Make us love your favorite game
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Many of us love different games. I don't mean, in this sense, individual MUs, but the underyling RPGs published and used on them.
So what do you enjoy? And why? Make us love your favorite game. I will try and provide an example after I have actually had a meal today.
I'm a rodeo clown.
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It's never systems (sorry @Misadventure) or mechanics that make me care either way about a game. It's always people.
With some games it's nostalgia; I remember, possibly through rose colored lenses, how I was back at the time I was playing them. The things I was encountering for the first time, the fun I had when my own life was different.
With others - most of them - it's who I was playing with; folks whom I might not have spoken to in a while or who're on MSB reading this right now. 'Dream teams' which lasted for some time and produced roleplay I still remember to this day.
But none of it is transferable to others. I never loved a game because it was perfectly set up or just had some sort of perfect storm of a theme. It's always been people who evoked the strongest response from me - give me great players to be around and that's my favorite game.
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Exalted. I haven't even played since first edition (Power Combat, awyiss!) but if I am going to be honest it is the game I have been the most passionate about ever, both playing and just mucking with the system and reading the books and content.
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@Arkandel You, sir, are fired. You can tell stories and RP, but no setting things up for you.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure said:
@Arkandel You, sir, are fired. You can tell stories and RP, but no setting things up for you.
That's what I said.
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@Misadventure said:
@Arkandel You, sir, are fired. You can tell stories and RP, but no setting things up for you.
Oh-no-that-sounds-so-horrible.
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My favorite systems do not translate well to this environment. I love the element of chance in a game, so random creation is awesome for me, in tabletop it doesn't matter if someone rolls like a god and someone else rolls more average because everyone is participating and creating fun together.
Online it's a whole different ballgame, if things aren't as 'balanced' as they can be then people will whine, bitch, and moan. So we go with systems where everyone starts out with the same points. It's still not equal because one person's build might be better optimized than anothers, but at least the potential for equality is there. Everyone had the same points to work with at creation.
I still am tempted to use the old FASERIP marvel system for a game though, with random creation and everything and just say Fuck Balance but everytime I try I see the damage an Alien, Deity, Angel/Demon could do if the dice decided to love them with 14 powers and the like while another pc might roll up a normal human with two powers, and roll that they can glow and smell the past.
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Whatever the system was for BS Deimos and Orion. Simple, understandable coded combat that allowed for seamless rp and moving scenes and enhanced the Rp rather than grinding it to a screeching halt.
I really enjoyed getting to rp and do battle and combat scenes without having to worry about (for the most part) people bitching and moaning the entire time and endless rules lookups.
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FS3. -
I haven't had a chance to play many of the RPG systems that I've read, so I'm not sure how convincing I could be.
The single best RPG book I've read, though, is Apocalypse World. The system itself may not be for everyone, and that's fine, but it starts each section—the player section and the GM ("Master of Ceremonies") section—with how to play this game. I would say easily that a third of the book involves advice that can be carried over to any RPG.
My favorite, which you have heard me repeat time and time again: Barf forth apocalyptica. That is, make everything you do have to do with the theme and the setting, which is something I wish every game did. Many of the rules are about this, about making the game world real.
Other rules teach how to separate player from character and how to treat the game with respect even as you're roasting the characters slowly over a fire of bad but interesting situations.
These things are not bits of advice, friendly from the game author to the player, they are laws without which you are not playing the game correctly. You can ignore the rules, of course, as you can with every game but this one doesn't act wishy-washy about it.
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Vampire: the Requiem 2nd Edition Featuring the Strix Chonicles
This is, overall I feel, my current favorite RPG. Vampire is a game about human desire and inhuman ability. You don't play a human (unless you are playing a Ghoul, of course) but instead something simultaneously so much more and so much less than human. A creature with all too human foibles, but strength, power, immortality. The Kindred represent the cool, romantic, and tragic. They are violent, they are sexy.
The types of stories you can tell in VtR2EftSC are numerous. From romantic melodrama to political intrigue, visceral horror to unmitigated, savage violence.
The simplicity of the 5 Clans gives you 5 different aspects of the modern vampire legend. Beautiful, Savage, Secretive, Scary, and or Regal. Kindred start as humans cursed with undeath, which offers a freedom of story development. No vampire is the same, and yet they are all familiar.
I may just be rambling at this point, but tl;dr Vampire is legit.
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BESM, or Big Eyes Small Mouths. I don't know why I liked the Tri-Stat system as much as I do, and I haven't played it in awhile, but the system was just so open to make any kind of tropey character you ever wanted to. It didn't have to be based in anime, which is what the system drew a lot of inspiration off of. An example would be that I created a Yatcha(or however it's spelled, it's been awhile, but the alien species from Predator)in one of the longer campaigns I was apart of.
