Tabletop RPG Catch All

MisterStatic wrote:

Can anyone here recommend a good RPG to play with my kids..ages 5 and 10? Both of them love the board game Dungeon Run and I thought they might enjoy extending that into an RPG that is appropriate.

Maybe look at some of the original D&D re-creations for the same feel but much simpler than Pathfinder/D&D4?

There's a whole bunch listed at http://www.retroroleplaying.com/content/retro-clones. Microlite74 looks good although I haven't played it (I like Lamentations of the Flame Princess best, but it's not suited to kids for a couple of reasons, mainly the author's love of explicit and gory art).

http://www.dungeon-world.com/ Dungeon World is quite fun too, using a hack of the Apocalypse World rules. It plays like a more free-wheeling version of the old D&D. It's not quite released, but it should be very soon.

http://www.dungeonslayers.com/ DungeonSlayers is fairly simple and quick, although the mechanics aren't D&D style.

I'll add a +1 to the Mouse Guard RPG, too. My daughter (8) loves it.

5 & 10 is a different spread but I've had success with D&D 4e with a 7 & 10 year old. I do make surreptitious use of a planted NPC in the party though.

Miashara wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:

Can anyone here recommend a good RPG to play with my kids..ages 5 and 10? Both of them love the board game Dungeon Run and I thought they might enjoy extending that into an RPG that is appropriate.

Paranoia.

You monster.

MisterStatic wrote:

Can anyone here recommend a good RPG to play with my kids..ages 5 and 10? Both of them love the board game Dungeon Run and I thought they might enjoy extending that into an RPG that is appropriate.

Try Dungeon World. Very narritive. Also under Creative Commons, so it's free.

Download link: http://db.tt/uWzMvsgR

Thanks all. I will check those out.

LiquidMantis wrote:

5 & 10 is a different spread but I've had success with D&D 4e with a 7 & 10 year old. I do make surreptitious use of a planted NPC in the party though.

Same ages, D&D 4th has worked really well. The system is really consistent and easy to understand. Good starter game.

Edwin wrote:
Warriorpoet897 wrote:

In an effort to figure out what system to use for a bunch of non rpg-playing but video gaming loving folks for relatively casual games, I've ended up investing in both Pathfinder and D&D, but now reading through both systems and learning them both, I still cant decide. D&D just seems so much better for people who dont want to spend any time learning complicated rules, but as a DM Pathfinder seems better.

Dragon Age is your best bet. Not just for the familiar setting if they have played the games, but the AGE system is one of the best things out there. Go here and grab some of the free PDFs to read up on it.

Nice. I'll check it out. Man, I just spent sooo much money on D&D and Pathfinder though. Admittedly mostly on miniatures, battlemats, etc which I guess are universally useful.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Miashara wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:

Can anyone here recommend a good RPG to play with my kids..ages 5 and 10? Both of them love the board game Dungeon Run and I thought they might enjoy extending that into an RPG that is appropriate.

Paranoia.

You monster.

What? :Serious Face: Its got simple rules and almost a fifty/fifty chance it won't ruin his kids' faith in him forever.

Well, fifty/fifty if he isn't doing it right.

Miashara wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
Miashara wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:

Can anyone here recommend a good RPG to play with my kids..ages 5 and 10? Both of them love the board game Dungeon Run and I thought they might enjoy extending that into an RPG that is appropriate.

Paranoia.

You monster.

What? :Serious Face: Its got simple rules and almost a fifty/fifty chance it won't ruin his kids' faith in him forever.

Well, fifty/fifty if he isn't doing it right.

I love the game, but I have 40 year olds here who refuse to play.

Back a ways I posited doing a game of Fiasco online and had a couple of bites... I'd like to settle it in for players (and have viewers if wanted).

Easiest way is via Google+ Hangout, and I'll throw out there two different dates/times: Thursday August 16 at 8PM EDT or Saturday August 18 at 6PM EDT.

So, first: players. If you're interested, PM me which of those date/time combos works for you. Once I have four or five players for a time, that'll be the winner. I'll fiddle with the settings to see if we can get more than 5-6 others watching (and maybe participating by helping with selections).

I'm thinking the In A Southern Town setting from the main game is the best bet for the first game. If you don't have the game itself but want to play, that's fine. I've not played yet myself, so I'm going to be kind of winging it myself from my end.

