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RPGs and Genre Exploration
#1
This... is probably a by-product of being bored out of my skull while dusting down the RPG shelf today. Leaving me alone with my thoughts usually results in random outcomes.

With a Pokemon RPG whirring along in the roleplaying section of the forums, it's nice to see new players get exposed to the hobby. While D&D is sort of the de-facto reigning king of the genre, I find that there are a lot of pen & paper systems out there that deserve love from the gaming populace.

Some of them are even nice enough to do up slick demo adventures with cut down versions of the rules to showcase the system to prospective players. While I'm not currently actively playing in a forum game currently, I do occasionally shill certain titles, because frankly, I love the hobby and in my mind at least, more exposure is usually a good thing.

These are some of my favorite systems with quickstarts:


Dragon Age
by Green Ronin
Based on the Bioware video game of the same name, Dragon Age may yet displace Pathfinder as my go-to fantasy RPG system. Built around Green Ronin's proprietary Adventure Game Engine (or AGE) system, AGE uses a 3D6 system with a unique narrative 'stunt' system that triggers whenever a player rolls doubles and is relatively less mechanically crunchy overall than Pathfinder and D&D. Character generation is detailed without being complex, the levelling advancement system opens options and tricks to players without causing power escalation and the stunt die system where players get to pick and choose their way through fancy maneuvers is just clever.


A glance through leaves me a slight suspicion there might be some problems towards high-ish level play (can't quite put my finger on it yet), but to be honest, most games I ran with the system never actually reach high level play... so I guess I'm just speculating. Overall, the fact that it's just fun and easy to run sold me on the system. It also doesn't hurt than Wil Wheaton did an excellent run through of the game on Tabletop.

The Arl's Ransom -  Dragon Age Quickstart Adventure


Savage Worlds by Pinnacle Entertainment Group
If I want to run something in the modern, military or pulp genres with my local group, Savage Worlds comes out. Savage Worlds is a system neutral game engine which ties skill ranks to the size of dice rolled against a target number (d4 for rookie, d6 for seasoned, for example) rather than being modifier based. It's fast and relatively streamlined as a conflict resolution mechanic with less book keeping than most RPGs as well, so that's always a plus.

If there's a negative for Savage Worlds, it's ironically in it's system neutrality. Savage Worlds is a toolbox system and is highly dependent on the GM's spit and polish to kludge together the adventure via limiting options or coming up with a setting. It's honestly sometimes quite a bit of work, especially if you're working towards genres outside of 'modern', though I've always found the end results rewarding - I know GMs who run Fantasy and Sci-Fi using the base engine as well, so the caveat that it might just be me applies.

The Wild Hunt - A Savage Worlds Test Drive



Chris Perrin's MECHA by Heroic Journey Publishing
The science fiction giant robot rpg genre is something I WANT to like, especially given my love affair with mecha anime. The usual problem is that the system inevitably turns into Spreadsheet: The Game, which to me misses the entire point of the frenetic fights that define the genre. Needless to say, when I stumbled into MECHA, which is a rules light D6 based Dice Pool system, I fell in love. Being an indie system, MECHA gets away with it's overdrive mechanic, where overdrive points are awarded by the GM for successful roleplay which in turn fuels crazy combat stunt abilities and I have a personal soft spot for any system with mechanics built in to reward player interactions.

It's rules light, narrative driven and generally abstract. Needless to say, I went squee. Unfortunately, while I managed to snag a first printing copy, being an indie title means it's notoriously difficult to acquire copies of the book, save through print on demand sources.

MECHA - Quickstart
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#2
I am a massive Bioware fan, Dragon Age: Origins is one of my favorite games and Mass Effect is a bloody thrilling adventure. I just now discovered that there's a table-top game in the same universe I'm gonna go geek out for the next million years.
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#3
(05-23-2017, 01:26 PM)CodySP Wrote: I am a massive Bioware fan, Dragon Age: Origins is one of my favorite games and Mass Effect is a bloody thrilling adventure. I just now discovered that there's a table-top game in the same universe I'm gonna go geek out for the next million years.

They kicked out a hefty 400+ page full colour book in 2016 and it won an ENnie. It's a fantastically weighty tome with a lot of setting information covering huge swathes of the setting.


The Escapist reviewed it very positively and Wil Wheaton featured it in a two-parter on Tabletop. 
It really deserves more face time. 

