What System should I use Megathread

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Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
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Shrecknet posted:

OK I am jonesing to run a campaign again (lord help me, I'm back on my bullshit). I want to do something in space, not super-hard scifi but somewhat more realistic than Warhams or Star Wars. Battlestar Galactica is probably my thematic and tech touchstone (no I do not want to use the BSG RPG I am sure both exists and is terrible). The campaign I envision has players as leaders of a sizable (but not 1000s) crew, cruising the universe solving problems and making friends, like Star Trek or BSG.

This would be with very, very new players (like, their first RPGs ever), so I'd need something with no trap feats or CPA skills to make a competent character, but I still want more mechanics than just running themed Dread/Fiasco! scenarios.

I've looked at Scum & Villainy, and beyond me not really grokking how to run it (despite playing in a Blades in the Dark game), I think it's definitely a bad first RPG. I can run Star Wars EotE in my sleep, but it's so inextricably tied to the SW setting I don't really want to use it, and I don't feel like going to the effort of hacking Genesys into "not-Star-Wars"

Most important thing is that books are physical and cheap (like Savage Worlds cheap) because I'll want multiple player copies at the table and PDFs don't really work there.

Danger Patrol + a printer

# ? Dec 23, 2019 10:36

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 23:16

Eediot Jedi: Dec 25, 2007; This is where I begin to speculate what being a
man of my word costs me

It's not quite what you're asking for but Seven Worlds is a setting for Savage Worlds. At the moment the core book + bundle is on an OK sale at drive thru rpg. 90% of setting stuff the players won't need table copies of as long as they have the core SW rules. Any special edges/equipment you could print off and hand around. Seven Worlds tries to base itself is plausible science (although it does have psionics in the setting), it tries for fast rules representing hard sci fi concepts, and it has a bunch of sidebars explaining their science in the core book which is neato. They lean more towards Expanse than Star Trek/Star Wars as inspiration.

It has a campaign that looks cool, separate from the core book, covering the end of days for the setting.

Downside: core setting is small, there's only a seven settled worlds, pretty much only humans, and the base story of how hyperdrive and psionics came to be around is brain-meltingly stupid and I'd be embarrassed to relay it to players. But you could use the setting as a base and expand it out to a big boy galaxy, with that plus the sci fi stuff from the Savage Worlds book.

The Savage Worlds sci fi companion sucks rear end imo and I would preemptively not recommend it.

# ? Dec 23, 2019 11:24

OB_Juan: Nov 24, 2004; Not every day is a good day.; Dinosaur Gum

Glagha posted:

Not only is it a Paranoia scenario, it's one where the troubleshooters get ~~fined~~executed for damaging ORANGE property at the end

Friend Computer does not look well upon clones that violate their clearance.

# ? Dec 23, 2019 16:52

LongDarkNight: Oct 25, 2010; It's like watching the collapse of Western civilization in fast forward.; Oven Wrangler

I asked my Indie RPG group for some general themes we might want to explore for our next game and got back a very specific response.

quote:

A game set in the real world without supernatural elements. Is there anything Clue-like? I'm picturing Clue mashed with Werewolf where people get a role and secrets about themselves/what they've been doing, and these clues are slowly revealed at timed intervals as we all try to solve the mystery before time is out and everything is on the table. Am I describing murder mystery theatre? I feel like I am, but I'm picturing a tabletop version of it.

Any suggestions for games that might fit the bill? I was thinking Lovecraftesque or A Town Called Malice and going easy on the supernatural.

# ? Jan 11, 2020 16:08

Lumbermouth: Mar 6, 2008; GREG IS BIG NOW

LongDarkNight posted:

I asked my Indie RPG group for some general themes we might want to explore for our next game and got back a very specific response.

Any suggestions for games that might fit the bill? I was thinking Lovecraftesque or A Town Called Malice and going easy on the supernatural.

A Taste For Murder by Graham Walmsey would be right up your alley. You set up volatile relationships between family at an English country house, then one of the characters is killed and their player becomes the detective for the second half of the game.

# ? Jan 11, 2020 20:43

LongDarkNight: Oct 25, 2010; It's like watching the collapse of Western civilization in fast forward.; Oven Wrangler

Lumbermouth posted:

A Taste For Murder by Graham Walmsey would be right up your alley. You set up volatile relationships between family at an English country house, then one of the characters is killed and their player becomes the detective for the second half of the game.

