Tabletop RPG Catch All

I've been eying up Call of Cthulhu after watching a bunch of Game Geeks reviews on the main book and various supplements. Plus Halloween has got me in a horror type mood.

For all of you PDF fiends out there, Drivethru RPG is bundling $700 worth of PDFs for $25. All the procedes go to Doctors Without Borders to aid victims of the recent flood in Pakistan. It has a bunch of cool indie games such as "Fear Itself," "Don't Rest Your Head," and "Hot War" along with some bigger games such as "Spycraft 2.0," "Exalted," and "Icons." Lots of neat little tidbits in there too. You can check it out here.

I'm interested in that bundle, but I kind of want to see how much overlap there is with the previous Haiti bundle.

I went to Certis and Brennil's house last night to play a demo of The Dresden Files RPG. We didn't do any of the city creation and only the final bits of the character creation and just played a one-shot adventure. While the combat slowed things down we had a damn fun time regardless. Looking forward to next week as we'll be starting completely from scratch, building the city and the characters and then playing. I've heard that the city and character creation is one of the best parts of the game.

Trachalio wrote:

I went to Certis and Brennil's house last night to play a demo of The Dresden Files RPG. We didn't do any of the city creation and only the final bits of the character creation and just played a one-shot adventure. While the combat slowed things down we had a damn fun time regardless. Looking forward to next week as we'll be starting completely from scratch, building the city and the characters and then playing. I've heard that the city and character creation is one of the best parts of the game.

Awesome! We're gearing up to start a DF campaign in a few weeks. Right now we're playing Greg Hutton's Remember Tomorrow. It's been a bit of a paradigm shift. It's somewhere between RPG and story-generator, with no GM.

wordsmythe wrote:

I'm interested in that bundle, but I kind of want to see how much overlap there is with the previous Haiti bundle.

I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure there is no cross over.

Last night we attempted our second session of Remember Tomorrow. This is a very structured cyberpunk game that lacks a GM. The general consensus among our group was that the game is unfinished.

Of the 3 types of scene that a "controller" (sort of a rotating GM role) can initiate, the only one that can help the controller's own PC achieve game victory is the type of scene that a controller can't initiate for his own PC. So the game marries tightly constrained mechanics on what you can do with a complete lack of motivation on what you should do.

In the end we kind of threw up our hands and decided to move on.

I think this might be appropriate to post here:
IMAGE(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5049/5321975655_f456dd4c15.jpg)

Bumping and subscribing.

It lives!

Been reading a lot of Call of Cthulhu lately, specifically Delta Green. Its probably one of the best written supplements I've read in a long time. The basic premise is that the 1928 federal raid on Innsmouth spurred the creation of a government agency to fight the Mythos. It's basically a mixture of X-files and Cthlulu. Two tastes that are great alone, and even better together.

I've been plotting a game of Necessary Evil for my supers loving friends this summer.

Aliens arrived and the first thing they did was befriend all the super heroes so they could betray them and kill them off. Now the only surviving people with super powers are the villains. They'll have to save the world before they can have their chance to conquer it. It uses the Savage Worlds game system so die rolls go pretty quick.

2nd round of Dresden Files tonight.

Hawaiian wizard whose mentor was murdered
Indian accountant, member of a secret society
African-American emissary of the Research Triangle

Q-Stone, impressions on Dresden Files?

I'm looking for something contemporary and occulty to run but hopefully also simple and malleable.

gains wrote:

I've been plotting a game of Necessary Evil for my supers loving friends this summer.

Aliens arrived and the first thing they did was befriend all the super heroes so they could betray them and kill them off. Now the only surviving people with super powers are the villains. They'll have to save the world before they can have their chance to conquer it. It uses the Savage Worlds game system so die rolls go pretty quick.

I read through that a while back. Really awesome concept. I really like the super powers system in there too.

Funding just finished on the Kickstarter for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and I'm really excited to get that book in my hands once it is printed. It is a more complex version of Daniel Solis' earlier storytelling game, Happy Birthday Robot.

Another ongoing Kickstarter I'm excited for is the redone Bulldogs!. I missed out on the original when it was a d20 setting but always wanted to play it. I mean who doesn't love a sci-fi RPG with sentient teddy bears?

oilypenguin wrote:

Q-Stone, impressions on Dresden Files?

I'm looking for something contemporary and occulty to run but hopefully also simple and malleable.

It's tough to get your head around the magic system without reading it several times and trying it out in play. For me, the rules text just didn't do a grand job of explaining it all to me in a way I'd understand.

