The Gaming Den

The premise is that you and 4 friends are all Down To Game, have time for it, and are willing to learn and play whatever (the sluts). You don't have to run it if you don't want to, but you can. What do you choose, and why?

Play the unfinished version of my Fantasy Heartbreaker to give it a good testing.

MGuy wrote:Play the unfinished version of my Fantasy Heartbreaker to give it a good testing.

What's it based on?

Hrm. Depends on my friends.

If I'm talking about people who've already played TTRPGs with me or people I know, I'd like to take a stab at running an erotically charged sexventure. I think I've learned a bit since I last tried to run a game and it'd be more burlesque like Oglaf or Supermegatopia than unabashedly porny.

If I was talking about my other nerd or military friends, the kind of people already experienced with jRPG tropes but haven't actually played a game, I'd try to run through a game of 3E or 4E D&D with me as the Dungeon Master. I'd go all-in on some kind of team assignment like building an economic empire or pimping out their airship or whatever.

If I was going to run a game with people wholly unfamiliar with TTRPGs, I'd try to run FATE Core or Mouseguard. I'd like to run something in the vein of a family-friendly action-adventure tale like Toy Story or Star Wars or Transformers.

Also, I just realized that my first and third paragraph made me sound really creepy when they're that close together.

1. If they don't know RPGs, I'd probably run pre-written modules for 3e D&D with simple Tome classes.
2. If they do know RPGs, but not well, I'd have one of them run the module
3. If they know RPGs well, I'd go for a Tome campaign
4. If they were total RPG masters like approximately one person I know, I'd ask them what they suggest.

Regarding Lago's comment on sexventures: I wouldn't make an explicit declaration one way or another, or bring it up myself. I would let people do what feels comfortable, and only draw a line if it seems like someone (e.g., me) is starting to feel uncomfortable. Maybe mention, once we start dipping our toe into the water, that if someone feels uncomfortable, they should say something.

I'm going to assume "willing to learn and play whatever" implies that they are unfamiliar with rpgs (or at least specific systems), so my answer would be FATE or 6d6 - both easy to understand and quick in char-gen, so the majority of time would be spent actually playing.

As for setting, probably a present-day horror / monster hunt one-piece, since that spares you a lot of world-building and explaining.

8d8 wrote:

MGuy wrote:Play the unfinished version of my Fantasy Heartbreaker to give it a good testing.

What's it based on?

I'm not sure what you mean but it is a D20 game.

After Sundown: Pod Cult. I've been wanting to run this campaign idea for ages, but all my friends like playing Team Good when it comes to the horror genre.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Hrm. Depends on my friends.

If I'm talking about people who've already played TTRPGs with me or people I know, I'd like to take a stab at running an erotically charged sexventure.

costanza_face.jpg

Depends on the group.

If'n I had my druthers, I'd get the band back together and pick up the Champions Forefront game. but I'd need at least 3 of the other original members of that game to really continue it, and that is phenomonally unlikely to happen due to jobs, kids and life changes.

If'n we're talking a more random assortment of friends from boardgaming night I'd currently lean towards running Feng Shui 2 (despite all my ire in the other thread) with a cheesy netflix action movie viewing following each game session for those who could stay late.

If'n we're talking kids looking for an RPG group from the Unversity gaming club, I'd probably give either PF or 5e a Koumei-esque treatment (here's a PDF of new options that overwrite the trap options) and run a silly pirates D&D game.

Actually, I've fallen into a deep depression with my life lately lately because the hypothetical scenario thrown up by the OP is so often JUST hypothetical.

MnM 3e because my gaming group will play anything but actually learning it is too great a commitment. So awhile back I switched to that because I can tweak it to run almost anything and they have slowly learned it through osmosis. Also I have created a number of characters and as villains and heroes play by the same rules they can skip creating characters to simply pick anyone who appeals to them. There's also a decent random character generator they can use if they want to make their own but fast. Meaning we could start gaming immediately and not lose any momentum or energy.

...if you add "are willing to learn the genre" to the list, it would definitely be M&M, a PL 12-14 game.

Shady314 wrote:MnM 3e because my gaming group will play anything but actually learning it is too great a commitment. So awhile back I switched to that because I can tweak it to run almost anything and they have slowly learned it through osmosis. Also I have created a number of characters and as villains and heroes play by the same rules they can skip creating characters to simply pick anyone who appeals to them. There's also a decent random character generator they can use if they want to make their own but fast. Meaning we could start gaming immediately and not lose any momentum or energy.

Link, please!

8d8 wrote:and are willing to learn

This is such a foreign concept I almost can't cope. Normally it's like tearing finger nails.

Uhm... In no particular order...

Edge of the Empire with a bucket of houserules thrown on top
Earthdawn
Shadowrun 4 w/ Ends of The Matrix
3.Tome
nWoD Mage
After Sundown
After Sundown with nWoD Mage grafted on to it

Kriegsspiel, with the group meeting in steam tunnels.

