Check out the follow up, 6 MORE RPGs that aren't Dungeons and Dragons, here: ruclips.net/video/wlAcbHK0VQE/видео.html 6 brand new RPGs that AREN'T D&D, what more could you ask for?
Hahah! In the bottom of the screen there is a progress bar with chapter titles but the second chapter is "Simba Room" but it should be spelled Symbaroum!
I'm a farmer wrenching on a tractor in the US midwest while watching a guy talk about his favorite roll playing games across the Atlantic ocean. I love the modern world sometimes.
Where as I am about 90 miles north of where he is based (UK just not London) -- and frequently chat roleplay with a friend in Alabama... And Texas... And Michigan...
I’m in bed in the Rocky Mountains recovering from my fifth surgery this year. I don’t have a body that would let me play table top RPGs in meat space, but I have an amazing group from all across the country that plays together every week with the magic of the internet and cheap webcams. Hello everyone here, I’m so happy to know you are out there.
Surprisingly...helpful. I have heard of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk and Call of Cthulu, but the rest of these I have never even heard of. Being new like 5 years into TTRPG's and even less actual playtime; This has given me some food for thought. Specifically the refence to a Drama Die which can probably be added to any game system to help tie down descriptions. Very informative. Appreciate it. Earned a Sub.
I will say this much though. You do seem to have a bias towards Atmsopehric heavy systems. Which, while not a bad thing does limit the scope of possible suggestions. Only cure for that is experience though. So not really a complaint. More an observation.
Shadowrun is great, it's basically futuristic dnd. So elves and guns and sorcery. There is a lot of emphasis on planning, but my group always treated those like smaller roleplaying vignettes. We didn't spend time wondering if there was a back door, we roleplayed casing the target or hacking or astral projecting to discover the information. Office buildings in a world with magic and supernatural infiltrators are basically vertical dungeons, because you can only gather so much information before you go in. It can also be great to really explore alternate objectives, obtaining data or securing a corporate hostage really opens up your imagination.
0:45 Blades in the Dark 5:10 Symbaroum 6:20 Dead Lands Reloaded 8:15 Song of Ice and Fire 11:29 Hot War 14:10 Cyberpunk and Shadow Run 16:53 Ten Candles 21:25 The Expanse 24:40 Call of Cthulu 27:20 Night Witches
Another good one along the plans angle is... Plans are worthless, but planning is essential. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower He used many versions of this same quote over the years and it is questioned if the quote is really his.
@@DrakeAurum There's also now a Cyberpunk/Climate fiction hack for it called Hack the Planet where you can play as cyberpunk stormchasers who can hack nanite infused superstorms.
There's also a Fantasy Apocalyptic War one called Band of Blades where you play the last surviving human military trying to stop world ending undead/ evil demigod
My games growing up were: 1. Star Wars The Role Playing Game from West End Games, 2. Rifts from Palladium, and 3. Vampire the Masquerade from White Wolf.
And if you're not into Vampires, White Wolf has a whole series of beasties. Werewolf: the Apocalpyse (for those of us who want to play eco-terrorist werewolves) Mage: the Ascension Changeling: the Dreaming (for those of us who want to be fairies trapped in human bodies) Demon: the Fallen Hunter: the Reckoning (for those of us who REALLY liked Supernatural) Etc.
I played two ongoing campaigns 'back in the day', one was a homebrew setting using the Rifts system, the other was a mash-up of Mage and Shadowrun, so similar background to you. Also played a bit of Werewolf, Cthulu and Kult, and also larped V:tm and Changling, currently I'm playing a homebrew fantasy game, so I have dabbled in a bit of everything, but I have never actually played DnD!..
West End Games' ("D6") Star Wars, Ars Magica, Feng Shui, Runequest, Pendragon, Delta Green and Unknown Armies, the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and its WH40K brother, first edition Dark Heresy ... and _of course_ The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The ASOIAF game sounds as if owes a lot to Traveller, Pendragon and Ars Magica. All of the White Wolf games are mixed bags, with uneven quality and some issues to work around, but the same is certainly true of Shadowrun and Deadlands. Munchausen is the boozy old dad of GMless, highly-structured round-table games like Ten Candles (and for that matter Werewolf).
For those looking for a written list of the games, here you go. But make sure you still watch and see why you should play these games. 1. Blades in the Dark 2. Symbaroum 3. Deadlands Reloaded 4. The Song of Ice and Fire 5. Hot War 6. Cyberpunk / Shadowrun 7. Ten Candles 8. The Expanse 9. Call of Cthulhu 10. Night Witches
I'm surprised they don't have that in the video description, along with links to them. I suppose it's due to them just having them to create this, and they are certainly cranking out content.
Thanks for the post! Here are the time stamps: 01. BitD 00:45 02. S 05:11 03. DR 06:20 04. tSoIaF 08:11 05. HW 11:27 06. C/SR 14:03 07. 10C 16:34 08. tE 21:19 09. CoC 24:39 10. NW 27:12
@@jimn4315 Today (!), GURPS is not a good system. It used to be, but from both design and gameplay perspective, it aged and continues to age badly. (I'm not saying it doesn't work nor that it doesn't serve well to those who already play it and like it - it just isn't a game to recommend to new players anymore). Also Shadowrun is great setting and its older editions were good at the time, but it's long term decline in design throughout last 3 editions (4, 5, 6) is sadly well known in its fandom. Fate Core should be in the list. So should Savage Worlds. And GUMSHOE, probably, at least in some of its iterations (personally I'd pick Ashen Stars, but Trail of Cthulhu would be a safe bet). Hillfolk too. may be 13th age? Frankly I'm not really much impressed by this list :/
This definitely needs to be a thing. Lots of other tabletop channels have, like, long running campaigns and stuff or various game system reviews, but I don't know of any channel that spreads its attention like that and runs plenty of one shots of several games. That is definitely something I'll be into
Uff, I thought I'm some wierdo that the best games I know didnt make it to the list. Dont get it wrong, the list has quality entry but what about Fate and Burning Wheel? Sure the game released only in my country wont make it here but I mention it anyway: it's called Střepy snů which means Dream Fragments. It's narrative system and the setting is base on dreams. Or the Dreams that control life of humans, their longing, feeling and so.
Back in the day, when we got tired of d&d we switched to RuneQuest or Warhammer. I didn’t really like the Warhammer system, but they had good adventure modules - much better than anything TSR put out. We also liked the way Warhammer had dozens of occupations rather than classes, so you could start as a Soldier and then become a Bounty Hunter and then an Assassin, or you could be an Apprentice Wizard who becomes a Wizard and then an Elementalist. It worked really well from a roleplaying perspective. But RuneQuest was probably what we played the most. The game rules were similar to Call of Cthulhu (I think CoC rules were a mod of RuneQuest) - there was something about the rules that just seemed to make them more appealing than D&D - probably the skills and the fact that you didn’t have ‘levels’ - so your character only got harder to kill because they became better at avoiding attacks, which just seemed better than the weird hit point concept of d&d.
i think it is more a thing of both being based on the same system known as "basic roleplaying" but i'll have to confirm that, and what bothers me about runequest (at least personally) is the complete lack of controll, who or what your character is and how decent they are is entirely up to the dice, with the only choices you really get to make being spells
@@defensivekobra3873 You might want to look into Mythras. The modern version of RuneQuest is basically Runequest 2e due to licensing issues, plus a ton of rules that fuse it even more with Glorantha like you said. Mythras is Runequest 6e with the serial numbers filed off. It's been turned into something of a GM toolkit. Like... there are rules for firearms in a seperate suppliment and they're really good. You're almost expected to change / remove some things to fit your setting as well as possible. It's also just a more elegant system. Combat is cooler *and* a bit less clunky, and skill bloat is cut down by splitting them into "basic skills" everyone has and "professional skills" which only apply if you pick them during character creation. It's my favorite system ever and I didn't even like RQ: Roleplaying in Glorantha much. A lot of people have described it as the company's BRP house rules they've developed over a decade of refinement and I think that's pretty accurate.
Interesting, what didn't appeal to you about Warhammer. For me it's super interesting, partially because it reminds me of the game that introduced me into the setting. That was Midgard, a smaller german game. Two things in particular I like about both: The damage system with permanent consequences and actual need to actively heal wounds and the smaller more personal scope.
As a long term RPer I never thought RPing would become so popular, what's more surprising to me is that D&D is the game capturing new players' attention. Personally I loathe it.
I tried convincing my players for ages to at least try somethign that is not DnD (or Pathfinder wich really is just DnD with a different name). Hope you got better luck than me.
I love GURPS. It's very complicated but you can play anything you can possibly think of. Half cyborg half vampire cat sure once I've played one. Jedi adept with no legs in medieval Europe sure. Dwarf techomancer news anchor yup.
The game is "front loaded"; character creation can be as complicated as you care to make it, but playing does not have to. I find it if anything easier than D&D, certainly easier than Pathfinder.
@@svennoren9047 True, in my experience a gm playing with people new to GURPS is best off making some character templates that fit setting, offer them to the players and discuss during character creation on some specifics.
GURPS is really just a pared-down version of HERO; most of the creation, action and dice conventions of both games are identical. What Steve Jackson had was an in with the S/F-Fantasy industry which got him all kinds of resource books: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Ringworld, Vorkosigan Saga, Auto-Duel (a rift on his own Car Wars game), WildCards, The Prisoner, etc. But the game-play is really indistinguishable from HERO (i.e., Champions). And as with HERO, if you're any good a math, you can make a 75-point character that is at least as powerful as what most people would be able to make with 200 points. Good game, but there are an easy dozen that I'd put before it an any list....
0:45 Blades in the Dark 5:10 Symbaroum 6:20 Dead Lands Reloaded 8:15 Song of Ice and Fire 11:29 Hot War 14:10 Cyberpunk and Shadow Run 16:53 Ten Candles 21:25 The Expanse 24:40 Call of Cthulu 27:20 Night Witches
So glad you mentioned Deadlands, truly an under appreciated favorite. I've got to mention Mutants and Masterminds. For anyone who wants to play a Superhero based campaign M&M is very much set up to be able to run any kind of superhero campaign you want. I personally prefer the 2nd edition to the current 3rd edition. The orig creator of that game also has another more rules-light superhero game called Icons if you want something a bit easier to run.
I wish I knew about this video sooner because there was a Hurricane Dorian charity bundle on DriveThruRPG that had games for example Icons, but also Supers Revised and have you heard of Mighty Protectors (Villains and Vigilantes 3)? There was also this watchmen/the dark night dark superhero rpg called Cold Steel Wardens. I only got this bundle a few weeks ago and it was available from 17 sep to 30 sep or something, I don’t know how much the games are but the bundle was only $25. It came with other games and supplements as well.
Yeah I played a recent version and it was just... utterly terrible. The rules and some other stuff was so problematic that about 2-3 sessions into the campaign we got to the point things got so bad we just all decided to up and walk away from it. Bear in mind this had nothing to do with the GM, or the story setting, or characters, or players. It was due to the game itself.
1st edition Shadowrun included a note from the author claiming that, while the matrix was a great idea, something like it would never work in real life. Aaaand they also had a Poofreading Department who (in addition to failing to spot the typo in their own job description in the credits) managed to spot the missing O in Intruder Countermeasures (which made it sound rather rude).
@Kaushtubh chauhan-- Exactly such! Where Call of Cthullu and Kids on Bikes gives you a chance to possibly survive, you go into Ten Candles KNOWING the PC you make is gonna die. Honestly i can see where the charm lays in it. Your making a PC that you know has a finite time in the world, giving you the freedom to make a character you normally never would. That type of bleekness isn't for every game group,however, so i'd run it by your DM/players first.
Played this a couple of weeks ago. Everything was going 'great' for us, right up 'til the end, when everything went to shit and we all died within a few minutes. It was Glorious! (But not something I'd want to play very often.)
Just a minor word of warning. The first time I played a I bought 'long life' candles. It was a complete disaster. 6 hours into the game only one candle had gone out - and that's because someone opened a door to quickly on the way to the bathroom. Test your candles - mapmaker sure they burn for about 3 hours
@@geekwithglasses2897 Silly Geek, doggos don't die, they go to an amazing farm north of the country, with wide space, lots of squirrels and my favorite uncle, who I haven't seen in over a decade
An absolute must-play tabletop system is Paranoia. It makes for some of the most fast paced, hilarious one shots a role-player can play. Far in a dystopian future, society scrapes by in an underground complex run by a single all powerful yet thoroughly broken AI known as "Friend Computer". The players are a team of "troubleshooters" tasked with solving some problem for the computer, such as eradicating horrible mutants or exposing a treasonous secret society. Luckily, on such a dangerous mission in such a dangerous world, each player has a series of clones for the inevitability of their demise. The catch is, every player must hide that they are one of these mutants, and also a member of a treasonous secret society.
