Tabletop RPG Catch All

If you're just starting out with the *World series of games, I can't suggest the Dungeon World Guide enough! It's really helpful in figuring out how things flow. And it's free!

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?ypk10...

fogrob wrote:

If you're just starting out with the *World series of games, I can't suggest the Dungeon World Guide enough! It's really helpful in figuring out how things flow. And it's free!

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?ypk10...

Yeah, it's spectacular. Really helped me wrap my head around it.

Mind you, you don't need to take it as gospel. There's a few things where the Guide lays out a particular way of doing thing that isn't the only way to do things. So if you do something and it works, don't worry too much about what the Guide says. If you're not sure how to start doing stuff, though, the Guide is a great starting push.

fogrob wrote:

If you're just starting out with the *World series of games, I can't suggest the Dungeon World Guide enough! It's really helpful in figuring out how things flow. And it's free!

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?ypk10...

Thank you for this, because the rule book makes no sense to me at all and I gave up on it.

Cross post from the Perdita thread.

Almost got enough for the Perdita Ice Cave adventure Sunday. My main issue is that I cannot downscale the adventure without losing the core of what I want to do, so we really need at least 4, ideally a few more as we have 2 lower level players I do not want to squash... too much...

So please sign up! I could probably handle 6 or 7 total.

athros wrote:

A couple of book bundles:

Shadowrun 3rd Ed. Essentials
Shadowrun 3rd Ed. Sprawl Guide

And bought

SR 3rd is where I jumped in, so I'm tempted to get the bundles. But then I remember what a nightmare that system can be and it makes me want to ... not, instead.

Basically, anytime I find myself thinking "Is there (still) an app to help with that?" I get real wary of the system in question.

On the other hand, I remember having a blast with my gunslinger adept. I wouldn't say no to doing that again.

*sigh* I'll probably buy everything after I get my allowance.

Zudz wrote:

SR 3rd is where I jumped in, so I'm tempted to get the bundles. But then I remember what a nightmare that system can be and it makes me want to ... not, instead.

Basically, anytime I find myself thinking "Is there (still) an app to help with that?" I get real wary of the system in question.

On the other hand, I remember having a blast with my gunslinger adept. I wouldn't say no to doing that again.

*sigh* I'll probably buy everything after I get my allowance.

I remember running it with fondness, in a way that I never really felt with SR4 - even though SR4 was more cohesive overall. That's why I picked it all up. They're all really good scans/native PDFs, and they bring back fond memories

Zudz wrote:

Me again! As much as I hate to spam, I'm here to beg for more feedback. I've had some input already, and I used it to put together a revision. Also, I made my site look like less of an eye-sore. I know I'm not as exciting as Monte Cooke, but I'm hopeful that you fine folks will be able to help me get this thing to a mirror shine! Or maybe just better than D+ game design. Whatever, I'm not picky.

Here's the pitch (it's a work in progress):

I've been playing a lot of Pathfinder. I like it, but I think it's kind of a mess. There's a ton of cruft, right? Trap feats, weird niche skills, frankly terrible archetypes, all that stuff. So I set out to fix it. No joke, this started as a balance patch for the magic system. But the more I worked on things, the more I realized that spells and feats and skills were only part of the problem. My core issue was much more fundamental. It was the dice.

Basically, rolling a die isn't actually interesting. It's fun, especially when you can roll a lot of them, but it's a wholly passive action. I roll the dice, and they tell me when bad things happen. Nuts to that. I've needed something better. In my system tasks are resolved using hands of cards. As a character completes adventures and grows in power they earn more cards for their hands. Cards make task resolution active. If I have several cards to choose from then failure becomes an option I exercise. If I only have one high card, and I think I'll need it, saving my strength becomes a thing I do mechanically as a player as well as something I can express through my character. If I've got all low cards then maybe I'll become trepidatious and ask another character to help me out. Luck still plays some part when you draw your cards, but strategy comes into play whenever you get to decide which card to apply to your situation.

If you want to take a look at what I've got, it's available on http://www.puppetshowjustice.com/. And after this I won't be back to bother you all until I've actually had my local nerds sit down for a test drive. Promise.

I'm back after a month of barely being able to check in to the forums, and I've been thinking about a card based tabletop RPG (using the setting I wanted to make a cRPG in!) Lets compare notes! I played a quick session while abroad with some of the cast of my show and I think this idea has lots of promise. I'm kind of coming at it in a different way, but there's a lot of merit to ditching the dice!

WARNING! Very long post!

Apologies for the long post, but I thought I'd share my experience with playing Houses of the Blooded. It's a very niche RPG that I played over 3 months in one of my playing groups. It is described as being the inverse of Dungeons and Dragons in that it concerns the aspects of the imaginary world that D&D is set in that are not covered by the game. Specifically the political machinations of the monarchies that rule over the adventurers and other vassals.

