Table Top RPG's

[Yandros]

So first and foremost, please forgive me if this has been posted before.  I didn't see a thread in the first few pages, so I thought to start this one up.

 

But!  Do any people here take part in ye old table-top?  What systems do you like?  Tell us some good stories of your games!

 

Myself, I have tried out so many systems that it isn't even funny anymore.  But my personal favorites are either super-crunchy or super-light.  It's strange, I either want to go as simulationist as I can, or as story-centric as possible.

 

So with that said, some of my favorite games are:  GURPS, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, Forthright (game a friend of mine is publishing, and quite rules-light), and World of Darkness.  I use WoD as a blanket, since I like things about all the games.  But can't say that any one game is my favorite.

 

So what about you folks?

[voidVirago]

I play Pathfinder because I'm simple and that's what all my friends play.

 

I notice that I end up playing the pretty, diplomatic, 25+ CHA characters (kitsune oracle, elf spellslinger), or like... the ones that stay quiet and tend to not be noticed as much (half-orc ranger, kasatha drug lord investigator) and do their damage.

 

My cousin hates when I DM though, cause I haven't learned the art of the DM poker face and just end up grinning evilly. Even if I'm not doing something, I'll end up grinning evilly one way or another, and she gets so nervous. She shouldn't though, one of our games ended up being Dating Sim: The Campaign cause we were playing at 4am

[Sukaaretto Ueno]

for a change of flavor:

 

http://www.maidrpg.com/

 

best maid WINS 

 

And speaking of a DM poker face -- if you don't play it in-person, you can play the RPGs online on platforms like roll20.com with remote peeps and its pretty fun . 

[Miss Gaz]

I play quite a bit of Pathfinder and classic D&D both 2.0-3.5. I usually am the DM so I rarely got to play my own character but when I do, I play Clerics. Usually play them with low Wisdom and High Charisma with the feat Powerful mind. But it was seldom we got far with people moving or just not showing up.

[111]

for a change of flavor:

 

http://www.maidrpg.com/

 

best maid WINS 

 

And speaking of a DM poker face -- if you don't play it in-person, you can play the RPGs online on platforms like roll20.com with remote peeps and its pretty fun . 

 

When Suka and I played this, she was actually the WORST MAID, and was sacrificed in a demonic vampire blood ritual for her poor maid skills.

 

Everyone play maid rpg.

[Lydia Lightfoot]

Pathfinder and D&D 5th Edition use very similar rulesets, as far as current tabletop games go, with a key difference. 

 

The former has 21281382308293 character creation options which means that there's a great deal of flexibility in what you could play as and how that could develop, yet also an intense and fundamental level of game imbalance both in terms of the usefulness of abilities with the same creation/learning cost and also the level of cunning of the player (their ability to munchkin during creation/leveling and/or ability to leverage their abilities effectively in the game). That wide variety means it can take ages to create a character, and the person running the game might struggle to keep up with the strange combinations of concepts and abilities that come into play. That problem only becomes worse the higher the levels go. But, with a good group, who aren't out to power game, and a good GM who can keep track of everything, it can be fun.

 

The latter, on the other hand, is far more streamlined and smooth to play, at the cost of a severe shortage of character options by comparison. Much, much easier for newer players and newer GMs, but with no less capability to run a complex and interesting story. It's also newer, and so some of those character options may eventually exist where they do not today.

 

As much as I liked Pathfinder and I have most of the books, the character slog just became... well, a slog. My friends and I have been having far more fun with D&D 5th Edition, with a caveat - if someone has a really interesting concept for something about their character, they can propose it to the group and the table can discuss it and determine if it could be doable and how to make it work. That's how we're making up for limited options. If someone /reaallllly/ wants to go outside the box a little, we just talk it out.

[Telluride]

Wow, I could... well, write a dissertation on this topic. But I'll keep it simple.

 

I've been playing Tabletop games off and on for longer than some people here would believe, so I won't drop dates. But I started with AD&D, added a bunch of wargames to the mix (Car Wars, Warhammer40K, and several now-obscure titles), and expanded to include GURPS, Star Frontiers, Space Opera, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and most of the White Wolf Universe as I went on to college.