Kevin Sullivan The computer is your friend, the computer creates clones so that if you die a valiant hero of the city you may live on in spirit if not in body. Honest citizens run these risks freely, frequently and with great enthusiasm friend citizen. Not to do so is cowardice and friend citizen cowardice is treason. Please report for termination immediately friend citizen, have a nice day. I have known a group starting with fresh 6 clone sets need to recreate characters within an evenings play...
@@davidwright7193 I've been in games where I've run out of clones before getting to the mission briefing... and where I was not the only one to run out of clones on the way to the mission briefing. Ironically... those sessions were the most fun.
I thought I had no money left after buying dozens of dice sets for D&D. And then I watched this video and .... I now have ten more RPGs being delivered next week.
Recomendations; Everything world of darknes (just about any version): Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse etc etc Mutant Year Zero Legend of the Five Rings
Problem with WoD is that is require a lot of researching for the GM to get a good knowledge of the world with all it's factions and even more to create a good plot that suits his players. Some of the rules can be a bit complicated for new players as well, especially Mage: The Ascension/Awakening.
Same here. Nothing says epic like a Titan Juicer throwing a Coalition hover tank at fire prepped Glitterboy. Once they plant that spike, they cant even dodge!
I love the setting of RIFTS but I hate the rules. Which is why I love savage RIFTS. With savage worlds ruleset running the game is so much easier. Playing it too. I remember playing palladium rules and going back and forth between three books trying to definitively figure out how ranged combat works.
The Star Wars RPG by West End Games was the first RPG I played, back in the '80's, because my mom didn't want us playing AD&D. It's a really fun system that only uses d6 and the first two books were used by Timothy Zhan when he created the Thrawn Trilogy, the first books of the Expanded Universe (Legends). Fantasy Flight Games recently did a 30th Anniversary reprint of the first two books and PDFs of the dozens of supplements can be found online. Give it a try, and may the Force be with you.
@@Dyrnwyn My group's problem with it is that it's too generic. I'm sure with years of experience we could get it to "feel" the way we want it to, but by default our two games felt exactly the same - despite one being "Supernatural" in the Old West and the other being High Fantasy tribal world.
@@gatherer818 I can understand the "too generic" complaint. I think it's up to the group and the GM to really narrow down the world the game is set in, carefully work out the skills you want to use (and don't want to use) and create strong aspects that define the world. So while it can feel too generic out of the box, it allows for a narrower, more focused game if you are willing to spend the time creating the necessary aspects, skills etc.
@@gatherer818 If you guys find Fate Core, alone, too generic I highly suggest checking out 'Baroque Space Opera' which uses Fate. It's setting is like a mix of Dune, WH40k, and many fantastical sci-fi shows & movies. Emphasis on the 40k and Dune. 'Oubliette' is another big Fate setting (Fate rules included with this one), but it's a supernatural fantasy set in purgatory-like plane where the characters find themselves after death. Has a little mish-mash of modern & futuristic tropes blended into it's largely fantasy themes. I've not explored it thoroughly yet since it has a large amount of content in the book. In other words, there are some Fate Core based RPGs with great content out there if you dig a bit.
"No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength" - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. (Yup, I'm a pedant even at six in the morning)
My favorite RPG is Mouse Guard. It has such a fun dice system that is pretty quick and the "conflict" system that can be used up and beyond commanding armies, to having a bake off or a staring contest. What is really unique and fun about this is that each player is a mouse with unique skillsets and a core belief and instincts that will be challenged through the campaign. I highly recommend checking it out! Mouse Guard RPG.
Donnie Chase I second this. I really like how you’re a mouse in a world with owls and foxes. You’re society is the underdog and while you are basically screwed on the surface, some how you always pull through with sheer will alone. I played first before I read the comics and again after I read them and both times it was magical. If you don’t like mice you can also try torch bearer which is based on mouse guard but is more traditional fantasy.
@Scott Whatever I'd say that the differences between V20 and V5 are a little more complicated than "V5 is garbage". Don't get me wrong, V20 is better overall, but V5 did a decent job of updating the setting - something the game was in dire need of - and introduced some new mechanics that actually work fairly well. Where V5 falls short is in the fact that, in trying to streamline mechanics which, over 20 years of editions, had gotten a bit clusterfuck-y, they went a little overboard and simplified it too much (mostly in regards to abilities, skills, and disciplines). That said, V5 is easier to learn than V20 as a result, and is therefore a better introduction to the setting for a newbie so they're not getting bogged down by the mechanical complexity right out of the gate. The same thing happened with the progression of DnD editions from 3.5 to 4th Ed, and now 5th Ed is a happy medium - I can see that happening easily with VtM.
I've never actually found the White Wolf system (Vampire, Mage, Changeling, etc) all that good. The setting is interesting, but when I've played, the rules have some serious issues and some of the stuff is so vague it's always causing "fights" in the group. Though to be fair, I haven't seen the latest 2 versions, so who knows. But with WW now being a dead company, who knows what the future of their properties will be like.
You mean "Rulesmaster." Consult 9 charts to see what your strike did. I did like the various levels for Spells and Skills though. Rolemaster's level of "crunch" would put a modern "minimalist system advocate" in a coma!
Rolemaster is my all time favorite, beating out DnD, in my mind, back in the 80s. It also had Tolkien's Middle Earth as a setting available, so double win.
Loved Rolemaster after my group "graduated" to it from MERP in the late 80's - early 90's. If I did it again I'd probably leave out every Companion past 3, maybe even 2 though.
I've heard of it but never played or looked into it. I'm still wrapping my head around learning something that isn't DnD/Pathfinder, but's still complex. Even Starfinder is slightly easier to get into than, say, Shadowrun from scratch. Lots of stats I'm not used to, lots of explanations I've not heard a million times so it's not just second nature to see in those games instead. I was also somewhat interested in City of Mist but it seems the more I read about the setting, the more I'd only run a conspiracy game and in that case, I feel like I should run Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green.
Shout outs to my favorite tabletop games. Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars RPG - the buy in is a little hefty but i LOVE the narrative dice system. And Mutants and Masterminds - anytime i can play a Super Hero/ villain i am there. Crunch is hefty though.
Definitely was hoping to see FFG Star Wars on this list! Would love to hear Johnny's opinion of it. The narrative dice is my favorite dice system just because of the scenarios it can create and how well it captures the essence of the Star Wars movies.
@@Thwarten I was hoping to see it too, but he did make a point of saying he wasn't a big one for RPGs in established properties, so that may have been a barrier for him moreso than The Expanse and SoIaF. But who knows, if enough people ask for it, he might give it a proper review on here.
Edge of the Empire is definitely my favorite RPG because nothing can beat the fun factor of force points and the utility of the scene as opposed to long/short rest system. That and skill trees are muy nice to track character growth.
Night Witches: also an absolute great song of the band Sabaton. Shadowrun is the only P&P I played so far, it's very good fun. Ah, I've played also another game: Earthdawn. But what that one is is basically Shadowrun minus the cyber elements, set in a Medieval-esque timeline. But it plays in the Shadowrun universe, created by the same guy(s) afaik. I'd love to get back into roleplaying... Do you also know other systems, like The Dark Eye or The World of Darkness (Vampire and Werewolf), and if so, could you address these? Thank you for this video, it's one of the formats I looked forward to the most when you started the Dicebreaker project.
true, there are strong hints that Earthdawn & Shadowrun are set in the same game universe. just that these settings are separated by 6000 years(or is it 12000?). one thing though, game mechanics very, very different from each other. for example, with Earthdawn, a player needs, at most, 2 each of ALL the types of dice(d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 & d20). Shadowrun, you MUST have the infamous 'cube of dice'. holds 3 x 3 x 4 d6's. 36 in total. pretty sure Shadowrun is the main reason why these cubes are sold most if not all gaming stores.
Props for posting about Deadlands! It's one of my favorite RPGs that almost nobody has heard of. You missed one of the big highlights though. It gives people a great reason to do terrible impressions of various American accents. ;)
@@jamiefultz3921 i went to me rpg store yesterday and of all the games listed to start soon there was NONE from WoD. it was all shadowrun, dnd and star wars. i asked why no WoD and the naswer was a simple "there are no GMs interested". im seriously thinking on starting a table now, this scorn cannot continue
The most fun I've ever had playing a pen & paper RPG was when a friend introduced me to "Paranoia". Set in a futuristic sci-fi world you begin with 6 clones of your character (this should be your first clue on how this game will go). Your group is provided with an apparently simple task to complete, which of course will be hindered quickly and catastrophically by each player's character, their roles within society in general, and the added bonus that competitive rather than co-operative play is highly encouraged. For example, one scientist character may innocently decide to put on a pair of experimental, nuclear powered rocket boots. While the security character begins to immediately question the scientist's intentions and attempt to subdue the scientist, the scientist inadvertently fails a skill role causing the boots to self-destruct, killing the entire group. Cue the release of everyone's Clone #2. In the end, if your group completes the assigned task and hasn't used more than 2 clones ... you're doing it wrong. If, however, you end the game with sore bellies from all the laughter, 0 clones left to use, and having failed to reach step 2 of a 3 step task ... congratulations, you've succeeded!!
Blades is amazing and it seems that I'm now running a yearly Halloween Ten Candles game. Great list. I REALLY want to get Spire to the table. I'm a big Eclipse Phase fan as well and I can't wait for the second edition to be printed soon.
Eclipse Phase is my unicorn - love the setting and the possibilities of it but I've never had a chance to play it. My gaming group tended to play Friday evenings, and after a long work week most of us were too shattered to really dive into something that complicated.
@@TheOriginalHairyDave The universe of EP is ridiculously cool. I read Altered Carbon forever ago and was fascinated with the concept, then found Eclipse Phase. I've run a couple super short sessions but I'm planning on either pushing hard for my weekly group to play or starting a new group once I get the second edition book. It alters your priorities as a character so much just by the nature of the setting.
I have used the CP2020/Fuzion rules for a number of game worlds I have created. It is a well balanced system that allows for a lot of creativity in skills and special abilities.
@@brettdibble2763 play-by-post is when you play an rpg on an internet forum whenever people get around to posting throughout the week rather then everyone playing at the same few hour block of time.
Play-by-post originates in snail mail. You would join a group, mail in your planned activity, then receive the results a bit later. It was adopted by BBS, Usenet, and forum members in the time real-time computing wasn’t capable of hosting multiple players at once. Play-by-mail games backed by mainframes (often a university’s “powerful” mainframe) were also called “batch games” since all the player turns received in a certain time frame were input into the mainframe all at once (in a batch) and the results calculated and sent out to the players. (Showing my age: mail and post were interchangeable prior to the 1990s: hence “post office”)
For anyone who wants a full list of the games discussed, and a small summary to remember which is which: 1 - Blades in the Dark - Steampunk heist game, with 2 - Symbaroum -Dark creepy forest RPG 3 - Deadlands - 'Weird West', the wild west with creepy, crazy magic 4 - A Song of Ice and Fire RPG - Gritty medieval houses and politics in the world of Westeros 5 - Hot War - Alternate History UK, cold war gone hot. Keep society from plunging into darkness, also mutants. Dice rolls affect characters permanently 6 - Cyberpunk (2020 or Red) - It's Cyberpunk, not too distant future, corporations have major power. Hacking is a thing. 7 - Shadowrun - As above, but with magic and fantasy races. 8 - Ten Candles - Tragic Horror RPG, the sun is dead, society is failing, everyone is going to die. One-Shot RPG 9 - The Expanse - Based on the books (and show) of the same name. Sci-Fi fun times in a gritty version of the future where humanity has colonised (in every sense of the word) the solar system. 10 - Call of Cthulu - H.P. Lovecraft is problematic, but his works are spooky. Eldritch horrors are coming and you have to investigate how, and why. 11 - Night Witches - Based on actual history, be some soviet women in WW1 planes throwing bombs at nazis and maybe dealign with sexism.
While I was fanatic for MT during its heydey, I've played/GM'd all the versions published since 1978 and switched a few years ago to the Mongoose version of Traveller. MongTrav v1 was a bit rough but MongTrav v2 seems to have polished the rough edges a bit.
@@kevinsullivan3448 Then he shouldn't be making videos like this. Not mentioning Traveller because it's old is like not mentioning ST TOS because it was from the 60's.
@@DennisMoore664 That's the best reason not to mention STtOS. If you weren't alive to watch it the first time you shouldn't sully it with your eyeballs.
