Hey all,
I'm new here and I wanted to start a discussion about TTRPGs that people enjoy. I really like seeing people talk passionately about those sorts of things. I'm, personally, a big fan of games by Jenna Moran (Nobilis, Glitch, etc) and have a lot of positive experience with certain Powered by the Apocalypse Games. I'm also fascinated by a lot of OSR content because I feel like it has the potential to capture some of the more interesting parts of early D&D (my partner and I discuss AD&D quite a bit).
I used to write homebrew for Exalted and I've played some WoD games, but it's not my true passion, except maybe for Changeling the Lost. I had a long-running game of Ars Magica 5e a while ago, which was a tremendous experience and really ignited my interest in more dense, bean-countery games that I had previously been discounting in favor of lighter, more narrative-drama experiences.
I'm not as big a fan of D&D as some, but my partner and I did meet because of 3.5e homebrew, so I do have some positive nostalgia.
Anyway, what about you- what TTRPGs are you interested in? Which ones have you had long or interesting games with? What are you looking forward to playing, or setting up to play?
Hello,
I would love to hear anything you care to share about Ars Magica 5e it was a system I was offering to learn with my current play-group but majority vote was for Lancer.
I'm really interested in exploring how time changes a player character, and Ars Magica has that down, not to mention the amazing depth that the magic system has.
Before we did lancer the playgroup i GM for did a 3-month Burning Wheel campaign where I lifted bits from the Ars Magica magic system but half the playgroup bounced off Burning Wheel so we did a couple of months of Shadowdark while I read Lancer and prepped a short campaign.
I ran Keep on the Borderlands with some modifications to line-up with the level 0 character funnel leading into it, I personally liked running Shadowdark a lot. The inventory management is alot of fun to see play out, but like Burning Wheel some members of the playgroup didn't like it as much as I did.
I've read Nobilis and love the core concept behind it, could see it being wonderful for a long one-shot or two-shot, but I've never talked to anyone who has actually played it.
I also had a positive experience with the PBTA Masks game, but I've come to learn I don't care for shared storytelling games / player-facing games as much.
The few months I ran Masks I had a much harder time with the challenge to prep that PBTA is asking the GM to on the spot come up with good consequences was less fun for me than running Shadowrun 5e combats. As a player I didn't like how a Playbook forces you, ableit gently, into a very specific theme/story your character is going to explore, and I did end up using the playbook change but as a player it didn't engage me as much as an organic development of a character.
Prior to the Burning Wheel I did about a year long Shadowrun 5e campaign, which was a lot of fun! With hindsight I think i would spend more time talking about the campaign arc/theme in session 0 as me and another member of the playgroup had a blast with a slow burn criminal syndicate focused campaign but the rest would've enjoyed a corporate heist oriented one. I did get to run some exciting modules from the 1e/2e Shadowrun era that i converted to 5e, and it was with players new to the shadowrun ttrpg so didn't have to endure people who knew how to break the system.
The year before the playgroup did a 6-month Cyberpunk RED campaign which was fun but at the end of it for us the system had too many flaws for us to consider again.
Before that I ran a year long Pathfinder 2e campaign while playing in a PF2e Rise of the Runelords campaign, alot of fun and I really like pf2e but I honestly got overwhelmed with the amount of player options and at this point I am kind of over running high-fantasy ive done it for too many years lol.
In addition to the weekly Lancer game I'm also running a Delta Green game both systems I have been very interested in for a few years. For lancer I'm running a heavily modified version of Operation Solstice Rain and the follow up Winter Scar. We used Microscope to establish details about the planet so I've modified the modules to work that in as well as change the entire module lay-out to a point-crawl as remixed by Valkyrion at https://trainlightning.com/solstice-rain-remix/
Delta Green is a heavily modified version of Impossible Landscapes that ties in a bunch of other pre-written scenarios so far both have been an absolute delight.
This year for Halloween I want to run some Mothership one-shots, other than that I've been really lucky in being able to check off some games and pre-written scenarios/modules/campaigns from my ttrpg bucket list the past year.
Some systems I own that I haven't yet got the opportunity to play or run for folks: