Has anyone actually tried Humans & Houses?

[Karnitis]

It's a meme we've probably all seen once or twice...the funny idea of a ogre, drow, lich and dragon gathering to play D&D except it involves SUV's, bake sales, and a corporate work setting.

The idea almost seems entertaining - like the Sims games, but more creativity and a group play mode. I can see where CHA/DEX/WIS etc would still all come into play, and a ton of fun classes (careers) to choose from.

Of course, then I got to thinking of logistics, and I wilted some. Race bonuses? What's a D&D equivalent of a Murderhobo party? Can being elected to the PTA be as rewarding as conquering a castle?

So in all half-seriousness, has anyone played a modern-day RPG? Like, not war-based or holding any magic?

[Aelyn]

It's not exactly what you're talking about, but my friends and I have done a Traveller campaign (which is a sci-fi game primarily used for exploration, piracy, and mercenary-style campaigns) in which we set up a medium-sized company, then spent each session deciding on the quarter's priorities, managing advertising and research budgets, fending off corporate espionage etc.

We spent one of the earliest sessions deciding on, purchasing, and arranging the installation of the decorations for the lobby in our office.

We've also used d&d rules (heavily homebrewed) for a modern-day Persona campaign, which included quite a few sessions of just day-to-day life in the in-universe high school - planning a winter ball, splitting our efforts between studying, after-school jobs, and our social lives, etc. But then there was a supernatural story layered on top of that.

[Connington]

It's a meme we've probably all seen once or twice...the funny idea of a ogre, drow, lich and dragon gathering to play D&D except it involves SUV's, bake sales, and a corporate work setting.

The idea almost seems entertaining - like the Sims games, but more creativity and a group play mode. I can see where CHA/DEX/WIS etc would still all come into play, and a ton of fun classes (careers) to choose from.

Of course, then I got to thinking of logistics, and I wilted some. Race bonuses? What's a D&D equivalent of a Murderhobo party? Can being elected to the PTA be as rewarding as conquering a castle?

So in all half-seriousness, has anyone played a modern-day RPG? Like, not war-based or holding any magic?

I play in a weekly GURPS Modern Secret Agents campaign. I know other people who play magic-free games as cops investigating a crime or as criminals pulling off heists or building up their street gang. All magic-free Humans in monster-free Houses. Plenty of action and excitement.

Conversely, I also know of some tables that play sci-fi, fantasy, or historical campaigns that draw more from The Sims or cozy mystery fiction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_mystery) than heroic epics. With those you get the fun of really thinking and acting out what it would be like to live in a cyberpunk world or in Elizabeth I's court or whatever.

You have even more campaigns, modern or fantastic, where the mundanity of school, relationships, and jobs are used as a B-Plot to ground the characters in real life (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer). "Roll for how well you do in your classes" is a common phrase in the other "College students in a modern version of a D&D world" campaign I play in.

As for strict "You live in completely boring suburbs/work in a boring office", I know I've seen indie developers sketch out some satirical rules for that, and I'm sure people have played them as one-shots. I'm not aware of anyone living out parallel mundane lives in a long running campaign, but the law of really big numbers suggests some table out there has done just that.

[JoeJ]

You'll probably get a better conversation on this topic if you ask the mods to move this thread to the General Roleplaying forum.

[Karnitis]

I play in a weekly GURPS Modern Secret Agents campaign. I know other people who play magic-free games as cops investigating a crime or as criminals pulling off heists or building up their street gang. All magic-free Humans in monster-free Houses. Plenty of action and excitement.

Conversely, I also know of some tables that play sci-fi, fantasy, or historical campaigns that draw more from The Sims or cozy mystery fiction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_mystery) than heroic epics. With those you get the fun of really thinking and acting out what it would be like to live in a cyberpunk world or in Elizabeth I's court or whatever.

You have even more campaigns, modern or fantastic, where the mundanity of school, relationships, and jobs are used as a B-Plot to ground the characters in real life (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer). "Roll for how well you do in your classes" is a common phrase in the other "College students in a modern version of a D&D world" campaign I play in.