It's just really flexible and terribly open to allow you to just whatever, yet there for all that openness, it doesn't let you go so crazy you end up being overpowered. In which case, something just as overpowered could be thrown at you.
Still, really really love that system. I miss playing it.
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I have mixed feelings about the Iron Kingdoms ruleset. On the one hand, I love the setting, and the tabletop wargame is super keen. It translates amazingly well to an RPG, especially the roll/eplay aspects. There is no social attribute; do you intimidate via explaining in elaborate detail (Intellect), or by brute force (Strength), or perhaps by doing some knife trick (Poise)? /How/ you do it, dictates which thing is connected to the social test. It has a very fun feel to it.
On the other hand, all of the careers and shit they made for the RPG are pulled directly from the wargame itself. You want to play a gobber bard? Fuck you, the only bards in the setting are Trollkin, SO YOU CAN ONLY MAKE TROLLKIN BARDS. Also, while it is not level-based, there is an XP-progression chart that everyone follows, rather than you getting to pick what to spend your XP on. I want very badly to figure out how to translate this to a mush, but given the lack of 1:1 across the board with careers (it relies on heavy GM involvement and the need of a firm 'no' or six at times) and xp, it seems overly tricksy.
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I'd like to amend my previous statement. Vampire: the Masquerade is where it's at for me, although part of that could be nostalgia since it was the first time I got into the World of Darkness with RL friends (a guy at work played so I got pulled into their group) and had a blast.
For starters the layered metaplot you could do anything you wanted with, where you could plant as much paranoia as you liked and it could still be plausible. Playing inhuman hypocrites on a cycle of endlessly repeating their own mistakes, telling each other and themselves lies about freedom and independence when it's obvious they've neither of those things, fighting an utterly meaningless war between factions led, essentially, by the exact same kinds of Elders, all of it for nothing. And then the idea of having to figure out secrets so ancient there aren't records of them because writing hadn't been invented yet at the time, so the truth is hidden behind high-immortal methuselahs who don't even remember how to be people any more. But also the entire system of Generations and power held in the vitae (and stolen, if possible) was excellent, I really missed the pyramid scheme of Elder, ancillae and neonate in Requiem.
That's where it's at for me.
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One of my favorite is Paranoia. A Logan's Run-esque anti-cooperative game, it is your job to navigate your six-pack of clones through the alliances and treachery of your friends and the world - where everything is punishable by death. In a zone of the wrong color from you? Death. Holding an object of the wrong color from you? Death. Are you happy? Death. Are you sad? Death. In a world where there is no right answer the only answer may be to kill everyone else to make it to the briefing at the end of the play session.
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FFG Star Wars is a lot of fun. The dice are insane upon first reading, and second, and maybe 15th, but the first time you actually play it's pretty easy to understand. The system is really unique, plays to much of the feel of Star Wars and I like that your base attributes are set forever outside of some talents, meaning most of the focus is on skills/talents. There are also a lot of options for races and a wide range of play, from being a rebel pilot to a Hutt merchant. Also? Star Wars.
Another one that I'd really like to play, but haven't had the opportunity, is Symbaroum. It also sticks to the never changing base attributes, but has more traditional dice. In a way, it is standard fantasy fare, but I really dig the setting and I like the small differences in setup and character choices.
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I actually like pre-metaplot oWoD in terms of flexibility. (Have I mentioned yet today that I miss the Tzimisce? Yes? Well, then I haven't mentioned it enough times today yet.)
Metaplot is something I have always felt is best left to individual campaigns, and I always have felt limited by it, or imposed on by it, if it's being handed down by the game company. If it's super open, that's one thing -- but it still feels more like tinkering around in someone else's sandbox than I care for. It just rubs me wrong on some level. I know it's possible to ignore it, but something about it always feels like playing around in someone's pet storyline from on high, and the world of the game becomes somehow smaller for it the more the core materials are tailored to the specifics of that metaplot.
I like metaplot in individual games and campaigns. Even in core materials, 'here is this sub-setting' or 'here is this chronicle (o/nWoD)' or 'here is this campaign (D&D) world' have a different feel and don't nag at me in quite the same way, or feel as much like my characters are suddenly the supporting cast for the game developers' head-novel.
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Earthdawn.
MechWarrior.
These are the things I grew up on, and it shows.
Otherwise, I dig the GMC. All of it. Very much.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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Holy crap Gany! In my experience finding people who play Earthdawn, much less know about the game is a rare treasure of a find.