I once threatened on here to run a supers-noir game in M&M3rd, with a short description being "Top 10 where everyone has sordid pasts, with an introduced phildickian fraying of personal identity". PL would likely be 6-8, or possibly up to 12 if players wouldn't try to break things in half.

Grek wrote:

Shady314 wrote:MnM 3e because my gaming group will play anything but actually learning it is too great a commitment. So awhile back I switched to that because I can tweak it to run almost anything and they have slowly learned it through osmosis. Also I have created a number of characters and as villains and heroes play by the same rules they can skip creating characters to simply pick anyone who appeals to them. There's also a decent random character generator they can use if they want to make their own but fast. Meaning we could start gaming immediately and not lose any momentum or energy.

Link, please!

Um to what? The character generator I'm assuming? It's a part of the GM's Kit.

Assuming ttrpg...

3e DnD
Deadlands (with initiative/actions houseruled)
HEX
Battlestations
or something new to me (Shadowrun, M&M, Champions, ?)
or something homebrewed and new to me

I want:
• fun starting character creation
• mechanics that aren't a clusterfuck
• have reasonable expectations of how things work

Won't touch these systems as they are triple threat failures in those categories:
BRP-like
One-Roll Engine

Last time I tried to introduce people, I used 3.5 core only. And then went through the process of selling each class. Everyone was a druid. I just made their characters for them based on what they wanted, and I still wanted to kill everyone at the table.

I would be strongly tempted to say FATAL because ever since I did a review I've had a morbid curiosity as to how that "game" actually plays.

But I'm pretty sure that would end with us toasting with Draino to put ourselves out of our shame and misery.

There's a game called Fantasy Imperium that I have a similar morbid curiosity about* but you posited willing to learn and play anything, not "Take a college course to learn," so I'm going to assume that's non-practical.

Honestly, my big loves in gaming are Dungeons and Dragons and it's kitchen sink Dungeonpunk milieu, Rifts and it's sheer BWB** insanity, and White Wolf because Werewolf was the first long running campaign I ever got to play. So I'd put it to a vote and try to have someone else run out of those. But if we're doing White Wolf, I'd want to play either "All Fera Allowed" Werewolf or Demon, and I'd want at least all the fluff from the books to be present. Fucking up Pentex always sounded fun, but they didn't exist in my ST's world.

*The book is 440 pages and weighs about 3 pounds. And it's clearly RALIZM grognard fantasy.
**Balance? What Balance?

3.x D&D (& Pathfinder). Because I have the books (& the PRD).

If we're getting new books too, I'd be very tempted to run a GURPS 4 game of Spelljammer in the Astral Sea as an adventure-serial like TOS. That's no moon, that's an Astereater!

Something point buy, especially if the group is actually going to be committed to learning it. With how popular superheroes are, the 4 people might like that to begin with so I'd already have a hook for a mid approaching high level Mutants and Masterminds of Champions/HERO game. Something like a 500 or 600 point HERO 5th game, powers capped at 100 total points, 15 damage classes maximum or something like that. Maybe a Mutants and Masterminds game at a power level in the teens.

crasskris wrote:I'm going to assume "willing to learn and play whatever" implies that they are unfamiliar with rpgs (or at least specific systems)

Not that it matters, but I meant that the other people would be willing to play anything they know, but that's not a limitation, because they'd be willing to learn and play anything else without quibble. In trying to keep it short I didn't flesh that out much.

Schwarzkopf wrote:Actually, I've fallen into a deep depression with my life lately lately because the hypothetical scenario thrown up by the OP is so often JUST hypothetical.

That's part of why I was thinking about this subject. There's no such thing as a perfect game group when it comes to our hobby, and in order to get a game going at all you inevitably have to make concessions. I mean, I painted the most freeing, limitless situation I could think of in the OP, and there are still answers filled with back-up answers because getting what we want is so foreign to us. It's foreign to me too, I am still not sure how I'd answer.

But I also want to not care about the limitations. What I want is to get prepped with the game I want to run, then put a call out for interest and make sure I get people who are into it. If the group I normally game with doesn't want to play that game, then they aren't the group for that game. Find new people, make new friends, etc. I'm tired of having the limitations of "Everyone thinks PF is great and you're the weirdo" or "I've learned enough systems, just run something I know" or "Only if I get to play a fetishistic trigendered foxkin vampire."

But I still don't know what game I'd run if'n I had my druthers. This thread is really helping me refine my answer to that.

Magical Tea Party. Strategy game about empire-building in a greek-inspired fantasy setting where the not-Persian empire has just retreated due to successful rebellion in the provinces.

2nd choice, d20 game with midlevel characters. You are supervillains, the game starts with your latest world domination plot crumbling around you as you struggle to escape with enough to give an edge next time.