Tabletop Roleplaying Games and Board Games

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

You're just the sort of person who'd love them.

I can't see why I wouldn't. It's just kinda hard to find the kind of dorks who'd be into them. They're sort of isolated by definition.

[LoathsomePete]

You just need to know where to look, meetup.com is a decent site for finding people and creating group activities, and even Craigslist can sometimes help you find someone. If you have a college or university where you live I'd also recommend going up there and posting some flyers advertising a game, you should have no problem finding players if you do that. Also if you have a game store in town, you can ask them if you can post a flyer there as well, or just hang out and see who walks in and strike up conversations.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by LoathsomePete

You just need to know where to look, meetup.com is a decent site for finding people and creating group activities, and even Craigslist can sometimes help you find someone. If you have a college or university where you live I'd also recommend going up there and posting some flyers advertising a game, you should have no problem finding players if you do that. Also if you have a game store in town, you can ask them if you can post a flyer there as well, or just hang out and see who walks in and strike up conversations.

Hmm. Good ideas. The only place I know of that's close, I walked in there once to buy comic books, and the guy who I guess owned the place was a dick who acted like I was an intruder or something. Asked me if I needed any help and I told him I was just looking, and he asked me again if I was sure in a condescending voice that made me think he thought I was there to steal something. I had a bookbag, so it wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility, but still. Dick.

[Guybrush]

We had our own tabletop games club back in the days. We used to meet friday evenings/nights at a cafè where some of us worked and we sold pizza and coffee and people played all sorts of games like Roborally or Junta. There usually was some Warhammer going on on a pool table. Think I've mentioned this a couple of times before, but it's worth reminiscing about yet again. Most of the members were roleplayers and when we started up our club, we got some cash from the office of culture and we spent all that on tabletop RPG books. This is part why I've tried so many different games.

Regarding dice rolling, I generally feel like they get in the way of things as much as they help. I've sometimes played with DMs who required me to do charm rolls when speaking to people I didn't already know and I always thought it seemed a bit contrived or like a hurdle. I mean, my character's not particularly ugly or anything so can't we just play out a dialogue between ourselves and see if I say something rude?

I love Dungeons & Dragons, but the basic dungeon crawl feels too much like a computer game to me. You kill a large group of minions and then there's a boss at the end. I feel like by now, I've been on so many dungeon crawls, it just got old. If I game more D&D in the future, I'd rather have dungeons with few monsters that are more challenging (perhaps only "bosses"). As the fights are challenging, each characters abilities at combat are important, but you're less likely to spend all evening rolling dice. I could add that I've managed to run D&D campaigns without including a horrible amount of dungeons just fine.

Since I started reading Pratchett (mid-teens), I have to admit my D&D campaigns have been quite Discworldy to some degree I love that kind of humour in my settings. I've also always been a big fan of giving players freedom in regards to what they wanna do in combat etc. Like I wouldn't mind LoathsomePete coming up with some sort of cool move using boots of running. The point is to have a fun evening with your buds after all so what harm could it do?

edit :

Originally Posted by LoathsomePete

Besides that I've also tried Wraith: The Oblivion but found the mechanics far too complicated to work properly and the game did cause some hurt feelings between players messing with each other as their shadows.

Possibly my least favourite WoD game. It was just hard to get your head around in so many ways. The setting was completely confusing and vaguely described I thought. I think this has often been the case with the old WoD games (another example is Changeling and The Dreaming or Mage and the Digital Web). And the characters seemed naturally inclined to get a bit egotistical, for example worrying about the state of their fetters etc. so it didn't seem easy/natural for a bunch of ghosts to really pull together as a group either. Each character comes with a lot of baggage. At least, that's how I remember it. Better as a resource for other games, I thought!

edit : You mention the Shadow system .. definetly could also make things a little difficult

[Yac]

It's interesting to see what kind of rpgs were played in different parts of the world.
I've been playing rpg games since I was 14, including in no particular order:
CP2020, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer, DnD (2nd and 3rd ed), Earthdawn, WoD: werewolf, changeling, demon hunters x, mummy, legend of 5 rings, Star Wars and a ton of other systems, including many Polish ones no one here heard about
My favorite one by far was my friend's Firefly based sf system, named .. SF (eSeF phonetically), boy did we have some space fun.
I was lucky enough to find a solid group (2 groups in fact, around 8 people at any given time) and when I moved away for college, I found a ton of RPG clubs so I never really had a shortage of game masters and gaming opportunities.
That was before, now ... I kind of got bored with rpg games. Last game I played was something like 3 years ago.. I'm still a part of the same rpg club, it's only now when we meet we talk, drink, maybe play a board game like settlers of catan and that's it.
Yac.

[Guybrush]

Hum, my closest group of roleplaying friends is made up of about 3 people besides myself. Then there are 6 more friends who have been occasional players. Generally, you'd expect 3~4 players and a GM on any of our sessions and more characters made as the casual players sometimes join up, even if they don't play as regularly. I consider it an okay size group and then there are other RPG circles that we know from our days in the tabletop gaming club.

Very few of these people are guys I'd consider geeks or nerds. Actually nerd or geek is not a word I'd use to describe any of them. We're just more or less normal guys who like that sort of thing.

[Howard the Duck]

for me, it's neither outgrowing tabletops or lack of people

i really don't have the commitment to make it a regular thing, i have other things to attend to

there's a quite big comics shop, which also sells modules, that can hook you with groups

[James]

This thread has inspired me and I have decided to set up a group with some friends. The stuff is expensive though....

[LoathsomePete]

It's really not, the only thing you need are your dice and the rule book. Almost all the games have some kind of supplementary books to accompany the game, but you don't really need them unless you really want to expand on what you can do. Check out used bookstores for old rule books, I managed to score Mage: The Awakening and Werewolf: The Forsaken for $16 together. If I were to go to a new bookstore that sold them, each of them would have been somewhere around $35-40 U.S. apiece. You can also find some good deals on Amazon or half.com. If you're thinking of going the D&D route, I'd recommend checking out the game Pathfinder which fixes a lot of the problems with 3rd, 3.5, and 4th edition while also giving you the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide all in one giant tomb. I wouldn't even bother with 4th edition because they're going to be releasing a new one within the next year or so, so no point in wasting your money. Also, if you don't mind PDF's, you can find downloads (both legal and illegal) to help save you money.

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by James

This thread has inspired me and I have decided to set up a group with some friends. The stuff is expensive though....

It only starts to get expensive if you want to start buying miniatures and models etc, all you need are a few modules and rule books to kick off.