use them sparingly.

Whoa, word explosion. This is pretty much what I do with my free time. I plan gaming sessions and build systems. It's incredibly satisfying, and -incredibly- geeky.

[Ezdaar]

I'm trying to restart a Pathfinder game I had running via Maptool with my old D&D group. I would kill to have the time and a local group to play something like Mouseguard, Spirit of the Century or Houses of the Blooded though.

[Demon G Sides]

I'd love to play some new D&D online via IRC with calculating programs or some kind of interface. I'm kinda itching to try out the new system. I don't have any D&D friends near me so I don't get to play anymore, and haven't played since 3rd Ed in college.


This. I miss Unicorn McGriddle's old Soviet game that we tried. That was tons of fun for the two times we got to do anything.

[Dean]

I recently started a new 4.0 campaign with some local folks I've known since college. This is the second try I've had at 4.0 and I've been much happier with this campaign than the last one. 4.0 still feels a little scripted with regards to character development, but it is certainly a lot easier to work with than 3.5.

Dude! You organized a 4E campaign among Qt3'ers, came to one session and bailed! We've been going ever since (with a hiatus for paternity leave), and have gone from a weekly weeknight that first summer to one Saturday a month. Rob O'Boston has been DMing for a year and a half, and just recently begged to play, so we're starting a second campaign so he can play sometimes.

We're up to 5th level, and it seems to be a pretty slow leveling curve, but that's mostly because we'd have huge gaps of not playing. I'm the Eladrin wizard who's usually the only one standing at the end of a battle. I don't get near enough to anything to let them hit me, but even so, for most of the campaign I had a better AC than our fighter and cleric (that's changed as they got better stuff).

Meanwhile I DM my 3.5 campaign that's been going on for about 6 years. They're all around 17th level and into the world shaking stuff. I'm running the first Adventure Path that Paizo published in the old Dungeon magazine. Over the years I've added a lot to it, and players have come and gone. We have two of the original four players and three new(er) players.

Great moments in that campaign:

Rogue is riding their pet Quetzlkoatl over lava when pyrochlastic dragon uses his disintegrate breath weapon on them both. Rogue makes his save, Quetzlkoatl doesn't and disintegrates. Rogue has a Wile E. Coyote moment of hanging there in space saying, "Ulp!" before plunging into lava below.

Bard takes Leadership feat, and with his Charisma ends up attracting well over a hundred followers. The only problem is they're all low-level bards. Since the bad guys have taken over the government of the city, the bard decides to wage a propaganda war and sends out his army of bards to all the inns of the city to sing about how corrupt the government is and foment rebellion. After a few nights of this, when the party is off adventuring elsewhere, the city guard (now comprised mostly of half-orc mercenaries) stage ambushes all over the city, killing every bard they can get their hands on, and burning the party's home inn, The Tipped Tankard, to the ground. This becomes known as "The Night the Music Died."

I'm also doing a 3.0 campaign via maptools on occasional weekday nights. That campaign has been going for 7 years, but two of the guys moved away so now we do it over the internet when we can. I'm playing a Ranger/Tempest there. We're around level 15 and I'm a little bored with my character. I get 6 attacks/round in a full attack, and against my favored enemies I'm a force (I took down an orc leader in one round that the DM had finely crafted to go toe to toe with me while the spellcasters were occupied elsewhere), but if there's anything that requires more nuance, I've generally got nothing to do.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Yeah, my bad. As soon as the campaign started I took a job that required me to work weeknights. If you guys are now on Saturdays, I could definitely return, if you all forgive me for earlier lameness. :-)

[AaronSofaer]

I'm playing at the moment in a light-hearted Call of Cthulu campaign. Yes. I know it makes no sense.

Every session my naive young soldier from the sticks of Britain ends up with more sanity than he started which is just wrong. I think I'm up in the 80s now.

It's mostly light-hearted because we're all total powergamers and so we just break the campaign at every turn, and our GM spends most of the session desperately trying to keep us on the "right" track. "NO, YOU MAY NOT KILL THAT NPC."

[jason_wilson]

I miss my D&D group. We played together for nearly two decades before I moved away and got married. I BS together on Skype as we watch 49ers games, and I've been wondering how we could use some online interface to replicate our old environment. We used miniatures, and I built dungeons and other environments out of Lego pieces.

[Drastic]

I've been playing in two 4e campaigns, roughly monthly sessions depending on the usual scheduling logistics. The two groups play quite differently from different composition.

In the slightly longer-running game, the party's at 6th level; my guy's a cleric. There's also a rogue, fighter, warlord, and paladin in the character mix; overall, it's an extremely survivable group. Lowish on the damage output, but solid. The other group's at level 5; my character's a ranger with delusions of grandeur. More oddball mix of classes that lead to a more frail party overall, but with much more raw damage output in combat situations. Amusingly, only one character actually has a positive charisma modifier--it's a pack of smelly lunatics, we've concluded.

On a rather more irregular schedule, I'm in a third group that primarily does one-shots of mostly "indie" and small-press rpgs--a spot of Primetime Adventures here, an Unknown Armies game there, some playtesting of homebrew bits, etc. It's a good palate-cleanser to D&D.

[Robert Sharp]

I have a regular group. We play Cthulu and a few other games. We just started A Game of Thrones campaign. I haven't read the books, but so far it seems interesting. We're about to start a game called Grimm, in which you play kids entering fairy tale world. Looks exciting. We're pretty light-hearted as a group, and we focus far more on roleplaying than power gaming.

[Jasper Phillips]

We alternate weekly between Spirit of the Century and Star Wars Saga Edition. Before, we alternated between D&D 3.5 and Champions, and before that, between Shadowrun and Runequest.
I've just turned completely green with Envy. Those are all great games.

I run a Conan game irregularly, but that's about all the RPGing I can get. Looks like we might also start up some Pathfinder too, but that could easily fall through. I can manage a weekly boardgame night with a few friends, but for some reason RPGs are much harder to organize. :-(


This. I miss Unicorn McGriddle's old Soviet game that we tried. That was tons of fun for the two times we got to do anything.
That was great fun, while it lasted.

[bloo]

I'd love to play some new D&D online via IRC with calculating programs or some kind of interface. I'm kinda itching to try out the new system. I don't have any D&D friends near me so I don't get to play anymore, and haven't played since 3rd Ed in college.

Get thee to http://rptools.net/

Lots of add-ons, macros and such from the community. Takes some setup for the DM but really makes a game move once you're playing.

[Pogo]

Ahh very interesting, I'll have to dig into that. Thanks.

[Kalle]

I've been playing in a campaign of the Swedish rpg Mutant for roughly six months. Mutant is set in an apocalyptic far future, many years after a nuclear war has scourged the lands and mutated both people and wildlife. Pure-blooded humans emerged from their secure vaults and have rebuilt civilisation, but much has been lost. Technology is on a 19th century level, though artifacts from the past can still be found and fetch high prices. Mutated humanoid animals serve as the working class, serving in factories and workshops while the pure-bred humans act as the nobility. Mutated humans that could pass for pure-bred are shunned as they could pollute the pure-blooded.

Grimdark, right? Well, not exactly. The game setting can be a bit grim but the tone of the game is very comical. An old plastic chair is a treasured ancient artifact fit for a lord's manor. A gun-like object found while venturing deep into a forbidden zone can be practically anything, and your GM won't let you know until you try to fire it. The bent cop you need to investigate is a mutated pig, and so are his colleagues. Warrens of mutated rabbits have declared war on all meat eaters, and so on.

The campaign, which has been going on for eight months now, features a motley band of adventurers who have no real reason to stick together except for fun and profit. A few players have joined and dropped out, characters have left, but the group has remained. The most obvious fact about the characters is that they are not nice people, they are in fact downright antagonistic towards eachother. Part of it is the class society the game takes place in. The noblemen of the group are more than happy to delegate the gruntwork to the lowest-ranking party member, who happens to be my character. And naturally I try to get back at them in any way an underhanded servant can try to inconvenience his social superiors.

The best moment of the campaign stems from when one of our players had to miss three sessions because he had to work late. We needed an appropriate excuse and since he had made a visit to a brothel in the previous session we all thought that having him come down with a horrible venereal disease was a good idea. So his character, a noble big game hunter, was stuck in his room and sick with fever while the rest of us went adventuring. While he was sick we all made sure to stick him with the bill for whatever we did, knowing he was in no position to argue, and then left town without him. Taking his horse with us, naturally. When the player came back he was treated to a half-hour solo adventure where he had to find out what the hell was going on, dodge creditors, find some transportation, and then ride after us. We still give him crap about his venereal disease in character every now and then. He makes sure to take all the credit and use the rest of us as disposable grunts whenever possible. I love it.

[DoomMunky]

I just ran a one-shot with some buddies in a Western setting using the Savage Worlds rules and had a ball. They designed a motley band of characters, including a 4 foot Russian dwarf who is hideously ugly but has a big heart and tries so hard, a guy whose torso is normal sized but whose arms and legs are freakishly long, is amazing at gambling, and is a kleptomaniac, and another dude called only The Engineer, whose amazing skill at gadgets is dubbed 'MacGuyver' in the rulebook.

I had a whole scenario designed for them to have to catch a speeding train loaded with ghostrock, which thins the border between this and the Spirit World (causing hauntings, visitations, and more) that was to culminate with a battle against a terrible gang on the speeding train, which was heading for a broken bridge over a deep canyon. Of course.

Of course they get some dynamite and blow the tracks before the adventure even gets started, sending the locomotive plowing into a cliff face.

Nothing went as planned and we all had a ball. There were also zombies, men hopping from galloping horses to a speeding train, and all manner of goofball acrobatics as they raced up the length of the train trying to find the strongbox and steal all the money.

Players are wild and unruly, and are wonderfully fun.

[Mrenda]

I'm surprised at how many people are playing D&D. Of about ten games I know of only two are D&D, and all those players play in another non-D&D game.

I'm currently playing in a Savage Worlds game based on Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun series. It's quite combat orientated with a lot of the characters quite gimped out now. I'm rolling for criticals now and will generally re-roll normal successes because we need the high level damage. I'm playing a brothel Madam, who's so rich has time for adventuring. She has a huge loyalty to "her girls" and tries to recruit more of them genuinely believing they'll have a better life.

We have one PC that's shared amongst us. He used to be a follower for a guy who has since dropped out of the game. The PC was totally non-combat orientated and needed a follower to do his fighting, i.e. the PC was a judge and the NPC was his bailiff. After months of the NPC being treated like crap by the PC we eventually asked what the NPC's name was, and how it was strange he didn't have a name. Somehow he ended up with the name Shaft. Now he's developed into a pimp like character with the ability to bed women, low born and noble, with a pimp cane and a vicious back hand he instills fear and desire into other men.

That campaign is coming to an end, and I've said I might be willing to run the next one, I don't know how much I have for it, but I have the basis of a Traveller story laid out. Hopefully it'll work out.

I'm going to my gaming societies convention this weekend, http://www.warpcon.com check it out. It should be a good laugh. It's probably the biggest gaming convention in the country at the moment, getting about 500 people. And with wargamers preregistered at about 70 people, the wargaming tournaments is going to be bigger than anything anyone or GamesWorkshop has ever run here. Good stuff.

[Hans Lauring]

I miss my regular group - but we've all moved on (mostly in a geographic sense).

Having worked behind the counter in a game store I'm wary of the 'post a message on their board'-approach to getting a new group.
But with the large group of people I'm connected/reconnected to on Facebook (one of my old players write children's fantasy and another illustrates Magic cards), perhaps I should just ask them, if anybody have a group and a spot?

[Pjerrot]

To Hanzii

Do you know about the yearly event www.viking-con.dk/? (It's in danish - sorry!)
The group I'm playing with (right now:Space 1889), are there every year. It's a place to meet complete stranger for a single game of either table-top RPG or boardgames.
It's always in october, so it's a bit of a wait, but it's an idea worth looking at.

[GloriousMess]

At the moment we're just starting a new campaign in the Millennium's End system. It's a modern-day setting that uses 2xD10 (percentile dice) for all roles, and has more skills than you have ever seen. One character dumped his remaining 10 points into Dental Surgery for example.
The biggest reason I love this system more than any other is the "detailed time" concept. In D&D you have actions and turns, and everyone goes in initiative order. This rarely changes unless you perform an action that purposefully changes your position, such as ready action or whatever. You're also allowed to discuss tactics, strategy, or coordinate to get flanking bonuses assuming your GM isn't a complete in-character or nothing guy.

Millennium's End however does it in a way that's so addictively fun, and potentially catastrophically bad (or incredibly good). At the start of detailed time, there is no out of character communication allowed at all that's related to the game. You can't discuss the previously-discussed strategy, you can't direct people to kill someone specific, you can't help, nothing. This is actually in the rulebook. Then, each turn, everyone writes down in one sentence what they do, something that must be a) possible in-game and in-character and b) achievable in approximately 5-6 seconds. This is then hidden until everyone is finished. The DM does this for any relevant NPCs as well.
When everyone is done, all the actions are revealed and all happen at once. So if I lean out from my cover to see if anyone is there, and some enemy shoots at my cover, I will get shot the face. If we're trying to communicate and I write down "use radio: this is GloriousMess, in position" but someone else also wrote the same, the radio is garbled (or one person gets there first based on their character's 'Speed' stat and the other gets cut off). In hand-to-hand combat the Speed, body mass factor and training determines more often what happens, and it's great to have rock-paper-scissors events to see what happens in a fight.
I remember one game where we had to infiltrate a government surveillance bunker (think 24 season 8 and CTU's entrance) and two of us went in via a ventillation duct. We found two security guards and got into hand-to-hand with them. I wrote "duck", DM wrote "punch face", I ducked. I then wrote "nut punch", DM wrote "body tackle" and since my speed was 0.9 and the guard's 1.1, I nut punched him before he could react. Fight over as my next action was "punch face" which did around 15 trauma levels and knocked him out.
However, my squad mate was having a proper fight - alternating "block"/"kick" with the DM's "block"/"punch" etc, neither of them landing a blow because of high fighting skills and total guesswork. They then punched eachother at the same time and knocked eachother out, and I'm left standing there with three bodies and no communications with the other players (radio blackout). Shit.

Anyway, the twist this time, as we've played M'End before and used the default setting each time, is that it's in a vaguely Firefly-esque universe. There's an adaptation of the rules for 2300AD and our GM has tweaked it slightly so that it has more of a Firefly feel to it, at least initially. We're pretty much at the mercy of our employers at the moment, flying to various colony worlds and doing contracts. It's great fun - I'm the pilot, and as such the group leader. The group leader gets double the pay of each member upon successful debrief, which is lovely. A new ship-grade auto cannon for the bow? Why yes, that sounds lovely. The first session was just to get re-acquainted with the rules and the changes, and to do a quick train robbery. Yup, as in Firefly train robbery. Fantastic fun!

As a side note we used to play D&D before this. The previous campaign which ended last year had me as the DM, and it was going quite well. We had people around 4th-5th level investigating an inter-city war, getting involved with one side or another, and generally being pawns of a greater plot involving our favourite dark skinned elves. During that campaign we had a player with us who always took the slightly radical approach to one thing in particular, which usually ended up with hilarious characters. This character was actually a Bard, in a bee costume. Yes, bright yellow and black. He was the party leader, and declared that the rest of the party must have coloured armour or clothes like his.
So there I was, trying to work out how an inter-city war would be stopped by four lunatics dressed like bees led by a gigantically under-qualified Bard (2 ranks in Perform) with a huge ego. Pity it ended really.

edit: holy shit, wall of text. Does it show that I like pen & paper RPGs much?

[Disconnected]

Our system & setting are home-made. It's a bit difficult to describe..

The setting is a tidally locked moon with permanent day & night sides. The human('ish) and only player race are colonists, who long ago managed to supplant the day-side ecology with one that could sustain them. The local ecology isn't poisonous, but can't.

The colonists have regressed to a 1200-1600s state of technology, and are no longer aware that they are colonists. Nor are the players, currently. But I'm trying to clue them in.

In the very long term, humanity will become extinct if nothing changes. The native ecology is recovering and reclaiming the globe ever faster. But a great many means exists to avert that fate. The biggest obstacle is ignorance of the fact that it is happening.

Presently, humanity is divided into 12 realms, with fairly different types of organisations. Trade between them is limited and largely handled by the two human religions.

Divinity doesn't exist in the setting. One of the religions revere The Observer, an orbiting and fully functional colony ship. The other reveres The Captain, whose actual name is lost to history. Both are quite sincere and nobody has any idea they're basically Cargo Cults. The players included, for now.

Magic talent is a bit weird & very cliché in the setting. All native life is talented in some fashion, some of it very much so. Less than 10% of humans develop any degree of talent. Virtually all human talents are women, and a useful degree of talent is so rare in humans that less than a handful currently exists in the world, and only two are known.

Human culture universally considers the dark side evil. As magic is very closely associated with the native ecology, most human talents are exiled to the twilight (where they get killed or starve to death). The ones that aren't exiled are the few who manifested talent as small children and managed to come to the attention of the more magic-friendly of the two religions. They're instead recruited into the clergy and the followers of that religion considers their talent divine (the other religion disagrees, of course).

Over the last couple of decades, the other sapient race on the moon has finally regained the numbers and wealth to concern itself with more than basic survival. Humanity believes this race of sapient dark-siders exists, but knows it in much the same way Vikings knew Lindworms existed. They're mythical creatures. So much so that a human might not recognise one.

On the human side of things, the ongoing persecution of the talented, and the encroaching native ecology has created a situation of too many young men and too few natural resources. The mother of all causes of war.

Being terribly religious sorts - the human society is very much inspired by the dark ages - the pretext will of course be religious differences. But unlike the in the real world, neither religion wants war in the setting. Both are almost as much merchant houses as they're religions at this point, and see anything that may disrupt trade as a threat.

The campaign just started, so the goals aren't too clearly defined yet. The most notable thing they've done so far, was burgling the third most wealthy family of the realm they're in.

At the end of our last sessions, their future plans had been narrowed down to starting a crime syndicate, starting an academy for mad inventors, or launching an expedition to the twilight to find a dark-sider. I think current consensus is the expedition, but they have a few more days before I need to start preparing whatever they decide. I hope they change their minds, though. If they enter the twilight, I don't think they can prevent the war, and I'd like them to.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write a novel so I'll stop here.

[Jasper Phillips]

That sounds pretty cool Disconnected. Ambitious too!

[Kael]

I like it Disconnected! Especially how you have a background that's hidden from the players and drives much of where the world is. It will make it fun when seemingly unconnected facets of the world start to click together.

[Anti-Bunny]

I've been playing Shadowrun 4th Edition again. The 20th Anniversary book is fantastic and the 'missions' structure is great if you can't get the same group of people every game, but still want your actions to have some effect on the storyline.

[Eric P]

i currently have three games going.

the first one is a 1st edition ad&d game, where i play a neutral fighter. There have been times when someone has threatened us, but since it isn't in the immediate interests of our party to fight, my fighter will take two steps back if the rest of the party decides to attack. He is the guy who GETS THINGS DONE and tries to keep everyone on track for our various quests rather than tackling incidentals. He's kind of tough to play because the initial response is still "KILL EVERYTHING"

the second game is Shadowrun. Our first game is tomorrow, where I'll be playing the hacker of the bunch. I haven't played Shadowrun since 1989 when I absolutely loathed it, but I figured I owed it a chance again. The new hacking stuff is kind of out there, but thankfully i do VoIP engineering in real life so I can at least grasp what they're trying to do.

The third game is a totally casual B/X D&D clone I run for some friend where we get together every few weeks and I DM essentially a ton of noobs who had literally never played before they met me, but now really enjoy it and look forward to our games. I try to put my own stamp on the cultures of the monsters and try to make certain that fighting isn't the only way to solve problems, but so far they have really liked the combat aspects of things, even when I'm slaughtering them for their mistakes.

I'd love to play more, but it's hard to find places to play in NYC

[Alistair]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27dungeons.html

Y'all just be grateful for your freedoms.

[Dean]

D&D Musical premiering tomorrow in in the Berkshires!

http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=522&gclid=CJqOtpaSyp8CFd1L5QodV0ah3g

[Robert Sharp]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27dungeons.html

Y'all just be grateful for your freedoms.

That's like an Onion article. Also, how is the issue of whether the guy was a D&D enthusiast from his youth a matter of court opinion?

[Disconnected]

That sounds pretty cool Disconnected. Ambitious too!

Thank you. And yes, it was ambitious. Way too ambitious, actually.

One can't have a realistic human-alien game setting. I haven't quite come to terms with the fact myself, but a fact it is. The knowledge requirement is simply too extreme, as is the amount of it a human can't process intuitively.

So yes, I was a bit overly ambitious there, heh.

In terms of scale, the setting is tiny compared to any prefab D&D setting. The day-side land area is slightly smaller than Spain, the habitable parts much smaller still, and all of humanity is just one million individuals.

The project, however, has been fairly massive. I think the page count of the set-in-stone bits is in the 400s. It's insane and in principle counter-productive to running a campaign. Fortunately it works for us. Besides, it's the only way I know how to get away with writing crap fiction and inventing weird societies :)

@ Kael, you can do much the same in any setting, using a secret future time line. I recommend it, but with the following reservation:

Because players rely entirely on information provided them by the GM, all information about current events will seem to have personal significance in the eyes of the players.

Keep that in mind. A good way to make the setting a bit more vivid, without confusing the players too much, is to settle on a handful of different locations and NPCs the players know or know of, and tie them together over time with a handful events along the lines of small personal triumphs & tragedies (dead uncle, new nephew), legal and career changes, and similar stuff the players can't easily connect to whatever they're doing, and can't easily confuse with something they should take an interest in.

[Tracy Baker]

We alternate weekly between Spirit of the Century and Star Wars Saga Edition. Before, we alternated between D&D 3.5 and Champions, and before that, between Shadowrun and Runequest.

As someone who thinks Spirit of the Century would be about just right for my group, is there anything I should know before pulling the trigger? It's kind of old, and I've been out of the RPG loop for a long time, so if there's another pulp game that's better I'd love to hear about it.

[awdougherty]

Ah, love reading about these games. Haven't been in one myself for a while. I still have my Twilight 2000, Traveller, 2300AD, Dark Conspiracy (can you tell my group dug us some GDW?), MERP, GURPS space, and Car Wars on the shelf should my gaming group ever decide to reconvene...

[hong]

I was part of a D&D 3/3.5 group for several years. My favourite character (let me tell you about my character) was a swordsage, towards the end of the 3.5 era. We did the Age of Worms adventure path, and I joined in at 17th level. Sort-of game writeup is here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3rd-edition-rules/186400-bo9s-notes-swordsage-play.html)

When 4E came out we switched over, and did the WotC modules in sequence. I retired due to moving away, but we got to ~14th level while I was there. Good fun was had by all.

[Reldan]

I'm going to be running a 3.5e Iron Kingdoms campaign in a few weeks. Most of my group has only played 4e so this will be an interesting change of pace for them.

[Robert Sharp]

Played Grimm a couple of nights ago, and it was great fun! Only two players could make it to this one, and the game is really suited for a group of kids, since everyone specializes. Classes basically fit the Breakfast Club model. So I played a jock, and the other guy was playing an outsider (juvie). Fantastic setting. It's a mix of Disney fairy tales with the actual Grimm style. We went from being chased by the ugly duckling (grown up into a duck-man beast of some sort) to finding ourselves in the house of the three bears (where we were attacked by a boiling pot of porridge!) to a nice little village where a little girl fed us while her foster father explained where we were (we started in detention in the Real World) to the Clock Tower, where a gnome tried to take out our hearts and replace them with cogs so that we would run his machines for him. All in all it was brilliant fun. Highly recommended. And the system is quite simple, while still allowing for interesting character progression.

[John Merva]

I never really got into pen and paper RPGs as I never really knew anyone that was interested. However, the one that I did get to play a couple of games of was Chill, the horror game. Loved it so much I ended up buying a lot of the campaign books. I also have an Aliens RPG - never got to play it but was also great reading.

[Eric P]

my noobie game was pretty amazing. All the player characters are total paranoid sociopaths. it's very entertaining to watch them do everything they can to avoid opening doors.

i am hoping they grow out of this, but a few of them, they really only have fun when they're rolling the dice and killing things. which i am happy to have them do, but I'm trying to convince them that having a bit of foreplay is better than to just bang away.

[Hans Lauring]

To Hanzii

Do you know about the yearly event www.viking-con.dk/? (It's in danish - sorry!)
The group I'm playing with (right now:Space 1889), are there every year. It's a place to meet complete stranger for a single game of either table-top RPG or boardgames.
It's always in october, so it's a bit of a wait, but it's an idea worth looking at.


Thanks.

I know of Viking Con, but it's the one con I've never been to (back in the day I even helped organize a few). I probably should go... but the aversion I have about advertising for random strangers to play with also extends to the kind of people, you meet at cons - most of them are wonderful, but some of the worst nutcases manage to hide it until they're in your living room eating your snacks, which is another thing my gamestore job taught me.
But I appreciate the effort.

I should also make an account on BoardgameGeek, whic Lorini adviced me to, last time I kwetched...

[Tortilla]

my noobie game was pretty amazing. All the player characters are total paranoid sociopaths. it's very entertaining to watch them do everything they can to avoid opening doors.

i am hoping they grow out of this, but a few of them, they really only have fun when they're rolling the dice and killing things. which i am happy to have them do, but I'm trying to convince them that having a bit of foreplay is better than to just bang away.

I've played with a lot of people like this, and the trick is to ease them into the RP end of the pool with baby steps.

Start out with pure hack and slash. Give them some vague plot point to go clear a dungeon of baddies or whatever, and then give me them a few very vanilla fights. Then try and transition to an experience that still lets them focus on fights, but gives them some reason to think about a larger context. Perhaps an NPC that needs protecting, and is present in the fights or an enemy that is clearly too strong too beat (be careful about never-surrender players here) but can be talked around to a peaceful resolution. Always reward any effort they make towards roleplaying even if it was a silly idea. If the barbarian with the INT and CHA of 9 wants to try to cleverly talk circles around the NPC then let him. Once you've got them used to roleplaying there's plenty of time to make them start trying to play a particular character faithfully.

[Jon Rowe]

So, I am currently running a Red Dwarf game. (great system in this one)

I thought of a really cool idea for each play session. We call each session an Episode. And at the end of the episode, we vote on what it shall be named.

Right now we have

4th Episode: The Schilling Joke
5th Episode: Double Up for Safety
6th Episode: A New Hop

Our 4th game introduced my players to the overall story arc of the game. They found an abandoned shuttle, and after some CSI work, they found that the occupants had been killed by baseballs and bats. They also found a Curt Schilling rookie card in a locker. (In the better than life episode, our Dog got into a fist fight with Curt Schilling)

Game 5, was a trip to the past through a woman's locker. They went to the day before the drive-plate failed. They did everything they could to change the future... to no avail. Our Hologram character tried to fix the drive-plate by strapping another one on top. "Double up for safety" he said. The 2nd drive plate is what ended up causing the failure. (In the Red Dwarf game, your game starts 300 million years in the future, after the drive-plate fails on your ship irradiating everyone and everything, and only 300 million years later, the crew is able to leave stasis.) The hologram was able to successfully argue with himself to get him into the stasis pod... saving his life, and making his character human.

Episode 6
Bob (me) the AI created a new device called the Bob-hop drive. Allowing the crew to travel anywhere in the universe they like. Through a miscalculation, they end up at earth. Which was taken over by all of the species. They were all at war, and segregated. The crew landed in DC, and after a re-enactment of the Day the Earth Stood Still, they met with the Squirrel president. Turns out the Squirrels were at war with the dogs, and the crew (who has a dog member) were in trouble. One character did a dance, and was seen as being the "chosen one" to lead the squirrels in exterminating the dog menace. After a crazy escape, the crew headed to france. (Where the dogs lived) They ate bacon, and had fun. Then... the squirrels attacked. Using their ship, they were able to help route the squirrel normandy invasion, and all got medals. (It was very reminiscent of the end of star wars, I even played the song as I handed out medals) (Hence the name, A New Hop)

[Unicorn McGriddle]

I'm tentatively considering a future game, but it'd have to address the problems that have killed games in the past. In other words, I'd want to do something stripped-down, simple, fast, short-term, and with a flexible cast. Previously I've had elaborate setups that involve learning a new setting and making a complex character before ever playing. That's not the best way to do it.

