So, since many of us are RPers here, figured I'd see who amongst us does traditional pen and paper style RPGs. What's your favorite? Any games you've been itching to try? Any 'war stories', so to speak, of characters you've played, adventures you've GMed? Discuss!
Processing....
thorndarkblade: What do mcdonalds and michael jackson have in common? Squeesus: they both put 40 year old meat into 5 year old buns thorndarkblade: XD
I've mostly played Pathfinder recently, though Legends has really been piquing my interest over the past couple of days. It is pretty simple, and similar to the pathfinder character creation, though the classes are a tad different, and the abilities will get some love from those who can recognize geeky pop culture references
The past is gone, now is all there is. Your friendly, neighborhood VG Mod K7 has a blog of reviews!
Haven't had a chance to play Pathfinder yet...Exalted is my favorite at the moment. That and Legend of the Five Rings
Never played Exalted. What setting is it geared for?
It's sorta fantasy, but to call it medieval would be wrong. It draws heavily from many mytholgoies, from greek to oriental to norse to babylonian...the list goes on and on. It's over the top kung fu, sorcery, highly anime and video game inspired mechanics (surfboard sized swords are completely acceptable). The power level and progression is pretty out there too...you basically play humans given the powers of the gods, in a highly kung fu setting.
I think you could call exalted Epic Mythology Fantasy. People play (and fight) godlike beings and demons and everything in-between - kinda like how Final Fantasy games stock their monster roster with the names and likenesses of deities and stuff pilfered from a variety of religions and mythologies. I love tabletop systems. Sadly, I haven't gotten the chance to play Exalted yet, but I'd love to. Right now, my favorite system is probably Unknown Armies (I'm running a session for a few of the AL RPers right now, actually). I also enjoy Feng Shui a whole lot, though I know it's not as well-known. I've played some GURPS, some Paranoia, some Deadsands, a bunch of Shadowrun (I played some 3rd edition years back, but mostly played 4th edition after that), Don't Rest Your Head, and I think that's about all I can recall yet. (I'm working on making my own system based on the Zelda games/setting, and I'm liking its progress so far.) A little bit about each of those games for those who haven't heard of them: Unknown Armies is set in the present-day real-world. It's intentionally a realistic, gritty setting in which the magickal and unnatural occur - people have nicknamed it "Quentin Tarantino's Call of Cthulhu" and that's somewhat accurate. It's played with 2d10 and no exhaustive skill list - there's a non-random, point-based character creation, but a lot of it is extremely flexible (e.g. you get to make up and name your skills, for the most part), and there's an emphasis on your character's personality and backstory (insanity is a mechanic in this game). Feng Shui is a system dedicated to recreating John Woo Hong Kong action movies, and it is goddamn awesome and a total riot to play. Players are kung fu movie badasses of some stripe or another (they've got all the archetypes you can think of - the Old Master, the Rogue Cop, the Scrappy Kid, the Honorable Killer, etc.), they get to do stunts, and characters are broken up into two categories: mooks, that you beat up by the bucketload, and named characters who are badasses like you. Just like in the movies. I played a 16-year-old ninja-in-training named Nut Lee who once killed a bad guy by kicking him in the nuts off the roof of a 40-storey building. It's a stupid fun game. It's played with just a small handful of d6s, but you need two different colors. GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System. It's meant to be what it sounds like. I played it once so I don't know much of what to say about it, other than: At the time, I thought the looooooooong list of skills was really tedious to navigate and assemble a character, since the system tries to have skills for everything. I don't remember the dice used. Paranoia is essentially a black comedy in a dystopian future. Friend Computer runs the world, everything's shitty but no-one's allowed to say it, happiness is mandatory, no-one trusts everyone, go. All characters are given a secret society (which is illegal in the game's world) and a secret objective, so everyone's trying to figure out who's backstabbing who for what constantly while simultaneously being terrified of being caught. It wass a blast the one time I played it and I want to play more. Deadsands is a Weird West game (think Wild Wild West: cowboys and indians, but also with monsters, magic, and steampunk contraptions), set in an alternate past around the turn of the cerntury. A big magical thing happened that changed the frontier, magic and monsters run around, the civil war is still going on, etc. Great fun, especially for fans of the genre. The dice system is a little clunky - it uses d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 (yes, all of them). Character creation is somewhat randomized, which I hate, but it's fair enough. Playing the game also requires two decks of playing cards, which are used for character creation, and for the most awesome initiative system I've ever seen. (Also, some people in this setting can use