I love the cypher system. The games of Numenera I’ve played were like being in a story that would’ve been drawn by Moebius in the pages of Heavy Metal. And the system made everything flow nicely without too much crunch. Great for focusing on roleplay and storytelling.
The old Marvel role playing game had an amazing system that really worked well! You should check it out sometime...it's amazing they created a workable system that can handle such a diverse universe full of different power types and sets. They also had a karma system so good characters lost karma when they did bad things and gained it when doing good things...like experience points that can also be taken away; you could also spend karma in an emergency to modify a role as a last resort. Amazing system from top to bottom.
Only problem I had with it was the complete reliance on so much randomization of powers and stats. Every party I ran with had two or three near useless characters and one who had Monstrous level stats and universally useful powers.
Friend computer is always right. Saying otherwise is treason. Knowing the rules (which edition) is a treasonous activity and should be terminated immediately. Here is your ticket to self termination booth.
H.P. Lovecraft is probably the _best_ example of why it's important to separate the art from the artist. Yeah, he was a terrible person, but he still created one of the greatest horror stories ever written which is why he's remembered. If he hadn't written those books, pretty sure nobody would ever mention his name.
People's morals are messed up. Lovecraft may have been a racist, but the Soviet Red Army committed literal genocides (before WW2) just because they didn't like the cut of somebody's jib, or because they were political opponents--and listen to how they're described in this video. It's not even mentioned. They're called "amazing". Pretty sure genocides are a worse crime than writing racist poems. Boggles my mind. 🤯
The World Of Darkness games have been my favourite, with vampire at the top of those! Also picked up a game called Cavemaster recently which plays using stones, which seems really evocative with the setting in the mechanics. In the same way that Fate Of The Norns: Ragnarok does by using runes instead of dice!
Yes, I had an ongoing World of Darkness group in high school. We played Vampire, Werewolf and Changling. I still have about 30 books from the 90s that I wish I could get more use out of.
For a game with a contemporary setting and a heavy focus on roleplay it's hard to beat the WoD stuff. Vampire was always my favorite. Very political to begin with and it was easy as a storyteller to scale your campaigns. Did you want more intrigue than combat tonight? Simple to do. More combat focus tonight? Also easy. I was never a stickler for dice, though we rolled a fair bit, but I always felt it was a strength of the game because it was just as fulfilling to have a single night mission as it was to have a year long campaign.
I'm confused on why we are discussing the racism of H.P. Lovecraft, when discussing the Call of Cthulhu game. The Cthulhu mythos, though started by Lovecraft, was built upon by numerous authors (at last count more than 20), and is now firmly in the public domain. The Call of Cthulhu game like all role-playing games is highly derivative and based on all (and none) of this body of work. There is merit in examining how human ignorance shapes the prejudices and fears of people both historically and currently. There is NO merit however in looking at the fiction as though it had contracted some sort of communicable disease based on it's mere proximity to a flawed man with bad ideas from nearly a century ago. The fiction is it's own artwork, and has it's own value apart from it's progenitor. No one now viewing a Jackson Pollock painting is suddenly going to decide to become an alcoholic, just as no one is going to read 'At the Mountains of Madness' or even 'The Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family' and become a racist. If there are people in the world that are willing to treat entire genres and swathes of culture as 'contaminated', and they are willing to condemn it based on the retroactive sins of their creators, then that is it's own sort of ignorance that should be argued against and resisted. It seems as though here, that sort of hysterical condemnation is being legitimized, by an odd sort of attempt to preemptively inoculate yourself against it. The presumed argument to condemn the game, and the defense against said speculative condemnation, is so clumsy and ill reasoned as to suggest that even Johnny Chiodini doesn't see the merit in it himself... so then it just seems like pandering or patronizing. I enjoy RPGs and support a good deal of critical examination of storytelling, but it is neither edifying or beneficial to be forced to watch someone in the act of performing a public flagellation of a man who's been dead for 82 years for sins we retroactively attribute to him. This sort of presentism is a dangerously close-minded way to view history; but what's more concerning to me is that people are using it to justify the denigration and dismissal of what are now our shared stories and art forms. I saw a similar argument against D&D attributing bad ideas to Tolkien. By offering inserting your bizarre critique of Lovecraft into the discussion, you're attaching a social stigma to something may detract from someone's enjoyment of that thing, and by doing so you're not raising awareness or promoting understanding, or in fact offering any real critical analysis or affirmative support to any concept. It's like you vomited on the source book, then cleaned it off and handed it to the player and said "enjoy this, please ignore what just happened"...and even if they are able to enjoy the game after that, the negative association you just made is just something to be overcome that offers literally 0 positive value, and must be ignored for it not to attach a negative value. If someone can show me that Lovecraft himself is alive and well AND collecting a paycheck from Chaoseim for the game AND that those proceeds are then being used to fund some sort of hate group; well then, I'll certainly retract my criticism. Until then. Stop. Please.
If even Justin Trudeau, the King of Woke, Mr. Current Year and Peoplekind, is going to be Cancelled, then NO ONE is pure enough and should not even try. If racism is everybody's crime, then it is nobody's crime! Ignore virtue-signalling about it from now on. If you're daring, you might even demand that groups survive with resiliency and that they don't need your outside help. Coming soon for Call of Cthulhu: Shub Trudeaurrath: The Black Face of the Woods With a Thousand Young.
The times we live in, man. I think you're absolutely right. It's like McCarthyism, but more intense than McCarthyism ever was. Imagine if we lived in a world where ordinary, mostly apolitical people felt the urge to spontaneously disavow Communism before mentioning Star Trek, and then go on to point out that some of its themes are "problematic", lest anyone suspect that they may be a secret pinko.
"There is NO merit however in looking at the fiction as though it had contracted some sort of communicable disease based on it's mere proximity to a flawed man with bad ideas from nearly a century ago." Well-put.
GURPS: generic Universal role-playing system, is a role-playing system developed by Steve Jackson which you can play literally anything there are tons of other sourcebooks that you can play it's a really fun RPG.
@@kabronex9877 it's not the math that's the problem. If anything, the character creation is the part I like, even though the auditing and number crunching is way more than necessary, as are the billions of skills and how they might transfer to other skills. Where the math is a problem, the issue isn't the difficulty, it's the volume. But no, it's the core mechanics that I'm not fond of. I don't like the way combat is a bunch of missing unless you explicitly never use the basic attack, and I don't like the division of traits, and I don't like the need to budget character points, or the way that the same character concept can often be created in more and less efficient ways. I don't like how players have the memorize it look up tables, like how strength correlates to damage, or more obscure things. I also don't like how the base magic system uses Fatigue, meaning wizards are better when they're beefy. I don't like how do much of the game that you're expected to spend money on is a bunch of needless mechanical garbage that won't ever get used, and so much of what does get used is just minor variations of other things, or it's overly complicated stuff that all but the most annoying GMs who get turned on by recording dice rolls will simply handwave. I don't dislike GURPS because I can't do math, I don't like GURPS because I don't want to do math when the end result is a game with too many rules that doesn't do enough to make one setting feel different from another.
Spire is glorious and has is one of the most evocative settings I've ever read. The Appendix for Goats is gold and I love the Art Deco inspired designs they used throughout the book.
Shhh, you'll summon Kevin.Rifts / Palladium multiverse is this impossibly creative, bizarre well of ideas married to the biggest cluster of a system you've ever seen. Half of it was never laid out digitally, and never will be. Even the stuff that was is edited in what can only be called stream of consciousness. Errata IS its own separate line of books. Try to streamline and fix it on your own, you'll get sued. It's the most fun you'll ever have with an utter trainwreck.
Aaron Malay as much as i liked macross an tmnt, rifts for me was literally rifts earth, the pantheons, and the dimension books. I never had any of the palladium fantasy books, the tmnt books, the macross or robotech books. Rifts for me was juicers, glitter boys, samas, ccw, cosmo knights, phase world, tolkien, freehold etc. I bought almost every book in rifts earth and the dimension books in existence. I thought it was such a great idea, mixing high magic with high technology, along a multi scaled multiverse backdrop.
These RPG intro vids have been my favourite part of the channel so far. The way you use editing to add shading and flavour to your own evocative descriptions of the games in this one is deftly done, and had me aching to play pretty much all of them, or at least watch them being played. A couple of things I would have like to see more of: * a few words from Johnny about his own brief experience with Ten Candles, just as an adjunct to the points Wheels brought up. * Also, both Shadowrun and Cyberpunk felt like they got slightly short shrift in terms of descriptions of their mechanics, compared to the relative depth you went into with the rest of the games on the list.
Also of note - *Earthdawn:* the fantasy world setting from far in the past of Shadowrun en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthdawn *Amber RPG:* A diceless RPG set in Roger Zelazny's Amber multiverse en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Diceless_Roleplaying_Game *In Nomine:* Angels and demons playing out an eternal war on Earth, by SJG en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Nomine_(role-playing_game) *Rifts:* A future Earth in which a catastrophe caused dimensional rifts to open all over the planet turning it into an apocalyptic Multiversal nexus en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_(role-playing_game) *All Flesh Must Be Eaten:* A zombie survival RPG with a great game system en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Flesh_Must_Be_Eaten *Paranoia:* Just an hilariously good time en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)
I wonder if the flashback system from Blades In The Dark could be showed into Shadowrun, it could use something to make those painful "planning" hours go away.
@Paul Gauthier Sure, FitD Shadowrun would be ideal, haha! I keep meaning to check out the existing FitD cyberpunk game, but can't say I was super excited by the brief description. The Sprawl is pretty good and I've used it to run the CP2020 setting with some success, but those are slightly different animals on both counts.
probably because The New World Of Darkness isn't THAT good and the new Old World Of Darkness seems to be quite......tailored for safe spaces? Dunno how to put it.
No Vampire: The Masquerade? C'mon dude! It is one of the most iconic RPGs. Keep up the great vids, but I'm so bummed it didn't get a mention; it's focus on in-depth storytelling and roleplaying makes it such a joy to play.
My top 5 are 1 cyberpunk 2 vampire the masquerade 3 sla industries 4 paranoia 5 call of cthulu I watched u for the 1st time and i enjoyed so i have subscribed an notified the bell icon and look forward to more to come
Rifts is an awesome RPG. Anima is worth it just for the artwork but is also very fun to play. Dark Heresy has always been a favorite. Feng Shui and Paranoia were fun too heh.
One of my favorite experiences was playing a game called Upwind. You pick your own skills by making a short phrase that describes them. I really enjoyed that one of my skills was a line from a Rolling Stones song.
Over the edge had a similar idea. You also picked your own attributes by describing three things you're good at and one you're bad at. No good for munchkins but fine for everyone else.
I'm not surprised. Vampire can be a bit contentious and deals with a lot of topics that aren't everyone's jam. Anima on the other hand just isn't a very good game. It's super broken and not just because the translation is terrible.
My thought on the list: 1. Blades in the Dark: a very changed version PbtA system. Recommending scum and villainy or hack the planet that build upon the Blades changed rule for scifi or cyberpunk style. There is also City of Mist that is also really interesting take on the system 2. Symbaroum: from the same developer that created Mutant Year Zero. There is also tales from the loop (detective story ala stranger things) and coriolis (scifi stories) from them. 3. Deadlands reloaded: well there are other savage world setting that s really good. There is also the deadlands hell on earth setting 4. Song of ice and fire: one problem with it is that it's quite easy to game the system if you put your mind to it. One system that I really like from the same publisher is Mutants & Masterminds 3E. 5. Hot War: never tried or read the rule so I don't know much, but it seems really good. 6. Shadowrun / Cyberpunk: I really love shadowrun despite all of its flaws & the massive ammount of d6 I need to carry for playing. Caution the rule can be really inconsistent sometimes. For Cyberpunk, there is also the Witcher rpg using the same rule. 7. Ten Candles: never know this exist. Definitely will check it out. but I love Fiasco, a game which the character also more or less almost always lose in some ways. 8. The Expanse: using the AGE system (Fantasy Age, Modern Age) that also powers Dragon Age RPG for more fantasy spin. 9. Call of Cthulhu: really good detective game. If you don't fancy the world setting but like the detective stories, there is the Gumshoe system that have more wacky (TimeWatch) or super power (Mutant City Blues) setting for the detective genre. 10. Night Wiches: another PbtA games. There is a lot of setting and genre for PbtA. My favorite is Mask and Monster Hearts. Have heard good things about other but haven't really played them only read through some of the book. Other system that I like but not on the list : Vampire the Masquerade, Stars Without Numbers, Numenera (Cypher System), Capers, FATE Core
About the other systems you mention: VtM(WoD) is a very good game but you need the right kind of players for it to be good. Stars W/O Numbers and Numenera both suffer from weak rulesets. In Stars the game goes from if I get hit once I am gonna die to getting hit 10 or so times and looking at the enemy and saying is that the best you got. In Numenera, I built a character and without even trying as a tier 2, I was singlehandedly defeating tier 6 threats w/o hardly breaking a sweat. FATE Core is another one that requires a certain type of player for it to be successful.