 

These days, on my shelves, besides all the miniatures games, I have D&D, Star Frontiers (found a cache of it), Shadowrun, Castles and Crusades, and several of the Fantasy Flight RPGs set in the WH40K universe - Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy and Deathwatch. I was running a Rogue Trader campaign as Gamemaster for a couple of months before it fell off due to RL creating havoc for my playing group. I'm willing to try Pathfinder but currently don't own any stuff for it. Supposedly, a local group is going to run Star Wars: Edge of Empire here soon, and I'm looking at that.

 

I -have- tried out a couple of the online tabletop simulator programs, and had mixed results with them.

[111]

Pathfinder and D&D 5th Edition use very similar rulesets, as far as current tabletop games go, with a key difference. 

 

The former has 21281382308293 character creation options which means that there's a great deal of flexibility in what you could play as and how that could develop, yet also an intense and fundamental level of game imbalance both in terms of the usefulness of abilities with the same creation/learning cost and also the level of cunning of the player (their ability to munchkin during creation/leveling and/or ability to leverage their abilities effectively in the game). That wide variety means it can take ages to create a character, and the person running the game might struggle to keep up with the strange combinations of concepts and abilities that come into play. That problem only becomes worse the higher the levels go. But, with a good group, who aren't out to power game, and a good GM who can keep track of everything, it can be fun.

 

The latter, on the other hand, is far more streamlined and smooth to play, at the cost of a severe shortage of character options by comparison. Much, much easier for newer players and newer GMs, but with no less capability to run a complex and interesting story. It's also newer, and so some of those character options may eventually exist where they do not today.

 

As much as I liked Pathfinder and I have most of the books, the character slog just became... well, a slog. My friends and I have been having far more fun with D&D 5th Edition, with a caveat - if someone has a really interesting concept for something about their character, they can propose it to the group and the table can discuss it and determine if it could be doable and how to make it work. That's how we're making up for limited options. If someone /reaallllly/ wants to go outside the box a little, we just talk it out.

I've found the same thing.

 

5e really simplifies and just lets you /play/. The advantage/disadvantage and proficiency bonus system lets gms make adhoc rulings about bonuses without quibbling over whether it's a +4 or a +5.

[Eses Fafa]

I'm currently in a D&D 5e session with some of my FC members. My member of the group is a Calashite humie fighter with a military history and an ungodly ego. His biggest insecurity is his tiny downstairs and has the need to prove everyone wrong and always be right..that being said, he's the tankiest S.O.B with a penchant for one-shotting green dragons.

 

The second is an elven bard who plays music during combat for whatever odd reason despite the fact she has mental magics capable of taking down some of the biggest baddest monsters in the game on her own. She sleeps with a lot of people and has a living shadow that torments the poor tank.

 

Our third is a halfling cleric who takes 'praise the sun' to a whole new level. Blasted Pelorians. She's as zealous as she gets and is accompanied by an enchanted mace that floats by her side and can attack 3 times in a turn whilst unleashing bursts of electricity on every successful hit that targets up to 3 nearby enemies..so basically Mjolnir. Whenever she sees the undead, she goes into an insatiable bloodlust and doesn't stop until every one of them is dead!

 

Our fourth and newest is a Were-Bear, who was subjected to servitude to the group on behest of one of their previous members, a Paladin, and his Drider master, in order to defeat a powerful wizard who is currently in slumber. He's yet to reveal his emotions, but we get the feeling he might be attracted to the tank if he likes short dudes.

[FreelanceWizard]

I've been playing tabletop RPGs for like... ever. I've got an entire bookshelf filled with gaming books, including basically the entire oWoD Mage and Changeling sets, much of Exalted, D&D 4e, Pathfinder... you name it, I've probably played it. I've also co-written and edited a couple of games (Concept Syndicate's Rumours and Kronos) and have three RPGs sitting on my computer in various stages of polish (the closest to Kickstarting for publication is a dystopian sci-fi game where magic is used to circumvent the laws of physics).

 

Right now, I play two tabletops. In my Thursday group, I'm running Star Wars, but on a card-based system (one of those aforementioned RPGs sitting on my computer ) that's similar to SAGA. Our intrepid heroes are about to resolve a Dark Side-enhanced plague, then take the fight to the Sith behind it. My Friday group is currently running Pathfinder, where I was basically playing April Ludgate as a wizard and am now playing an enthusiastic, sarcastic gnome monk.

