Tabletop Roleplaying Games and Board Games

[Unknown Soldier]

The general consensus on here, seems to be that most people have grown out of role-playing or lack others to play with. Its a shame really, as traditional role-playing is a fantastic way to spend time with friends in a creative environment. In many ways the computer RPG industry has killed-off traditional RPG as a popular hobby.

[LoathsomePete]

I wouldn't be so quick to lay blame at the rise of video games' door. Like comic books, RPG's have had a huge advertising problem in the last few decades. They're not advertised or easily available for purchase, usually only available in specialty stores, or big chain bookstores. Since Borders (US bookstore) went under last year, the only bookstore we have in my town is Barnes & Nobel and I'd say about 80% of their stock is D&D stuff, however if you're new to the experience and have questions, it's unlikely anybody working in the store will be able to answer them beyond where they are located and how much they cost. If you're lucky and live in a big city, there may be game stores that sell both board games and books, both used and new, and the staff will be able to answer your questions. I've definitely found that game store personnel shake the stereotypes associated with comic stores and are a warm and friendly environment.

I definitely will concede that video games have had an impact on PnP RPG's, but I'd say it's more because of the prevalence of video game usage. As many people in this thread have said, they would play an RPG if they could find people to play with them, whereas with video games you can find plenty of people on multiplayer games, you just need to start it up and find a populated server. No looking for players, no finding an agreeable time and then hoping nothing comes up, just double click on your icon and log in. Now obviously there are other obstacles like server's being down for maintenance or nobody being on, or internet connection dropping you, etc. Apparently D&D 4th Edition did try to make their combat more akin to something you'd expect in a video game, with large groups, and has received a lot of criticism, enough to cause Wizards of the Coast to announce a new edition and to include fan suggestions and test plays before the finished product is released, which makes me curious as to how many people switched over to Pathfinder.

Finally... while mainstream culture has had a more changeable relationship with nerd culture over the last decade, I've never felt that PnP RPG's had really been embraced. Video games, comic book characters, sci-fi/fantasy/horror, etc. have all in some way flourished over the last decade with more "mainstream" audiences, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find people on the fence in their geekdom to play a game of D&D. It's kind of sad in a way that a large group of man-children playing Call of Duty together on a server all in separate locations is considered a fairly normal way to spend an evening, but a group of like-minded individuals meeting up around a table and creating a story together is still considered as something for losers.

You should check out the non-fiction book Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf for some more commentary on table top gaming. I'd recommend picking it up used or finding it at the library as it's not the type of book you'd read more then once.

[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

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by mr dave

While I agree with this I don't think it's the only reason for comic book shop clerks to be a little apprehensive towards customers. A person who's got a backpack and who doesn't want help is a risk. I've seen myself hand over a backpack to plenty of clerks so I could browse their store without hassles and they could relax a bit and not worry about me stashing stuff. There's also the fact that most comic book / game shops make virtually no profit. One dude slipping a handful of reference manuals and game modules into their backpack can easily tank their entire month if not quarter.

If he'd asked me to leave my bag at the desk, it would have been fine. If he hadn't come off as such a prick right off the bat, I would have asked him to watch it while I browsed. But no, dick from the get go.

[LoathsomePete]

Finally finished by god awful Supernatural game last night, yes a game based on the CW TV show. Now you'd think the premise alone would stand up pretty well as something to base a game on, but the core book is less than 200-pages long and only gives you info on about 5-monsters which kind of just leaves you making the rest up as you go along. I really wish I chose to play Hunter: The Vigil instead, but with two brand new players, I wanted it to be something simple, so I could just sit them down to an episode or two and say "pretty much that". It would have also saved me time having to explain the new system and meant we could have started gaming a lot sooner. Sadly though, my slothful ways resulted in 6-months of pure storytelling agony.

The good thing about the game is that each gaming session could be an episode and you don't need an over arcing story for the entire game, with each session building up to this massive ending. If you needed time to figure out how to progress the story, you could write some "monster of the week" episode to help buy you so time. That's more or less what I did for a majority of the game, but I still found myself running thin on ideas because the book doesn't give you anything besides just retreds of the show. I started a story in the hopes that it would write itself, but instead it just kind of sat there, never gaining much intrigue or even giving them a reason to combat it. It's almost exactly like what's happening in the show now, introduce a major threat, then ignore it for two months while you attempt to somehow make sense of it all later down the line.

[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.

[LoathsomePete]

With the recent massive bitch-fest that has ensued with Mass Effect 3's ending, it has me curious, have you ever, as a storyteller, had your players be incredibly pissed off with you for the ending you had to your game?

I finished my Supernatural (yes a game based off the CW tv show, don't ask) with an ending that more or less was viewed rather than experienced. The actions of my characters made the ending possible, but they became spectators when the ending happened. I got a somewhat mixed response from my players, but I was so fucking sick of that game that I just wanted it over and put very little work into it.

Same thing goes with World of Darkness games, which almost inevitably end with your characters dying because the main intrigue of the game series is wheels within wheels, the invisible hand guiding your fate. You're always the pawn of some unseen force and death is really the only true escape from that control. It means the journey is the fun part, but the ending is always what people will remember, so you need to make the journey as memorable as possible to help distract from the grisly ending that awaits.

Going back to Mass Effect, the game billed itself as the choices you make effect the overall outcome of the game, which is pretty much the same with PnP RPGS, but with far less variety. With some video games you can have control on the order in which you do things and to some degree the course you take, but ultimately you're always going to be in the same bar, talking to the same drunk C-Sec officer to get information. PnP RPG's do much of the same thing, but as it's an impromptu style of storytelling, players can do things the storyteller had no intention of doing.

Blah, my brain isn't working today. Okay here's the general gist of this argument/ question, Mass Effect was to some degree a game in which the players built the universe, a much more stripped down version of what players can do in a PnP RPG, yet there exists options for them to make. PnP RPGS are very much the same way, with the storyteller having a framework for a story, but one which is ultimately written by the players, and because of that, do the players have a say in how the ending should be?