Maybe an abridged version of Cold City.

Edit: I have a couple of ideas for a quick-and-dirty Mass Effect RPG system too.

[Jon Rowe]

Red Dwarf is great because the rules are so flexible. It leads to many hilarious moments and situations.

[belgerog]

All these stories are awesome, makes me want to play. I don't think I had the best D&D experience. Although the DM and one or two of the players were fairly enthusiastic about the game, few tried to actually act their characters out or do anything to add to the immersion, so our sessions usually devolved into a dice throwing game.

I have a question for D&D 4 players. Given that the rules are more streamlined, how does that affect immersion in your sessions? Does the game become more of a boardgame or wargame than an actual RPG, or does it work with good players and a good DM?

[Tortilla]

I have a question for D&D 4 players. Given that the rules are more streamlined, how does that affect immersion in your sessions? Does the game become more of a boardgame or wargame than an actual RPG, or does it work with good players and a good DM?

3e and 4e are a wash in that respect, as both really require a map to play properly. Once everyone is staring at figurines on a map, the roleplaying aspects tend to take a back seat and instead everyone is in boardgame mode. 4e has a more streamlined tactical battle system, but it's still a tactical battle system that required staring a map and thinking in mechanical terms instead of roleplaying terms.

[Wallapuctus]

It works with good players and a good DM, but the new rules certainly don't help borderline role players develop their character.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

I have a question for D&D 4 players. Given that the rules are more streamlined, how does that affect immersion in your sessions? Does the game become more of a boardgame or wargame than an actual RPG, or does it work with good players and a good DM?In our current game we've been handling a lot of the social/character development stuff away from the table, via email and such. The actual face-to-face sessions are mostly dungeon/site exploration and combat.

We've gotten some good stuff out of this setup. A lot of the players have written extensive background stuff for their characters which gets posted to our campaign wiki, and we've had some neat "scenes" play out away from the table. The drawback is that sometimes it doesn't feel like these developments come out at the table, but that's not really different from other DnD versions I've played.

[Tortilla]

It works with good players and a good DM, but the new rules certainly don't help borderline role players develop their character.

Neither did the old rules in my experience. D&D has always done just about squat to really encourage roleplaying. The books suggest it's a nice thing between fights, but the system doesn't do anything to encourage it. That's an observation, not a criticism. D&D is a game with a lot of tradition and success and some of that can be attributed to appealing both to those want a rich roleplaying experience and those who want a wargame with some context to thematically bind the fights together.

A system that really wants to strongly encourage RP can do a lot more in terms of tying rewards to roleplaying. D&D rewards players for killing things.

[Lunch of Kong]

As someone who thinks Spirit of the Century would be about just right for my group, is there anything I should know before pulling the trigger?

What a great system. I had never played anything like this before, and I am absolutely loving the story-telling aspects.

The character generation for SotC was also about the most fun I've ever had in an RPG.

Do it. :-)

[Hawkeye Fierce]

A system that really wants to strongly encourage RP can do a lot more in terms of tying rewards to roleplaying. D&D rewards players for killing things.Yeah. I've played some systems that really encourage interesting character development and moral decisions and so on and so forth. Unknown Armies springs to mind. But D&D has never been that sort of system. Which is totally fine, I don't need systems to be all things to all people. D&D is still about killing things, and taking their stuff.

[Tracy Baker]

What a great system. I had never played anything like this before, and I am absolutely loving the story-telling aspects.

The character generation for SotC was also about the most fun I've ever had in an RPG.

Do it. :-)

Already done, and thanks for mentioning it or I would have missed it completely. I've been in board game mode for more than a decade now and haven't even looked at the RPG market since the 90s. I have a group of five (including me) who are all either professional or closet writers with families who wanted to start something that focused on role-playing instead of endless combat, and after reading the sample rules for SotC I was instantly sold. The setting is absolutely perfect as we all love pulp fiction and the FATE/FUDGE system is simple enough for everyone to learn. The only problem I'm having now is trying to get other things done after reading the rulebook because I'm fighting a desperate urge to read old Doc Savage books while listening to 20s and 30s radio on Shoutcast.

I'd bought D&D 4e because they all said they wanted to play it, but when it came down to it nobody wanted to read through all those rules and spend half our gaming sessions dealing with crunchy combat. I ordered the latest edition of Warhammer the other day hoping it will sate our fantasy RPG craving. It looks like it focuses more on role playing and abstracts combat to precisely the degree I want.

I also ordered the Mouse Guard RPG (http://rpg.geekdo.com/rpgitem/43719/mouse-guard-roleplaying-game) just because it looks so damned awesome.

If SotC goes well I'll likely grab Diaspora (http://rpg.geekdo.com/rpgitem/53617/diaspora) because it looks to bring all the coolness of SotC into a hard sci-fi setting. The latest Call of Cthulhu RPG looks great as well. Why did all this amazing stuff have to come out *after* I had kids?

[Jasper Phillips]

What a great system. I had never played anything like this before, and I am absolutely loving the story-telling aspects.

The character generation for SotC was also about the most fun I've ever had in an RPG.

Do it. :-)
I love how character generation has other players guest star in a series of your previous pulp-titled adventures, then ties each story into the game mechanics. Beginning characters end up with much more life and connection than other games, and it doesn't take much time either.

I've started porting this mechanism to every RPG I run.

[Jasper Phillips]

If SotC goes well I'll likely grab Diaspora (http://rpg.geekdo.com/rpgitem/53617/diaspora) because it looks to bring all the coolness of SotC into a hard sci-fi setting. The latest Call of Cthulhu RPG looks great as well. Why did all this amazing stuff have to come out *after* I had kids?
If you do pick up Diaspora, I'd be curious to hear your impressions. I've been eying it for a while myself.

Which Cthulhu RPG are you thinking of, The Trail of Cthulhu? I picked that up a while ago and like the way clue investigation is handled, so that everyone gets a chance to shine, and missed clues are dealt with smoothly. Haven't had a chance to run it yet though. Definitely better than the klunky RuneQuest derived Cthulhu rules of yore.

[Mrenda]

I love how character generation has other players guest star in a series of your previous pulp-titled adventures, then ties each story into the game mechanics. Beginning characters end up with much more life and connection than other games, and it doesn't take much time either.

I've started porting this mechanism to every RPG I run.

It's a good idea, problem is denying it to players when you don't want them to know each other. People get annoyed that there's no free stats.

Mongoose Traveller has it built into it as well.

I just won an adventure book for Mongoose Traveller, might play it later in the year.

[Tracy Baker]

Which Cthulhu RPG are you thinking of, The Trail of Cthulhu? I picked that up a while ago and like the way clue investigation is handled, so that everyone gets a chance to shine, and missed clues are dealt with smoothly. Haven't had a chance to run it yet though. Definitely better than the klunky RuneQuest derived Cthulhu rules of yore.

CoC 6th Edition (http://rpg.geekdo.com/rpgitem/43842/call-of-cthulhu-6th-edition). These guys are all big into Lovecraft so any impressions any of you can share of the various games in that genre are appreciated.

[Eric P]

3e and 4e are a wash in that respect, as both really require a map to play properly. Once everyone is staring at figurines on a map, the roleplaying aspects tend to take a back seat and instead everyone is in boardgame mode. 4e has a more streamlined tactical battle system, but it's still a tactical battle system that required staring a map and thinking in mechanical terms instead of roleplaying terms.

that's my biggest problem because it seems that the roleplaying game grinds to an inelegant halt and the tactical boardgame boots up.

[Mightynute]

that's my biggest problem because it seems that the roleplaying game grinds to an inelegant halt and the tactical boardgame boots up.

That's a flaw in the players/DM, not the system. A good DM can get roleplaying out of a Monopoly game.

[Tortilla]

that's my biggest problem because it seems that the roleplaying game grinds to an inelegant halt and the tactical boardgame boots up.

Yep, even played with good roleplayers a 3e or 4e game alternates between sharply delineated roleplaying and wargaming phases. There's nothing smooth about the transitions either. Roleplaying stops at "roll initiative" and restarts at "Okay, you search the bodies."

[Tortilla]

That's a flaw in the players/DM, not the system. A good DM can get roleplaying out of a Monopoly game.

Your second sentence contradicts your first. I agree that a group focused on RPing can RP anything and work around any system or rules that are in place. That doesn't mean it is invalid to criticize a system for being RP unfriendly or for failing to reward RP.

[Mightynute]

Your second sentence contradicts your first. I agree that a group focused on RPing can RP anything and work around any system or rules that are in place. That doesn't mean it is invalid to criticize a system for being RP unfriendly or for failing to reward RP.

But it does reward RP. There's a section in the DMG about using ad hoc XP as rewards, as well as quest-based XP that isn't gained through combat.

If your group isn't focused on roleplaying, you don't have RPGers, you have wargamers/boardgamers, and you might as well try and polish up a turd. Ain't going to happen.

EDIT: If you need the rules to spell out how to award XP for roleplaying, put the DMG back on the shelf, you are not creative enough to be a DM.

[Mrenda]

But it does reward RP. There's a section in the DMG about using ad hoc XP as rewards, as well as quest-based XP that isn't gained through combat.

If your group isn't focused on roleplaying, you don't have RPGers, you have wargamers/boardgamers, and you might as well try and polish up a turd. Ain't going to happen.

EDIT: If you need the rules to spell out how to award XP for roleplaying, put the DMG back on the shelf, you are not creative enough to be a DM.


I think the biggest argument that D&D isn't for roleplaying is that there are no real enumerated roleplaying attributes or stats.

[Mightynute]

I think the biggest argument that D&D isn't for roleplaying is that there are no real enumerated roleplaying attributes or stats.

I'd argue that's why it's EXACTLY for roleplaying - players have to use their own creativity and not rely on statistics and dice rolls. There's no random stat for "Likeability" or "Suaveness" - yes, Charisma is used when there's a mechanical win-lose challenge using those concepts, but that's gaming, not roleplaying.

If players can't look beyond the stats and dice rolls, tabletop RPGs aren't for them. Maybe they should try Diablo.

[Tracy Baker]

that's my biggest problem because it seems that the roleplaying game grinds to an inelegant halt and the tactical boardgame boots up.


That's a flaw in the players/DM, not the system. A good DM can get roleplaying out of a Monopoly game.

I think Eric's point is that even if you have a great group of role-players the combat systems in most games don't lend themselves to seamless continuity between role-playing and combat. I'd agree with that, and it's why I'm not going to start a D&D 4e campaign. I don't want to deal with the dichotomy between role-playing and pushing a bunch of minis around on a grid.

[Mrenda]

I'd argue that's why it's EXACTLY for roleplaying - players have to use their own creativity and not rely on statistics and dice rolls. There's no random stat for "Likeability" or "Suaveness" - yes, Charisma is used when there's a mechanical win-lose challenge using those concepts, but that's gaming, not roleplaying.

If players can't look beyond the stats and dice rolls, tabletop RPGs aren't for them. Maybe they should try Diablo.

I don't think you realise that when people say roleplaying, it's just a truncated form of, "roleplaying game." There needs to be rules for a game. Statistics and odds help to model the world, without that you're just writing collaberative fiction. Which is very far away from what I, and I imagine most roleplayers want.

[Tortilla]

If you need the rules to spell out how to award XP for roleplaying, put the DMG back on the shelf, you are not creative enough to be a DM.

There's so much so laughably wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to begin responding.

A good system has rules and rewards built in to facilitate and encourage roleplaying, and it is in no way a sign of weakness on the players or DMs to benefit from such. Let's just leave it at that.

[Jon Rowe]

I don't think you two are understanding eachother.

In Red Dwarf, I hand out 1-3 CP for character building, as rewards for good role playing.

[frank austin]

My group and I have been playing Pathfinder for almost six months, but I don't really like running D&D games. Playing in them can be a lot of fun, but I find that the combat doesn't quite gel with my DMing style. I like things more cinematic and less tied to the grid, where my players tend to stare down at the miniatures and fixate on it like it's a tactical game.

I'm trying to find a happy medium.

[sinfony]

that's my biggest problem because it seems that the roleplaying game grinds to an inelegant halt and the tactical boardgame boots up.
I don't know, my wizard's inability to hit fucking anything with magic missile is becoming the stuff of role-playing legend in our game.

[Tracy Baker]

I don't know, my wizard's inability to hit fucking anything with magic missile is becoming the stuff of role-playing legend in our game.

Your wizard's so bad, he can't even hit *the darkness*.

[Kael]

I don't know, my wizard's inability to hit fucking anything with magic missile is becoming the stuff of role-playing legend in our game.

One of my favorite gaming moments was from the parties ranger, a character who specialized in killing werewolves. The party goes up against a group of werewolves, with their leader, Duin Halfmorn, the first werewolf. The player charges, swings, rolls a twenty, rolls a very high crit (x4 damage). With his already considerable bonuses vs werewolves he takes out Duin with one hit.

So much for all the time spent building that character, but oh well, thats how it goes sometimes.

Go forward a year later. The players are charging up a staircase toward the bearer of the opalus mortis, which gives him control of death. As the players charge he summons the dead forms of all their greatest enemies. Before the ranger appears Duin, back for his revenge.

The player swing first, rolls a 20, rolls another x4 damage crit and takes him out a second time with one hit.

It was a great moment, poor Duin.

[sinfony]

Yeah, so imagine the reverse every time I cast magic missile, and you've got Dmitri Medvedev. Yes, I named my wizard Dmitri Medvedev. I thought it was appropriately fey.

[Kael]

Yeah, so imagine the reverse every time I cast magic missile, and you've got Dmitri Medvedev. Yes, I named my wizard Dmitri Medvedev. I thought it was appropriately fey.

