SuperBiasedMan

Pen and Paper and Roll20.net Games

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For a DW game are you meant to come up with a backstory about the world being post apocalyptic? I didn't see anything about that in the book, and maybe I just made false connections when listening to Friends at the Table. But I thought part of the whole Apocalypse World idea was that there was some calamity and the world has been rebuilding since then. And that as a group it's a good idea to flesh out broadly speaking what happened to the world.

 

Is that a thing or did I misunderstand? I'll probably do it either way, but if I missed out on a part of the book that goes through this broad worldbuilding I'd want to go back over that.

 

Doesn't have to be post-apocalyptic. The rules set you up for the broad world creation, but don't really dictate too much of what it has to be (other than vaguely-fantasy). FatT made theirs post-apoc because Austin's tired of Tolkien fantasy worlds and wanted to create something different.

 

I would be down for Dungeon World or The Sprawl (assuming there aren't too many people already).

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I uh, don't know what any of that is either! I'm not well versed in cyberpunk.  :getmecoat

Think stereotypical cyberpunk. 

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Think stereotypical cyberpunk. 

 

russian-hacker.jpg

 

Like yeah I'm probably ok with generics. I just don't have particular touchstones. As I said, it probably doesn't matter as much as I think.

 

Also cool, thanks Korax! I'll probably just use the idea I had then about a post zombie infestation town.

 

I think at this point we could have enough people for 2 games in theory. Which means in reality there's probably one game people could commit to. I made up making a google sheet, partly cause I was bored at work, for people to add info to. This is probably the easiest way to just look over who's interested, especially for lurkers and people who might have specific requirements.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aV2-k1dcpwmZmS0HOJ9-33GNyXSQ3SQ1hYfOCWLHyTY/edit?usp=sharing

 

If you think I left out some column that should be there, just add away.

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I'd absolutely be up for playing something, dungeon world sounds really cool. I'd also be up for dming D&D 5e if anyone wants to play that.

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I found this on the same site as monsterhearts there's The Quiet Year where a small group of people play as a post apocalyptic town's council as they try to prepare their town for whatever dangers may be coming.

 

The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

 

Anyway it sounds like it could be fun for 2+ people for about $8

 

Also I keep hearing good things about tabletop simulator so you might want to try that out SBM.

 

The first couple of episodes of this season of Friends at the Table were them playing The Quiet Year. I was a bit disappointing, nobody really seemed to want to create much conflict, so it ended up kinda flat.

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Was there meant to be conflict? I had thought the game was meant to be isolating in a sense, and that people just built upon what had come before.

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I would be super down with playing. Not sure how regularly I could commit to a campaign or anything, but shorter run stuff would be great.

 

I don't have the most experience, only really having played D&D 4e in a poorly run game that constantly got derailed by the group's LARP drama/talk.

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The first couple of episodes of this season of Friends at the Table were them playing The Quiet Year. I was a bit disappointing, nobody really seemed to want to create much conflict, so it ended up kinda flat.

 

Oh really? I quite enjoyed those episodes. I don't get the impression that The Quiet Year requires a lot of conflict to work, at least not between the players.

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Oh, now I realise a thing I should add. Interested formats, like play by post, instant messenger, voice chat, video. 

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Oh really? I quite enjoyed those episodes. I don't get the impression that The Quiet Year requires a lot of conflict to work, at least not between the players.

 

It seemed like the cards were at least encouraging developing different factions in the city and having them conflict, even if it's not directly the players conflicting. Plus there was the mechanic where you could take tokens if you didn't agree with what was going on.

 

It brought me back to the Holiday special in season 2, where Austin had to play a character to cause problems because the other players were just kinda working together.

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It seemed like the cards were at least encouraging developing different factions in the city and having them conflict, even if it's not directly the players conflicting. Plus there was the mechanic where you could take tokens if you didn't agree with what was going on.

 

It brought me back to the Holiday special in season 2, where Austin had to play a character to cause problems because the other players were just kinda working together.

 

I think they said at one point that they kept forgetting to say when they took contempt tokens. Which was a bummer, cause that's a great mechanic. And I do agree about the factions not really jostling each other much, it would've been fun to see more of that.