Thursday is definitely the better time for me

Hackmaster Basic is available for free. http://t.co/XdLXorfw

Have to get back on the Delta Green post: DG rules so much. It's hands down the best book I have in my library, totally engrossing stuff. You could use it with any system although it's meant for Call Of Cthulhu 5.1, which is admittedly creaky as hell, but I love it regardless. DG actually predates the X-Files, even if much of it reads "what if Mulder was investigating the Mythos?"

I should run another DG campaign... I've been looking for a way to take Trail Of Cthulhu, this could be a good match.

Throwing it out there again for Fiasco. Thursday the 16th at 8 PM EDT or Saturday the 18th at 6 PM EDT. I want more players, darnit!

Rubb Ed wrote:

I want more players, darnit!

Don't worry too much about getting five players: four is probably the sweet spot for Fiasco. And three is okay too, although you might blaze through the story pretty quick.

(Timezones prevent me actually joining in, unfortunately).

Well, the problem is as it stands, I've got one player with a preference for one day, one for a preference for the other, and...

So, thus the plea for players.

So I don't really have time (or a group) for pnp rp anymore, but in case no one has mentioned it, Eclipse Phase is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike so you can go ahead and grab everything for free. It borrows the notion of cortical stacks and sleeving from the Richard Morgan Kovacs series of novels which is an interesting twist because it means characters (usually) aren't in any danger of really dying.

Rubb Ed wrote:

Well, the problem is as it stands, I've got one player with a preference for one day, one for a preference for the other, and...

Oh, right. I wasn't sure but your original post was aiming for five. Two is no good!

MikeSands wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Well, the problem is as it stands, I've got one player with a preference for one day, one for a preference for the other, and...

Oh, right. I wasn't sure but your original post was aiming for five. Two is no good!

Yeah, I know 4's the sweet spot and what I'm shooting for, but if I'd had 4 players and myself all agreeing on the same date and time, I wouldn't turn the 5th away. It'd just make the game a little more chaotic and long (from what I can tell).

Rubb Ed wrote:

Yeah, I know 4's the sweet spot and what I'm shooting for, but if I'd had 4 players and myself all agreeing on the same date and time, I wouldn't turn the 5th away. It'd just make the game a little more chaotic and long (from what I can tell).

Yeah, five just slows it down a bit. I've even played with six a couple of times, and that worked fine too.

First on-line Fiasco GWJer game completed. Initially between me, Tanglebones and Nuean, but finished off with one of my friends stepping in for Nuean when he had to leave.

As I posted on G+, the recap of the game:

Paraplegic war hero, football star, and local car salesman (me) gets hit by a car during an epic wagon-tricycle chase with his stepson (Tanglebones), is turned into a quadriplegic after breaking his neck against a tree in the woods that he's flung into, almost dies in an abandoned lot that's intended to be turned into a strip club (or as they all call it, a "titty bar"), and gets knocked out of his chair at said bar months later by the bazooms of a stripper. With dead eyes, probably.

Dry drunk stepson can't get respect from anyone (he thinks), almost dies from a gunshot wound (that the mayor (Nuean) shot) at the abandoned lot, takes over the construction and management of the bar while his stepfather tries to recover from the accident, and eyes all the alcohol he supposedly gave up when joining AA. Oh, and he unintentionally double-crossed the mayor who was blackmailing him into stealing the Purple Hearts his step-father had earned by replacing the two real ones with a real one and a fake one while on a bender one day shy of his one-year anniversary, instead of two fake ones.

Corrupt mayor blackmails the stepson (who is also the guy he's sponsoring in AA) to steal the Purple Hearts, tries to convince the paraplegic who wants to open the strip club that there's a law on the books that says 50% of all strip club earnings are paid to the town, shoots the step-son but fails to kill him, gets caught up in all the fecal matter hitting the fan, spends all his favors staying out of jail, and has to work as a janitor at a strip club in a neighboring town.

And all this happened in a nice Southern town.

(And I just realized I'd originally set it up for tomorrow... *sigh*)

Thought it was Thursday, but I'm like a lemming with invites

No harm done, and I had a great time anyhow!

I was picturing Rondell as this the entire game:
IMAGE(http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/1/2/8/4/22774821-22774823-large.jpg)

Tenra Bansho Zero - An Art and Culture-Rich RPG from Japan

This is a translation and update effort from my friend and GWJ member Andy. We have played this game at many our of RPG game sessions. This is a kickstarter for the actual printing, not some pipe dream. And it's almost completely funded.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

This is a translation and update effort from my friend and GWJ member Andy. We have played this game at many our of RPG game sessions. This is a kickstarter for the actual printing, not some pipe dream. And it's almost completely funded.