 

I'm a big fan of systems that take seriously the truth that the mechanics represent and make statements about the world. Take CP2020, for instance. That game is obscenely, almost comically, lethal in combat, but that fits with the cyberpunk theme of "life is cheap." Game systems that try to do everything and represent every possible world and genre always fall flat for me.

[Martiallais]

I've been doing tabletop RPGs off and on since a friend introduced me to them in college. The only one I've really been the Storyteller/GM for is Aberrant (which I ran off and on for about 3 years), White Wolf's venture into the superhero genre. But otherwise the list of ones I've played is pretty big....D&D 3.0 and up, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Whitewolf (Werewolf and Hunter are my -favorites- but Changeling gets an honorable mention), Marvel Classic, Dungeon World (this game is simple but can be surprisingly fun), Dragon Age, Warhammer (Dark Heresy and Only War), a few Star Wars systems, CthulhuTech...the list goes on.

 

These days since most of my friends live in separate parts of the world, we use a combo of Roll20 (dice, text roleplay) and Skype (OOC chatter, memes, general shenanigans) to play pretty regularly. We're actually about to start a Sci Fi Space Odyssey game using the Savage Worlds system here in the next month or so. There are a few games I'd really like to play like the new 'Edge of the Empire' series for Star Wars, Final Fantasy D6 (someone recently introduced me to this and it looks -really- fun), and Night's Black Agents.

[Warren Castille]

I started tabletop with AD&D in high school with my friend's older grognard friends. It was awful and I was enthralled. The logical next step was 3.0 and later 3.5, but I always enjoyed D&D as long as it was under level 10 or so. I blame this for my penchant to go under-powered in a setting where over-powered is the law.

 

On the radical flipside of that, I devoured the core book for Exalted and Exalted 2.0. I never dug into the millions of supplements it got, but I loved the concepts and settings and scale of power. I described it to a lot of friends as "Amazing awesome anime fight scene: the game" and I maintain that belief.

 

Original World of Darkness (and later New WoD) also got me invested pretty well. I have a Nuwisha glyph tattoo and one of my favorite characters to play came from the Wild West setting. It didn't go well, as Werewolf games tend to lean towards.

 

Most recently, I dabbled with D&D 4.0. I keep hearing good things about 5.0 but I don't have a group (or the time to assemble/join one). Also, I can confirm that MaidRPG is a lot of fun. I don't know if it's in the official rules, but I strongly recommend doing a completely random character generation.

[Caspar]

Games that I've played: World of Darkness, Mutants & Masterminds, D&D 3-3.5 and 4, Savage Worlds, Exalted (kinda), Eclipse Phase.

Games I'm curious about: NWoD, 13th Age, Legend of the 5 Rings, Feng Shui

Games I always wanted to play but never got the chance: Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Tenra Bansho Zero, Ars Magica, Das Schwarze Auge, Terra the Gunslinger, Doublecross, Spycraft, Deadlands, Cthulhu Tech, Dogs in the Vineyard, Mekton Zeta.

 

Some aren't translated yet. I haven't completed any campaigns though... T_T my old club was flakey, plus only ever wanted to play D&D. And that was years ago in school.

[GhostlyMaiden]

I play Pathfinder because I'm simple and that's what all my friends play.

 

I notice that I end up playing the pretty, diplomatic, 25+ CHA characters (kitsune oracle, elf spellslinger), or like... the ones that stay quiet and tend to not be noticed as much (half-orc ranger, kasatha drug lord investigator) and do their damage.

 

My cousin hates when I DM though, cause I haven't learned the art of the DM poker face and just end up grinning evilly. Even if I'm not doing something, I'll end up grinning evilly one way or another, and she gets so nervous. She shouldn't though, one of our games ended up being Dating Sim: The Campaign cause we were playing at 4am

I can attest to this. I told her about Pathfinder about 1 1/2 years ago and we've had games together ever since. Pathfinder was my first tabletop RPG and I love it. Never been a DM before, nor do I wish to be. I always had a bunch of ideas for characters that were never used, but the ones I was able to put into action have always been memorable.