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#4
I enjoy Warhammer a lot its a great War Strategy RPG game where 2 or more players pit armies of figures up against each other and fight to the bloody death I mainly play as chaos (awesome army design) and I use A LOT of space marines (they look like their from fallout) and I enjoy beating my friends with their elven archers and rifle men with only swordsmen! While its also a video game I still prefer the table game as I can get who ever I want to play it if their interested instead of just fighting some AI or random person over the internet so say I got friends over for a sleep over thing I can get 5 of them to play with me (I only have 96 figures and most are chaos and the rest are small sets of other armies
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#5
(05-24-2017, 12:47 PM)Super_trainer_Larry Wrote: I enjoy Warhammer a lot its a great War Strategy RPG game where 2 or more players pit armies of figures up against each other and fight to the bloody death I mainly play as chaos (awesome army design) and I use A LOT of space marines (they look like their from fallout) and I enjoy beating my friends with their elven archers and rifle men with only swordsmen! While its also a video game I still prefer the table game as I can get who ever I want to play it if their interested instead of just fighting some AI or random person over the internet so say I got friends over for a sleep over thing I can get 5 of them to play with me (I only have 96 figures and most are chaos and the rest are small sets of other armies

A fan of Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000, I take it?
Have you looked up the upcoming Warhammer Age of Sigmar Skirmish ruleset and Shadow War Armageddpm?

The campaign play rules for Shadow War are incredibly fun and I'm currently working on doing up a small Inquisition task force.

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Spinning back to the topic, Cubicle 7 Publishing has announced they've picked up the Warhammer Roleplaying Game liscence and that the game will be set in the original Old World setting, which is great since Fantasy Flight Games lost the Games Workshop IP licence. I'll miss Dark Heresy, Only War and Deathwatch a lot.

Personally, I'm looking forward to embarking on another road trip to Kislev. What could go wrong this time?
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#6
The only table top system I've had hands on interaction with was Pathfinder and Pokeroles. You can already attest that I really like the former, but I'm just getting started with the later. I've done plenty of research on how to make a really good Sorceror, though! That quickly became an absolute boon to play! Nothing survives a Quickened Empowered Intensified Maximized Dazing Fireball (and the follow up, since Quickening is awesome like that) !
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#7
(05-24-2017, 07:46 PM)Lord Windos Wrote: The only table top system I've had hands on interaction with was Pathfinder and Pokeroles. You can already attest that I really like the former, but I'm just getting started with the later. I've done plenty of research on how to make a really good Sorceror, though! That quickly became an absolute boon to play! Nothing survives a Quickened Empowered Intensified Maximized Dazing Fireball (and the follow up, since Quickening is awesome like that) !

It's one of the reasons I find myself slowly moving away from the Pathfinder RPG as my go-to system (despite having stuck with it since the Alpha).
Well... that and prep time.

It's increasingly difficult to balance plot and world-building with the fact that at higher levels, players can pretty much do whatever the heck they want (and that adventures start looking less like dungeon crawls and more like commando raids.) Plus, keeping encounter balance and my players entertained are difficult for both my players and myself when a properly specced Wizard can pretty much solo an adventure on their own.

Seriously, one of my players sent me this clip after a particular fight where the pre-fight buffing list was frustratingly longer than the fight itself.
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#8
On the other hand, I once ran a (D&D) game from level 1 to level 20 during college, and it was awesome to watch the players slowly become virtual (and then actual) gods! The prep time definitely kept increasing.
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#9
(05-24-2017, 08:13 PM)Iron Wrote: On the other hand, I once ran a (D&D) game from level 1 to level 20 during college, and it was awesome to watch the players slowly become virtual (and then actual) gods! The prep time definitely kept increasing.

That is the beauty of the game isn't it?  Big Grin

Still, that's a skill I admire. People tell me my style is fundamentally 'gritty'. I excel at small set pieces, little personal stories and 'street' level action. Somewhere between levels 10 and 15, I find myself struggling to find challenges for my players or story lines suited to their power levels.

It's a personal thing really.
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#10
I'm currently trying to develop a tabletop system using Magic cards. Essentially each character would be defined by a set of cards they could build up over time following something like the regular rules of Magic. Encounters would be pulled from small, thematically-appropriate decks (ten or fifteen cards each, but there'd be a lot of them) and players would work to acquire more spells and connect to new lands (to fuel said spells) as time went on and they traveled to different places. It should have the advantage of (once I've worked the rules out) being easy to pick up for Magic players and something that should be easy enough to put together (if there's one thing EVERY. SINGLE. Magic player has, it's a box or ten of extra cards they'll never have a use for).
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