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We've all been there, or are there now... we want to run a game, but not in an established or explicit setting. What we're looking for is a ruleset or indie game that fits our needs. This is the thread to post your game idea and let people suggest rulesets. The format for requirements goes like this: code:code:code:code:I'm working on a game right now, based on one I saw in the "New Game Idea Thread" - quote:The UTE Stockholm, aka "The Stocks" is not only a prison ship transporting a variety of Military and Civilian Prisoners, but the crew themselves are all dishonored for some reason or another. You only take a position on The Stocks if it's the preferred choice over a court-martial. RULESET: Normal or lower SUPPORT: Established, though I could handle User-Generated. I don't want to have to stat out every enemy as a full character CHARGEN: Quick would be preferable, but I'm not opposed to Normal complexity and running a Chargen session SETTING: I'd prefer Neutral or vaguer. I initially considered nWoD, but I don't want to go to the trouble of statting out every single enemy as an NPC. If you guys can think of a better way to phrase this OP, I'm all for it. But yeah, help me find a mainly-social/non-combat system that works in a hi-tech world that doesn't require infinity hours of prep for the DM that doesn't fall apart when the characters draw iron on the baddies. Like I said, I initially considered nWoD or Shadowrun, but ShadowRun puts too much emphasis on gear, and nWoD will have me crafting NPCs all week. I looked at the Cortex system (from Serenity), but it doesn't seem quite right either.
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Aug 12, 2011 20:20
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List of Systems/Games: (I'll edit this post as people suggest systems/settings) d20: Advantages: TONS of support for existing monsters/settings/adventures Disadvantages: Clusterfuck of feat support and complex character generation
GURPS Advantages: Universal system, fairly simple to play Disadvantages: OMG chargen is retarded, munchkining abounds
Green Ronin: Advantages: Death to HP and Ability Scores! Disadvantages: Poor rulebook organization
Storyteller Advantages: Truly universal "core game" for extensibility Disadvantages: System mastery required, not-great Monster Manual support
Unisystem One-Roll Engine ??? I Dunno suggest something Man-Thing fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Aug 12, 2011 |
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Aug 12, 2011 20:22
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The full storyteller line right now from White Wolf is New World of Darkness Vampire: The Requiem Werewolf: The Forsaken Mage: The Awakening Hunter: The Vigil Promethean: The Created Changeling: The Lost Geist: The Sin Eaters
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Aug 12, 2011 20:33
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Shadowrun: Advantages: Decently paced, and with a little modification the ruleset can be dropped into quite a few games. Almost everything is customizable to some extent. For the most part pretty balanced. Disadvantages: Powergaming is hideously easy(though easy to discourage), and if you don't have the 20th anniversary edition then you will never understand hackers. The few things that aren't decently balanced are hideously unbalanced(Some of the newer stuff, Mages who feel like being gods, some weapons[I'm looking at you Barret 151])
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Aug 12, 2011 23:56
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If someone puts out details on more Cortex/Cortex+ stuff, this can be combined with it. Leverage Advantages:Awesome for anything involving a team of highly competent bad-asses with no real threat of death. Narrative control for the kinds of flashbacks and twists seen in caper movies. Disadvantages: Not as flexible as other systems. Needs well typed character roles. Players having the ability to create flashbacks is counter-inuitive. FATE Advantages: Fast and flexible. Lots of FATE variants out there so tons of options for customization. Can be crunchy if necessary. Disadvantages: No one unified system, character generation can be slow, cannot handle wildly disparate power levels; handles absolutes poorly.
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Aug 13, 2011 03:14
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What system should I use for: Jesus Christ had the divine knowledge of the blessed Celestial "Ars Pugnica" (Kung Fu), which he then taught to his disciples. It's now the Protestant Reformation. Both the protestants and the catholic church have supernatural martial artists. Hijinks ensue. RULESET: Crunchy or below SUPPORT: Established or below CHARGEN: Normal SETTING: Neutral or below. I'm looking for tactical combat support. Weapons of the Gods is nice but too slow.
