TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

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TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by someone » Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:31 pm

I am just curious if someone who plays and what systems?
Of course we might get into a "this is better than that" system discussion, but please be aware that anyone has different taste, so please keep it civil.

So, i play or played:

Warhammer 40k (Orks) (stopped like 2 editions back, did not like the newer codices)
Warhammer (Dwarves) (well, honestly, i own a small army, never played it really, not counting the testplay(s))
Confrontation (Orks, Undead, Kelts, Devourer, Cadwallon) (yeah, i really was into this, best system i ever played, so well done figures, rules, world and most important: measuring in cm! ;-) )
Warmachine (Mercenaries) (I like the world and the figures, but the rules set is a bit... odd)

A friend of mine wants to introduce Malifaux to our little group of Gamers, so far i like what i see, but i am reluctant to invest money in a system we hardly play or that dies as soon as we all start it (yeah, that happend, a lot^^, like Dreamblade for example, or my Warhammer Dwarves)

Okay, enough about me. Now you!

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming

Post by TinSoldier » Wed Mar 13, 2013 7:02 pm

I haven't played table top for a long time, but I do enjoy it.

I have played:
OD&D
AD&D
Palladium + AD&D fusion (homebrew stuff)
Cyberpunk & Cyberpunk 2020
Paranoia
Battletech
Gurps
Traveller
The Morrow Project -- we had a long campaign on that one. The GM is now a published author which is cool. My character died by a lucky headshot near the end of the campaign, but it didn't matter much because it was such a good campaign. A good death.

I'm probably missing a few.

I haven't actually played them, but I own the D&D 3.5 books, Eberron, Star Wars D20 + some source books, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (I LOVE the setting!), Dragon Age RPG.

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming

Post by Arydra » Wed Mar 13, 2013 7:20 pm

DnD 3.5 and AD&D (have all of the AD&D books that my father gave me) as well as Runequest (pre-DnD)

Two really fun non-medieval systems that I enjoyed were All Flesh Must Be Eaten (modern zombies obviously) and Deadlands (American Civil War Era ~ 1860s). I still have characters and a working knowledge of all 5 systems so if any games get started here I can join or help DM if necessary.
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Re: TableTop and Wargaming

Post by boneguard » Thu Mar 14, 2013 7:14 am

Let me see here's the list of RPGs I played or ran over the years (I do have a couple more system I haven't tried...yet).

OD&D
AD&D both Edition
tried 3rd ed. D&D
GURP
Shadowrun 2nd/3rd ed
old World of Darkness (werewolf/vampire
Ars Magica 3rd
WEG star wars
Conan (Mongoose)
Travellers (Mongoose and original)
Alternity
Amazing Engine (Bughunter)
AfterMath
Bushido
MERPS
Role/Space Master
Legend of 5 rings
Kobold ate my baby
All Flesh must be eaten
Call of Cthulhu
Earthdwan 1st and 2nd ed

Wargame:
WH40K
Last edited by boneguard on Fri Mar 15, 2013 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Game systems

Post by Amara » Fri Mar 15, 2013 11:24 am

The low wealth thread made me think about this (especially some of Willpell's comments relating to wealth in D&D!) but this seemed a more fitting place for it. If it isn't, I'm fine with it being moved. I didn't know quite where else to put it. C:


What game systems are you familiar with? What do you like/dislike about them, and what is your favorite?


My favorite system...definitely what White Wolf ran with in oWoD, and Exalted. I love leveless systems where you can raise skills whenever you have the exp to do so. Character growth and improvement seems much more natural. I could justify raising my character's brawling skill for example, with the exp he'd received from recent fights, or I could raise a knowledge skill during downtime, under the justification he was studying. I like that.
Wealth is less absolute in that setting, and more a matter of justification as well, thou some storytellers are more tightfisted about money than others. I like how wealth works in oWoD however. It feels a nice fit. On the other hand....

oWoD at times feels much less accessible than D&D. The system is considered much more complicated by many, and I've been told that dice pool systems are considered quite difficult to understand. I have a hard time seeing this personally, but oWoD (and more specifically VtM) was my first game. I found D&D later. As far as D&D...I like how simple it is to a degree, but I do have a hard time taking it seriously once the players start getting higher leveled. It starts getting pretty ridiculous even before epic level.