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For a DW game are you meant to come up with a backstory about the world being post apocalyptic? I didn't see anything about that in the book, and maybe I just made false connections when listening to Friends at the Table. But I thought part of the whole Apocalypse World idea was that there was some calamity and the world has been rebuilding since then. And that as a group it's a good idea to flesh out broadly speaking what happened to the world.

 

Doesn't have to be, though most every fantasy takes place in post-post apocalyptic worlds where a grander age has finished? Dragon Age has the Tevinters, Elder Scrolls has the Ayleids, Game of Thrones has Valyria, and Lord of the Rings is dotted with abandoned architectural marvels. It provides an easy setup for dungeons with traps and hyper-powerful magic objects.

 

The system is called Powered by the Apocalypse but you don't have to deal with apocalypses at all, it's just the name that came out of the game that first used the system. In fact the system's strength is how much freedom it allows you to deal with whatever themes and settings you want, which is why it has been exported to so many other genres.

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For those interested in running D&D 5th edition Gamers With Jobs has a set up well suited for lighter one off games set in a town called Perdita. You can find details over here: https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1296076

it's great way to dip your toes into DMing without committing to running a full years long campaign and they could really use some more DMs as that's the main thing holding the it back.

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Doesn't have to be, though most every fantasy takes place in post-post apocalyptic worlds where a grander age has finished? Dragon Age has the Tevinters, Elder Scrolls has the Ayleids, Game of Thrones has Valyria, and Lord of the Rings is dotted with abandoned architectural marvels. It provides an easy setup for dungeons with traps and hyper-powerful magic objects.

 

This is an interesting thought, my gut reaction was that those aren't apocalypses but of course they are.

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It brought me back to the Holiday special in season 2, where Austin had to play a character to cause problems because the other players were just kinda working together.

 

To be fair about that, Kingdom isn't supposed to have a GM or that many players, so it's not surprising that they had to do some tweaking on the fly.

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Everything is derivative of Neuromancer, or derivative of something derivative of Neuromancer. Even the name "The Sprawl".

 

Yeah I was wondering why that name was tickling me. Sounds super fun.

 

Like yeah I'm probably ok with generics. I just don't have particular touchstones. As I said, it probably doesn't matter as much as I think.

 

Deus Ex is another easy touchstone for it.

 

The first couple of episodes of this season of Friends at the Table were them playing The Quiet Year. I was a bit disappointing, nobody really seemed to want to create much conflict, so it ended up kinda flat.

-----------

It seemed like the cards were at least encouraging developing different factions in the city and having them conflict, even if it's not directly the players conflicting. Plus there was the mechanic where you could take tokens if you didn't agree with what was going on.

It brought me back to the Holiday special in season 2, where Austin had to play a character to cause problems because the other players were just kinda working together.

 

My short impression of their group (from a handful of episodes) was that the players enjoyed enabling each other to do things in their games so maybe they are just a more conflict averse group?

 

I played The Quiet Year and it was a great time! Gita explains exactly why it was a good time better than I could. (The stupid looking "OK!" building was mine! Wow we are such wonderful artists.)

 

I will say, however, that "Role Playing Game" may be somewhat of a misnomer for The Quiet Year, and what makes it a fun experience is very different from what makes a DnD-alike or a Powered by the Apocalypse game a fun experience. I don't want to say it isn't a "game" (of course it's a game) but I think of it more as a world-building exercise/conversation-enabler. It's great, though! I bought the PDF after playing it.

 

Some of these are going for a different emotional tenor I guess. You just reminded me of another game that's also more of a gristly thought exercise called Dog Eat Dog. Like The Quiet Year I think I first heard about it on Shut Up and Sit Down and it sounded interesting/terrible.

Basically the game divides players into roles like Colonial Overseer and Native Islander and the mechanics of the game direct the colonial players to oppress the islanders through events like the banning of the local religious festival, or increased exploitation of resources. It's not meant to be a barrel of laughs but it's designed as an easy experience to get into for players who may not have spent much time with board games before.

 

Anyway it seems like it could be a good recommend for a bunch of conscientious, thoughtful people to play some time. Also a very demonstrative tool for teaching (younger) people how injustice & oppression can become normalised.