Symbaroum doesn't use the Year Zero System. It is it's own thing. It has roll low d20 mechanics.The year zero system uses d6's. Regardless of the system, Symbaroum's setting is fantastic.
@@EricEsenwine ah sorry the one with year zero is the forbidden land. well I have just skim through symbaroum rulebook. Haven't got time to play. But it's from the same dev at least right.
@@dragonjaw95 ahh yeah... Jarningren the company that produced Symbaroum merged with Free League a few years after the games release. Its a different system but distributed by the same developers of the Year Zero system! Cheers
Man been ages since I thought about Monster Hearts, I've never played such absolute trainwrecks of petty awkwardness as playing a teenager as a teenager.
Through the magic of Kickstarter, we got to play Blades in the Dark while it was in development. We had a truly lovely (if that word can be applied to a game of Blades) game and a ton of fun building up our crew. Blades to us always felt like we were right on the edge of disaster and hanging on by the skin of our teeth. I particularly LOVE LOVE LOVE the flashback mechanic and think it is one of the best design elements I’ve seen in an RPG in a very long time. Ten Candles is one of those harrowing experiences as an rpg player that leaves you walking away from the game going, “what just happened? Did I have a good time? Or should I seek therapy?” Another game that’s just coming out that is truly brilliant is Icarus. I got to play it with the developer and it is one of the most intriguing and novel games I’ve seen in a very long time. I highly recommend checking it out. I could ramble on about more games and the games that you talked about but people don’t really want to hear that. Cheers, JiB
"From the depths of hell in silence Cast their spells, explosive violence Russian night time flight perfected Flawless vision, undetected" Sorry couldn't help myself.
I'd nominate Mouse Guard (I'm a massive fan of its "fail-forwards" mechanic), and Fate Accelerated Edition (story collaboration and world creation done on the fly with minimal rules).
Thanks for the list- some interesting reviews there. I think a game is like a toolbox and what you do with it, and what the players do with it, is vitally important. I've been roleplaying since 1980 and refereeing since 1982, so I'm a little long in the tooth in our great community! A game, well-written and with a good story and engaging characters, is as good as you make it. From D&D, Traveller, Aftermath, Daredevils and Bushido by Charette and Hulme, MERP & Rolemaster, they're all good. I've played excellent Cyberpunk campaigns and very mediocre and poorly refereed Shadowrun games, I've ran Star Trek on 16 players (heads and asst heads of department) in a university group years ago, and played in the highly enjoyable recent Star Wars rules. I've even modified games, taking existing rules and used them for created universes. I've used Champions superhero rpg rules as a superhero game where Gifted are hunted by everyone else in society and live among the shadows, and recently because it's scale deals with human to massive creatures, I'm running a Champions game set in Anne McCaffery's world of Pern where the players are thread-fighting Dragon Riders. I've even created a rues system using the lethal Phoenix Command combat system set in the techno-thriller world of shows like Mission Impossible, Jack Ryan, or Strikeback. A game is as good as you make it, if the referee has a good story, the players are engaged with back stories and can breathe life into their characters, and between them, the world takes shape. I'm just glad this hobby is gaining a renaissance! (oh, I forgot to mention Flashing Blades is one of my favourite games, if you blow off the dust...)
I didn't know that game. As a flight combat simulator and RPGs lover I am interested in war planes pilot RPGs. Can you tell me something more about the witches game?
Rules are generally okay. The problem was that the book & art layout wasn't as good as most other high quality RPGs coming out these days. I also felt there was a lack of art in it. That said, I would prefer using W&G's system over the FFG version's d100 system which is overloaded with a bit too much DRM hell. I say that as someone who has loved WFRP since 1st edition which uses the same core. FFG 40k just adds even more crunching and numbers everywhere. I'll still keep them all, however.
Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke was not so pithy as MacArthur's paraphrase: "The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: 'I have never had a plan of operations.' Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."
I love Shadowrun, but I don't really like the newer editions after 3rd or maybe 4th. They need to reboot and get back to the roots of the game, it has become to fantastical in the story and world they have built with the newer editions and lost a lot of the gritty cyberpunk feel in my opinion.
OD-X I played a homebrewish version of the newest shadowrun. In it we were the police and it was just corruption left and right on multiple occasions we would get notes from higher ups telling us to ignore something or stop looking into a case. One time we didn’t follow the suggestions and we almost got blown up
Check out the follow up, 6 MORE RPGs that aren't Dungeons and Dragons, here: ruclips.net/video/wlAcbHK0VQE/видео.html
6 brand new RPGs that AREN'T D&D, what more could you ask for?
Can you put time stamps in the video?
Hahah! In the bottom of the screen there is a progress bar with chapter titles but the second chapter is "Simba Room" but it should be spelled Symbaroum!
I'm a farmer wrenching on a tractor in the US midwest while watching a guy talk about his favorite roll playing games across the Atlantic ocean. I love the modern world sometimes.
@@loveblanket6512 Hello! you're not too far away.
Where as I am about 90 miles north of where he is based (UK just not London) -- and frequently chat roleplay with a friend in Alabama... And Texas... And Michigan...
Also Ohio and I absolutely feel this. The world can be good.
I’m in bed in the Rocky Mountains recovering from my fifth surgery this year. I don’t have a body that would let me play table top RPGs in meat space, but I have an amazing group from all across the country that plays together every week with the magic of the internet and cheap webcams. Hello everyone here, I’m so happy to know you are out there.
Gamer from Michigan checking when you posted this and realizing I got a LATE start to today.
Surprisingly...helpful. I have heard of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk and Call of Cthulu, but the rest of these I have never even heard of. Being new like 5 years into TTRPG's and even less actual playtime; This has given me some food for thought. Specifically the refence to a Drama Die which can probably be added to any game system to help tie down descriptions.
Very informative. Appreciate it. Earned a Sub.
I will say this much though. You do seem to have a bias towards Atmsopehric heavy systems. Which, while not a bad thing does limit the scope of possible suggestions. Only cure for that is experience though. So not really a complaint. More an observation.
Shadowrun is great, it's basically futuristic dnd. So elves and guns and sorcery. There is a lot of emphasis on planning, but my group always treated those like smaller roleplaying vignettes. We didn't spend time wondering if there was a back door, we roleplayed casing the target or hacking or astral projecting to discover the information. Office buildings in a world with magic and supernatural infiltrators are basically vertical dungeons, because you can only gather so much information before you go in. It can also be great to really explore alternate objectives, obtaining data or securing a corporate hostage really opens up your imagination.
This might be off topic.......
How do I get hair and beard like yours?!
You buy it in a Halloween costume shop. ...
What kind of question is this?
0:45 Blades in the Dark
5:10 Symbaroum
6:20 Dead Lands Reloaded
8:15 Song of Ice and Fire
11:29 Hot War
14:10 Cyberpunk and Shadow Run
16:53 Ten Candles
21:25 The Expanse
24:40 Call of Cthulu
27:20 Night Witches
@band thingy. Thank you, I will have to try and search for "Symbaroum"
I've been playing rpg's since the end of the 80s and i've heard of two from the list. Lol
Thanks the captions called the second one Simba Room and I couldn't find it.
@@BunnyTheOverlord Honestly, who do I have to kill to have some Champions/Hero System love?
Sad star wars isn't listed. By ffg
“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
Not unlike Mike Tyson's "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."
I was mistaken. Cheers mate
I kind of like "This is the perfect time for Plan B."
"Do we even have a Plan B?"
"Nope. But this is the time for one..."
Thank you. I first heard the line from Batman in "Young Justice"
Another good one along the plans angle is...
Plans are worthless, but planning is essential.
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
He used many versions of this same quote over the years and it is questioned if the quote is really his.
Steampunk? Purposely playing the badguys? Retcon skill checks? Excuse me I need to go find this game
Plus it has a sci-fi offshoot called Scum & Villainy which is great for anything from Star Wars to Firefly.
@@DrakeAurum There's also now a Cyberpunk/Climate fiction hack for it called Hack the Planet where you can play as cyberpunk stormchasers who can hack nanite infused superstorms.
There's also a Fantasy Apocalyptic War one called Band of Blades where you play the last surviving human military trying to stop world ending undead/ evil demigod
And Adam Koebel is making a psychedelic space wizard's hack
Do it! My friends and I have had such a blast with it!
My games growing up were:
1. Star Wars The Role Playing Game from West End Games,
2. Rifts from Palladium, and
3. Vampire the Masquerade from White Wolf.
And if you're not into Vampires, White Wolf has a whole series of beasties.
Werewolf: the Apocalpyse (for those of us who want to play eco-terrorist werewolves)
Mage: the Ascension
Changeling: the Dreaming (for those of us who want to be fairies trapped in human bodies)
Demon: the Fallen
Hunter: the Reckoning (for those of us who REALLY liked Supernatural)
Etc.
West End Games Star Wars. Quixotic jedi. Good times...
h3lblad3 you forgot wraith the oblivion, for those people who thought vampire wasn’t depressing enough.
I played two ongoing campaigns 'back in the day', one was a homebrew setting using the Rifts system, the other was a mash-up of Mage and Shadowrun, so similar background to you. Also played a bit of Werewolf, Cthulu and Kult, and also larped V:tm and Changling, currently I'm playing a homebrew fantasy game, so I have dabbled in a bit of everything, but I have never actually played DnD!..
Loved Star Wars The Roleplaying Game. I just started putting out videos taking about this game.
Great video! Needs a part 2: Ten *MORE* RPG'S that aren't Dungeons and Dragons!
Part 2 better have goblin quest
Best have Mork Borg in there!
Please!!! Part 2!!
I hope mouse guard will be in the presumeable second one
West End Games' ("D6") Star Wars, Ars Magica, Feng Shui, Runequest, Pendragon, Delta Green and Unknown Armies, the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and its WH40K brother, first edition Dark Heresy ... and _of course_ The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The ASOIAF game sounds as if owes a lot to Traveller, Pendragon and Ars Magica. All of the White Wolf games are mixed bags, with uneven quality and some issues to work around, but the same is certainly true of Shadowrun and Deadlands. Munchausen is the boozy old dad of GMless, highly-structured round-table games like Ten Candles (and for that matter Werewolf).
For those looking for a written list of the games, here you go. But make sure you still watch and see why you should play these games.
1. Blades in the Dark
2. Symbaroum
3. Deadlands Reloaded
4. The Song of Ice and Fire
5. Hot War
6. Cyberpunk / Shadowrun
7. Ten Candles
8. The Expanse
9. Call of Cthulhu
10. Night Witches
I'm surprised they don't have that in the video description, along with links to them. I suppose it's due to them just having them to create this, and they are certainly cranking out content.
Aww man no GURPS, guess he picked some super popular games and a good amount of obscure ones.
Omg thank you for making this list
Thanks for the post! Here are the time stamps:
01. BitD 00:45
02. S 05:11
03. DR 06:20
04. tSoIaF 08:11
05. HW 11:27
06. C/SR 14:03
07. 10C 16:34
08. tE 21:19
09. CoC 24:39
10. NW 27:12
@@jimn4315 Today (!), GURPS is not a good system. It used to be, but from both design and gameplay perspective, it aged and continues to age badly. (I'm not saying it doesn't work nor that it doesn't serve well to those who already play it and like it - it just isn't a game to recommend to new players anymore).
Also Shadowrun is great setting and its older editions were good at the time, but it's long term decline in design throughout last 3 editions (4, 5, 6) is sadly well known in its fandom.
Fate Core should be in the list. So should Savage Worlds. And GUMSHOE, probably, at least in some of its iterations (personally I'd pick Ashen Stars, but Trail of Cthulhu would be a safe bet). Hillfolk too. may be 13th age?
Frankly I'm not really much impressed by this list :/
Paranoia! :-D Who remembers the insanity of that one? Been a few years since I played it, but maybe I need to change that. :-)
There is a video game coming out, soon
Oh man! lol I am curious to see how that plays out. :-)
I'm sorry but you aren't of sufficient clearance for those memories. Report to the Happy Center of Bliss for a gentle mindscrub. Activate a new clone.
LOL! @Silvadel Shaladin knows the drill! ;-)
Send in the clones, baby!
This is absolutely great content for this channel. I'd love to see one-shots of each of these games to see how they play.
