Tabletop RPGs

The PDF of Monsterhearts is on sale right now, which made me realize we don't have a tabletop RPG thread.

So you should but Monsterhearts, and then I guess we can talk about it and other tabletop RPGs

I got a post-campaign survey about Thirsty Sword Lesbians. One of the questions was "What convinced you to back this campaign?" and in the spirit of honesty, I replied "the title."

I reviewed Rod, Reel, and Fist over in the Justice Bundle thread. A clever change of pace, that one!

A different group is in the character creation and planning phase for a game of Lancer. I've basically never gotten to play giant shooty robots in a TTRPG context before, so I'm psyched!

Nich said:

I got a post-campaign survey about Thirsty Sword Lesbians. One of the questions was "What convinced you to back this campaign?" and in the spirit of honesty, I replied "the title."

Click to expand...

Literally every time I see anybody talk about this game, I read the title as "30 Sword Lesbians". And I always think "what a strangely specific number."

As for me, I've been running a campaign of Band of Blades for the last year (the dark fantasy military hack of Blades in the Dark) and we're getting close to wrapping up. IT's been really fun! The game's got some neat board-gamey elements and it really builds on the "crew as character" aspect of BitD, in that the actual PCs are pretty expendable and interchangeable, but the army is the thing you're concerned about. And each player takes on a high-level operations role within the army as well, which is cool - the Commander decides on missions, Quartermaster keeps track of resources, and the Marshal keeps track of the soldiers.

30-50 Feral Sword Lesbians

We've been playing Age of Sigmar: Soulbound remotely for a few months now. We can only manage a session roughly every two weeks, but that's early middle age for you. The game's pretty recently released and nobody is too well versed in the mechanics or the lore (aside from how it connects back to old Warhammer Fantasy) - we're discovering how things work while we play. So far, it's been fun.

Soulbound is many kinds of dumb, but also epic; every character in our team is OP in the right context. I'm not yet entirely sure how I feel about the d6 pool system, but at least it's not d100 - instead of failing a lot, any easy-to-medium difficulty checks seem to pass without problems and even harder things have a chance.

It's going to be interesting to see what our GM comes up with once we have gone through the introductory adventure - so far, threat levels have been pretty low. The team's healer has been able to cure any damage the enemies have been able to do on or past our tank. I can see that a more persistent threat could become deadly quickly, though - there are only 5 to 10 Toughness points before you start getting Wounds, and any more than a single Wound is already serious business. So far the highest damage per character turn I've seen was 10 (my character used an armor-piercing backstab shot on an enemy boss), so it looks like it could be deadly if 2-3 tough enemies gang up on a single character.

Nich said:

30-50 Feral Sword Lesbians

Click to expand...

1D6 Sword Lesbians

Fredde said:

1D6 Sword Lesbians

Click to expand...

So they're Short Sword Lesbians?

Over the next 3-5 minutes, 2d6 sword lesbians surround your kids once a minute that they spend playing in the yard

Like I mentioned in the other thread, I've played a tiny bit of Lancer and I think I love it a lot, and I'd really like to be able to get a more consistent/reliable game going. I like how it balances the crunchy character-building combat play against social roleplaying by just making them two different systems. They don't try to shoehorn combat-based mechanics into social roleplaying situations with no mechanical support or guidelines for it (like D&D), but also don't have to sacrifice the deeper, more intricate strategic combat for the sake of a more flexible system.

Also, mech combat! Outer space! Awesome art!

The official website for Lancer just went up, and on it you can buy physical copies of the book! (Or could as of this morning when it went live, anyway.)

Been playing a bunch of AGON, by John Harper and Sean Nittner, lately. It's a new (very reworked) edition of an older game of Harper's. The premise is that you're a bunch of Greek heroes journeying home from war, and you happen upon islands that have problems that need solving, and you solve them, often with the help or hindrance of the gods. It's very episodic (once you do an island, you leave and never return), with a super punchy and fast moving dice and conflict system, and some light competitive elements between the players. It's really simple to learn and really good for a one shot or short campaign. It's also well-set up for a rotating-GM, and I would really recommend it for first time GMs, as it comes with 12 prebuilt island scenarios, and you basically just have to read the text on the page to keep the game moving forward.

You can also get the PDF on Harper's Itch page. They've also made the game available for hacking under the aegis "Paragon System" (clever name) and have already released a few official playsets, including an X-files style hack, a Transformers style hack, and a BSG style hack.

Adventures in "right place, right time" publishing: I have an entry in "Gaming With Godot", a game jam for games that don't exist, which was just published as a collection. (Mine is "War-Bard", second from the end.)

Artist/co-creator of Lancer is working on a fantasy RPG that just released a playtest.

