Tabletop RPG Catch All

jlaakso wrote:

I just got done reading Remember Tomorrow. It's a really interesting game, one I hope to run soon. It's literary, GM-less cyberpunk for all of us who were left wondering exactly what were the Gibson influences on the 1990s cyberpunk RPG offerings (much as I enjoyed them as a teenager). Light on adventuring and shopping lists, heavy on character arcs and cause and effect.

This is now on my Drivethru RPG wishlist.

I just picked up the DC Adventures Hero Handbook from Green Ronin for $20. It's to be the start of the 3rd edition of Mutants and Masterminds. Pre-orders of the hardcopy version are now active, and for just $5 extra, they will throw in the PDF that you can download now.

Great cover by Alex Ross and the layout is clean and clear. Haven't read pass the 1st chapter yet, so can't really say much about the rules, but the writing flows and easy to follow.

Will post more impressions as I get them.

Falchion wrote:
jlaakso wrote:

Remember Tomorrow

Thanks for this, I had read about it but didn't think it would be much different from the other clones. And I do like me some Cyberpunk. Will check it out.

If you're interested in it, here is my review and here's an actual play post by the game's maker.

You know, I would be willing to try a Google Wave - or regular old email, if you don't like Wave. I've got invites to spare, if you don't have it yet - game of Remember Tomorrow. Here are some pointers from the game's author Gregor Hutton, end of the thread.

I think it would be best with three, tops four guys. Any takers? I think you do need the book or it'll be a bit of a chore to go through everything in written form.

Also picked up the DC Adventures pdf yesterday. Skimmed through while we were slow at work and it looks pretty good.

Ordered Action Castle and Jungle Adventure as well, the first two Parsley Games from Memento Mori. They are essentially an old text based adventure game with a human GM instead of a computer parser. My plan is to take them to Dragon*Con with me.

I really would like to get into pen & paper gaming, but so far, haven't really found the right thing. I used to play APBA baseball quite a bit, but the comic book store doesn't seem to have much demand for that. I'm definitely planning on checking out some of the offerings at Dragon*Con this year to see if I can find one that both me and my girlfriend can enjoy.

jlaakso wrote:
Falchion wrote:
jlaakso wrote:

Remember Tomorrow

Thanks for this, I had read about it but didn't think it would be much different from the other clones. And I do like me some Cyberpunk. Will check it out.

If you're interested in it, here is my review and here's an actual play post by the game's maker.

Just bought the PDF and looking forward to reading. I would have bought the Print + PDF bundle, but shipping to Canada was $20 :'(

Tonight playing Tenra Bansho before it's finalized for printing.

mooglicorn wrote:

I really would like to get into pen & paper gaming, but so far, haven't really found the right thing. I used to play APBA baseball quite a bit, but the comic book store doesn't seem to have much demand for that. I'm definitely planning on checking out some of the offerings at Dragon*Con this year to see if I can find one that both me and my girlfriend can enjoy.

What sort of genres and things are you both interested in?

I just ran a first session of Apocalypse World this week. It was really fun, glorious post-apocalyptic goodness (i.e. badness).

Worth a look if that sounds interesting - you can read the character classes pdf (look at the refbook) on the website to get a pretty clear idea what the game's like: http://apocalypse-world.com/. It's currently in pre-order (which includes instant pdf, thus my ability to play it) but I think the books are due in the next couple of weeks.

Out of curiosity, has anyone else played Paranoia? I'll admit that the games can be uneven, where some sessions are great and some just don't gel, but when things get rolling it can be a lot of fun. We just played again last spring, and while it wasn't a great session, it was still fairly entertaining.

My group just finished up with Dark Heresy - and we're starting up Trail of Cthulhu in a few weeks.

We're going with bootleggers in 1930's Vancouver as our story line - should be good.

Poppinfresh wrote:

Out of curiosity, has anyone else played Paranoia? I'll admit that the games can be uneven, where some sessions are great and some just don't gel, but when things get rolling it can be a lot of fun. We just played again last spring, and while it wasn't a great session, it was still fairly entertaining.

I played one session a few months ago - and it was very silly and good fun. Of course, that's pretty much all I remember about it and it was only a one-time session to take a brief break from Changeling. How's that for not at all helpful?