I really want that myself.
The way Will talks about Ten Candles just makes me wanna see a playing-in-the-dark session
This definitely needs to be a thing. Lots of other tabletop channels have, like, long running campaigns and stuff or various game system reviews, but I don't know of any channel that spreads its attention like that and runs plenty of one shots of several games. That is definitely something I'll be into
A one shot of each of these would be a great way for player/purchaser 'tasters' and at least for me would go down a treat!
I can only give one like!!!!!!!! Yes!! For the love of 8 pound 5 ounce baby Jeeezus, please do this.
@@NomNom1970 commenting because I can't like your comment twice.
This video hits different now...
Why
My top three would be
1. WH40k Dark Heresy
2. Exalted
3. World of Darkness (Mage and Werewolves specifically)
Werewolf is a great game
Which edition of Dark Heresy though?
@@jiriz0r 1°
Uff, I thought I'm some wierdo that the best games I know didnt make it to the list. Dont get it wrong, the list has quality entry but what about Fate and Burning Wheel?
Sure the game released only in my country wont make it here but I mention it anyway: it's called Střepy snů which means Dream Fragments. It's narrative system and the setting is base on dreams. Or the Dreams that control life of humans, their longing, feeling and so.
I just got Dark Heresy from a humble bundle and it’s so good. My friends and I can’t get enough of it.
Back in the day, when we got tired of d&d we switched to RuneQuest or Warhammer.
I didn’t really like the Warhammer system, but they had good adventure modules - much better than anything TSR put out. We also liked the way Warhammer had dozens of occupations rather than classes, so you could start as a Soldier and then become a Bounty Hunter and then an Assassin, or you could be an Apprentice Wizard who becomes a Wizard and then an Elementalist. It worked really well from a roleplaying perspective.
But RuneQuest was probably what we played the most. The game rules were similar to Call of Cthulhu (I think CoC rules were a mod of RuneQuest) - there was something about the rules that just seemed to make them more appealing than D&D - probably the skills and the fact that you didn’t have ‘levels’ - so your character only got harder to kill because they became better at avoiding attacks, which just seemed better than the weird hit point concept of d&d.
i think it is more a thing of both being based on the same system known as "basic roleplaying" but i'll have to confirm that, and what bothers me about runequest (at least personally) is the complete lack of controll, who or what your character is and how decent they are is entirely up to the dice, with the only choices you really get to make being spells
@@defensivekobra3873 You might want to look into Mythras.
The modern version of RuneQuest is basically Runequest 2e due to licensing issues, plus a ton of rules that fuse it even more with Glorantha like you said.
Mythras is Runequest 6e with the serial numbers filed off. It's been turned into something of a GM toolkit. Like... there are rules for firearms in a seperate suppliment and they're really good. You're almost expected to change / remove some things to fit your setting as well as possible.
It's also just a more elegant system. Combat is cooler *and* a bit less clunky, and skill bloat is cut down by splitting them into "basic skills" everyone has and "professional skills" which only apply if you pick them during character creation. It's my favorite system ever and I didn't even like RQ: Roleplaying in Glorantha much. A lot of people have described it as the company's BRP house rules they've developed over a decade of refinement and I think that's pretty accurate.
Interesting, what didn't appeal to you about Warhammer.
For me it's super interesting, partially because it reminds me of the game that introduced me into the setting. That was Midgard, a smaller german game. Two things in particular I like about both: The damage system with permanent consequences and actual need to actively heal wounds and the smaller more personal scope.
@@scelonferdi Well, those are all definitely advantages of RuneQuest / Mythras as well, in any case
*casually forwards this to my players*
As a long term RPer I never thought RPing would become so popular, what's more surprising to me is that D&D is the game capturing new players' attention. Personally I loathe it.
Caitlin RC I literally just did this
Lol yuuuup
Me toooo
I tried convincing my players for ages to at least try somethign that is not DnD (or Pathfinder wich really is just DnD with a different name).
Hope you got better luck than me.
I love GURPS. It's very complicated but you can play anything you can possibly think of. Half cyborg half vampire cat sure once I've played one. Jedi adept with no legs in medieval Europe sure. Dwarf techomancer news anchor yup.
I was wondering if this system is still viable these days.
The game is "front loaded"; character creation can be as complicated as you care to make it, but playing does not have to. I find it if anything easier than D&D, certainly easier than Pathfinder.
@@svennoren9047 True, in my experience a gm playing with people new to GURPS is best off making some character templates that fit setting, offer them to the players and discuss during character creation on some specifics.
GURPS is really just a pared-down version of HERO; most of the creation, action and dice conventions of both games are identical. What Steve Jackson had was an in with the S/F-Fantasy industry which got him all kinds of resource books: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Ringworld, Vorkosigan Saga, Auto-Duel (a rift on his own Car Wars game), WildCards, The Prisoner, etc. But the game-play is really indistinguishable from HERO (i.e., Champions).
And as with HERO, if you're any good a math, you can make a 75-point character that is at least as powerful as what most people would be able to make with 200 points.
Good game, but there are an easy dozen that I'd put before it an any list....
@@lunavarion Very much so, it can be as simple or complicated as you like. Any genre/setting, the only boundaries are set by the GM.
0:45 Blades in the Dark
5:10 Symbaroum
6:20 Dead Lands Reloaded
8:15 Song of Ice and Fire
11:29 Hot War
14:10 Cyberpunk and Shadow Run
16:53 Ten Candles
21:25 The Expanse
24:40 Call of Cthulu
27:20 Night Witches
So glad you mentioned Deadlands, truly an under appreciated favorite.
I've got to mention Mutants and Masterminds. For anyone who wants to play a Superhero based campaign M&M is very much set up to be able to run any kind of superhero campaign you want. I personally prefer the 2nd edition to the current 3rd edition.
The orig creator of that game also has another more rules-light superhero game called Icons if you want something a bit easier to run.
I wish I knew about this video sooner because there was a Hurricane Dorian charity bundle on DriveThruRPG that had games for example Icons, but also Supers Revised and have you heard of Mighty Protectors (Villains and Vigilantes 3)?
There was also this watchmen/the dark night dark superhero rpg called Cold Steel Wardens.
I only got this bundle a few weeks ago and it was available from 17 sep to 30 sep or something, I don’t know how much the games are but the bundle was only $25.
It came with other games and supplements as well.
I'm a massive fan of Shadowrun, but that series is in need of an editor. Any editor. A single proofreader, anything.
Shadowrun is amazing and great, but i refuse to play 6th edition, made it way way too simple
Yeah I played a recent version and it was just... utterly terrible. The rules and some other stuff was so problematic that about 2-3 sessions into the campaign we got to the point things got so bad we just all decided to up and walk away from it. Bear in mind this had nothing to do with the GM, or the story setting, or characters, or players. It was due to the game itself.
We always played w GURPS rules.
@@keithb6344 Everything on this list is better with GURPS rules
1st edition Shadowrun included a note from the author claiming that, while the matrix was a great idea, something like it would never work in real life. Aaaand they also had a Poofreading Department who (in addition to failing to spot the typo in their own job description in the credits) managed to spot the missing O in Intruder Countermeasures (which made it sound rather rude).
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth - Mike Tyson
Pretty sure Moltke predates Tyson
Alf Clark the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry
Robert burns
Predates Tyson and moltke
A kick to the balls then a sword in the throat will defeat giants. - Leonidas I of Sparta, 490 B.C.
Predates the Roman Empire.
@@arimill1045 For Moltke, substitute "France" for "mouth".
Note to self; Plan for getting punched in the mouth.
So ten candles is like a kobayashi maru exam of table top RPG games
@Kaushtubh chauhan-- Exactly such! Where Call of Cthullu and Kids on Bikes gives you a chance to possibly survive, you go into Ten Candles KNOWING the PC you make is gonna die. Honestly i can see where the charm lays in it. Your making a PC that you know has a finite time in the world, giving you the freedom to make a character you normally never would. That type of bleekness isn't for every game group,however, so i'd run it by your DM/players first.
Played this a couple of weeks ago. Everything was going 'great' for us, right up 'til the end, when everything went to shit and we all died within a few minutes. It was Glorious! (But not something I'd want to play very often.)
There was a few different games run from another stream, probably easy to find searching for Ten Candles, that I thought were REALLY REALLY good!
It SUUUUUUUUCKS. The best way to play is to throw the game in the trash and never play it.
Just a minor word of warning. The first time I played a
I bought 'long life' candles. It was a complete disaster. 6 hours into the game only one candle had gone out - and that's because someone opened a door to quickly on the way to the bathroom.
Test your candles - mapmaker sure they burn for about 3 hours
"You can be dogs". Say no more! 10 Candles, here I come.
10/10 candles
But they’ll all die
Pugmire if you don't want them to die
@@geekwithglasses2897 Silly Geek, doggos don't die, they go to an amazing farm north of the country, with wide space, lots of squirrels and my favorite uncle, who I haven't seen in over a decade
I heard that too, and the gears in my mind started turning.
An absolute must-play tabletop system is Paranoia. It makes for some of the most fast paced, hilarious one shots a role-player can play.
Far in a dystopian future, society scrapes by in an underground complex run by a single all powerful yet thoroughly broken AI known as "Friend Computer". The players are a team of "troubleshooters" tasked with solving some problem for the computer, such as eradicating horrible mutants or exposing a treasonous secret society. Luckily, on such a dangerous mission in such a dangerous world, each player has a series of clones for the inevitability of their demise. The catch is, every player must hide that they are one of these mutants, and also a member of a treasonous secret society.
One shot? But you get 5 clones...
Kevin Sullivan The computer is your friend, the computer creates clones so that if you die a valiant hero of the city you may live on in spirit if not in body. Honest citizens run these risks freely, frequently and with great enthusiasm friend citizen. Not to do so is cowardice and friend citizen cowardice is treason. Please report for termination immediately friend citizen, have a nice day.
I have known a group starting with fresh 6 clone sets need to recreate characters within an evenings play...
@@davidwright7193 I've been in games where I've run out of clones before getting to the mission briefing... and where I was not the only one to run out of clones on the way to the mission briefing. Ironically... those sessions were the most fun.
I thought I had no money left after buying dozens of dice sets for D&D.
And then I watched this video and .... I now have ten more RPGs being delivered next week.
@@Glassboxgames I do play them... not as often as I'd like.
But let's put it this way: if I were a dragon, tabletop RPGs would be my horde.
What job do you have ?
Recomendations;
Everything world of darknes (just about any version): Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse etc etc
Mutant Year Zero
Legend of the Five Rings
Hell yes! Playing a Tremere is fucking awesome!
Problem with WoD is that is require a lot of researching for the GM to get a good knowledge of the world with all it's factions and even more to create a good plot that suits his players. Some of the rules can be a bit complicated for new players as well, especially Mage: The Ascension/Awakening.
@@SwedishNeo I had tons of fun as a Mind Mage in Mage: The Awakening 2e
Rifts/Palladium RPG will always have a special place in my heart.
Same here. Nothing says epic like a Titan Juicer throwing a Coalition hover tank at fire prepped Glitterboy. Once they plant that spike, they cant even dodge!
Damn right!
I love the setting of RIFTS but I hate the rules. Which is why I love savage RIFTS. With savage worlds ruleset running the game is so much easier. Playing it too. I remember playing palladium rules and going back and forth between three books trying to definitively figure out how ranged combat works.
@@cody-adricharper5848 Part of what I like about it is the rules and character creation.
@Scott Whatever the setting is only as good as the GM.
Sad to not see Numenera and Cypher but hey check them out
Absolutely. Accessible system, wonderful setting
The Star Wars RPG by West End Games was the first RPG I played, back in the '80's, because my mom didn't want us playing AD&D. It's a really fun system that only uses d6 and the first two books were used by Timothy Zhan when he created the Thrawn Trilogy, the first books of the Expanded Universe (Legends). Fantasy Flight Games recently did a 30th Anniversary reprint of the first two books and PDFs of the dozens of supplements can be found online. Give it a try, and may the Force be with you.
I was gona sugest Fate core but it's not an rpg its a rpg system that lets you do EVERYTHING.
It's so disappointing that Fate is on hardly anybody's radar. Are Aspects really that difficult to understand?
The polar opposite yet similar would be GURPS.
@@Dyrnwyn My group's problem with it is that it's too generic. I'm sure with years of experience we could get it to "feel" the way we want it to, but by default our two games felt exactly the same - despite one being "Supernatural" in the Old West and the other being High Fantasy tribal world.
