OT: The might of Pen & Paper

[llamabeast]

I've recently started doing roleplaying, and have played one game of White Wolf's Hunter, and one of Exalted. Both are excellent. Exalted is super-excellent in my opinion. Thematically, I think it's probably more than worthwhile getting the book just to read it even if you never expect to play*.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

I'm currently fully enjoying GM'ing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which is a lot better system than it sounds. The writers have really succeeded on bringing the cliche-tastic warhammer world to live and it bears no liking to the other low-quality license stuff (the WoW rpg for example) out there.

You should see the books of WFRP's 1st edition then! For myself, I find 2nd ed. somewhat lacking... in spirit, maybe? I just can't put my finger on just what it lacks. In any case, 1st ed. books are worth to look up - and old Black Library novels, too!

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

But it seems that current group will eventually dissolve as we go on our separate ways to the numereous Finnish universities, so I might be picking up some new games at sometime in the future. WRFP is awesome, but one of my players will taking all the books with him and I don't have the money to replenish my library. Any recommendations for good Pen & Paper games?

If you like Rennaissance setting, 7thSea/Swashbuckling Adventures may be the thing for you, too. Legend of the 5 Rings by the same author deals with popular samurai theme (but I've lost site of their newest timeline - introducing new world-shaking events every few years seems a bit silly. I'd recommend to use setting as it was at start (1st-2nd ed. time) and then play by ear). If you'd like more epic/high fantasy, you should probably look up EarthDawn and/or Talislanta. EarthDawn is especially recommended as many elements from it were used in Dominions (Horrors particularly!). Another game which influenced Dominions was Ars Magica by Atlas Games (I'd recommend 4th edition. There is also an opinion that the 2nd one was the best of all). They also make a more light-hearted hack-and-slash called Rune. Dying Earth is also an interesting system based exclusively on Jack Vance's novels.
Currently, the guy who made 7thSea and Legend started a new project called Houses of the Blooded. It features both strong storytelling element and a smattering of strategy - believe it or not! And it's gothic as ***! I think any of his games are worth at least to look at so you may also want to see those he made in the interim.
Of other genres I can recommend Feng Shui RPG by the above-mentioned Atlas Games. If you don't know, it recreates classical Hong Kong/Chinese action movies - with a smattering of some other bordering genres... Some of White Wolves' World of Darkness products were pretty good. But there are tons of them so may not want to pursue this course without having at least a handful of others to split costs with. Forgotten Futures is a good independent system and it's mostly free iirc. It mainly deals with recreating feelings of old-school scientific romance (whose modern incarnation is steampunk!). Kults was a good game of gothic punk line. I don't remember whether they continue it still. I like FASA's Shadowrun more than Talsorian's Cyberpunk, but they are both good systems and have quite beautiful worlds.
I also like both old WEG Star Wars (d6 version, and if somebody has his hands on the Tank Girl RPG by the same authors, he/she can ask almost anything from me!) and TriTac Bureau 13 despite the systems being somewhat clanky. Of course, these are long out of print now, but if you will stamble on one of them, definitely worth to try.
That's about all I can remember at the moment. Hope it's helpful.

[chrispedersen]

I've run, ref'd and played thousands of Paper and pencil systems:

Fantasy Hero 2nd edition: (Hard to find). Incredible rules, best fantasy system I have ever found. *Any* spell can be created - including all the Dominions spell.

Gurps. Much more customizable than DND; good spells; good combat.

Midnight: D20 variant. Aweseom flavor - creepier than Dom but it could be Dom gone bad. This game literally had me raving for 2 solid years. And has the *best* module - out of thousands.. that I have ever played.

Dnd 3.5. Lots of players, readily available

Call of Cthulu: Awesome if you are playing Rylleh Dreamlands.

Dnd 4.0 Crap. But plentiful.

Ars Magica. Well I like it. But no one else did.

Honorable mentions: Elfquest. Elric, Paranoia, T&T, Lionheart,
probably a few dozen I'm forgetting.

[Lavaere]

I've read loads of RPG system books, but since its just me and my older brother. You can't really have that much play the P&P game.
Cyberpunk was a nice one, as I use to like playing as a Netrunner.
Another would be the Mystara setting for D&D.

And never could find a group online to stick around long enough to play a game session over aim or something. I've just tended to do freeform roleplaying with a couple friends. I think if you can be creative enough and like stories, roleplaying something like that without rules. And with people who will actually let there characters take damage bring out some really also stories.