Just finished reading this and it seems perfect. Thanks. Respect a book with 5 page of recipes.

# ? Jan 14, 2020 22:24

UrbanLabyrinth: Jan 28, 2009; When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence; College Slice

LongDarkNight posted:

I asked my Indie RPG group for some general themes we might want to explore for our next game and got back a very specific response.

Any suggestions for games that might fit the bill? I was thinking Lovecraftesque or A Town Called Malice and going easy on the supernatural.

Something like Fiasco might also hit similar notes.

# ? Jan 15, 2020 05:35

punishedkissinger: Sep 20, 2017

Best Star Wars system for players who don't like a lot of crunch?

# ? Mar 1, 2020 18:42

Tenebrous Tourist: Aug 28, 2008

kidkissinger posted:

Best Star Wars system for players who don't like a lot of crunch?

Scum & Villainy, a hack of Blades in the Dark, is very light on crunch and its setting is pretty much Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off.

# ? Mar 1, 2020 18:58

Lemon-Lime: Aug 6, 2009

kidkissinger posted:

Best Star Wars system for players who don't like a lot of crunch?

Fate Core.

# ? Mar 1, 2020 19:11

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

kidkissinger posted:

Best Star Wars system for players who don't like a lot of crunch?

WEG D6 Star Wars.

# ? Mar 1, 2020 19:35

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

lasers and feelings

# ? Mar 1, 2020 20:06

punishedkissinger: Sep 20, 2017

So not FF's system?

# ? Mar 2, 2020 06:06

Lemon-Lime: Aug 6, 2009

kidkissinger posted:

So not FF's system?

No, unless your idea of "not a lot of crunch" is so broad it includes gear porn and long lists of nickel-and-dime feats.

# ? Mar 2, 2020 09:57

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Lemon-Lime posted:

No, unless your idea of "not a lot of crunch" is so broad it includes gear porn and long lists of nickel-and-dime feats.

FFG star wars is a great core system buried under mountains of cruft.

# ? Mar 2, 2020 10:08

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

sebmojo posted:

lasers and feelings

Sabers and Feelings

# ? Mar 2, 2020 10:20

punishedkissinger: Sep 20, 2017

mllaneza posted:

WEG D6 Star Wars.

Leaning towards this since there are plenty of adventures ready to go already.

# ? Mar 2, 2020 16:10

Lemon-Lime: Aug 6, 2009

kidkissinger posted:

Leaning towards this since there are plenty of adventures ready to go already.

Make sure you use the first edition and not the second edition, though (the latter adds a lot of unnecessary crunch).

# ? Mar 2, 2020 18:19

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

Lemon-Lime posted:

Make sure you use the first edition and not the second edition, though (the latter adds a lot of unnecessary crunch).

I almost specified 1e in my post. Do this.

# ? Mar 5, 2020 03:52

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

UnCO3 posted:

Sabers and Feelings

# ? Mar 5, 2020 04:26

Mecharasputin: May 30, 2009; Ultra Carp

What's the closest I can get to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the RPG?

# ? Mar 5, 2020 15:17

Ignite Memories: Feb 27, 2005

Panic at the Dojo would work pretty well

# ? Mar 5, 2020 15:38

ShineDog: May 21, 2007; It is inevitable!

I want to do a jojo hack of worldwide wrestling. Its perfect. Most fights are 1v1. That constant back and forward as momentum changes hands. Speedwagon or his various surrogates filling the narrator role explaining what's going on and why it is in fact good that jojo turned some leaves into a hang glider

# ? Mar 5, 2020 17:39

grassy gnoll: Aug 27, 2006; The pawsting business is tough work.

I want a feel-good RPG that's relatively rules light and isn't Golden Sky Stories. What's out there?

# ? Mar 5, 2020 17:47

Tsilkani: Jul 28, 2013

grassy gnoll posted:

I want a feel-good RPG that's relatively rules light and isn't Golden Sky Stories. What's out there?

Ryuutama is a pretty adorable RPG about normal folk wandering around to create stories fed to baby dragons.

# ? Mar 5, 2020 18:26

UnCO3: Feb 11, 2010; Ye gods!; College Slice

grassy gnoll posted:

I want a feel-good RPG that's relatively rules light and isn't Golden Sky Stories. What's out there?