magic, and they do so using a deck of cards too - the power of their effect is determined by what poker hand they draw, that type of stuff). Shadowrun is also set in a dystopian future, and also features wacky shit, but it's much less directly a comedy/farce than paranoia. Basically, it's as cyberpunk as a game can get. Think Blade Runner, with orcs and trolls and magic and the matrix and supercorporations running the world etc. It's played with a shit-ton of d6s, though, so better buy one of those bricks with 36 of them (it's what I did). Don't Rest Your Head is by and far the simplest game I've played, though also very fun. its emphasis is on storytelling, and to that end characters don't actually have stats. Players are insomniacs who have discovered they have superpowers fueled by their lack of sleep, and can enter dreamland - only dreamland is a terrifying place called the Mad City, and is largely run by nightmares. Players' superpowers are fueled by their lack of sleep and their insanity - but they also suffer penalties from going too long without sleeping and from going too insane (get too exhausted and you'll fall asleep, which is almost like dying in this setting; go too crazy and you'll turn into a nightmare yourself, etc.). It just requires d6s - a bunch, but not half as many as shadowrun does, and some coins and two bowls. It's really easy to pick up, even for people who've never played a tabletop system before, as there's few mechanics, no skill tables, no stats, and the majority of gameplay is based on storytelling. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to share a lot of what I know, because I'm always encouraging people to try new things, and always looking forward to trying interesting new systems myself.
Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness.
GURPS is definitely fun if you have a good GM. It's been a while since I played a game with that system, but yea, it really does have an option for EVERYTHING. It's kinda nuts. Also, the dice system is rather different than your usual system, as to win a roll, you need to roll the lowest or something. You roll three dice, and the best roll is three 1s or something due to the math system they use. I'll need to look it up some more to get the exact thing, but it wasn't a bad system at all. Another system I've played is D20 Modern. It is built and feels a lot like a modified D&D 3.5 system, so you can do a lot of different things in it, but it is more geared towards, as the name suggests, modern and futuristic times. Not to say you couldn't use it for a more fantasy/past setting, as there are arcane rules in it, but when you want to step up and shoot someone in the face with an AK-47 or Colt Anaconda revolver, there are statistics available for them
Oh lord, Paranoia? THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!!! Shadowrun I'm not too big on, mainly because Milwaukee's population of Shadowrun players are reaaaaaally fucking pretentious. I have an open gaming table policy, especially if I run at public venues, like a college campus. The hobby of tabletop has a tarnished image as is, why make it worse? I've actually gotten a few people who were only passingly familiar with it to become regular players in games of mine, and close friends through it,
WHEN I play, which isn't often due to group scheduling, group dynamics and the fact that my husband is more popular than me, I'v emostly played D&D or Pathfinder. I have played some Vampire the Masquerade, which was really enjoyable largely due to the group I played with. And my friend's character (and I secretly had a crush on her but she was totally obvlivious) who was dependat on mine such that if we got split up in game hers went berserk and killed everything betwen us to get back to me (and she came up with this on her own as we talked out ideas, but yeah... it was really interestingl). In D&D I like to be a halfling Rouge... in pathfinder we played an epic game when my husband got snipped and so we started with creating a lvl 20 and so it was a pretty bad ass monk. Also, it's not exactly table top, but I did try Vampire the Requim as a LARP. Didn't care for it, not my thing.
If you really want to have fun with people, create a monk and have a wizard cast grease on the monk. It may make it harder to grapple, but if you have a good GM, you can have some fun with a greased up monk.
i love D&D as it was my first, but also like rogue trader and dark heresy have yet to try pathfinder or shadowrun.
To be honest I have never done a "Tabletop RPG", but I have really wanted to. The only problem is that I am pretty much the only one where I am at that likes rpg's. Darn my high school's many people having the same dislikes and likes! As for LARPing, I don't care much for it.
^ The best gif I ever made ^ WRYYYYYYYY!
Well Corrick the beauty is that after high school you move on to College. You'll mostly likely find someone there!
Most colleges have an anime club, and more often than not, there are some tabletop gamers there. However, the real trick is finding a good DM. A good or bad DM can make or break a good game session
Originally Posted by K7Sniper Most colleges have an anime club, and more often than not, there are some tabletop gamers there. However, the real trick is finding a good DM. A good or bad DM can make or break a good game session very true
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Forum Rules
