My Five Favorite Pen and Paper RPGs

Posts : 208 Join date : 2012-09-13

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons First Edition
Gamma World
Call of Cthulhu
Tunnels and Trolls (Solitaire)
Pendragon

Do you guys play or did you?

Posts : 183 Join date : 2012-09-13 Location : Vancouver

Forgive my ignorance, is it the same as a 'table top RPG' with the wee figurines, trees, etc? Or a different creature?

Posts : 208 Join date : 2012-09-13

en.wikipedia dot org/wiki/Role-playing_game has a lot of good definitions, but, basically, table top games involve dice paper and characters. Video game RPGs have the paper and dice rolling done for you, and yet, less freedom of action due to the limited interaction between players.

There are games with armies and miniatures like Warhammer.

Admin Posts : 1186 Join date : 2012-09-13

JamesCarter wrote:: Forgive my ignorance, is it the same as a 'table top RPG' with the wee figurines, trees, etc? Or a different creature?

Not everybody uses figures. We used to play with just the rule books, notebook paper and dice.

And some of the ones that use figures are actually war gammers, and don't do role playing. In wargamming, you are the all-knowing god/general commanding your armies, against one or more players or each commanding their armies, like a very complicated chess game. Like Alex said Warhammer is one of these, I used to play BattleTech which was a basically giant armored robot tank combat. Where it gets complicated keeping it all straight is games like these developed RPG versions, role playing games based around the original game, both Warhammer and BattleTech did this. I believe BattleTech's was called MechWarrior.

The video game equivalent would be something like Warcraft, vs World Of Warcraft. The original Warcraft itself was a real time strategy game(RTS), depicting battles etc., you commanded the armies, decided what and where to reinforce your supply chains and defenses, when and where to attack, etc., while World of Warcraft was a Role Playing Game where you take the part of an actual character in the game and interact with other players doing the same, within the context of the fictional world.

I just saw recently that Mouse Guard has a RPG. That could be fun.

Admin Posts : 1186 Join date : 2012-09-13

Alex Ness wrote:: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons First Edition
Gamma World
Call of Cthulhu
Tunnels and Trolls (Solitaire)
Pendragon

Do you guys play or did you?

I played D&D a lot, more in college and after. We even had a long campain in D&D's version of Lankhmar(The setting for Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories). At one point we switched to Iron Crown, mostly to play their MERP stuff, and a friend of mine had a copy of the Thieves World RPG, which was great fun.

We played Traveller too.

We played Shadowrun, but that game ended too soon, the GM got married and he never had time anymore. Haven't played in a long while. Not anything seriously anyway. I ran across a bunch of old FASA Star Trek RPG books at an garage sale a while back. Original series stuff. I've been dying to get a group together for that but I haven't had any takers.

My next door neighbor has a weekly game. When we first moved in, I tried it out for a while, they play state of the art D&D with all the newest rules. But it was a room packed full of almost a dozen rule lawyers and no actual role playing. Way too many PCs and all rule lawyers. Half the nights games were spent looking up stuff. And everyone knew everybody else's character sheet by heart. So every decision and action was made by the group. It was like a video game walk-thru. Over several of the nights I sat in on, they where exploring a labyrinth, stopped to go back to town a few times for supplies, and each time they would get back to the caves, after days of journey to and from the closest town, the place would be exactly as they left it, down to their own footprints, like time ceased to exist while the were gone. The first fight we got in I was convenient separated from the group by a rock slide, for the whole three hour battle, no one tried to help me out, my efforts to escape were pitiful, the GM didn't even toss me a random creature to fight the whole time. Horrible DM.

Posts : 183 Join date : 2012-09-13 Location : Vancouver

Awesome, thanks for the clarification.

Earlier this year I tried a table-top RPG for the first time, some sort of Orcs VS Vikings thing. It got wildly complicated and the fellow showing myself and the others how to play pretty much ended up playing both sides by himself. All I and the other newbies ended up doing was rolling dice. That said, I liked it enough that I went home and wrote up my own rules for a very simplified version, a kind of "anyone-can-play". I lack the equipment and haven't had a chance to test it for real yet, but I'm still very keen.

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JamesCarter wrote:: ...I went home and wrote up my own rules for a very simplified version, a kind of "anyone-can-play".

I always wanted to do that.

So many of these games seem so unecesarily overcomplicated. The combat systems are so convoluted you can't just sit down and play. Sometimes you just want to sit down and play a game. There are some simple easy games out there, that only take a few minutes to learn the basic play, but it seems the complexity is part of the fun for some people.

"Munchkin" and "Zombies!!!" are pretty easy and simple to learn. But also have infinite expansion possibilities for people who want it.

Posts : 183 Join date : 2012-09-13 Location : Vancouver

Joe Lee wrote:

JamesCarter wrote:: ...I went home and wrote up my own rules for a very simplified version, a kind of "anyone-can-play".

I always wanted to do that.

So many of these games seem so unecesarily overcomplicated. The combat systems are so convoluted you can't just sit down and play. Sometimes you just want to sit down and play a game. There are some simple easy games out there, that only take a few minutes to learn the basic play, but it seems the complexity is part of the fun for some people.