Thats great. Your dm should give you a nice perk, balanced with the fact that attack spells have a 50% chance to miss and fly off to amusing and disasterous effects. Could be fun when you learn to cast fireballs.

[Jasper Phillips]

I don't know, my wizard's inability to hit fucking anything with magic missile is becoming the stuff of role-playing legend in our game.
I'll bite... what's the story? Ordinarily Magic Missile automatically hits...

Do all your opponents cast Shield, make Spell Resistance rolls, or are you failing your roll for casting in armor or something?

[sinfony]

I consistently roll less than 8 on magic missile. I'm only level 2, so my Int bonus is only +5, which hasn't given me enough to hit most of the enemies we've faced. I've critted a couple of arcana checks, though.

[Lunch of Kong]

I'll bite... what's the story?

He's not playing the D&D system you think he's playing.

[prolix]

I consistently roll less than 8 on magic missile. I'm only level 2, so my Int bonus is only +5, which hasn't given me enough to hit most of the enemies we've faced. I've critted a couple of arcana checks, though.
Were you attacking the darkness (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA)?

[Damien Neil]

I'd argue that's why it's EXACTLY for roleplaying - players have to use their own creativity and not rely on statistics and dice rolls. There's no random stat for "Likeability" or "Suaveness" - yes, Charisma is used when there's a mechanical win-lose challenge using those concepts, but that's gaming, not roleplaying.

Have you ever played something like Dogs in the Vineyard? Because it sounds like you've never encountered a rule system that really encourages roleplaying.

Capsule summary of DitV: You get a set of freeform character attributes (e.g., "I don't care if I live or die" or "I've never met a man who didn't have some good in him"). Every time you're in a conflict of any sort, you get a significant bonus each time you do something that pulls in one of your attributes. This leads to people getting into character, since there's a direct advantage to doing so.

Playing a system like this is hugely different than one like D&D, where the mechanics are pretty much all about combat and the occasional specific ability. That's not to say you can't roleplay with D&D, but there's really no support at all from the game itself. Playing a game like DitV can be a bit of a revelation; I know it was for me.

[Robert Sharp]

I consistently roll less than 8 on magic missile. I'm only level 2, so my Int bonus is only +5, which hasn't given me enough to hit most of the enemies we've faced. I've critted a couple of arcana checks, though.

I'm still confused. Is this a pathfinder rule or something? In D&D magic missile automatically hits, right? There is no roll.

As for RPing, I disagree that you need rules for it. However, I can see why they would be helpful, especially for players who are roleplaying very different characters than themselves. Most of the time, when we are playing Cthulu, we just RP the scenes, but there are times when we use the persuade or fast talk skills to just shortcut and represent our characters' abilities rather than our own.

But doesn't 3e have all sorts of skills and such that basically represent all this? I've never used miniatures while playing 3e and never felt it necessary.

[Mightynute]

I'm still confused. Is this a pathfinder rule or something? In D&D magic missile automatically hits, right? There is no roll.


4th Edition. All attacks require a d20 roll. No more auto-hits (if a spell has an automatic effect, it doesn't count as a 'hit' or an 'attack' for purposes of triggering other abilities, like a monster taking damage when they start their turn inside a Stinking Cloud).

[Jasper Phillips]

Hah! Somehow I'd totally forgotten that power was still called Magic Missile in 4E. The time I ran it nobody was a wizard, and it just didn't stick.

[Mightynute]

Hah! Somehow I'd totally forgotten that power was still called Magic Missile in 4E. The time I ran it nobody was a wizard, and it just didn't stick.

Yeah, the wizard in my campaign actually DIDN'T CHOOSE IT. A wizard without Magic Missile just seems wrong to me...

[Tortilla]

I'm still confused. Is this a pathfinder rule or something? In D&D magic missile automatically hits, right? There is no roll.


4e D&D made magic missile an "at will" power available to wizards. It has a to-hit roll now and can miss, which is a bummer, but on the other hand a wizard out of better spells can have infinite uses of magic missile.



But doesn't 3e have all sorts of skills and such that basically represent all this? I've never used miniatures while playing 3e and never felt it necessary.

You can play 3e without miniatures/maps but then you have to ignore some fairly important things like speed and reach and opportunity attacks. 3e and 4e were both designed for maps, and playing without can be a touch screwy.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

CoC 6th Edition (http://rpg.geekdo.com/rpgitem/43842/call-of-cthulhu-6th-edition). These guys are all big into Lovecraft so any impressions any of you can share of the various games in that genre are appreciated.I love Call of Cthulhu. I've run tons of games of it, and it's probably my favorite game of all time. The underlying rules system is a bit long in the tooth these days, but not overwhelmingly so. Its main strength is the scads of great adventures and support for it. Masks of Nyarlathotep, Beyond the Mountains of Madness, and of course Delta Green are among some of the best RPG products ever produced.

I haven't yet tried Trail of Cthulhu (http://www.pelgranepress.com/trail/index.html) but the buzz is good. Doesn't have the extensive support of CoC, but as I understand it converting CoC adventures is pretty easy. Good for if you're looking for a sort of Indie-game style take on CoC.

There's also all the games CoC has directly or indirectly inspired, though they lack Lovecraftian horrors. Unknown Armies is probably the most direct descendant, with its extensive madness meters. There's a bunch of indie horror games out there that have similar sanity/madness/fear systems.

[Tracy Baker]

Thanks for your post. I checked into Trail of Cthulhu and it appears to be out of stock nearly everywhere, although I suppose the PDF is an option. I'm thinking about weaving some Lovecraft into the SotC game we're about to kick off but I want to get a feel for the system before going crazy with it. SotC focuses on pseudo-superheroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow so I think it would be fun to throw them into a Lovecraftian setting, but a lot of the appeal of that setting is that typically normal people are dealing with it. Decisions, decisions...

I keep hearing great things about Unknown Armies. I'll have to check it out.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Lovecraft would mix pretty well with SotC but if you want to keep some semblance of a sanity system you'd need to mod it in yourself. A "Resolve" stress meter that is attacked by monsters "Horror" skill or something would work. Have Consequences be long-term insanities, and you're all set.

It might be better to start with the basic FATE system and build up to a CoC-like game, rather than trying to hack SotC. Check out Don't Rest Your Head by the same guys who did SotC. It's got some horror-meter stuff in it.

[Tracy Baker]

Awesome -- thanks again!

[Jasper Phillips]

Thanks for your post. I checked into Trail of Cthulhu and it appears to be out of stock nearly everywhere, although I suppose the PDF is an option. I'm thinking about weaving some Lovecraft into the SotC game we're about to kick off but I want to get a feel for the system before going crazy with it. SotC focuses on pseudo-superheroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow so I think it would be fun to throw them into a Lovecraftian setting, but a lot of the appeal of that setting is that typically normal people are dealing with it. Decisions, decisions...
Trail of Cthulhu does a good job of explicitly supporting both a Lovecraftian inevitable cosmic horror setting, and a more adventurous two fisted action approach which could fit with SotC (ala R.E. Howard I guess? Never read any of his Mythos stuff).

[Matt Bowyer]

I'm big on role-playing -- my favorite sessions are the ones without combat (since my party tends to one-shot my encounters if I wing it), and I have players that tend to be incredibly absorbed in their characters. I'm using d20 as my base, but what systems are really supportive of roleplaying and have good rules for it? I'm always looking for more to read and pull from, and I'd love some recommendations.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Baker, Unknown Armies is worth a look for sure.

[Tracy Baker]

I'm obviously no expert, but I chose FATE (based on FUDGE) over all the others because it looked to be the closest I could get to a seamless RP experience. Practically every rule in the game is there to enhance and reward RP, and I love the compel system, where the GM can use people's traits against them but then must reward them with fate points that the player can use to help pull off spectacular things later. I think it's great that players are rewarded for taking potentially (or outlandishly) negative and double-edged traits so there's a compelling reason to create vivid characters that aren't just one-dimensional min/max machines.

[drake113]

I picked up Spirit of the Century yesterday after reading this thread-- good recommendation, guys! I love the Novel concept in character generation; I'm totally going to steal that and repurpose it all over the place.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Baker, Unknown Armies is worth a look for sure.What was probably the best campaign I've ever run was with Unknown Armies, and I attribute it in large part to the system itself. The character generation has each player essentially pick hot buttons that the GM can press whenever he wants to get some quality reactions out of the character. As an example, one character was an ex-cop who had a soft spot for kids. So the very first adventure had a "coven" of stupid teenagers who didn't know what they were doing accidentally summoning some demons. So now you've got these teenagers being "ridden" by evil murdering assholes. You can just up and kill the kids and the demons will go away. Or you can try and save the stupid kids through a MUCH more difficult process. It was great.

[Mightynute]

I picked up Spirit of the Century yesterday after reading this thread-- good recommendation, guys! I love the Novel concept in character generation; I'm totally going to steal that and repurpose it all over the place.

Heck yeah. I'm already trying to figure out how to retrofit that into my games.

[Jasper Phillips]

I'm also fond of Ars Magica (http://www.atlas-games.com/arsmagica/) (the 4th edition of which is free, the the 5th is a bit better), for two particular tricks. 1 is getting everyone involved in designing the community of magi that the plaeyrs form, and second is for having "Grogs", 2nd string characters who play the community's non-hero members, from guards to cooks to stablehands. Some of the most fun I've had was running adventure seeds with the grogs while the main PCs were away.

Burning Empires (http://www.burningempires.com/) is another system with an interesting bit of world design at the beginning, and a built in campaign arc as you defend a world from parasitic alien invasion. Never played it, but it looks interesting enough.

[Ezdaar]

Burning Empires (http://www.burningempires.com/) is another system with an interesting bit of world design at the beginning, and a built in campaign arc as you defend a world from parasitic alien invasion. Never played it, but it looks interesting enough.

This is by the same guy who did Mouseguard. There is a fantasy version of the rules, minus the big campaign arc, called Burning Wheel. I really love the stuff he does but I have yet to play any of them unfortunately.

I think one of the neatest parts of Burning Wheel is that the players and GM write out their next 3 actions on paper and then reveal them as they go.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Burning Wheel is a great system, and I hear Mouse Guard is even better. I didn't like Burning Empires much because of how locked-in the system is to the campaign. You can't easily use it for any other kind of sci-fi campaign except the one it gives you.

[Jasper Phillips]

I hadn't realized Mouse Guard was a similar system; I'll have to take a look at it.

[Tracy Baker]

Mouse Guard showed up today and it's worth the measly $23 Amazon is charging just for its good looks (not to mention helping support a terrific game designer). Hardcover, full color throughout, and there's even a map printed on the inside of the slipcover. I haven't read the graphic novels it's based on, but they sold me with the setting -- role-playing a bunch of mice has some amazing potential.

From everything I've been told and read it's a streamlined (yet not necessarily stripped-down) version of Burning Wheel, and from a quick skim it looks to be amazing. There's a lot of the same stuff here that appealed to me in SotC: Fun character design, loads of traits (including negative ones that give you the equivalent of fate points to help later when triggered), and a focus on role-playing above all else. Even the dice system is similar to that of FUDGE in that you simply roll for degree of success instead of having to add up a ton of numbers and bonuses.

Happy with this purchase and I haven't even played it yet, which is good since I'm funding most of my current role-playing fetish with the proceeds from the sale of a copy of The Settlers of Catan: The Book (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1137/die-siedler-von-catan-das-buch-zum-spielen) that I regretted purchasing for years.

EDIT: Stumbled across this terrific and comprehensive review (http://www.gnomestew.com/reviews/mouse-guard-rpg-review-want-to-play-a-mouse-with-a-sword) of Mouse Guard while looking for printable files.

[drake113]

Heck yeah. I'm already trying to figure out how to retrofit that into my games.


Well, I know for certain that the next Supers game I run will use a similar mechanic to have player's describe their character's first issue, first team-up, and first epic crossover event (think Secret Wars or CoIE).

[Tracy Baker]

I ran across Dread (http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/dread/index.html) tonight, which may have potential for one-offs. There are no stats or dice at all -- characters are defined completely by text and a Jenga tower is used to resolve conflicts. If you topple the tower your character dies immediately, so I can see how the tension would ratchet up as the game progresses.

There's a good review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11974.phtml) at RPG.net.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Well, this thread just cost me the $23 for Mouse Guard.

[Anders Hallin]

Oh sure, now it's interesting ;(
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=49888

[Wallapuctus]

I think one of the neatest parts of Burning Wheel is that the players and GM write out their next 3 actions on paper and then reveal them as they go.

Having played both games I can tell you this is the worst thing ever. Especially when you have to do it for conversation (yes you have to script your roleplaying in advance, trying to guess what the other guy will say/do)

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Yeah, scripting bothers me a bit in BW. It's pretty easy to house-rule around it, though.

[Jasper Phillips]

Ug. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that part; clearly needs a bit of GM discretion. I mean, it works ok for somethings, but clearly fails for others.

[Disconnected]

I'm big on role-playing -- my favorite sessions are the ones without combat (since my party tends to one-shot my encounters if I wing it), and I have players that tend to be incredibly absorbed in their characters. I'm using d20 as my base, but what systems are really supportive of roleplaying and have good rules for it? I'm always looking for more to read and pull from, and I'd love some recommendations.

If you play your own stuff, consider making your own rules as well. I won't pretend it's simple or fast, but it's not terribly difficult and the big, fat advantage is that it will evolve to be whatever suits you.

If you marry the challenge concept from the D20 system, to the concept that everything a player can do will expend some type of resource, proportional to the challenge, and to the concept of using challenge factors you combine to determine the CR of an action, instead of predefining possible actions and their CRs, you pretty much have a RP-centric system.

That probably sounds overly simplistic and daunting all at once, but it really isn't. If you're considering doing this, begin by writing up a short list of moments in fiction you thought were cool. When you're done, look at it for a bit. Most of those moments probably involve a protagonist or several, doing stuff that was difficult according to factors laid out in the fiction. And most of those actions probably cost him/her/it/them some type of resource or resources, tangible or abstract (like someone's reputation, for example).

