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Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010
More or less out of the blue, some of my friends have decided that they wanted to try playing a tabletop RPG. Me being the gooniest person of the bunch, it fell to me to figure out the specifics. :v:

However I have very limited knowledge of tabletop RPGs, the only one I've ever played being a little bit of D&D 3.5. It's hard to get an idea of what it's like starting out with a game from reading a dozen megathreads, so I figured I'd try asking here; What's a good 'beginner's' RPG? Other then trying to find something that doesn't need half a ton of books to start playing, I don't have the slightest idea.

Since it's (unsurprisingly) easier for me to get my friends together online then it is sitting down in the same room, character sheets, virtual tabletops, rules references or the like would also be helpful. The only thing I can really think of is the D20 SRD for D&D 3.5, which only covers rules references anyways.

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Sionak
Dec 20, 2005

Mind flay the gap.
There are a lot of resources out there now, for a variety of genres. There are also a lot of games, which can be a bit overwhelming. The megathreads are generally for more intense discussion of the various systems and, as you noticed, aren't always the best for figuring out the basics.

One of the things you should do first is talk to your group and figure out what kind of game you're interested in. This thread offers some examples about the different aspects that people think about when picking a system: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3430847

I would recommend a relatively simple system to start, unless your friends are really into wargames or other things where the mechanical interactions of the rules are very important.

Dungeon World is often recommended for starting out and for good reason; it uses a simple base engine (from the game Apocalypse World) and you can find everything you need to play online here: http://book.dwgazetteer.com/

For horror/investigation, Call of Cthulhu is a classic, and you can find quickstart rules for free on either DriveThruRPG or Chaosium's website. Onyx Path (formerly White Wolf) also has a quickstart available for their World of Darkness game.

In general, I think quickstarts are your friend at this point if you'd like to check out a few systems. They generally include pregenerated characters, rules references, and a short scenario. Again, many companies put them up or have them on DriveThrueRPG.

Right now there are also tools dedicated to making playing online easier too - I am not an expert on those, but Roll20 is the one I hear mentioned most often.

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010
Cool, I'll check out what you've suggested.

The vague preference thrown around was something more sci-fi would be preferential to fantasy. In the event I end up with something fantasy-ish I might end up sticking with D&D because I at least have a basic idea of the rules already. :v:

I'll look at Roll20, too.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Another recommendation in the same "everything you need is freely available online" category as Dungeon World is FATE, which has a very comprehensive online System Resource Document aka all the rules and poo poo you could ever need to play, plus a whole bunch of other stuff too.

FATE is a pretty flexible game and could easily do science fiction. The SRD comes in two flavors, FATE Core which is the "baseline" version of the latest iteration of FATE and FATE Accelerated which is a quicker and simpler hack, and it also has the FATE Toolkit which is like a bunch of optional tweaks and hacks you can mess around with.

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010
I'll look at that when I get a chance. This is more for my own idle curiosity, but are either the Fantasy or 40k Warhammer systems any good? Or the Iron Kingdoms RPG?

Asymmetrikon
Oct 30, 2009

I believe you're a big dork!
Well, Warhammer isn't an RPG, it's a miniatures war game. There are WH based RPGs - Warhammer Fantasy Role-play 3e is extremely good, but probably pretty expensive for a beginner to get into (the WH 40k RPGs are all flavors of bland).

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Anatharon posted:

Cool, I'll check out what you've suggested.

The vague preference thrown around was something more sci-fi would be preferential to fantasy. In the event I end up with something fantasy-ish I might end up sticking with D&D because I at least have a basic idea of the rules already. :v:

I'll look at Roll20, too.
Don't be afraid to mix and match rules, settings, and modules. If it's good, you can use it. For sci-fi, I'm an OSR grognard so atleast check out Stars Without Number and Hulks and Horrors. They are free to try, and even if you don't use the game, Stars Without Number is known for its planet generation, and Hulks has classes to use with OSR D&D in a sci-fi setting especially if you want to play aliens that don't fit in with anything else. Both games are very similar to Old D&D. Old D&D is usually more simple than 3rd edition. AD&D can get fiddly though.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Sep 1, 2014

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010

Asymmetrikon posted:

Well, Warhammer isn't an RPG, it's a miniatures war game. There are WH based RPGs - Warhammer Fantasy Role-play 3e is extremely good, but probably pretty expensive for a beginner to get into (the WH 40k RPGs are all flavors of bland).