You know, I've been getting into tabletop RPGs more these days. I started with DnD, and after getting married (and discovering my wife wanted to play as well) it spiked my research motivation. We immediately looked for something steampunk, as we heart it, and only found Space 1889, which we played the hell out of. It's a broken system, sure, but I loved the setting. With enough patience, you can make anything work, right? Since then we've gotten into DnD and Star Wars D20. I do really enjoy anything starwars, so I hold a place in my heart for my lv11 Ewok Jedi Weapon Master. Now we're moving and had an epiphany, since we're pretty much dead broke, we were looking for a way to gain lots of information about lots of game systems for the least money. We decided to get the Barnes and Noble's "Nook" (as it has a memory card slot, and the amazon "Kindle" does not), put a bunch of PDFs on the memory card (which you can fit a TON of PDFs in 16GB) and bring it where ever we go. I'm in the download phase right now, and this thread has helped much in my search for games worth our time. We're most excited for Mouse Guard (after reading a bit about it). I am curious though, has anyone played Serenity RPG? Firefly is the reason we got married (or met, for that matter) and it's a game we'd love to play, hopefully it's not broken.

Edit: Typos and ridiculous grammatical errors.

The Mouse Guard rpg is great!

MikeSands wrote:

The Mouse Guard rpg is great!

Yes, yes, and a thousand times yes.

Poppinfresh wrote:

Out of curiosity, has anyone else played Paranoia? I'll admit that the games can be uneven, where some sessions are great and some just don't gel, but when things get rolling it can be a lot of fun. We just played again last spring, and while it wasn't a great session, it was still fairly entertaining.

I've played Paranoia XP, 1 session, and it went well. Lots of back-stabbing and tomfoolery.

Another Tenra Bansho session tonight, looks like we'll be doing the final act next week.

Serenity: I haven't played it, it reads well enough and I seem to recall it won some awards when it came out. Should be okay. If you don't know about Rpg.net, check out their reviews. It's the one source of RPG reviews I count on.

Paranoia: I've played quite a few games of Paranoia back in the day, but not for the past decade or so. It can be really good with the right group, but I have an aversion to comedy games (although I loved Teenagers From Outer Space to bits). It is so hard to write comedy, especially for games, and especially for roleplaying games. I've read the latest version and do prefer the old one, though.

Serenity: I read somewhere that the version of the Cortex System rules engine that they used for Serenity was quite broken. They then updated and refined it for the Battlestar Galactica RPG which was then quite well received. Eventually they released the "Big Damn Heroes" handbook to update the Cortex System in the Core book to the one used in BSG RPG.

Guess what I'm trying to say is, go get Serenity but make sure to pick up the handbook as well.

Poppinfresh wrote:

Out of curiosity, has anyone else played Paranoia? I'll admit that the games can be uneven, where some sessions are great and some just don't gel, but when things get rolling it can be a lot of fun. We just played again last spring, and while it wasn't a great session, it was still fairly entertaining.

I ran a short adventure as a mid-campaign break a while ago for our regular group. It's really great fun especially with the right group. Of course they didn't make it past the briefing but many laughs were had.
Not a great system for a protracted campaign but fantastic for a 2-session breather.

I own Serenity but must confess I haven't read it nor given serious thought to playing it. I've heard a few negative things about the system, especially its lack of explicit rules for handling spaceship piloting/combat.

Still reading Dresden Files. Up to about page 133 now. Out of 416. Of the first book.

Any Mutants & Masterminds or Spycraft players here?

I've run a M&M1e campaign with 3 adventures and it went pretty well but I felt there were holes in the system. Have considered picking up M&M2e, but now that DC game is out/coming out and it's sort of M&M3e. Anyone taken a look at it?

Got Spycraft 1e and was really excited about it and then saw the errata was something like 30 pages and it took the wind out of my sails.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I own Serenity but must confess I haven't read it nor given serious thought to playing it. I've heard a few negative things about the system, especially its lack of explicit rules for handling spaceship piloting/combat.

Yeah, the Big Damn Heroes Handbook expands alot on the missing or not so good rules. It's up for an award this year for best supplement so it must have done something right.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Still reading Dresden Files. Up to about page 133 now. Out of 416. Of the first book.

I've finished it, got my mind blown. It's going to take awhile to digest everything. At first I had trouble getting my head around the Fate system as this is my first real look at it. Now that I'm starting to get comfortable with it, I can start incorporating all the spellcasting rules in my head. Definitely going to need afew re-reads but I got distracted (see below).