The most complicated game I've ever played was Shadowrun, I suppose. I'm very fond of it and its wealth system as well, though my one complaint with Shadowrun is how easily a single bad roll can ruin not only your day...but kill your character and the whole party. (MAGIC USERS, ENOUGH SAID.) obviously a DM can choose to fudge that, but if you go strictly by rules and consequences, a single bad roll turns things nasty quicker than in any other game I know of.
Last edited by Amara on Fri Mar 15, 2013 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Game systems

Post by LAYF » Fri Mar 15, 2013 11:47 am

Hmm..

Well, IÔÇÖve played oWoD, nWoD, DnD 2-3.5, call of cthulhu (cant remember the number, but it was the D100 setting), cthulhu dark, shadowrun, SLA Industries and an unknown amount of homebrews.

oWoD is without doubt my favorite vampire setting, as well as demon the fallen. But the mechanics seems a bit flawed if you want to cross with mage and/or werewolf. But the clans, the stories, blood progression trough diabere, camarilla and sabat are clearly better than the new setting.

nWoD is on the other hand without doubt my favorite system and I own 12 books of that setting, I prefer mage, but love the other setting to (but I use the old clans for vampire and the old stories)

DnD 3.5 is my favorite fantasy setting, even do I find the amount of ÔÇ£extra rules, classes, racesÔÇØ and such to be fare to much and allow for way to much minimaxing! I prefer to play campaigns within the levels 2-8 above that I find it a bit ridicules.

Call of cthulhu is a great story and fantastic mood.. but I donÔÇÖt like the d100 system...

Cthulhu dark is a great system for quick horror games, but IÔÇÖve only tried it a few times... it was a free system by Thieves of Time, but I canÔÇÖt seem to find it again...

Shadowrun, while fun did not hold my interest for long... I just donÔÇÖt find the setting so intertaining.

SLA IÔÇÖve sadly only played twice, but I loved it, and have been searching for the book for ages.. itÔÇÖs a cool dark/action future setting where everything is about survival and 5 minutes of fame...

So... all in all a great amount of settings.... oh.. and I love homebrews :)
-Best regards LAYF

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Re: Game systems

Post by TinSoldier » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:00 pm

There is another thread on the subject, but I can copy and paste to here.
TinSoldier wrote:I haven't played table top for a long time, but I do enjoy it.

I have played:
OD&D
AD&D
Palladium + AD&D fusion (homebrew stuff)
Cyberpunk & Cyberpunk 2020
Paranoia
Battletech
Gurps
Traveller
Shadowrun
The Morrow Project -- we had a long campaign on that one. The GM is now a published author which is cool. My character died by a lucky headshot near the end of the campaign, but it didn't matter much because it was such a good campaign. A good death.

I'm probably missing a few.

I haven't actually played them, but I own the D&D 3.5 books, Eberron, Star Wars D20 + some source books, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (I LOVE the setting!), Dragon Age RPG.
My favorite system is probably GURPS or FUDGE. However, most of these other games have engaging worlds which IMO is what really makes the game. The system is just mechanics.

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Re: Game systems

Post by Amara » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:04 pm

I'd almost forgotten CoC! I don't mind d100...but I admittedly didn't flirt with the game long. Our group fell apart a few sessions in. I definitely preferred oWoD's system, but I liked the danger element CoC held. I've not touched the base oWoD much outside of Vampire, Mage (for NPCs) and Werewolf, but I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard to capture that "odds against you" kind of setting.

Mhm, I've heard nWoD's Mage was much improved, but I'll admit Requiem alone was enough to put me off the new books. I'm trying to stay open minded; what do you like best, new vs old, about each?



Ah! And minmaxing. Yes, it's painfully easy with 3.5. I once (by accident) wound up with a rogue that had a +20 to move silently...at rogue level 2. (Ah, were cats...) It had been entirely by accident, but luckily wasn't TOO broken, outside of a few sneak attacks I managed...while at full sprint.
I've never delt with minmaxing much outside of D&D, but I think that's largely because it's much harder to do in other games I've played. In VtM in the past I've let players get away with some rather ridiculous things in the name of story, but I never had a hard time balancing things out so that everyone was equally useful.


TinSoldier: my apologies. I'd meant this as a systems discussion, but I can see where this topic would be redundant. I think I'd originally interpreted that thread as tabletop and Wargaming to the exclusion of non-tabletop P&P.

