Tabletop RPGs 2021

Yeah, that sucks hard. The only official pdfs are the Basic Rules and the errata sheets.

The Star Wars rpg, which is a rather large selection of materials, also has ZERO PDFs. The word is, that Disney will not allow a single PDF to be made, because of Piracy.

While it would be nice to have them in PDF’s, DNDBeyonds app for reading their books online is VERY good, actually. Its far superior to any PDF’s of RPG’s I’ve read recently (And I’ve read a LOT!).

AFAIK it’s a license problem because Disney sees PDF of games as Digital Games and not Physical games and that is a much different and more expensive license.

Thanks a lot @malkav11, @_aaron, and @ImaTarget for the extra information and suggestions.

It does seem like Mutant Year Zero might be the closest RPG in terms of recreating a STALKER-like experience even if mutations are part of it (which seems to be the case with a lot of the ‘post-apocalyptic’ designs so I can live with that.)

I was thinking that a lot of the Gamma World retro-clones would have a goofy element that might impact the bleaker tone I am looking for, but I might be able to overlook/ignore that or find a way to twist it a bit.

Red Markets is probably further away from my goal, but the more I read about it the more interested I become in it due to its focus on an economic model and intricate equipment system. It probably won’t work for STALKER, but I may pick it up anyway just for its novelty and rare qualities.

I think I need to take another look at Degenesis. I took a quick look at it before, but found the website a little confusing/unhelpful and I got the impression that the RPG was one of those that gave priority to sleek design and expensive art over the core mechanics, but that might be an unfair first impression. Since the core rules are free I should just download and peruse them to get a better sense.

Many thanks again for the answers!

Is Mutant Year Zero anything like After The Bomb, a string of sourcebooks set in a post-apocalyptic America filled with mutant animals, based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness RPG in the Palladium family of RPGs?

This is very cool. New DLC for Cyberpunk Red, created with the designer of the D&D combat wheelchair:

That artwork is nice. It should be a little more form-fitting with lots of straps, like current racing/sports wheelchairs, no?

Guess the design of the chair handles this.

The PDF for the chairs is here:

It mentions the following (emphasis mine):

This Cyberchair is Rocklin’s top of the line model, and it shows. It seats one, and secures comfortably to the user with an automatic harnessing system. The Spider’s initial activation is a sight to behold as four hydraulic limbs splay below the user with a hiss, and lift the pilot into the air.
To pilot the Spider, a user must either plug in one of their Interface Plugs for hands free control, or dedicate a hand to operating the armrest’s control panel. While using a hand to pilot the Spider, that hand cannot be used to do anything else. While piloted, any attacks targeted at the Cyberchair are instead targeted at its pilot. The chair’s pilot cannot be removed from the Cyberchair as long as they are conscious.

I guess I’m nitpicking.

Say, I recently purchased Forbidden Lands the PDS from Bundle of Holding, and they seem so damn interesting.

I am just a bit curious how it actually plays? Dice rolls are supposed to be far and few between, and are dramatic high points as far as I can tell - Is the gameplay itself more like Call of Cthulhu ,with more roleplaying? I also see some boardgame like structures in the movement and investigation of hexes on the map - All in all, I would love some input on how people play this.

Also - the art is…different! I seem to recall I read somewhere that its the old Draker and Demoner, the swedish Dungeons and Dragons art that is in these books?

Yea, its the old art. Well, how does it play. I think that really depends on the GM. Rolls should be few and far in between but I had GMs try to run this like DnD and that doesn’t work well. In general there are some very abstract mechanics in there. Your base and the exploration being the big ones. It didn’t really feel organic and sometimes disruptive even. I don’t feel its a deep RPG game but more an exploration game? Not sure if that distinction makes much sense to anyone else :-)

Thanks! I did feel like there was a bit of a board game feel to it as well.

Well, as for deep - depends on what you are after I guess. We hardly use the rules in Call of Cthulhu which we just started, and I’d say that is as deep a roleplaying game as you get, but its built on roleplaying.

Our first session, we ran Edge of Darkness - Its a scenario that is now part of the Starter Set for Call of Cthulhu. Its suppsed to take a few hours, but we ended our session after 4 hours, and wasn’t done.