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Any Mutants & Masterminds or Spycraft players here?

I've run a M&M1e campaign with 3 adventures and it went pretty well but I felt there were holes in the system. Have considered picking up M&M2e, but now that DC game is out/coming out and it's sort of M&M3e. Anyone taken a look at it?

I just picked up DC Adventures and still working my way through it and is my current distraction. The rules IS M&M3e and my first exposure to M&M. There will be an actual M&M3e core book, but the rules are exactly the same as those found in DCA just with all the DC Comics references taken out.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Got Spycraft 1e and was really excited about it and then saw the errata was something like 30 pages and it took the wind out of my sails.

I have Spycraft 2e and it's very very good. Much better than 1e from what I've read. Too bad the really cool Shadowforce Archer world setting was never converted. Instead they came up with the more "gritty, Alias-like" World on Fire for 2e and then dropped almost all support for it to focus on FantasyCraft. Now Spycraft 3e is set for release next year. Best to wait that one out.

Falchion wrote:

I have Spycraft 2e and it's very very good. Much better than 1e from what I've read. Too bad the really cool Shadowforce Archer world setting was never converted. Instead they came up with the more "gritty, Alias-like" World on Fire for 2e and then dropped almost all support for it to focus on FantasyCraft. Now Spycraft 3e is set for release next year. Best to wait that one out.

Oh that's interesting. I've read the original and was inspired by it, but the system felt like a bit of a mess. Looking forward to maybe checking out E3, then.

Has anyone else played Space 1889? I'd like to know how it rates against other little-known games.

PaxAddict wrote:

Has anyone else played Space 1889? I'd like to know how it rates against other little-known games.

I consider Space 1889 to be a classic. One of those games that I never played but always heard spoken about in highly regarded tones.

There even was a computer game made of it by Paragon Software, using the same engine they used for the MegaTraveller series of computer games, which are computer versions of Traveller (yet another classic).

PaxAddict wrote:

Has anyone else played Space 1889? I'd like to know how it rates against other little-known games.

There is supposed to be a Savage Worlds version of Space 1889 coming out soon. You may want to check that out. Also on the SW/Steampunk tip, you may want to check out Deadlands: Reloaded (Wild West Horror with some Steampunk thrown in) or Runepunk (Dark Steampunk Fantasy)

Also, please let me know how reading PDFs on the Nook works out. I'm slowly re-building my Deadlands Classic collection in PDF form due to the fact that a lot of the books are out of print. I've been eyeing up the nook for normal reading purposes, but I'd also love an alternative to printouts and 3 ring binders for my RPG PDFs.

Oh, SW Space 1889? That'll be interesting. I'll give everyone a lengthy review once I get the nook, I expect good things though. I've also downloaded Runepunk and the entire Savage Worlds collection. And Dream Pod 9. Lots to read, lots to read.

The only thing I'm worried about for the nook, is that unlike regular reading, you need to be able to flip back and forth, place bookmarks, save bookmark settings, stuff like that, which I'm not sure the nook has the capabilities for.

Another game that riffs of Victorian steam powered spaceships is Full Light, Full Steam. It has a lot of cool stuff in there, although there's some rules that I found a bit annoying. You could probably hack out the annoying bits easily.

PaxAddict wrote:

Oh, SW Space 1889? That'll be interesting. I'll give everyone a lengthy review once I get the nook, I expect good things though. I've also downloaded Runepunk and the entire Savage Worlds collection. And Dream Pod 9. Lots to read, lots to read.

The only thing I'm worried about for the nook, is that unlike regular reading, you need to be able to flip back and forth, place bookmarks, save bookmark settings, stuff like that, which I'm not sure the nook has the capabilities for.

Awesome! Can't wait to see how it works for PDFs!

Also more info on SW Space 1889 here and here. According to the second link it's supposed to come out Summer 2010, so it shouldn't be far off.

oh, yeah. I'm definitely looking forward to that. I also need to read through Runepunk. Without a nook, though, that'll prove to be difficult. Or at least will hurt my eyes.

Also, don't expect the nook review too soon, as it will be at least a month or two before I can afford it.

MikeSands wrote:

The Mouse Guard rpg is great!

Can you guys humor me and describe the experience, please? I'm intrigued by the game and have heard nothing but good things.