All about Pen & Paper rpgs and their relation to video games.

[Frostyfirefly]

Hi everyone, pen & paper rpgs have been around for a long time, and they have been holding hands with video games most of the time; when one type of game moves in a direction, the other follows, and viceversa, and sometimes, they follow the same direction all the time.

Calling them "Pen & Paper" is more of a tradition than a fact, considering many are played using tablets or laptops, and through forums, chat rooms and video chat rooms.

Something that I really like is that we can draw ideas from one type of game, and apply them into the other. I know most of you on this site are very much familiar with many different types of video game rpgs, so I will talk about some of the p&p rpgs that I know of, maybe you can use them as a creative source for your projects.

First, we have the fantasy genre, a very common and overused genre that still contains a lot of variations that may be tapped into, for example, there are:

Weird Fantasy Games.

For these types of games, I would recommend the p&p game known as "Lamentations of the Flame Princess"; although it is heavy with gore, explicit content and other hard to digest things, it teaches a lot on how to surprise and unnerve the player with unexpected things.

High Fantasy Games.

One of the best high fantasy games I can think of is "Pathfinder". Exquisite player character customization with daring feats, spells and powers, make the player feel very powerful, but without loosing a sense of danger thanks to the increasingly powerful villains and dangers.

Low Fantasy Games.

"Beasts and Barbarians" for the "Savage Worlds" system contains a lot of Conan the Barbarian in it, with relatively realistic enemies and situations, but with a good sprinkling of supernatural and unnatural beasts to add a bit of flavour.

If any of you have pen and paper games to recommend, want to talk about how pen and paper interacts with video games, or simply want to know more about these traditional rpgs, be sure to post your thoughts here!  

 

[hyde9318]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu_(role-playing_game)


Call of Cthulhu -


This pen and paper game strives on investigation. You need to know everything that is going on and plan ahead in order to survive. It is also a very good recommendation in terms of survival horror as you are in a universe of mysterious and man-killing horrors.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

My choice for weird fantasy lately is Numenera by Monte Cook. On top of being an interesting system and world, the book is downright gorgeous.

 

[The Stranger]

The World of Darkness games by White Wolf, especially the Old World of Darkness. I love the storyteller system, and enjoy the twisted reflection of our world.

 

[AstoXx]

FATAL.

Google it.

That is all.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

@ Hyde9318: Good choice, if there is one game most traditional roleplayers praise as the best horror rpg, it's that one. The Savage Worlds version "Realms of Cthulhu" is pretty good too, lots of customizable playstyles and pulpy variants, somethings even simplify the rules if you want to introduce new players.

@ Touchfuzzy: I've yet to try Numenera, but I've heard a lot of good things about it. The only reason I haven't gotten it yet is because I have a lot of fantasy and sci-fantasy games I have yet to try in my collection (don't we all? some books are just accumulating dust on my shelf!).

@ The Stranger: The Old World of Darkness was amazing, I have a lot of it's books, Demon: The Fallen was one of my favorites.

@ AstoXx: I remember that one, heh, just a few screams and cuts away from Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

 

[AstoXx]

All joking aside though, there are a few that I have really enjoyed even if, crunch-wise, they leave something to be desired.

Bliss Stage is one of my favourites, but the rules are so weak when it comes to being an actual solid game. It's still awesome though since the premise is aliens are attacking the world and all the adults have fallen into a coma. Now the kids must go into a dreamworld and fight the aliens using gigantic mechas made from PURE LOVE.

Paranoia is... just brilliant. It is the closest thing you can get to sheer chaotic fun in a tabletop game. Setting is spot-on, the actual mechanics are simple and interweave so smoothly with gameplay and best of all, they are no nitpicky rules to deal with.

I could go on for hours discussing tabletops and how much I love them, but I don't want to textwall or hijack the thread.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

Bliss Stage is one of my favourites, but the rules are so weak when it comes to being an actual solid game. It's still awesome though since the premise is aliens are attacking the world and all the adults have fallen into a coma. Now the kids must go into a dreamworld and fight the aliens using gigantic mechas made from PURE LOVE.

Paranoia is... just brilliant. It is the closest thing you can get to sheer chaotic fun in a tabletop game. Setting is spot-on, the actual mechanics are simple and interweave so smoothly with gameplay and best of all, they are no nitpicky rules to deal with.

I've never played Bliss Stage, but by your description, it reminds me of Monsters and Other Childish things; it's a Tim Burtony setting with children that can control or have powers related to monsters they imagine.

I'll have to look into Paranoia, it sounds good.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

@ Touchfuzzy: I've yet to try Numenera, but I've heard a lot of good things about it. The only reason I haven't gotten it yet is because I have a lot of fantasy and sci-fantasy games I have yet to try in my collection (don't we all? some books are just accumulating dust on my shelf!).

Its why I started shifting to buying more board games. I realized I had an entire shelf or two of RPG books I hadn't even played yet.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

Its why I started shifting to buying more board games. I realized I had an entire shelf or two of RPG books I hadn't even played yet.

I've found a couple of partial solutions for that, maybe you already tried them:

One, I started playing by forum and by chat room; rpggeek.com is great for organizing such things, and lately, there are a lot of play by video chat games over there too. I'm currently running 3 PbF games over there, although it's considerably slower (a simple adventure can last a month or a bit more), it's very convenient for my erratic schedule. 

Two, the Mythic GM emulator works pretty good; the surprises and plot twists aren't as clever and as precise as if you were playing with a live GM, but it gets the job done, and you can play cooperative rpgs that way too.

Of course, playign face to face is a lot better, but we all know you need a fairly steady group for that.

