What ROLE-PLAYING have you been doing?

Please post again when you do. I was a fan of the early 1st edition, but everything after that fell flat. Even the early first edition stuff seemed closer in style to Toon than it did to Brazil or THX. Too much "goof around in one area until you're bored being silly and then go the net and do the same."

I've been DMing 5e over the last couple of months. I've been running my game over Roll20, which has been pretty useful so far. I'm doing it that way partially so I can play with a lot of really good players. They are giving some good breadcrumbs that I can use for later in the story as well. We're focusing more on standalone adventures until the whole thing solidifies, at which point I'll start laying out some more overarching stuff.

I'm doing my own setting, kind of a frontier province where the humans are slowly encroaching on land that used to belong to the orcs, who in my setting aren't any more evil than anyone else. So far the PCs have worked to clear a hideout of thieves inside the main city, but they're about to venture out and stretch their legs a bit. Looking forward to it!

dysjunct wrote: Last night, we played Ryuutama, session #4 out of a scheduled 6. If you haven't heard of it, imagine if someone asked Hiyao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, etc.) to make an RPG based on Oregon Trail.

So: brutal wilderness survival and resource management, where if you were forced to choose between facing a dragon or a blizzard, you'd probably choose the dragon. But it's all cute and heartwarming! With the laughter of children, and the joy of exploration and discovery. But sometimes you get lost and starve to death.

Anyway, super fun. My nerdbros are trying to save a village witch from being framed and executed for the failure of the iceberry crop. There's an obnoxious witch-hunter, totally Dudley Doright, including a cleft chin. And a reluctant young executioner. But they haven't yet learnt that the witch is guilty! Looking forward to busting expectations.

Finished this up last night, a nice little 6-session campaign. They found the witch's Book of Shadows and learned that she was guilty. They quizzed her and learned that her brother drank herself to death from the town's iceberry wine, so she devoted herself to preventing anyone else from ever having to go through that. She was accepting of her fate. The party tried to negotiate with the town elders but they were resolute: the price must be paid. The executioner was a town guard who was in love with the witch. Last-minute shenanigans occurred, mostly everyone cried hot streaming anime tears and the witch was beheaded.

It was a bit of a departure from the normal happy-go-lucky tone of Ryuutama, but it ended up being a nicely verkakte situation where there were no villains, just people making tough choices. When I was young, all my games turned into Call of Cthulhu. When I was an adult, all my games turned into Fiasco. Now that I am middle-aged, they seem to be turning into Dogs in the Vineyard.

Just finished my first adventure with TALES FROM THE LOOP.

TFTL is a game set in the "1980s that never happened." It's a weird mixture of an alternate history that resulted in some futuristic tech happening in the 60s and 70s and the 1980s kids-on-an-adventure genre, ie Goonies, ET, Stranger Things, etc. You play as an 80s kid growing up in a town with a particle accelerator in, resulting in strange experiments which then result in mysteries that the kids get involved in. It's open enough to cover just about anything. I really dig the quick character creation. You pick an archetype, your age is the number of points you have to divide among your attributes, you get some skills, and pick some more cosmetic stuff. Checks are just adding your skill plus the tied attribute, roll that many d6s and look for a 6. Extra 6s generate added effects. You get "luck points" equal 15 minus your age, which are used to re-roll failed checks. It's very fast, very collaborative, and a total blast. Can't wait to play it again. If I run a story, it'll be a miracle if there aren't any dinosaurs in it.

I enjoyed playing in my college roommate's Paranoia campaign, but there was generally alcohol involved. One session, he used the spinner from the Nuclear War game to deal out shots of liquor when characters got shot.

A few years back, I acquired the Paranoia card game. It's hard to get on the table, but does a great job simulating an entire 1st edition Paranoia campaign in just 2 to 4 hours. Funny, violent, stupid player vs player action. There was supposed to be an expansion with mutations and secret societies, but it never got released and so those two elements of Paranoia are missing from the card game. It's still great.

Josh Look wrote: Just finished my first adventure with TALES FROM THE LOOP.