Er, yeah. I meant Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and whatever the Warhammer 40k one was called.


Babylon Astronaut posted:

Don't be afraid to mix and match rules, settings, and modules. If it's good, you can use it. For sci-fi, I'm an OSR grognard so atleast check out Stars Without Number and Hulks and Horrors. They are free to try, and even if you don't use the game, Stars Without Number is known for its planet generation, and Hulks has classes to use with OSR D&D in a sci-fi setting especially if you want to play aliens that don't fit in with anything else. Both games are very similar to Old D&D. Old D&D is usually more simple than 3rd edition. AD&D can get fiddly though.

Is D20 Modern a huge wreck or worth consulting too?

Yalborap
Oct 13, 2012
D20 modern is a huge, huge wreck. Honestly, I'd tell you not to run D&D 3.5 either. Even if you stick to the three core books, we're talking three books with pages the size of a sheet of paper that are...What, 3 or 4 inches thick altogether? I've got college textbooks far slimmer than the D&D core set, and written in such a way that they're easier to grasp. Plus, you can stumble into some impossibly powerful characters really easily on accident, both on the player side and the GM side. It just isn't a game I'd recommend for new players, at allll.

Oh, how do you feel about hardcopies versus PDFs? There're certain games that I'd recommend that are only available in one or the other these days.

But some games that're easy to find...

-Dungeon World. Built for dungeon fantasy, inspired by the sort of fiction D&D has around it. Very cool, very easy to learn. Already recommended, of course.

-Apocalypse World. The game that Dungeon World's rules are based on. Technically it's a post-apocalyptic game, but especially if you're willing to play a little fast and loose with some things, you can reskin it to a lot of semi-modern or science-fiction settings so long as violence is easy, supplies are scarce and peace is hard. Gonna warn you now, every character archetype has a spot on the character sheet that gives an idea of how they react after physical intimacy(read: sex). It's a genre thing. You can block this out with a white square in Photoshop or something before you print it out and you won't even know it was missing, though, and it can save on some real awkward conversations.

-Fate Core. More of a toolkit than a ready-to-go game, but it breaks down a lot of what its mechanics do very cleanly, and leaves you with a pretty solid idea of what you're doing. Due to how it's built, you can wrap it around almost any setting. It's rarely my first choice compared to a dedicated game for something, but it's often my second or third, and the place I turn to if I don't have a game more purpose-built.

-If you can track down a copy and are into the setting, the old Star Wars d6 game is really solid. It was written before the prequels, so it's a very lean, crisp representation of the Star Wars world. It's got its flaws, but it's a drat easy and straightforward way to get to playing, since drat near anyone who'd actually want to play an RPG has at least seen the original trilogy.

I would probably lean towards Dungeon World or Apocalypse World for a first game. There're other systems entirely I could recommend, but a lot of that depends on your tastes in media, what sort of game you want to play, and so on.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


My personal "go-to" system for new players and groups is either Savage Worlds or PDQ.

Savage Worlds is probably what I'd recommend to people who are into the idea of playing RPGs but are looking to "play a game" more than "play a character" if that makes any sense. Basically Savage Worlds doesn't really demand much in the way of roleplaying so you can invest as much or as little into your character as you like. It's a good system for people who are coming into TRPGS from a background of things like video games, war games, or board games. It's rules are easy to learn, very simple and not very abstract at all. It has all the funny dice (which I find new players find engaging) but it avoids the "what do I roll for this?" question by making your rating in an ability be the dice that you roll. You'll have to put up with people mixing up d8s and d10s for a while though.

If you're interested in Sci-Fi Savage Worlds also has the benefit that you can play standard "sci-fi action" style right out gate with just the main rule book (which is extremely cheap). Star Wars, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, etc. There is a sci-fi companion which can add a bit of extra stuff, but really the main book is plenty for the most part. Savage Worlds has the basic "test drive" rules available for free.


