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Request for Assistance: RPG Recommendations

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25 Mar 2016 13:18 #224865 by John Myers
Hello,

I was hoping the forum could help me out with some RPG recommendations. A friend of mine has asked me to run a role playing game for her brother's bachelor party. According to her he likes D&D type games and Lovecraft. In addition she is expecting 9 to 11 people of varying levels of gaming experience to play.

Combining Lovecraft with a dark fantasy setting isn't to hard and can be accommodated with pretty much any game. My plan is pre-make all of the characters in advance But I was debating about what would be the best system to use and I would really appreciate any feedback you all might have.

So far my thoughts are:

- Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC): I know he (the soon-to-be-ex-bachelor) likes DCC and it looks like a lot of fun, but I am worried about two things, one is that having each person run multiple characters might be a little too challenging for new players and with each player running up to four characters that could be up to 40 characters in play at the beginning. The other issue is that it looks like there are a lot of +4/-2 type mechanics and that might be a little too much to keep in my head with a big group, especially if some of the players need help learning the ropes.

- Dungeon World: I like the Apocalypse World system and the more role play-ey mechanics seem like they might be better for a big group, in my experience bigger groups do better with the "let's all free-from a story" style of role playing rather than the old school mechanics heavy style. I am worried about how hard it is to generate a lot of characters in this system, especially if I want to have some back ups in case people die (which I want to be an option to keep things scary and Lovecrafty)

- D&D 5th Edition: I have heard good things about 5th edition but my experiences with 3.5/Pathfinder and 4th Edition lead me to believe they were almost unplayable without miniatures, which is something I don't want to deal with (it seems bad for a party environment).

- FAE: With a big group FATE/FAE seems to lend itself well to the "let's all tell a story together" style of play and the light mechanics might be easier to manage, but I would rather run a game designed for a swords and sorcery setting than an open ended one.

Thank you for any help in advance. And sorry for using role play-ey and Lovecrafty as if they were real words.

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25 Mar 2016 13:21 - 25 Mar 2016 13:22 #224866 by Gary Sax
I don't RPG almost at all so hopefully you'll get better suggestions than mine, we have some great RPGers here... but for normal types to be introduced to gaming I would go combat heavy oldschoolish that isn't very crunchy. I think "tell a story together" new wave is a mistake given the situation you described running it, but that's contingent on the crowd at the bachelor party.

DCC strikes me as a great choice. You're in a one shot so who cares too much if it's brutal, and it's pernicious enough to create some good times and good laughs.
Last edit: 25 Mar 2016 13:22 by Gary Sax.

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25 Mar 2016 13:53 #224869 by Shellhead
You might look into Cthulhu Dark Ages. You can buy the pdf from the Chaosium website for $12, and that includes the core rules for Call of Cthulhu. Chaosium's percentile-based system is easy to run, and extremely easy for new players to pick up. The medieval setting is similar to D&D, but even more familiar, and the sanity loss rules are fun and create unique role-playing opportunities.
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25 Mar 2016 14:12 #224870 by Shellhead
Usually horror is a tough genre to convey in a role-playing game. If the characters have access to healing or even resurrection, it blunts the horror element, leaving you with a more generic adventure tone. But if you don't have the healing stuff, than you need to handle the characters delicately or risk losing them in middle of an adventure. Call of Cthulhu (and Cthulhu Dark Ages) allows you to menace the characters without damaging them excessively during the early stages of an adventure, by causing sanity loss instead of physical injury. There is also a first aid skill in the core rules (probably Physik or something like that in Dark Ages) that can heal minor amounts of damage. Anyway, you can hit the group with some minor physical threats and a fair amount of sanity loss early on to sustain the horror atmosphere, then cut loose on them with lethal attacks and heavier sanity loss in the final encounters.

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25 Mar 2016 14:27 #224871 by metalface13
I haven't played any of the other games, but DCC all the way. Running four Level 0 characters is really easy. Nobody has any special powers or abilities to worry about and they only have a handful of items (most of which aren't useful) so there isn't much bookkeeping to do. Also, characters will start dropping 5 minutes into any given dungeon funnel. We played through Sailors on the Starless Seas and it was a lot of fun.

