The Gaming Den

Other than 3.5/Pathfinder, what game would would you guys recommend as a fairly solid system for running a generic fantasy adventure for a couple of players that are experienced board gamers, but are wholly new to RPGs in general?

Related to this, does anyone have any input on Fantasy Age and Titansgrave? I've been given the pdfs, but haven't read through them yet and know nothing about either of them.

Related to this, does anyone have any input on Fantasy Age and Titansgrave? I've been given the pdfs, but haven't read through them yet and know nothing about either of them.

Fantasy Age and Titansgrave are built on the Dragon Age green ronin's engine, which has been discussed on this forum before and is kinda not very good. It's boring. You may get some info on Titansgrave by watching Will Wheaton's videos on youtube.

Mouse Guard is basically functional and a decent intro game, but kind of crap at player agency. FATE Core is FATE, and so is kind of weird, but it is also basically functional, and Core is the least aggravating variant I've seen. You can also hack together something out of GURPS or HERO.

Runequest 6. Barbarians of Lemuria. The One Ring.

Just to cite some wildly different takes on fantasy.

The One Ring is good, but it is LotR specific, not a "generic fantasy" in any way. Runequest 6 is a horrible pile of garbage out of which you are supposed to make a game on your own.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Mouse Guard is basically functional

Generating a divide by zero situation in Mouseguard is trivially easy. The rule of both sides being able to achieve their goals simultaneously stops working when conflict goals are truly fundamentally incompatible. I.e. "We want to make the crucial information we possess reach Lockhaven!" vs. "We want to prevent Lockhaven from getting the crucial information they possess!", an example which actually happened in our test session. When a game can be broken unintentionally this fast - moreover, when you actually attempt to follow its supposed design goal and avoid framing conflicts purely in terms of straight-up fights to death - I wouldn't call it functional.

I always like to suggest Earthdawn. 3e is solid and has a lot of books, 4e is pretty cool but only the PHB is out. There's lots of premade adventures for 1e through 3e, all of which are compatible enough with each other (the rules change across editions but the numbers don't really, so stat blocks are compatible).

I like ACKS quite a bit, but any recommendation of it is very much a "Yes, but" type situation. If you have any experience with any D&Dlike, it's pretty easy to pick up.

ACKS is more rules lite than D&D3.PF but requires more DM arbitration. Some of TGD's Tome and other classes are actually simpler to put together than their WotC/Paizo counterparts while still being interesting and effective, like...

-Hicks Mage, you select a sphere and are good to go (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52837)

-Dungeonomicon Monk, building your own fighting style is fun and straightforward to grasp.

-Races of War Samurai, Barbarian are "hit things and watch them die"
-Races of War Knight has a functional defender mechanic and still contributes to dropping foes
(http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=33310)

-Tome of Virtue Totemist is a good 'nature caster'/'shapeshifter'
(http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50483)
-Tome of Virtue Soulborn is a good 'Paladin' or 'Warlock' depending on if you choose shiny or spooky FX
(http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50472)

-The SRD Rogue as is seems fine, though maybe it could pick up some abilities from the Thief Acrobat.

Tome [Combat] feats add a lot of customization to characters thematically and mechanically.

You might want to do some slight adjustments for versatility, like letting Monk use WIS in place of Dex OR Str, having the Samurai's Kiai be a flat bonus to damage instead of criticals so they don't all run around with picks.

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I've heard good things about Fate.
Tenra Bansho Zero has a rules lite system for getting the narrative going in its specific setting but its combat system is kinda messy.

@Blicero -- I just went back and read your ACKS review this morning. The economic aspects sound like they'll appeal to the board gamers I mentioned earlier. The really dumb grognardy bits aren't too difficult to excise? Like, getting rid of that THAC0-esque system isn't going to cause a lot of problems/make a lot of work later on?

@Lokathor -- What do you like about Earthdawn? I only had one experience with it way back when it first came out, and it didn't gain any traction with my group then. I haven't looked at it since and remember almost nothing about it.

I'm in sort of an unusual situation in that I've got a group of people that want to try TTRPGs, but most have never really played any before and are unsure of how into it they're going to be. However, they're open to trying just about anything, provided they can understand the game and whip up characters in about an hour at the table prior to diving immediately into playing. They definitely want to be able to make their own characters though, which is why I figured 3.5/PF probably wouldn't work. Given the goal of "make characters, play one-session adventure in one sitting."

Fixing the alternate universe THAC0 that ACKS favors is not too difficult. You just need to convert everyone's throw progression into an attack bonus progression and add 10 to all the ACs. 30 minutes of work tops, including making a cheat sheet and printing it out.

The other major grognardy bit is race as class, but if you get the Player's Companion there are enough elf and dwarf classes to fit most archetypes. You should also check out OgreBattle's rebalancing of the classes to fit the same XP chart. <http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50472>

ETortoise wrote:You should also check out OgreBattle's rebalancing of the classes to fit the same XP chart. <http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50472>

That's a link to Frank's Soulborn.

Here: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56161

Nards! Too many tabs open at once.

Why don't you try Warhammer Fantasy RP?

*Why* don't you want to use D&D 3.5? There are lots of perfectly good reasons, I'm not trying to argue with your decision not to use it, but your specific motivation is important in recommending what other games/systems you might want to try.

https://www.burningwheel.com/?page_id=2

Although the basic rules used to be free (which was a good price point) and are no longer?

Anyway, BW is far from perfect but it has stealth rules and basically uses Shadowrun 3rd edition combat, so if your wargamers find the extreme-HP swings of D&D objectionable, that would solve your problems. The game engine does produce absurd outputs in various places outside of combat and stealth, IIRC; and you might have to mind-caulk over some stuff assuming it works like Shadowrun does.

@Violence in the Media:

If creating characters under an hour is a priority then I suggest low-to-mid crunch games like Barbarians of Lemuria, Chronica Feudalis, or King Arthur Pendragon. These have nice mechanics which are flavorful yet simple enough to not halt the game to crawl, be it on creation or during combats.

darkmaster wrote:Why don't you try Warhammer Fantasy RP?

violence in the media wrote:They definitely want to be able to make their own characters though

That criteria makes WFRP unusable.

violence in the media wrote:I've got a group of people that want to try TTRPGs, but most have never really played any before and are unsure of how into it they're going to be. However, they're open to trying just about anything, provided they can understand the game and whip up characters in about an hour at the table prior to diving immediately into playing. They definitely want to be able to make their own characters though, which is why I figured 3.5/PF probably wouldn't work. Given the goal of "make characters, play one-session adventure in one sitting."

I think 5e D&D is a good fit for your needs in spite of the fairly well deserved hate it receives here. It has rules holes you can drive a truck through (especially stealth), and the power level of the players has been lowered throughout (especially at high level). However, character creation is quite quick and the characters don't have too many moving parts for first few levels of their careers. Further, free basic rules mean that the rules obsessed among your friends can come to the table fairly well prepared. Just run a session which is fairly fast past and which allows them to be reactive rather than proactive until they have their feet wet.

violence in the media wrote:@Blicero -- I just went back and read your ACKS review this morning. The economic aspects sound like they'll appeal to the board gamers I mentioned earlier. The really dumb grognardy bits aren't too difficult to excise? Like, getting rid of that THAC0-esque system isn't going to cause a lot of problems/make a lot of work later on?

Yeah, you shift the formulas for attack bonus and saving throws to get sane 3E ish outputs without too much issue. If you're mildly conversant in both system's numbers, you can go back and forth pretty much on the fly.

Time-wise,you can easily make a first level (or second or third level, really) character in less than an hour. The main area that can suck up character creation time is probably equipment selection, since that sort of thing can actually matter in a low-power game like ACKS. The Player's Companion book has a number of premade equipment kits, but I am sure you can find dozens more for free online if you want to.

For what it's worth, the main ACKS writer dude is kind of a terrible person, politics-wise. I'm not sure if that matters to you.

Ethics aside, other than rules-accessibility and name recognition (neither of which are necessarily nontrivial issues), I do not know a reason you would pick 5E over ACKS. There's actually an ACKS srd here: https://github.com/capheind/ACKS_SRD The formatting is kind of rough, but it is totally usable.

I'd honestly suggest Shadow of the Demon Lord, that Dark Fantasy RPG made by Robert J Schwalb. Right now not really physical copies that are going to be available yet, so if that's a dealbreaker I can understand that. Merits to that is it can be kinda done with miniatures like D&D, the classes are mostly simple enough doing step by step instructions what to modify basically. Since supposed to level up per session, can get a campaign finished, options come in quicker which I imagine they would like that?

I was going to suggest 4e, but instead how about 13th Age? Never really played it myself, but since 4e is like a boardgame, and 13th age is supposed to be "simpler & streamline" I imagine that might be good for them? (even got a free SRD)