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Aug 13, 2011 19:35
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Xand_Man posted:Jesus Christ had the divine knowledge of the blessed Celestial "Ars Pugnica" I would use D20 Monks and Ninjas would be the KungFu Dudes and there is a huge magic system with all kinds of spells for the Priest magic type users in the game. Knights and swashbucklers for your fighter types. Tons of monsters to run from MM1-MM5. Just keep the players from going too super natural when making the characters and you'll be fine. Books needed: Players Handbook - Basic Classes and the majority of the good magic spells. Dungeon Masters Guide - Rules Monster Manuals 1-5 - Take your pick of bad guys. *Complete Adventurer - Just for Ninja class if you don't want to just use the Rouge Class in the Players. *Spell Compendium - Not necessary but it has a ton of spells not found in the Players.
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Aug 13, 2011 23:49
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Xand_Man posted:What system should I use for: If your kung-fu is more on Street Fighter side of the spectrum then Savage Worlds with the Super Powers Companion might work well for you. It can offer decently tactical combat, and if the SPC will allow for a decent amount of character differentiation to simulate the different styles. pre:Savage Worlds RULESET: Lite-ish SUPPORT: DIY to User Generated CHARGEN: Quick SETTING: Universal
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Aug 14, 2011 01:49
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ManMythLegend posted:Savage Worlds Savage Worlds wouldn't be bad at all. It's a very open game and I hear the gameplay is fast too. Has anyone played it through a campaign? Is the combat fast paced?
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Aug 14, 2011 04:38
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Xand_Man posted:What system should I use for: Seems like Final Stand is what you're looking for. Free book made by one guy, but it does chop socky very well. It's also very simple so it would be easy to make up new "styles" for the specific religions, or re-flavor existing ones.
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Aug 14, 2011 06:21
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MohawkSatan posted:Shadowrun: Addendum: Character creation is hideously detailed and takes a while.
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Aug 14, 2011 06:38
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Cheap Soda posted:Savage Worlds wouldn't be bad at all. It's a very open game and I hear the gameplay is fast too. Sadly I have yet to play a Savage Worlds game without using the internet, so I can't vouch for its speed at a table. Based on the couple of games I've run on here though it seems to run smoothly enough.
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Aug 15, 2011 03:44
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Here's something I wrote awhile back. By no means a complete list. Dogs in the Vineyard - http://www.lumpley.com/dogsources.html - Play a enforcer from the church in an alternative western setting. "Young people sent to solve problems with religion and guns, when neither is the solution" Polaris - http://www.tao-games.com/?p=1 A GMless system where the players take on the role of knights fighting for a doomed civilization that once was the grandest in the land, now a shadow of its former self. Houses of the Blooded - http://housesoftheblooded.net/ Take the roll of a noble in a unforgiving land. Plot, betray, and most importantly, get your revenge. Fiasco - http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/ "Fiasco is a GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation. During a game you will engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It's like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it'd take to watch one" Burning Wheel - http://www.burningwheel.org/ A game driven by the GM testing your characters beliefs, with mechanical rewards for acting on them or changing them. Fantasy setting, but also a sci fi one with Burning Empire, and Mouse Guard Free Market - http://projectdonut.com/ - What if you were an immortal infovore, who lived on a space station with other immortals, where currency was similar to the number of friends you had one Facebook. What would you do? What would make? What would you accomplish? 3:16 Carnage Among the Star - http://gregorhutton.com/boxninja/threesixteen/index.html - Become a Space Trooper. Kill all life that threatens earth. Innovative flashback mechanics. A game you can play strait or cheesy. Wilderness of Mirrors - "Was James Bond ever first level? Does Jason Bourne need a Feat to use an automatic weapon? Frustrated by spy games that assume your character needs to go through ten or more levels before he’s considered “competent?”" Wilderness of Mirrors distills the spy genre to its basic elements, Planning Expertise, and Trust. Players get bonus "betryal" dice every time they break that trust. Dresden Files RPG - Winner of a bunch of this years ennie awards, and based on the FATE system, the Dresden Files RPG does the "magical detective" genre awesome. Have a party with a half demon sorcerer whose trying to go strait and an overweight cop who just seems to stumble into things, and both balance with each other. Smallville - http://www.margaretweis.com/news/99-smallville-the-rpg If you like the show or hate it, it doesn't matter. The system is great for the super hero genre, or even the teen drama genre. Leverage is done in a similar fashion Dread - a horror and suspense game. No dice however, the only conflict resolution mechanic is pulling blocks from a Jenga tower. Dread is one of the best games I've ever played.
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Aug 15, 2011 11:41
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Microlite20: It's D20 lite. RULESET: Lite SUPPORT: Established CHARGEN: Quick, like 3 mins. SETTING: Universal-ish Advantages: Very Quick Play! Characters are created in less then 3 mins. Rules are only 2 pages long. Tons of user created campaign settings everything from Darksun to Gritty Sci-Fi. Can use almost any d20 material you have. Free at this time. Disadvantages: Not very detailed. No real complex characters you pick a class on go. http://www.microlite20.net/ -> Forum then Downloads for PDF's
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Aug 16, 2011 14:10
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The Window: RULESET: Lite SUPPORT: DIY CHARGEN: Involved SETTING: Universal Advantages: Very simple dice mechanics and an open character system. Free. Disadvantages: You have to make everything in your world (no Monster Manual to pick bad guys from.) Limited granularity in the levels of attributes, skills, powers, etc. http://www.mimgames.com/window/
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Aug 16, 2011 14:53
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Bliss Stage Bliss Stage is a game about Love and Loss. And Giant Robots. It is from the same guy who made polaris and it is pretty neat, if in need of a few rules tweaks to turn down the creep factor a bit. With some work it can be rethemed into any game about child soldiers. RULESET: Lite SUPPORT: DIY CHARGEN: Involved* SETTING: Established *mechanically chargen is not so bad, but considering everyone is making multiple characters and assigning relationships to them, there is a large amount of up front work.
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Aug 16, 2011 21:47
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Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch RULESET: Regular SUPPORT: Deep CHARGEN: Involved SETTING: Inseparable Advantages: Easy to use ruleset that does a great job of evoking the setting. Lots of material created for each line and they are cross-compatible. Disadvantages: Combat swings between hyper-lethal and inconsequential with very little in between. Unless you want to do the legwork, the mechanics are inextricably tied to the setting.
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Aug 16, 2011 22:24
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying v3 RULESET: Normal SUPPORT: Established CHARGEN: Quick SETTING: Inseparable Advantages: One of the slickest systems in print. Rule set is intuitive with cards and tokens mitigating most of the typical RPG legwork. Flavor out the rear end with unique abilities, damage types, and others. Chargen is quick and easy. Very nice support from the website. Some of the highest production values in an RPG today. Disadvantages: Pricey. The core set only supports three players and it only gets more expensive the more players you want to add. Being run with physical components pretty much necessitates additional purchases with additional players. FFG's Achilles Heel is an organized rulebook. I hear later Game Master books condense and clarify rules, however. Some people don't like the "boardgame" feel lent by the cards and tokens. Unlike other Warhammer RPG properties (prior versions of Fantasy, the 40k systems, et al.), it's actually fairly hard to die, which may disappoint some purists.
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Aug 18, 2011 09:57
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Kobolds Ate My Baby! RULESET: Lite SUPPORT: Established CHARGEN: Quick SETTING: Inseparable Advantages: ALL HAIL KING TORG Disadvantages: ALL HAIL KING TORG
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Aug 18, 2011 13:23
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Primus posted:Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch CHARGEN gets upgraded to Days for Dark Heresy: Ascension, however.
