Non-video games

[YoThatLimp]

Does anyone DM we should get a roll20 game going!

[Gormongous]

Yeah, I think I'm going to pick up the physical version as well and play it with some of my grad school friends. I wonder how easy it would be to modify though. Just from my impressions of the review and the website, the biggest issue I have with the game is that there's only one Colonizer, making it seem monolithic. It seems like having two Colonizers would be more interesting and true to life, since they could possibly have competing interests and be played off of each other.

 

I don't see why you couldn't have two colonizers with two different kinds of tokens, so that the colonized could play them off each other and take sides, but the two issues I see are 1) two colonizers weakens the "us vs. them" mentality of the system by making it possible for two of the colonized who have assimilated to be opposed to each other rather than the colonized who have not assimilated, and 2) it would be possible for there to be scenes involving both colonizers but none of the colonized and I'm not sure how that'd be handled mechanically in terms of Enforcement, Judgment, and Indifference. Would there be different sets of rules? What happens when one colonizer breaks the other colonizer's rules, or when one of the colonized breaks one set of rules but not the other? Would it be mechanically possible for one of the colonized to Run Amok after losing all their their tokens with one colonizer, even though they'd been keeping and gaining tokens with the other? It's an interesting set of problems, especially if you want to preserve the power of the original game.

[Merus]

Does anyone DM we should get a roll20 game going!

 

I can DM. I'd like to do 5th edition D&D and have access to the Player's Handbook to support more interesting characters than just the ones included in the free rules, but I can run Numanera and probably Eclipse Phase as well. Scheduling will probably be an issue, though, as I'm in a very different timezone to most of you.

[YoThatLimp]

I can DM. I'd like to do 5th edition D&D and have access to the Player's Handbook to support more interesting characters than just the ones included in the free rules, but I can run Numanera and probably Eclipse Phase as well. Scheduling will probably be an issue, though, as I'm in a very different timezone to most of you.

 

Where are you from? I'd be down, I just finished up reading trough the 5e handbook! 

[Twig]

Merus is in Australia. Doing it on the weekend, morning or evening or whatever, I'm cool with anything. Every other week probably better than every week! Or once a month! Or... whenever!

 

I'd also be down!

[YoThatLimp]

Ah cool, I have ton of family in Aus/NZ.

I would get up early/stay up late on the weekend to accommodate the DM, whatever would be easiest for you. 

[tberton]

I don't see why you couldn't have two colonizers with two different kinds of tokens, so that the colonized could play them off each other and take sides, but the two issues I see are 1) two colonizers weakens the "us vs. them" mentality of the system by making it possible for two of the colonized who have assimilated to be opposed to each other rather than the colonized who have not assimilated, and 2) it would be possible for there to be scenes involving both colonizers but none of the colonized and I'm not sure how that'd be handled mechanically in terms of Enforcement, Judgment, and Indifference. Would there be different sets of rules? What happens when one colonizer breaks the other colonizers rules, or when one of the colonized breaks one set of rules but not the other? Would it be mechanically possible for one of the colonized to Run Amok after losing all their their tokens with one colonizer, even though they'd been keeping and gaining tokens with the other? It's an interesting set of problems, especially if you want to preserve the power of the original game.

 

Good points. Without having more specific knowledge of the rules, I can't really say how you would mod it. The comment was mainly to point out that colonial situations rarely have a monolithic "colonizer", but rather individuals and groups that benefit from colonial systems to a greater or lesser extent. But perhaps that sort of nuance would be detrimental to the larger point of the game.

[Gormongous]

Good points. Without having more specific knowledge of the rules, I can't really say how you would mod it. The comment was mainly to point out that colonial situations rarely have a monolithic "colonizer", but rather individuals and groups that benefit from colonial systems to a greater or lesser extent. But perhaps that sort of nuance would be detrimental to the larger point of the game.

 

Well, the rules are quite clear that the colonizer can play it however they want. All players are able to invent and play subsidiary characters, like friends and allies, so particularly talented colonizer could play multiple nations trying to seduce the colonized if it interested them. The rules are even more clear that it's simple for the colonizer to win, so any good colonizer (ugh, gross accident of word choice) is going to want to complicate things to have fun and what I've just suggested is not a big jump from that. Still, it's a game about the brutal destruction of a native culture by outsiders, so it's difficult to make it about anything else. I would like to hear your efforts to turn the rules into something less hopeless or at least more interesting for the colonized, so do share them here if you decide to try it.

[tberton]

Yeah, I'm definitely going to try it out.

[Merus]

Merus is in Australia. Doing it on the weekend, morning or evening or whatever, I'm cool with anything. Every other week probably better than every week! Or once a month! Or... whenever!

 

I'd also be down!

 

Where are you, Twig?

[Twig]

 

Where are you, Twig?

Dallas, Texas. CST.

[Merus]

I should also ask what people are looking to get out of the game and what sort of thing appeals to them about roleplaying (and even what kinds of fun they respond to); that lets me know whether to plan a one-shot game with pre-made characters, or a campaign, and what sort of things we'll so. An urban mystery would appeal to different players than a kick-in-the-door dungeon raid.

[osmosisch]

Has anybody seen Shut Up & Sit Down's review of Dog Eat Dog, the RPG-lite about colonialism? It's a really worthwhile read and I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts, especially if anybody's played the game or is expecting to play it soon. I'm doing my Master's in Public History and my research is probably going to be about history in tabletop games, so this is really relevant. Also, I'm TAing a course about empire and colonization, which means my scholar-sense is tingling twice as hard.

That's amazing, thanks for linking it. It's both heartening and disheartening to me because I am on-and-off working on a design of my own that closely mirrors this idea, but with the capitalist social system as a focus rather than colonialism. One player controls 99% of the wealth, the rest shares the other 1%.

It's heartening that it's clearly possible to succeed, but disheartening to probably have to rethink things to be more distinct.

[Hermie]

I've been itching to play D&D5, online or IRL. But I'm currently in a SW: Edge of the Empire online game, so I don't think I will join another online campaign. 

 

 

PS, in the current campain, it reaaaally helps that everyone is in the same timezone.

[Twig]

I should also ask what people are looking to get out of the game and what sort of thing appeals to them about roleplaying (and even what kinds of fun they respond to); that lets me know whether to plan a one-shot game with pre-made characters, or a campaign, and what sort of things we'll so. An urban mystery would appeal to different players than a kick-in-the-door dungeon raid.

I just like to be able to be goofy and have fun, no matter what I'm doing. U:

 

I once played a mute dwarf barbarian who only drank milk - which of course most bars and taverns didn't have on tap! - because he had once done something bad while drunk that caused him to get kicked out of his clan and he of course was constantly depressed.

 

I do silly things.

 

I'd definitely like to move away from the Stereotypical Western Fantasy setting, if possible, because that's all I've ever had the chance to play, but I'm not against it if that's easiest for everyone involved.

[YoThatLimp]

I should also ask what people are looking to get out of the game and what sort of thing appeals to them about roleplaying (and even what kinds of fun they respond to); that lets me know whether to plan a one-shot game with pre-made characters, or a campaign, and what sort of things we'll so. An urban mystery would appeal to different players than a kick-in-the-door dungeon raid.

 

So I would definitely say I prefer the roleplay and exploration part of DnD but I also dig combat, especially if it is serving a narrative or working towards a goal. I also probably lean more to the goofy/fun side of things as well, I am have no preference on setting.

 

Having said that, if you are more into the dungeon crawl stuff, that totally works for me especially if we are treating this as a proof of concept thing, I would just totally dig and idle thumbs RPG group, hah. 

[Twig]

It's also worth noting that while I vastly prefer the RP portion to the combat portion of things - I am complete garbage at getting over the "this is so awkward pretending to be a fantasy character" hurdle. I try but I'm bad at it. That's why I tend to play goofier characters.

[YoThatLimp]

It's also worth noting that while I vastly prefer the RP portion to the combat portion of things - I am complete garbage at getting over the "this is so awkward pretending to be a fantasy character" hurdle. I try but I'm bad at it. That's why I tend to play goofier characters.

My last character was named Abe Linkon (elf cleric), who wore a sick cape and played the flute badly. 

[Twig]

Perfect.

[Bjorn]

I haven't RP'd in a tabletop game in a long time, but when I was, I found myself increasingly drifting towards more and more bizarre characters, as they tended to be easier to actually role-play. 

[Apelsin]

I've only ever RP:d once and my character was pretty bland, played very straight.

The only exception to this was that I made a mistake when setting it up that resulted in me not having any money to buy pants for him, leaving him pantless for the start of the adventure.

Two of my party members however had very fun characters. One of them was a humanoid duck mage with a very funny family history and a tendency to roll fails on magic checks with usually hilarious and annoying results.

The other had a character class which gave him bonuses whenever he acted in a daring, swashbuckling manner which of course lead to the player trying to find as many situations where he could take advantage of this as possible.

[Merus]

Yeah, I didn't particularly want to run straight fantasy - at the very least, we'd do something like Eberron or something strange from my head. That's also why I suggested Numanera and Eclipse Phase.

 

Numanera's a game by the designer of D&D 3rd ed, set in the distant future where weird technology has become a kind of magic. You find weird devices and can finagle them to use against your enemies. It does combat, but it's not the focus - you get XP for discoveries, and for allowing the GM to make your day worse. The trick is that the rules to Numanera aren't freely available so we'd need to work around that.

 

Eclipse Phase is a transhumanist sci-fi game. You play as transhumans working for secret freelance spies fighting existential threats to transhumanity, because we've spread far enough that vast, unknowable forces have noticed us and they do not want us here. Combat's not a focus in Eclipse Phase, and honestly it's kind of clunky. Eclipse Phase's rules are freely available, but it's further off the reservation than D&D 5 or Numanera.

[YoThatLimp]

I know this sounds corny, but I am really down for anything. I was hoping to check out 5e, but both of those other options sound interesting!

Is numanera from some rpg setting? It sounds super familiar. I'll check out Oberon as well just to try to familiarize myself with them.

[Merus]

You might be familiar with Numenera because they're basing the new Torment game in that setting. Also it's a game that I frequently spell incorrectly.

[Apelsin]

There's also Stars without number, a sci-fi rpg that has a free edition:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/86467/Stars-Without-Number-Free-Edition

 

Been following a campaign which is quite fun. Has a very Firefly feel.