It's crazy, it IS completely funded now! Wow!

Yeah, if you like manga art and/or tabletop roleplaying, there's something in there for you. And if you already funded, thank you so much!

As a limited Gamers-With-Jobs only limited reward, if you fund the kickstarter I'll tell you about the time that Quintin Stone played a game of Tenra Bansho Zero where he was a little girl who had a crush on a sorcerer!

But let me actually come right out and say: I played SO MUCH Team Fortress II as a stress relief from 10 days at the office, then X-hours a night translating/localizing/posting, etc. Without the GWJ TF2 servers and events, where I could spend a quiet evening lowering stress by killing adults without crazy internet racism and sexism in my ears, I likely would have gone insane. I do owe some debt to GWJ!

-Andy

Hey all; very (very) new to both this site and forums in general, so apologies if there's another, more appropriate place for this. I was just curious about the opinions of Goodjers on character creation software. As a GM, I appreciate the certainty they provide in knowing that my players have done all their math right, but as a GM, I can't help but feel like there's been something lost, and that we're moving toward a more video-game-like experience. Thoughts?

Chuckleberry wrote:

Hey all; very (very) new to both this site and forums in general, so apologies if there's another, more appropriate place for this. I was just curious about the opinions of Goodjers on character creation software. As a GM, I appreciate the certainty they provide in knowing that my players have done all their math right, but as a GM, I can't help but feel like there's been something lost, and that we're moving toward a more video-game-like experience. Thoughts?

This thread seems a perfectly good place to discuss that. Not much to add, though. I don't see a problem with using that sort of thing to cope with a complicated game, but I prefer to play games with simpler mechanics these days.

I think that's the crux of my issue; I'm not completely sold that games should be getting that complicated (the Hero system is grandfathered out; its complexity is the cornerstone of the system, and players know what they're signing up for). It seems like there's this kind of arms race going on, with games getting so complex they need character creators, which opens designers up to being able to create increasingly specific and nested rule sets for character creation, which makes the character creators even more necessary. This is super clear with the Hero Lab character creator, which I love and fear in equal measure.

I'm not eager to go back to the days of sitting down--armed with only a hand calculator and skepticism--and trying to figure out how player X spent her/his starting XP, but I also have a hard time selling the idea of tabletop role-playing when the first thing I say at the mention of creating a character is "great! First, go pay for and download this specialized software."

This is one part kvetching to one part idle musing. Just wanted to get the read of the forums in general.

When I was younger, character creation was the only way I ever got to actually play the game. Seldom, if ever, did I sit down with anyone to run through, or be ran through, a scenario. I would just sit in my room, studying the rules, and try to put builds behind my cousins superhero sketches.

Today though, I'm not as socially nervous and awkward feeling about RPG's. Any tool or device I can use to get me playing faster or easier is great!

Chuckleberry wrote:

I'm not eager to go back to the days of sitting down--armed with only a hand calculator and skepticism--and trying to figure out how player X spent her/his starting XP, but I also have a hard time selling the idea of tabletop role-playing when the first thing I say at the mention of creating a character is "great! First, go pay for and download this specialized software."

RISUS, FUDGE, and WaRP are free rules-light systems that would let you skip the calculator (the three are really pretty similar IMO). They do maybe require a greater tolerance for abstraction and a willingness to just kind of "wing it" since there aren't tables of difficulty modifiers for every situation, but the rules are really quick to learn for new players and character generation is also really quick (provided the player has a good idea of what kind of character they want).

As an example, in WaRP, character generation (statistics-wise, there's a lot more that goes into building up background and seeding plot hooks a GM can make use of) can be boiled down to answering the following questions:
What's your character's job?
What 2 other things are they good at?
Of the three (job + 2 other things), which are they the best at?
What's something your character is bad at?

There's no need for numbers at all (there are of course a few numbers underpinning it, but for someone new to RPing, they just need to answer the questions and you can work out the rest).

With D&D 4E, digital character creation is the only way to go. So much faster, easier, foolproof.

With everything else, I consider it an abomination. Character creation with pencil, dice, paper and books is a holy rite and something I truly value. It's downright critical in establishing a level of trust and intimacy between GM and player in a traditional game, and yes, a computer in the process would dilute that experience.