[Dragar]

I love rpgs, haven't played in a while unfortunately it's not so much about what thee game is as the group of players, very difficult to get a really good group together and keep them together! To be honest I've had years of mediocre rpging with small windows of brilliance that were the highlights of my gaming light. They aren't necessarily the best games, but the most fun I've had has been with first ed DnD, Vampire: The Masquerade, d6 Star Wars and Alternity. I've played far mroe dnD that anything else, lots of 3 and 3.5, but I do find the game lacking a bit - or in all likelihood the group wasn't up to scratch

If anyone has a good group going in Perth I'm keen!

[Demantiae]

Hi everyone. Been lurking for ages here, thought I'd post on this subject

I've been toying with using the Dominions background for a P&P or PBeM game for a while now. It happened when I realised that Late Age Ulm is very very close to the unnofficial setting that a lot of my old RPG games were set in. Although there was never any official connection between any of my games there were always similarities and common themes running through them, ideas and themes that are prevalent in Late Age Ulm. So I started comparing other games I'd run and idea's I'd had and found they could all fit very nicey into the Dominions world, with a couple adjustments here and there. I think the Dominions setting would make a fantastic basis for campaigning. I really love the mix of fantasy, mythology and history, something a lot of RPing settings don't get right.

My advice for using the setting as a backdrop would be to focus on a small part of the Dominions lore. Rather than throwing in all the nations of the game and flooding players with information just focus on one or two of them, and a couple others that thematically fit your campaign as neighbouring realms.

[Burnsaber]

Holy crap! This thread just got into epic levels. I never thought that there would be so many replies.

Originally Posted by atul

I own WFRP core book, have only GM'ed a couple sessions though. It has both great and poor sides, I especially like the class progression where you actually take a trade and advance instead of some concept. On the poor side, all the mechanics really rub it on that you're playing a RP version of a tabletop wargame.

The core rules need..some fine-tuning, I admit. But RPG's are 90% setting and 10% rules. Besides, doing some fine-tuning to the rules is pretty easy. Like you probably saw, the early levels are pretty painful because none of the players can really do anything well. At least the first career serves as a lesson in 'humility' as one of the players is bound to lose a fate point. I circumvented the first career problems it by giving a lot of circumstance bonuses and some extra exp until they hit their second career.

The character generation is pure gold, like you mentioned. At least it was to me as GM when my players rolled their guys. The excitment! The pure multitude of options! My first group was: 1) Dwarf Miner, 2) Elf Outlaw, 3) Human Apprentice Wizard, 4) Human Squire. I was pretty surprised, they rolled quite a good “adventuring” party. My other group was a lot more down-to-earth thought: 1) Halfling Merchant 2) Elf Messenger 3) Human Fisherman, 4) Human Servant (Waitress, to be exact).

Originally Posted by atul

Dunno about recommendations. Paranoia's always good for laughs, and actually that Finnish rpg Stalker seemed pretty interesting. Haven't played it though.

Heh, Paranoia is pretty funny. And I've only read the book! Haven't had the chance to play. I'll have to take it up one time with my veteran group sometime. Every time I think of the nuclear hand grenade (you can throw it to only to a maximum 50 meters and it has explosion radius of 200 meters), I simply explode.. to laughter.

Originally Posted by atul

Usually there are, though at least some university gaming groups are a bit... strange.

At least I didn't join my Uni's group because of the vibes I got from few of the regulars. But they're worth checking out, anyway.

I personally restarted rpgs only after finding like-minded people at work. Has worked fine, thus far.

Yeah, the 'creeps' can be, well, creepy. Internet is full of horror stories about creepy players, I once spent a day reading a thread dedicated to these players in some RPG forums. The horror.. *shudder*

Luckily I haven't bumped into anything really bad. I've had generally bad players (“backround? Couldn't care less”, powergamers, etc..), worst was this one player with some power gaming tendencies who had the habit of raising a temper whenever his character didn't perform as well as he presumed.

Work seems like a 'safe' place to recruit players, now that you mention it.

Originally Posted by Lavaere

I've read loads of RPG system books, but since its just me and my older brother. You can't really have that much play the P&P game.
Cyberpunk was a nice one, as I use to like playing as a Netrunner.
Another would be the Mystara setting for D&D.

And never could find a group online to stick around long enough to play a game session over aim or something. I've just tended to do freeform roleplaying with a couple friends. I think if you can be creative enough and like stories, roleplaying something like that without rules. And with people who will actually let there characters take damage bring out some really also stories.

I've never really played a 0% rules game. Could be interesting, thought. I probably aren't good enough GM to create something like that and make it work.

The most important part about rules is that they flow well. Every time you need to check something from a book, the rules aren't actually helping, just being a nuisance. One of the reasons why I moved away from D&D was the constant need to check rules. There were just so many of the damned things!

