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Hi All,

My D&D group took a short break that has now become a forever break and talking to the other players it seems that it was mainly because our adventures were too epic in nature (5+ hours every other week). I was thinking that an RPG boardgame might be up our collective alley.

I was looking at Descent and others but they all appear to be designed with set characters in mind so players wouldn't be able to make their own characters and have some ownership in their development. On the other hand, I like the idea of expansions, the adventure book and even the scenarios available for free online.

I found a printable tool to make your own characters; has anyone tried this?

Your thoughts are appreciated, on Descent or any other game that might fit the bill.

Thanks.

I currently play a descent campaign every sunday and there are set chacters but you still get to pick there "skills" and gear and stuff like that. i can't say for sure how your D&D group would like it but mine does. Oh and on the time thing the way we are running it is about 4 hrs a week and it will still take us months to finish (set-up and take down make up most of this time). You could also just do Quests with descent instead of a campaign but i have never done that and im not sure how it works.


Edit: oh and descent if you do a campaign has just about as many FAQ's and such to the rules as GW does to 40k

Voryn15,
Thanks for the input. Is the combat system fairly smooth? How long do the combats take, on average?

A game of Descent takes about 90 minutes but can run shorter depending upon how familiar everyone is with the rules. Now that figure is assuming the PCs survive all the way to the end boss. Some Descent games only last 20 minutes or less before TPK, whereupon the PCs start all over again. So you could end up taking as long as your D&D sessions to complete a single dungeon -- although I wonder whether folks you play with will have patience for that.

Also keep in mind that Descent is all G and no RP. This is not a good replacement for D&D if you like D&D for more than a string of combat encounters.

That might be better when considering that one of the problems we had, as a group, was with people disconnecting from the game during some of the more involved combat segments.

I was drawn to Descent mainly because it looked interactive and has a more visual appeal than a plastic mat with erasable marker scribblings. I'm thinking that roleplaying can be added as they progress through the dungeon/adventure.

Primarily I'm looking for something with a more simplified combat system than D&D 3.5 and fluid game mechanics.

It sounds like you're looking for a "rules-lite" game. Keep in mind that D&D (both 3.X and 4E) is much "crunchier" than most RPGs out there, which tend to focus on storytelling . . . like, for example, the Storytelling System used in White Wolf's New World of Darkness lines. Getting rid of some of the rules means you can play more quickly but I also find that some people use the rules as prompts -- so if there are fewer rules, they are less interactive with the game world. Also, fewer rules can mean less characterization: rules help you come up with a character, including her personality, in a quick and orderly fashion. A lot of a nWoD characters' development happens along the same line as fleshing out a character for a short story or novel, which is difficult for some people. Creative writing takes both discipline and talent and not everyone has the capacity to do it well. Rules help people in this regard, I feel.

Long story short: visuals can help but miniatures'n'mats, even when they're pretty are still miniatures'n'mats -- i.e., you're talking about tactics (which your group doesn't seem to like). For more "fluid" RPing that retains a certain amount of crunch, I'd suggest Savage Worlds. It's a generic ruleset for which anyone can publish settings. You can play high fantasy a la D&D (allegedly) just as well as far future post-apoc dystopia.

Some great advice there, thanks. I think it's going to be a fine balance between interactivity, storytelling, character development (read PC buy-in) and fluidity of game play.

My experience with RPGs has been with:
D&D
Rifts
Marvel Superheroes
Call of Cthulu

Of those, I probably liked CoC probably the best for game mechanics but it was lacking in character development because you'd die or go crazy (or both?) every time we played. It's been years and years so I don't know what it's like now.

I'll check out Savage Worlds, any other recommendations are welcome.

I know this will be somewhat overwhelming, but wiki has a nice list of Savage Worlds settings you might want to browse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Savage_Worlds_books

Manchu,

How does Savage Worlds compare to Gurps, Paladium system or Fantasy Craft?

I have not myself played any of those games but from my reading of GURPs and Rifts (I have not heard of Fantasy Craft), they're much, much, much crunchier than Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is a paltry investment and very easy to understand quickly (only 160 pages!), unlike both GURPs and Palladium's stuff, so I'd really suggest picking up a copy and just giving it a go with your group.

