Let's start a (virtual) tabletop RPG club!

Games
1

There are a ton of weird and interesting tabletop roleplaying systems and variants that are easily accessible in digital format, and there are a lot of options to play with folks online using tools like Roll20.net. I’d like to see if there’s enough interest to get a virtual tabletop series going.

This is inspired by Reddit’s Indie RPG of the Month and our own Classic Games Club, and I’d like it to run more like a book club where each season a specific person can propose a couple potential games/systems to the group and everyone can vote to select one of those to learn and play. Rather than it being a big poll voting for anything and everything, I like that everyone has a chance to bring a couple of games they’ve always wanted to try out or GM or loved the setting or whatever. I also love that this kind of setup means you might play something you wouldn’t normally be into.

##If you’re interested in jumping in to the next season, sign up here

##Season Threads:
Season 1: Dungeon World vs Torchbearer (@mtthwcmpbll)

How It Works

Here’s how it works, and I’ll keep this up to date with any changes we make over time. I’d love to hear any changes that’ll make this more interesting, more inclusive, or generally play better.

  1. Each club “season” will last 3 months. This will give folks enough time to play a smaller campaign and see their characters grow, and individual groups can decide how more or less frequently they want play during that time.
  2. A game is chosen and played by all of the groups over the course of a season. Leading up to a season, a proposer is chosen from the folks that are on the GM list and they select their two games, and we’ll post a poll in the season thread for the group to vote between the two. The club can read through the rulebooks and discuss what they like or don’t like in the thread.
  3. Games must be playable from a single book or source, and that source must be available digitally for $20 or less. This tries to maximize approachability, since folks don’t need to buy a core rulebook, a monster manual, a specific campaign add-on, etc. There are great resources like DriveThruRpg and Indie Press Revolution, not to mention free stuff from designers - lots to chose from without requiring a big buy-in.
  4. Random groups (fitted to the game system) and GMs are assigned each season. The goal is to get a taste of the system, play with different people, and try something new. The signup form at the top of this post lets you specify whether you’re willing to GM or not, and what kind of play frequency you’re looking for. Hopefully this will let us set up play groups that’ll fit everyone’s needs and interests.
  5. Groups self-organize their season’s gaming. Once the game is selected the group can sort out if they want to play fewer longer sessions or a more frequent shorter games to fit their availability. We’ve got a great Slack channel that groups can use to organizing and discuss their games (bug @Dave_Perkins for an invite, and he can set up a dedicated channel for your group).
  6. Tell stories about your games! Throughout the season, use the season thread to talk about your games, tell stories of the weird stuff your characters are doing, or discuss things about the system itself.

Some disclaimers:

  1. I’ve read a handful of rulebooks and stuff (I love reading these things), but I haven’t played much of anything other than a handful of evenings with DnD back in high school like fifteen years ago. I think this kind of format sounds inviting to new folks like me, since there’s the chance to learn from seasoned players and try out a bunch of new stuff with fairly low commitment into a specific system or campaign.
  2. I’m terrible at regular commitments, especially virtual ones. This format is an attempt at setting this up so that it’s flexible for folks that need to drop out for a season for family or job commitments, or folks that want to jump in to try things out without feeling like they’re signing up for a two year cellular plan or something. Part of that is putting less emphasis on long campaigns and more on playing and talking about new game/systems. Another part will be making the season-to-season organization resilient to folks coming and going.

Anything and everything is fair game for critique or suggestion here, since I’m pretty much just making up my ideal “lets get together and talk about this fancy rulebook” club at this point. Use this thread to help me hash out the details of how this thing is organized and discuss the club as a whole, and I’ll keep this post updated with the latest description and pointers to season-specific threads.

2

I’d love to be part of a DnD 5E campaign with my fellow adventurers from Qt3 (depending on time, etc.). I have the Player Handbook already.

3

@mtthwcmpbll, what an interesting idea!

My local RPG collective, the RTR, has “Try It Out Tuesdays” where GMs can volunteer to run lesser-known or recently released systems to small pools of players, usually once or twice a month. It’s a really fun endeavor (one of my favorites, actually), though not one of RTR’s most popular events (it only averages about 4-6 participants, whereas our larger Quarterly events can easily draw 50+. Then again, TIOTs only run 1-2 tables tops; Quarterlies run 10+!).