"Munchkin" and "Zombies!!!" are pretty easy and simple to learn. But also have infinite expansion possibilities for people who want it.

That's what I'd like to do, long term. Make a game you can learn in the same space of time it takes to learn a card game, but then have more complex options if wanted. I'm a total novice to the entire field of RPG's (outside of video games anyway) and I feel approaching it from a novice perspective will help in the overall design. At the moment it seems even some of the more basic table top RPG's make one feel like they're being thrown in at the deep end.

The next step is to set it up and play it, iron out any kinks in the design. If it works as smoothly as I'm hoping it will, I'll put the rules online. Heck, if it works as well as I hope other people can use the rules as a basic template and then build upon it with their own complexities.

Posts : 302 Join date : 2012-09-14 Location : Salem, MA

I played AD&D, Gamma World, and a few others in elementary and high school. I still have most of my old D&D books someplace, and my sons play the new version with their friends.

Mostly, the planning and preparation and reading all the materials was the funnest part, moreso than the actual playing. Getting a group together on a regular basis was usually impossible, so few adventures ever reached a satisfying conclusion. But it was still fun, what we did do.

Posts : 560 Join date : 2012-09-13 Age : 46

I played D&D AD&D, white wolf games such as LARP for Vampire, Werewolf, Cyber punk stuff, Rifts, Dangerous Journey's....damn the lists goes on.

Get this...I still have all my stuff. Also have you walked by the walmart toy aisles? They have miniature figures for D.C. and Marvel in these balls for 97 cents. Those would make for greay play pieces if someone wanted to run a campaign. I've always wanted to get a message board version of an rpg going.

Posts : 183 Join date : 2012-09-13 Location : Vancouver

J.M. Hunter wrote:: I've always wanted to get a message board version of an rpg going.

I'm game!

Admin Posts : 1186 Join date : 2012-09-13

J.M. Hunter wrote:: I've always wanted to get a message board version of an rpg going.

How does something like that work?

Subject: Re: My Five Favorite Pen and Paper RPGs Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:08 am

Joe Lee wrote:

J.M. Hunter wrote:: I've always wanted to get a message board version of an rpg going.

How does something like that work?

Late to the party, but since you asked.

It works sort of like narrative volleyball. The Game Master, or his equivalent, starts off with a post to establish the situation. Each of the players will have a character (usually hashed out between the player and the GM off-thread). The players will then post replies to the original post describing how they react to the situation and what they do. And then the GM writes a post telling what happens as a result of their actions, and so on.

It's a lot slower paced than a tabletop pencil-n-paper funny-dice RPG, but it can be fun.

Here's an example of a message board RPG I ran over on the Steve Jackson Games forums: The Horatio Club

Posts : 343 Join date : 2012-10-04 Location : Ohio

Some timely awesome dice rolls must make for some really contentious moments. affraid

Subject: Re: My Five Favorite Pen and Paper RPGs Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:22 pm

Well, the dice part gets tricky. As I understand it, there are programs out there that will provide random die rolls, but I've never bothered with it. In the online games I run, I usually determine things through GM's fiat. Not every player is comfortable with that, but I prefer it for two reasons. First, because it speeds up the process a li'l. Online games go at a glacial pace without having to add extra posts for the die rolls. Second, because when gaming in a Message Board format I like it to read like a narrative without the game mechanics interrupting things.

Posts : 76 Join date : 2012-11-01

I played Champions a lot. No wait, A LOT! I also played a lot of White Wolf's World of Darkness games. Mostly Vampire: The Masquerade. I even watched the tv show on Fox for the five or so episodes it lasted. I played AD&D a few times, but Champions and Vampire is mostly what I played.

Subject: Re: My Five Favorite Pen and Paper RPGs Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:53 pm

When I lived in Darkest Iowa, I was in a gaming group run by a couple who were Champions snobs. Well, snobs is a bad word. They mostly ran super-hero campaigns and Champions is one of the best systems for that genre. When I joined their group, they had a file of over 1000 character sheets representing practically everyone in the Marvel and DC Universes as well as various independent characters.

The first time I ran with their group, Bryon, who made most of the character sheets, asked me who I'd like to play. "Captain Marvel", I said.

"Do you mean the Kree Warrior...?" he said puzzled. The only other Captain Marvel he could think of was the female black Captain Marvel from AVENGERS. Since I am neither, he didn't think I meant her.

"No, I mean the REAL Captain Marvel. Wisdom of Solomon. Strength of Hercules. Courage of Achilles..."

"Okay, I get the idea."

"Power of Zeus..."

"I said I got it!!!" As it happened this one one of the few super-hero characters he had never worked up for Champions. So he handed me Superman's sheet and said, "Just ignore where it says Vulnerable to Kryptonite and replace it with Must Say SHAZAM! to Activate Instant-Change."

The game went well and I enjoyed gaming with that group for many years. Bryon and his wife also commissioned me to draw character portraits for many of their new character sheets. "The portrait is the most imporant part of the character sheet," Bryon used to say, and had designed his own custom Champions sheet to accomodate a large image.