 

[Omnimental]

Personally, I find GURPS really gets my creative juices flowing. For a pick up and go I prefer Anima Prime or Myth Enders. Sadly, most of the players in my area are devout Pathfinder/D&D fans. Which isn't bad, but some variety would be nice. At least try expanding into Fantasy Craft.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

Fantasy Craft is probably the best Fantasy interpretation of the d20 rules. My favorite d20 game is still probably Mutants and Masterminds though.

Still probably would play a dozen other games before those two though.

Unfortunately, several of the games I'm super into playing are games that my group is kind of meh on. Like Mutant City Blues or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

Personally, I find GURPS really gets my creative juices flowing. For a pick up and go I prefer Anima Prime or Myth Enders. Sadly, most of the players in my area are devout Pathfinder/D&D fans. Which isn't bad, but some variety would be nice. At least try expanding into Fantasy Craft.

Yes, Pathfinder/D&D sometimes is too popular for it's own good; and this comes from me, someone who is in love with Pathfinder. But when you introduce Pathfinder players to other games, like GURPS, they feel a bit lost when they are not restricted by specific character classes.

I have never played GURPS but I know a lot of people like it, maybe I'll give it a shot one day.

 

[The Stranger]

@ The Stranger: The Old World of Darkness was amazing, I have a lot of it's books, Demon: The Fallen was one of my favorites.

Demon is pretty good. I really like "Gypsies", a book that allows you to play as one of the Rom in the World of Darkness. I also enjoyed Wraith: the Oblivion, and Hunter: the Reckoning.

 

[monkeynohito]

I know a lot of systems, but all anyone has ever wanted to play is D&D or, every once in a great while, Storyteller. They're really frustrating, silly systems, but I could make do. I've been GMing Pathfinder, but I've really gotten frustrated with the fragility of its complexity and ridiculous power scale. I really liked d20 derivatives because they were easy to tinker with, mod and overhaul, but it's tough to do in Pathfinder without a bunch of other parts breaking down.

Been getting seriously jaded with more recent players though. I keep getting these wretched MMO zombies that don't care anything about anyone else at the table, can't handle any amount of min in their min-maxing, refuse to role-play at all and just expect game to happen to them without any input. Instead of telling me what their character wants to do, they want to know why there isn't a quest board. I've honestly had better experiences with classic powergamers and gloryhounds. I'm sorry, I'm really not capable of creating an experience like WoW in a tabletop game, go back to playing that instead.

Anyway, I got really excited about Ryuutama and 13th Age recently, but then I started having actual nightmares about trying to start games with really awful people. I used to really love this hobby, but now I can barely imagine it being fun or friendly.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

@ The Stranger: I didn't know a WoD book about Gypsies existed, the closest thing I knew about were the Ravnos; I bet that Gypsy book had special rules for when you are persecuted and chased around Europe by government officials

@ Monkeynohito: Yes, if you GM Pathfinder, you need that "holy cow these aren't PCs but superheroes in Tolkien trappings" mentality 

Yes, maybe they should play WoW the rpg and run it like that. I don't really tolerate that kind of player, I avoid them like Spellplague.

If there aren't players in your area, you could always try play by video, chat or forum. But yes, the best thing is face to face when possible.

 

[monkeynohito]

@Frostyfirefly - Yeah, the power scale isn't so bad if you accept it for what it is. A lot of people just have too much expectation that they'll be able to run a Pathfinder game like a 1st ed D&D game and call it broken when a couple goblins aren't a challenge.

My problem is more number of abilities than the power level. Most characters can just do a lot more and pull out abilities for any given situation instead of being forced to roleplay or think their way out of tight spots. It's just easier for a bad player to play the stats rather than a character. It also makes it that much more work to build encounters and keep track of what the PCs can do. It's easy to change a +1 to a +3, but accounting for about twenty more skills, abilities, traits or feats per NPC because a PC might do this or that is exhausting.

I could definitely run good games with good players, but I've only had one roleplayer in Pathfinder so far and the rest have been walking kender bags stuffed with abilities, crying about their one weak spot and complaining that three fights a session aren't enough. I prefer maybe one random fight a session and three great showpiece fights in four sessions. I just don't have the time or energy to build more than that with 3rd gen d20. The last session I ran was a short dungeon crawl with five or six fights plus a boss and the players still demanded more while ignoring anything that wasn't waving a sword at them, so I just scrapped the whole game.

 

[The Stranger]

@ The Stranger: I didn't know a WoD book about Gypsies existed, the closest thing I knew about were the Ravnos; I bet that Gypsy book had special rules for when you are persecuted and chased around Europe by government officials

The Ravnos is a Gypsy family, one of which is made up of both kindred and kine. There's also a family named the Silent Striders, who have Garou blood, the Urmen family is related to the Fae.  I haven't read through the book in a while, so I'll have to get back to you regarding their persecution. Hehe.

 

[monkeynohito]

BTW, I discovered a ridiculously cool podcast the other day: Shark Bone

Each episode, they'll talk about a movie and pick out some of the cool themes and ideas and how they can fit into games. For example, from the Tombstone episode, they talked about some of the side effects of PC reputation or having an initial grace period where death isn't a factor in situations yet, so the PCs can strut around, acting like badasses. In the latter portion of the show they cover some crunchier mechanics related to the topic.

As much *****ing as I've done in this thread, it's because I've discovered some really cool stuff lately that's just a little soured by bad game experiences in recent years.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

I want to recommend 3 books, well, 2 books and a sort of pamphlet, that can help you generate worlds, dungeons, sites, monsters, etc., in both your video games and tabletop rpgs.

- The Ultimate Toolbox

- The Tome of Adventure Design

-  Random Esoteric Creature Generator

I've reviewed the generator, and I plan to review the other two books in a few weeks.