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2018-09-22, 08:31 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2018
Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
Hey! So I haven't thought about board games in a while (like, many years), but I've been missing the hobby recently. Having some trouble jumping straight back in though. I have some questions, and I'm hoping the kind people here can answer a few of them!
1. Do people still play AD&D?D&D 3.5?(OK, I can see on this site that a lot of people still play 3.5, but how popular is it in general?) Star Wars d20? d20 Modern? GURPS?
2. I thought about picking up Pathfinder, but I hear 2e's coming out. Should I wait?
3. Is D&D 5e the most popular tabletop game right now?
4. Is play-by-post as frustratingly slow as it sounds? Worth trying anyways? I'm happy to hear your experiences.
5. What's a good, popular modern system I can learn (that's not mentioned above)?
6. What's a good, obscure system I can learn, just to expand my repertoire/give me ideas?
7. I've DM'd IRL, but it's so long ago... Any place I can watch an experienced DM run a game?
Any helpful tips about engaging in my tabletop hobby online would be appreciated!Last edited by aviary; 2018-09-22 at 08:34 PM.
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2018-09-22, 08:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2014
- Location
- Avatar By Astral Seal!
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
1) AD&D? A little bit, I think. 3.5, yes. The rest, not sure.
2) Pathfinder is free online. Just use that.
3) Not sure, but it's up there.
4) It's worth trying, but don't expect a blazing speed. It might not be for you, but it's free to try, so why not?
5) Not sure.
6) Engine Heart.
7) There are some 5E D&D podcasts/webshows that some people swear by, but I dunno personally.I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2018-09-22, 08:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2018
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2018-09-22, 08:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2014
- Location
- Avatar By Astral Seal!
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2018-09-22, 09:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
1.Yes, in both real life and online. Each edition/game has it's fans. It can be hard to find players/a DM, but that is true of any game.
2.Depends. You can go with the ''new", or just by the original. Note the Pathfinder 1E is ''on sale" at most places.
3.Hard to say, but it IS popular.
4.It is not ''that slow". Really the speed depends on you and the others. It is possible to have a swift game, if everyone posts a lot each day. But mostly it is a slow, as it's is more a day to day game. But slow is not bad....really a week can go by fast...or even a summer. And even you you only do a post a day..well, a lot happened last week in my play by post games...and even more over the whole summer.
It is worth trying. It's a slower game, sure, but it allows for a lot more detail and role playing.
5.Starfinder or Star Trek Adventures
6.Toon :)
7.You can Google ''watch a D&D game" easy enough.....but, well, everyone runs a game way differently.
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2018-09-22, 09:39 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2012
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
Yup. People still play all these things.
2. I thought about picking up Pathfinder, but I hear 2e's coming out. Should I wait?
3. Is D&D 5e the most popular tabletop game right now?
4. Is play-by-post as frustratingly slow as it sounds? Worth trying anyways? I'm happy to hear your experiences.
5. What's a good, popular modern system I can learn (that's not mentioned above)?
6. What's a good, obscure system I can learn, just to expand my repertoire/give me ideas?
7. I've DM'd IRL, but it's so long ago... Any place I can watch an experienced DM run a game?
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2018-09-23, 11:16 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2018
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
If you've been out of the hobby for more than 5-8 years, the gaming landscape has changed dramatically, and there are gaming styles that are dramatically different than prior to 2010.
Things to think about:
1) if you liked dnd 3.5, then pathfinder is the game you want to chase.
2) if you want something similar, but a little less crunchy, try Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds also has different, non-high fantasy settings. I'm partial to Rippers (victorian horror setting), and Savage Rifts. But there are many options.
3) If you want to try different style of playing, Powered by the Apocalypse (pbta) games, such as Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, Masks. These games focus on different settings and themes with a shift from combat simulation to narrative storytelling.
