also it would be cool if it’s a setting that has dope miniatures, i kind of want miniatures
also also i think combat in ttrpg games tends to be pretty uninteresting?
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Everyone should pivot to playing the Ghost Dog RPG that shares a rule set with the DBZ game.
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This is the setting that’s been wowing me the most lately, dungeon crawling by way of euro sci-fi comics
I think it landed on something parallel to Disco Elysium in overall ‘vibe’
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Anyway, I’ll write a big ol’ list of recommendations and comments. I don’t really play games that have dedicated miniatures associated with them, so that’s a bit of a blind spot for me unfortunately.
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I’ve been obsessed with TTRPGS lately, so let me try:
For me TTRPGs are constraints for cooperative storytelling. The friction the game content and rules provide signposts for where the self-interested parties can push the story.
I think the dungeoning structure is pretty easy for me to run. I’ve played enough games with swords that I can convey the rules and results in an interesting way. I want to be better at the non-dungeoning stuff, and there’s a lot of content out there to help with that. Those two things combined kind of bounce off each other, so the content at my table is pretty fun.
And a couple RPGs I’m interested in
First is MORK BORG. This is the idea of diving into dungeons and fighting fucked up things without the cruft of elves and dwarves and the fucked economies of feudal city states despite wizards that can cast conjure food. Your GM has to be in tune with their players, but if they can do that then it’s pretty fertile ground for silly weird shit.
Also it’s really just a roll d20+your skill over difficulty system. The DM has to be mildly ok, but like the value of Mork Borg is that it’s 1) a bunch of tables of weird shit to play with 2) the community is really vast with stuff like ikea dungeon jams.
Then is my current fancy, 2400. This is a series of mostly sci-fi RPG zines. It feels like cooperative storytelling guided by simple stakes and easy to understand dice rolls. Each zine has a slight tweak to the rules, but otherwise comes with tables for full game sessions.
I’m also writing my own d20 OSR type game. It’s currently a compilation of all the hacks I’ve had to put into Mork Borg to make it feel consistent, but I think it’ll grow into something interesting soon.
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i was always sooo interested in “kult” its like the 90s alt weirdo horror rpg thing i think i never played it but i liked the rulebooks…
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Friend of mine played Mork Borg not long ago. It’s incredibly gorgeous and cool, but there isn’t really a game there necessarily - he described it as “You stand there and witness the most metal thing that has ever happened. It doesn’t relate to you, you can’t interact with it, but you see it.”
With a really invested group, though, definitely could go places I’m sure.
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this sounds like extremely bad gming
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kult is the most 90s rpg because the wachowskis were posting on usenet newsgroups dedicated to it and the Matrix was always just 'what if Kult was an action movie"
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I think RPGs are one of the highest artforms we have achieved, a systemic fusion of oral storytelling traditions, improvisation, collaboration, and imaginative exploration that enables us to experience narrative in an agential way. A good RPG allows for the exploration of ethical quandaries, the experience of lateral thinking involved in puzzles and strategy games, and the pleasure of creativity itself. At a good table, this is further enhanced by the presence of others who can collaborate with and inspire each other.
A good RPG isn’t just a conversation (c.f. d vincent baker and meguey baker’s writings on this), it is one of the best conversations you can have. These games are a mature form of the unstructured play of children, where ‘pretend’ is paramount to the cultivation of our human capacities.
I may be a bit of an outlier with this take, but I am writing all of this in earnest. RPGs are the best thing to ever happen to me.
Even if all I’m doing is pretending to be an annoying psychic horse making dick jokes, I think all these things hold true.
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Yeah I can see that happening. The players have to feel comfortable to suggest crazy things and the GM has to be able to play off that. There’s not many rules to MB - it’s all tables and like d20+skill roll over. It’s really basic.
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I very much agree with this read on RPGs and (as always) am really appreesh’in your thoughtfully written ideas about it.
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You said it
It sounds like I’m starting a Dungeon World game soon, the problem is too many people want to play!
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I demand a spot on whatever sb table top game opens up. I don’t mind waiting for years, but the tiny taste I got at the meetup has me jonesing
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Fully agreed - to follow on - I really think rules systems are underappreciated as dramatic engines. Dice rolls provide randomness obviously, but even other game systems collide to produce situations no one intended. This is why ttrpgs aren’t like writing and aren’t even like freeform rp/improv: all the humans at the table are bound to answer, at least occasionally, to this implacable force - a stand in for the physical laws of the real world, really. It makes the secondary world feel real in a way no other medium can, which makes the drama seem more significant and affecting.
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Was leaving out dice talk (even though dice are great and I hugely prefer games with some sort of uncontrolled element to it to games that are entirely free of randomness) because I wanted to make the most general answer of what I see in RPGs as an activity, but I agree with everything you said here.
Dice and strict randomness feel stifling in a video game where all our actions are proscribed by what the game designers had time to craft, but they open up the potential of any action to truly surprise everyone in a ttrpg. When our reactions are curtailed only by what we can imagine doing, there is so much potency to letting chance control the fates of our characters.
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see i knew it had a lot of swag
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yeah i want to know what happened to all our pisspeople
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God, same, damn.
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Can I be a fly on the wall for the SB games? I would like to listen in