Houses of the Blooded is player v player orientated and therefore those taking part must buy into the fact that they will meet their end at the hands of another sitting around the table.

The character below was developed from scratch and turned into the villain of the adventure. What is described is how he rose and fell to an ignominious end.

Name: Fyx Steele
House: Elk (cunning trait)
Title: Baron of Utarg
Age: 18 years
Name meaning: I AM ALIVE!
Secret name: Segat
Secret Name meaning: Advisor to power
Siblings: 3 (Fyx is the youngest of 4)
Valet: Topper

Fyx is a very determined fellow who's intellect has been exploited by many in court. His time there, all be it brief, has cemented a formidable and somewhat begrudging reputation amongst his peers. He is a very focussed and serious young man and doesn't suffer fools at all. This is somewhat ironic considering the temperament of the valet that has been assigned to him by his father. For Topper, Fyx's valet is also a fool. He is obsessed with custard, both in pies and in buckets and will frequently offer custard to Fyx by bellowing 'custard sir?' at the most inopportune moments. Fyx despises Topper with a passion that no sane being can fathom, but suffer Topper he must for he he is bound to obey the wishes of his father.

Fyx is currently being entertained by the Countess of Thorns, an old crone who he has been advising on court and state matters over the past 2 years. There is history between the Thorns and Steele with the former slighting the latter via a grave crime that the Countess committed against the House of Steele that only the Countess and Fyx know the nature of. Fox's siblings are now demanding restitution for this crime and Fyx is desperately trying to sue for peace before hostilities break out between the two families.

Not only is Fyx seeking peace but he is also wanting food from the house of Thorn for the lands and people under his care are starving after a very harsh winter. The Countess has agreed to this, but has resisted the demands for further payment for her yet to be determined but deeply heinous crime she committed in her youth. Fyx's siblings predicted this response and they have launched a pre-emptive strike against the House of Thorns. Fyx is very much now in a fix (sorry!) and must avert all out war if his machinations are to be fulfilled.

After a bloody engagement of mass murder (Ven to not take part in war) Fyx and his siblings lay siege to the Castle of Thorns only to be defeated by the countesses allies. Undeterred Fyx demands a trial be held against the countess for her past transgressions and even described the mass murder as a result of a justified police action and repeatedly refers the conflict as being just that.

The countess acquiesces to Fyx's demands and a trial is held, much at the behest of her allies. Lady Peacock agrees to act as defence for Fyx, at least initially, and things start to unravel for the young baron.

So it all comes down to this. A dramatic trial with 3 jurors, one of whom was supposed to act for the prosecution but instead decided to act for the defence. I'm looking at you, Lady Peacock.
Fyx Steele had to suffer the word salad that spewed forth from his now former legal representative's mouth implying that the arrest attempt by House Steele of the Countess of Thorns was an act of insanity and the case should be dismissed. She then used the word 'magnanimously' a lot along with variants thereof.

In response to this diatribe that was laced with factual inaccuracies and outright slander, Fyx Steele declared objection and demanded the court's attention. This he gained and exploited.
Fyx stood before the court and using all of the skills he gained as a courtier explain the crime the Countess of Thorns had committed and also declared that his action was not Steele against the Countess but instead he represented the people, thus invoking the rule of law in a realm that doesn't recognise such a thing. This didn't go over too well and Fyx acquiesced to the demands of the court to retract this statement if somewhat begrudgingly.

The crime was one of murder that the Countess of Thorns committed 16 years ago by poisoning a cake she had made to honour Fyx's grandmother's birthday. Both were friends from childhood and the matriarch who was Lady Steele fell to a foul poison that was administered to the cake, to the admission of the Countess.

Despite Fyx's impassioned plea for justice it was clear the jury was not to side with the Steeles. In a desperate act of forcing a retrial and acting under the legal guidance of the Lady Peacock, Fyx poisoned the jury via the handmaid of Baroness Trixauna, Maud Popple, who gave the jury wine as they began deliberations.

The Lady Peacock had a severe reaction to the poison and she fell into a coma. Baroness Trixauna also fell foul of the poison but managed to pull through enough to have Fyx seised for attempted murder, despite the lack of evidence against him!

The third member of the jury, a representative of the senate, declared a retrial and secured Fyx until further notice. The Lady Peacock rested in the Countess's bed as she recovered from the poison. The Baroness Trixauna instead decided to put an end to Fyx's seemingly endless machinations by ordering the guards away and replacing them with her own knights and killing Topper, his faithful custard obsessed manservant, to eliminate all witnesses from the murder she was about to commit.

Fyx Steele, the Baron of Utarg fell on the sword of Baroness Trixauna and as he did so uttered the words 'I forgive you.'. After which his head was cut off and presented to the Countess of Thorns.

You might want to take a look at Phoenix Dawn Command as well:

My Burning Wheel Codex arrived today. Time to start badgering my regular rpg crew even more to play some...

