The Pen & Paper RPG Thread

I see.

I always liked the SAGA system.

Tell you though - worst system I've played is GURPS. What a goddam headache.
 
Bass said:
I see.

I always liked the SAGA system.

Tell you though - worst system I've played is GURPS. What a goddam headache.
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Steve Jackson (GURPS creator) needs to be disemboweled and stuffed with polyhedral dice.
 
My roleplaying group is the almagamtion of two groups. My friend Will was with the older gamers and I was with friends of our age. Will brought me to the their group, and when the numbers needed topping up, I brought in others from my group.

Those from the original, older group, play GURPS all the ******* time.

Those from my group, hate that system.

But they've been playing GURPS for like... over 10 years. They're used to it. I still don't see the fun in that system at all. I think it's ****.

In fact, I think most RPG systems are worthless because roleplaying games generally aren't good GAMES. They're fine worlds and settings, but as a GAME, mechanically, they suck. There's about as much strategy as a game of snap.

What I mean is - if you're playing poker, there's strategy: do you change your hand? What hand to you play? Is this the right time to bluff? Raise? Call? There's a lot of play decisions.

In most roleplaying games there are NO play decisions. It is simply this - you roleplay, and then you roll a completely random number and hope that you've got enough of the odds on your side. But it doesn't matter how you've roleplayed, nor what the situation is. If you CAN alter the random elements on the fly, then it's just this cascade of book-keeping. It really annoys me.

I was playing a Ancient Rome version of The Punisher - a combat monkey. And as we were roleplaying, I'd describe my sword strikes, and I'd do lots of set up and what not - and none of it matter. I just rolled those three D6 and tried to roll under 16. Which always happened. Then the bad guy got a chance to dodge. And it didn't matter what I did, he got that dodge. The only way he didn't is if I rolled 6 or less. Then he couldn't. Or if we dropped a boulder on him - which we did, and of course, my character had no part to play in that.

Now, sure, maybe the GM could've been more flexible, and sure, maybe I should've made a different character, but dammit, the book doesn't give guidelines for that. It's down to the whim of the GM and that's hardly something you can gauge your strategy on.

It really pisses me off. The mechanics should have a random element, sure, but there should be an ability to evaluate, adapt, and improvise MECHANICALLY on behalf of the players.

Most RPGs, if you remove the RP part, are the dullest ****ing games ever.
 
We had an awesome gaming session today as several storylines converged into one whole one. It's unfortunate because it seems like it's the end of the story, but fun and exciting none the less. The next mission is most likely our last, but we will go out with a bang.
 
Nice! That's always satisfying. It looks like the Cthulhu game I'm playing is going to resolve this Tuesday.

What game are you playing, Houde?
 
It's loosely based off of Discworld, but with 3rd edition D&D rules. What is happening is our home town is under invasion, Ankh Morpork. In the books, and in our story, this happens all the time, but what is different about this time is that the invaders are from inside the city, which are augmented by a sect of evil priests and their slave warriors. One of our characters use to be part of this group, and an earlier mission we stole an extremely evil sword from this group in one of their caverns. The evil dudes are roaming Ankh Morpork looking for him.

Basically, we teleported into the city because it was under siege. From their we went around and gathered the local groups into one cohesive unit and have hatched a plan to kick some evil ***.

The next game we be us kicking some evil *** all across the city.
 
Did anyone ever play Twilight 2000 or the old Marvel Superheroes RPG? I used to dabble in both back in the 80's and had a good amount of fun, at least when I lived in St. Louis and my cousins also played. Most of the time someone ended up cheating or sorta cheating.
 
Willverine said:
Did anyone ever play Twilight 2000 or the old Marvel Superheroes RPG? I used to dabble in both back in the 80's and had a good amount of fun, at least when I lived in St. Louis and my cousins also played. Most of the time someone ended up cheating or sorta cheating.
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FASERIP FTW!
 
Willverine said:
Did anyone ever play Twilight 2000 or the old Marvel Superheroes RPG? I used to dabble in both back in the 80's and had a good amount of fun, at least when I lived in St. Louis and my cousins also played. Most of the time someone ended up cheating or sorta cheating.
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I've played the Marvel Superheros game. The character creation system in it was awesome, but the actual gameplay left alot to be desired. We used to jsut make randomly generated characters out of it to see what we'd get. I once had a man who could turn into an 18 wheeler, he could time travel, and if you put anyone into the trailer he could manipulate their emotions. I called him KC the Sunshine Truck.
 