It is a lot of work to create your own system, but as I hope I just demonstrated, it's not difficult. It just takes time. And you don't need a massively comprehensive rule system to start using it. Most likely, a very basic one will serve your group better initially, and if you're having any fun with it at all, it will grow (probably totally out of control even, but such is life).

[Sebmojo]

We had a long-running 3.5 campaign that was just edging out of the fun levels (pushing 9th) when I offered to DM some 4th. We ran through Keep on the Shadowfell in a semi-parody fashion (see here (http://elevenfootpole.blogspot.com/)for the reason why) then buckled down to it with a frankly awesome homebrew desert city campaign. Up to 8th level now, approaching the end of the Heroic Tier.

Approaching it, initially, skeptically, we've really come round to 4e. It does what it's trying to do much better than 3e, but you do need to appreciate that what it's trying to do is arguably less ambitious.

That said, there's very little that you could do in 3rd, from a story perspective, that you can't do in 4th with a bit of thought.

[GloriousMess]

Ug. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that part; clearly needs a bit of GM discretion. I mean, it works ok for somethings, but clearly fails for others.
Sorry, I don't do discreet. Baha!

[Hans Lauring]

I love Call of Cthulhu. I've run tons of games of it, and it's probably my favorite game of all time. The underlying rules system is a bit long in the tooth these days, but not overwhelmingly so. Its main strength is the scads of great adventures and support for it. Masks of Nyarlathotep, Beyond the Mountains of Madness, and of course Delta Green are among some of the best RPG products ever produced.


I love CoC. So much that last time I went to Vegas I went to the Gun Store to fire a Thompson - played several of the classic campaigns, but never finished one. The most Epic was the Walker in the Wastes campaign from Pagan, that I GM'ed (using Twilight 2000/Dark conspiracy combat rules)... but I left the city, before we could finish.

[Brandon Clements]

Ooh, Delta Green. The intro fiction (http://www.delta-green.com/opint/raredocs/final.html) is one of the better ones I've seen.

[Case]

I'm really looking forward to the Dresden Files (http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/) RPG. It's based on the Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher.

The game is based on a modified FATE 3.0 system, but designed to be more campaign friendly. One of the more intriguing aspects of the game is that you sit down with your players and design the city where everything will be happening before you launch the actual campaign.

[Chowhound]

I just picked up the Rogue Trader book last week, but haven't had the time to sit down and dive into it. The premise and theme/flavor abounds - I really hope the gameplay matches up with it.

[Rorschach]

Starting up my Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition next week. Got three players rolled up so we'll hit the ground running.

[drake113]

Just picked up the Day After Ragnarok (http://atomicovermind.com/blog/?page_id=339) for Savage Worlds by the brilliant Kenneth Hite. It's a WWII two fisted supernatural post apocalypse pulp type-scenario. The idea is that in 1945, the Nazis managed to summon Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent that's 300 miles wide and thousands of miles long, and the U.S., in a panic, tries to nuke it. Surprisingly, this works, except now there's a rotting magical snake carcus covering covering vast swaths of Europe and North America, not to mention that its death caused a tsunami that covered much of the world's coastal areas with radioactive magic snake venom. Now, it's three years after Serpentfall, and the parts of the world that are still inhabitable are in chaos, and new sciences and arcane knowledge are being discovered in the hopes of reversing (or even, just stopping) the spread of the snake's poison on Earth. The U.S. has fragmented, the Soviets have Frost Giants lead by Loki, and the Nazis are still operating out of South America and Antarctica.

I've just barely begun to dig into it, but so far, it's the coolest setting I've seen since Damnation Decade (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=20321&it=1). Now I just have to figure out a way to shoehorn in all the cool pulpy stuff from SotC.

[Mightynute]

Just picked up the Day After Ragnarok (http://atomicovermind.com/blog/?page_id=339) for Savage Worlds by the brilliant Kenneth Hite.

This is hands-down the coolest idea I've seen all year.

[Eric P]

that sounds absolutely bad to the ass.

[Mrenda]

I read that link, and I still have no idea what's distinct about the book. And I'd be interested in it, seeing as the main campaign I play in is Savage Worlds based.

[Jasper Phillips]

Hah! That's awesome. I'm tempted to combine that with Hard Vacuum, so I can have Nazis on the Moon to boot.

[Brian Rucker]

I've been curious if anyone's actually tried playing The Great Pendragon Campaign (Pendragon 5th Edition). I own a copy but just don't have a group or time for it. Still, it seems pretty amazing, fleshed out and detailed.

The original Pendragon was perhaps the first RPG that did include actual stats that could influence player behavior and express character personality as I recall.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

I'd love to play or run The Great Pendragon Campaign, but my group's never been interested in Pendragon.

[Jasper Phillips]

Man, I wish I could get such an involved campaign going. Instead I get episodic Conan, and canned Pathfinder Adventures.

Not that those are bad per se (they can actually be quite good), but it's not what I'd play given free reign.

[bloo]

Oh hell yes, Ragnarok!

[Jasper Phillips]

Playing "Rise of the Runelords" our (cleric-less) three man party of level 4 heroes just offed a CR 6 badass undead beast -- using a Rube Goldberg combo revolving around Animate Rope and Grease. Hah!

I strongly suspect we've messed up the plot, or done something that will come back to bite us later, but it was totally worth it. :-)

[Unicorn McGriddle]

I have mixed feelings about Savage Worlds overall, but the base system is simple and it does a handful of things I'm very pleased with. The Day After Ragnarok is one of them.

[Arioch]

I DM a Deadlands campaign which at the moment moves very slowly (as in, once in three months) due to stupid grownupness and responsibilities of the players. You don't get much playing time in if you have to explain the rules every time. Since we stoped playing every week, I moved back from the convoluted overarching plotline to self-contained episodes, as the players apparently couldn't remember any NPCs, including the big bad. That's my fault, of course, but I'm still a DM novice.

[GloriousMess]

Yeah real-life is a pain in the bum when it comes to a regular session. Our fortnightly campaign has suffered a total of a month's delay due to one or more players having urgent commitments or panics at work. I miss our weekly session where we'd play for 10 hours every Sunday, back when we were all students. That was awesome.

[Eric P]

i don't really have the endurance / patience to run 10 hour games. i think that like 6 or 7 is my absolute limit, but 5 is about average for us.

i came up with a pretty cool idea for a setting and i think i'm going to try to flesh it out a bit and maybe turn it into a game for some people i know.

the idea is one where the known world is a fresh water lake with collections of islands as the individual cities / towns and what not with sunken islands long thought to be legend starting to rise returning demihumans to the world.

[Jasper Phillips]

I DM a Deadlands campaign which at the moment moves very slowly (as in, once in three months) due to stupid grownupness and responsibilities of the players. You don't get much playing time in if you have to explain the rules every time. Since we stoped playing every week, I moved back from the convoluted overarching plotline to self-contained episodes, as the players apparently couldn't remember any NPCs, including the big bad. That's my fault, of course, but I'm still a DM novice.
Long hiatuses are a pain. One trick I'm starting to look at is using "Face Cards" for NPCs, which I'm hoping are more memorable than just names by themselves.

You can apparently buy decks with various selections of faces from Paizo, but I think I'm just going to mine my long since unused CCG trove, sticking them in card sleeves along with a cardstock stub with name and a short description.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

i don't really have the endurance / patience to run 10 hour games. i think that like 6 or 7 is my absolute limit, but 5 is about average for us.

I think I've done 10 hours in the distant past, but I prefer a more typical 3 to 4.

[Demon G Sides]

I'm going to ask what ever other nerd who reads this thread but doesn't have nerdy enough friends wants to ask;

SOMEONE RUN AN ONLINE GAME PLEASE.

[Jasper Phillips]

I generally aim for 4 hours, but try to have enough material for 6 if things are rolling and people are into it. Like Unicorn says, the real trick is keeping campaigns rolling, as it's such a pain to organize adults with jobs.

I'd love the occasional 10 hour game, but it just doesn't happen anymore. Drives me nuts, as plenty of people I know will readily play poker for that long. :-/

[Unicorn McGriddle]

SOMEONE RUN AN ONLINE GAME PLEASE.

I might run one sometime soonish, but it's too early to promise. Currently I'm kicking around the following elements as desirable:

- short duration, so the game can end on a high note rather than tapering off without resolution as people stop showing up

- flexible cast, because attendance was patchy the last time

- simple system, for fast and easy conflict resolution (and low-investment character creation)

- familiar setting, to get people interested and involved right away

- fast, straightforward advancement, to raise the stakes quickly over just a few games

Under consideration: Savage Worlds: Necessary Evil in generic Marvel/DC comic book world

Under consideration: Mass Effect homebrew, or possibly Mass Effect with Primetime Adventures (although PTA didn't work out too well the last time I tried it, and I'd want to give the homebrew angle a shot before I decided it wouldn't work)

Under consideration: Cold City (post-WWII counter-occult espionage in occupied Germany)

Under consideration: Dogs in the Vineyard, probably in a different and very familiar setting (e.g., Star Wars, with Jedi or Sith instead of Dogs)

Proposed plot framework: A "Warriors" situation (Falling Down is also worth mentioning) which forces the players to cross hostile territory. This gives the plot plenty of conflict, and also clear progression with a natural resolution. (It also explains varying attendance with the idea that the characters sometimes split up to reduce the risk of detection.) For Necessary Evil, I'm thinking a supervillain prison break, with the goal being refuge in Latveria or someplace similar, and the opposition being increasingly dangerous superhero teams and conventional responses (including Sentinels). For Mass Effect, possibly a fight through the Terminus Systems to Citadel space, or from someplace dangerous on a planet to a spaceport where the players can escape. For Cold City, through Berlin during a major supernatural event. For Dogs, if it's Star Wars, probably something similar to what I'd do for Mass Effect -- otherwise, not sure.

There are also some things I've tentatively ruled out but might consider again with adequate player interest:

New World of Darkness: Changelings and their relationship with a secret world strike me as exceptionally well-suited to the Warriors plot, and can veer powerfully between confrontations with epic forces of myth and legend and desperate, gritty struggles with mundane threats. Werewolves have some of the same strengths, but I see them as less ideal. The system, unfortunately, is a little on the complex side, but it's reasonably approachable.

Exalted: There's plenty of latitude in Exalted for a Warriors plot (to say the least), but the system and character creation are disastrously elaborate, and the setting is unfamiliar to most. If I felt extremely ambitious and some players felt the same way, I might dust off my Rakshastan concept -- complete with a ready-made hundred-node map of a section of the Southeastern Wyld -- and do a Fair Folk game. Really, though, anything but Solars is interesting. Other relatively recent additions to the line include Infernals and Alchemicals. I think Lunars might work especially well.

Primetime Adventures: Even though I mention it above, I suspect it's really too freeform to succeed. Maybe it could work with the right players.

Paranoia: It's just a shade on the high-complexity side. I think Cold City provides a lot of the benefits of Paranoia, but does a better job of delivery.

A "big picture" game: For a long time I have nursed the idea of a game where the players scheme and plot the time-lapsed management of a city or nation. I don't think this is that concept's time to shine.

Any thoughts?

[KWhit]

I've been looking for a regular game in the Atlanta area for ages. I'd be up for an online game though.

[Djscman]

Speaking of online games, here's an interesting Wired article (http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/03/features/werewolf.aspx?page=all) about the history of Mafia/Werewolf games. Which apparently can be played in a non-internet-forum context!

[Brian Rubin]

How did I miss this thread before? :) I'm running a Serenity RPG campaign with a group of 10 folks, including me, and have been for about a year. Been tons of fun.

Have any of you guys played the Heavy Gear or Fading Suns systems? Those are my faves.

[Brian Rubin]

I'm really looking forward to the Dresden Files (http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/) RPG. It's based on the Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher.

The game is based on a modified FATE 3.0 system, but designed to be more campaign friendly. One of the more intriguing aspects of the game is that you sit down with your players and design the city where everything will be happening before you launch the actual campaign.
I too am severely looking forward to this one as well.

[Jasper Phillips]

How did I miss this thread before? :) I'm running a Serenity RPG campaign with a group of 10 folks, including me, and have been for about a year. Been tons of fun.

Have any of you guys played the Heavy Gear or Fading Suns systems? Those are my faves.
Heavy Gear I played a bit years ago, but only briefly.

I've started a Fading Suns campaign a couple of times, but it's always (ahem!) faded out. Most recently I tried crossing it with Crimson Skies pulp, on a planet isolated from the jump web for several hundred years and with few resources, so the technology has fallen back to electro-prop planes. I even went so far as too cook up some home brew rules, a cross between Crimson Skies, D6, and the old Star Warriors game, but alas my PnP buddies just don't like dogfighting. :-(

I'm serious enough about this that I keep thinking about hacking out an online version, but so far I've managed to hold off on yet another time sink.


Btw, how the hell do you manage 10 players?!

[Mrenda]

Speaking of online games, here's an interesting Wired article (http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/03/features/werewolf.aspx?page=all) about the history of Mafia/Werewolf games. Which apparently can be played in a non-internet-forum context!


My University's gaming society uses it an ice-breaker. Not only is it an entertaining game, it's great for getting people who aren't gamers talking to each other and involved with a game. It's horrendously simple to grasp. If you're a villager, you accuse the weird looking guy of being a werewolf, if you're a werewolf, you kill the person who most annoys you. And that gets everyone all riled up and talking.

However there are a number of people who aren't suited to surviving past the first few lynches;
People with shifty eyes.
People with beards.
Gingers.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Any thoughts?Depending on the schedule (I work most weeknights) I'm definitely interested. I have no preference among the options you listed, they all sound good.

[Brian Rubin]

Btw, how the hell do you manage 10 players?!
It's a fun juggling act, to be sure, but I treat it like an episode. If players go off to do certain things separately, I cut between different scenes and do different takes as the game goes on. It actually works fairly well. Thankfully the system upon which Serenity is based is pretty streamlined, so it's not too difficult.

[Demon G Sides]

Unicorn, anything you try I'd definitely commit to. I LOVED the Soviet one we tried for a little bit, unfortunate time constraints played against all of us.