TFTL is a game set in the "1980s that never happened." It's a weird mixture of an alternate history that resulted in some futuristic tech happening in the 60s and 70s and the 1980s kids-on-an-adventure genre, ie Goonies, ET, Stranger Things, etc. You play as an 80s kid growing up in a town with a particle accelerator in, resulting in strange experiments which then result in mysteries that the kids get involved in. It's open enough to cover just about anything. I really dig the quick character creation. You pick an archetype, your age is the number of points you have to divide among your attributes, you get some skills, and pick some more cosmetic stuff. Checks are just adding your skill plus the tied attribute, roll that many d6s and look for a 6. Extra 6s generate added effects. You get "luck points" equal 15 minus your age, which are used to re-roll failed checks. It's very fast, very collaborative, and a total blast. Can't wait to play it again. If I run a story, it'll be a miracle if there aren't any dinosaurs in it.

I really like the visual artist who worked on this and dig the "lost 80s" vibe playing as kids. I'm not sure I could role-play this tough. Seems a bit close to home. I was 6-16 in the 80s. Prime age for these tales and had plenty of 'adventures' of the sort. Riding my Space Invaders banana seat bike with friends out to abandoned bridges at night that supposedly had ghosts. Sneaking across farmer fields where a supposed crazy family lived that would shoot you with a salt rifle. Exploring woods filled with WWII artifacts (lived in Germany throughout the 80s) and of course more ghosts! Basically being out and about all hours of the day investigating our world.

Fantastic time to be a kid. Old man glasses, but I think a lot had to do with the limited technology of the time, but our unlimited imaginations.

Again, I really like the future retro trend of 80s nostalgia, but seems I might struggle a bit emotionally role-playing a past I lived. Looking forward to more reports though.

Here's 8 or 9 year old Mr. White around '82 or '83 in his screen-printed, raglan glory.


EDIT: of course, in at least one session....you've got to role-play kids role-playing. ha!

Tales sounds incredible, I think I need this game... anywhere to get an English physical copy that is not a PDF?

Edit: I think I figured it out on the manufacturer's website... just trying to make sure I get stuff in English and not Swedish.

Supposedly people have been ordering from the publisher (Modiphius.com) and getting stuff. Modiphius ships very slowly (from the UK) and with no tracking, but my stuff arrived eventually.

I have the PDF of TFTL and it is ... I dunno, not as mind-bending as I expected. The tone is a little weird, and the US portion of the setting feels tacked on. The 80s part of the setting is great, but the weird science part of it doesn't quite hang together for me. I like the idea of the loop as a conceit for introducing weirdness, but it goes a little far for my tastes. Levitating cargo trucks floating through the sky is a little much, plus there's robots everywhere, except not really because then you have to handwave too much stuff.

The system is great; it's the same base system as used in Mutant: Year Zero, which is fantastic and I highly recommend. It's a "explore the ruined post-apocalyptic wasteland" game, with a fun board-gamey element at the end of each session where you try to work on projects for your little compound: a water filter, maybe a bit of garden, wind power generator ... each project you complete opens up new projects to build, and also makes your compound more attractive to crazy mutant raiders.

Would it be easy to remove some of the tech from the setting? Leave it all in the realm of 'the loop'?

Mmm, for the most part it shouldn't be too hard. There's four included adventures that all some some degree of weird tech, but you could easily reskin it, or say that the weird stuff is only around the DARPA loop project and not in society at large. That brings it way more into line with your typical 80s property, where the weirdness is contained, or only part of a secret government research project (Stranger Things, Firestarter, etc.).

It's still a good game, and the art is beautiful. I quibble because I love.

Ordered. Hoping to get my wife to play this as the fantasy setting of DCC was not her thing. I'll let everybody know!

I have had a bit of rebirth/renaissance period with my own take on gaming as a hobby, thanks to RPGs.