Spoilers in case you are going to play it, I guess

It ended up with one of the investigators, the only one playing a man, had to poke his head up through a trapdoor in the ceiling where he was more or less told there might be a gruesome monster , and got his head almost torn off, zero hit points, bleeding to death, out in the middle of nowhere.

The rest of the pc’s actually had some quick thinking here, and put him on a ladder that was used to reach the trapdoor, and starting towards the town a few miles away - luckily, they had arranged for transport back half an hour later, and after a luck roll, the transport came early, and there were able to save the character.

That was a lot of fun ,and next session they will come back with a police detective, which is a new character rolled up by the PC. Lets hope they don’t do the same thing one more time!

So - After that, the players were rather interested in the rpg setting, and I decided to get Keepers manual, and Investigators Handbook, and a book of five adventures, called Doors to Darkness, which should be newcomer keeper friendly.

My goal is eventually either run Horror on the Orient Express, or Masks of Nyarlathotep, both of which sounds amazing!

CoC is certainly a fine vehicle for roleplaying but I don’t think it has that many mechanics that actually shape and prompt story and there are a lot of more indie RPGs that are basically little but.

@BiggerBoat I’ve taken some baby steps finally in Ironsworn but still having trouble wrapping my head around the relationship among some key mechanics. So tell me if I’ve got this right: The biggest plot driver is the Background Vow, but then you also have a series of Iron Vows that make up the bulk of the adventure. Within each Iron Vow are a series moves that you can take to earn progress marks as well as bonuses known as momentum. Eventually you’ll have enough progress marks to successfully complete the Iron Vow. At that point the plot has advanced and you must identify and swear another Iron Vow. Within that next Iron Vow are also a series of moves, and so on…

Is this right? At what point to you complete your Background Vow?

Lately I’ve been enthralled by Delta Green. The basics are similar to CoC (well to older editions, but it’s very similar), and during an operation there are still few story-shaping rules, but it does have the Bond system that does drive long term personal narratives. I now much prefer it to vanilla CoC.

The mechanics might not shape or prompt story, but the theme and how the mechanics are used, most certainly do.

In D&D you are demi gods - you rise in level, you get tougher, meaning you can take on, and will take on, anything that moves.

In CoC, you really cant - you have to investigate, research, move silently, do everything in your power to gain advantages, and THAT leads to roleplay, instead of rollplay.

Sure, any system has implicit biases towards particular types of story, whether it be simply mechanically supporting them and not other things, or making combat more or less lethal, etc. CoC can certainly be argued to be more roleplay oriented than D&D because it makes characters human and frail in a context where much of their opposition is not and focuses on investigation and mystery solving. But that still falls on a spectrum that includes a lot of games that aren’t D&D, and I would argue that it’s still much closer to the D&D end of that spectrum than it is the “deep roleplaying” end. YMMV.

(And it’s great, although I agree with Juan that I prefer new Delta Green this days.)

I saw the KS page is now up, apparently soon to go live. Congrats in advance @BiggerBoat!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shawntomkin/ironsworn-starforged

Generally, correct, yeah, but the thing is that things will tend to snowball on their own without having to think about it too hard. The focus at the start of your campaign should be an inciting incident. This is a lower-ranked quest that gets you started. You achive milestones on that quest by overcoming obstacles, and then make a decision as to when the narrative is guiding you to Fulfill Your Vow. Hopefully, at that point, you’ve also got enough milestones marked to give you a good chance of success. This is the reason to insert challenges and complications in your path. They give you an opportunity to Reach a Milestone and mark progress on that quest.

You have a background vow as well, but that’s … err … in the background. It’s purpose is a bit more in adding some texture to your character. You might make progress on it, or not, over the course of your adventures.

You’ll probably end up organically getting mixed up in other quests in short order. Someone once called it “Sidequest, the game”. And that’s pretty accurate. The mechanics are intentionally going to result in prompts that will lead to an NPC or community needing something, or put you into some new trouble.

Well, “soon” in a cosmic sense ;). Looking like early April, as we’re dealing with some logistic bits.