As for strict "You live in completely boring suburbs/work in a boring office", I know I've seen indie developers sketch out some satirical rules for that, and I'm sure people have played them as one-shots. I'm not aware of anyone living out parallel mundane lives in a long running campaign, but the law of really big numbers suggests some table out there has done just that.

So you definitely got the meaning of what I meant to say - the secret agent/cop type roleplay versus dwarves/elves etc. Having a parallel mundane life is funny to think of existing, but I wouldn't suggest that to anyone.


You'll probably get a better conversation on this topic if you ask the mods to move this thread to the General Roleplaying forum.

That also makes more sense. I've only ever browsed this board, so I kind of forget that other boards exist. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Tetrasodium]

It's a meme we've probably all seen once or twice...the funny idea of a ogre, drow, lich and dragon gathering to play D&D except it involves SUV's, bake sales, and a corporate work setting.

The idea almost seems entertaining - like the Sims games, but more creativity and a group play mode. I can see where CHA/DEX/WIS etc would still all come into play, and a ton of fun classes (careers) to choose from.

Of course, then I got to thinking of logistics, and I wilted some. Race bonuses? What's a D&D equivalent of a Murderhobo party? Can being elected to the PTA be as rewarding as conquering a castle?

So in all half-seriousness, has anyone played a modern-day RPG? Like, not war-based or holding any magic?


Keith baker has mentioned running an A-team type former karrnathi elite undead (zombie/revenant/ghoul/etc types) or escaped experiments out fixing the world at a few cons before. I'm not sure if it came up on twitter, his blog (http://keith-baker.com), a manifest.zone (http://manifest.zone) episode, or ssomething else.. but I've seen it come up a few times.

[Grod_The_Giant]

D&D is definitely not the system to do something like that-- you could probably homebrew it into something suitable for, say, urban fantasy special forces, but the kind of game you're describing seems like it would mostly be about interpersonal conflicts and petty power struggles. People being people, dealing with the stresses of everyday life. You're going to want a system heavily weighted towards roleplay and storytelling, not towards combat. Something like Fate (which brings character personalities to the fore) or STaRS (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/268061/STaRS-The-Simple-Tabletop-Roleplaying-System) (which has robust social combat rules) would be better, and an Apocalypse World hack (which would be built to the specific setting) might work better yet, but... the only two games I can think of that would really do "the drama of everyday life" well are

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/134196/Chuubos-Marvelous-WishGranting-Engine): Also known as "the Miyazaki movie RPG," it's... hard to describe beyond that, really. It's a game about having quiet, character-driven adventures. You know how D&D traditionally gives out XP for killing monsters and stealing treasure? In Chuubo's, you get XP for eliciting emotion from other players and doing genre-appropriate things. I've never played, but I've heard very good things.
Fiasco (https://bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/): Also known as "the Coen Brothers movie RPG," it's not really an RPG so much as it is a collaborative storytelling tool, but with a good group it's amazingly fun. It's a game about normal people getting into deep crap; about what happens when competing ambitions run afoul of each other and everything collapses into a mess of betrayals and self-destruction and unhappy endings. There's no GM; on your "turn," you can either narrate a scene involving your character and let the group decide how it resolves, or let them narrate a scene while you decide how it resolves. There's some added nonsense with dice pools that I can't quite remember the details of, but which encourages everyone to run into as many setbacks as successes, and ultimately determines just how screwed you are at the end. I have played this one, albeit a while ago, and greatly enjoyed the experience.


EDIT:

So you definitely got the meaning of what I meant to say - the secret agent/cop type roleplay versus dwarves/elves etc. Having a parallel mundane life is funny to think of existing, but I wouldn't suggest that to anyone.
Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense. There are at least as many games aimed at the modern day as there are at classic D&D fantasy. Is there a particular genre and/or level of complexity and/or amount of fantastical elements you're looking for?