On that note, I think if you want to do the “collective voting on systems” sort of thing, those who sign up should be willing to GM. Maybe not at first, if they’re new to it–maybe not even for awhile!–but eventually. I think that kind of buy-in’s needed, honestly. If a given GM’s saddling up their preferred system and charting a course through the story of their own choosing, the burden’s not terribly onerous, but if only three people (say) sign up to GM, and then get weird new games foist upon them by players month in and month out, that could lead to some burnout. Or maybe not! I like running weird stuff, myself :-D

It’s a minor problem at best, and might not crop up at all, but I thought I’d mention it! And GMing isn’t such a big deal at all :)

All that said, I’d be thrilled to take part in this–especially as my time frees up a little in the medium-near future. Moreover, I gladly volunteer to GM as needed, as that’s genuinely one of my favorite things in the world to do.

Plus, I’ve been itching to run stuff like DCC RPG and Adventurer, Conquerer, King System, which I’ve owned for ages but not gotten to run. Nevermind stuff like Savage Worlds and Dungeon World, which I’ve never even played but really want to test out (spoiler alert: I mostly wanna see what stuff would work best for my own long-term games I run, haha). And I consider myself an old hand at running Pathfinder and Fate, if either ever arises.

One of these days, I’m gonna have free time again (maybe when I leave behind these damned math courses for programming classes that respect my time more, haha), and I am totally running a long-term Roll20 adventure for Qt3ers. Today is not that day. . . but it shall come!

Also, tagging @merryprankster, @Rob_O_Boston/@Rob_O_Boston1, @Galadin and @Shellfishguy, all of whom were an absolute treat to play with back in the day when Rob was running 5E for us. I’d tag Arkon, but I’m like 90% sure he got banned :(

4

I’d be really into this idea, or just getting into a virtual RPG group in general.

I’m another one of those who’s read a lot of RPG manuals over the years, but hasn’t had a chance to play them much (lack of time + bad experiences with PUGs). Love to have a chance to check some out.

5

I would be interested in another go at an RPG club. Just not sure about the month limit. One of my favorite things is to develop the character, and a month of online gaming (assume a day a week for a couple of hours) doesn’t seem to give enough time to get a full character. If we could expand the timeframe I think this could be awesome. If not, I would always be interested in playing another campaign. Sadly, being in Boston, and in the office at 7am, I usually prefer earlier hours for my gaming time.

6

Certainly sounds like a neat concept. All the online sessions I’ve had with various QT3/BF folks have been really positive experiences. I’ve dipped my toes back into GM’ing a bit by running a 5e campaign for my wife and kids and it’s been a blast so far. I don’t know a lot about other systems but I really enjoyed the DCC campaign Rob ran (character funnels are awesome!) and I’ve really been wanting to try out Dungeon World. Plus I’d love to see what Armando can do behind the GM’s screen.

The one thing that makes online games iffy is that lining up the schedules of 5 or 6 adults can be a bit like herding cats. Kids, work, holidays est vs pst etc really throw a wrench into regular games. Maybe the short timeframe of individual games would benefit by hitting the less busy pockets of time for people. With a large enough group of people, there may be enough in any one or two month time period that can commit to once a week that it might work out well.

7

I’d be interested in more online RPG stuff, but I’m not sure a new game every month is for me. I kinda hate reading rule books and would rather play a game for a few months to really get into the characters/story.

Plus, as Mr. Shellfish points out, coordinating these things is pretty tough. A longer format allows for some missed sessions.

8

I agree, but wasn’t sure if everyone would be willing to try it. Maybe only folks who are in the “I’d be willing to GM a group” are in the rotation to propose new systems? That way it’s still friendly for folks who want to jump in to play games each month even if they don’t want to have the responsibility of running one. Whenever they want to switch to the +GM list they can drop into the rotation for picking stuff as well.

I’ll admit I have no good baseline for this, and a month really does seem like a really short time to organize and play a game with folks. That said, I know I won’t usually have several hours a week to game consistently between family and work (and I can’t be the only one). I was really looking for a format that lets folks like me play without holding up a group’s long-term campaign. Maybe folks who are interested could indicate if they wanted smaller games (4-6 hours, one or two sessions over a month rather than regular weekly) or larger games and that could be used to setup the game groups?

As for the month timeline itself, the trade-off for longer periods is that fewer folks get to pick a new game. If we can figure out how to make a two or three month block work I’m game, but I’m not sure how to get around the long wait to get to choose the next game. Maybe that’s not the interesting part of all this though - I’m a little biased by the stack of cool books I’ve been itching to try :P

9

@ArmandoPenblade Savage Worlds is my favorite one-book sub-$20 RPG system. Dead simple to pick up, plays fast, emphasis on narrative. I came close to playing a zeppelins-and-skypirates Nazi-punching game at the end of my time in college. It’s a perfect fit for that sort of game, but it didn’t come together before everyone graduated.