PDQ is what I use for people whose interest in TRPGs comes from things like free-form RP, improv or people who are into the idea of TRPGS due to the collaborative storytelling aspect and less into the idea of an action game. It's really simple rules but a lot of the ideas are more abstract and player-driven. It also only uses 6-sided dice and is pretty consistent on what you roll and what you can add to a roll (pretty much always 2d6 plus a bonus or penalty). The core rules are free (and only about 13 pages) and there are several settings/systems out there that are available quite cheaply.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I'm very much a beginner into tabletop RPGs myself, but I did get to GM a session of Microlite20 with two other complete newbie friends of mine and they seemed to take well to it. I'm just throwing it in as I learned about the system too from SA TG and finding something that was just D&D enough to feel familiar to everyone, just enough definite structure to the combat to make my PC game friends comfortable but simple enough to not get tangled up in a lot of rules worked out really well.

http://microlite20.net/
http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/microlite20/microlite20.html
http://donjon.bin.sh/m20/Microlite20.pdf

I also echo the recommendations for FATE and Dungeon World (and the even simpler World of Dungeons) as potential beginner systems.

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010

Anatharon posted:

whatever the Warhammer 40k one was called.

One of the people in the group I'll be trying to run this for used to date a dude who played 40k and apparently is interested in at least hearing about the 40k RPG. I looked into it and it turns out there's like five of them. A simple yes/no regarding if any of them are good or not would be cool.

The Thread posted:

Dungeon World

Dungeon World seemed pretty well recommended so I told everyone about it and I'll see what their responses are. Shadowrun was also something that looked pretty cool but I'll need to look at it myself first, I think.

In the meantime, I know nothing about Roll20. Is it hard to learn or teach? I should be fine with it but 3/6 of the people who'll be involved haven't gotten within 100 feet of anything like it before. :v:

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Anatharon posted:

One of the people in the group I'll be trying to run this for used to date a dude who played 40k and apparently is interested in at least hearing about the 40k RPG. I looked into it and it turns out there's like five of them. A simple yes/no regarding if any of them are good or not would be cool.

That's sort of a hard one to summarize with a single yes/no because some people like them and some people hate them but for what they are I find them pretty serviceable and lend themselves well to a sort of general 40K experience. In order:

1). Dark Heresy is a game where you play agents of the Inquisition investigating stuff and trying not to die. The first edition of this game is the clunkiest and roughest of the 40K RPGs, and it wasn't even originally made by FFG but by Games Workshop who then cancelled it a month after release because they're Games Workshop. FFG picked it up and ran with it but it took them a while to smooth a lot of the wrinkles out. A 2nd Edition of DH got released at GenCon and has been getting some favorable word of mouth, so if this interests you I would look for the 2E version.

2). Rogue Trader is hypercapitalism in space. You own a kilometer long spaceship and have a piece of paper that entitles you to do whatever you drat well please to get rich or die trying. Dark Heresy is about being "normal" people on the ground level of grand conspiracies and plots, Rogue Trader is about being the 1% with orbital bombardment capabilities. Some of the math, notably ship-to-ship combat, is kind of wonky though there are some fan-patches out there that supposedly work okay. Nonetheless RT is a popular game that encourages you to get into a lot of crazy situations and people seem to like it a lot, I'd say it's one of the most popular of the bunch.

3). Deathwatch is about being space marines. You do space marine stuff. If you like some space marines then Deathwatch is the game for you. You will be a huge, power armor wearing dude with a bolter and shoot lots of other dudes, then do it again. The default focus of DW is obviously a bit narrower than something like Rogue Trader but it doesn't have to be and it still gives you all the necessary skills and rules to have your marines caught up in conspiracies and investigations but the books are primarily focused on killing poo poo which, to be fair, is what space marines are best at.

4). Only War is about being in the Imperial Guard. It's a war-focused game but more "war from the perspective of the average soldier" since instead of power armor and bolters you tend to get lasguns and flak armor. That said Guardsmen can still get pretty badass with the right kit. They're also normal men and women instead of genetically engineered super-soldiers so the game lends itself to a more human element as well. I personally think OW strikes a better balance of letting you start out at ground zero but not having starting level characters be complete scrubs than 1E Dark Heresy did, a lot of rules streamlining and refinement done over the various games makes its way in here, and it has some fun stuff like building your own regiment and everybody getting a semi-disposable comrade to boss around and take bullets.

5). Black Crusade is about being Chaos and being the biggest bastard around in a race with the other bastards in your party to get mad props from the Chaos Gods and be invited to sit at the cool kids' table, losers get turned into chaos spawn. Supports mixed parties of normal people and space marines out of the gate. BC is nonetheless a game where you maybe want to make sure that it's right for your group because A). it lends itself to interparty conflict more than maybe any of the other games and B). if you have That Guy in your group then this game will potentially bring out the worst in him. Still, with the right group and attitude it can be pretty cool. Just treat it like Saints Row in space.

Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 3, 2014

Sionak
Dec 20, 2005

Mind flay the gap.
The other thing I would mention, since I wish I'd learned it earlier: just because you like a setting doesn't mean you have to run the game with the official/licensed rules for that setting.

In the case of WH40K, if your group likes to do all the calculations and equipment lists that go with the FFG games, then no problem. You'll be set. But you can also pretty easily run something like that in FATE, which is a much simpler system.

Also, I'm fairly sure that there's some free adventures for the 40K RPGs, either through FFG's website or on DriveThruRPG, so you can always grab those, read through them, and run them if you like and see how it works before buying a bunch of books.

FishFood
Apr 1, 2012

Now with brine shrimp!
I'm a big fan of Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG; it's crunchy, but pretty easy for newbies to grasp. The beginner box is really great, too. The system is a little more narrative, and you need some fancy dice, but there are online tools for those. I know a lot of people run it on Google Hangouts.

Asymmetrikon
Oct 30, 2009

I believe you're a big dork!
The FFG Star Wars RPGs both (all three whenever Force and Destiny is released) use a sort of modified version of WFRP3e, too, so you can carry knowledge from one over to the others if you ever want to expand.

Drone
Aug 22, 2003

Incredible machine
:smug:


Thirding the FFG Star Wars RPGs (they're all compatible with each other and are really more like 3 sourcebooks than 3 separate core rulebooks). Edge of the Empire was the first tabletop RPG I ever played and it was pretty easy to get into. Character generation for it can be a bit complex, but especially if you start with one of the Starter Boxes (which come with pre-generated characters), you'll be fine. The dice take some getting used to but I honestly prefer them to d20 at this point -- they help make the game much more narrative than just rolling a d20.

As I'm also fairly new to traditional gaming, I'm missing some of the slang: what the hell does it mean when someone says a game is crunchy?

Asymmetrikon
Oct 30, 2009

I believe you're a big dork!
Technically, it means that there's a lot of rules that interact with each other - think of D&D and its bajillion combat rules versus something like FATE or PDQ where there's less rules and the system is more fluid. Frankly, it really doesn't mean much.

Quinn2win
Nov 9, 2011

Foolish child of man...
After reading all this,
do you still not understand?

Anatharon posted:

In the meantime, I know nothing about Roll20. Is it hard to learn or teach? I should be fine with it but 3/6 of the people who'll be involved haven't gotten within 100 feet of anything like it before. :v:

Roll20 is extremely easy to use. It's a chatroom with a diceroller plus a board where people can drag tokens around. There's more fancy tools but that's about all you need.

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

Drone posted:

As I'm also fairly new to traditional gaming, I'm missing some of the slang: what the hell does it mean when someone says a game is crunchy?

Statistics for everything/ability to model everything with rules!

To sort of illustrate the difference between a crunchy and non-crunchy situation, say you're shooting a laser gun in fog.

A non-crunchy system has sort of a generic rule covering bad situations. The GM imposes that penalty on the roll.

A crunchy system has exact rules governing firing laser weapons in fog and the GM must impose that specific penalty. In that same section, there are also rules governing firing a laser weapon in a variety of bad situations, each of which carries a different penalty.

As a rule, non- or less crunchy systems tend to reward role-playing and characterization, while crunchy systems (due to the complexity and depth of the rules) reward systems mastery. Systems mastery is typically knowledge of the rules backwards and forwards, so much so that you can minimize your drawbacks and maximize your advantages in any given rules situation (usually to the ire and frustration of the GM).

Example of a less-crunchy system: FATE Core
Example of a crunchy system: GURPS

To me, these are great examples because both systems aspire to be 'universal' in that you can use them to model any genre, but they have wildly different approaches to doing so.

Sadsack
Mar 5, 2009

Fighting evil with cups of tea and crippling self-doubt.
Like the OP, my missus and I are interested in getting into RPGing but I don't really know where too start. Ideally we want to play a few games with each other so we can get to grips with the whole thing before we inflict ourselves on an actual group. Can anyone recommend any decent RPGs that work with just two players? I really like the sound of Dungeon World and the Star Wars games, but they all need three players minimum.

oriongates
Mar 14, 2013

Validate Me!


Sadsack posted:

Like the OP, my missus and I are interested in getting into RPGing but I don't really know where too start. Ideally we want to play a few games with each other so we can get to grips with the whole thing before we inflict ourselves on an actual group. Can anyone recommend any decent RPGs that work with just two players? I really like the sound of Dungeon World and the Star Wars games, but they all need three players minimum.

Keep in mind that in most games if it's just two people there will only be one player. The other person is the GM who takes charge of the setting/NPCs/plot.

The majority of games can technically be played one-on-one, but it requires more care constructing and balancing encounters, typically reducing the number of foes and their power level dramatically.

Unless you have a specific genre in mind already, I'd probably suggest a super-hero game for one-on-one play. They have a high power level and are naturally somewhat more suited to individuals rather than teams. The best ones are also fairly simple (personal preference is Truth and Justice)

But if you have a group that you're planning on joining you might just look into what games they're playing and try one of them out. You can afford to screw up when just playing around with just the two of yourself and learning the system before you join could help out a lot.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



It's not really a traditional RPG, but The Quiet Year is an RPG-ish thing that works just fine with two players.

Nothing I do to describe it is going to do it justice, so

quote:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive beyond that. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.

The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year/

My wife and I play it occasionally. It produces a different story each time. It's always kinda post-apoc, but you can assume any other genre you'd like as far as tech levels or whatever.

LGD
Sep 25, 2004

Anatharon posted:

I'll look at that when I get a chance. This is more for my own idle curiosity, but are either the Fantasy or 40k Warhammer systems any good? Or the Iron Kingdoms RPG?

The Iron Kingdoms RPG is in fact pretty good, but it's very rooted in the wargame. If you're familiar with how that game works then it should be pretty fast/easy to pick up, but if not I think it'd potentially be a little crunchy for a first time roleplaying group. The design assumes miniature use, which can be done cheaply in both real life (rubber mat + pens for terrain, and a set of generic bases to indicate position) and especially online, but does require a bit more set-up and work than many of the other options. It's a really fun system if you enjoy the setting and your group likes to work together tactically to bust some heads, but otherwise it might not be the ideal first choice. The game can be run out of the corebook quite easily, but there is definitely some good supplemental material (with more on the way, though the release schedule is not fast).

The similarity to the wargames does mean that it's fairly easy for a GM to adapt existing units as additional antagonists though. And if your group does want to do some tactical headsmashing, you have a decent online tabletop solution, and there is some familiarity with either Warmachine or Hordes, I think it could be a pretty good choice- if you know the rules resolution of actions is quick, it's fairly easy to eyeball things as a GM, and the game is set up for players to feel empowered from the get-go while encouraging the GM to make it interesting. You start out fairly badass, and the career/archetype system lets you define your character without being as pigeonholed as you are in other class-based systems. And while the combat can occasionally be brutal, players have the tools to deal with it and it's actually fairly forgiving of screw ups- being downed only has like a 1-2 in 216 chance of killing you.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
I'd really say that the FFG Star Wars is my new go-to for people who are new to RP's. It's very straight forward, has a good intro pack, decent premade adventures and characters (if thats your thing) and most importantly it's Star Wars which means that everyone knows the basic setting pretty well and from there any information or question about the setting is a simple google search away.

I don't know how hard it is to find Orpheus these days, but that game was also a very structured sort of thing that was good for starting out, and honestly is best played with people who had as little information about the setting as possible.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Sadsack posted:

Like the OP, my missus and I are interested in getting into RPGing but I don't really know where too start. Ideally we want to play a few games with each other so we can get to grips with the whole thing before we inflict ourselves on an actual group. Can anyone recommend any decent RPGs that work with just two players? I really like the sound of Dungeon World and the Star Wars games, but they all need three players minimum.
Oooh ooh. Motherfucking Black Streams: Solo heroes. It's free on Drive-thru RPG. The cool thing about it is it's barely a system, you can overlay it on other D&D based RPGs, to make them 2 player. So if you want to play, lets say, Dark Dungeons, you just add the simple rules in Black Streams and you're good to go. If you want to give Labyrinth Lord a shot, that works too. So you aren't getting one game, you're opening up the pile of free retro-clones and whatnot. Want sci-fi? It should work with Stars without Numbers and Hulks and Horrors. They also have free modules for it on Drive thru. Sine Nomine rules like that.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Another simple-but-awesome game that hasn't been mentioned is Fiasco, which is "...inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan."

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/

It's a whole lot of fun. It's a different experience from the whole "you move 60 feet per round, and have a 37% chance of hitting a target behind cover" kind of game, but it does a wonderful job at emulating the genre it says it's inspired by. It's a single-session game though, so you won't be playing the same characters time after time.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Babylon Astronaut posted:

Oooh ooh. Motherfucking Black Streams: Solo heroes. It's free on Drive-thru RPG. The cool thing about it is it's barely a system, you can overlay it on other D&D based RPGs, to make them 2 player. So if you want to play, lets say, Dark Dungeons, you just add the simple rules in Black Streams and you're good to go. If you want to give Labyrinth Lord a shot, that works too. So you aren't getting one game, you're opening up the pile of free retro-clones and whatnot. Want sci-fi? It should work with Stars without Numbers and Hulks and Horrors. They also have free modules for it on Drive thru. Sine Nomine rules like that.

I just browsed the PDF and this sounds awesome and I can't wait to try it out on my one friend that I can schedule games with. Thanks!

Sadsack
Mar 5, 2009

Fighting evil with cups of tea and crippling self-doubt.

Babylon Astronaut posted:

Oooh ooh. Motherfucking Black Streams: Solo heroes. It's free on Drive-thru RPG. The cool thing about it is it's barely a system, you can overlay it on other D&D based RPGs, to make them 2 player. So if you want to play, lets say, Dark Dungeons, you just add the simple rules in Black Streams and you're good to go. If you want to give Labyrinth Lord a shot, that works too. So you aren't getting one game, you're opening up the pile of free retro-clones and whatnot. Want sci-fi? It should work with Stars without Numbers and Hulks and Horrors. They also have free modules for it on Drive thru. Sine Nomine rules like that.

Oooh this looks interesting, but i think it might add yet another level of complexity to an already complex game. Especially for a pair of absolute RPG virgins. Would getting one player to control a whole party rather than just one character be a practical option? Say three separate characters?

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Sadsack posted:

Oooh this looks interesting, but i think it might add yet another level of complexity to an already complex game. Especially for a pair of absolute RPG virgins. Would getting one player to control a whole party rather than just one character be a practical option? Say three separate characters?

I've just read the PDF, and I'm not sure it would actually add much complexity to 1st-3rd level B/x or BECMI D&D, which is honestly not that complicated to begin with.

Compared to a new player trying to play 3 characters at once, it sounds downright simple.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Sadsack posted:

Oooh this looks interesting, but i think it might add yet another level of complexity to an already complex game. Especially for a pair of absolute RPG virgins. Would getting one player to control a whole party rather than just one character be a practical option? Say three separate characters?

All it's really doing (referring to Black Streams, based on my quick reading) is adding some "buffs" to the solo player so that they're more able to handle encounters. Technically you can run any campaign with just the one player going through it, but even if you as the GM assign less monsters to a fight, and make them "act dumber" and even fudge some rolls, a lone Fighter with 1d6 for hit dice is going to die easily no matter what. This just gives them an extra buffer so that the game doesn't end with 1-2 bad rolls (or really, so that you don't have to gloss over as many bad rolls).

I'd say it's definitely better than having a single person try to keep track of two or even three different characters.

I suppose if you didn't want to add rules, it might be an option to just have your one character start off at a much higher-level.

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Morholt
Mar 18, 2006

Contrary to popular belief, tic-tac-toe isn't purely a game of chance.

AlphaDog posted:

It's not really a traditional RPG, but The Quiet Year is an RPG-ish thing that works just fine with two players.

Nothing I do to describe it is going to do it justice, so


http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year/

My wife and I play it occasionally. It produces a different story each time. It's always kinda post-apoc, but you can assume any other genre you'd like as far as tech levels or whatever.
Shameless plug: I started an open participation run of this game in the game room. come and try it out. Also note that the author allows you to "buy" the game with a good deed so you can get it for free(ish) and feel good about yourself at the same time.

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