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Post by dorkknight23 on Jun 7, 2010 21:15:59 GMT -5
This is a thread to talk about non-MURPG RPG games you've seen/played/been reading/etc. and discuss them. (I picked the title to poke fun of WK, who is fond of talking about monkeys writing on typewriters.) Here's a couple I've been looking at lately: Dark Heresy: I have such mixed feelings about Dark Heresy. Like the nWoD, I feel, if run by the wrong people, it could potentially go disastrously. But I see a lot of potential in the setting, and I find the mechanics pretty solid thusfar (although I have a notoriously bad eye for munchkin-ing. I can make something functional or above-functional, but I definitely don't have the flair for optimization some have.) I think, with just the core books, its kind of moderately interesting, but with Ascension and the Inquisitor's Handbook and some more options it really comes into its own. Rogue Trader seems pretty cool too although I haven't had a chance to look more at it. Ghostbusters International (West End Games 1989): How did I not know about this game before today? I downloaded the books after reading a thread on another site about it today, and 1) pretty funny, 2) pretty clever and rules-lite, 3) its freakin' Ghostbusters. Shadowrun: Only familiar with the latest edition. Love the setting, hate the rules that accompany it. Way too many dice and way too much mechanics to do even the simplest thing. The fewer dice you roll at once on average the better, I say. Exalted: Exalted is rapidly becoming one of my favorite fictional worlds, period. The mechanics are not awesome here (combat lulls a bit, same as Scion, which is another fun game) but definitely a creative "kitchen sink" type world. D&D: 4th Edition's made some improvements in my eyes with the hybrid class idea in PHB3, but I still feel there's a decided lack of customizability. It also, I feel, doesn't do anything better than 3.5 in terms of storytelling (the possible exception being Skill Challenges,) so I don't really see the point. But it's getting better. How about everyone else?
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Post by WildKnight on Jun 7, 2010 21:41:31 GMT -5
I'm still pretty torn on 4th Edition myself. It does a lot to get rid of the massive power gaming problems that 3.5 had, but to do so it makes all of the classes really ultimately feel very homogeneous.
Also, just in general, agreed all around on Shadowrun. I do think that you can accurately represent the feel of Shadowrun with d20 Modern and a couple of sourcebooks, though.
<edit> Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't plug the West End games "DC Universe" RPG. Great mechanics, fun game all around.
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Post by takewithfood on Jun 7, 2010 21:45:57 GMT -5
I really miss 3.5e. It wasn't perfect, and it was awkward as hell to play online (I so don't miss die rolling), but it was fun. Largely I miss the fantasy settings, which don't seem to translate well in MURPG. I have to round my old 3.5e online group sometime and put them through a storyline I worked on once.
I haven't played Feng Shui in forever, but that game always got a laugh out of us when I played with my local group. Whenever we broke out a John Woo movie or Big Trouble in Little China we got the urge to dust off the Feng Shui books and make up some characters. The system was full of holes, but I loved the "shot" system for governing initiative/rounds. It's basically the same thing that Scion uses, and it's always made more sense to me than the standard turn-based system you see in D&D and most other games.
~TWF
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Post by GhostKnight on Jun 7, 2010 23:04:47 GMT -5
Not that much of an RPG but: HeroQuest.
Easy to play, usually no arguments from the players and as a GM you can make it a lot of fun by playing the monsters as smart beings instead of cannon fodder. The players have to work together and use strategy to defend the weak, block paths so enemies are forced to fight one by one and the mage and elf classes have to rationalize their limited spells.
The only bad thing is that players never level up but they can buy armor, weapons, potions and magical items to make their characters harder to kill.
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Post by WildKnight on Jun 8, 2010 6:50:56 GMT -5
HeroQuest was fun, but extremely limited. Eventually we had something like 40 pages of house rules and 10 pages of additional stuff (new spells, equipment, etc).
If you've got an arm & a leg to invest in a board game, Descent is much like HeroQuest, but with a lot more rules, more complex strategies, etc. And a ton of expansions.
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Post by Brainstem on Jun 8, 2010 11:06:51 GMT -5
Ah, Descent is great. My old roommate got it and we generally had a blast playing it.