[Tracy Baker]

Thread necro to see if anyone's tried Fiasco (http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/). I'm about to pull the trigger on it, because it looks amazing if you could get the right group pulled together for it. GM-less, narrative-driven instead of dice-driven, and you basically spend a few hours cobbling together a Coen brothers movie. It comes with four scenarios and they release new scenarios free each month (plus there are others developed by the player community to download). If any of you have tried it I'd love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: I just discovered they only make the scenarios available to download for one month and then pull them before posting the next one (they're going to collect them in an anthology at the end of the year).

[Tracy Baker]

Also, I was thinking of getting Diaspora (the space implementation of the Fate 3.0 system) and noticed DriveThruRPG is offering a Spirit Of The Century/Diaspora bundle for $19.99 (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80195). That there is a bargain -- wish it would have been available when I bought SotC...

[Demon G Sides]

Thread necro to see if anyone's tried Fiasco (http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/). I'm about to pull the trigger on it, because it looks amazing if you could get the right group pulled together for it. GM-less, narrative-driven instead of dice-driven, and you basically spend a few hours cobbling together a Coen brothers movie. It comes with four scenarios and they release new scenarios free each month (plus there are others developed by the player community to download). If any of you have tried it I'd love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: I just discovered they only make the scenarios available to download for one month and then pull them before posting the next one (they're going to collect them in an anthology at the end of the year).


That actually sounds like a ton of fun.

[Mrenda]

I've been interested in Traveller since I heard Mongoose were bringing out a new edition. And since I won a copy of Beltstrike at a con (Best player in a scenario, thank you very much XD) I've gone on a splurge of buying up Traveller books, plus reading all the ones my gaming society has. Now I plan on running a campaign once the summer hits and my current campaign finishes.

Starting tonight I've drawn up about 5 planets in a subsector, and plan on doing the whole subsector by the time I start. Including a description explaining the stats on the planet, plus some characters and story seeds on each planet, I'm going to have a lot of notes. What's the best digital way to store these? I played around with a personal wiki a few years back, and I'm thinking about going that route again (but I'm not very strong with wiki's. technical aspects.) Are there any easy to use ones about? Or should I be setting my eyes on something completely different.

[bloo]

I like that Mongoose is rejuvenating some life into traveller, though it's impossible not to have nits with it - and all versions - the best kind of traveller is home brew, a bit from this version, a bit from that version.

Setting up a googlesite is pretty easy for a wiki you'll want to share, though I don't think you can hide or restrict individual pages.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Speaking of Mongoose, I ordered their new version of Runequest. I love me some BRP, and I've always wanted to run a Glorantha game. I've also been getting copies of the HeroWars/HeroQuest stuff to use as background and setting material.

[Jasper Phillips]

Yeah, I tried to get into the straight HeroWars rules, but they just didn't work for me.

I'm curious to see how the Basic Role Playing version has come around since its last incarnation -- tell us what you think of it when it arrives!

[Lunch of Kong]

The last Runequest game we were in, we managed to elevate ourselves to godhood. I think we might revisit Runequest in another decade or so.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Yeah, I tried to get into the straight HeroWars rules, but they just didn't work for me.They're very interesting, but I think in actual play I'd find them too floaty and freeform. Sometimes you just want to know exactly how hard it is to stab that elf, y'know?

It doesn't help that the system is a moving target - HeroWars was pretty different from HeroQuest, which is pretty different from HeroQuest 2. The newest edition has the weirdness that the only things with fixed stats are the PCs. Everything else is represented by an abstract "resistance," which can change based on anything from how difficult the task being attempted is, to how important it is to the narrative that the PC succeed. It's odd.

The supplements are great, though, and rules-light enough to make conversion to other systems a breeze.

[Jasper Phillips]

That was exactly my take. I found myself preferring the old Advanced Runquest (http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=500) rules from Avalon Hill.

The setting is wonderfully wacky and colorful (I love King of Dragon Pass!), but damn everything is just so floaty...

[Tracy Baker]

Just a heads up via the BoardGameGeek forums: One Monk Miniatures, which makes some excellent print-and-play mini sets, has made all its stuff free (http://www.onemonk.com/Home.html). It's an amazing bargain if you have the patience to cut those out (or one of those fancy printers that does all the cutting for you, which I find myself coming ever-closer to purchasing thanks to deals like this).

EDIT: The site is getting hammered now, but here's an example of one of his cooler sets:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/495885/Elf-Alliance-Heavy-Infantry.jpg

[Jasper Phillips]

Sweet! I just got into WorldWorks' "TerrainLinx" (though sadly I lack a robo cutter), and was eying exactly these miniatures. The "Dwarven Caverns" stuff has taken forever to assemble, but is so much cooler than pen drawings and ad hoc blocks on a square grid.

Such cardstock figures are quick to cut out (much quicker than the terrain), so long as you leave a border of white around them. Actually, it's turned out to be easier to freehand these things than I expected, so getting down to black may not take much longer...

[Tortilla]

Played the concluding adventure to a 4e campaign last night. We were a party of 5 20th level characters, so we were no lightweights by any means, but we went up against a tarrasque.

Just the name conjured so much fear that we were really worried about the fight. It turns out to be somewhat anticlimactic though. We had all anticipated fighting some sort of big bad final monster so we were all loaded for bear with our best daily powers kept in reserve for this fight. The poor tarrasque didn't have much chance. My sorcerer stunned him to open the fight, someone else tripped him, someone else immobilized him, and the dogpile was on. We just buried him in status effects to neutralize him while we slowly whittled down his huge hit points. He still got in a few good attacks and there were definitely times we needed healing but the outcome was never in doubt. The fight was more tedious than thrilling.

I'm a little sad that the mythical tarrasque, traditionally one of the biggest scariest meanies in D&D, was dispatched with so little effort. 4e watered them down too much.

[Mightynute]

If you beat the tarrasque, your DM is doing it wrong.

[Tortilla]

If you beat the tarrasque, your DM is doing it wrong.

No, not really. Go look at the 4e stats for a tarrasque. Most of the insane immunities that used to make them unstoppable death machines are missing now. It's just a big monster with a ton of hit points and some hard hitting attacks.

Plus there's the oddities in the D&D rules that size isn't a bonus or penalty to attacks that stun or prone or grab a target. It's entirely legit in 4e rules for an elf to immobilize a tarrasque with a wrestling move, as absurd as that sounds.

[Mightynute]

No, not really. Go look at the 4e stats for a tarrasque. Most of the insane immunities that used to make them unstoppable death machines are missing now. It's just a big monster with a ton of hit points and some hard hitting attacks.

Plus there's the oddities in the D&D rules that size isn't a bonus or penalty to attacks that stun or prone or grab a target. It's entirely legit in 4e rules for an elf to immobilize a tarrasque with a wrestling move, as absurd as that sounds.

So your DM failed by using the incorrect stats. The tarrasque that you can defeat is not the true tarrasque.

[Tortilla]

So your DM failed by using the incorrect stats. The tarrasque that you can defeat is not the true tarrasque.

The DM used the book stats for a tarrasque. If you want to argue that the book is wrong, I could probably get behind you on that.

[Mightynute]

The DM used the book stats for a tarrasque. If you want to argue that the book is wrong, I could probably get behind you on that.

I prefer to think of it more as a test to see if your DM is paying attention.

[Tortilla]

If you were trying for funny there, well, you missed.

[bloo]

Tarrasque = Campaign Reset button.

Anything less is not a tarrasque.

[Jon Rowe]

I think beating a Tarrasque could be a cool way to end a campaign.

But it shouldn't be possible without some character deaths. It would be especially neat if you had an entire army to attack it and do some strategizing that way. Or maybe you could kill it through some non combat means? Like maybe someone getting swallowed whole opens their bag of holding and tosses in a portable hole.. that would be awesome.

I guess the 4e version is pretty watered down.. though according to the guide, when the Tarrasque is reduced to 0hp, it burrows underground and escapes.

[Tortilla]

I guess the 4e version is pretty watered down.. though according to the guide, when the Tarrasque is reduced to 0hp, it burrows underground and escapes.

Yeah, we know for a fact we didn't kill it, but our objective at the time was just to beat it. Ironically we did have armies handy, four of them actually, but due to a complex net of intrigue and deception that we had woven the four armies were basically just there to cancel each other out and keep each other busy so we could focus on the real bad guy. Oh, and all four armies thought they had shown up to be on our side too.

We had no character deaths while facing the tarrasque itself, and I don't think anyone ever went under 25% hit points. We took some heavy hits but our party had a lot of healing potential so we never in the whole campaign had characters get reduced to 0 hit points unless someone fragile (aka my sorcerer) got caught in melee and mauled so badly that they lost all their hit points in one round. In the whole campaign, levels one through twenty, it was pretty rare to have someone drop. Of all the times it happened, only once did it result in an actual character death before emergency healing could be applied to the downed character. The one death for the whole campaign was, of course, my sorcerer.

I'm hesitant to really blame 4e for that though, this was a first campaign from DM who had almost no DM experience and little 4e experience so I think the encounters were more vanilla and predictable than they ought to have been.

[Brian Rucker]

Speaking of Mongoose, I ordered their new version of Runequest. I love me some BRP, and I've always wanted to run a Glorantha game. I've also been getting copies of the HeroWars/HeroQuest stuff to use as background and setting material.

Mongoose is definitely getting their share of my money too. I'm only (semi) actively collecting a few lines these days. Traveller and Conan: The Roleplaying Game each have their own shelves now. Well, Mongoose Traveller shares space with some books from older editions, Serenity RPG and a few odds and ends from the Star Wars (d20) and Star Trek RPGs. Conan shares space with a collection of Howard's Conan stories and reprints of the Savage Sword of Conan.

I also had to pick up Paranoia and a couple supplements. For old time's sake.

[Mightynute]

We had no character deaths while facing the tarrasque itself, and I don't think anyone ever went under 25% hit points. We took some heavy hits but our party had a lot of healing potential so we never in the whole campaign had characters get reduced to 0 hit points unless someone fragile (aka my sorcerer) got caught in melee and mauled so badly that they lost all their hit points in one round. In the whole campaign, levels one through twenty, it was pretty rare to have someone drop. Of all the times it happened, only once did it result in an actual character death before emergency healing could be applied to the downed character. The one death for the whole campaign was, of course, my sorcerer.

You know, as a current 4e DM, this is something I've noted as well. A good Leader class can provide enough healing to negate almost any damage the party starts to take. I've had to start being a *lot* more aggressive in what I throw the players up against to make things challenging. Granted, there are still times I want to smack my gamers across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

I mean, if you're going to continually do the "loot! loot! loot!" chant, you waive your right to bitch when you get stuff determined by random selection.

[frank austin]

I have some problems with my players that I'd like some advice with.

First of all, they're needlessly antagonistic. They treat every conversation with an NPC like a boss fight, with sarcasm as their main tactic. Usually the solution for this is obvious, just put them in conversations with people that can manhandle them and aren't afraid to, but I've done that. It doesn't help. As soon as they're done getting beaten nearly to death, they're back to treating everyone like opponents.

They seem to have problems with the "roleplaying" elements of RPGs all around, really. Outside of combat they're rarely doing anything worth noting, no matter how much prompting and incentive I give them. I'll spend a few paragraphs worth of description on a bar/tavern, for example, and end it with something like "Where are you?" I get blank stares. I give them free reign to do whatever they like for a little while, and they do literally nothing before I'm forced to move the story along on my own.

Of course, once combat comes around, they're all at the edges of their seats and paying plenty of attention. Even then I have a problem getting them to do anything other than "I swing at it with my sword" or "I shoot it with my gun".

I know that these are pretty standard problems that most DMs face at one point or another, but I've never had it this bad before. All my players, all the time, for over a year now. I love these dudes and want to keep playing with them, but all of my attempts to get them to play along have come up short.

Any ideas? The less conventional, the better. I think it's going to take a lot to get them on track.

[Brian Rucker]

I hate to say this but it could just be the players. Some folks get it and some folks don't. MMOs really haven't helped this kind of problem at all in tabletop. Everything revolves around combat now. It always did to some extent, RPGs evolved from miniatures rules in the first place, but from what I've seen it's getting worse and worse.

One thing that might work would be to set a tone with NPCs interacting. Or imply there might be some kind of material rewards if they play their cards right. Stick them in a king's court for taste of intrigue and show them how developing connections can be useful in getting out of trouble, acquiring material assets and so on. Or, if that's too upscale, find a little hamlet somewhere that's in need of Seven Samurai to protect and train them. The reward would be in the mines the peasants work or the crops and could pay off a good deal in cash but the players would have to get invested in helping there. Not just with this set of bandits but all kinds of other problems that would crop up. Make sure there are interesting personalities involved in the village as well as memorable antagonists.

Ultimately though, you might just have a table full of folks who really just want to whack things on the head.

[Mightynute]

Any ideas? The less conventional, the better. I think it's going to take a lot to get them on track.

Ringers. Lead them into believing they're going into a regular combat - but drop hints beforehand that something's different, hints they can only get by not only paying attention to your narrative, but by taking an active part in it. If they're forewarned, they can avoid doing something stupid (i.e., going balls-out kill-em-all in the combat), and if they totally foss it up, make sure it's evident that they failed because they didn't bother preparing themselves.

Example: Party finds out that the local town constabulary wants someone to deal with a wizard gone rogue. Party might think strategy would be "find out about his weaknesses". If they go asking the locals, they learn also that there have been a rash of kidnappings recently. If they take an ACTUAL interest and not just "how many plusses will this get me", then lay them clues to realize that this wizard's been kidnapping children.

Then throw a combat at them where they're attacked by opponents that are obviously trying to mimic the heroes. Similar armor, similar weapons - just like kids playing dress-up, which is what they are. The kidnapped children, polymorphed into adults and given a compulsion to go fight the heroes like grownups do.

Lay enough clues for the PCs to figure it out, and if they insist on going in sword-first - then the polymorph effect wears off at the end of the encounter and you can introduce a mob of sobbing parents and furious townspeople.