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Baxter said:
I've played the Marvel Superheros game. The character creation system in it was awesome, but the actual gameplay left alot to be desired. We used to jsut make randomly generated characters out of it to see what we'd get. I once had a man who could turn into an 18 wheeler, he could time travel, and if you put anyone into the trailer he could manipulate their emotions. I called him KC the Sunshine Truck.
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AWESOME.

Yeah, I always found the combat rules kind of iffy. Also, the frequency with which one could lose a character's entire karma due to the penalty infracted from killing was just insane.
 
I hear you on the Marvel RPG. I used to create character after character but the gameplay system was garbage.

If I had more time and knew others who played, I'd rather play Heroclix. I have a huge box of them but I've never actually played a game. Actually I just got Colonel Al-Rahman from the latest Marvel set. Sweet.
 
I tried playing D&D and White Wolf stuff on and off when I was younger with my friends, but we never got very far in it and always ended up doing something else.

I've done some online RP on and off since then - tried a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game during the Vietnam War (which would have been wicked cool if I had gotten it off the ground), a modern Mage: The Ascension game (which was awesome, but had way too many characters for me to manage), and a Changeling: The Dreaming game loosely inspired by Runaways.

Right now I'm playing around with a tight-knit little chat-based superhero crew, on and off.
 
Oh man, the MAge Ascension game I played was set in 1984, and we were part of the technocracy. Basically, we were hunting down the Anti-Christ, and trying to kill him.

At least everyone else was hunting him down. I knew where he was, what his name was, and was his personal bodyguard.

And my character died almost every game. I was a clone, made from part demon and part angel DNA. I was the shizznet.
 
I'm gonna start a Hunter's campaign using the new WoD (a la Supernatural). I'm kinda nervous 'cause I sometimes forget things or can't think fast when someone does something i wasn't expecting, but I think I should at least try it once.

I'm just using the rules of WoD the world will be of my creation, nothing really fancy, just a little less dark than WoD.


Mage is awesome i really want to play it, but my DM backed out and we got back in playing D&D (Rogue 9th lv FTW). I still have my Son of Ether sheet. :(
 
I played a D&D game on Tuesday - and it's so silly that game.

For no reason, we attacked a whole bunch of Lizardmen. It was more of an exercise "who can kill them in the most interesting fashion" than anything else.

WoD is really cool. For HUNTER I recommend stealing THE TERMINATOR. I did, and it kicked ***. (The villain wasn't a robot, but was 'supernatural' - but all it did was chase them and not die for a ridiculously long time - so sweet).
 
Ultimate Quicksilver said:
I'm gonna start a Hunter's campaign using the new WoD (a la Supernatural). I'm kinda nervous 'cause I sometimes forget things or can't think fast when someone does something i wasn't expecting, but I think I should at least try it once.
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I know in August, White-Wolf is coming out for with a new Hunter game set in the new WoD called Hunter: The Vigil. It's supposed to be a radical revision of Hunter: The Reckoning.
 
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I am currently running a Star Wars Saga Edition game set in the Legacy era on odd Tuesdays.

My characters (An Imperial Knight, his brother a Jedi, a professional gambler, his mechanic, and his bodyguard who is apparently strong in the Force an part of some prophecy) have just experienced the major Galaxy-changing events of 130 ABY and are now faced with the big question: What side do we join? The next session will be a political party on Cloud City where they will be forced to choose between The Sith Empire, The Imperial Rebellion, The Alliance Rebellion, or some level of independant system-hopping.

I suspect they will choose the latter, and am completely unprepared if they choose the first one.

On even Tuesdays, we've started a fairwell to DnD 3rd edition campaign set in the Forgotten Realms. We are considering transitioning these characters into 4th edition. I play a LG cleric of Mystra who is a bit of a dick, but is good at heart. I have a lineage/back-story only Cable could understand and have a penchant for making sure enemy spellcasters don't get to do that voodoo that they do so well. I know that once the Year of Blue Fire hits I'm going to be shopping around for either a new god, new class, or new character, but that's okay. We are currently trying to destroy cults of Shar that are working towards infiltrating Zhentarim cells in the Western Heartlands.
 
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