Tiki (Half-Elf, Aberrant bloodline Sorcerer)

Serena (Human, pirate)

Nyx (Sylph, rouge turned magus)

Kyori (Elf, spellslinger)

Syndra (Half-elf, Assasin)

Shyvana (Kasatha, Ninja)

 

I also had a bunch of one-shot characters. One of them died due to me not stating them out properly (Halfling Druid). Then again, everyone was suppose to die in that one particular game.

 

Recently, I have been playing a Star Wars tabletop, I believe its fairly new and I unfortunately can't remember the name of it. I play a purple Twi'lek jedi apprentice, She is really young (Like....18) and has an temper issue.

[Yandros]

Nice to see other table-topper's here!

 

Maid RPG....  That is one that seems like fun, but DAAAAAMN there are some cringe-worthy and seriously creepy things in that book!!  I mean, not speaking badly of the game as I have never played it myself.  But I read through the book at my local game store (yay for my entire group running an hour late), and some parts were...  Well, they definitely hit very high on the creepy/squick scale for me.

 

Fantasy Flight games.  I love them!  I actually ran a game over the course of nearly a year, that took people from the slums of a Hive world to the higher echelons of the Inquisition.  And the fun part of it was when we switched arcs?  I would switch games.  Such as, they hired a rogue trader crew to ferry the party to another world...  So I had them roll up Rogue Trader characters to play the crew!  Then later on when their original Dark Heresy characters had the clout to pull in favors?  They got to play Deathwatch, to take part in an assault on a Chaos Cultist temple.  It was grand fun.

 

Ahh, the stories of games I have had.  GURPS though, still takes the cake for me.  In my every-other Sunday game, my group is realizing how screwed they are.  They started off as nobles of various houses, but now have been blamed for the death of the King.  The group managed to escape the city, but they now basically have only what they can carry.  And now they must stay alive long enough to restore their good names, as well as their standing within their Houses.  Good times.

[Verad]

I play a lot of Fate by way of using it in the game itself. It's not my absolute favorite system, but I think it's a good fit for a narrative-heavy environment like freeform RP.

 

I have owned a lot of tabletop systems and only played a fraction of them. Unknown Armies is probably the worst offender in this regard because I love the setting and think it's a great system with a better sanity mechanic than the vaunted CoC rules, but it's difficult to get a group going. Burning Wheel is another example, and I've used some of its character design principles in making RP characters since purchasing the system on a whim.

 

I've played D&D in most of its early forms, starting with the BECMI set and working up through 5th. 4th and 5th are where I've spent the most time actually playing the game, as my high school years were spent playing Rifts, Legend of the Five Rings, and a smattering of White Wolf games. I liked 4th edition in spite of the many, many criticisms about it, and would play it again if I had an appropriate group.

 

I used to have a group that was big on experimentation and homebrewing, so we played lots of one-shot indie games as well as classic systems like Traveller and CoC. The downside of this is that I've only rarely seen the end of a campaign because new things would take our interest before the old one was finished. To date, the Fate-14 plots and the D&D campaign I was in for the better part of a six months are the only ones that have concluded in recent memory.

 

Right now I'm a bit at odds with the RPG industry, which seems to have divided along wanting to make short indie games and revitalizing the old-school dungeon crawl. There's also an emphasis on system without setting as part of a DIY-aesthetic that's been fine for the most part, but I'd like a good, weird setting that I'd never have thought of with the contents of my brain alone. That's driven me back to older games like Tekumel and Runequest, the latter in particular - Glorantha is fascinatingly weird, and I'm looking forward to the release of the new edition with system and setting merged together.

[Caspar]

I really can go either way. If the framework of mechanics is balanced and easy to use, as well as supporting a variety of character concepts, I'm sort of okay with just using it as the game part of my RPG. A setting I came up with or brainstormed with friends can substitute decently. M&M was like that for me.

 

At the same time though, there are games that have really fascinating settings and are so rich with lore that I'm willing to play in it even if the mechanics aren't appealing to me, or even go ignored. A lot of White Wolf games were like that for me, since their books were disorganized and I felt the mechanics didn't always reflect the feel they were going for (Exalted Mote attrition, though I've never been in that situation myself.)