Thaumaturgy (ritual spellcasting) is especially hard to grok, IMO. I wish they had more example spells.

I like the way the chargen intertwines character histories.

We have yet to do any combats. We get distracted and off-topic easily.

thejustinbot wrote:

Another ongoing Kickstarter I'm excited for is the redone Bulldogs!. I missed out on the original when it was a d20 setting but always wanted to play it. I mean who doesn't love a sci-fi RPG with sentient teddy bears?

Yay! I like that one! And once again, not just because my wife drew angry teddy bears for it.

I posted this over in the 4e thread, but I think it's relavent for here too: Paizo will be selling Pathfinder branded miniatures. With Wizards cancelling their line of minis, it's nice that someone else will be selling cheap plastic minis

Man. For some reason I just remembered Jovian Chronicles and wished I knew somebody who could GM it so I could play (since I definitively have no time to run a game, like everyone. :D) Never actually managed to run/play a game of that, though I bought the sourcebooks (the original *and* the Silhouette Core ones) ages ago.

Anybody else have an old niche game they wish they'd gotten around to playing, but never really did?

Hypatian wrote:

Man. For some reason I just remembered Jovian Chronicles and wished I knew somebody who could GM it so I could play (since I definitively have no time to run a game, like everyone. :D) Never actually managed to run/play a game of that, though I bought the sourcebooks (the original *and* the Silhouette Core ones) ages ago.

Anybody else have an old niche game they wish they'd gotten around to playing, but never really did?

I have both versions of Jovian Chronicles. And, I ran a short game with the newer version. It was full of fiery fire. I am a die hard fan of the settings.

Indeed. The world needs more awesomeness set within the bounds of the Solar System.

Jovian Chronicles for me, too! I've got almost all the books and I love the setting a great deal. At the time we were too busy with Heavy Gear to switch. That said, I want to play more Heavy Gear, too. Plus there's a bunch of games I'm not actually interested in playing, just wanted to read through them (the "new" RuneQuest for one).

That sounds like an amazing game. Almost a cross between RIFTS and McAuley's The Quiet War. (I so want a game in the Quiet War setting.)

Our great white whale game was always Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth.

Made about four runs at creating a world and then characters, but never really managed to get it off the ground. Extremely bulk, with too many numbers and convoluted mechanics, though the ideas and concepts of the game were absolutely mesmerizing.

I always loved the RIFTS world, the total mash-up of super-heroes, magic, tech, magi-tech, aliens, interdimensional-beings, PA, and gods was awesome. It really bummed me out that I really got into it as my RPG group was breaking down; we were big into Robotech and then Heroes Unlimited. I still have all my PnP RPG books, supplements, dice, and maybe even a few of the charactes I've created from back then.

I should really inventory it sometime.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I always loved the RIFTS world

I've got one word for you: SPLUGORTH.

We did a short Rifts campaign using a convoluted system I had put together based on Millennium's End, of all things. It was very short-lived, but highly imaginative.

I have lots of non-D&D RPGs that I have collected. Exalted, Heavy Gear, Gurps, etc. I often would love to run them, but few people seem to really get into the setting as much as D&D.

jlaakso wrote:
Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I always loved the RIFTS world

I've got one word for you: SPLUGORTH.

We did a short Rifts campaign using a convoluted system I had put together based on Millennium's End, of all things. It was very short-lived, but highly imaginative.

Yeah, a True Atlantean Undead Slayer was probably my favorite character.

I've got a huge shelf of GURPS sourcebooks - some of them very cool, but never quite played. Things like GURPS: Russia, with it's setup for a historical or historical fantasy game of great awesomeness, or GURPS: Reign of Steel which is basically the Terminator future campaign. I keep them in the (probably vain) hope that I will run a game using them some day.

BadMojo wrote:

I have lots of non-D&D RPGs that I have collected. Exalted, Heavy Gear, Gurps, etc. I often would love to run them, but few people seem to really get into the setting as much as D&D.

I'd love to try Exalted, but I'm also reading Scion right now, which is kind of like Exalted Light, if I'm not mistaken.

Rubb Ed wrote:
BadMojo wrote:

I have lots of non-D&D RPGs that I have collected. Exalted, Heavy Gear, Gurps, etc. I often would love to run them, but few people seem to really get into the setting as much as D&D.

I'd love to try Exalted, but I'm also reading Scion right now, which is kind of like Exalted Light, if I'm not mistaken.

Scion is an RPG?