I'm gonna plug some of my own games first:

Twilight Song
A pastoral sci-fi map-and-story game about an immortal narrator living among humans in the twilight of the human era! It's hacked from the rules-light map-game The Quiet Year and majorly inspired by the manga Yokohama Shopping Log, which is about a robot running a coastal coffee shop during the peaceful ending days of human civilisation. You all collectively play the immortal narrator and their ordinary life and little adventures, as well as filling in the increasingly-strange world around them as years and decades pass. As all that suggests, it's meant to be pleasant and uplifting from moment to moment, but with an undertone of sadness. While it's heavily inspired by a manga, it's more general; there's no particular anime/manga aesthetic and the characters and setting are whatever you want them to be. Here's a twitter thread linking a bunch of posts I'm making about some of the inspirations (including the main one):
https://twitter.com/SpeaktheSky/status/1234811654841479168

Pockets full of Stars
A 2-player game about an astronomer and a storyteller collaborating to tell the story of a humble giant jumping from planet to planet through the cosmos and helping the tiny people they meet along the way. This is storybook-style with some possibly-serious undertones if you want to go that route (by undertones I mean like a grandparent trying to explain difficult subjects to their grandkid).

Games that are not my own (the first that come to mind, at least):

The recently-finished Pleasant Dream Jam on itch.io was a game jam for games that are easier and lighter to play. Some of them are more light-and-fluffy than others.

Fall of Magic
Can easily skew feel-good if that's how you want to play it. It's a very rules-light, narrative prompt-based game where you move your band of characters along a map on their journey to restore magic to the lands. It can very easily go very bittersweet or just bitter if that's the way you lean, but that's not mandatory, and you can definitely play it light-hearted. It also has some expansions ('Songs of the Axe and Fiddle'), at least one of which is deliberately a comedy. BFF! by the same team also looks pretty feel-good.

House of Reeds
A game about a home and the family that lives in it - the normal moments that make up their lives, and the events that change them. As above, you could easily play this light-hearted. It's free, if that helps.

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine
A pastoral fiction game (about growing as a person). I haven't played it, but apparently it's very good?

A Lonely Throne
A 2-player game submitted to a game jam I recently ran. I kind of like it. It starts off on the sadder end (a wanderer meets a ruler in an empty, dilapidated kingdom), but the game's about rebuilding, overcoming problems, and making something new together.

Along Among the Stars and AatS hacks
Together Among the Stars and TatS hacks
Two world-building journalling games, one for solo play and one for duets. You could probably do them with more players, if you wanted. They both have quite a few hacks, some of which are also feel-good (e.g. Pockets full of Stars is a hack of Together Among the Stars). The base games aren't necessarily feel-good, but they definitely lean that way.

# ? Mar 5, 2020 20:26

Pussy Quipped: Jan 29, 2009

Looking for a TTRPG that does Kaiju / Mech battles. A friend mentioned wanting to play a Pacific Rim-esque RPG and I've been looking around at the options to run a one-shot or mini campaign.

Ruleset: Anywhere between Lite and Normal
Support: Established preferably
Chargen: Quick is better but Involved is fine
Setting: Established is fine, but ideally we would be reskinning things to be more akin to Pacific Rim.

Anyone have experience with any of these? I haven't played any of these systems:
Fate CORE has a Kaiju vs Mecha ruleset variant
Cthulhutech , a crazy anime mecha vs lovecraftian horror type rpg

# ? Mar 30, 2020 21:51

King of Solomon: Oct 23, 2008; S S

Pussy Quipped posted:

Looking for a TTRPG that does Kaiju / Mech battles. A friend mentioned wanting to play a Pacific Rim-esque RPG and I've been looking around at the options to run a one-shot or mini campaign.

Ruleset: Anywhere between Lite and Normal
Support: Established preferably
Chargen: Quick is better but Involved is fine
Setting: Established is fine, but ideally we would be reskinning things to be more akin to Pacific Rim.

Anyone have experience with any of these? I haven't played any of these systems:
Fate CORE has a Kaiju vs Mecha ruleset variant
Cthulhutech , a crazy anime mecha vs lovecraftian horror type rpg

You're basically looking for Battle Century G (and maybe its expansion, Battle Century Z.) It's relatively rules light and is all about giant mech battles. It has recommended settings for Kaiju fights, Gundam, and one other campaign that I can't remember off the top of my head. Chargen is 100% point buy and quick.

