Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - On a Slippery Slope

Roleplaying is a totally different animal. It's really quite difficult to explain it to someone who hasn't done it... or is it just this particular RP system?

Gary Sax wrote:

Roleplaying is a totally different animal. It's really quite difficult to explain it to someone who hasn't done it... or is it just this particular RP system?

The whole banana, I'm afraid. We've never played any RPGs. The closest we've gone is probably Descent. Haha. Zero experience.

There's a short film called The Gamers ( gamers.deadgentlemen.com/ ) that would actually give you a good idea of the general way a roleplaying game works. It's really low budget but it's very funny. Hell, even if you don't get round to playing an RPG it's worth checking that film out if you get a chance.

What you really have to do is get over being self conscious. If you do that, it doesn't matter how shitty the rest of it is (the GMs preparation, the ability of the other players to get into character)-you'll still have fun. But if everyone is really nervous and self conscious, that is really what could kill the experience.

If WFRP is too unstructured, you might take a close look at Keep on the Shadowfells for D&D 4e.

It comes with a quick start set of rules, pregenerated characters, and maps for the first session. Just add dice. The second and future sessions will require dipping into some dungeon tiles or a wet erase grid.

The rules and system are EXTREMELY structured. The adventure is mostly a pretty linear series of encounters. It isn't perfect, but low level combats in 4e are fun, you can start with very little prep, and you are only out $20 if it fails in the first session.

Oops. Keep on the Shadowfell is a free download now.

www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/dndtestdrive

The main thing with taking board gamers and trying roleplaying to to emphasize that the point isn't to "win" and in fact no one "wins." The whole point is to run around, do stupid shit, and worship the plaguefather nurgle.

Kookoobah, take a look at that free download for Keep On The Shadowfell. If you decide you want to run it for your group, PM me your address and I'll snailmail you a demo copy I got a while back. It has nice big full-color maps, plus quickstart rules and stuff. You'd need to supply dice and minis (or just raid another game for the minis).

If K. declines, then I'll just mail it to any FATtie who wants it. First come first serve!

Aside from the fact that my brother requested we try out an RPG to see if it would be fun, we've been playing Descent a lot lately and we want to incorporate some sort of leveling system, without the commitment and headache that Road to Legend entails. We're all busy, so we can't really run a campaign, but we'd like to have characters that don't reset every time we play.

Eventually, we just figured maybe an RPG would do some good.

After 6 months of so of 'DRY' I've been back to rpging once a week, or every other week now. My last group was playing WHFP before Real Life kicked in, I really like it. Roleplaying is honestly my favorite sort of gaming. I'm pretty excited because I might get involved in an honest to god remote rpging group, for Dark Heresy. GM in Melbourne (not Skellie) players in Arizona, Canada, UK, Minnesota. We were originally thinking play-by-post, but we all have access to voice communication, and hell half of us have webcams...



Good picture of last night's session (complete with guy doing a fist pump for a good roll...)

And no, kids those are not home printed books, those are proofs, torrenting RPG books makes baby jesus cry)

kookoobah wrote:

Aside from the fact that my brother requested we try out an RPG to see if it would be fun, we've been playing Descent a lot lately and we want to incorporate some sort of leveling system, without the commitment and headache that Road to Legend entails. We're all busy, so we can't really run a campaign, but we'd like to have characters that don't reset every time we play.

Eventually, we just figured maybe an RPG would do some good.

You should got for Dungeons and Dragons 4th ed then. From the way it sounds you can basically play it as a dungeon crawl, but you get more freedom in character leveling/creation.

Thought I'd share what happened last night. Thought it was going to bomb, what with all of us being new at it.

Turns out, we pretty much had a good time. It was awkward at first, and they weren't really getting into, basically going through the motions and not being imaginative and I had to punish them for it, lightly and sneakily, when they didn't examine a room well enough, I had the watchmen who came in search it and find a big sack of gold. Hahaha. That taught them fast and hard.

One of the them tried to take on 4 mutants on a bridge alone without waiting for backup, had him smacked down and running back in less than a turn.

All in all, it was pretty kickass. They want to level up faster, so we're halving XP costs, but it's good. It keeps them motivated to keep playing because they get stronger faster.

kookoobah wrote:

Thought I'd share what happened last night. Thought it was going to bomb, what with all of us being new at it.

Turns out, we pretty much had a good time. It was awkward at first, and they weren't really getting into, basically going through the motions and not being imaginative and I had to punish them for it, lightly and sneakily, when they didn't examine a room well enough, I had the watchmen who came in search it and find a big sack of gold. Hahaha. That taught them fast and hard.

One of the them tried to take on 4 mutants on a bridge alone without waiting for backup, had him smacked down and running back in less than a turn.

All in all, it was pretty kickass. They want to level up faster, so we're halving XP costs, but it's good. It keeps them motivated to keep playing because they get stronger faster.

Cool. I went by the comic store today to pick up the Free RPG Day freebies. I got a primer for Rouge Trader by FFG, it's another 40K RPG, but it sounds a little more interesting than Dark Heresy. You play as explorers on rogue trading vessels (hence the name). Basically a bunch of smugglers, treasure hunters and adventurers. I think it looks pretty cool.

We're still new at this, and I'm not even sure if we have the time to sustain it and see it to it's end, but yeah. RPGs are fun, needs a ton of work though.

kookoobah wrote:

We're still new at this, and I'm not even sure if we have the time to sustain it and see it to it's end, but yeah. RPGs are fun, needs a ton of work though.

Check this out, it's called the Mythic Game Master Emulator. It's this system so you can play without a GM by generating some random results and then the players interpreting those results into their adventure. Or, as a GM you can use it to help create impromptu adventures.

rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=20798&it=1

There's also a whole game system too, but I just downloaded the GM emulator. I've read through it and it seems cool, but I've never actually played with it.