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26 Mar 2016 08:04 #224889 by DukeofChutney
11 is a big group for a game. I'm familiar with the first three on the list and i'd be inclined to go DCC. Its probably the most upfront fun, though Dungeon World might have an edge over it as a narrative builder. However with a big group that are chucking down beers DCC is golden. D&D has a brand label, and is more complex than the other two (although you can download a basic version that is pretty sound for free) and is more for the traditional D&D audience that want to push numbers up on their character.
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26 Mar 2016 21:46 #224911 by metalface13
I'm just going to leave these here, the DCC artwork speaks volumes to the gaming experience you will have.









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26 Mar 2016 22:52 #224913 by Gary Sax
There's something amazing about that last picture of a dragon mage shooting fire out of his hands but not breathing fire.

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26 Mar 2016 23:29 #224914 by ChristopherMD
The DCC rulebook seems to be sold out or highly priced.

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26 Mar 2016 23:31 #224915 by Gary Sax
Yeah, they had a kickstarter for the next edition recently IIRC.

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27 Mar 2016 12:03 #224925 by Shellhead

DukeofChutney wrote: 11 is a big group for a game. I'm familiar with the first three on the list and i'd be inclined to go DCC. Its probably the most upfront fun, though Dungeon World might have an edge over it as a narrative builder. However with a big group that are chucking down beers DCC is golden. D&D has a brand label, and is more complex than the other two (although you can download a basic version that is pretty sound for free) and is more for the traditional D&D audience that want to push numbers up on their character.


DCC sounds wild, but probably a poor choice for eleven players of varying rpg experience who are also drinking. 44 characters is too damn many.
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27 Mar 2016 23:48 #224938 by bioball
Lamentations of the Flame Princess- Its plays as an old school D&D game (as in Save vs. Breath Weapon), deadly, and it set in the 1700's. Basically if you saw the trailer for The Witch- that is the feel of the game. The guy that produces it is a metalhead in Europe and its got gaming supplements like "The God that Crawls" and "The Two Towers" written by a guy from GWAR.

And the rules are free online here: www.lotfp.com/RPG/

Here is an image search from the various products: www.google.com/search?q=lamentations+of+...xGMKHQ-BAscQ_AUIBygC

Here is a great short review of a lot of their products: dungeonsdonuts.tumblr.com/post/133219718...of?is_related_post=1

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28 Mar 2016 00:27 #224941 by Jason Lutes
I heart Dungeon World and its family, but it is a tad problematic due to the finite number of base character classes, and the fact that the game works best with no class overlap. 11 players is a challenge to manage, but one thing I do with groups that large is set them up in a survival situation, where it makes narrative sense that a bunch of them would be joined in a common effort. Lovecraftian investigation is hard to make work narratively with that many people in a single evening, but make them all common folk caught in a seaside village taken over by Deep Ones, and you've got a compelling survival horror game.

I think that DCC RPG could work well if you run a funnel and allow each player to roll up a single 0-level villager. When someone dies, they're out of play temporarily until the party finds new villagers, at which point they can rejoin as a new character. While they're out of play, you can optionally have them control monsters during fights, which in a party situation can work great as they try to kill their friends. Metalface mentions Sailors on a Starless Sea , the go-to funnel adventure and perfect for a one-shot. It's not Lovecraftian per se, but certainly qualifies as pulp horror.
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28 Mar 2016 22:40 #224977 by dysjunct
If you want to play DCC, you don't have to do four schlubs per player. You could do two, for a total of 22 PCs, which is roughly the same number you'd have with five players running 4 PCs apiece.

I think DCC is a great choice for players of varying levels of experience and sobriety. The experienced players can enjoy the piss-take on dungeon delving; the less experienced can thrill to the joys of robbing tombs for gold and murdering innocents in the process. Both of those are compatible with lots of different sobriety levels.

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28 Mar 2016 23:34 #224979 by John Myers
Thanks everybody for the reccomendations, it sounds like DCC is the way to go. I'm excited, it really looks like a fun game with a lot of cool ideas.
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