Skip Navigation
Tabletop Gaming @beehaw.org
Zaleramancer @beehaw.org

Tell me about your favorite TTRPG!

Hey all,

I'm new here and I wanted to start a discussion about TTRPGs that people enjoy. I really like seeing people talk passionately about those sorts of things. I'm, personally, a big fan of games by Jenna Moran (Nobilis, Glitch, etc) and have a lot of positive experience with certain Powered by the Apocalypse Games. I'm also fascinated by a lot of OSR content because I feel like it has the potential to capture some of the more interesting parts of early D&D (my partner and I discuss AD&D quite a bit).

I used to write homebrew for Exalted and I've played some WoD games, but it's not my true passion, except maybe for Changeling the Lost. I had a long-running game of Ars Magica 5e a while ago, which was a tremendous experience and really ignited my interest in more dense, bean-countery games that I had previously been discounting in favor of lighter, more narrative-drama experiences.

I'm not as big a fan of D&D as some, but my partner and I did meet because of 3.5e homebrew, so I do have some positive nostalgia.

Anyway, what about you- what TTRPGs are you interested in? Which ones have you had long or interesting games with? What are you looking forward to playing, or setting up to play?

9 comments

  • Yay, some ttrpg talk on beehaw! I'm very interested in non-D&D games/systems, though I'm playing an in-person Curse of Strahd game that's been very fun.

    Outside of that, I've been really loving Blades in the Dark. I'm GMing it online for my friends and TBH, it's been up and down. I think the problems for me are:

    1.) I over explain rules and hand hold my players too much. 2.) The game requires lots of input from players which is difficult for some of them. 3.) I run into the same problems that plague a lot of groups regardless of the system---scheduling, buy-in, etc. 4.) Playing in-person is just better than playing online, personally.

    I know that sounds like I dislike BitD, but I really don't. When the game hits, it really hits! And I find prepping for the game much more fun than DND 5e.

    other games: 1.) I've got Masks and The Wildsea on my bookshelf, but I think I'm going to try playing those games as a player first before introducing it to my friends so that I have a stronger grasp of how it should feel like to play these narrative driven games. 2.) Mousegaurd and Dungeon Crawl Classics are OSR games I want to try, and they might be easier to introduce to Dnd 5e friends. 3.) Ten Candles and Fall of Magic are other narrative driven and mechanics-lite games I'd love to play in-person if given the opportunity! 4.) Lastly, Mothership is one that I'm interested in too

    • Oh my God, yes! I love Masks. I've played several games of it and the mechanics work great for the genre. It may be my favorite superhero TTRPG over all.

      I haven't played BITD yet, by I've played some games in its family. I found it quite fun, it's core mechanics really do encourage you to be indirect, scrappy and willing to skulk. Very fun!

      I haven't heard of the Wildsea, can you tell me more about it?

  • Hello,

    I would love to hear anything you care to share about Ars Magica 5e it was a system I was offering to learn with my current play-group but majority vote was for Lancer.

    I'm really interested in exploring how time changes a player character, and Ars Magica has that down, not to mention the amazing depth that the magic system has.

    Before we did lancer the playgroup i GM for did a 3-month Burning Wheel campaign where I lifted bits from the Ars Magica magic system but half the playgroup bounced off Burning Wheel so we did a couple of months of Shadowdark while I read Lancer and prepped a short campaign.

    I ran Keep on the Borderlands with some modifications to line-up with the level 0 character funnel leading into it, I personally liked running Shadowdark a lot. The inventory management is alot of fun to see play out, but like Burning Wheel some members of the playgroup didn't like it as much as I did.

    I've read Nobilis and love the core concept behind it, could see it being wonderful for a long one-shot or two-shot, but I've never talked to anyone who has actually played it.

    I also had a positive experience with the PBTA Masks game, but I've come to learn I don't care for shared storytelling games / player-facing games as much.

    The few months I ran Masks I had a much harder time with the challenge to prep that PBTA is asking the GM to on the spot come up with good consequences was less fun for me than running Shadowrun 5e combats. As a player I didn't like how a Playbook forces you, ableit gently, into a very specific theme/story your character is going to explore, and I did end up using the playbook change but as a player it didn't engage me as much as an organic development of a character.

    Prior to the Burning Wheel I did about a year long Shadowrun 5e campaign, which was a lot of fun! With hindsight I think i would spend more time talking about the campaign arc/theme in session 0 as me and another member of the playgroup had a blast with a slow burn criminal syndicate focused campaign but the rest would've enjoyed a corporate heist oriented one. I did get to run some exciting modules from the 1e/2e Shadowrun era that i converted to 5e, and it was with players new to the shadowrun ttrpg so didn't have to endure people who knew how to break the system.

    The year before the playgroup did a 6-month Cyberpunk RED campaign which was fun but at the end of it for us the system had too many flaws for us to consider again.

    Before that I ran a year long Pathfinder 2e campaign while playing in a PF2e Rise of the Runelords campaign, alot of fun and I really like pf2e but I honestly got overwhelmed with the amount of player options and at this point I am kind of over running high-fantasy ive done it for too many years lol.

    In addition to the weekly Lancer game I'm also running a Delta Green game both systems I have been very interested in for a few years. For lancer I'm running a heavily modified version of Operation Solstice Rain and the follow up Winter Scar. We used Microscope to establish details about the planet so I've modified the modules to work that in as well as change the entire module lay-out to a point-crawl as remixed by Valkyrion at https://trainlightning.com/solstice-rain-remix/

    Delta Green is a heavily modified version of Impossible Landscapes that ties in a bunch of other pre-written scenarios so far both have been an absolute delight.

    This year for Halloween I want to run some Mothership one-shots, other than that I've been really lucky in being able to check off some games and pre-written scenarios/modules/campaigns from my ttrpg bucket list the past year.

    Some systems I own that I haven't yet got the opportunity to play or run for folks:

    • Monster of the Week
    • Blades in the Dark
    • Twilight 2000
    • Nights Black Agent
    • Call of Cthulhu
    • I'm sorry did you say street magic

  • My friends and I started off playing D&D 3.5e in high school and college. We played it a lot over the years. Eventually we started playing 5e, and that's mainly what we play today (on the rare occasions we actually sit down and play).

    I had a friend who enjoyed experimenting with other systems like "GURPS" and "Swords & Wizardry". We only ever played a few sessions with "Swords & Wizardry" but I enjoyed it a lot. It was an extremely lethal system where players were encouraged to be clever rather than solving problems through comat, since players weren't particularly powerful compared to your typical monster or NPC.

    Most recently, another friend introduced us to "Apocalypse World", which we really enjoyed. We originally were just gonna play a one-shot, but wound up having a dozen or so sessions to keep the story going.

    • I got really into GURPS about a month ago, absolutely fascinated by the interlocking systems!

      My partner is a big fan of "Apocalypse World," and we haven't go around to playing it together. However, she loves how it creates drama and really drives a story.

9 comments