4) There are lots and lots of games that tailor roleplaying experiences in ways that were less common in the early 2000s. Call of Cthulu does investigative horror well, Pelgrane Press with their GUMSHOE system does investigation roleplaying very well. FATE does narrative roleplay in cool ways. And that's just scratching at the surface. I'd recommend checking some meet-ups in your area, checking out a local con or two, checking a local hobby store and trying things out. It may just be that you're into DnD style gaming and nothing else will appeal to you. But then again, you may try Urban Shadows (pbta) and will never play a hack and slash game ever again.
Worse comes to worse, AetherCon is an online convention and Roll20 has older Dnd versions you can play. And/or try out.
Best of luck finding a group!
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2018-09-24, 04:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
Welcome home!
1. Occasionally. In the last dozen years, I've played original D&D, AD&D 1e and 2e, and D&D 3.5e.
2. Play it now if you have the books, or wait until 2e comes out and buy the 1e books very cheaply at used book stores.
3. No idea. I play what my friends want to play, totally apart from any notion of popularity.
4. Play-by-post was worth doing when it was the only game available, and the internet wasn't available yet.
5. No idea. Why is "modern" a requirement?
6. Flashing Blades (musketeers in Paris)
Pendragon (Arthurian mythos)
TOON (cartoons. Do not try to take this one seriously).
Champions (if you are interested in superheroes and arithmetich isn't a barrier for you.
7. Try a large gaming store in a big city.
Getting my current friends interested has always been easier for me than finding a group of players. It's much easier to convince friends to try a new activity than to convince strangers to try a new potential friend.Last edited by Jay R; 2018-09-24 at 04:36 PM.
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2018-09-24, 06:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
I'm English probably the two games that get the most talk (and are therefore the most prominent) are D&D5e and Fate. Of the two 5e is probably more popular, but Fate is not only available for free but is also the more 'modern' one design-wise (having somewhat more narativist mechanics, although the core is a qualitative simulationist game) and arguably the one with more respect.
Although if we play on German DSA is significantly more popular.
Prior have pretty much answered your other questions, so into the one I can give some recommendations on myself.
For more obscure games worth looking at, there's Unknown Armies (not exactly obscure, but it's a very good Urban Fantasy game with a gritty tone and a focus on the weird), The Laundry (although only if you're a fan of the Charles Stross books), and Yggdrassil, Keltia, and Qin: the Warring States (all three by the same company, ask three low fantasy, all three well researched, the first being ~500ce Norsemen, the second being ~500ce Britons*, and the last being ~200bce China with wuxia tropes).
* Celts, on the island of Great Britain. The hand is also a more historically accurate King Arthur game than Pendragon.Last edited by Anonymouswizard; 2018-09-24 at 06:51 PM.
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2018-09-24, 07:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2018
- Location
- IRL
- Gender
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
1.
My lot primarily use home brewed systems, but they've definitely taken some inspiration from all of those for one experiment or another - some sticking some not. The only exception is probably Star Wars d20, but that's just us though.
2.
PF 1e books are currently on sale in most places I've seen, so you could jump right in for cheap! I'm not sure how big the differences between the editions will be because I haven't been following the playtest, but according to Paizo's FAQ they are streamlining the action system, introducing a unified proficiency system and apparently changing the paradigm with magical weapons so standard weapons will be sufficient to have balanced characters. If those are positive or negative for you, they might help you decide if the wait (and higher price point ) are worth it.
3.
In the English-speaking world, it's definitely dnd 5e. Fate, GURPS and so on definitely have their supporters though. The sales figures and active player numbers for 5e were brought up in another thread recently - quoted in the spoiler below. DSA (Das Schwarze Auge or the Dark Eye in English) has always seemed to dominate the German market, so that doesn't surprise me. I have heard that the main game in Japan right now is Call of Cthulhu but I can't remember where I heard that.
4.
Never tried it. I assume it's slower paced of course but my biggest concern is tone - I can sound like an absolute dingbat if I don't communicate my tone well.
5. & 6.
I'm merging these because I'm not sure how popular/obscure some of these are and so that I don't feel so bad for listing a bunch in one go.
- I second Apocalypse World and the Powered by the Apocalypse games like Dungeon World - definitely worth a look.