 

I really like RPGs from other countries that might reflect different styles of design or flavor. A German friend suggested The Dark Eye and I know little about it. I really am glad Tenra Bansho Zero got translated because the setting is outrageous; i hope to see their... Uh, Soba Western Terra translated too.

 

L5R is a game that I want to play because, oddly enough, I played their CCG and liked it a lot before it got sold off, and learning about the setting and the strong factional loyalty interested me.

[Aden Dellebecque]

For strictly tabletop I mostly play D&D, mashing together the best parts of 3.5, Pathfinder, and AE (favorite of a friend, personally I can take it or leave it). I've played just enough 4e to realize it wasn't for me, and only had the opportunity to dabble in 5e, though I enjoyed the simplicity of the system. Done a little bit of World of Darkness, Aeon, Exalted, BESM, Blue Rose, and my One True System, the system to end all systems, QAGS. I've also messed around with the homebrew Final Fantasy d6, been in a campaign of that for almost three years now playing a red mage.

 

I'm probably forgetting something else I've played once.

[Yandros]

"Unknown Armies is probably the worst offender in this regard because I love the setting and think it's a great system with a better sanity mechanic than the vaunted CoC rules, but it's difficult to get a group going."

 

 

Oh man, how could I forget Unknown Armies!!  I love the game, and have actually gotten the chance to play it a couple of times.  It is a wonderful setting, and really changed how I view games as a whole.  Namely, the "broadly specific" concept that it does in regards to skills.  But also the sanity system is has, where you can become hardened against some things.

[Dogberry]

I run a very Pacific Rim inspired Bright Future Cthulhutech game with friends every month. I play in a Star Wars game, too.

 

I've played lots of Shadowrun, Warhammer 40K RPGs, Deadlands, D&D, and White Wolf.

 

My next project is working on adapting Deadlands to a steampunk Japan setting, playing on the similarities between the Spaghetti Western and the Samurai movie genres.

[Jana]

I got my intro to tabletop through a 3.5 campaign during college, we met every Sunday on IRC for about two years. I've also played Maid RPG (my first yandere character came from Maid) and, thanks to Verad, Fate-14.

[Caspar]

I run a very Pacific Rim inspired Bright Future Cthulhutech game with friends every month. I play in a Star Wars game, too.

 

I've played lots of Shadowrun, Warhammer 40K RPGs, Deadlands, D&D, and White Wolf.

 

My next project is working on adapting Deadlands to a steampunk Japan setting, playing on the similarities between the Spaghetti Western and the Samurai movie genres.

That sounds like fun. Since I like both genres quite a bit.

 

I really liked the idea of Terra the Gunslinger because of this. Since I heard it shared mechanics and setting with Tenra Bansho, I figured were I ever to somehow manage to find people who'd play it with me, they could carry their characters over to a Terra Campaign or, if they chose not to, I could use stuff their characters did or NPCs they met to influence the following campaign's plot.

[Miss Gaz]

And Im just over here playing Magic in the back alleys 

[Sukaaretto Ueno]

for a change of flavor:

 

http://www.maidrpg.com/

 

best maid WINS 

 

And speaking of a DM poker face -- if you don't play it in-person, you can play the RPGs online on platforms like roll20.com with remote peeps and its pretty fun . 

 

When Suka and I played this, she was actually the WORST MAID, and was sacrificed in a demonic vampire blood ritual for her poor maid skills.

 

Everyone play maid rpg.

 

LIES.

 

I NEVER SAID BEST MAID IS SUKA ANYWAYS. HOW DARE YOU

[Miss Gaz]

for a change of flavor:

 

http://www.maidrpg.com/

 

best maid WINS 

 

And speaking of a DM poker face -- if you don't play it in-person, you can play the RPGs online on platforms like roll20.com with remote peeps and its pretty fun . 

 

When Suka and I played this, she was actually the WORST MAID, and was sacrificed in a demonic vampire blood ritual for her poor maid skills.

 

Everyone play maid rpg.

 

LIES.

 

I NEVER SAID BEST MAID IS SUKA ANYWAYS. HOW DARE YOU

*watches the fight eating popcorn*