I don't know anything about Fate, but my understanding is that Cthulhutech is gross and has bad math, avoid at all costs. Another commonly played mech game on SA is Lancer, but that's very crunchy, so probably not what you're looking for.

# ? Mar 30, 2020 22:03

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Battle Century G is excellent, I remember playing the prototype game for it, Giant Guardian Generation. That was good, if janky, and it's only grown better since then.

# ? Mar 30, 2020 22:07

Auralsaurus Flex: Aug 3, 2012

Friends don't let friends CthulhuTech. Unfortunately, I can't speak to the Fate Core supplement.

It's more (horror-)Sentai vs. Kaiju -- which is easily reskinned to Mechs -- but you might want to look into Last Stand since it meets most of your criteria. Support died on the vine for reasons, but there definitely should be enough there for a mini-campaign at the least. Available for free, to boot -- just make sure to grab the cards as well.

Alternately, there's Remnants -- which is admittedly still a bit bio-mech from what I understand, but manages to check a lot of your boxes otherwise (lightweight system, two supplements, etc.).

Finally, have you seen the latest hotness in the mecha RPG genre, Lancer? You'll have to throw out the (amazing) setting and liberally reskin some of the mechanics to get more Pacific Rim, but the mission framework still fits the bill.

Auralsaurus Flex fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Mar 30, 2020

# ? Mar 30, 2020 22:26

Pussy Quipped: Jan 29, 2009

Cool thanks for the recommendations! I�ll be checking them out.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 00:03

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

Pussy Quipped posted:

Looking for a TTRPG that does Kaiju / Mech battles. A friend mentioned wanting to play a Pacific Rim-esque RPG and I've been looking around at the options to run a one-shot or mini campaign.

Ruleset: Anywhere between Lite and Normal
Support: Established preferably
Chargen: Quick is better but Involved is fine
Setting: Established is fine, but ideally we would be reskinning things to be more akin to Pacific Rim.

Anyone have experience with any of these? I haven't played any of these systems:
Fate CORE has a Kaiju vs Mecha ruleset variant
Cthulhutech , a crazy anime mecha vs lovecraftian horror type rpg

Savage Tokusatsu even let's you play the kaiju!

They even have a Test Drive version as a PWYW https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/236278/Savage-Tokusatsu-Test-Drive?term=Savage+Tokusatsu

# ? Mar 31, 2020 02:13

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

Pussy Quipped posted:

Looking for a TTRPG that does Kaiju / Mech battles. A friend mentioned wanting to play a Pacific Rim-esque RPG and I've been looking around at the options to run a one-shot or mini campaign.

Anybody have the Last Stand download links handy ?

# ? Mar 31, 2020 03:45

Pussy Quipped: Jan 29, 2009

mllaneza posted:

Anybody have the Last Stand download links handy ?

2 posts above you.

Auralsaurus Flex posted:

It's more (horror-)Sentai vs. Kaiju -- which is easily reskinned to Mechs -- but you might want to look into Last Stand since it meets most of your criteria. Support died on the vine for reasons, but there definitely should be enough there for a mini-campaign at the least. Available for free, to boot -- just make sure to grab the cards as well.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 15:39

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Hi folks - didn't there use to be a GURPS megathread? I can't seem to find it.

# ? Apr 10, 2020 22:12

LongDarkNight: Oct 25, 2010; It's like watching the collapse of Western civilization in fast forward.; Oven Wrangler

Was thinking about Tabletop games inspired by video games since I'm stuck playing online with my friends. So far I've got Bleak Spirits, Facing the Titan, Blood Symphony and Fragged Aeternum. Any suggestions on other games like this?

# ? Apr 20, 2020 14:14

Lemon-Lime: Aug 6, 2009

Last Stand if you can find it, which is EDF/Monster Hunter.

# ? Apr 20, 2020 14:25

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

LongDarkNight posted:

Was thinking about Tabletop games inspired by video games since I'm stuck playing online with my friends. So far I've got Bleak Spirits, Facing the Titan, Blood Symphony and Fragged Aeternum. Any suggestions on other games like this?

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. :smugdog: