PDA

View Full Version : The Obscure-But-Awesome RPG Sharing Thread



Chainsaw Hobbit
2011-08-27, 01:11 AM
There are a lot of RPGs out there that very few people one play, put are cool beyond belief. JAGS Wonderland (http://www.jagsrpg.org/jags/content/Wonderland.pdf), RISUS (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm), and Basic Fantasy (http://basicfantasy.org/) just being a few examples. There are so many undiscovered gems out there. So many obscure RPGs that deserve fame.

This is the place where all those obscure games can be showcased and given the credit they deserve. Where we can all come together and give them a tip of the hat and a salute.

Xefas
2011-08-27, 01:20 AM
Hot Guys Making Out (http://www.tao-games.com/?p=36)
Blazing Rose (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/blazing-rose-a-story-game-of-romantic-rivalry---ashcan-edition/4639945) (which often includes hot guys making out, unrelated to the above game)
Monster Hearts (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/games-in-playtesting/monsterhearts/) (a hack for Apocalypse World that will almost certainly involve teenage monsters of varying genders making out)
Fiasco (http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17106) (which requires no making out, but it certainly helps)

Chainsaw Hobbit
2011-08-27, 01:40 AM
Hot Guys Making Out (http://www.tao-games.com/?p=36)
Blazing Rose (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/blazing-rose-a-story-game-of-romantic-rivalry---ashcan-edition/4639945) (which often includes hot guys making out, unrelated to the above game)
Monster Hearts (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/games-in-playtesting/monsterhearts/) (a hack for Apocalypse World that will almost certainly involve teenage monsters of varying genders making out)
Fiasco (http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17106) (which requires no making out, but it certainly helps)

Well ... Um ... Wow. Those are certainly unconventional. Especially the first. Awesome.

TooManySecrets
2011-08-27, 01:43 AM
Hot Guys Making Out (http://www.tao-games.com/?p=36)


Hot Guys Making Out is a yaoi role-playing game, set in the Spanish Civil War, in which a tormented nobleman and his young ward attempt to resist their forbidden love for each other, and fail.

ಠ_ಠ

Anyways, it sort of depends on what you mean by "obscure". There's some that are just slightly obscure, but that you never see in the Finding Players forum. For instance:
Paranoia - 1984 meets Three Stooges (though there is one game running right now, strangely enough)
Unknown Armies - Modern occult horror/action/adventure
Cthulhutech - Lovecraftian mythos meets Evangelion
Delta Green - Lovecraftian X-Files (just recently go an update that was able to pull it into the 21st century, instead of the 90s)
Shadowrun - By far the least obscure, but it's just never seen wide play. Part of the reason might be do to the fact that the companies that create content for it keep going out of business for reasons unrelated to sales of the books themselves.

Then you have the super obscure:
The Window (http://www.mimgames.com/window/) - A rules-lite RPG that bridges the gap between freeform RPGs and ruled RPGs
Icar (http://www.icar.co.uk/) - Far future SF RPG with a neat twist on unarmed and melee combat
Violence: The RPG of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed - The only RPG that isn't meant to be played. It basically moves dungeoncrawling from quasi-medieval fantasy to the real, modern world. Replace "orcs" with "people" and "heroes" with "sociopaths". It's a great satire. [I'm not linking to it - forum rules]
Artifice (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Artifice) - An AI RPG. The content, right now, is a bit anemic, but it has one of the cooler ways of doing skills.
Engine Heart (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Engine_Heart) - A modified version of Artifice where the players are maintenance robots that survived the end of humanity.

Raistlin1040
2011-08-27, 01:50 AM
I was going to say Paranoia, which I don't actually know how to play, but would learning/playing. Um, other than that, Burning Wheel or Dread? I've played Dread and if the narrator is good and the players are serious, it's amazing. Never played Burning Wheel but I've heard good things.

Knaight
2011-08-27, 01:55 AM
Carnage 3:16
Its the official alien genocide RPG, and a lot of it has to do with questions about the acceptable price of utopia. Fascinating stuff.
Chronica Feudalis
This is written as if it were the translated document found in a 12th century monastery, and written by monks there. I mean that literally, and that leads to it being an incredible read, of what is also a very good game.
Lucid
Basically, its a specific build of Dread to cover what is basically Inception. That leads to quality.

I'd list Fudge, but I've probably shilled it out to the point where it is no longer obscure at all on this forum.

TooManySecrets
2011-08-27, 01:58 AM
Oh, and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is a rules-lite way of telling ridiculous improv stories.

Jjeinn-tae
2011-08-27, 02:03 AM
My signature has some good ones.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten - It's a zombie Apocalypse, the DM creates a kind of zombie (lots of different options) and the player's try to survive. I have not gotten to really play it much yet, but apparently try is the key word there. :smalltongue:

MAID RPG - Maybe self explanatory? It's comedy based and weird, and things get beyond ridiculous for no good reason.


There's also one I've been wanting to find, but I haven't been able to re-locate it... Touhou though, that has to be good, Touhou fans are insane that way. :smalltongue:

Knaight
2011-08-27, 02:08 AM
And I just realized a failing on my part. I didn't mention:
Wuthering Heights
Ennui ridden upper class Victorians get involved in love, as they inevitably spiral towards suicide. It has the potential to be worth playing once or twice, if ennui and suicide are themes you take an interest in for personal reasons.
Dogs in the Vineyard
Its awesome, it is also innately religious. PM me for the basic overview if you must know. The short version, stripped of religion: Picture a group of very young paladins, given a sword and a holy text, and sent out to solve complex problems that are far beyond their maturity level. Now take that concept, set it in a western U.S. frontier town, and call it a day.

TooManySecrets
2011-08-27, 02:10 AM
MAID RPG - Maybe self explanatory? It's comedy based and weird, and things get beyond ridiculous for no good reason.


You are a maid, having worked dutifully for the Saionji family for several years. You are also a shy albino princess who does odd jobs for the yakuza, and train with the three-section staff. Your peer Maya is an outgoing young maid with freckles, a streak of being greedy for sweets, and who also happens to be a military cyborg.

ಠ_ಠ

Speaking of, one of the non-trolls on /tg/, Ettin, was planning on using Maid for one of his games. Basically, the story of the game, was that the Lady of Pain (from the Planescape Setting) decreed that every faction needed to empower a single magical girl to be their representative. He eventually ended up Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) if I remember correctly. The chat logs of the game sessions were quite funny.

Agrippa
2011-08-27, 02:14 AM
These are both retro-clones.
Mutant Future: (http://www.goblinoidgames.com/mutantfuture.html) Retro-clone of Gamma World.
Generic Old-school Role-playing Engine or G.O.R.E. (http://basicroleplaying.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=3)

Jjeinn-tae
2011-08-27, 02:18 AM
ಠ_ಠ

Yeah, that about sums it up, and some of the optional rules are really creepy, but it is hilarious too. And mindless, stupid fun.

Conners
2011-08-27, 02:51 AM
The Riddle of Steel is probably a winner on obscure. Have any of you heard of it before? I didn't think so.

Jude_H
2011-08-27, 02:56 AM
And I just realized a failing on my part. I didn't mention:
Wuthering Heights
Ennui ridden upper class Victorians get involved in love, as they inevitably spiral towards suicide. It has the potential to be worth playing once or twice, if ennui and suicide are themes you take an interest in for personal reasons.That's one I haven't played, and it sounds like that could have been a mistake. Nice tip!

And, if I'm supposed to chip anything in, I'm hesitant to call any games I've played "obscure," except maybe a couple of unawarded one-shot free rpgs.
Until We Sink (http://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/37/) is a pretty slick murder mystery type game. Very casual, nicely structured, a lot of fun.
vs. Monsters (http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/vs-monsters) is just a stripped down set of mechanics for Victorian era monster killing. It is very straightforward and very fun.
Sea Dracula (https://seadracula.wordpress.com/) breaks the awards rule, but it is about prosecuting criminals (or defending criminals, sometimes it is not easy to keep track), using facts. It sometimes even matters what the facts are. The conflict resolution mechanic is streamlined by the removal of dice, and the unique dance-off engine.
Badass Presidents (http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/badass-presidents) does everything its title promises.

Just because I'm digging around on 1km1kt again, I want to say that I've never played normality (http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/normality), but I'd kind of like to; it makes me smile.

Due to its awards and general popularity, Dust Devils probably doesn't count, but I don't see it mentioned around here very often, and it does excellent jobs matching its mechanics to its fiction, tying genre staples into gameplay and sharing narration between players at the table.

TooManySecrets
2011-08-27, 03:01 AM
Additional game: Amber Diceless. As the name suggests, it's a diceless (though not entirely freeform) game set in Roger Zelazny's Amber universe. For those who don't know, in the Amber universe, by doing certain things, you can go to any universe you imagine (the main conflict comes from the fact that there's only one "real" universe and all the rest are reflections of it - it's also the one place that you can gain the ability to create universes). I do like how they did the character sheet for canon characters - they basically gave them three different sheets, based on different viewpoints (usually common fan viewpoints), instead of just one "official" one.


EDIT:

The Riddle of Steel is probably a winner on obscure. Have any of you heard of it before? I didn't think so.

Yep. It got mentioned in /tg/ thread I read which was talking about Conan games. There's even a TVtropes page (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheRiddleOfSteel) about it.

Shades of Gray
2011-08-27, 03:02 AM
ಠ_ಠ

Speaking of, one of the non-trolls on /tg/, Ettin, was planning on using Maid for one of his games. Basically, the story of the game, was that the Lady of Pain (from the Planescape Setting) decreed that every faction needed to empower a single magical girl to be their representative. He eventually ended up Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) if I remember correctly. The chat logs of the game sessions were quite funny.

The system is very rule-light and malleable. I use it, but rarely for maids.

In one game it was an alternate future (where the Cold War never ended and they invented mecha instead of nukes) and the players were teenagers in an orbital space academy where they learned to pilot mecha to further the war on earth.

I use it when I want a mostly RP-based game but with some rule structure.

turkishproverb
2011-08-27, 03:04 AM
Hot Guys Making Out (http://www.tao-games.com/?p=36)
Blazing Rose (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/blazing-rose-a-story-game-of-romantic-rivalry---ashcan-edition/4639945) (which often includes hot guys making out, unrelated to the above game)
Monster Hearts (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/games-in-playtesting/monsterhearts/) (a hack for Apocalypse World that will almost certainly involve teenage monsters of varying genders making out)
Fiasco (http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17106) (which requires no making out, but it certainly helps)

I think you and me are going to get along.

*Scribbles links*

Some from me then...hmm....
Offhand, that I've played, these come to mind quick:

Inspectres

Tales from the Crypt
Silver age Sentinels


Less but still arguably obscure:
Men in Black
Ghostbusters (Ok, it may not be that obscure)

Knaight
2011-08-27, 03:45 AM
Additional game: Amber Diceless. As the name suggests, it's a diceless (though not entirely freeform) game set in Roger Zelazny's Amber universe. For those who don't know, in the Amber universe, by doing certain things, you can go to any universe you imagine (the main conflict comes from the fact that there's only one "real" universe and all the rest are reflections of it - it's also the one place that you can gain the ability to create universes). I do like how they did the character sheet for canon characters - they basically gave them three different sheets, based on different viewpoints (usually common fan viewpoints), instead of just one "official" one.

Amber is pretty widely known. Karma might qualify as a diceless game which isn't, but Amber? Sure, its not D&D, or WoD, or even GURPS, but its not Wuthering Heights or Blazing Rose or Kagematsu either. Which reminds me:
Kagematsu
A samurai comes to the village, and the characters play a bunch of maidens trying to woo the samurai, so he will defend the village.

Tetsubo 57
2011-08-27, 06:05 AM
Games that I think are cool but aren't all that well known:

Everstone: Blood Legacy. One of the best versions of the 3.5 rules I have ever read.

The World Tree. A truly unique fantasy setting without any of the classic fantasy setting tropes.

The Mutant Epoch. A post-apocalyptic game that perfectly emulates the feel and tone of early games in this genre. Just a really fun read.

Shadow of the Sun
2011-08-27, 09:48 AM
I agree with Dogs in the Vineyard, as mentioned above; I rather love the mechanics.

By the same guy, and also religious: Kill Puppies For Satan. The basic premise is that all the players are addicted to Faustian style power and have to commit evil acts to keep getting it.

FUDGE is pretty cool. It's a free universal roleplaying game, except, unlike GURPS, it's not so stupidly math-y.

Human Occupied Landfill is stupidly random and hilarious. I love it. I know someone who rolled up a character that was a superhero potato.

TooManySecrets
2011-08-27, 12:52 PM
Amber is pretty widely known. Karma might qualify as a diceless game which isn't, but Amber? Sure, its not D&D, or WoD, or even GURPS, but its not Wuthering Heights or Blazing Rose or Kagematsu either.

That's why I said earlier that it depends on how you define obscure. Let's be honest - the RPG market is dominated by D&D. WotC is the Microsoft of RPGs, with White Wolf and Steve Jackson vying for Apple (in this metaphor, I'm just talking about number of OSes, not anything else). Everything else, individually, has less than 1% of the market. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if everything else collectively had less than 1% of the market.

Hence,

There's some that are just slightly obscure, but that you never see in the Finding Players forum.

[...]

Then you have the super obscure:
I made that distinction to prevent what I call the Hipster Paradox i.e. anything that the hipster has heard of is not obscure enough for them to like.

Shadowknight12
2011-08-27, 01:10 PM
This thread is relevant to my interests, and therefore it is now incarcerated in my subscriptions dungeon.

Please, do carry on.

beyond reality
2011-08-27, 01:53 PM
I'll give some love to the PDQ system:

Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (http://www.7skies.net/): A fantasy setting featuring floating islands in a chaotic world of anti-gravity trees and pirates riding on giant parrots.