You take the role of an ICON, a larger than life hero, caught between the turning of two ages. Long ago, the cruel and prosperous Arken empire ruled the land until it fell to the Doom. Over time, the land healed, and the idyllic, pastoral Green Age came to pass. Now, however, that peace is threatened by the coming of the Churning Age. With dungeons literally erupting from the earth and monsters pouring out in great blights, Kin increasingly turn their hearts to plundering their depths for riches and power, and their hands to their sword hilts. Will you have the strength to resist this age, or will you claim its terrible power for yourself?


ICON is a fantasy role playing game heavily inspired by the vast, unknown spaces of classic mythic fantasy, anime, and video games. It has a robust narrative system for story driven play and a final fantasy inspired tactical combat system, with either or both systems usable for play.

Click to expand...

I haven't gotten a chance to download and look it over yet, but I am definitely intrigued.

Does anyone know any podcasts in the style of The Adventure Zone or Critical Role that play Blades in the Dark or Lancer? Cross-posted.

There are a billion Youtube channels that have Blades in the Dark series, but none that I know of at that level of production value. Friends at the Table did a short season with an earlier version of the Blades rules, and I think a later season did a campaign with Scum and Villainy, the Blades-in-Space hack, but I haven't listened to it.

So if I want to introduce my nephews (12 and 9) to tabletop RPGs, is that Ravenloft board game a good way? I'm told it's kinda like D&D with training wheels, is that correct?

Don't know board games that well myself, but I believe there are several RPG-lite ones like that.

We're finishing up our Lancer campaign, and the group is looking at starting up a game of Eclipse Phase (2nd edition). Has anyone played it? Got any impressions, tips, etc?

I love Eclipse Phase. Especially as a palette cleanser after long sessions of high level high bookkeeping D&D Pathfinder.

- It is not a game where you start out terrible at everything and improve, it is a game where the PCs start out as like, the absolute best in their chosen fields (it's an offshoot of Shadowrun, so, same principle there). There's an experience system but it's frankly vestigial and splashing a ton out just ends up flattening everyone's specialization out.

- It is also not a game where you get loot. 2E in particular all-but throws the whole notion of an inventory out with some standardized lists of "here's what we can assume every PC is going to have because it's universally handy" and "here's a list of everything you need if your main role in the group is X" and past that the whole deal is it's post-scarcity and you can 3D print anything, so like, if you need self-sealing stembolts or a somnoflange or whatever, you just like... ask the weirdos you know on the internet if anyone has a good blueprint file for one and find a printer real quick.

- It is ALSO not a game where you need to do a ton of math. We're on a derelict space station where everyone went feral 2 years ago and we need to establish some sort of campsite in the overgrown hydroponics bay? Well, my survival skill is 80, so, if I roll an 80 or less, yeah, I did it (and honestly if I roll like, an 85, I can spend a point from some pool or other to flip it into a 58 and still do it). No DCs, no adding some number to what I roll (but OK if my arm is like mangled maybe I've got a -10 penalty so I need a 70 or less).

- It IS a game with a really high concept setting, and everyone does kinda need to internalize that before you start because there's a bunch of things your character (and anyone with a handle on this) are totally going to take for granted. Like, there probably isn't going to be gravity most of the time. Everyone is on the internet 100% of the time and has a personal Bonzi Buddy they can have do all that research to find out that the CEO is way into showtunes and that's our in, or whatever else would slow things down with a let's hit the library sort of scene.

- The first 2e splatbook is out uh, Soon(tm) and has a lot of fun new toys and an alternate character creation system doing the whole Traveller/Twilight 2000 sorta "life path" thing which maybe relevant if you take a bit to start making characters.

I finally got to run The Job, the system I made for a contest on TT several years ago. Rules can be found here.

My nephew was in town, and he heard I had a campaign going, and so my brother and his wife invited themselves and the nephew to play, but I didn't have anything prepped, and I didn't really want to prep anything, so I ran this instead. The Job also has the advantage of being DM-less, and I wanted to just play for a change (although, as the only one at the table familiar with the rules, I did a lot of walking everyone through everything all the same).

The premise is basically "heist movie with dysfunctional team," and the one-off ended with my daughter driving the entire team off a cliff after we had successfully completed the job because her character was just that angry at someone on the team. There was a single character on the team who had a chance at surviving, but someone else was really angry at him and thwarted his attempt to make it out. Everyone agreed that it was the best possible ending.

The system bakes inter-character drama into character creation, so it's more or less intended for something along those lines to happen, though not usually to this extreme. (Under the hood, my daughter and the other guy both got a 2 on one of their relationship rolls, and she took the "even if it costs you your life" bit at face value.) A+, would Job again.