 

p.s Play By Post sounds really fun! I enjoyed the dnd game SmartJason was running earlier this year but having to be awake during the very early, hours of Sunday 10am-1pm was just killing me :/

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Count me in for either role. Been running a pathfinder game with two seperate groups using roll20 and discord this year, to moderate success (only 2/9 players dropped out so far!) but significant enjoyment on my part at least.

Regarding the google doc, may i recommend an additional field to fill in? I think it might be worth it if everyone notes down what kind of style/tone of game they're looking for. System used can inform atmosphere to an extent, but you could still end up joining a sprawl game expecting dark and seedy crime thriller for mature players when everyone else wants to run benny hill with laser guns. Can also help the DM ensure a more comfortable experience when they know the players expectations re: rules strictness and tone going in to the game.

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That's a good suggestion, as is your one about rules strictness, I added both.

 

Though a reminder, you don't have to fill out everything. I meant to put real name as optional but woops. Just fill out what you want and what you think matters. It's just to give people ideas for if they want to ask about organising anything.

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This is an interesting thought, my gut reaction was that those aren't apocalypses but of course they are.

 

it's an insight i thought was novel until i discovered it wasn't. also i think the real life analogue for living with the ruins of an ancient empire might be the remnants of Rome throughout Europe, tough i haven't looked into Medieval Europeans' perceptions of that stuff.

 

with all that said, it would be interesting to play a campaign that takes place in the upswing or height of a mythical empire's golden age. there was a time where i was watching Hell On Wheels and reading up on Roman road construction that got me thinking about how a setting where the players are members of an empire's transcontinental road project would allow for some really neat situations and goals.

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it's an insight i thought was novel until i discovered it wasn't. also i think the real life analogue for living with the ruins of an ancient empire might be the remnants of Rome throughout Europe, tough i haven't looked into Medieval Europeans' perceptions of that stuff.

 

with all that said, it would be interesting to play a campaign that takes place in the upswing or height of a mythical empire's golden age. there was a time where i was watching Hell On Wheels and reading up on Roman road construction that got me thinking about how a setting where the players are members of an empire's transcontinental road project would allow for some really neat situations and goals.

 

I wonder why that's not a setting used more. Is it because the individual party approach is such a chaotic way to operate in a structured society?

 

Me and my brother tried out Dungeon World last night, just the two of us. It was fun, and went smoother than I expected even though he got through stuff pretty quick. There was good shit like him calling a flock of ducks to fly him and a friend to a stop a giant arm creature, promising to pay them in 2 bread.

 

I think I fumbled a bit with rules though, I didn't always know what 'move' his actions should be, or if I should be sticking to them always being moves. A few times I felt like something should be a roll, I'd glance over the moves list and then just ask him to roll a stat either ignoring moves or suggesting a move that seemed a bit off. Likewise I didn't pay enough attention to my DM move list, so I want to be more attentive to that for next time, because I did have to pause and think about consequences a few times and it broke up flow a bit.

 

For next time I have to build up and populate a zombie town. I might ask if he wants to play the Quiet Year for that, cause I'm pretty bad at maps!

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I guess we need to see who wants to dm and go from there in regard to timezones etc.

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Yeah, now that all the info is there anyone who wants to GM should decide what kind of game they want. The system, format, time etc. And then either post here or directly ask the people who seem to fit that if they want in.

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Well I'm particularly interested in some dungeon world, and seeing as you are all down for that on GMT evenings and are new to the system like me, I'd like to invite SBM, Mythalore and Gwardinen to some dungeon crawling shenanigans run by yours truly. The invitation is of course extended to anyone else who wants to join, its just that the stars seem to have aligned for you guys in particular.

For format, I was thinking roll20.net and voice using something like discord or google hangouts.

Lemme know if you guys are interested and if we got the full group ill chase you up with more deets.

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Dearest woob

 

I cordially accept your invitation of Dungeons and Worlds.

As you know Monday - Thursday work for me, Tuesday/Wednesday being of slight preference. Hit me up with your extra deets, I'm down for roll20 and voicin.

 

Sincerely,

SBM

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