Truth and Justice (http://www.atomicsockmonkey.com/products/tj.asp): A fun, fast traditional super-hero game. Put on silly pants and beat up bad guys.

Questers of the Middle Realms (http://www.silverbranch.co.uk/questers/index.htm): A rules-light parody of the traditional D+D setting. Lots of fun reinterpretations of the standard Tolkien-esque races.

Ninja Burger the RPG: (http://ninjaburger.com/rpg/) You're a ninja. You deliver fast food. With great honor.

Ravens_cry
2011-08-27, 01:59 PM
Dogs in the Vineyard
Its awesome, it is also innately religious. PM me for the basic overview if you must know. The short version, stripped of religion: Picture a group of very young paladins, given a sword and a holy text, and sent out to solve complex problems that are far beyond their maturity level. Now take that concept, set it in a western U.S. frontier town, and call it a day.
I played it at a convention, and that was basically my take on it too. We never resolved the issue at hand completely. We solved the crime, but the judgement had us really flustered. If you DM, make sure your prepared for a long wait as players struggle to figure out the right thing to do.
If you want to play a less religious game, reflavouring it with a kind of Mafia flavour and playing Mafia enforcers could also work.

Glimbur
2011-08-27, 02:27 PM
Wuthering Heights (http://www.unseelie.org/rpg/wh/index.html)
Ennui ridden upper class Victorians get involved in love, as they inevitably spiral towards suicide. It has the potential to be worth playing once or twice, if ennui and suicide are themes you take an interest in for personal reasons.

I have found that other common themes include starting the American Civil War early, taking over the town like a "big gay spider", and getting married off and living happily ever after. The setting is very malleable especially once you start tinkering with the problem table.

Lady Blackbird (http://www.onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/) is a one shot/system set in the skies. The setting has several asteroids/planetoids/islands with the PCs flying between them for various reasons. The system has attributes which are supported by traits. If you have the Bold attribute and the Explosives trait, then when you attempt a bold escape from the brig using explosives you have cooked up then you get extra dice. There are also Drama Dice, which are a floating pool you can use to get things done. They come back when... I forget, actually, but I played the game once and had a great deal of fun as the titular character.

Captain Six
2011-08-27, 02:39 PM
Dang, I was hoping to be the first to say Maid.

But seriously the game Maid plays closest to is Paranoia. Your experience points equivalent is 'Favor'. Favor is used to buy or sell stats, running out of favor gets you fired, the only way to 'die'. (The HP equivalent is Stress, it can only incapacitate you and you recover 1 stress ever OOG minute.)

You gain favor by having Friend Computer the Master like you more than anyone else. This can be by doing a good job, sabotaging your rivals or by trying to be his leading love interest; the game can quickly become a harem romance. The exception is the Head Maid, who only gains favor when everyone gets along with each other and loses favor when they don't, in exchange they get the ability to punish maids who work beneath them. I'm not sure on the Head Maid details because I haven't had enough players to support having one.

Drachasor
2011-08-27, 03:29 PM
Eldritch Ass Kicking -- You play a wizard, you get bonuses if you humiliate your opponents (the insult rule). Rules-lite and silly fun.

Universalis -- rather rules-lite cooperative story-telling game. Everyone has coins, you pay a coin to make up a fact about the game world. Typically you start off any session creating the world from scratch as well as all the characters one fact at a time.

OverdrivePrime
2011-08-27, 06:01 PM
My favorite RPG of all time, Immortal: The Invisible War was pretty awesome. To make it work, you had to house-rule it to the gills, but the intent of the system and the setting were fantastic. Immortal 3rd edition (now free online) is pretty good as well. (http://www.invisiblewar.com/) Stay far, far away from 2nd edition.

Shadow Lord
2011-08-27, 06:14 PM
Dresden Files RPG is totally awesome. Everyone should go play it :smallcool:

Y'know a complete inverse of Obscure but Awesome? FATAL. Everyone should go play it, so they will respect every other RPG far more.

randomhero00
2011-08-27, 06:25 PM
Prism. Pretty gritty. Lots and lots of math.

Edit: Oh, and battlestar galactica RPG. I own the book but have never played :(

Ravens_cry
2011-08-27, 06:32 PM
Dresden Files RPG is totally awesome. Everyone should go play it :smallcool:

Y'know a complete inverse of Obscure but Awesome? FATAL. Everyone should go play it, so they will respect every other RPG far more.
Yes, oh so yes. You think 3.X is unbalanced?
You don't need to weave millions of baskets to level.
You think grapple is over complicated.
Well, it is, but at least you don't need to roll a d100 TWICE to find the results that are statically the same as flipping a coin.
And yes, those were the most forum-safe examples I could think of.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2011-08-27, 06:42 PM
Badass Presidents (http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/badass-presidents) does everything its title promises.

Damn! That is one badass RPG!

Knaight
2011-08-27, 10:30 PM
Dead Inside
Basically, this is a game about playing emotionally deadened people who have given up on life. I wouldn't call it fun, per se, but it is certainly worthwhile.

Warrior, Rogue, and Mage
It scratches the D&D itch perfectly. Moreover, it does so through the idea of archetype blending, and better captures the feel of early D&D than early D&D, while being both short and mechanically elegant. It is also free.

Zageidh
2011-08-27, 11:12 PM
Paranoia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%29;) Welcome to Alpha Complex, citizen. Have a free sample of Bouncy Bubble Beverage, the Mandatory drink of choice. If you do not provide a satisfying personal experience summary about the event of your consumption of this product, you will be required to report for summary execution. Failure to report for summary execution will be reason for you to be required to report for summary execution. Failure to report for summary execution will be reason for you to be required to report for summary execution. Failure to report for summary execution will be reason for you to be required to report for summary execution. *Paradox detected, isolated, cleared.* Have a nice daycycle, citizen.

Arbane
2011-08-28, 12:45 AM
Paranoia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%29;) Welcome to Alpha Complex, citizen.

I find it helps me imagine Alpha Complex if I think of Friend Computer as having the voice of GLaDOS.

Anyway, Obscure... I found a second-hand copy of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG today, how's that? From all I've heard it manages to be that rarest of things, a licensed game that DOESN'T suck. The system's not too clunky, and it does a decent job of balancing the spotlight time for the Slayer and the Scoobies.

Jjeinn-tae
2011-08-28, 12:56 AM
Dang, I was hoping to be the first to say Maid.

+more stuff that Jjeinn cut

:smalltongue: I knew it always comes up quickly in these, so I jumped at it.

You can also do some other weird stuff with it that aren't harem, MIKO RPG, a sample scenario deals with demon hunting of a sort... Kind of... OK, there it's a Harem to a God probably... to an extent... Ellipses...

Totally Guy
2011-08-28, 01:50 AM
From all I've heard it manages to be that rarest of things, a licensed game that DOESN'T suck.

There are good licensed games out there. Because licences tend to be adaptations of existing systems authors get a chance to firm up their rules.
Dresden Files - Fate
Mouse Guard - Burning Wheel
Leverage and Smallville - Cortex
Doctor Who (By Cubical 7) - (Original?)


My awesome, obscure game is Lacuna Part 1. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City (second attempt) (http://memento-mori.com/lacuna/). It's an RPG that does Inception. But it was written way before Inception came out. Players go into a dream space to eliminate the hostile parts of a subject's personality. While there every action the characters carry out increases their heart rate. If it gets too high threats can kill you in the dream. As the players interact more with the world the dream space gets more aggressive and surreal through the accumulation of static.

In the end the players end up trying to balance the things they do so that they avoid threatening their lives, avoid alerting the dream that they're messing with it and accomplishing their mission.

It's a really clever and light game. It's about 60 pages long.

Dragonmuncher
2011-08-28, 07:03 PM
Oh man, how aboutBliss Stage? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlissStage)

It's like a cross between his Dark Materials and Neon Genesis Evangelion. You're all part of a squad of young teens, who battle aliens using robots made out of parts based on your relationships with others.

Gorgondantess
2011-08-28, 07:23 PM
Everyone is John: (http://wso.williams.edu/~msulliva/campaigns/john/) simple, and rather poorly designed and broken (I've played it a few times and had to use judicious houseruling & changes each time) but wacky hijinks and unmitigated japery resound.:smallbiggrin:

Doorhandle
2011-08-28, 09:03 PM
I know a good-but-incomplete one: Xia! (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Xia:_Main_Page) is a hombrew system designed by an RPGnet fourmer.

Also, anything on http://www.1km1kt.net/ would count.

Arcane_Snowman
2011-08-28, 09:18 PM
All Flesh Must Be Eaten - It's a zombie Apocalypse, the DM creates a kind of zombie (lots of different options) and the player's try to survive. I have not gotten to really play it much yet, but apparently try is the key word there. :smalltongue:
AFMBE is based off of the Unisystem, which has another setting which I rarely see mentioned anywhere, Witchcraft, an urban fantasy setting with some intruiging options, it is however rather had to balance as supernatural beings are often twice as tough as the standard human, and as a consequence most magicians. It's been discontinued for some time now though, which is a bit of a shame.
Eclipse Phase: (http://eclipsephase.com/) a horror game set in a transhumanistic future.

Twilight 2013: an apocalypse game, the world as we know it has ended as a result of the latest world war, and it is your job to survive.

Ars Magica: a game mostly centered around mages in a medieval Europe where everything they believed is true.

Tyndmyr
2011-08-28, 09:28 PM
Everyone is John. Google it.



Also, soon to be added to the list: White Rain. When it's got core finished, I promise to post an SRD.

SowZ
2011-08-28, 09:31 PM
Carnage 3:16
Its the official alien genocide RPG, and a lot of it has to do with questions about the acceptable price of utopia. Fascinating stuff.
Chronica Feudalis
This is written as if it were the translated document found in a 12th century monastery, and written by monks there. I mean that literally, and that leads to it being an incredible read, of what is also a very good game.
Lucid
Basically, its a specific build of Dread to cover what is basically Inception. That leads to quality.

I'd list Fudge, but I've probably shilled it out to the point where it is no longer obscure at all on this forum.

Also known as Starship Troopers, the roleplaying game! Heh. If I remember, there is actually a disillusion mechanic in game, right?

Knaight
2011-08-28, 09:40 PM
Also known as Starship Troopers, the roleplaying game! Heh. If I remember, there is actually a disillusion mechanic in game, right?

I don't remember one, but it is entirely believable.

Jude_H
2011-08-28, 09:46 PM
Sort of.

There's the mechanic where you get to have flashbacks to win or escape fights, but your last flashback has to include "hatred for home."

The way players manage that can swing pretty drastically, and it doesn't come up until pretty deep into the game. It's still definitely an element, though.

Jjeinn-tae
2011-08-28, 09:55 PM
AFMBE is based off of the Unisystem, which has another setting which I rarely see mentioned anywhere, Witchcraft, an urban fantasy setting with some intruiging options, it is however rather had to balance as supernatural beings are often twice as tough as the standard human, and as a consequence most magicians. It's been discontinued for some time now though, which is a bit of a shame.

They had/have another one in the system too... Armageddon? Maybe?

How is Witchcraft though? It seemed interesting to me.

Jude_H
2011-08-28, 10:07 PM
They had/have another one in the system too... Armageddon? Maybe?
Yeah. Armageddon, Conspiracy, the planet of the apes thing and its light version for Buffy/Angel and Evil Dead.

Arbane
2011-08-28, 11:17 PM
Yeah. Armageddon, Conspiracy, the planet of the apes thing and its light version for Buffy/Angel and Evil Dead.

I think the zombapocalypse RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten is based on the same system.

Jjeinn-tae
2011-08-28, 11:21 PM
I think the zombapocalypse RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten is based on the same system.

Scroll up a bit (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11738569#post11738569), that's how we got on this line of conversation. :smalltongue:

Jude_H
2011-08-28, 11:44 PM
I think the zombapocalypse RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten is based on the same system.
You know, I might have heard of that one. :smalltongue:

Looking up the Terra Primate, the apeocalypse Unisystem game, I think I have a new game to try. I'm just not sure I'll use the system itself. Has anybody tried it/read it? I'm curious if it has anything to distinguish it from any other Unisystem game, beside allowing us to monkey around with words.

And as for how the other Unisystem games work (I've mostly used AFMBE, Witchcraft and AoD), they're solid for action-horror, but I haven't had great experiences pushing the systems outside that genre. Their calculations, tables and specifically statted items/vehicles seem onerous in lighter-toned games, and their explicit stats and exploding dice tripped up a less heroic horror game I tried with AFMBE. As a whole, though, they're pretty good at what they do, and their books are generally pretty fun.

Arcane_Snowman
2011-08-28, 11:51 PM
Armageddon is an expanded setting for Witchcraft, the core book simply gives the different factions and leaves it at that, Armageddon has an actual time line involving the coming of the Messiah of an eldritch horror named Leviathan, prompting heaven and hell to break their “cold war”-esque attitude towards one another and descend almost wholesale upon earth.

Witchcraft is an interesting system, though it takes it's realism a little too seriously: with the “Oh my god, I've been shot” rule, ridiculously high damage on most projectile or edged weapons, combat is downright rocket-tag for mortals. As a mage, you can kinda mitigate the one shot equals death approach via spells, but when almost every single supernatural creature has some kind of way to avoid getting butchered by that kind of weapon naturally, it can get a little bit jarring.

MunsterJujus
2011-08-28, 11:52 PM
Monster and Other Childish Things.

You have an imaginary friend. Imaginary friend is real. Imaginary friend lacks empathy and causes you problems when he tries to "fix" situations. Sometime Imaginary Friend fights other Imaginary Friends to keep kids "safe" and "happy".

Awesome little system with lots of ridiculous/goofy/scary situations.

Ted_Stryker
2011-08-29, 04:23 AM
Operation: Fallen Reich (http://www.fallen.se/)

It's a Swedish RPG (though the rules are in English) in which the characters are British heroes in the late 1930s. Character creation is done by means of a board game that's essentially a life path generator. It's pretty fun. Haven't actually played the game yet, but hoping to change that pretty soon.

onthetown
2011-08-29, 03:18 PM
I guess RuneQuest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneQuest) used to be pretty widespread or popular, but I never hear it mentioned anymore and I've been quickly falling in love with it and its setting through the weekly games with my friend's dad.

You're in Glorantha and your goal is to become a RuneLord of whatever cult you follow. Lots of original fluff stuff for the setting, and the rules are nice -- roll a d100 and try to get under what your skill % is. 100 is a botch, 01 is a critical. It's pretty rules-light for the players, but judging from what I've been observing, the DM has to do loads of math.

I think I love the world of Glorantha more than RuneQuest itself, though.

Arbane
2011-08-29, 03:36 PM
Scroll up a bit (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11738569#post11738569), that's how we got on this line of conversation. :smalltongue:

I guess I failed a Spot check.



Witchcraft is an interesting system, though it takes it's realism a little too seriously: with the “Oh my god, I've been shot” rule, ridiculously high damage on most projectile or edged weapons, combat is downright rocket-tag for mortals.

I'd argue that's relatively realistic. Being a normal human in a gunfight is a BAD place to be.



I guess RuneQuest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneQuest) used to be pretty widespread or popular, but I never hear it mentioned anymore and I've been quickly falling in love with it and its setting through the weekly games with my friend's dad.

RQ was never as popular as D&D, but it's been around a LONG time, and people who like it, tend to like it a LOT.



I think I love the world of Glorantha more than RuneQuest itself, though.

There's a recent 'indie' game called HeroQuest which uses Glorantha, but the rules are very different. (You define your character as a descriptive paragraph. and assign numerical scores for the traits in it.)

JackShandy
2011-08-29, 03:43 PM
Montsegur 1244 An incredible game that plays very differently every time despite having a fixed setting and a cast of somewhat predefined characters. Deals with real-world religious issues, so avoid if your group isn't very comfortable with that.

The Mountain Witch Another game with a fairly constrained setting but a lot of potential. One of my favorite RPG sessions ever was the characters sitting in a ghost haunted hut telling eachother ghost stories that hinted at their secrets.

In a Wicked Age Really cool low setup time roleplaying with an interesting setting generation system.

EccentricCircle
2011-08-29, 03:55 PM
I've only played it once but
Dead of Night : http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11841.phtml

Basically its a horror movie game. the players play a party of victims who have a certain number of survival points. you can spend survival points to achieve certain ends, win them for critical successes and lose them for rolling a thirteen on 2d10. once you run out of survival points the DM can kill off your character whenever they feel like it.

the game I played ended with my character being the only non zombie left, trapped in Main Engineering. I blew up the Space ship to prevent the virus spreading. I consider that winning.

Arcane_Snowman
2011-08-29, 04:17 PM
I'd argue that's relatively realistic. Being a normal human in a gunfight is a BAD place to be. Which is why it's taking it's realism too seriously, if you're not really familiar with the game and don't get firearms or some means to protect yourself against them as a human, then you're boned. One stray bullet killing your character is not particularly fun, especially when there's half a dozen supernaturals that laugh at damage.

Mono Vertigo
2011-08-29, 04:42 PM
One game still in "development", but nonetheless playable already (with expectable imbalance issues) is Magical Burst, found in this blog (http://yarukizero.wordpress.com/tag/magical-burst/).
You all play magical girls who were recruited by a magical critter, a tsukaima. The city is prey to strange monsters, and you need to find the right balance between your normal, social life (that seems to help you in various ways for the rest of the gameplay, thanks to the social links), and your magical adventures. Oh, and actually, you got your powers and duty in exchange for a wish; magical girls, monsters and tsukaima alike have the potential to have horrid stories/fates behind them; your powers can and will cause painful collateral damage, and you/your loved ones will suffer magic-induced changes as you grow in power.

Basically? It is Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with bits of Persona, and if you liked MAID for the tables, well, lucky you, there are tons of these as well (but without the creepy stuff, instead you get the good kind of scary)!

Haven't played it (yet), but there's a lot of potential, and it allows alternate settings with relatively little tweaking.

kaomera
2011-08-29, 08:02 PM
My awesome, obscure game is Lacuna Part 1. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City (second attempt) (http://memento-mori.com/lacuna/). It's an RPG that does Inception. But it was written way before Inception came out.
Yeah, Lacuna Part 1 is pretty awesome. A number of awesome suggestions here...

Has anyone mentioned Apocalypse World (http://apocalypse-world.com/) yet? Barf forth apocalyptica, indeed.

My personal pick-of-the-moment would be Backswords & Bucklers (http://tiedtoakite.com/backswords_bucklers), however. Elizabethan OSR Tavern Trawling. Plus, really, who doesn't love an excuse to get the codpiece out of the closet and parade it around?

Then there's I Dare You to Play This; but then IDYPT is more of a meta-RPG. Basically you go into a used book shop (or anywhere that might sell used games), buy something you've never heard of (or at least never read / ...never played / ...never GM'ed), and then get some friends to play at least a 4-hour session of it (errata: at least a 15-minute session) with no prep (including no pre-reading of the rules). Bonus points if you grabbed something that actually isn't an RPG, but play it like it was one, anyway.

Blackfang108
2011-08-29, 09:30 PM
Oh, and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is a rules-lite way of telling ridiculous improv stories.

I must find!

meschlum
2011-08-29, 09:30 PM
A playable version of Exalted: Fair Folk? Nah. Not obscure enough.

Time to look through ye olde foggy lenses of warped recollection.

Reve: the Dream Ouroboros (http://malcontentgames.com/?page_id=13) is somewhat old school mechanics-wise (equipment has weight, being hurt is easy and dangerous, starting characters are not guaranteed to survive) but it has very nice fluff and mechanics that work well with it too. Plus (involuntary) comedy gold opportunities.

Ahem. Details!

You, your friends, your town, in fact your entire universe (and the universes next door) are all dreams - dreamed by dragons, to be precise. When the dragons' nightmares wake them up, their dreams end, and so do you (your friends / your town / your universe / all the other universes). The last time it happened was when magic, after being discovered, was excessively overused. This was long ago, and now the dragons are sleeping again, their dreams including the possibility of magic and of gates between their dreams.

So you can find yourself transported to another universe via (mostly static, often long lasting) gates, all of which have a general medieval fantasy theme due to dragon dreams melding with one another. More to the point, if you are killed, the dragon dreaming you won't stop dreaming about you, so you'll wake up in another universe, having experienced an oddly vivid dream of another (different) life - and be able to learn from it. Much as you can learn from dream of past lives you (the player) did not die in, of course.

How does this translate, mechanics-wise?

Your character has an Archetype, the sum total of all the skills that the dragon dreaming you has ever dreamed you possessed. You start out a fair way below that Archetype, but as you travel to new worlds and find things that remind you of past dreams / lives, you gain experience towards your Archetype skills at an accelerated rate. You can also practice and improve yourself the traditional way, but it's much slower and requires truly epic challenges to improve past being skilled. Thus, someone with high combat Archetype skills will be able to become a terrifying warrior (relatively) easily over the course of traveling without getting into fights, while someone without would need to survive and win while facing off against massively more skilled opponents.

If you choose to be able to use magic (and it's generally to your advantage, though you are more fragile in the long run as a result), you cast spells by shifting your awareness closer to the conscious level of the dragon's dreams. In this new realm, you travel from one place of power to the next, meeting strange forces that can help or hinder, until you find one that suits the spell you want to use. Then you cast it - and can either trigger it at once, or continue to travel in the dream realm. The next time you go to that place of power, the spell will activate at once, so you can have a large number of spells 'in reserve' - but risk activating them at the wrong moment.

How do things become hilarious?

When you use magic (including magic potions), you spend dream points (the mana equivalent), which can only be recovered when you're asleep for the two hours around midnight. Most of the time, this happens harmlessly, and can even give you more than your normal maximum dream points. Sometimes, the dragons notice you... and if you're very lucky, you wake up overflowing with dream points and a more or less permanent intrinsic bonus. Otherwise, you typically wake up with a range of temporary and very amusing derangements.

True game story: the party necromancer analog (focusing on spells of Awakening, obviously) wakes up with two simultaneous compulsions: give all his money to the first stranger he sees, and be overcome with hatred and the need to insult and demean the first stranger he sees.

"I wake up and wrap my pillow around my face."

"Find me a wretched beggar!"

Necromancer is led to the local pie vendor (whom he'd met before), and told he's facing a beggar. Sees a customer instead.

"Damn you. Here, sir - take all my money."

"Er... Thanks?"

"Now buy me a pie!"

"Alright."

Necromancer takes the fresh (piping hot) pie and slams it in the customer's face.

"I feel so much better now."


Add a neat system for enchanting items (not accessible at character creation, but very versatile), some very fun spells, and fluff that takes itself not too seriously, and you've got a fun game.


Next: other ancient and obscure games. Some of which you probably should not play.

TooManySecrets
2011-08-30, 11:20 AM
I must find!

Ask and you shall receive (http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Adventures-Baron-Munchausen-Role-playing/dp/1899749187).

Knaight
2011-08-30, 01:14 PM
The Great Tournament (Free) (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=65945)
A competitive GMless freeform role playing game about a bunch of Wuxia characters involved in a large tournament, all of whom are there for reasons other than winning the tournament.

meschlum
2011-08-30, 09:49 PM
Now, then.

Probably thankfully obscure, what with certain setting... features? Yes, let's call them that.

Bloodlust is (was) a game in which you played a sentient, indestructible magic weapon, granting fairly notable power to your carrier. This had a number of interesting consequences.

1) You don't care (much) about dying. It just means waiting a bit until someone else picks you up (such as one of the guards who killed your previous bearer) and going on from there.

2) Water Is EVIL. Excessively so - if you get tossed into the ocean, or a well, you (being a chunk of indestructible, inanimate metal) will never get out. And anyone wanting to get you out will drown first...

3) At character (weapon) creation, you get a fair number of semi-random powers, enabling a large variation in starting 'characters'. Some are more useful than others, but it's generally possible to come up with some nasty combos, and you always grant your carrier decent protection from damage, allowing them to survive that much longer.

4) Over time, as you accumulate sensations, you can begin to meld with a favored carrier. They've picked up experience and are therefore better fighters, and you've picked up more powers, so it's an interesting synergy.

5) Sensations? Indeed! Weapons gain 'experience' via their carriers - the rush of making a fortune, the heady feeling of winning a fight, the... pleasure... of spending all that money on wine, women, and whatever else. All contribute to making the weapon more powerful, though each has its own personality, affecting its goals. A sword that really cares about fame will drive its carrier to challenge everyone she meets, while an axe focused on wealth will gladly encourage its carrier to throw a fight for a handful of gems.


Now for the less than happy sides.

1) Balance is iffy at best. Play a barbarian with a heavy weapon, and you'll have a pet (human) flesh eating horse analog, massive combat power, and overall survivability. Play an urban rogue with a dagger, and you'll be upgrading to a new body pretty soon (though you'll probably pull off a few awesome kills first).

2) The setting is something like a mixture of the worlds of Robert E Howard and John Norman. It is quite possible for weapons (via random powers) to become obsessed with matters best left to FATAL. Fortunately, no details are provided, but all players should be playing at the same level of maturity or there will be... issues.

3) It is afflicted with a metaplot that manages (in some ways) to outdo the early White Wolf 'successes', by virtue of being unfinished, erratically adding nonsensical things to the game world, and being completely irrelevant. On the plus side, it's superfluous anyway.


So it's a fun system if you like high combat raiding adventures, a setting that has issues, semi random character creation with decent diversity and efficiency in the outcomes, and fairly simple and lethal combat (lethal for those who lack magic weapons, that is).

It's also (perhaps for a reason) out of print, but the creators have apparently expressed a willingness to have it made available via torrent.

Heatwizard
2011-09-02, 04:48 AM
I've always had a soft spot for Traveller.

caden_varn
2011-09-02, 07:25 AM
Torg is good fun. Earth has been invaded by different realities bent on stripping the basic energey of reality from the place. You can be a cyberpunk, a medieval mage, a silver ages superhero type, even a caveman (or a flying starfish that can't speak cave..starfish (I guess?).

Inter-party balance can be a bit wonky, but an experienced DM can easily sort that out.
Quick and easy, somewhat basic system, includes cards which the players can use to get certain combat boosts or alter the storyline (such as Romance, which may cause an NPC to fall for a PC (or vice versa), or make an NPC an old flame...)

I only wish I could find someone else to DM it so I could play.

Earthdawn is also fun - D&D style setting, nice mechanic IMO. Never had a chance to play it to very high level though.

Arbane
2011-09-02, 11:41 AM
Torg is good fun.
(snip)
Quick and easy, somewhat basic system, includes cards which the players can use to get certain combat boosts or alter the storyline (such as Romance, which may cause an NPC to fall for a PC (or vice versa), or make an NPC an old flame...)

I remember that game! I was still a noob back then, and I couldn't quite wrap my head around the system. I do remember it had an odd way of handling damage to cause actual injuries, 'shock', and being knocked unconscious.

The cards were neat - they gave PCs bonuses for doing stuff in combat _besides_ "I swing at him".

Unless I missed something important, though, you couldn't pay me to play a cyborg in that system. Blow one reality roll in the wrong realm, and you'll be hobbling around as an amputee for the rest of the session...

caden_varn
2011-09-02, 12:54 PM
Not really, unless your DM is mean. If you just disconnect your cyberlimbs will stop working til you reconnect, which should only take a minute or so even with bad rolls. Of course, you do need to watch out for people invoking reality storms on you - you either want to win or lose badly enough to get physically transformed.
Even if you don't though, you can still use the cyberlimbs etc., but you will disconnect a lot...
Now a cyberheart would be a bad plan, I agree.

Ravens_cry
2011-09-02, 01:36 PM
I think that would be a bad plan regardless unless you literally had no other options. What about someone with a heart transplant, meat to meat?
I actually own a copy of TORG, and it looks interesting to be true, but I have never played it. Other fairly obscure games I own but have not played are Bushido, basically a game in a place supposed to be a lot like Medieval Japan. I will have to look through it again to say anything about the mechanics, but it uses a d20.
A game I own I really want to play is Ghostbusters. Because we all know their is something strange in the neighbourhood. Who are you going to call?

The Glyphstone
2011-09-02, 01:39 PM
I wonder - was there ever a licensed MIB RPG? If so, Was it awfulHow awful was it?

Ravens_cry
2011-09-02, 05:24 PM
I wonder - was there ever a licensed MIB RPG? If so, Was it awfulHow awful was it?
You would need hardy PC, K got eaten and survived after all, a system for rewarding crazy stunts, K got eaten and blew up an unreasonably large bug from the inside, and lots of tools for making quirky weirdos as well as aliens. Mutants and Masterminds sounds fair, with the right calibration.

Ashtar
2011-09-02, 07:10 PM
The Silhouette system (http://store.dp9.com/product_info.php?products_id=105&osCsid=bba2ce0e023ce8b26e3d52f94063f6b5) from Dream Pod 9 (http://dp9.com/). Generic rules used to power the universe of Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles.

Big Eyes Small Mouth (mentioned earlier)

Mekton Zeta, a system to run large robots.

Arbane
2011-09-02, 07:47 PM
I wonder - was there ever a licensed MIB RPG? If so, Was it awfulHow awful was it?

I know there was at one point. I don't remember the rules at all, though.

kaomera
2011-09-02, 08:30 PM
I wonder - was there ever a licensed MIB RPG? If so, Was it awfulHow awful was it?
http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=4912

West End Games. Supposedly as good as the d6 Star Wars game (that a ton of people loved), and which it sharded most of it's system with - with a comedy twist. There was a pretty big community built around the MIB game around here at one point. I never actually got to play it, but the Hercules & Xena d6 game was full of a surprising amount of awesomeness*, so I suspect it might have been pretty good.

*Aside from a couple of real idiots and jerks who really wanted me to run D&D and so sabotaged the game. Especially since I was already running D&D for them and wasn't interested in running a second night.

turkishproverb
2011-09-03, 01:13 AM
I wonder - was there ever a licensed MIB RPG? If so, Was it awfulHow awful was it?

Ahem.


I think you and me are going to get along.

*Scribbles links*

Some from me then...hmm....
Offhand, that I've played, these come to mind quick:

Inspectres

Tales from the Crypt
Silver age Sentinels


Less but still arguably obscure:
Men in Black
Ghostbusters (Ok, it may not be that obscure)

and to answer your question, it was good, but not as good as ghost-busters.

Raum
2011-09-03, 07:34 AM
Hmm, I didn't see Over the Edge (http://www.atlas-games.com/overtheedge/) or Diaspora (http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/) mentioned yet. A few more:
- Age of Shadow (http://ageofshadow.freehostia.com/)
- Fear (http://www.fearrpg.net/)
- Violence RPG (http://www.costik.com/Violence%20RPG1.pdf)
- PDQ (http://evilhat.wikidot.com/pdq)
- TriStat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Stat_dX)
- Wushu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushu_%28role-playing_game%29)

The Glyphstone
2011-09-03, 10:34 AM
How many games out there can be run entirely without a DM?

Knaight
2011-09-03, 11:06 AM
Hmm, I didn't see Over the Edge (http://www.atlas-games.com/overtheedge/) or Diaspora (http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/) mentioned yet. A few more:
- Age of Shadow (http://ageofshadow.freehostia.com/)
- Fear (http://www.fearrpg.net/)
- Violence RPG (http://www.costik.com/Violence%20RPG1.pdf)
- PDQ (http://evilhat.wikidot.com/pdq)
- TriStat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Stat_dX)
- Wushu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushu_%28role-playing_game%29)
Speaking of Over The Edge, there is Over The Fudge, the Fudge adaptation of it. It is rather impressive.

How many games out there can be run entirely without a DM?
A ridiculously high amount.

The Glyphstone
2011-09-03, 12:28 PM
A ridiculously high amount.

Any suggestions for good ones? My most reliable group all hate DMing.

Knaight
2011-09-03, 12:29 PM
Any suggestions for good ones? My most reliable group all hate DMing.
It really depends on what you want to do. That said, take a look at the Mythic GM Emulator, which allows you to have GMless games in any setting with no tweaking.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-09-03, 12:49 PM
Any suggestions for good ones? My most reliable group all hate DMing.
Fiasco (http://www.gnomestew.com/reviews/fiasco-in-action-and-why-you-should-play-this-game) is one that I've heard touted as astoundingly good. It's become somewhat of a big hit with people looking for something fresh and good.

Knaight
2011-09-03, 03:11 PM
Fiasco (http://www.gnomestew.com/reviews/fiasco-in-action-and-why-you-should-play-this-game) is one that I've heard touted as astoundingly good. It's become somewhat of a big hit with people looking for something fresh and good.

Fiasco is incredible.

Jude_H
2011-09-03, 04:23 PM
Fiasco (http://www.gnomestew.com/reviews/fiasco-in-action-and-why-you-should-play-this-game) is one that I've heard touted as astoundingly good. It's become somewhat of a big hit with people looking for something fresh and good.Fiasco is amazing. It's a simple, easy to set up way to structure a RP session; it's brilliant at spewing out complete narratives in a single session; it's light enough to be an easy beer-and-pretzels game; its metagame is easy to grasp and drives the fiction.

The only problems I've had with it are introducing new players who don't have backgrounds in RPGs or theatre (the scenes are largely unstructured, and players' goals are fairly abstract, compared to other games) and setting up new scenarios (it's pretty easy, but it's pretty easy to run in circles with already used plot elements once you've made a couple).

Actually, has anyone played The Shab-al-Hiri Roach? It's by the same author as Fiasco and Grey Ranks and every write-up about it sounds kind of neat, but I've never played it or heard anything concrete about how it runs.

JackShandy
2011-09-03, 05:45 PM
Actually, has anyone played The Shab-al-Hiri Roach? It's by the same author as Fiasco and Grey Ranks and every write-up about it sounds kind of neat, but I've never played it or heard anything concrete about how it runs.