MikeSands wrote:

My Burning Wheel Codex arrived today. Time to start badgering my regular rpg crew even more to play some...

I understand. I finally got mine to try Apocalypse World. I'd love to play BW, but I'm not sure if I see it happening.

fogrob wrote:
MikeSands wrote:

My Burning Wheel Codex arrived today. Time to start badgering my regular rpg crew even more to play some...

I understand. I finally got mine to try Apocalypse World. I'd love to play BW, but I'm not sure if I see it happening.

That was the case for us too, but we've played a little Mouse Guard and a lot of Torchbearer since then, so I think it will be an easier sell than a few years back.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

Masks: A New Generation is on sale now and it sounded pretty interesting so I picked up a copy of the pdf. It looks like a lot of fun! It's got some really neat mechanics and the book is pretty well-organized with lots of good examples and some nice art.

Looking forward to giving it a try sometime.

Nice! I found a youtube of Adam Koebel running an all-lady one-shot of Masks for a con event. It was really cool.

Hey so it looks like I'm finally going to be getting a roleplaying group together. One guy is already running a D&D campaign in his own custom setting but I'd like to run an Edge of the Empire campaign either interspersed with the main campaign or in parallel if there's enough people.

I've never run a campaign before and have only GMed a handful of adventures but I reckon I could pull it off. I could, however, use someone to bounce ideas off and offer some seasoned advice as I've never done this before. Anyone I could bother?

We've got a DM advice thread. Good place to ask for advice from the crowd, or for people to give one-on-one feedback.

Not sure if this is the proper place to put this, but it seemed fitting...

I never really got into D&D and only played a few smaller encounters back in the early 90s. One of my best friends did have a board game based RPG that I really enjoyed, but outside of that my role playing has been pretty much limited to video games.

Listening to The Unmarked on my commute and recently finding HarmonQuest in the D&D Podcast thread has REALLY got me interested in trying out something more along those lines of collaborative storytelling where the focus is on building a fun narrative more than the actual gameplay mechanics. In the case of The Unmarked, I actually find myself "talking" to "the group" and playing along.

If any of you have something like this going and have an opening for a newbie, I'd love to join even if it's just on a limited "guest" basis.

Edit: I'm in Dallas, TX, so this would either have to be a local group or some sort of video teleconferencing type thing.

Don't forget games like Fiasco...

vypre wrote:

Not sure if this is the proper place to put this, but it seemed fitting...

I never really got into D&D and only played a few smaller encounters back in the early 90s. One of my best friends did have a board game based RPG that I really enjoyed, but outside of that my role playing has been pretty much limited to video games.

Listening to The Unmarked on my commute and recently finding HarmonQuest in the D&D Podcast thread has REALLY got me interested in trying out something more along those lines of collaborative storytelling where the focus is on building a fun narrative more than the actual gameplay mechanics. In the case of The Unmarked, I actually find myself "talking" to "the group" and playing along.

If any of you have something like this going and have an opening for a newbie, I'd love to join even if it's just on a limited "guest" basis.

Edit: I'm in Dallas, TX, so this would either have to be a local group or some sort of video teleconferencing type thing.

I would check out the community D&D game that is pick up and play over here. Playing via Roll20 or Google Hangouts is totally viable, so if you have friends that have spread far afield in the world but who you'd like to play with, hit them up and see what is possible!

If you are enjoying The Unmarked, it might be a sign that you would be into games that are more storytelling based and less mechanical heavy. I think it is worth exploring FATE.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

If you are enjoying The Unmarked, it might be a sign that you would be into games that are more storytelling based and less mechanical heavy. I think it is worth exploring FATE.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

Also the Powered by the Apocalypse games: Apocalypse World, Monster of the Week, Dungeon World, Monsterhearts, The Sprawl, Uncharted Worlds, Torchbearer, Masks, Wide World of Wrestling, etc.

I really like these games because they have a strong focus on theme and story, but also very mechanics light. There are usually a bunch of these games on Roll20, or various google+ communities like The Gauntlet and the Dungeon World Tavern.

One thing I'd suggest is to seek out communities that have sprung up around the podcasts you listen to and see if they're doing anything online. It sort of self selects for the types of game and people you want to play with. Or rather, it filters out the people you don't want to play with.

Thanks guys!

The original Deadlands is getting a 20th Anniversary reprint. All the original rules w/ updated full color art. Even though I moved on to the Savage Worlds version I'm totally getting a copy for old times sake.

Also the next campaign book for the SW version of Deadlands is getting kickstarted at the same time.

Vypre, you might also check out "The Gauntlet" on G+. They run a bunch of games for new players every week. Their podcast for Dungeon World (Discern Realities), is also great.

Has anyone here ever built a table with an inset monitor/tv? Alternatively, does anyone know of a better thread at GWJ in which to ask about such things?

Our Pathfinder GM is doing that right now. Here's the video he's following...