Tabletop RPG Catch All

I'm really late to this, apparently, but the 2011 Indie RPG Awards have been announced: http://www.rpg-awards.com/2011/

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Anima Prime look really interesting.

Just picked up Star Wars: Edge of the Empire today. Haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, but goddamn is it pretty. Lots of cool tokens, maps, and dice!

Mixolyde wrote:

I'm really late to this, apparently, but the 2011 Indie RPG Awards have been announced: http://www.rpg-awards.com/2011/

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Anima Prime look really interesting.

Do is fantastic. I've skimmed Anima Prime, but it does look cool as well.

Radical Ans wrote:

Just picked up Star Wars: Edge of the Empire today. Haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, but goddamn is it pretty. Lots of cool tokens, maps, and dice!

I love the dice pool system for this. What I love even more from the Beginner Box is how the adventure teaches you the rules as you go. The first scene uses a basic success/fail roll, the second adds in opposition and more options and so on until you get the entire system. Really clever teaching tool, even if it is super rail roady.

I got Savage Worlds for Xmas. Now to adapt it to Fallout.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I got Savage Worlds for Xmas. Now to adapt it to Fallout. :lol:

*cough*

Radical Ans wrote:

Just picked up Star Wars: Edge of the Empire today. Haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, but goddamn is it pretty. Lots of cool tokens, maps, and dice!

"looks more like roll-playing to me!1!!"

Lets hope they have more luck with that than they had with their third edition of WFRP.
Looking at their release cycle shows me that it didn't sell as good as they had hoped.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I got Savage Worlds for Xmas. Now to adapt it to Fallout. :lol:

Quintin, I forgive anything bad I ever said about you. Which was once, I think, and I was quoting you.

Haha, I should have guessed.

I was all set to play in a Savage Fallout game last year, but it ended up falling through. My character was a vault security officer who learned everything he knew by watching old action movies over and over. Also, he came from a vault where everybody was named Dave, so I named him Dave Davison the 3rd.

Radical Ans wrote:

Also, he came from a vault where everybody was named Dave, so I named him Dave Davison the 3rd.

Fun Fact: I had a boss named that. Seriously.

oilypenguin wrote:
Radical Ans wrote:

Also, he came from a vault where everybody was named Dave, so I named him Dave Davison the 3rd.

Fun Fact: I had a boss named that. Seriously.

I work with a guy named Ken Kenny. His parents are apparently dicks.

Played an impromptu game of Fiasco last night using the Operation Zebra playset. WW2 American sub, occult stuff going on, something weird knocking outside the sub and lots of chaos inside. Had a lot of fun. For one of our players it was his first non DnD Encounters RPG, and two others had never played any RPG at all. I continue to view Fiasco as a great way to introduce people to roleplaying.

It also helps that I have at all times in my car a binder containing about 30 playsets, dice, sharpies and index cards. Can be run at the drop of a hat.

Has anyone talked about/checked out Mobile Frame Zero?

It's a mech tactics game that uses Lego for building the mechs.

Trachalio wrote:

Has anyone talked about/checked out Mobile Frame Zero?

It's a mech tactics game that uses Lego for building the mechs.

I think I remember reading about Mechaton or something similar on Vincent or Clinton Nixon's web sites years ago, which I think is a predecessor to this. Nice to see all the nicely made, published material. Unfortunately I own very little lego these days.

Edit: Yes, this is the game I remembered reading about years ago. Nice to see it doing so well!

May not entirely qualify as an RPG, but more a rogue-like co-op horror game with a theme not unlike the demon/dark souls series with inspiration from Monster Hunter, I just want to give this a quick shout-out.
Apologies if it is mentioned elsewhere, but a search for "Kingdom Death" left me without any results.

The Kickstarter is still going for another 5-6 hours from now and be advised that this game is deliberately going for quite mature art and is certainly NSFW for everybody. On the other hand, the miniatures are looking truly amazing.

Kingdom Death: Monster
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

*edit* Ah, well - now saw it mentioned in the boardgaming catchall by link only. no wonder the search didn't find anything

kingschiebi wrote:

May not entirely qualify as an RPG, but more a rogue-like co-op horror game with a theme not unlike the demon/dark souls series with inspiration from Monster Hunter, I just want to give this a quick shout-out.
Apologies if it is mentioned elsewhere, but a search for "Kingdom Death" left me without any results.