Manchu wrote:I have not myself played any of those games but from my reading of GURPs and Rifts (I have not heard of Fantasy Craft), they're much, much, much crunchier than Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is a paltry investment and very easy to understand quickly (only 160 pages!), unlike both GURPs and Palladium's stuff, so I'd really suggest picking up a copy and just giving it a go with your group.

I ran into fantasy craft on Pinnacle's website, looks like it was printed last year. I was looking at Savage Worlds and I'm starting to think that I'll go ahead and pick it up unless the new one, Fantasy Craft but didn't want to jump into an untried system when I'm looking for something simpler than D&D.

Savage Worlds is a neat RPG. It doesn't work for every genre any more than GURPS does, but it's very cool and minimalist, but with enough crunch to give it body.

A big theme of the game is that characters are assumed to be at least somewhat capable of living in the world they're in. Skills are very broad: "Shooting" covers bows, guns, plasma rifles, etc. "Fighting" includes unarmed, melee weapons, etc.

However, raising a skill gets expensive and there's a diminishing return after a point so it's better to specialize and take perks that are often keyed to a weapon or class of weapons. So two cowboys might have equal shooting, but one is specialized in pistols while the other is more familiar with rifles and has a reduced penalty when shooting from a moving vehicle. One's a gunslinger, the other's a stage coach guard.

Similarly a lot of the sub-systems are based on using simple essentials and then adding flavor and detail via 'trappings.' A big example of this is the magic system: instead of having tons of almost-but-not-quite identical spells (Fireball, Ice blast, Call lightning, etc) there's a generic 'blast' spell and settings have guidelines on how trappings apply to it. They've been a little weird as sometimes it's described as an on-the-fly thing, sometimes there's some hard rules on it, but ti basically allows the GM a lot of luxury to say "OK, you were hit with a Stun power that was described as a block of ice forming around you... Then a fireball hit yo, so roll to escape early."

Another feature is some nice rules for NPCs that make it very practical to due impressively large fights. it's kind of like 40k where heroes tend to have multiple 'wounds' while basic troops generally have 1.

Balance wrote:Savage Worlds is a neat RPG. It doesn't work for every genre any more than GURPS does, but it's very cool and minimalist, but with enough crunch to give it body.

A big theme of the game is that characters are assumed to be at least somewhat capable of living in the world they're in. Skills are very broad: "Shooting" covers bows, guns, plasma rifles, etc. "Fighting" includes unarmed, melee weapons, etc.

However, raising a skill gets expensive and there's a diminishing return after a point so it's better to specialize and take perks that are often keyed to a weapon or class of weapons. So two cowboys might have equal shooting, but one is specialized in pistols while the other is more familiar with rifles and has a reduced penalty when shooting from a moving vehicle. One's a gunslinger, the other's a stage coach guard.

Similarly a lot of the sub-systems are based on using simple essentials and then adding flavor and detail via 'trappings.' A big example of this is the magic system: instead of having tons of almost-but-not-quite identical spells (Fireball, Ice blast, Call lightning, etc) there's a generic 'blast' spell and settings have guidelines on how trappings apply to it. They've been a little weird as sometimes it's described as an on-the-fly thing, sometimes there's some hard rules on it, but ti basically allows the GM a lot of luxury to say "OK, you were hit with a Stun power that was described as a block of ice forming around you... Then a fireball hit yo, so roll to escape early."

Another feature is some nice rules for NPCs that make it very practical to due impressively large fights. it's kind of like 40k where heroes tend to have multiple 'wounds' while basic troops generally have 1.

Thanks for the insight, Balance. Do the combats run fairly smoothly or is there a great deal of dice rolling and waiting for turns like in D&D?

Combat is pretty smooth. There is some waiting for turns, but things can get simplified. A major issue is players need to be aware that there's some 'standard' stuff they can do (like opposed roles to intimidate or trick an opponent) and you need these to make attacking big targets viable.

For big fights with lots of hordes of monsters things get simple as you can roll multiple device for attacks without issues. So if 3 basic orcs attack, you can roll 3d8 and resolve all their attacks at once easily.

It's a good system. The overall feel is pulp/high adventure.

Thanks, Balance; for $10 it's definitely worth a look.