Choosing a Pen & Paper RPG

[Alex_P]

Be boring! (Seriously, this is like the most important bit of advice ever.)

I'm not following... care to elaborate?

Sure thing. It's an idea from improv that works really well for roleplaying games as well. Check this out:

What happens when you try to be clever all the time? Well, a lot of the time you come up with something incomprehensible to everyone else. Also, it's a lot of work, so it gets stressful and wears you out quickly.

So, don't be clever. Forget clever. Do the "boring" thing, the thing that seems obvious and comes to mind right away. Most of the time, this'll seem like the natural next place for the story to go -- that's good! Sometimes, the thing you thought was obvious and simple is actually something everybody else will think is clever. So, you still get clever twists and turns sometimes, while everything progresses smoothy and naturally most of the time -- and that's exactly how you make a good story in the first place.

-- Alex

 

[Dirty Apple]

Be boring! (Seriously, this is like the most important bit of advice ever.)

I'm not following... care to elaborate?

Sure thing. It's an idea from improv that works really well for roleplaying games as well. Check this out:

What happens when you try to be clever all the time? Well, a lot of the time you come up with something incomprehensible to everyone else. Also, it's a lot of work, so it gets stressful and wears you out quickly.

So, don't be clever. Forget clever. Do the "boring" thing, the thing that seems obvious and comes to mind right away. Most of the time, this'll seem like the natural next place for the story to go -- that's good! Sometimes, the thing you thought was obvious and simple is actually something everybody else will think is clever. So, you still get clever twists and turns sometimes, while everything progresses smoothy and naturally most of the time -- and that's exactly how you make a good story in the first place.

-- Alex

Wouldn't this unconscious flow create a game set that's a bit cliche? Your brain always relying on the usual suspects to push the story forward?

 

[asinann]

You can always play a few sessions of We're All Going To Die.

Your character sheet is two things you're good at ("running" is a popular one) and three things you're bad at. Before the session starts, the DM rolls a die, which randomly decides which character will "win" (namely, not die). Then a setting is chosen and everyone plays their character. Throughout the session, the DM finds increasingly creative and violent ways to kill off individual players, leaving the "winner". A good DM finds ways to keep the players guessing who is going to win.

It's also diceless.

That. is. awesome.
Unfortunately though, I'm looking for something more in depth then that =). I've been thinking about DnD but I want to broaden my choices. Although I most certainly will look into that.

You could try rifts, if you can find the books.

 

[linchowlewy]

I'm sad you've already picked up Dungeons and Dragons. As far as PnP games go it's extremely restrictive and there are many better ones. i recommend either paranoia or Runequest. Paranoia for plain old pure fun and runequest if you want something more serious. i recommend you check them out at their publishers site. www.mongoosepublishing.com [site] The Runequest SRD is also available for free. it contains all the rules for creatures and spells but lacks any details on the world. i'll see if i can find a link for that later. I'm 99% sure it's legal though.

 

[Alex_P]

Wouldn't this unconscious flow create a game set that's a bit cliche? Your brain always relying on the usual suspects to push the story forward?

Good question.

I haven't really found it to be a problem in practice.

Usually when I react negatively to a trope or cliche it's specifically because there's a dissonance between the cliche and the thing I expect naturally. It's an immediate reaction like "But, hey, a real person wouldn't say that!" The more nuanced grievances that come up when I really think about something are also the ones I find easiest to rationalize away. So, that's one reason I'm pretty comfortable trusting my first reaction.

Also, with the kind of improvised storytelling you're doing in a tabletop RPG, the goal is fun, not art. An idea that's entertaining right now is usually more than good enough, even if it ends up involving common tropes or overused stock character.

-- Alex

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Wouldn't this unconscious flow create a game set that's a bit cliche? Your brain always relying on the usual suspects to push the story forward?

Good question.

I haven't really found it to be a problem in practice.

Usually when I react negatively to a trope or cliche it's specifically because there's a dissonance between the cliche and the thing I expect naturally. It's an immediate reaction like "But, hey, a real person wouldn't say that!" The more nuanced grievances that come up when I really think about something are also the ones I find easiest to rationalize away. So, that's one reason I'm pretty comfortable trusting my first reaction.

Also, with the kind of improvised storytelling you're doing in a tabletop RPG, the goal is fun, not art. An idea that's entertaining right now is usually more than good enough, even if it ends up involving common tropes or overused stock character.

-- Alex

Moreover, not every game can be a super awesome complex tale of woe. Sometimes all people want is to be the hero and crack some heads and get some babes.

 

[Alex_P]

Moreover, not every game can be a super awesome complex tale of woe. Sometimes all people want is to be the hero and crack some heads and get some babes.

Definitely true!

I'm generally a super-awesome-complex-tale-of-woe man myself, though. But that's where I think the "Be boring" technique is actually strongest: creating raw, direct, emotionally resonant stuff rather than pretty foofaraw.

-- Alex

 

[the_hessian]

Personally I'm into Inquisitor. Granted it is part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so sci/fi rahter than fantasy, but I've tried so many other P&P RPG's and this is just, in my opinion, perfection.

You mean Dark Heresy? Inquisitor is a minis skirmish game. Games like Necromunda and Inquisitor can have a roleplaying or narrative element but they're not conventionally classed as RPGs (by their own publisher, for example).

But yeah! Like I was saying. I find Inquisitor works the best. You only have D10 and D6 to worry about. Granted yes the odd D3, but that is just halfing a D6's results.

What do you *do* with the d10s and d6s that makes it different from D&D? That's the important thing.

D&D may have rules to govern the appearance, but that's one of my complaints. I hate having so much left up to chance.

Any version from this decade has a height-and-weight chart, but you can just pick.

-- Alex

Personally I'm into Inquisitor. Granted it is part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so sci/fi rahter than fantasy, but I've tried so many other P&P RPG's and this is just, in my opinion, perfection.

You mean Dark Heresy? Inquisitor is a minis skirmish game. Games like Necromunda and Inquisitor can have a roleplaying or narrative element but they're not conventionally classed as RPGs (by their own publisher, for example).

But yeah! Like I was saying. I find Inquisitor works the best. You only have D10 and D6 to worry about. Granted yes the odd D3, but that is just halfing a D6's results.

What do you *do* with the d10s and d6s that makes it different from D&D? That's the important thing.

D&D may have rules to govern the appearance, but that's one of my complaints. I hate having so much left up to chance.

Any version from this decade has a height-and-weight chart, but you can just pick.

-- Alex

Dark Heresy??? What the hell are you on about???
Maybe that's the American title, but we here in the country it came from call it by it's real name Inquisitor. Sorry if that come's across as dick-ish, but I've never heard of it refered to as Dark Heresy, by anyone, ever.

When I've played it with friends and at the Games Workshop, Inquisitor is refered to as an RPG. Granted the rules are mainly gauged toward the skirmishes, but the rules are set as adaptable, the GM works everything out and the players are just wandering about in his world.
So the RP element, even though it is not governed by a load of strict boundaries, is still there, there's a library of free supliments on the internet for people who can't be bothered to, or simply can't, work them out for themselves.

The D10, D6, D3 thing is just a comment on the ammount of bloody dice you end up having to use in D&D, in Inquisitor there's just those 3 and the odd D100 table, but it's still D10's and D6's, so you don't have to faff about so much.

I know you can just pick, but then what's the point in having the tables?!. It makes them completely superfluous, and that waste irritates me when you can look on D&D as being the epitomy of regulations for RP-ing.

It's just a prefernce and my opinion after all, and your quoting comes across as more nit-picking than constructive criticism. So I tut at thee! Pah!

 

[Alex_P]

Dark Heresy??? What the hell are you on about???
Maybe that's the American title, but we here in the country it came from call it by it's real name Inquisitor. Sorry if that come's across as dick-ish, but I've never heard of it refered to as Dark Heresy, by anyone, ever.

Dark Heresy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000_Roleplay].

An imprint of Games Workshop published it, then they handed it over to Fantasy Flight Games.

Sounds like you're actually playing Inquisitor as an RPG, though, rather than playing Dark Heresy. I've never heard Inquisitor called an RPG. The one friend I had who owned any models for it knew it as a straight-up wargame. But I can definitely see how it's not all that different from D&D or Dark Heresy, so, hey, cool! I always thought that RPG techniques could improve a game like Inquisitor or Necromunda.

Have fun. I'm sorry that I caused offense.

(The reason you can still roll on the chart is that sometimes you really don't know what you want. And because D&D still has all kinds of little "legacy" bits that, yeah, really don't make sense in the context of the rest of it. I hate charts and random chargen, but I can see why some people like 'em.)

-- Alex

 

[Da_Schwartz]

If you just prefer battling, might I suggest Classic Battletech?
You individually manage a mech's weapon/heat/movement/awesome systems to beat the crap out of the other ones. You may want to buy all of the pewter figurines, and then they did their purpose and sucked you into buying hundreds of dollars of gameplay-enhancing awesomeness. Although, this happens to any game that has miniatures involved.

yea combat system was pretty cool in battletech. I played that a few times. Though i do remeber that although it was a cool system battles took an EXTREMELY LONG time to complete.