The Kickstarter is still going for another 5-6 hours from now and be advised that this game is deliberately going for quite mature art and is certainly NSFW for everybody. On the other hand, the miniatures are looking truly amazing.

Kingdom Death: Monster
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

*edit* Ah, well - now saw it mentioned in the boardgaming catchall by link only. no wonder the search didn't find anything

Also mentioned a few times in the Interesting Kickstarter thread, but no worries

$1.7m is a sh*t ton of money.

McIrishJihad wrote:

Also mentioned a few times in the Interesting Kickstarter thread, but no worries

$1.7m is a sh*t ton of money.

I hope that he stops doing surprise options by now that it is past $1.8m. Otherwise it is getting difficult to ramp up my pledge later on if need be...

kingschiebi wrote:
McIrishJihad wrote:

Also mentioned a few times in the Interesting Kickstarter thread, but no worries

$1.7m is a sh*t ton of money.

I hope that he stops doing surprise options by now that it is past $1.8m. Otherwise it is getting difficult to ramp up my pledge later on if need be...

When Steve Jackson Games and REAPER Minis blow out their delivery time frames due to over-funding, I honestly am not expecting this one to ship until sometime in 2014.

McIrishJihad wrote:

When Steve Jackson Games and REAPER Minis blow out their delivery time frames due to over-funding, I honestly am not expecting this one to ship until sometime in 2014.

That would make me real sad. Well, maybe we're lucky and he doesn't consider 5700% funding at $2m "over-funding" or that the base sets would ship at least on time with the expansions shortly after.

From soup to nuts, it costs a lot to make minis, get them on a boat, get them to the US, then get them off to backers around the world.

He will hit modeling delays, quality delays, packaging delays, trans-Pacific shipping delays - the whole shebang.

All his tiers were already anticipating a Nov 2013 delivery date - if this hits your doorstep if the first half of 2014 it will be a miracle.

I know Adam has been doing high quality boutique models for a while, but this has become the single biggest project he's ever had to undertake. The scale differences between producing 500 of a model in a single run versus what is required for this project are staggering.

I wish him all the luck, and hope he's got friends who have at least done the whole process working with him to keep his costs in line.

$2m - wow.

Mixolyde wrote:
Trachalio wrote:

Has anyone talked about/checked out Mobile Frame Zero?

It's a mech tactics game that uses Lego for building the mechs.

I think I remember reading about Mechaton or something similar on Vincent or Clinton Nixon's web sites years ago, which I think is a predecessor to this. Nice to see all the nicely made, published material. Unfortunately I own very little lego these days.

Edit: Yes, this is the game I remembered reading about years ago. Nice to see it doing so well!

Reading through the free PDF now and it's pretty solid, especially for a free game. Although, I think I would consider this more of a board game, than an RPG. It's like a cross between Battletech, Mechwarrior and HeroClix, where you remove the pieces off the figure when they get blown off. Fun!

Ran Outbreak: Undead for wordsmythe, E Hunnie, and JollyBill and his lady this weekend in preparation for running it next weekend at RabbitCon. It was the first time we've played this. It was my first time GMing since a failed attempt to start a STAR WARS RPG after my freshman year of high school in 1997. So, it was a bit rough but the core concept came through anyway and made it an exciting session.

Outbreak lets you play yourself in a zombie apocalypse based on your own surroundings. Our game started at a bar we regularly waste entire days at playing games. It was doing just this that caused them not to notice the zombie apocalypse happening all around them until it descended upon the bar, ripping out the neck of their waitress. From there it was a lot of fun (with lots of stops for checking the rules, however), as they navigated the neighborhood, relying on their knowledge of street closures on game days, where Jewel's garbage bins are at, and a bit of help from Google Maps. Favorite part was probably the detailed discussion/argument about the exact layout of the bar and where they would be sitting in relation to doors and windows.

I'm pumped for next week. I'm dry running scenarios in my apartment so I can get a better grasp on how the game works and just focus on facilitating a great experience for next week's players.

Damn that sounds awesome!

The zombie thing in your actual surroundings sounds like a lot of fun. We've done versions of that with invasion and conspiracy scenarios in the past. It's very easy for beginners and freeforming.

We're back to what is almost a teenage years gaming pace. In a given week I might play the Deathwatch RPG, a scifi miniatures campaign on the Flying Lead ruleset (which is awesome) and run my own D&D campaign (4E), now on its second season with seven players rotating. Add to that some random pick-up games (we've done Fiasco, Mountain Witch and guest spots in other people's campaigns) and, well, isn't physical, in-person gaming the best hobby? I love it.