- The Star Wars rpgs by Fantasy Flight games and their Genesys system are doing something very interesting - but require you to get your hands on their non-numerical dice or use a look up table unfortunately.
- While it's not quite my cup of tea, 13th age is a d20 game released by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet (lead designers of dnd 3e and 4e respectively) that has some interesting ideas that are worth a look - like characters' One Unique Thing, Icon relationships and the escalation die. We've experimented with the escalation die and it helps encourage quick paced combat without turning it into an unsatisfying one-turn rout or letting the casters nova everything as easily - you would need to bump up enemies to-hit/dodge mechanic accordingly though.
- White Wolf is coming out with a fifth edition of Vampire: the Masquerade, if that's your thing. I'm sure that one will be fairly popular.
- There's also Kult: Divinity Lost, a reboot of the Kult game from '91 (horror game where human reality is an illusory prison hiding a horrifying reality).
- There's Zweihander (with an umlaut on the a) Grim and Perilous RPG, a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay retro-clone that's been getting some attention and praise.
- I've heard about Weave which is a narrative game aimed at one shots with minimal preparation. It uses an app, a deck of their own cards (kind of a Tarot deck feel) and their own dice. Some of the settings look absolutely bonkers.
- Also Grant Howitt has a bunch of completely free one or two page rpgs that are brilliant fun for one-shots. Like Honey Heist - where you play bears trying to steal honey and only have two stats: bear and criminal. Weird game, but very fun for a pizza night with friends.
7. Oh there are so many rpg... shows(?) now that it is easy to find streams of a game. There's the Roll20 YouTube channel linked above, there's "Critical Role", "Dice, Camera, Action" and "Acquisitions Inc." and I'm sure a BUNCH of others that I've never heard of or watched.. The important caveat is that everyone has their preferred style of playing and sometimes people can get hung up on emulating a certain game they saw - which is no fun. There's also a LOT of stuff out there for DM/GM advice from the Angry GM, Matt Colville and probably more than I can list. Give it a google, you'll likely have to wade through some stuff that's not right for you to find the stuff that is.Last edited by GaelofDarkness; 2018-09-24 at 08:30 PM.
According to easydamus, I'm a 4th level CG elf wizard. Str 9 - Dex 11 - Con 9 - Int 18 - Wis 14 - Cha 16.
Homebrew setting (or part thereof): Phaunia and the Twilit Between
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2018-09-24, 07:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- The Great White North
- Gender
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
6. Mouse Guard
How do you keep a fool busy? Turn upside down for answer.
˙ɹǝʍsuɐ ɹoɟ uʍop ǝpısdn uɹnʇ ¿ʎsnq ןooɟ ɐ dǝǝʞ noʎ op ʍoɥ
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2018-09-25, 07:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2018
- Gender
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
Have you tried watching YouTube? There's a ton of channels on there dedicated to D&D. Just click the search bar and type in, "Dungeons and Dragons"
You'll get loads of stuff that will tell you everything you need to know.
But don't watch DawnForgedCast or WebDM
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2018-09-26, 03:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
First things first - the market has exploded since you left, and that's without getting into what electronic distribution meant for the free self publishing side. There's tons and tons of systems, basically all of them you can find players for (mostly among people willing to learn new systems generally, who don't necessarily know that system in particular). If you do a google site search for "system recommendations" you'll find a lot of threads where people ask for recommendations and get a deluge, and just skimming those might not be a bad way to reintroduce yourself to the state of the industry.
Yes, to all of these. Some stuck around better than others, with GURPS being in continuous long haul production and success for decades and d20 Modern never really picking up much and having only a tiny fraction of its former players, but all are still around.
If Pathfinder is your jam, grab Pathfinder. Then, if Pathfinder 2e is also your jam, grab Pathfinder 2e. Pathfinder has a free SRD, so there's no cost to picking it up.
Yes. It's not the most popular in every language, but between the size of the NA market and the ubiquity of English as a second language for people with a wide variety of first languages it's still the most popular overall, and that's without getting into translations.
That said, popularity only matters if you don't have the charisma to get players to learn new games that you want to play, at least sometimes. How much charisma that takes can vary, but a lot of games are in short enough books or designed to be easily taught and thus don't take much.
I don't particularly like PbP, but it can work. It's a very different format than real time games though, and that demands different design. D&D in particular transfers extremely poorly to play by post, though there are games that transfer far worse.
See my comments on popularity above. That said, Red Markets made a big splash recently, and while I fully expect it to fade into obscurity right now it fits your criteria. The same applies to Blades in the Dark, though I wouldn't personally recommend that one. On the weirder end, and basically a candidate for question 6 except for its popularity is Microscope.
There's a very large group of RPGs that aren't hugely popular but are still big enough to stay in print, while being produced by actual professional companies (some of which are companies of one person, plus freelancers). Below those in popularity are a large group of games produced by individuals who never made a company, but who still managed to make good games, usually in .pdf. I wouldn't discount either of these, especially not the former.
That said, you asked for a singular game, so I'll select just one: Microscope.
I'm going to refrain from pulling out a list of a dozen systems here, and instead select two, mostly because these are fairly distinct goals. Without further ado:
Hollow Earth Expedition will expand your repertoire. It's very functional, has a lot of cool things in it, and just generally works. There's some mechanical weirdness, sure, but its overall a pretty standard, usable system which is a lot of fun in play.
Rivers and Lakes will give you ideas. I don't particularly like how the mechanics work in play, but it's a fairly short book (released electronically and for free) densely packed with ideas likely to be unfamiliar to you, along with some interesting mechanics I haven't seen elsewhere at all. I wouldn't recommend actually playing it, but for reading material for ideas it's really solid.
Tons. If you're okay with just getting audio I'd recommend the Role Playing Public Radio Actual Play podcast, which has literally hundreds of episodes in dozens of games, including several editions of D&D. I'd also recommend the Fear the Boot Actual Play Podcast, which is a much smaller operation but still an interesting one.I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2018-09-27, 01:18 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Norway
- Gender
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2018-10-01, 02:39 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2018
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
With a recommendation like that...
It's good to be home!
Hey! I keep forgetting SJ Games does things other than GURPS and Munchkin.
Thanks for the thematic recommendations. Also, I was looking for a system like a 21st century Shadowrun, and Unknown Armies fits the bill perfectly!
Matt Colville looks like a great channel, and I even recognize Critical Role's Matt Mercer's name from his voice acting on games. Thanks for the recommendations on channels.
Thanks for recommending Weave as well, that game looks cool!
Hey, a system to run my Redwall campaign in!
Great recommendations. After looking all of them over, I'm definitely going to purchase a copy of Microscope - it's easily one of the most interesting games I've seen, and I'm really excited to try it out.
Also, RPPR is great! Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
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2018-10-01, 08:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
- Location
- San Francisco Bay area
- Gender
Re: Coming back to tabletop, lots of questions!
As others have posted, yes.
There's also "retro-clones" and near-clones that emulate older games, Pathfinder is the most popular, but (for example) there's Labyrinth Lord that does 1981 "Basic" D&D.
2. I thought about picking up Pathfinder, but I hear 2e's coming out. Should I wait?
3. Is D&D 5e the most popular tabletop game right now?
Judging by recent sales, yes.
In my area they both seem pretty popular, strangely PF seems to have younger fans on average.
4. Is play-by-post as frustratingly slow as it sounds?
Yes, it often is.
Worth trying anyways?
I think so
I'm happy to hear your experiences.
Of PbP?
Okay, some of this advice I'm less certain of than when I first wrote it but
5. What's a good, popular modern system I can learn (that's not mentioned above)?
Um...
The recent version of Pendragon looks as awesome as the previous ones, and there's new versions of Call of Cthullu and RuneQuest as well.
6. What's a good, obscure system I can learn, just to expand my repertoire/give me ideas?
7. I've DM'd IRL, but it's so long ago... Any place I can watch an experienced DM run a game?
YouTube
Any helpful tips about engaging in my tabletop hobby online would be appreciated!
Sorry, other than PbP at this site I've no other on-line experience, but I hear good things about "Roll 20".