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a fun game, but the mechanics aren't nearly as good as Fiasco. The whole 'love the character on your right and hate the character to your left' produces an overly squashed relationship map. The setting is great, though.

Knaight
2011-09-03, 06:05 PM
On other notes, there is Forsooth!*, made by one of the people on this very forum, that won the recent Shakespearean Drama game design competition. There is also The Matter of Rose*, which was an entry in said competition that I personally liked.

*I may have these two reversed.

joe
2011-09-04, 11:37 AM
One I remember playing and enjoying was Obsidian (http://www.apophisconsortium.com/). The mechanics were a little strange, but it was a good bit of fun. Sort of a battle of heaven and hell wages in a post-apocalyptic future full of evil corporations and cyborgs.

Vknight
2011-09-04, 06:37 PM
Here we go. I also own each and can have there systems are fun but it varies between groups.

Monsters & Other Childish Things
Eclipse Phase
A Dirty World
Fight
Ironclaw
Maid
Big Eyes Small Mouth

Shadowknight12
2011-09-04, 06:38 PM
I find myself really wanting to play Until We Sink.

I don't really know why. I guess I like the strange appeal of solving mysteries on a sinking island.

JackShandy
2011-09-07, 01:48 PM
I can't believe I forgot to mention "Prime Time Adventures". It's a roleplaying game where the in-game events are framed as a TV show. It's a great introduction to roleplaying since most people are familiar with how TV works, and it's a great way to get established roleplayers to think about things in a different way.

turkishproverb
2011-09-07, 05:23 PM
TIME LORD

The open-source Doctor who RPG.

Knaight
2011-09-07, 05:25 PM
I can't believe I forgot to mention "Prime Time Adventures". It's a roleplaying game where the in-game events are framed as a TV show. It's a great introduction to roleplaying since most people are familiar with how TV works, and it's a great way to get established roleplayers to think about things in a different way.

Its Fudge System as well, and the Fudge word scale is incredibly intuitive. You don't even have to know the system to understand the character sheets of characters written in it for example.

Vknight
2011-09-08, 11:28 PM
Fiasco is incredible.

I interviewed one of its creators for my senior project. Its a good game but I have yet to actually play it with my group

Totally Guy
2011-09-09, 02:35 AM
Allow me to sum up 1001 Nights (http://www.fairgame-rpgs.com/1001nights.html):

"Yo dawg, I heard you like like roleplaying games so we put a roleplaying game in your roleplaying game so you can roleplay while you roleplay."

You play members of the sultan's court who all envy an aspect of each other.

Your characters tell stories to each other and the sultan hoping to use those stories to gain your ambition and freedom whilst avoiding the sultan's wrath.

The stories you tell are roleplayed by the other players characters. But because the characters are in competition it leads to playing the sub-characters out in particular ways.

Say the scholar is cast as a guard by the actual captain of the guard who is telling the story. The scholar may decide to play his character by being all "Durp de durr, I'm so badly managed and have inadequate training" in order to make the guard captain look stupid.

Xefas
2011-09-11, 03:44 AM
A quick scan seems to tell me that no one has mentioned Misspent Youth yet. Its a great game all around, but I've found a particular, specific use for it that I want to try out.

It's a game about Youthful Offenders fighting some big evil Authority, grasping for the power to change the world while attempting to keep from becoming as corrupt as the Authority itself.

The Authority could be any number of things. It can be a greedy corporation, a rotten political system, a false religion, an outdated way of thinking, or even just a single man with a vision and a will to impose it upon everyone else whether they like it or not.

Part of play is collaboratively designing the Authority, as well as the setting and what its themes and elements are.

So, the specific use I was thinking of? I have yet to find a system that actually captures the Final Fantasy feel for me, until Misspent Youth.

Ramza and Company vs Classism and Corrupt Nobility. Cloud and Avalanche vs Shinra and Other Assorted Madmen Bent On Changing The World. Wakka and Those Other Guys I Guess vs Yevon and their screwed up 'Calm'. So on and so forth.

Young angry people with improbably shaped weapons fighting old oppressive people with antiquated ideals. Whats this about wisdom and experience coming for age? Screw you, buddy, I spiked my hair with egg whites this morning, and I made a special spell just for you that projects fireballs from my raised middle fingers. Throw in some Moogles and you're done.

Balain
2011-09-11, 04:46 AM
There was one I saw I was thinking of picking it up but never did at the time and now I can't remember the name. It was set in Utah, in an alternate/fantasy 1830's based around Mormons. It was pretty obscure but had an interesting mechanic. Wish I could remember more about it now.

There was another system, again I can't think of the name but for some reason I think it was a western style game that used playing cards instead of dice

flumphy
2011-09-11, 05:39 AM
There was one I saw I was thinking of picking it up but never did at the time and now I can't remember the name. It was set in Utah, in an alternate/fantasy 1830's based around Mormons. It was pretty obscure but had an interesting mechanic. Wish I could remember more about it now.

Dogs in the Vineyard (http://www.lumpley.com/dogsources.html).



Bloodlust is (was) a game in which you played a sentient, indestructible magic weapon, granting fairly notable power to your carrier. This had a number of interesting consequences.


Bizarrely, the other day I was sitting around wishing there was an RPG to do just that. (There's this homebrew setting I have...) I'll have to try and hunt this down.

Ravens_cry
2011-09-11, 07:57 PM
Dogs in the Vineyard (http://www.lumpley.com/dogsources.html).

After hearing about it on Fear the Boot, I played it at a convention. It was a lot of fun.


Bizarrely, the other day I was sitting around wishing there was an RPG to do just that. (There's this homebrew setting I have...) I'll have to try and hunt this down.
With some mild home-brewing, basically saying "yes you can play an intelligent item" and making maybe some item classes and feats, you could do this in D&D 3.X.

JackShandy
2011-09-11, 09:38 PM
There was another system, again I can't think of the name but for some reason I think it was a western style game that used playing cards instead of dice

Deadlands is a Weird West game that uses cards (though also uses dice).

Knaight
2011-09-11, 09:42 PM
Deadlands is a Weird West game that uses cards (though also uses dice).

Its a Savage Worlds adaptation, strictly speaking.

Jude_H
2011-09-11, 09:47 PM
Dust Devils is entirely poker hands. It's what I usually use for Westerns, but it's pretty unforgiving to players once they start losing contests.

Edit: Deadlands came in at least 4 varieties - an original system, a d20 game, a GURPS expansion and a savage worlds adaptation (which is a bit wonky because SW was originally a watered down Deadlands variant).

The original Deadlands system has its problems, but is by far the most flavorful/fun. It's also the iteration with the greatest focus on its cards, iirc.

cattoy
2011-09-12, 01:11 AM
Its a Savage Worlds adaptation, strictly speaking.

Other way around, innit?

kaomera
2011-09-12, 07:39 AM
Other way around, innit?
The newest version of Deadlands is SW-based. Savage Worlds, in turn, was developed from the Deadlands-spinoff minis game (Great Rail Wars, according to Wikipedia).