@@gatherer818 I can understand the "too generic" complaint. I think it's up to the group and the GM to really narrow down the world the game is set in, carefully work out the skills you want to use (and don't want to use) and create strong aspects that define the world. So while it can feel too generic out of the box, it allows for a narrower, more focused game if you are willing to spend the time creating the necessary aspects, skills etc.
@@gatherer818 If you guys find Fate Core, alone, too generic I highly suggest checking out 'Baroque Space Opera' which uses Fate. It's setting is like a mix of Dune, WH40k, and many fantastical sci-fi shows & movies. Emphasis on the 40k and Dune.
'Oubliette' is another big Fate setting (Fate rules included with this one), but it's a supernatural fantasy set in purgatory-like plane where the characters find themselves after death. Has a little mish-mash of modern & futuristic tropes blended into it's largely fantasy themes. I've not explored it thoroughly yet since it has a large amount of content in the book.
In other words, there are some Fate Core based RPGs with great content out there if you dig a bit.
"..and then the players fell out.." Story of my tabletop gaming life.
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
-Moltke The Elder
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth"
- Mike Tyson
I like that one even more.
I love it when a plan comes together
Col. John Smith aka Hannibal
Love it
My ex Army roommate says this us true AF
Shit more good RPG table top games but I can't AGAIN find friends to play this with
Online there is RoleGate. Or there is Discord.
Roll20 is a pretty good online medium. I made some great friends, there
@@mar_speedman Thanks. My brain was noping out of what that one was called. 😊👍
Same!! ):
Caroline L Abbott No prob. Just adding what little I can to the community :)
"No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength" - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder.
(Yup, I'm a pedant even at six in the morning)
And I love that you are 😂
Never read the full quote in English before and I'm so happy I finally found a version.
Kudos to you, good Sir!
My favorite RPG is Mouse Guard. It has such a fun dice system that is pretty quick and the "conflict" system that can be used up and beyond commanding armies, to having a bake off or a staring contest. What is really unique and fun about this is that each player is a mouse with unique skillsets and a core belief and instincts that will be challenged through the campaign. I highly recommend checking it out!
Mouse Guard RPG.
Donnie Chase I second this. I really like how you’re a mouse in a world with owls and foxes. You’re society is the underdog and while you are basically screwed on the surface, some how you always pull through with sheer will alone. I played first before I read the comics and again after I read them and both times it was magical. If you don’t like mice you can also try torch bearer which is based on mouse guard but is more traditional fantasy.
Such a good game! 🗡 🐁
Isn't the game system an adaptation of the Burning Wheel?
@@vojtechpribyl7386 yep! I've never played burning wheel though.
*REDWALL INTENSIFIES*
There are three pretty good ones I can suggest, each more different than the last:
Vampire: the Masquerade,
Fiasco,
Mutant Crawl Classics
HELL YES, FIASCO! There is so much material to cover in Fiasco. You can even make your own playset, and the open source content is really wonderful.
I love playing Fiasco! Excellent game!
@Scott Whatever I'd say that the differences between V20 and V5 are a little more complicated than "V5 is garbage". Don't get me wrong, V20 is better overall, but V5 did a decent job of updating the setting - something the game was in dire need of - and introduced some new mechanics that actually work fairly well. Where V5 falls short is in the fact that, in trying to streamline mechanics which, over 20 years of editions, had gotten a bit clusterfuck-y, they went a little overboard and simplified it too much (mostly in regards to abilities, skills, and disciplines). That said, V5 is easier to learn than V20 as a result, and is therefore a better introduction to the setting for a newbie so they're not getting bogged down by the mechanical complexity right out of the gate. The same thing happened with the progression of DnD editions from 3.5 to 4th Ed, and now 5th Ed is a happy medium - I can see that happening easily with VtM.
Dread?
I've never actually found the White Wolf system (Vampire, Mage, Changeling, etc) all that good. The setting is interesting, but when I've played, the rules have some serious issues and some of the stuff is so vague it's always causing "fights" in the group.
Though to be fair, I haven't seen the latest 2 versions, so who knows. But with WW now being a dead company, who knows what the future of their properties will be like.
Rolemaster! My god, the crits! THE CRITS!
I was going to cite Rolemaster myself. For me personally, it is RMSS where the system came into its own.
Rolemaster is my all-time favorite RPG. (As well as M.E.R.P.)
Played 1st through 4th editions, 3E and 4E are my favorites.
Greatest game ever!
Glad to see I am not the only one missing this on the list, I loved building ships in Space Master, ICE Games were great
You mean "Rulesmaster." Consult 9 charts to see what your strike did. I did like the various levels for Spells and Skills though. Rolemaster's level of "crunch" would put a modern "minimalist system advocate" in a coma!
Shot goes in one ear, out the other, all earwax removed. Instant death.
Rolemaster by I.C.E is amazing, surprised its not even mentioned.
I played Spacemaster for about 5 years. The Rolemaster systems are still one of my favorites
Rolemaster is my all time favorite, beating out DnD, in my mind, back in the 80s. It also had Tolkien's Middle Earth as a setting available, so double win.
Loved Rolemaster after my group "graduated" to it from MERP in the late 80's - early 90's. If I did it again I'd probably leave out every Companion past 3, maybe even 2 though.
i had to modify the armour so it gave protection, otherwise, great
Hate those damage tables though
We play a lot of the games from Whitewolf...Mage the awakening....vampire the masquerade....highly reccommend their games :D
Havn't watched yet but he did not include White Wolf? Or Palladium books?
no cwod, no like. this video is rubbish
I got my start in Palladium and than WW.
I bring some of those rule sets into my fantasy campaigns.
White wolf's systems are utter nonsense with bizarre terminology
@@ulkem only names the old WoD... No likes either. Changeling the Lost 1e is one of the settings and rpg book ever made.
Am I the only one who has seen/played/enjoyed Legend of the 5 Rings?
I like you, have a campaign playlist: ruclips.net/p/PL5Rkg9d6KK79y4Qd8zMRoyLEC1IYQwxwd
I've heard of it but never played or looked into it. I'm still wrapping my head around learning something that isn't DnD/Pathfinder, but's still complex. Even Starfinder is slightly easier to get into than, say, Shadowrun from scratch. Lots of stats I'm not used to, lots of explanations I've not heard a million times so it's not just second nature to see in those games instead.
I was also somewhat interested in City of Mist but it seems the more I read about the setting, the more I'd only run a conspiracy game and in that case, I feel like I should run Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green.
L5R is one of my groups favorite game. I absolutely love the mix of Politics, intrigue, and combat. It's a shame what FFG did to 5th ed
I also love LOT5R really good RPG
4th edition was the best!!!!
Shout outs to my favorite tabletop games.
Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars RPG - the buy in is a little hefty but i LOVE the narrative dice system.
And Mutants and Masterminds - anytime i can play a Super Hero/ villain i am there. Crunch is hefty though.
Definitely was hoping to see FFG Star Wars on this list! Would love to hear Johnny's opinion of it. The narrative dice is my favorite dice system just because of the scenarios it can create and how well it captures the essence of the Star Wars movies.
@@Thwarten I was hoping to see it too, but he did make a point of saying he wasn't a big one for RPGs in established properties, so that may have been a barrier for him moreso than The Expanse and SoIaF. But who knows, if enough people ask for it, he might give it a proper review on here.
Edge of the Empire is definitely my favorite RPG because nothing can beat the fun factor of force points and the utility of the scene as opposed to long/short rest system. That and skill trees are muy nice to track character growth.
Along those lines I'm sad to see Genesys didn't make the list.
Night Witches: also an absolute great song of the band Sabaton.
Shadowrun is the only P&P I played so far, it's very good fun. Ah, I've played also another game: Earthdawn. But what that one is is basically Shadowrun minus the cyber elements, set in a Medieval-esque timeline. But it plays in the Shadowrun universe, created by the same guy(s) afaik.
I'd love to get back into roleplaying...
Do you also know other systems, like The Dark Eye or The World of Darkness (Vampire and Werewolf), and if so, could you address these?
Thank you for this video, it's one of the formats I looked forward to the most when you started the Dicebreaker project.
true, there are strong hints that Earthdawn & Shadowrun are set in the same game universe. just that these settings are separated by 6000 years(or is it 12000?). one thing though, game mechanics very, very different from each other. for example, with Earthdawn, a player needs, at most, 2 each of ALL the types of dice(d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 & d20). Shadowrun, you MUST have the infamous 'cube of dice'. holds 3 x 3 x 4 d6's. 36 in total. pretty sure Shadowrun is the main reason why these cubes are sold most if not all gaming stores.
Props for posting about Deadlands! It's one of my favorite RPGs that almost nobody has heard of. You missed one of the big highlights though. It gives people a great reason to do terrible impressions of various American accents. ;)
nothing from World of Darkness? Vampire the Masquerade? Changeling which has probably one of the most unique settings and worldbuilding? :(
Agree! I can't believe they left these out!
Too childish
WoD is my go to..... can't believe that it was left out.
@@jamiefultz3921 i went to me rpg store yesterday and of all the games listed to start soon there was NONE from WoD. it was all shadowrun, dnd and star wars. i asked why no WoD and the naswer was a simple "there are no GMs interested".
im seriously thinking on starting a table now, this scorn cannot continue
I run Mage the Awakening every Saturday myself
Hmmm, I can see this video getting quite popular right about now thanks to the OGL1.1
Tales from the Loop. I absolutely adore the 80th feeling it conveys.... A simple system to develop a story together.
The most fun I've ever had playing a pen & paper RPG was when a friend introduced me to "Paranoia". Set in a futuristic sci-fi world you begin with 6 clones of your character (this should be your first clue on how this game will go). Your group is provided with an apparently simple task to complete, which of course will be hindered quickly and catastrophically by each player's character, their roles within society in general, and the added bonus that competitive rather than co-operative play is highly encouraged.
For example, one scientist character may innocently decide to put on a pair of experimental, nuclear powered rocket boots. While the security character begins to immediately question the scientist's intentions and attempt to subdue the scientist, the scientist inadvertently fails a skill role causing the boots to self-destruct, killing the entire group. Cue the release of everyone's Clone #2.
In the end, if your group completes the assigned task and hasn't used more than 2 clones ... you're doing it wrong. If, however, you end the game with sore bellies from all the laughter, 0 clones left to use, and having failed to reach step 2 of a 3 step task ... congratulations, you've succeeded!!
I agree Paranoia was one of the funnest RPGs that I have played. It’s up there with Tales from the Floating Vagabond
James Ross Failing to complete your assigned tasks is treason, please report for termination immediately friend citizen. Have a nice day.
@@davidwright7193 I knew there'd be someone from Internal Security lurking about.
Played it once, one of the best rpg experiences of my life😁
Blades is amazing and it seems that I'm now running a yearly Halloween Ten Candles game. Great list. I REALLY want to get Spire to the table. I'm a big Eclipse Phase fan as well and I can't wait for the second edition to be printed soon.
Eclipse Phase is my unicorn - love the setting and the possibilities of it but I've never had a chance to play it. My gaming group tended to play Friday evenings, and after a long work week most of us were too shattered to really dive into something that complicated.
@@TheOriginalHairyDave The universe of EP is ridiculously cool. I read Altered Carbon forever ago and was fascinated with the concept, then found Eclipse Phase. I've run a couple super short sessions but I'm planning on either pushing hard for my weekly group to play or starting a new group once I get the second edition book. It alters your priorities as a character so much just by the nature of the setting.
Cyberpunk 2020
Cyberpunk 2020
Cyberpunk 2020
This was the first ttrpg I ever played and haven't stopped playing .
Yes. My favorite RPG.
I have used the CP2020/Fuzion rules for a number of game worlds I have created. It is a well balanced system that allows for a lot of creativity in skills and special abilities.
Me at the start of the video: “Blades better be on this list.”
Me 40 seconds later: “Chiodini, you beautiful scoundrel.”
But let's be real here. The best RPG is "Macho Women With Guns".
Why?
Because women, and guns.
Hard to argue that logic
I dunno. Hobomancer might have it beat. I mean, just look at that name!
I have the entire set. "Renegade Nuns on Wheels" is one of the best titles EVAR!
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG is awesome to play.
Fun fact: The Expanse actually began life as a play-by-post RPG before it became a novel series.
I was about to say this same thing. :D
I thought it began as a design idea for an mmorpg
play-by-post?
@@brettdibble2763 play-by-post is when you play an rpg on an internet forum whenever people get around to posting throughout the week rather then everyone playing at the same few hour block of time.
Play-by-post originates in snail mail. You would join a group, mail in your planned activity, then receive the results a bit later. It was adopted by BBS, Usenet, and forum members in the time real-time computing wasn’t capable of hosting multiple players at once. Play-by-mail games backed by mainframes (often a university’s “powerful” mainframe) were also called “batch games” since all the player turns received in a certain time frame were input into the mainframe all at once (in a batch) and the results calculated and sent out to the players.