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Post by takewithfood on Jun 8, 2010 11:32:04 GMT -5
I love the background to Scion (Exalted has always come across as too complicated for me.. too much going on) but the combat system is the worst I think I have ever seen in a game. Soak and dodge are waaaay too high.
I had been talking a lot about our Scion game and the characters we made, and I guess it sounded good to my friend's roommate. She ran a game of Scion for her D&D group, but even though all but one character was focused for combat, they said they couldn't hit anything of the creatures in the adventure (which was either out of the book or they bought a supplement.)
White Wolf has this weird idea that every game they write needs rules that are different enough from its other games to warrant purchasing an entire book of new rules. But there are only so many different ways to run combat in a d10 system with essentially the same ability scores and skills. For Scion, their idea for some reason turned into rolling dice normally, then adding ten times that many automatic successes, so that even max stats only means the difference between, say, 23 and 26 successes at high level play. -_-
God I love the setting, though. I adore the idea of a bunch of ordinary looking people sitting around in a Denny's at 3am b*tching about the gods.
"Oh my God, Loki is suck a dick. No offense, Brian." "Its okay." *Shrug* "You can't choose your parents."
~TWF
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Post by malice on Jun 8, 2010 17:48:41 GMT -5
Shadowrun, like many systems, goes a lot smoother the more the players know and choose to utilize that knowledge.
Dark Heresy still irittates me with its "experts have a 33% chance to succeed" mechanic. One bad mechanic CAN foil an entire system.
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Post by takewithfood on Jun 8, 2010 19:20:42 GMT -5
I have a dark confession to make.
.....
I have never played Shadowrun.
*hides*
~TWF
EDIT: I have played D&D (1st edition, 2nd edition, advanced, 3e, 3.5e and at least perused 4e), a slew of White Wolf games (V:tM, M:tG, W:tA, C:tD, H:tI, and even a Mortal game, plus a little NWOD), Scion, Feng Shui, GURPS, Fusion, Traveler d20, Star Wars, BESM, and MURPG, but somehow I never managed to find a game of Shadowrun. WTF?
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Post by WildKnight on Jun 8, 2010 20:32:17 GMT -5
Honestly? You're not missing that much. Shadowrun is best described as spending 14 hours planning a mission in order to spend 30 minutes actually executing the mission.... and you'll usually fail.
The odd part is, its got a really great setting, but for some reason the rules set totally discourages you from doing any actual role-playing, in favor of tossing your 24 dice to see if you can open the soda can with your bazooka.
That said, I think someday I'll take a crack at running "Shadowrun" with d20 Modern as I proposed (if you don't care about the fantasy elements of the Shadowrun setting, Cyberpunk 2020 has a much more manageable, though still somewhat clumsy, rules set)
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Post by dorkknight23 on Jun 8, 2010 21:42:02 GMT -5
Yeah, TWF, Shadowrun is really cool in theory, its just not the best crunchwise. Its like biting into a hot burrito and finding its full of cold Spam, no rice and beans, and instead Ritz crackers and Italian dressing or something. Just...eww.
*Not to talk bad on Spam, Ritz crackers, or Italian dressing. Just not three things I like in my burritos.*
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Post by GhostKnight on Jun 8, 2010 21:51:03 GMT -5
I have never played Shadowrun... but it sounds more interesting to play D20 modern instead.
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Post by SenseiSuplex on Jun 9, 2010 5:39:49 GMT -5
Ive only had experience with MURPG, Buffy's Unisystem, and a tiny bit with Star Wars (d20 and Saga both). I feel so behind after reading this thread.
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Post by Brainstem on Jun 9, 2010 12:26:28 GMT -5
I'm with you, sensei. I've played Star Wars (all Wizards versions), some D&D (3.5 and 4.0), d20 Modern, and MURPG.
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Post by dorkknight23 on Jun 9, 2010 14:28:08 GMT -5
I've played and/or run MURPG, D&D (1st-3.5,) Star Wars, Scion, Exalted, d20 Modern and Shadowrun 4E (both really briefly.) I've read most of the New World of Darkness stuff, D&D 4E, and now the Ghostbusters Roleplaying Game (which has some crazy potential.) Also went over some scattered Mutants & Masterminds, BESM, and other systems, but never really retained any of it. I think I'm going to be putting up a Dark Heresy interest gathering/recruiting thread sometime in the near-immediate future.
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