the greatest RPGs you have never played

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I'm taking paper and dice games, obv, as they allow you to play a role.

I wish I had ever got a chance to play:

Bunnie & Burrows
Paranoia
Toon
Star Wars

and probably some others, but they're the ones that leap into mind.

DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 4 May 2006 08:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Paranoia wasn't nearly as much fun to play as it was to read, to be honest.

aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Thursday, 4 May 2006 10:37 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm starting in a new group tonight! WFRP.
but imo D&D 3.5 > everything.

teh_kit has 20 friends (g-kit), Thursday, 4 May 2006 12:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Isn't D&D 3.5 the one that removes all sense of balance and pace?

JW (ex machina), Thursday, 4 May 2006 15:58 (seventeen years ago) link

I always wanted to play the James Bond one.

Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Thursday, 4 May 2006 18:26 (seventeen years ago) link

I have played (pen and paper, tabletop)
D&D
AD&D
MechWarrior
Shadowrun
Paranoia
Toon
Traveller
Top Secret S.I.
Mage/Vampire/Werewolf/Mummy/etc
Ars Magica
the Dr. Who RPG
Rifts
it goes on, I think.
All of them were ridiculous except for Mechwarrior, which was fun, because you got to pilot a giant robot in between roleplaying bits, and Dr. Who, because nobody gave a shit about the rules.

Amber is supposedly neat but I never played that.
I kind of wish the Rifts campaign had lasted a bit longer, but finals + summer put that one to bed.

Jesus christ I was a dork.

TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Thursday, 4 May 2006 18:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Never played tabletop RPGs. I read an AD&D booklet once.

Curt1s St3ph3ns, Friday, 5 May 2006 02:04 (seventeen years ago) link

I can't believe anyone ever actually got around to playing RPGs. We used to sit around and read the books and draw up plans and make characters and stuff but I don't think I've played more than 15 hours in my life, and most of that was, like, "WHERE'S THE MOUNTAIN DEW!?!?"

Dan I. (Dan I.), Friday, 5 May 2006 02:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, the James Bond one was crap. The mechanism just didn't work at all, as much as I wanted it to.

I have played:

D&D
AD&D
Shadowrun
Paranoia
Traveller
Top Secret
Mage/Vampire/Werewolf
Ars Magica
Doctor Who RPG
James Bond RPG
Gangbusters
Bushido
Call Of Cthulhu
Champions
DC Heroes
Golden Heroes
En Garde!
various GURPS
Runequest
Gamma World
Boot Hill
MERP
WFRP
2300AD
C&S
Chill
Skyrealms of Jorune
Judge Dredd
Twilight 2000
Pendragon
Stormbringer

TOMBOT, I trump your dorkiness. I AM NOT PROUD.

aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 5 May 2006 08:10 (seventeen years ago) link

oooh GAMMA WORLD!! that was awesome until they started trying to put mecha in it. that seems totally out of character for me but it's true.

TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Friday, 5 May 2006 12:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Isn't D&D 3.5 the one that removes all sense of balance and pace?

heh, balance, yeah... in places. house rules are necessary in places.
pace... no, that was 2nd Ed AD&D.

teh_kit has 20 friends (g-kit), Friday, 5 May 2006 12:28 (seventeen years ago) link

I think the game I always wanted to play but never did (or never have, since I still play some games) is Amber. The diceless system appeals to me.

aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 5 May 2006 12:33 (seventeen years ago) link

Traveller was impossible to work out what to do. GMing it was near impossible. it's like they wanted you to guess how it worked. which is fine.

Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

the best RPG ever was my free-form intergalactic anything-goes-but-magic one where nobody had any dice or character sheets or anything written down, I just sat there in the school cafeteria and GM'd as my friends came up with ridiculous shit for their characters to do, probabilistic issues were solved by having people guess numbers between one and ten.

Later, I would attend my senior prom, with a girl.

TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:23 (seventeen years ago) link

the best RPG ever was my free-form intergalactic anything-goes-but-magic one where nobody had any dice or character sheets or anything written down, I just sat there in the school cafeteria and GM'd as my friends came up with ridiculous shit for their characters to do, probabilistic issues were solved by having people guess numbers between one and ten.

We did something like this with from ages 8 till 14

JW (ex machina), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:40 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah it was a great way to stop losing dice at school.

TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:46 (seventeen years ago) link

six years pass...

what's up w/ pathfinder? seems like everyone loves it?

the late great, Saturday, 4 August 2012 05:27 (eleven years ago) link

It's a logarithmic evolution of D&D 3.5. For those who thought the number crunching nerdiness hadn't reached it's proper apogee. I got lost just reading the rulebook.

EZ Snappin, Saturday, 4 August 2012 15:49 (eleven years ago) link

the best RPG ever was my free-form intergalactic anything-goes-but-magic one where nobody had any dice or character sheets or anything written down, I just sat there in the school cafeteria and GM'd as my friends came up with ridiculous shit for their characters to do, probabilistic issues were solved by having people guess numbers between one and ten.
We did something like this with from ages 8 till 14

ditto
although i had a mini notebook which held all the initial details of various locations and inhabitants on the world map, we didn't really use it much as I'd memorised it all being the creator and all.

My friend kept all our work at his house, and then he moved to America abrubtly and I never saw him again. I would love to know that he kept that little book as I know he loved it.

PSOD (Ste), Saturday, 4 August 2012 16:22 (eleven years ago) link

four years pass...

the pathfinder people are making a space opera game

http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/11/17/13625140/starfinder-rpg-pathfinder

August is a long way off though

El Tomboto, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:56 (seven years ago) link

Would be more inclined to play a space opera setting than trad fantasy, due to genre preferences.

(rocketcat) 🚀🐱 👑🐟 (kingfish), Saturday, 19 November 2016 06:24 (seven years ago) link

Ditto. So is Pathfinder as fun as sales figures would suggest? Anybody know?

El Tomboto, Saturday, 19 November 2016 15:16 (seven years ago) link

No love for Car Wars itt...?

ΟáŊ–Ī„ΚĪ‚, Saturday, 19 November 2016 15:20 (seven years ago) link

Car Wars was pretty all right.
Mechwarrior 2nd Edition was better though.

El Tomboto, Saturday, 19 November 2016 15:58 (seven years ago) link

I kinda want to see if I can use this starfinder thing to build a sort of airtight garage/ jodoverse campaign setting

El Tomboto, Saturday, 19 November 2016 16:31 (seven years ago) link

omg lol wtf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metabarons_Roleplaying_Game
https://rpggeek.com/rpg/1449/metabarons-roleplaying-game

The Metabarons Roleplaying Game is a mystical space opera role-playing game which uses the D6 system. The players play characters who are not the Metabarons, but common people who are affected by the Metabarons.

Character progress depends upon adhering to an honor code. Heroes also have "NecroDream points" which, when they outnumber their "Amarax" (heroism) points, strip them of their heroic quality and throws them back into idleness and decadence.

This game actually re-implemented Star Wars, since West End Games had been bought by a French company but could not keep rights. Therefore they chose to adapt another sci-fi universe.

El Tomboto, Saturday, 19 November 2016 19:23 (seven years ago) link

The players play characters who are not the Metabarons, but common people who are affected by the Metabarons.

thank god for escapism

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 19 November 2016 20:03 (seven years ago) link

tbf being a Metabaron would be pretty boring and terrible too. You could probably make a Cards Against Humanity style character-creation system, but after that it's like okay you're an unstoppable warrior whose main motivation is to have children so you can mutilate them and then they grow up and murder you. OTOH making a game based on The Incal also belongs in the your terrible ideas thread

El Tomboto, Saturday, 19 November 2016 20:50 (seven years ago) link

didn't realize metabarons used the old west end games d6 system ... was going to pop on the thread earlier to say that i thought that the old d6 star wars was the perfect sci fi RPG

i have a soft spot for star frontiers, as that was the first RPG i ever bought (1983 iirc)

although i could never get a game going! so i suppose that is my favorite RPG i never played

the late great, Saturday, 19 November 2016 21:33 (seven years ago) link

my group was actually playing d6 star wars for a few months but we just switched to d&d 5E which is awesome

Paranoia

i have owned old editions of paranoia and currently have a copy of paranoia XP chilling on the game shelf. played a few times. reading the books is very entertaining, i found it hard to run a game that lived up to that level of funny

Toon

used to own, played a few times. again, found it hard to be as creative and funny as, say, warner bros cartoons. also makes you realize how much cartoons depend on visual humor / mood setting which is difficult to convey in an RPG

Car Wars

good board game. i had car wars / boat wars / air wars. i believe there was an RPG called "autoduel" but i never owned that. didn't play a whole lot of this or battletech. the paper pieces were just too flimsy and the rules too fidgety. we always ended up playing WH40K instead. the pieces had a reassuring solidity.

the late great, Sunday, 20 November 2016 00:11 (seven years ago) link

also FYI they made all of the star frontiers stuff public domain

http://www.starfrontiers.com

the late great, Sunday, 20 November 2016 00:17 (seven years ago) link

three weeks pass...

so the Traveler page on Wikipedia has this awesome table of scenario types. Poll material imo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role-playing_game%29#Adventures

a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Saturday, 17 December 2016 16:52 (seven years ago) link


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