[Tortilla]

Any ideas? The less conventional, the better. I think it's going to take a lot to get them on track.

Throw out your campaign and start over. How's that for unconventional?

When players get inattentive glazed looks for all your out-of-combat stuff that means it is quite likely boring them. That's the DM's fault. Find a way to make in interesting for them even if it means throwing out the style of plot that you like to run and finding something they like.

I've never played with you so I have no idea what you are doing to make players lose interest. I do know that I tend to tune out the plots of DMs who commit certain DM sins. Sins such as running uber powerful spotlight hogging Mary Sue NPCs, harshly railroaded plots, or just plain boring plots that are too opaque and byzantine to be followed by the players.

Go back to the drawing board, promise the players they can start new characters at whatever level they currently are at, and put together the simplest plot you can to get people moving.

[frank austin]

I hate to say this but it could just be the players. Some folks get it and some folks don't. MMOs really haven't helped this kind of problem at all in tabletop. Everything revolves around combat now. It always did to some extent, RPGs evolved from miniatures rules in the first place, but from what I've seen it's getting worse and worse.

One thing that might work would be to set a tone with NPCs interacting. Or imply there might be some kind of material rewards if they play their cards right. Stick them in a king's court for taste of intrigue and show them how developing connections can be useful in getting out of trouble, acquiring material assets and so on. Or, if that's too upscale, find a little hamlet somewhere that's in need of Seven Samurai to protect and train them. The reward would be in the mines the peasants work or the crops and could pay off a good deal in cash but the players would have to get invested in helping there. Not just with this set of bandits but all kinds of other problems that would crop up. Make sure there are interesting personalities involved in the village as well as memorable antagonists.

Ultimately though, you might just have a table full of folks who really just want to whack things on the head.

These are mostly players who got into the idea of tabletop RPGs from playing MMOs, so it's not an unlikely possibility.

I like the idea of forcing them to invest in their surroundings more, thanks. That's great advice. Part of the problem I've been having is all the time I spend crafting the NPCs and their personalities only to have them get needlessly antagonistic with every single one, like they're always shooting for combat at the end of every conversation.


Ringers. Lead them into believing they're going into a regular combat - but drop hints beforehand that something's different, hints they can only get by not only paying attention to your narrative, but by taking an active part in it. If they're forewarned, they can avoid doing something stupid (i.e., going balls-out kill-em-all in the combat), and if they totally foss it up, make sure it's evident that they failed because they didn't bother preparing themselves.

Example: Party finds out that the local town constabulary wants someone to deal with a wizard gone rogue. Party might think strategy would be "find out about his weaknesses". If they go asking the locals, they learn also that there have been a rash of kidnappings recently. If they take an ACTUAL interest and not just "how many plusses will this get me", then lay them clues to realize that this wizard's been kidnapping children.

Then throw a combat at them where they're attacked by opponents that are obviously trying to mimic the heroes. Similar armor, similar weapons - just like kids playing dress-up, which is what they are. The kidnapped children, polymorphed into adults and given a compulsion to go fight the heroes like grownups do.

Lay enough clues for the PCs to figure it out, and if they insist on going in sword-first - then the polymorph effect wears off at the end of the encounter and you can introduce a mob of sobbing parents and furious townspeople.

Mm. Another really good idea. I will definitely give this a shot. Thanks!


Throw out your campaign and start over. How's that for unconventional?

When players get inattentive glazed looks for all your out-of-combat stuff that means it is quite likely boring them. That's the DM's fault. Find a way to make in interesting for them even if it means throwing out the style of plot that you like to run and finding something they like.

I've never played with you so I have no idea what you are doing to make players lose interest. I do know that I tend to tune out the plots of DMs who commit certain DM sins. Sins such as running uber powerful spotlight hogging Mary Sue NPCs, harshly railroaded plots, or just plain boring plots that are too opaque and byzantine to be followed by the players.

Go back to the drawing board, promise the players they can start new characters at whatever level they currently are at, and put together the simplest plot you can to get people moving.

Kraaze, we've had lots of conversation about this within the group, and they all agree that it's not anything I'm doing or not doing. I don't commit any of those DM sins you've mentioned, and I've already been doing a lot of bending over backwards to fit their playstyle. Simple plots, plenty of action, different systems, all just keep coming up short. I've been running games for over fifteen years and I've never had such a problem group before. They're all new to the tabletop (within the last year that we've been playing) and I am just looking for ways to get them more involved with the worlds, not just pushing miniatures around. (Miniature gaming has already been suggested and shot down.)

[Tortilla]

Kraaze, we've had lots of conversation about this within the group, and they all agree that it's not anything I'm doing or not doing. I don't commit any of those DM sins you've mentioned, and I've already been doing a lot of bending over backwards to fit their playstyle. Simple plots, plenty of action, different systems, all just keep coming up short. I've been running games for over fifteen years and I've never had such a problem group before. They're all new to the tabletop (within the last year that we've been playing) and I am just looking for ways to get them more involved with the worlds, not just pushing miniatures around. (Miniature gaming has already been suggested and shot down.)

Ahh, new players was the bit I was missing there. I assumed that this was veterans who knew they liked rpgs and you just couldn't engage their interest. Sorry to cast aspersions on your DMing.

[Tracy Baker]

Sounds like they'd really rather be playing Descent (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17226/descent-journeys-in-the-dark).

[frank austin]

It's all good. I've been pretty harsh on myself over these games, because everything I try just doesn't seem to work. I have pretty much exhausted my bag of tricks, so I was just looking for a couple more to try. I'll report back with any success/failure.

EDIT: Tracy, we actually have a copy of Descent and they're not into it. They want so badly to be roleplayers, they just don't seem to know how to go about it.

[Brian Rucker]

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I suspect using the Seven Samurai approach might work. You can RP interactions between the peasants and how those folks are doing will directly impact the kind of payout the players will see. So there's some tangible point to getting to know at least some of the NPCs there. The NPCs themselves will be characters that reoccur on a regular basis and depend on the players for protection so that will be a new dynamic. Showing them a map of the town, the fields, the mines and whatever else will help them get a sense of it as a real place too. Especially if they spend some time there.

And there can be more than bandits. Maybe some of the NPCs have built in storyhooks (dark pasts, old feuds, etc.) that make for some action. Maybe when digging in the mines the common folk uncover some odd artifacts or maybe a whole lost civilization. Who knows?

Another way of going about getting the players to see what they're doing and where they are in a new light might be sticking them on a ship. Instead of peasants you've got seamen. Instead of bandits, pirates. Give them ports of call to visit and mysterious islands out there, lost treasures, etc.

I think the key is really getting them out of the hack and slash mindset and getting them to see themselves more as characters that belong to something rather than just footloose, selfish, adventuring for themselves. Give them dependent peasants with personalities, crewmen with colorful mannerisms, and some place they can call home whether it's a rustic hamlet on the edge of the wilderlands or a ship wandering the high seas. Then they might get a bit vested in a bigger picture.

[frank austin]

Well said, Brian! I will definitely be taking this advice to heart.

I think the next session we have set up is actually pretty well-geared to this sort of approach. I'll spend some extra time with the NPCs and worldbuilding, and maybe use a few more aids than I would normally like to help pull them in.

And I think I'll re-watch Seven Samurai, too. Heh.

[Tracy Baker]

Switching to something more freeform for a few sessions that depends almost entirely on RP, like the Fiasco game I posted earlier, might get them on track. Or even switching to a fantasy system that's much less crunchy and bases most rewards on RP prowess instead of combat tactics.

I dunno, Frank. That really sucks. It's hard enough to get an RPG session together, let alone have everyone in the group aware of the problem and wanting to change but not doing so. You have quite a strange problem there, and I can only imagine how frustrated you must feel after putting in all that work.

[Brian Rucker]

It is a bit unusual but these are folks who've never roleplayed before and have been molded by their experience with MMOs. So, seems to me, you need to give them a context you can't get in MMOs. That may get them thinking out of the box. Maybe?

[JoshV]

Two things my GM did that I always liked:

1. Give an experience bonus at the end of the session to whoever roleplayed the best. You get something for trying, and it gets the competitive streak of players channeled towards something positive for the whole group.

2. Make the players do a journal, swap which player has to do the journal each time, and give an exp bonus for doing the journal as well. The journal should be from the characters point of view. Have them email it to you, and forward it to the group before the next session. It helps when you take breaks, you can consult the journal, and seeing the players put their characters point of view on things can be hilarious, and can also give insight into the players characters the others might not notice. (It can take a bit for players to put things in their characters point of view, but usually once one does it with positive results, the others tend to try for it as well)

Basically reward the players for doing the things you want, and give the players other avenues to express themselves.

[frank austin]

Switching to something more freeform for a few sessions that depends almost entirely on RP, like the Fiasco game I posted earlier, might get them on track. Or even switching to a fantasy system that's much less crunchy and bases most rewards on RP prowess instead of combat tactics.

I dunno, Frank. That really sucks. It's hard enough to get an RPG session together, let alone have everyone in the group aware of the problem and wanting to change but not doing so. You have quite a strange problem there, and I can only imagine how frustrated you must feel after putting in all that work.

We have more recently been trying out other systems in the hopes that I could get them away from the combat-laden miniature-pushing that they seem to enjoy, and also because we were all getting a bit bored with Pathfinder. I'm an old World of Darkness vet, so we've tried Hunter and Changeling, with Werewolf coming up next. I can see them slowly warming to the idea of more story-driven systems, but they still get the "deer-in-headlights" effect whenever they get a chance to act on their own.

It's funny that you mention me putting in a bunch of work and getting frustrated. That summarizes nicely another problem I have with this game. I do a ton of work to prepare all these outcomes and NPCs with rich interactions, and they treat everyone exactly the same. Not only that, they don't even do the rudimentary work on their own characters that I ask of them. (Write a description, write a short history, etc) I'm the only one putting actual effort in most of the time.

Every DM is used to their players short-cutting through their hard work, but this is some next level shit, as it were.

I think once we settle on a system we all like, we will probably have a dedicated character generation session or two so that they HAVE to do the background work.

[Tracy Baker]

I don't know if it would carry over into your games well, but the character creation system for the FATE system is great because it forces each player to be connected in some way with at least two other characters. Character traits are also spelled out and you get a constant stream of rewards for using them to RP. Maybe if you could do something similar to get them to generate their characters together instead of independently and track their traits so they get a little something for using them. Get them invested in each other so you aren't doing all the work of trying to keep them on track.

I'd kill for a decent RP group right now. So many systems I want to try out, and I've laid down the groundwork for what could be some amazing campaigns, but when I manage to get my friends together all they ever want to do is queue up some horrible movie on Netflix and Rifftrack it. Fun, but my games are languishing.

[frank austin]

It is a bit unusual but these are folks who've never roleplayed before and have been molded by their experience with MMOs. So, seems to me, you need to give them a context you can't get in MMOs. That may get them thinking out of the box. Maybe?

I'll have to think about this a bit more, but I agree with the sentiment. I think the Seven Samurai Scenario(tm) is probably a good starting point for this. How often does an MMO forcibly involve you with the surrounding area rather than just have a town serve as a staging point for quests?


Two things my GM did that I always liked:

1. Give an experience bonus at the end of the session to whoever roleplayed the best. You get something for trying, and it gets the competitive streak of players channeled towards something positive for the whole group.

2. Make the players do a journal, swap which player has to do the journal each time, and give an exp bonus for doing the journal as well. The journal should be from the characters point of view. Have them email it to you, and forward it to the group before the next session. It helps when you take breaks, you can consult the journal, and seeing the players put their characters point of view on things can be hilarious, and can also give insight into the players characters the others might not notice. (It can take a bit for players to put things in their characters point of view, but usually once one does it with positive results, the others tend to try for it as well)

Basically reward the players for doing the things you want, and give the players other avenues to express themselves.

I used to do #1 every time, but rarely does anyone in this group do anything that would qualify as roleplaying. I have given it out before, but I think that they still see combat as the most effective way to their goals.

#2 is awesome, though. I like the idea a lot. Gonna try it out, probably with an in-game context, as well. Some important NPC will task them with keeping a record of deeds and they can pass responsibility between themselves. Great idea!

Tracy, I feel your pain. We spend too much time at the table bullshitting. If you're ever in the Bay Area, I know a group that could use a boost. ;)

[Brian Rucker]

Josh's idea for a journal is a good one. I don't know if you've played Amber: Diceless Roleplaying but a big source of experience in the game was player created content. Journals, art, maps, NPCs and things like that. (Our GM also was a bit infamous for giving out experience if he didn't have to buy his own snacks at times. We ended up rebelling when he tried to extend the practice into trading for Magic cards.)

But that only really worked well in our group because we did have experienced roleplayers who loved the Amber setting and immediately jumped in to create our own associates, shadow worlds, poetry and so on. These guys won't even write a backstory?

Are you sure they want to roleplay? Or is it that they don't understand the world well enough to write a biography? Maybe they feel intimidated?

Is there a setting they like? Maybe hit it from that angle too. Ask them what comics, movies or fiction they enjoy one day and just get them talking about that. What characters they find cool. Favorite action sequences. Coolest special effects. Whatever. If you start hearing them agreeing on things I think maybe then you find a game you can use to emulate those kinds of adventures and characters.

Once they start thinking about characters they understand in a setting that excites them odds are they'll naturally get more invested in the storytelling aspect.

[Pogo]

I can't believe I missed a post about a tarrasque being tripped by an elf.

Seriously? How does your DM get you to level 20 and then decide to play by the strict rules and allow a Tarrasque to get tripped? I realize it may have been a nerfed monster but... I mean damn, tripping it? Stunning it with a spell? No.

As for players that don't want to role play... it sounds like insecurity issues. Perhaps everyone thinks they're being dorks if they try to act like someone they're not, or change their voice or act out a little bit. They would much rather reaffirm their testicular fortitude via rolling dice and getting the CRITZ.

[frank austin]

I think that they're mostly just intimidated by actually being at a table with their friends and trying to roleplay. I have tried to get them to think about it more like a group storytelling exercise and less like a LARP minus costumes. They insist over and over that they want to do actual roleplaying, but they don't seem comfortable with it.