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Aug 18, 2011 13:50
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Do you really think system mastery is required for World of Darkness? I know it plays a part in character generation and some of the game lines, but I'd argue that it's a lot more difficult to make a straight-up useless character than in a system like Exalted or D&D. Anyways, a couple more entries: Paranoia Ruleset: Lite Support: between User-Generated and Established - lots of premade adventures are available Chargen: Quick (using Random generation is better) Setting: Established Notes: Best for one-shots and more comedic games. Often fast-paced and involves huge amounts of note-passing and scheming. I think you could use the set-up for other settings, but almost everyone seems to love the default 1984 type setting. Fantastic for first-time players as long as you make the characters ahead of time. Call of Cthulhu - d20 edition Ruleset: Normal Support: User-Generated. (Unless you don't mind adapting BRP and other Cthulhu materials, in which case it's Deep.) Chargen: Quick Setting: Neutral Notes: an easy way to get D20 D&D players to try something else. Characters are relatively simple compared to 3.0-3.5 D&D; sanity rules are intact, and monsters are very, very deadly.
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Sep 2, 2011 20:09
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Sionak posted:Do you really think system mastery is required for World of Darkness? I know it plays a part in character generation and some of the game lines, but I'd argue that it's a lot more difficult to make a straight-up useless character than in a system like Exalted or D&D.
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Sep 2, 2011 20:16
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You should use GURPS for everything ever. So should everyone.
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Sep 2, 2011 20:40
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Zero_Grade posted:You should use GURPS for everything ever. No thank you.
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Sep 2, 2011 21:02
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Fair enough on the WoD - I have seen some of that in my own game. Another question: has anyone played or run Feng Shui? I've heard good things about it in the past but it's obscure enough that I can't flip through it at the local game shops.
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Sep 2, 2011 21:02
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Zero_Grade posted:You should use GURPS for everything ever. Look at this terrible, terrible piece of advice.
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Sep 2, 2011 22:07
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Open D6 RULESET - Lite SUPPORT - DIY, although there's some Established support if you look for it. CHARGEN - Quick to Involved SETTING - Universal Advantages: Scalable, flexible, open-source, simple combat and skill resolution. Disadvantages: Little support, logarithmic scale occasionally produces similarities in higher digits, requires some tinkering to get working. I became a convert to Open D6 when I was converting some stats from Rifts into TORG, then into Open D6. Open D6 shares a lot with TORG, as it's conversion simply divides TORGs values by 3 and turns it into a die value and/or pip value that is rolled and added up. The logarithmic scale works on a base 5, where each multiple of 5 represents an magnitude of 10. The way the values and measures work are done in SI, so any number of units can be used, such as Joules (for damage), Watts (for strength), Meters (speed, range, etc.), etc. Combining these gives a lot of flexibility: for example, finding the measure of two sides, finding their values, then adding those values together gives the square meters of a space. The Values, in addition, use addition and subtraction of values to multiply or divide measures. Multiplying or dividing values exponential raisies or square roots the measure. It requires some effort to get anything out of it: the original Open D6 is the sum of a dice pool against a target number. I've found an opposed die roll vs. 3D6 + modifier dice to be most helpful, as this generates a wide variety of numbers while the opposed dice roll maintains the logarithmic curve of attributes, skills, and other values. Chargen is typically involved with a point-buy system, although Templates are suggested to spead up chargen. West End Games has been out of business for a while, so there's no real support for it, although an online D6 magazine and fan projects have been started, since the last act of WEG was to set the license to free.
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Sep 3, 2011 07:39
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Zero_Grade posted:You should use GURPS for everything ever. GURPS used that way would be quite literally hell to run, for the majority of games, rules-light systems like FATE work better as a base. You can solve a problem by statting every detail or by fuzzing out so you can fit more or less anything into it.
