RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
|
You might look into Apocalypse World, or one of the many hacks/similar games to it like Dungeon World or even Dogs in the Vineyard.
Apocalypse World is fairly rules light (compared to something like D&D or Pathfinder). It's a very narrative driven post-apocalypse game about scarcity and personal relationships in a world that's bad and keeps getting worse. "Failure" in that game drives the story forward and could still make for an interesting second-end-of-the-world (or at least the end of a community) story if your players are more interested in their characters relationships than being mechanically good at winning tactical fights.
Dungeon World uses a lot of the basic structures of Apocalypse World but mixes them with some D&D stuff in a familiar medieval fantasy setting. It's more focused on collaborative world building and dungeon exploration/crawling. It still may not be the best choice if they just don't care at all about fighting monsters effectively at all, but like Apocalypse World the PC's are the only thing standing in the way of a world crumbling into darkness, and even then that failure might be interesting.
Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about what happens when you give young people near-unfettered religious authority in a Mormon-esque frontier. It's about community and faith and justice with a dice-pool system based on character attributes (dice amounts assigned to descriptive phrases and relationships like "I'm the best shot in my family" or "My father taught me how to shoot").
If your players are getting caught up in Stormwind Fallacy stuff, picking a game that has (better) mechanics for the things they want to do is probably the right choice. I hear good things about Burning Wheel, and although I've also heard it's pretty complex, all the mechanics are thoroughly interconnected with each other and the character's beliefs and goals. I've never played/read/seen any of the other games that you said you have, but I would definitely avoid Shadowrun.
And as always, remember that if you're playing a game as a GM, you're playing the game too. And if you're not enjoying yourself at all playing a particular game, don't play that game. If you can't find something that works, maybe just stick to Fiasco and board games with these folks and seek some other group if you want to play something else.
Try Toon. If they prefer just screwing around, it's the perfect game for it.
There's also the old 'Tales of the Floating Vagabond' and 'Teenagers From Outer Space', the FATE system, in addition to the old d6 version of Star Wars for pretty rules-light sort.
For folks what are just trying to have fun? Sometimes just changing what kinds of encounters the players are encountering can make a great difference -- if you have a party that's very much all about the party, play up that aspect of the campaign.
We're going to take a step back from serious, y'all seem to want to hold each other's beers, so like, we're going to adjust f'r that.
*coughs*
Talisman *can* be somewhat roleplay-ish, depending on how deep folks get into their character cards. Just be sure to have a line of credit with your local games vendor when you pick it up...
If you're looking to stay with rules-light fantasy RPGs, my best suggestions would be...
1) Dungeon World
2) Fate
3) Swords & Wizardry
I will respectively disagree with MechaPoet's assessment of Dungeon World. While it is true that, like all "Powered by the Apocalypse" games, players have an active hand in world-building, the game is not exclusively about dungeon crawling. I've been in an ongoing DW campaign for almost two years now, and we have a very complex, action-packed storyline. Unlike other PbtA games, DW uses the familiar six ability scores, D&D-style character classes, and levels. But everything you need to know about your character is printed on the character sheet (or "playbook" as they're called in DW).
Fate is more traditional about the campaign world, and puts creative control squarely in the hands of the GM. The central mechanic is very simple, and is directly tied to the player-defined central characteristics of the character.
Swords & Wizardry is a retro-clone of the original 1977 version of Dungeons & Dragons, where the rules were far less complex, and the GM makes lots of decisions about how to proceed on-the-fly. ("Rulings not Rules").
About the only concern about FATE I could see is the 'explanation' phase (at least, that's how it worked to me when I've played it) where you're attempting to describe what one's character is doing. It's sometimes very blurry as to what an 'assist' versus 'action' is, and if you run into some groups, once they figure out 'assist' that becomes 'the thing to do' which while it can make for short encounters can also lead to a bit of a repetitive play-style.
|
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
|
I will respectively disagree with MechaPoet's assessment of Dungeon World. While it is true that, like all "Powered by the Apocalypse" games, players have an active hand in world-building, the game is not exclusively about dungeon crawling. I've been in an ongoing DW campaign for almost two years now, and we have a very complex, action-packed storyline.
That's fair! I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't capable of complexity.
In my experience, the rules are relatively simple but the effect is a nicely cinematic game that's as complex as whatever the fiction of the game is. The game text is also explicit about defining a "dungeon" broadly by the danger it poses to the world and being a place where adventurers tread. :)
The other thing I would point out about this and Apocalypse World is that there are specific rules about running it. Make sure that you read those sections as rules that are as hard as how to determine stats or how much damage a sword does - it's not just "GM advice."
I would recommend against recommending Talisman to anyone. Not because of any dislike. Simply because Fantasy Flight lost the rights to publish it so whoever acquires the IP may do a new edition which may or may not be compitable with the current edition.
Talisman is a fantasy board game that has a few RPG elements, but is not a role-playing game.
I would agree that anything that Games Workshop produces these days is probably best avoided. Those guys are jerks.
I have a 1983 first edition Talisman set, which I bought at a church rummage sale about ten years ago for $10. Before I bought it, I opened the box expecting to find that most (or all) of the MANY little cardboard tokens would be missing, but imagine my surprise to find that only a few had been punched out, and everything was there! It looked like someone started to play the game once, didn't like it, and then stuck it back in the closet for twenty years.
I've played every edition of Talisman (although not all of the many expansions), and I still think that the original version, with no expansions, is the most fun to play.
Totally agree about original Talisman. Admittedly, I and my friends all called it "Uncle Wiggly for adults," but we sure did have fun with it.
For the OP, I recommend Over The Edge. It's rules light, has freeform character generation, and can embody most things you're looking for.
|
Butting in here to recommend Risus: The Everything RPG. Super-simple, just decide what your character is like and make up your own "stats" to describe that. No skills, feats, iterative attacks, miss chance, conditional modifiers, extra rule book expansion - none of that complexity. You can be silly or serious. Uses only d6. And best of all, it's free!
www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus
I've played in two humorous campaigns with it, one inspired by the Iron Chef tv show, and one a light-hearted superhero game in the vein of The Tick. Worked well for both.
There's also the one-page, rules-lite RPG Lasers & Feelings.
The RPG is based on a song by The Doubleclicks.
For your group I would suggest either Savage Worlds et al, or sticking to multiplayer CRPGs via LAN or whatnot.
|
|
Why not look into the Pathfinder beginner box? The rules are simplified a lot. Also, you could even use the adventure it comes with to start to 'train' your players how to think ahead and things. And then if it's really Pathfinder that gets you excited to play, you could over time introduce more of the complexities in such a way that your players don't get overwhelmed.