Tabletop games: let's play them.

Does the guy who wrote Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, Orkworld, and Houses of the Blooded count, or do I need to schlep over to Gary Gygax's grave and break out the necromancy?

The post in question is at the bottom of the page.

In regards to game systems, backgrounds, etc.

Most players I know go into games with characters fitting the GM's style and tone, if they know it ahead of time.

If John is known for running games in which your characters backstory and motivations will never come into question, we make characters with very little in regard to those things. Instead, we focus on the things that will be focused on by the GM -- tactical combat and/or cooperative storytelling, for instance.

If Jane is known for running games in which the emotional depths of your character will be plumbed and every sentence you wrote in your background can and will have an impact on the characters adventure career, then we spend the time and effort to build well flashed out characters with families, motivations and reasons for doing x instead of y.

Castle is correct here. Being aware of the GM's intent for the campaign is going to help considerably more than anything else.

If the GM is going to hand-tailor the campaign to the characters' backgrounds, then yes, the players are highly likely to write detailed, intricate backgrounds that are going to be useful to the GM.

If the GM is going to focus at first on establishing the group and camaraderie, you're likely to establish a background in broad strokes and let the rest work itself out.

Not knowing what the GM intends is probably going to be frustrating for the players, as well - bringing a combat-oriented character whose abilities are most useful manipulating a battlefield to a campaign where combat is handwaved without any actual notion of placement or strategy is going to piss someone off.

I'm not a big fan of attempting to use the carrot and stick method of encouraging the players to roleplay. It often winds up with players trying to munchkin their interactions, and sometimes even drives other players out of the game because one is demanding the spotlight as much as possible.

I know this is a thread to find other roleplaying groups for people to join, but I just had to give my current game, which I'm running, a plug.

It's the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game: Adventures in Time and Space, by Cubicle7. In terms of capturing the feel and atmosphere of the show(s) (Doctor Who/Torchwood/The Sarah Jane Adventures), it does remarkably well, with a Merits and Flaws system (not unlike White Wolf) but a very simple 2d6+Trait+Skill system that makes play fast. And...unlike a lot of games, the emphasis is on talking and not fighting. About being smart and figuring things out and not using brute force.

And as a nearly thirty year veteran of games, I deeply appreciate and welcome that particular angle on things.

The company has been slowed down significantly thanks to the rebranding of the Who license and the change of actors, which meant all their products had to be reworked to cover the new version of the show. Not a great way to get the game products rolling.

But!

I recommend this game for both newcomers and veterans alike; for newcomers with a quick and simple game system and for veterans who want to challenge themselves with a game that has the setting of well....everywhere in time and space.

Check it out!


S.

I could go into why I hold RPGnet in considerably lower esteem than most, but let's be honest here: it's not worth the effort.

Their biases are well-known to anyone who cares to look, and it's better to take them with a grain of salt rather than as gospel.

Interruping the fanwank for a moment...

1) Has anyone here ever tried to adapt the City of Heroes universe for another superhero system (Hero System, Mutants and Masterminds 2E, GURPS, etc?) I'm looking for ways to do that since the CoH PnP is pretty much vaporware.

2) Does anyone else here play over Ventrilo or Skype? I've been recently introduced to this method of RPG gaming via The Spoony Experiment forums.

City of Heroes can be modeled fairly easily in Hero System, actually. I've always wondered if the very first write ups of the powers were done in Hero System.

Energy Bolt: EB 4d6, Does Knockback, cannot be spread or bounced, cannot be pushed, etc...

It's just an incredible pain to do, since there are tons of powers to write up, and background campaign rules to write up as well regarding the generation of characters. At least you can ignore leveling entirely, or tie security/threat levels to total points.

I can't imagine how much of a pain it would be to write up Dual Blades. Perhaps the best approach would be as a series of compound powers... ugh.

As for backgrounds and game mechanics, I like the Hero System 6e approach. You can use Complications; game mechanics enforced aspects of your character's personality and background. You can even throw in Complications that don't give you "points" to build with if you like.
Or you can avoid Complications, especially the Complications you don't want. You can write up your character's backstory, or not, in as much or as little detail as you want and fill it in in play.

I'm not really sure who John Wick is and why we need to pay atention to his pronouncements on the topic of the decline in tabtletop gaming.

But as someone who has been involved in organizing some of those conventions with declining membership, I have to say that the economy has LOTS to do with the declining amount of money spent on things that can be considered "extra" like purchasing new games and more importantly, attending conventions - which can easily cost a single person a few hundred dollars (depending upon hotel expenses mainly), let alone those with families who may want to attend.

When you are worried about making rent or the mortgage payment, spending $40 or more on a hardback game book or $200-300 on attending a convention are generally one of the first things to go. But if you are a gamer who enjoys tabletop games - that just means you go back to what you already have sitting on your shelf, be it Vampire: the Masquerade or DnD 3.5 or whatever.