Originally Posted by Dragar

I love rpgs, haven't played in a while unfortunately it's not so much about what thee game is as the group of players, very difficult to get a really good group together and keep them together! To be honest I've had years of mediocre rpging with small windows of brilliance that were the highlights of my gaming light. They aren't necessarily the best games, but the most fun I've had has been with first ed DnD, Vampire: The Masquerade, d6 Star Wars and Alternity. I've played far mroe dnD that anything else, lots of 3 and 3.5, but I do find the game lacking a bit - or in all likelihood the group wasn't up to scratch

If anyone has a good group going in Perth I'm keen!

Yeah, getting a good group is hard. Even one disruptive player is enough to spoil the fun for everyone. One thing I have noticed is that the players have to get along well even outside the game. When every player is friends with every other players (no “friends of a friend”) it's very easy to get along. Social meetings with no-RPG:ing are good to bring the group closer.

Originally Posted by Demantiae

My advice for using the setting as a backdrop would be to focus on a small part of the Dominions lore. Rather than throwing in all the nations of the game and flooding players with information just focus on one or two of them, and a couple others that thematically fit your campaign as neighbouring realms.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Besides, figuring out why a C'tissian Lizardman, Caelum birdman, Abyssian and a Ashdod Anakite are travelling together might be tough. Sounds more like a build-up to a joke than a PC party. Besides, most of the dom3 races won't really make good player characters. Caelumian with the ability to fly is tough to make work, but perhaps plausible. But a Jotun PC, for example? No way. If I were to make a campaign on dom3 world, it probably would be mostly about humans trying to simply survive with all this epic stuff going around (of course, the more they try to escape, the more tangled up they get in the epic mess). But that just might be my WRFP experience talking.

“Elemental” based magic of dom3 also could play out well. Characters with supernatural powers work best when their powers are limited in both power and diversity. D&D wizards are basically best at everything with the right selection of spells (“oh, you have put all your skill ranks in Climb. I don't have to do really anything and still I'm better at it than you ever can be.” 'Spider Climb'), another reason why I changed system.

If a mage character started with say Water 1 magic, he'd only be able to cast water spells, which can be quite limited in function. When he levels up it might a tough choice to either diversify in another path (to get spells with a wider range of functions) or just take up another level of water. Note that this Water 1 magic probably wouldn't be the same "power-level" as W1 on dom3 mage, more like 0,5 water.

[atul]

Cyberpunk was great at its time but it grew old a bit too fast. It's the year 2020, you can buy NMT cell phones, and with an extra cost even one that actually fits into your pocket! Yay. But guess future prediction isn't easy.

They published an updated version a year or two ago, but I got the feeling editors were lazy updating it. Capoeira for instance is still "obscure martial art" that can fool people who generally have never seen it. Right. Just go into a park on summer... Too bad, it was a fun setting and easy&fast system. Though quite gritty, headshot kills at 4 pt damage and heavy pistol does 4d6. Feeling lucky, punk?

Oh, and speaking of games that got old fast, Twilight 2000 anyone? Already on year 13 of WW3, we are.

[TheMenacer]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Yeah, I agree 100%. Besides, figuring out why a C'tissian Lizardman, Caelum birdman, Abyssian and a Ashdod Anakite are travelling together might be tough. Sounds more like a build-up to a joke than a PC party. Besides, most of the dom3 races won't really make good player characters. Caelumian with the ability to fly is tough to make work, but perhaps plausible. But a Jotun PC, for example? No way. If I were to make a campaign on dom3 world, it probably would be mostly about humans trying to simply survive with all this epic stuff going around

If the setting were to assume Late Age, then a lot of the whole "Wacky fantasy race" stuff wouldn't really be a problem. Even Abyssians are just tough humans with fire resistance by the late age. Also I'd probably go with a D&D 3.5 clerical domain system for the various elements of magic. Maybe each level of magic gives you a spell list that you gain more and more access to as you gain character levels as well as a couple stat perks, like the cleric domains did. So if you were to somehow start out with Water 9, you'd only have access to the first level spells in each spell list of Water Levels 1-9, and as you gained experience, you get more spells on all nine lists. This feels like it might be a little complicated though. Then again, nothing says D&D like tons of lists.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

I've never really played a 0% rules game. Could be interesting, thought. I probably aren't good enough GM to create something like that and make it work.

http://www.bayn.org/wushu/wushu-open.html

Whatever you say your character does, happens just like you said. Then you roll dice, and see how it affects the flow (of battle, or anything else). The more detailed your description, the more dice you get.

Only restrictions are that tough enemies die only done after the dice tell the time ("how" is up to a player), and players/GM can veto action or details that don't fit the style ("no bazookas in wild west, what about TNT?").