Spawning mostly from my running of DCC with a group of friends, they are now on the cusp of hitting level 2 and have completed Portal Beneath the Stars, Sailors on Starless Sea, Doom of Savage Kings, and The One Who Watches from Below (almost finished). That set of 4 modules has really taught me a lot about running the game and I am ready to go from simply running my group through stories into a creating more of a world around these events and stories taking place. I am very excited to see where the crew decides what to do next. They have a simple Tavern acting as a base of their adventuring guild and giving them the option to build it up and expand their influence on the surrounding areas should bring some very interesting decisions and interplay. The gonzo nature of DCC just really crushes it for me, and while my interest in other systems is now well beyond perked up... I fear my first love may be my deepest.

The bulk of my group of players is about to splinter off and I finally get to play as a character (something I am very excited about trying) in a Call of Cthulhu game at the end of this month. My Tales from the Loop package (found about here on this site) showed up and looks like great fun that can be had with the wife and a few friends and hopefully I can stir up interest in between my other RPG sessions. I do wish my players could meet more regularly, but having a group of players is a success in itself. I have caught myself drifting off thinking about how to I would run encounters, what player aids to bring to help the flow out, and drawing inspiration from other forms of entertainment. I am about to put together an order for some fantasy miniatures and a makeshift laminated mat to add a bit of visual representation to our theater of mind combat style, and am really excited to see how the characters choose to react to my next hook.

I guess it took me a long time playing games to really find out what I get the most out of in this hobby. I still would never turn down a game of TI or Dune, but getting together and busting through a dungeon sure seems a lot more appealing right now than playing anything that folds out of a box and has a new set of constraining rules to it.

It's been eleven months since I wrapped up my last campaign, and I am started to feel the urge to DM again. Instead of running another crunchy system like D&D 3.5, I think my next campaign will be lighter on the rules and more focused on the role-playing and storytelling. Probably either Call of Cthulhu or a combination of Elric/Hawkmoon/Corum. Chaosium published some fantastic adventures and sourcebooks back in the day, and I've got most of them. I will probably spend a year kicking around ideas and then working on maps and tokens before actually recruiting a group. And this time around, I may run a few one-shot games first just to shake out any potential personality conflicts between players.

DM'd my first 5th ed game today. I set in the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting by Kenzer which I have always thought was one of the best settings and source books ever put out for D&D. The main source book is not system specific so even though it came out in the 3rd edition era it works fine in 5th.

My plan was to set the players on course to find the Tomb of Kruk-ma-Kali. Which is a 3rd ed module that I would have to adapt for fifth when the time came. It centers around the finding of the final resting place of the Great Hobgoblin warlord and his fabled sword.

The first part consisted of the players starting in the bleakest lamest most depressing town I could think of. There they would encounter a Hobgoblin, which are a player race in Kalamar, who would tell them he was searching for the tomb of one of Kruk's lieutenants which was rumored to be near by.

They would have to pass through some wilderness and the deal with a tribe of goblins I modeled after Mohawk Indians who considered the tomb to be sacred ground and would fight any would be interlopers.

Then when they found and explored the tomb the would find grave robbers had picked it clean ages ago and that most of the traps were non functional or only partly functional. And that all loot had long been taken. The final chamber would see them fighting a stone golem that had been nearly destroyed in a prior raid but was still functional although very weak.

The true treasure lay in the bas reliefs carved into the walls of the final chamber that show in picture story form, like a tapestry, the life of Kruk and clues as to where he was buried.

It was a good time overall but I made the mistake of putting a riddle inside the tomb which had to be solved before they could get farther into the tomb. They just had no idea how to solve it and languished a long time getting frustrated all the while. Remind me to not do that again.

repoman wrote: It was a good time overall but I made the mistake of putting a riddle inside the tomb which had to be solved before they could get farther into the tomb. They just had no idea how to solve it and languished a long time getting frustrated all the while. Remind me to not do that again.

Don't feel bad, I've done it too. The only way to get through these mountains was this long tunnel with a teleport puzzle at the end. It seemed super easy and obvious and I'd snipped it from a (admittedly terrible) published adventure. This trans-dimensional castle that I worked for months on lay at the other end. Dudes just could not figure it out even with the clues present. Hours of annoyance and frustration for everybody. Seriously the most un-fun encounter ever.