(I don’t think I have the time to commit to an actual tabletop RPG group, but I do like plugging Savage Worlds.)

10

Well I had mentioned wanting to do this before, though entrophy and general craziness did mean I didn’t actually do anything about it.

I would also be more than willing to GM. There’s all kinds of things I’d love to see done! However I might also suggest we mostly keep them rules/ combat light, or at least that is what I would do if I got tapped to GM. I think with our globally distributed population, general schedule difficulties (I know that Wednesdays are the easiest day for me, any others are prone to interruptions), and such mean that I’d hesitate to do games where there is a lot of dice rolling.

I’ve seen some games run, quite well even, using asynch text based interactions. Paranoia is one I’ve seen done, as things are mostly descriptive, not dice based. So there is no need for combat that runs for days.

One series that I’ve been watching, and it is truly fantastic, is The Unmarked by Gamers With Jobs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5zc8lfq8zQJT5WJpPSVErBFy_JwbadX3

Rob Daviau runs an incredible homebrew campaign there. On top of being an excellent GM, it also uses a rules light system (basically pick a card for anything ‘special’, that’s it) to adjudicate it. Something like that could also work really well in a forum format, should scheduling an actual Skype mediated session prove difficult.

But really, watch The Unmarked. It’s a big part of why I’ve gotten the itch again.

11

Nice, I’ll add it to my watchlist - I could listen to Rob Daviau talk about games all day. I’ve been listening to a bunch of the Friends at the Table podcast which is making me want to figure out how to play some of these things :)

12

This describes me perfectly. I too would like to be involved in this.

13

I’d love to try this out too. Might be able to convince my wife to join also if the timing works.

14

Totally off-topic, and it’s not like this info isn’t available elsewhere, but how well do you find that the system handles very significant increases in scale over time? e.g., not just the “d4 > d6 > d8 > d10 > d12” natural advancement scale of individual skills/attributes, but particularly handling increasingly large numbers to reflect the difference between, say, a peasant-starting-out hero and the things they can fight vs. a demigod-stepping-down-to-hell-to-kill-all-demons later on?

Sorry, just figured I’d bug you since you volunteered that you like it a lot :)

On-topic to thread, @mtthwcmpbll, would something like “seasons” perhaps work a little better to straddle the line between “semi-frequent system switches” and “giving people the chance to dig into characters/RP”?

I mean, it might be the case that those two desires can’t satisfy each other directly, and folks are looking for two similar, but different Qt3-oriented RPG experiences here. . . but perhaps, say, a 3-month, 6- or 12-session “season” in each chosen system (perhaps with “tables” run by 2-3 GMs, if there’s enough demand) would give folks more of an opportunity to dig into their characters and parties?

Dunno. It’s an interesting thought exercise that I should probably drop in favor of cooking dinner and learning the rest of the first chunk of Calc 3 in prep for Friday’s homework due date. . .

15

Anyone ever play this?

http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/owl-hoot-trail/

It seems like rules for a one-off adventure. I bought a copy back when I was buying every Pelgrane Press product. Costs $19.95 which includes pdf and softcover book.

Might be a good choice for an adventure that just needs a GM. I’d play for sure.

16

The mass combat stuff works well enough, although it’s a little dry. As far as big fights on a sub-army level go, I can’t claim to have any personal experience there, unfortunately.

My general impression is that there’s less of a difference between starting from nothing and getting to the endgame in Savage Worlds than there is in, say, your D&D edition of choice.

17

I’d be interested in playing, but I’m not personally prepared to run a game. Unless I could maybe find my TMNT: After the Bomb books…

18

I haven’t, though, like you, I’m a fan of Pelgrane Press (or at least, often a fan of them in theory, but rarely with chance to put into practice). 13th Age is cool, and I’m hoping to play a Night’s Black Agents game sometime next month.

And thanks, @Fishbreath. I’m on a constant hunt for a game that would handle the goofy (to the point of comedic/farce) scales of a JRPG for a JRPG-pastiche/homage game I want to run in the early part of 2017. GURPS keeps calling my name, but I’m not a masochist, I swear!

19

Is there no JRPG expansion for Fiasco yet?

20

Some of my college friends played a campaign in a game that was basically every anime stereotype which may fit the bill. I’ll see if I can find out what it was.