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Sep 3, 2011 08:31
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What system should I use? - Ropey Pokemon knock offquote:Kids capture monsters using special gloves which fire tokens. Tokens are effectively pokeballs. The players work for a new monster-using branch of a megacorp's secret military. Trainers are children as the mysterious technology doesn't work unless you started from childhood and it's a recent development. We played for a while with BESM because I saw a supplement in a shop that claimed to let me run a monster trainer game. Sadly, BESM is awful and the monster training sourcebook was useless. We had some good times, but the sheer amount of work bending the system to the game broke my soul. RULESET: Crunchy to Normal - I don't really want to have to stat up all the monsters and their potential growth, but I don't want it to be a homogeneous mess of players spending points to break systems like BESM was. SUPPORT: User-Generated - See above really, I'm aware there's not going to be any support for this terrible, terrible idea CHARGEN: Quick or Involved - My players are mainly D&D types, so spending half an hour on a character is fine SETTING: Neutral/Universal I may just end up going with FATE or something.
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Sep 3, 2011 09:22
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I'm new to RPGs (haven't played one since college and it some weird indie thing), will be playing with a group of folks mostly new to RPGs. To give an idea of where we are at the moment, we currently have issues playing Descent (the Heroquest-esque boardgame) in a timely fashion. We wouldn't be launching this campaign until next semester so we will have hopefully gotten our basic dice-rolling and bookkeeping skills down, but overall I think we still want something light. I want to run a campaign that is basically Deus Ex-styled corporate intrigue, conspiracy-laced cyberpunk with corporate enforcers, hacking, etc. We're looking for something simple where you can roll dice to hack the planet/shoot the man. AFAIK Shadowrun is basically a ridiculous amount of tracking and is super involved, I would ideally like something where as many systems as possible are streamlined. I think we're looking for something like this: RULESET: Light SUPPORT: User-Generated or Established CHARGEN: Normal - I already have an idea about introducing them to the world with pre-gens and then once they have a feeling for it, letting them make their own characters. SETTING: Neutral or below. Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Sep 3, 2011 |
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Sep 3, 2011 21:05
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Your two best options for rules-light cyberpunk - and, frankly, any cyberpunk not in the vein of Shadowrun - are Technoir and Remember Tomorrow. Of the two, Technoir is probably closer to what you're looking for in that it has a traditional GM role.
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Sep 3, 2011 22:32
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Mutants and Masterminds could also be pretty easily adapted to any setting. I don't have any experience GM'ing a M&M game and while character creation can be somewhat complicated actually playing it is pretty simple. I think it was actually my first PnP RPG I ever played. Anyway I really like M&M because of the awesome character customization and the fact that you can pretty much do any setting you want to in it.
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Sep 4, 2011 16:54
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Mojo Jojo posted:What system should I use? - Ropey Pokemon knock off May I suggest Monsters and Other Childish Things by Ben Baugh (link has a bunch of free demos and such)? It's a game about kids and the non-Euclidean creatures from Beyond Space And Time who love them. The "default" tends to run to an Addams Family/Gorey-esque slight darkness, but since that's more tone than anything else it's not hard to play it lighter without any actual tweaking. quote:RULESET: Crunchy to Normal - I don't really want to have to stat up all the monsters and their potential growth, but I don't want it to be a homogeneous mess of players spending points to break systems like BESM was. quote:SUPPORT: User-Generated - See above really, I'm aware there's not going to be any support for this terrible, terrible idea quote:CHARGEN: Quick or Involved - My players are mainly D&D types, so spending half an hour on a character is fine You also have Relationships you can use to boost rolls; if you have 3 dice in your Relationship with Mom, you can bring those dice in "because I'm gonna make her proud!" Of course, if you screw up, then the Relationship can lose dice; even though Mom never knew what you were doing, you know you let her down. Monster creation is a little different: 1. Draw your monster 2. Circle the "important bits" 3. Assign the hit locations 1-10 to those bits. Each bit can have multiple hit locations. 4. Each bit gets 5 dice per hit location to buy abilities (so if I decide that my monster's "Big Nasty Fangs" is hit locations 3-5, that's 15 dice). Abilities fall into three categories: Attacks (does damage), Defends (blocks damage), and Useful (everything else). You can also buy extras like Spray, Wicked Fast, or Awesome to tweak those abilities. [/\quote] SETTING: Neutral/Universal[quote] The default setting is High School and those approximate age groups, but since the setting is pretty separate from the rules you could put it in any setting, really.