I definitely agree with world/story > system, still there are some systems that I feel allow more creativity than others. I often feel caged by class systems, for example, whereas looser skill based systems like World of Darkness I feel I can do anything.
Last edited by Amara on Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by Wolfie » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:05 pm

[mod="Wolfie"]I merged the two topics together and changed the title of thread to reflect that. :)[/mod]
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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by Amara » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:07 pm

Wolfie wrote:I merged the two topics together and changed the title of thread to reflect that. :)
Ahh, thanks. Sorry to be a bother!

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by Wolfie » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:09 pm

Ayeaka wrote:
Wolfie wrote:I merged the two topics together and changed the title of thread to reflect that. :)
Ahh, thanks. Sorry to be a bother!
No bother. It's what we're here for... among other things.

on topic.. I play D&D 3.5, dabbled in 4.0.

That's about all actually... :?
"This is my therapy dragon, she's for my panic attacks. I attack, everyone panics." (Quote found on http://outofcontextdnd.tumblr.com/)

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by TinSoldier » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:15 pm

Ayeaka wrote:TinSoldier: my apologies. I'd meant this as a systems discussion, but I can see where this topic would be redundant. I think I'd originally interpreted that thread as tabletop and Wargaming to the exclusion of non-tabletop P&P.
What is non-tabletop P&P?

I DO find game systems interesting in and of themselves. I like loosely-defined classes or archetypes better than jack-of-all-trades characters, but I agree that a class shouldn't be a straitjacket.

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by Amara » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:20 pm

I tend to think of tabletop as games containing components that would go on top of a table, such as wargaming, maps/miniatures for D&D, etc. Some games include nothing more than character sheets, however, which seems to remove the 'table' element completely. Perhaps I'm providing a differentiation where there really is none :b

As for loose classes...aye. I like things like say, the clans for Vampire. From there my character is whatever I spend my exp on. In D&D however, there are a lot of characters I could simply NEVER make without massive amounts of cross classing that would render them useless.

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by TinSoldier » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:28 pm

Ah, okay. I just consider any game with dice to be "tabletop" whether you use maps and minis or not. Or even diceless gaming, if you're still sitting around a table.

As compared with LARPing which I've never done. I don't even know if LARPing includes pen and paper, but I expect it doesn't usually include a table top. :P

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by Amara » Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:31 pm

The only time I ever larped we still had character sheets, haha, but definitely no tables, no. XD

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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by boneguard » Fri Mar 15, 2013 5:33 pm

Despite loving oWoD, I never got into LARP.

Then again I still play Bushido and AD&D 1st ed twice a month with my firends :)
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Re: TableTop and Wargaming / Game Systems

Post by someone » Sun Mar 17, 2013 6:40 am

To be honest, i wondered myself why the topics got merged, but then i was also surprised to read a lot of answers containing what i considered p&p. That is why I did not include my experiences in
D&D (not much to say, still playing, sometimes)
Shadowrun (although only two sessions, in the first session my char was introduced, the second one ended in tpk, not my fault at all, one of us just wanted to quit gaming and was a total ass, we never played again)
Cadwallon (too broken system, really, so much flavour and a rich setting, also possibilitys, but the mechanics suck)
Dark Heresy (man i love d100 systems, you always know your chances)
Kobolds ate my Baby
Arcane Codex (we are still waiting for the sourcebook for our next campaign, @*&;#!!!! )
And TWERPS (the worlds easiest RPS) ( this one is just for fun, compare with Kobolds ate my Baby, we sometimes play this when we are out reenacting using only wooden, bone or metal dice)

As for charackters in roleplaying:
I actually play a LE dwarfen wizard in D&D, runecaster. He is not really good in his magics, failed every single important arcane knowledge test so far (yes, the ones, they love me) but rocks in combat.
My Dark Heresy char is a much less complicated type, he goes with the credo 'violence solves anything' . A soldier/mercenary type who shoots first, then shoots some more and to be sure he shoots even more. If someone gets too close for shooting em they get a taste of my chainsword. Let other faithfull of the imperator ask the questions.
My Arcane Codex char is a elven wardancer who thinks he is an immortal elf but in truth he is not. (it is complicated)

So, i guess, i prefer powerfull (almost minmaxed) chars with some flaws to make them interesting.
In wargaming i seldom play an army list that has not been carefully thought through for at least a week. Sometimes ppl dont want to play my armies because, yes, they call me powergamer :-(

Wow, quite a long post to send with my mobile device, i apologise for any inconvenience that comes from autocorrect and bad english.

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