(Showing my age: mail and post were interchangeable prior to the 1990s: hence “post office”)
For anyone who wants a full list of the games discussed, and a small summary to remember which is which:
1 - Blades in the Dark - Steampunk heist game, with
2 - Symbaroum -Dark creepy forest RPG
3 - Deadlands - 'Weird West', the wild west with creepy, crazy magic
4 - A Song of Ice and Fire RPG - Gritty medieval houses and politics in the world of Westeros
5 - Hot War - Alternate History UK, cold war gone hot. Keep society from plunging into darkness, also mutants. Dice rolls affect characters permanently
6 - Cyberpunk (2020 or Red) - It's Cyberpunk, not too distant future, corporations have major power. Hacking is a thing.
7 - Shadowrun - As above, but with magic and fantasy races.
8 - Ten Candles - Tragic Horror RPG, the sun is dead, society is failing, everyone is going to die. One-Shot RPG
9 - The Expanse - Based on the books (and show) of the same name. Sci-Fi fun times in a gritty version of the future where humanity has colonised (in every sense of the word) the solar system.
10 - Call of Cthulu - H.P. Lovecraft is problematic, but his works are spooky. Eldritch horrors are coming and you have to investigate how, and why.
11 - Night Witches - Based on actual history, be some soviet women in WW1 planes throwing bombs at nazis and maybe dealign with sexism.
No Traveller? The original science fiction RPG. Very detailed game universe. Best version was MegaTraveller. Out of print, but still obtainable.
He is way to young to have been exposed to Traveler.
@@kevinsullivan3448 I pity the young people today.
While I was fanatic for MT during its heydey, I've played/GM'd all the versions published since 1978 and switched a few years ago to the Mongoose version of Traveller. MongTrav v1 was a bit rough but MongTrav v2 seems to have polished the rough edges a bit.
@@kevinsullivan3448 Then he shouldn't be making videos like this. Not mentioning Traveller because it's old is like not mentioning ST TOS because it was from the 60's.
@@DennisMoore664 That's the best reason not to mention STtOS. If you weren't alive to watch it the first time you shouldn't sully it with your eyeballs.
Shoutout to Numenera. Amazing RPG.
I love the cypher system. The games of Numenera I’ve played were like being in a story that would’ve been drawn by Moebius in the pages of Heavy Metal. And the system made everything flow nicely without too much crunch. Great for focusing on roleplay and storytelling.
I like the world, haven't played it yet. Interested what Dicebreaker thinks
For that quote Mike Tyson’s version is my favorite: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”
Ten Candles... wasn't it the two Ronnies who came out with the original RPG Four Candles?
No that was "Fork handles"
@@spoonlamp that's what he said ;)
The old Marvel role playing game had an amazing system that really worked well! You should check it out sometime...it's amazing they created a workable system that can handle such a diverse universe full of different power types and sets. They also had a karma system so good characters lost karma when they did bad things and gained it when doing good things...like experience points that can also be taken away; you could also spend karma in an emergency to modify a role as a last resort. Amazing system from top to bottom.
FASERIP - The best acronym of stats from any RPG.
Only problem I had with it was the complete reliance on so much randomization of powers and stats. Every party I ran with had two or three near useless characters and one who had Monstrous level stats and universally useful powers.
Paranoia was always one of my favourite d&d's
Have you seen the new edition by mongoose? It's pretty dang cool.
Friend computer is always right. Saying otherwise is treason. Knowing the rules (which edition) is a treasonous activity and should be terminated immediately. Here is your ticket to self termination booth.
Jovan Adriel Have a nice daycycle!
@@dragonjaw95 Friend computer?
H.P. Lovecraft is probably the _best_ example of why it's important to separate the art from the artist. Yeah, he was a terrible person, but he still created one of the greatest horror stories ever written which is why he's remembered. If he hadn't written those books, pretty sure nobody would ever mention his name.
People's morals are messed up.
Lovecraft may have been a racist, but the Soviet Red Army committed literal genocides (before WW2) just because they didn't like the cut of somebody's jib, or because they were political opponents--and listen to how they're described in this video.
It's not even mentioned. They're called "amazing". Pretty sure genocides are a worse crime than writing racist poems.
Boggles my mind. 🤯
@@DangerRifai Sorry to hear you don't think the night witches were amazing because some people who weren't them did bad things.
Paranoia, one of the best systems out there
The World Of Darkness games have been my favourite, with vampire at the top of those!
Also picked up a game called Cavemaster recently which plays using stones, which seems really evocative with the setting in the mechanics. In the same way that Fate Of The Norns: Ragnarok does by using runes instead of dice!
Yes, I had an ongoing World of Darkness group in high school. We played Vampire, Werewolf and Changling. I still have about 30 books from the 90s that I wish I could get more use out of.
Thanks, Torso!
For a game with a contemporary setting and a heavy focus on roleplay it's hard to beat the WoD stuff. Vampire was always my favorite. Very political to begin with and it was easy as a storyteller to scale your campaigns. Did you want more intrigue than combat tonight? Simple to do. More combat focus tonight? Also easy. I was never a stickler for dice, though we rolled a fair bit, but I always felt it was a strength of the game because it was just as fulfilling to have a single night mission as it was to have a year long campaign.
I'm confused on why we are discussing the racism of H.P. Lovecraft, when discussing the Call of Cthulhu game. The Cthulhu mythos, though started by Lovecraft, was built upon by numerous authors (at last count more than 20), and is now firmly in the public domain. The Call of Cthulhu game like all role-playing games is highly derivative and based on all (and none) of this body of work.
There is merit in examining how human ignorance shapes the prejudices and fears of people both historically and currently. There is NO merit however in looking at the fiction as though it had contracted some sort of communicable disease based on it's mere proximity to a flawed man with bad ideas from nearly a century ago.
The fiction is it's own artwork, and has it's own value apart from it's progenitor. No one now viewing a Jackson Pollock painting is suddenly going to decide to become an alcoholic, just as no one is going to read 'At the Mountains of Madness' or even 'The Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family' and become a racist. If there are people in the world that are willing to treat entire genres and swathes of culture as 'contaminated', and they are willing to condemn it based on the retroactive sins of their creators, then that is it's own sort of ignorance that should be argued against and resisted.
It seems as though here, that sort of hysterical condemnation is being legitimized, by an odd sort of attempt to preemptively inoculate yourself against it. The presumed argument to condemn the game, and the defense against said speculative condemnation, is so clumsy and ill reasoned as to suggest that even Johnny Chiodini doesn't see the merit in it himself... so then it just seems like pandering or patronizing. I enjoy RPGs and support a good deal of critical examination of storytelling, but it is neither edifying or beneficial to be forced to watch someone in the act of performing a public flagellation of a man who's been dead for 82 years for sins we retroactively attribute to him. This sort of presentism is a dangerously close-minded way to view history; but what's more concerning to me is that people are using it to justify the denigration and dismissal of what are now our shared stories and art forms. I saw a similar argument against D&D attributing bad ideas to Tolkien.
By offering inserting your bizarre critique of Lovecraft into the discussion, you're attaching a social stigma to something may detract from someone's enjoyment of that thing, and by doing so you're not raising awareness or promoting understanding, or in fact offering any real critical analysis or affirmative support to any concept. It's like you vomited on the source book, then cleaned it off and handed it to the player and said "enjoy this, please ignore what just happened"...and even if they are able to enjoy the game after that, the negative association you just made is just something to be overcome that offers literally 0 positive value, and must be ignored for it not to attach a negative value.
If someone can show me that Lovecraft himself is alive and well AND collecting a paycheck from Chaoseim for the game AND that those proceeds are then being used to fund some sort of hate group; well then, I'll certainly retract my criticism. Until then. Stop. Please.
The work cannot be separated from its influences? Also here: Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown - look it up, if you want. Says it better than I can.
If even Justin Trudeau, the King of Woke, Mr. Current Year and Peoplekind, is going to be Cancelled, then NO ONE is pure enough and should not even try. If racism is everybody's crime, then it is nobody's crime! Ignore virtue-signalling about it from now on. If you're daring, you might even demand that groups survive with resiliency and that they don't need your outside help.
Coming soon for Call of Cthulhu: Shub Trudeaurrath: The Black Face of the Woods With a Thousand Young.
The times we live in, man. I think you're absolutely right. It's like McCarthyism, but more intense than McCarthyism ever was. Imagine if we lived in a world where ordinary, mostly apolitical people felt the urge to spontaneously disavow Communism before mentioning Star Trek, and then go on to point out that some of its themes are "problematic", lest anyone suspect that they may be a secret pinko.
"There is NO merit however in looking at the fiction as though it had contracted some sort of communicable disease based on it's mere proximity to a flawed man with bad ideas from nearly a century ago."
Well-put.
GURPS: generic Universal role-playing system, is a role-playing system developed by Steve Jackson which you can play literally anything there are tons of other sourcebooks that you can play it's a really fun RPG.
Yeah, but it's also not very good.
@@AspelShuyin sorry you can't do math
@@kabronex9877 it's not the math that's the problem. If anything, the character creation is the part I like, even though the auditing and number crunching is way more than necessary, as are the billions of skills and how they might transfer to other skills. Where the math is a problem, the issue isn't the difficulty, it's the volume.
But no, it's the core mechanics that I'm not fond of. I don't like the way combat is a bunch of missing unless you explicitly never use the basic attack, and I don't like the division of traits, and I don't like the need to budget character points, or the way that the same character concept can often be created in more and less efficient ways. I don't like how players have the memorize it look up tables, like how strength correlates to damage, or more obscure things. I also don't like how the base magic system uses Fatigue, meaning wizards are better when they're beefy. I don't like how do much of the game that you're expected to spend money on is a bunch of needless mechanical garbage that won't ever get used, and so much of what does get used is just minor variations of other things, or it's overly complicated stuff that all but the most annoying GMs who get turned on by recording dice rolls will simply handwave.
I don't dislike GURPS because I can't do math, I don't like GURPS because I don't want to do math when the end result is a game with too many rules that doesn't do enough to make one setting feel different from another.
@@AspelShuyin lol wat r u? Casul?
@@kabronex9877 Yes. I want to have fun, not balance a budget.
Me, every time you two post a new video: "Ooh, I should get that."
Stars Without Number is another great game with one of the most robust world-building mechanics I've ever seen in a game.
Ermagerdddddd .. Palladium, Rifts, GURPs, FUDGE, Paranoia, Space Opera. First RPG I ever played was Metamorphosis Alpha.
I'm a fan of paranoia funniest time playing a game!
@@adamwelch4336 Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
If you don't trust the Computer, you will be used as reactor shielding!
Just saying: go look up Grant Howitt. He's produced a ton of strange little RPGs with neat ideas and light-hearted theming
Also, one page!
Spire is glorious and has is one of the most evocative settings I've ever read. The Appendix for Goats is gold and I love the Art Deco inspired designs they used throughout the book.
3 years later, in 2023, Hasbro has decided to burn D&D to the ground and this video is more relevant than ever, thanks, Dicebreaker!
No palladium... :( rifts, fantasy or robotech are all classic but best of all is teenage mutant Ninja Turtles
Patrick Van Nederynen high hoooo fellow palladium fan!
Shhh, you'll summon Kevin.Rifts / Palladium multiverse is this impossibly creative, bizarre well of ideas married to the biggest cluster of a system you've ever seen. Half of it was never laid out digitally, and never will be. Even the stuff that was is edited in what can only be called stream of consciousness. Errata IS its own separate line of books. Try to streamline and fix it on your own, you'll get sued. It's the most fun you'll ever have with an utter trainwreck.
Aaron Malay as much as i liked macross an tmnt, rifts for me was literally rifts earth, the pantheons, and the dimension books. I never had any of the palladium fantasy books, the tmnt books, the macross or robotech books. Rifts for me was juicers, glitter boys, samas, ccw, cosmo knights, phase world, tolkien, freehold etc. I bought almost every book in rifts earth and the dimension books in existence. I thought it was such a great idea, mixing high magic with high technology, along a multi scaled multiverse backdrop.
@@moguldamongrel3054 YES! Juicers 4 (albeit short) Life!
Drakijy loved when they came out with the juicer uprising an all the juicer variations.
These RPG intro vids have been my favourite part of the channel so far. The way you use editing to add shading and flavour to your own evocative descriptions of the games in this one is deftly done, and had me aching to play pretty much all of them, or at least watch them being played. A couple of things I would have like to see more of:
* a few words from Johnny about his own brief experience with Ten Candles, just as an adjunct to the points Wheels brought up.