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Sep 4, 2011 17:39
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That sounds nearly ideal. SOLD
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Sep 4, 2011 18:20
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So I have been running a Call of Cthulhu game in the World of Darkness system, and I am not really happy with the result. The characters are a bit too hardy for the CoC feel, and the combat kind of .. lacks punch, to me. Part of this is my own fault, but I'm interested in checking out some alternatives. I'm thinking of switching to something with FATE for my next game. I want to use a World of Darkness style setting - lots of monsters in a modern or mostly modern period. Would Dresden Files or Kerberos Club work better for this? How tied is Dresden Files to the exact flavor of the books, or will it work well for just about any modern occult type game? How does the crunch level compare between the two? A lot of my players aren't so big on more mechanic-heavy games, which is part of the reason I'm thinking FATE in the first place. Also, a question about FATE games in general. I haven't read all the rules in general, but players can cash in Fate tokens to modify scenes, right? Couldn't this play havoc with a creepy scene? The pitch black, monster-infested sewer suddenly has a light source, or something like that. Or if there's something else that would work well and fits what I've described, feel free to tell me about it. But not GURPS. Sionak fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Oct 25, 2011 |
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Oct 25, 2011 20:44
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Sionak posted:So I have been running a Call of Cthulhu game in the World of Darkness system, and I am not really happy with the result. The characters are a bit too hardy for the CoC feel, and the combat kind of .. lacks punch, to me. Part of this is my own fault, but I'm interested in checking out some alternatives. Dresden files could easily be used for any modern occult game. In terms of crunchiness, it's similar in level to WoD (but with more narrative control for players.) A player could certainly try to use a fate point to get light in a dark area (someone with an Always Be Prepared aspect could invoke the aspect and spend a fate point to have a flashlight on them). However, these are always subject to GM calls in two ways. The first way can be if it's definitely something that the GM doesn't want to happen or is too out there - someone "happening" to have a shotgun on them, or if the GM just wants it to be totally dark. The other way is more of a rules-based method: you can counterbid. If Player wants to spend a fate point to get that flashlight, the GM can offer them a fate point. If they take it, they get their fate point back and the GM's offered point, but they don't get a flashlight. Or, they can decide they really do want that flashlight, and pay an additional fate point (2 in total) to get that. This is more for when the GM would prefer for something not to happen, but is willing to be flexible if the player really wants something.
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Oct 25, 2011 21:31
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Perfect, I think that will fit with how I like to run things anyways. In the CoC/WoD game I started giving each character different tokens (reflecting their personalities) that basically let them rewrite just a little part of a scene once per session. It sounds like this is a more polished version. Thanks a lot!
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Oct 25, 2011 23:09
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I've been thinking on and off about running a future game based on spaceship fighting for a while, what would you recommend? Ruleset Normal Support User-Generated Chargen Involved Setting Universal/Neutral would be nice
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Oct 25, 2011 23:14
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I think the biggest question is what kind of sci-fi are you looking for? Pulpy space opera, or hard sci-fi space marines?
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Oct 26, 2011 00:27
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Maddman posted:I think the biggest question is what kind of sci-fi are you looking for? Pulpy space opera, or hard sci-fi space marines? Pulpy as hell,
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Oct 26, 2011 00:29
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