They actually aren't too concerned with the setting overall. One of the players has pretty strong feelings about wanting to do a specific type of campaign (horror) but the other two don't really care, as long as they get to hang out and game. Their indifference has been the catalyst behind us trying out different systems until we find one that we all like and think will be a good fit. Then I can get to work on the other issues.

[Brian Rucker]

Ha. Okay. Give them a horror campaign. But I'd head more into Call of Cthullu (actually, Kult might just push more buttons if they can handle the content and it's a modern setting so less suspension of disbelief stuff to worry about) than World of Darkness. And maybe check this out:

http://www.amazon.com/Nightmares-Mine-Rolemaster-Standard-System/dp/1558063676/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270845386&sr=8-2

If they're scared they'll be roleplaying without thinking about it. It's dropping them in the deep end but it might just be the shock they need.

[Tortilla]

Seriously? How does your DM get you to level 20 and then decide to play by the strict rules and allow a Tarrasque to get tripped? I realize it may have been a nerfed monster but... I mean damn, tripping it? Stunning it with a spell? No.

We always play by the strict rules in my group. We've had too many bad experiences with people who will take any amount of leeway in the rules to powergame mercilessly so we are habitually leery of creative interpretations.

The general party feel was that the tarrasque needed a bunch of extra defenses and immunities to really start feeling tarrasque-ish again.

[Jasper Phillips]

I have some problems with my players that I'd like some advice with.

...

Any ideas? The less conventional, the better. I think it's going to take a lot to get them on track.
You must tailor the adventure to the players, not the other way around. Players can change, but it's a slow process, best not driven by design.

That said... here are some ideas anyway!


Character Creation
- I find the easiest and most effective methods to work during character creation. Getting away from the bland and disconnected characters created for most systems (e.g. D&D) helps greatly.

- Character Hooks. These ties to the world around are a fundamental part of character creation, but are sadly lacking in many game systems. Some systems frame these as "disadvantages". Encourage the players to look at them as opportunities instead, or as a way to influence what sorts of plots will happen. The Pathfinder D&D campaigns have an interesting twist on this, where characters each pick a bonus feat/trait with the standard game mechanic bonus, but that is also tied into the campaign plot.

- Cooperative Backgrounds. I think I stole this from Spirit of the Century? Have each player write a short paragraph about a couple previous Adventures, then pass each to two other players who write their characters in as "Guest Stars". Spirit of the Century takes this one further by tying these stories into character traits and thus game mechanics. Works especially well for Pulp games.

- Preludes. This is from World of Darkness. Run quick preliminary/background adventures for each character separately. This can go a long ways towards establishing motivation.

- Don't start characters off as poor college students without a stake in the world. Better to start them as Barons with land, connections, and grudges, then have something other than loot drive things.

- Have them write down situations they want or predict to happen. Make use of these for ideas, and perhaps reward them with "Fate" or "Karma" points if they come true. Make sure they're mostly not combat related, and have them write them at the start of a session so they have to do them.

- "Grogs". This is from Ars Magica, where the main characters are mages, and their various cohorts and servants are fleshed out as "Grogs". They go on the adventures the mages are otherwise too busy for, more like the bit characters in Shakespeare than extra cannon fodder. Lots of potential here for humor, and it's ahrd to powergame the cook or shepherd. One of the best games I ever ran started off with the players as Grogs waking up from a nap to see their sheep rustled by woodland fairies.


Plot Devices
- Ruthlessly outline what you think each player likes, and to an extent try to include things each would like, rather than just plan for everyone as a whole. Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering (http://www.sjgames.com/robinslaws/) has some good advice along these lines.

- Write in opportunities tailored for specific players, tied into their character backgrounds. That's the mustache twirling bastard that kidnapped your sister -- where did she go?

- Give them a tangible piece of the world to defend, or even improve. Hard decisions about where their priorities lie. This will immediately get you away from MMO plots.

- Combat plots where the best resolution isn't straight forward fighting. More "make sure you do the right thing" than "find the hidden weakness".

- Situations without an obvious resolution, between two parties in grey, not black and white. Getting them to choose one side or the other is an indirect way to get them into character, especially if they have prior ties to both sides.


System and Game Mechanics
- Mechanical bonuses for describing combat actions, especially if they involve the scenery. Try to nudge them away from merely nominating a target and rolling dice.

[bloo]

Then throw a combat at them where they're attacked by opponents that are obviously trying to mimic the heroes. Similar armor, similar weapons - just like kids playing dress-up, which is what they are. The kidnapped children, polymorphed into adults and given a compulsion to go fight the heroes like grownups do.

I salute your deviousness.

[Pogo]

We always play by the strict rules in my group. We've had too many bad experiences with people who will take any amount of leeway in the rules to powergame mercilessly so we are habitually leery of creative interpretations.

The general party feel was that the tarrasque needed a bunch of extra defenses and immunities to really start feeling tarrasque-ish again.

I can understand that, but the DM should reaffirm that his rules should not be argued against. It's his game, he's taking the time to tell the story and describe the situations. If an outcome came out based on a bad interpretation of the rules, you shrug it off and keep playing. Any DM can tailor the rules for any particular situation, as long as he does it consistently and fairly.

Whenever I had a player trying to powergame, I would introduce scenarios that exploited his weaknesses. If he lowballed his Charisma and Wisdom so that he could pump up Strength and Dexterity... well then I suppose he's not talking himself out of this situation, or I'm not telling him that the door he's about to bust down had what sounded like 8 orcs talking behind it. A good DM plays to the strengths and weaknesses of his party. It's half of what it takes to be a good DM.

But yeah, at least you guys did raise an eyebrow on the Tarrasque fight, I just think that the DM should have modified the beast and made the encounter something more special, something unexpected that the players couldn't just look up the monster and know what to do. 2nd Ed Tarrasque was a BAMF, and when my Kender rogue climbed up its hairy body in order to crit it in the eye, he died in the process (after getting a successful crit, and then actually fatally failing a Dexterity check when the monster reared up, and then got swiped by one of its 10 billion attacks per round).

2nd Ed version:
http://thearchnemesis.com/images/Tarrasque.jpg

[Tortilla]

I can understand that, but the DM should reaffirm that his rules should not be argued against. It's his game, he's taking the time to tell the story and describe the situations. If an outcome came out based on a bad interpretation of the rules, you shrug it off and keep playing. Any DM can tailor the rules for any particular situation, as long as he does it consistently and fairly.


I guess I'm not sure where you are going with this, the topic keeps shifting. You started out criticizing the DM for not making the tarrasque scary enough because he stuck to the book stats and the book rules. Is that still what you are talking about?



But yeah, at least you guys did raise an eyebrow on the Tarrasque fight, I just think that the DM should have modified the beast and made the encounter something more special, something unexpected that the players couldn't just look up the monster and know what to do.

That's where we differ. If the DM wants to make up a monster he can do whatever he wants and we will assign praise or blame for the awesomeness of the fight to the DM. If he wants to run a book monster according to book rules, we will assign praise or blame to the book.

[Pogo]

I'm just criticizing the DM for being a slave to the book in either situation.

[GloriousMess]

Er you were fighting the Tarrasque as a small party and didn't get stomped in a few rounds? The hell? The Tarrasque eats villages! There's a reason there's only one of them!

Although I did hear a story from one of my current group from way back when, due to a complete misunderstanding of one rule or another and a very well munchkinned Rogue, they ambushed the Tarrasque and killed it one round via a surprise backstab. I imagine after doing that the rest of the campaign doesn't hold much hope of a challenge.

[Damien Neil]

EDIT: Tracy, we actually have a copy of Descent and they're not into it. They want so badly to be roleplayers, they just don't seem to know how to go about it.

Try Dogs in the Vineyard for a night or two? Dogs is big on focusing on the aftermath of what the players choose to do, which might help them wake up and engage with the world. It's also got mechanics which do a good job of encouraging roleplaying without turning the whole game into one big improv session.

[Tracy Baker]

Cross-posted from the Bargain Thread (thanks, Brian Rubin!): DriveThruRPG is offering another disaster relief bundle to raise money for victims of the flooding is Pakistan. $25 gets you all sorts of goodness including Icons and Starblazer Adventures (!): http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=84741&src=newsletter

EDIT: Other highlights include:

Dragon Warriors
Exalted 2nd Edition
Fear Itself
Harnmaster 3rd Edition
Open Game Table Anthology Vol. 2
Spycraft 2.0

[Tracy Baker]

That RPGDriveThru deal rekindled my interest in RPGs and I've picked up a few amazing-looking books over the past week.

Strands of Fate (http://voidstar.squarespace.com/) recently released, and it's a sort of FATE toolkit that helps you use that system for virtually any type of RPG you can dream up. 469 pages of goodness.

Hamlet's Hit Points (http://gameplaywright.net/?page_id=1529) is kind of a writer's/GM's guide to telling compelling stories, written by a guy who has published a lot of them (Robin Laws). I've just glossed over it, but it's akin to a screenwriter's guide like Save The Cat Goes To The Movies, only aimed at DMs. Looking forward to diving into it...

[Mrenda]

I'm thinking about getting a Call of Cthulhu RPG going. A set adventure would be best as I don't have the time to write a campaign. I just need to figure out which of the acres of books for Cthulhu RPGs goes with which, and what's the best to run.

Anyone have any advice? I'm guessing Chaosium Sixth ed is still current.

[Anti-Bunny]

I'm thinking about getting a Call of Cthulhu RPG going. A set adventure would be best as I don't have the time to write a campaign. I just need to figure out which of the acres of books for Cthulhu RPGs goes with which, and what's the best to run.

Anyone have any advice? I'm guessing Chaosium Sixth ed is still current.
How long do you want the adventure to go for? Do you want a one-shot over a session or two, or is this going to last for a while?

Also, if you haven't bought CoC yet, might I recommend Trail of Cthulhu instead?

[Mrenda]

How long do you want the adventure to go for? Do you want a one-shot over a session or two, or is this going to last for a while?

Also, if you haven't bought CoC yet, might I recommend Trail of Cthulhu instead?

I was imagining somewhere between 4 and 8 sessions. Our group has been suspended since University started back up as people didn't have time to play, and I didn't have time to write for my Traveller campaign. We're going to start back up again and have two or three things going at once. I figure a printed campaign would be easier for my part. That being said, our previous campaign lasted two years, so we're not averse to long running things, just that things might be easier on everyone with shortish bursts.

As for the core book, my university game's society has the Chaosium Sixth Ed book, so I was planning on using that and investing in something (apart from the adventure) if it looked like we were going to get good use out of it. I wouldn't object to buying something if it's good though, I've just not looked at CoC in any detail before and was looking at what the options are. So depending on what Trail of Cthulhu is and is like, I don't mind.

I have to order college books anyway, throwing a gaming purchase or two into the amazon order won't hurt. :)

[Anti-Bunny]

The system in Trail is much more narrative and investigative focused.. While Call still has dump stats and boring pass or fail rolls. The Sanity/Stability system in Trail is also more fun then Call's Sanity-as-Hit-Points. Also, the production values on ToC are much higher. Plus Kenneth Hite is the shit. The ToC book is just a joy to read.

There's a free adventure for Trail up here:
http://www.pelgranepress.com/seepagexx/files/freerpgday.pdf

Arkham Detective Tales (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?filters=220_0_0_10146) and Stunning Eldritch Tales (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=57993&filters=220_0_0_10146) are both good set of pulpy adventures.

If you want something less pulpy and more purest style, DriveThru is selling a bundle of ToC's latest purist adventures here (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=84461).

There are also conversion notes for running CoC made adventures in ToC, so you can still run Masks in ToC if you want.

[Tracy Baker]

I'm thinking about getting a Call of Cthulhu RPG going. A set adventure would be best as I don't have the time to write a campaign. I just need to figure out which of the acres of books for Cthulhu RPGs goes with which, and what's the best to run.

Anyone have any advice? I'm guessing Chaosium Sixth ed is still current.

If you change your mind and want to roll your own, Delta Green would make it easy and awesome.

[Mrenda]

If you change your mind and want to roll your own, Delta Green would make it easy and awesome.

Delta Green is a modern/futuristic military one, correct? I don't plan on creating my own campaign, I just don't have the time (or the skill when it comes to CoC) for that. I'd like it if I could give the players guidelines for their characters and let them roll them up from those. And they do like a decent bit of combat.

I dunno, I have a fun few evenings of considering the possibilities ahead of me.

[JoshV]

I always thought Cthulhu really lent itself well to one-shot and short campaigns. This is due to the really bleak nature of the setting and lets you kill* characters with abandon, as they aren't something the players are super attached to. Which in turn tends to heighten the suspense and fear in the players. Also one-shotters you can pre-bake all the characters, which can help tremendously when it comes to having the story make sense and can get players to RP a bit out of their boundaries by having to play characters outside their usual spectrum.

*And by kill, i also mean have them go utterly insane or turn into gibbering monsters.


the old Warhammer FRP also did a pretty good job of this, with its similarly bleak setting, and with crits able to kill the player characters quite easily if things went awry.

[Jasper Phillips]

I'm thinking about getting a Call of Cthulhu RPG going. A set adventure would be best as I don't have the time to write a campaign. I just need to figure out which of the acres of books for Cthulhu RPGs goes with which, and what's the best to run.

Anyone have any advice? I'm guessing Chaosium Sixth ed is still current.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is awesome. It's a long campaign, but it works well in spurts split up by location. That said, I've never actually finished it... Looking to start it with a new batch of players soon though!

Definitely check out Trail of Cthulhu. It's simply a better system for a mystery/horror game, rather than the venerable RuneQuest/Basic Roleplaying (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Role-Playing) derived Call of Cthulhu.

[Anti-Bunny]

I've never run masks, but I have it, and I wish I had a group I could run a campaign that long with.

[Jasper Phillips]

Aye, so do I! But we're going to give it a shot anyway. ;-)

It really is a kick ass adventure.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

I've never run Masks either, but I did run the absolutely massive Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign. Probably the best game I've ever run. Took 11 months, meeting every week. Ah, college.