I went through my binders the other day and estimate I have some 4000 sheets of mostly hand-written and drawn notes from over 20 years of designing, running and playing RPGs and wargames. Much of that stuff is very interesting to re-visit now. I was thinking I could digitize it all for easier searching and re-reading. The best way I could think of was to set up bright lighting and shoot them on the iPhone, sync to Dropbox automatically, rotate on the desktop if need be, and combine to a PDF file covering a single game's or project's notes. Took an hour to go through an initial 40 pages, covering my 1994 Vampire campaign.

jlaakso wrote:

isn't physical, in-person gaming the best hobby? I love it.

Agreed!

I've been getting games together this week for our biggest annual rpg convention this weekend. So many cool games to try, or revisit!

I went through this weird phase of "but does all of this face to face RPing matter in the grand scheme of things?", but now I'm safely back in the fold, gaming every chance I get. Me and my friends get so much out of it, it just beats most other things we do.

Yes, even though it's ephemeral, there's something great about creating a story with your friends.

In other news, here are some cool games I've got recently:
- The Regiment: Colonial Marines is a (free) alpha edition (it's super-minimal) of a military-stories hack of Apocalypse World. This edition has you killing aliens, of course. I've played a game of the vanilla Regiment rules, and it was great - a WW2 battle where everything went wrong for the unit our heroes were in. That was really fun.
- Itras By is a surreal game about people in a fantastic city. It's diceless and relies on card draws to resolve actions (the cards give you hints about how to narrate what happens, like "Yes, but... it works but something else goes wrong"). I'm really keen to give that a go.
- Hollowpoint, which is about hyper violent action (100 Bullets, Reservoir Dogs, Heat, etc).

Hopefully I get to play all three over the weekend.

Ran an impromptu game of Edge of the Empire's Beginner Game last night and had a lot of fun with it. Got some stuff wrong since it was all seat of the pants, but I am really digging the system.

MikeSands wrote:

- Hollowpoint, which is about hyper violent action (100 Bullets, Reservoir Dogs, Heat, etc).

As a massive 100 Bullets fan, I find this really interesting. Have you played it? Any games it's like?

jlaakso wrote:
MikeSands wrote:

- Hollowpoint, which is about hyper violent action (100 Bullets, Reservoir Dogs, Heat, etc).

As a massive 100 Bullets fan, I find this really interesting. Have you played it? Any games it's like?

I played it this morning at a convention.

A little rough as it was the first time I'd run it, and was making an improvised scenario (they were mob enforcers, find a rat selling info to a rival mob, and clean up the damage).

Great fun, with a breakneck pace. It has some cool rules to do with teamwork - mixed incentives for helping or refusing make it interesting whenever someone asked for help. The conflict rules work well for varied action scenes - one covered a "info gathering" montage as they tracked down the rat, another was an epic assault on the bad guys' safe house in the country.

So: recommended, A++, would play again.

Also played for the first time:
- "The Regiment: Colonial Marines" (see above). Fun, but the rules felt a little less fitted to an Aliens-style scenario compared to my earlier game with vanilla "The Regiment", in WW2. The more unit-tactics level rules felt kind of superfluous as our marines worked their way through the outpost to recover "valuable research speciments" from rebels.
- The Quiet Year: Really good. It's a very strange sort of rpg. You don't have characters as such, but you narrate a year in the life of a post-apocalyptic community, creating a map of all the significant things in and near your community. You take turns, drawing a card which you have to interpret (most have a choice of two events that happen), then take an action: have the community start a major project, discuss an issue, or introduce something new on the map.
- World of Dungeons/Dark Heart of the Dreamer (both are bonus stuff from the Dungeon World kickstarter). World of Dungeons is ultra stripped down Dungeon World, with the conceit "if Dungeon World is D&D4, then World of Dungeons is the 1979 basic set it was based on". Dark Heart is a setting inspired by Planescape, in which your adventurers live in Dis, a city that is finding and consuming other planes, which are incorporated as new parts of the city as it goes. Lots of fun, it's got all sorts of crazy stuff available (our party included a demigod, a half-drow/half-demon, a half-gnome/half-earth elemental, and a githzerai, and one human). Free-wheeling, crazy fun.