* Also, both Shadowrun and Cyberpunk felt like they got slightly short shrift in terms of descriptions of their mechanics, compared to the relative depth you went into with the rest of the games on the list.
Also of note - *Earthdawn:* the fantasy world setting from far in the past of Shadowrun en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthdawn
*Amber RPG:* A diceless RPG set in Roger Zelazny's Amber multiverse en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Diceless_Roleplaying_Game
*In Nomine:* Angels and demons playing out an eternal war on Earth, by SJG en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Nomine_(role-playing_game)
*Rifts:* A future Earth in which a catastrophe caused dimensional rifts to open all over the planet turning it into an apocalyptic Multiversal nexus en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_(role-playing_game)
*All Flesh Must Be Eaten:* A zombie survival RPG with a great game system en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Flesh_Must_Be_Eaten
*Paranoia:* Just an hilariously good time en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)
I wonder if the flashback system from Blades In The Dark could be showed into Shadowrun, it could use something to make those painful "planning" hours go away.
I think it would be really easy. Just port the mechanic straight from BitD and substitute Edge for Stress.
@Paul Gauthier Sure, FitD Shadowrun would be ideal, haha! I keep meaning to check out the existing FitD cyberpunk game, but can't say I was super excited by the brief description. The Sprawl is pretty good and I've used it to run the CP2020 setting with some success, but those are slightly different animals on both counts.
Hello? White Wolf? Vampire the Masquerade.... I cannot believe you didn't mention it.
probably because The New World Of Darkness isn't THAT good and the new Old World Of Darkness seems to be quite......tailored for safe spaces? Dunno how to put it.
@@rikusschulze6249 I can't stand overly sensitive millennials, who want the world to be shaped to protect their feefee's..
@@jeffgrey9147 okay, why tell me?
@@rikusschulze6249 you mentioned safe spaces, I was basically just stating how what I think about the people who use them.
Ah, so you like games full of white men with lots of women available to shag? It's ok, we think your games are boring too.
I also recommend Stars without Numbers
Very good sci-fi Rpg
No Vampire: The Masquerade? C'mon dude! It is one of the most iconic RPGs. Keep up the great vids, but I'm so bummed it didn't get a mention; it's focus on in-depth storytelling and roleplaying makes it such a joy to play.
It was filmed during day time, vampires couldn't make it :D
I'm guessing he didn't mention it because it's already getting some ridiculous spotlight right now from the game
My top 5 are
1 cyberpunk
2 vampire the masquerade
3 sla industries
4 paranoia
5 call of cthulu
I watched u for the 1st time and i enjoyed so i have subscribed an notified the bell icon and look forward to more to come
GREAT list, and mad props for mentioning SLA Industries. That setting is so damn good.
Rifts is an awesome RPG. Anima is worth it just for the artwork but is also very fun to play. Dark Heresy has always been a favorite. Feng Shui and Paranoia were fun too heh.
One of my favorite experiences was playing a game called Upwind. You pick your own skills by making a short phrase that describes them. I really enjoyed that one of my skills was a line from a Rolling Stones song.
Over the edge had a similar idea. You also picked your own attributes by describing three things you're good at and one you're bad at. No good for munchkins but fine for everyone else.
I'm disappointed not to see anima and vampire: the masquerade
i was disappointed to not see any palladium rpgs
I used to know a parody of Monty Python's Lumberjack Song called "I Like Palladium (and I'm OK)"
You can suggest them yourself.
@@LadyLunarSatine Wait PA-R-R-O-D-Y!?! You mean it's NOT THE ORIGINAL!?!
I'm not surprised. Vampire can be a bit contentious and deals with a lot of topics that aren't everyone's jam. Anima on the other hand just isn't a very good game. It's super broken and not just because the translation is terrible.
My thought on the list:
1. Blades in the Dark: a very changed version PbtA system. Recommending scum and villainy or hack the planet that build upon the Blades changed rule for scifi or cyberpunk style. There is also City of Mist that is also really interesting take on the system
2. Symbaroum: from the same developer that created Mutant Year Zero. There is also tales from the loop (detective story ala stranger things) and coriolis (scifi stories) from them.
3. Deadlands reloaded: well there are other savage world setting that s really good. There is also the deadlands hell on earth setting
4. Song of ice and fire: one problem with it is that it's quite easy to game the system if you put your mind to it. One system that I really like from the same publisher is Mutants & Masterminds 3E.
5. Hot War: never tried or read the rule so I don't know much, but it seems really good.
6. Shadowrun / Cyberpunk: I really love shadowrun despite all of its flaws & the massive ammount of d6 I need to carry for playing. Caution the rule can be really inconsistent sometimes. For Cyberpunk, there is also the Witcher rpg using the same rule.
7. Ten Candles: never know this exist. Definitely will check it out. but I love Fiasco, a game which the character also more or less almost always lose in some ways.
8. The Expanse: using the AGE system (Fantasy Age, Modern Age) that also powers Dragon Age RPG for more fantasy spin.
9. Call of Cthulhu: really good detective game. If you don't fancy the world setting but like the detective stories, there is the Gumshoe system that have more wacky (TimeWatch) or super power (Mutant City Blues) setting for the detective genre.
10. Night Wiches: another PbtA games. There is a lot of setting and genre for PbtA. My favorite is Mask and Monster Hearts. Have heard good things about other but haven't really played them only read through some of the book.
Other system that I like but not on the list : Vampire the Masquerade, Stars Without Numbers, Numenera (Cypher System), Capers, FATE Core
About the other systems you mention: VtM(WoD) is a very good game but you need the right kind of players for it to be good. Stars W/O Numbers and Numenera both suffer from weak rulesets. In Stars the game goes from if I get hit once I am gonna die to getting hit 10 or so times and looking at the enemy and saying is that the best you got. In Numenera, I built a character and without even trying as a tier 2, I was singlehandedly defeating tier 6 threats w/o hardly breaking a sweat. FATE Core is another one that requires a certain type of player for it to be successful.
Symbaroum doesn't use the Year Zero System. It is it's own thing. It has roll low d20 mechanics.The year zero system uses d6's. Regardless of the system, Symbaroum's setting is fantastic.
@@EricEsenwine ah sorry the one with year zero is the forbidden land. well I have just skim through symbaroum rulebook. Haven't got time to play. But it's from the same dev at least right.
@@dragonjaw95 ahh yeah... Jarningren the company that produced Symbaroum merged with Free League a few years after the games release. Its a different system but distributed by the same developers of the Year Zero system! Cheers
Man been ages since I thought about Monster Hearts, I've never played such absolute trainwrecks of petty awkwardness as playing a teenager as a teenager.
Through the magic of Kickstarter, we got to play Blades in the Dark while it was in development. We had a truly lovely (if that word can be applied to a game of Blades) game and a ton of fun building up our crew. Blades to us always felt like we were right on the edge of disaster and hanging on by the skin of our teeth. I particularly LOVE LOVE LOVE the flashback mechanic and think it is one of the best design elements I’ve seen in an RPG in a very long time.
Ten Candles is one of those harrowing experiences as an rpg player that leaves you walking away from the game going, “what just happened? Did I have a good time? Or should I seek therapy?”
Another game that’s just coming out that is truly brilliant is Icarus. I got to play it with the developer and it is one of the most intriguing and novel games I’ve seen in a very long time. I highly recommend checking it out.
I could ramble on about more games and the games that you talked about but people don’t really want to hear that.
Cheers,
JiB
I was a huge fan of Legend of the Five Rings RPG from AEG. So much fun.
you could jsut say d20 and get trek , star wars , that five rings and much more....in fact even dnd went d20 for a spell
Did I miss a joke?
Is there a reason for the quack?
I love it anyway
Monika Dietrich my best guess is either it being a tribute to the upcoming untitled goose game OR it is simply a bangin creative choice
It just reminds me of Caddicarus' Tips for Beginners of Bloodbourne video.
Quack
There’s always Donut County.
3rd Ed. Shadowrun and Vampire: The Masquerade were my favorites for years.
I'm game mastering a Shadowrun 2nd Ed. Group for 23 Years now. Never bothered to upgrade. :-D Sometimes we also play VTM.
It’s funny how different Ten Candles is from Sixteen Candles.
And how different they are from fork handles.
XD
@@Paldasan Wasn't it Four Candles?
@@davidcopplestone6266 it was, but I thought if I wrote four candles rather than its homophone people might struggle to make the connection.
Although very D&D like, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Also, a very different system and playstyle and World and FUNNY !!! MACHO WOMEN WITH GUNS !!!
"From the depths of hell in silence
Cast their spells, explosive violence
Russian night time flight perfected
Flawless vision, undetected"
Sorry couldn't help myself.
Hmm an excuse to play Sabaton during a game.
Good music taste right there.
Also thought I'd mention another game I've played, Iron Kingdoms, which is basically the tabletop RPG version of Warmachine.
Thank you for the video!! I want to get into pen and paper RPGs, and this channel will be great help.
I'd nominate Mouse Guard (I'm a massive fan of its "fail-forwards" mechanic), and Fate Accelerated Edition (story collaboration and world creation done on the fly with minimal rules).
rude_mech I picked up the original MG box set. It’s worth like 600 dollars now!! What a great game!!
Thanks for the list- some interesting reviews there. I think a game is like a toolbox and what you do with it, and what the players do with it, is vitally important. I've been roleplaying since 1980 and refereeing since 1982, so I'm a little long in the tooth in our great community!
A game, well-written and with a good story and engaging characters, is as good as you make it. From D&D, Traveller, Aftermath, Daredevils and Bushido by Charette and Hulme, MERP & Rolemaster, they're all good. I've played excellent Cyberpunk campaigns and very mediocre and poorly refereed Shadowrun games, I've ran Star Trek on 16 players (heads and asst heads of department) in a university group years ago, and played in the highly enjoyable recent Star Wars rules. I've even modified games, taking existing rules and used them for created universes. I've used Champions superhero rpg rules as a superhero game where Gifted are hunted by everyone else in society and live among the shadows, and recently because it's scale deals with human to massive creatures, I'm running a Champions game set in Anne McCaffery's world of Pern where the players are thread-fighting Dragon Riders.
I've even created a rues system using the lethal Phoenix Command combat system set in the techno-thriller world of shows like Mission Impossible, Jack Ryan, or Strikeback.
A game is as good as you make it, if the referee has a good story, the players are engaged with back stories and can breathe life into their characters, and between them, the world takes shape.
I'm just glad this hobby is gaining a renaissance! (oh, I forgot to mention Flashing Blades is one of my favourite games, if you blow off the dust...)
Definitely going to try and run Ten Candles, I just looked up the rules and it seems amazing
That is a very incomplete analysys of the Night Witches, but I'm hyped that anyone is even talking about the game.
I didn't know that game. As a flight combat simulator and RPGs lover I am interested in war planes pilot RPGs. Can you tell me something more about the witches game?
Would love to see a review of that Warhammer 40k rpg Wrath & Glory
A lot of people say it's really bad. Most people would recommend the fantasy flight 40k games.
Try Dark Heresy. It’s pretty good. Warhammer Fantasy rpg is also great.
@@a40kweeb36 agreed
Rules are generally okay. The problem was that the book & art layout wasn't as good as most other high quality RPGs coming out these days. I also felt there was a lack of art in it. That said, I would prefer using W&G's system over the FFG version's d100 system which is overloaded with a bit too much DRM hell. I say that as someone who has loved WFRP since 1st edition which uses the same core. FFG 40k just adds even more crunching and numbers everywhere. I'll still keep them all, however.
"No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy." --Douglas MacArthur
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder actually. Prussian general in the 1800’s.
Yeah MacArthur was actually quoting Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. Sorry.
Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke was not so pithy as MacArthur's paraphrase: "The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: 'I have never had a plan of operations.'
Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."
@@philmitchell12 Love the full name AND full quote. 👍
I'm genuinely surprised that Monster of the week wasn't somewhere in the mix, but man there are some titles I need to check out now!
I love shadowrun so much.
I miss playing it.
I love the transition quacks you've used for each entry and the ending.
I love Shadowrun, but I don't really like the newer editions after 3rd or maybe 4th. They need to reboot and get back to the roots of the game, it has become to fantastical in the story and world they have built with the newer editions and lost a lot of the gritty cyberpunk feel in my opinion.
@@O-D-X i haven't played in over 10 years but always wanted to get back into it.
OD-X I played a homebrewish version of the newest shadowrun. In it we were the police and it was just corruption left and right on multiple occasions we would get notes from higher ups telling us to ignore something or stop looking into a case. One time we didn’t follow the suggestions and we almost got blown up