Tabletop RPG Catch All

It was $30 at PAX for the printed playtest. It looked pretty thick, like a text book.

PA Report: Why you should care about Tenra Banso Zero: the RPG one man spent seven years translating

Also, having exceeded the max $80k stretch goal, AndyK will port the rules to support a game which almost, but not entirely, unlike Persona.

Since folks in this thread appear to have a lot of experience and creativity, I was wondering whether I could borrow some brainpower to get seeds for a gaming session. The setting is Mutants & Masterminds 3rd ed, standard, garden-variety supers.

The characters will find themselves at an off-planet, on-moon research station looking for a McGuffin that a rival set of characters are also looking for. The conflict, setting etc. are all established, but I would really like to add something to the scene/session other than "you punch the other guys until they stop being able to fight you for the McGuffin."

I've been playing with a number of ideas (e.g. vacuum containment breaks leading to loss of civilian life if the characters don't stop it, meteor storm), but that kind of thing always feels kind of tacked-on to me. Has anyone had any really awesome experiences moon-base-type gaming experiences they care to share?

Thanks for being an awesome community!

Make extra-interesting NPCs. Bob and Phil are arguing because Bob slept with Phil's x-wife. Annie doesn't want to listen to it because she's badly hung over. George speaks entirely in quotes from the space core from Portal 2. Beth was transformed into a squirrel, but her strength is inversely proportional to her size. She's now the strongest creature on the moon.

Make it personal. Bob slept with Phil's x-wife. Phil is a PC. Bob says she was talking disparagingly about the size of Phil's junk. ("Well that certainly wasn't his super power. And if it was super speed, God, I wish he could turn that off.")

Edit: Add NPC Jane to either of the above scenarios. Jane, of course, is Phil's x-wife.

Give them power, and then make them hate it. Give them all super ray guns. Make the setting highly breakable. Outside shouldn't be instant death, because that's kinda boring, but super inconvenient. Like little air-locks here and there, scattered across an open lunar field. That way they've got to run around, doing stuff, but it's extremely irritating.

Add third parties. Why are the PCs on the moon? Effectively to rescue/steal the MacGuffin, but perhaps they're also there to meet their groupies. Or Phil's x-wife. Or apply for a job with the other, bigger, more famous super-heroes, who will be watching on closed circuit camera. Really good superheroing might get individual PCs a job offer.

Examine their character sheets/backstory. There's usually something in there.

Add physics. You said it's a garden variety set of super-powers, right? Well _don't_ have compensation for the reduced gravity. Make hard athletics checks to walk, because the people with super strength are having an even harder time than usual not shooting into orbit. Make the fight three dimensional. The PCs/NPCs are moving so quickly that the walls are like additional floors.

Set everything on fire. Make it the PCs' fault. Specifically, one of the PC's fault. That way the rest of the group are yelling at him while they attack each other with fire extinguishers.

There is life on the moon. It's hostile. Or overly friendly. Or horny. Or obsessively maternal. Or thinks human-kind is the bee's knees because it just discovered 90's synth-pop and now psychically broadcasts it to EVERYONE WITHOUT CEASING.

Add multiple components. On fire in zero-gee (the lunar gravity compensator broke and is now functioning backwards) with the only method's of locomotion fire-extinguisher propelled flight. While Bob and Phil are arguing over Jane, while Annie wishes to God everyone would just shut up! And maybe give her an aspirin.

We got to play Fiasco with author Jason Morningstar this weekend.

Miashara, you are amazing. That is absolutely perfect, and now I can't wait to incorporate those elements!

Thank you. Good luck.

In unrelated news, I gave a PC a 3D stunt because he made me laugh so hard I cried. This was the first use of his new priestly powers when he apologized to Saturn, Maiden of Endings(Queen of the Death Gods and Goddesses), for another PC who referred to her as 'that little midget Female Doggo' when he forgot her name.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

We got to play Fiasco with author Jason Morningstar this weekend. :D

Neat! Why did you get to do that? What playset did you use? How did it go?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

We got to play Fiasco with author Jason Morningstar this weekend. :D

Hate you so much hate you so much hate you so much hate you so much.

How'd it go?

He was one of the GMs at Escapist Expo's Games on Demand. We used the playset of a cult. Players were me, LouZiffer, RedJen, RangerRick and his wife. Sadly we were limited to only an hour because the room had to be vacated in preparation for a John Tesh concert (seriously, not kidding). So we didn't quite make it to the tilt, but jumped ahead to it anyway when time was reaching the end, and then we gave out random dice to do a final roll. It's funny that Jason described Fiasco as "not a game you can win, but you can definitely lose", because my black 13 roll meant my character did in fact win. RangerRick and his wife ended up in jail. I can't remember exactly what RedJen and LouZiffer got, but I remember one of them got fate worse than death.

I just found Conclave, an asynchronous RPG that works in the web browser. This seems like a great tool for those of us who can't get their schedule to mesh with the gaming group. They even have a Kickstarter.

If you like Trail of Cthulhu, Achtung Cthulhu seems like a good buy.

Edwin wrote:

If you like Trail of Cthulhu, Achtung Cthulhu seems like a good buy.

That sounds pretty good actually.

Edwin wrote:

I just found Conclave, an asynchronous RPG that works in the web browser. This seems like a great tool for those of us who can't get their schedule to mesh with the gaming group. They even have a Kickstarter.

Been playing this with one friend for a while now. It's okay, but needs something more to be worth money. Doesn't quite manage to scratch that D&D itch, as it's just scenario text - fight - scenario text.

A bunch of episodes ago, an RPG was mentioned on the podcast that involved the (best be a woman, iirc) gm playing a samurai while the players where playing as ladies of the court, trying to get the attention of the samurai.
Has anyone an idea how this little gem was called?

Plastefuchs wrote:

A bunch of episodes ago, an RPG was mentioned on the podcast that involved the (best be a woman, iirc) gm playing a samurai while the players where playing as ladies of the court, trying to get the attention of the samurai.
Has anyone an idea how this little gem was called?

Kagematsu.

I had a quick search for the homepage, but the only one I could find looked a bit out of date.

Thank you! I will look around if I can find it somewhere.
I have a small Monday group that will go through a transition phase really soon and I might be able to convince them to do a one shot with this.

Edwin wrote:

If you like Trail of Cthulhu, Achtung Cthulhu seems like a good buy.

I posted a bit of noodling about Cthulhu as a tabletop game recently; I may nab Trail and Achtung over the next few weeks, as I'm curious as to how other systems compare in terms of the purist/pulp dichotomy.

Just ordered a hardbound copy of Delta Green: Countdown. I've been waiting for this sucker for AGES. The only thing that kind of irks me is that it has a swastika on the cover. While the reason it's there is because one of the groups your party can go against is a group of immortality seeking nazi occultists, I could have really done w/o it on the front cover. Maybe I'll cover it with some tape or something.

I recently picked up the L5R Second City supplement and two core books:

https://plus.google.com/photos/10390...

It is the best produced RPG I have ever laid my hands on. (And that includes my fav. HackMaster)

(cross post from the What are you playing this weekend thread)

athros wrote:

My TTRPG group just got done with a 2 session "palette cleanser" wherein they basically got to murder everything in sight ala Hollowpoint. Good, barebones plot (Replacement Killers, and a couple other Chow Yun Fat movie plots. Good test of my skills as a GM). Tomorrow night is going to be a longer session, since it will be picking a system, general wants in a campaign (round table discussion), and character creation (intermixed with taking care of kiddos, letting them roll dice, sneaking them chips). The basis is Western Fantasy (so no L5R, no Sengoku, no Legends of the Wulin, no Anima) and it has to be a new system to the group (so no D&D, no HackMaster). Thus far, the 2 suggestions are Dungeon World and Legends of Anglerre. Apparently, I'll be GMing either way, so that should be fun.

So, apparently my group has already decided which game which game they want to play for the next 6 month to 1 year campaign - Dungeon World. The last campaign was Diaspora, so I can understand they want to do a non FATE based system.

This should be interesting. Very very interesting. *steeples fingers*

Last year Kobold Quarterly ran a 3 part series on Krampus, giving him stats for Pathfinder, AGE, and 4E. I had a bit of free time last week, so I made faux monster manual pages for all three. Not sure if anyone needs 'em or is interested, but I thought I'd share
IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Eypuu56Vs2g/UMYH2SCKEuI/AAAAAAAAEQo/Xj3aYqFNvYo/s800/Krampus-4E.jpg)
IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-rs-wweAUkXk/UMYH2eNq9_I/AAAAAAAAEQw/_7Y97vCc0ZY/s800/Krampus-AGE.jpg)
IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-I4hE5c2XFvo/UMYH2a7K_aI/AAAAAAAAEQs/oFXUyPw_zr8/s800/Krampus-Pathfinder.jpg)

Anyone else jumped on the Fate Core Kickstarter? Fate has been my favorite RPG system for a while now and Core looks really fantastic.

thejustinbot wrote:

Anyone else jumped on the Fate Core Kickstarter? Fate has been my favorite RPG system for a while now and Core looks really fantastic.

Yeah, I'm in at the $30 level. Never really got into FATE or Fudge but I've been hearing enough about it lately that I figured it was worth checking out.

Great time to check it out. If nothing else you can pledge a buck, get the early version backer PDF of the rules and if you don't like it, cancel your pledge.

Or go for the $10 PDF level and get a whole bunch of cool toys.

Trachalio wrote:

Last year Kobold Quarterly ran a 3 part series on Krampus, giving him stats for Pathfinder, AGE, and 4E. I had a bit of free time last week, so I made faux monster manual pages for all three. Not sure if anyone needs 'em or is interested, but I thought I'd share
IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Eypuu56Vs2g/UMYH2SCKEuI/AAAAAAAAEQo/Xj3aYqFNvYo/s800/Krampus-4E.jpg)
IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-rs-wweAUkXk/UMYH2eNq9_I/AAAAAAAAEQw/_7Y97vCc0ZY/s800/Krampus-AGE.jpg)
IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-I4hE5c2XFvo/UMYH2a7K_aI/AAAAAAAAEQs/oFXUyPw_zr8/s800/Krampus-Pathfinder.jpg)

For interested parties here are some Savage Worlds stats for the Krampus with bonus Were-Santa stats as well

tanstaafl wrote:
thejustinbot wrote:

Anyone else jumped on the Fate Core Kickstarter? Fate has been my favorite RPG system for a while now and Core looks really fantastic.

Yeah, I'm in at the $30 level. Never really got into FATE or Fudge but I've been hearing enough about it lately that I figured it was worth checking out.

Me also.

I like that it's simple and generic - good for almost any time when I have an idea for a scenario that doesn't pair with another game I already own. I used to use GURPS for that, but I find there's too many optional rules and exceptions to make it easy. Fate does the job much better.

My PCs need to defend a city from an invading army. Current plan: give one PC dysentery and throw him into the invader's water supply.

Catalyst Games Labs announced 2013 as "The Year of Shadowrun"
Since in game lore, the "Sixth World" is supposed to have started after the end of the Mayan Calendar.

Apart from a 5th Edition of the Shadowrun RPG, also announced are

- Shadowrun: Crossfire, The Adventure Deckbuilding Game

- Shadowrun: Sprawl Gangers, a tactical miniatures game for 2 players, with everything needed to game right in the box.

-Shadowrun: Hostile Takeover, a Euro-style board game with players assuming the role of megacorporations attempting to assert dominance over the city of Seattle

-Shadowrun Returns, single player computer game on all platforms, which immerses the player in a noir story of betrayal and revenge with control of a dynastic megacorp hanging in the balance

-Shadowrun Online brings the universe to a full cross-platform MMO experience for iOS, PC, Mac, Linux and Ouya. Filled with turn-based action and corporate intrigues