Tabletop RPGs in 2022

Games
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Hey all. Thought I’d drop in some of my recent TTRPG experiences. My hobbies of boardgames, video games, TTRPGs, books seem to move in different frequency sine waves, taking up different shares of time, some going down to zero. TTRPGs were at a low tide for quite a while but started increasing in 2020 when I got into a 5e D&D game at work, and now it’s pretty much at a high tide.

Since 2020 I’ve wrapped two 1-10/11 D&D campaigns at work. The first was Storm King’s Thunder. I played a bard, discovering the power of a Bard in 5e and also found a great role-playing hook for her (an interminable optimist, she would ALWAYS look on the bright side of everything and interpret everything in the best possible light). The second was Curse of Strahd, in which I played a Ranger. I started out with weak RP hooks for him and struggled a bit, but ended up having a juicy in-character conflict with the unofficial leader of the party, and eventually having an intelligent magic item become grafted onto him, making him become more bloodthirsty.

Through 2021 I started becoming more and more interested in Delta Green. I acted as Handler/GM for an initial small group last summer in the classic Last Things Last starting scenario, then eventually opened it up to groups at work, where I think I ended up running it for four or five groups of 3-4 people, letting them compare their progress at the end.

A large campaign setting tome for DG, Impossible Landscapes, was also released in hardback last year and I fell in love with it and knew I had to run it. This campaign is a bear to prep, and since I had introduced so many people at work to Delta Green, I have kicked off TWO groups in that game. One with my D&D group as I took over for the DM, and another for veterans from Last Things Last.

I’ve also started running a mega-dungeon for my son and his best friend when he has visited our house (but he hasn’t visited in a while so that campaign may or may not be continuing) and also started a roll20 game of D&D with a couple of my childhood friends, my son, and their sons, which is nice.

So I’ve quickly gone from just playing in a semi-weekly game to being on the hook for GMing 3-4 games.

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About to do some Conan 2d20, so I’m curious about how it will go. I’ve always been curious about Savage Worlds but never found the chance to play or run it.

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This is one of the bigger TTRPGs that I’ve never actually played or even read. I just keep missing it.

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Hey everybody. I’m sort of “collecting” lost cities for use in a campaign I’m running. Any suggestions? It doesn’t matter where it comes from;D&D from 1-5e, Cthulhu, whatever. As long as it has a decent map or other materials I can pirate for the campaign I am interested. It doesn’t have to be complete. And smaller things like large temples or what not or completely acceptable. Please feel free to respond if you have any idea whatsoever I’m being very omnivorous and will probably investigate every reply I get here.

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Parlainth is the first that comes to mind. Parlainth: The Forgotten City - FASA | Earthdawn First Edition | Earthdawn First Edition | DriveThruRPG.com

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This was marvelous, thanks. I played with “tomb” “temple” and “city” and got a LOTTA stuff later at DTRPG. Sure some obvious ones (Dwellers of the Forbidden City and whatnot) but a lot of others that can be nicely used for other purposes.

And so it has been purchased. Thanks!

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Here are the closest things that pinged in my mind for city-ish stuff.

Monte Cook’s Ptolus is a heavily-detailed city. https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/ptolus-monte-cooks-city-by-the-spire/

Judge’s Guild had a city state of the invincible overlord. Maybe the originals are available somewhere. The Kickstarter for a re-issue might have died two years back.

Goodman Games published reprints of other Judge’s Guild works, some individual modules, some in wild-sized deluxe books.

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Obviously, I’m in.

I also announced before the campaign that I have lots of Alien D6’s and that there was no way I’d get BR D6’s. My players would have to be content with facehuggers…

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Bastards. ;(

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On one hand, I know Bladerunner is going to have terrific art, layout, and be a pleasure to hold and read.

On the other hand, I really do not like the Year Zero mechanics.

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I like the origami unicorn on the dice.

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I love it. It does a great job at simple rules and delivering tension in the Alien RPG. You have to be ok with large pools of dice. And difficulty tuning is fairly limited. But I find it great as a storytelling focused system. It’s not as crunchy as the heavier systems for sure.

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Really? I find them elegant, and easy to use and understand. The basic symmetry between the games have made it very easy to switch between games, but despite that, each game still retains it unique DNA through slight variations of the same rules - really enjoyable to me/us.

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Great for you guys. I’m not saying Year Zero is objectively bad. I just don’t like it. I love less crunchy systems (my favorite is Fate) so I’m cool with the storytelling approach. I dislike the amount of dice needed. I don’t care for the way the odds work out.

Free League’s insistence on using custom symbols throughout their text to push custom dice purchases are the back breaker for me. Yes, i know you can just use normal d6s but as I’ve stated before the custom symbols trip up my group when we do the conversions.

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Can’t argue with the dice bit. This is what I got to run Alien games for 5 players.

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Makes it easy to dish out stress dice like candy and give each player a set of regular ones. It added to the fun. But it’s a costly convenience.

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Thanks, found it:

I’d get the two you posted if PDF was an option, but I’ll glean Drive Thru for the individual modules tomorrow.

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Yay! It still being available gifts me a happiness at continuity with 45 years tabletop RPG history.

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As a mitigating factor, based on the KS page and this reply from FL, the starter set should provide you with all the dice you need to play if you are willing to pass them around the table:

In this version of the Year Zero Engine, you will only roll two dice for an action in most cases - one for your attribute and one for your skill. So much fewer dice are needed than in ALIEN for example.

The starter set comes with 2 of each.

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Interesting - as Telefrog noted, the nickel and dicing has always soured me a bit on what is otherwise an excellent company, with topnoth products.

Forbidden Lands comes to mind especially, and the die are rather costly!

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Our campaign of Masks of Nyarlathotep started today in a London boardgame café.

The first session of the prologue introduced a group of 5 surprisingly morally flexible characters. It concluded on a “stealthy” room break-in requiring a small jump over a balcony.

Picture the scene after the hop: one character dangling over the street (for those who know the system, even having gained double advantage, he rolled 100, 100 and 80 over his middling Dexterity), an ex soldier with a wooden foot holding him up by his belt and the whole street below them laughing it up. Heist of the century! Nobody will ever know we were there!

At least, I’ve got the perfect notebook (to record our failures) and dice tower for a CoC campaign…

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This was my wife’s first Call if Cthulhu game. She’s only played D&D before. But she had a blast. The focus on the storytelling and quirky characters won her over. Really glad it did. We’re looking forward to the campaign.