Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Judge Dredd]

Thinking about BESM, Tiny d6, and Gorge World. I got to wondering if there's any games out there of a similar level of complexity?

Tiny is a favourite. It has some serious problems. The rolls are too swingy, the lack of tactical depth, and the lack of a proper stat blocks. But my main reason for sticking with it is it does genres I like well enough, including mech games and space ships without needing to break out calculators and spreadsheets. If I ever feel the need for a one shot in any mech or sci-fi setting, it's great good enough.

BESM I have some books, but never read them enough to run it. Supposedly it was trivial to break. It's apparently still going.

I'm after something with more crunch that the usual "rules lite" stuff without becoming autism simulators.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

It has been fully funded. I can't wait! I! CAN'T! FUCKING! WAIT!

I took a look at this and...ehhh...
This ain't cyberpunk. I'll gatekeep the fuck on that one. This is more like Neon-core sci fi. Not my thing, but if that's what someone is going for, okay, but there is nothing punk about this whole thing.
Punk implies extremes. Extreme violence, extreme decadance, extreme situations. Thus, cyberpunk should mean a setting where life is cheap, technology rules all from the gutter to the boardroom, and the players are people who engage in extremely dangerous and eye popping situations for money and dopamine thrills in equal measure.

What I saw in that kickstarter ain't punk.
THIS is cyberpunk

That was not.

 

[Adamska]

Punk implies extremes. Extreme violence, extreme decadance, extreme situations

Oh I assure you this has extremes. Hardwired Island was extremely insipid, and had an extreme amount of cat cafes and bookstores. It also was anti-establishment in all the ways that a complete libshit Australian whose brain was raped because Trump was in office could be.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

Oh I assure you this has extremes. Hardwired Island was extremely insipid, and had an extreme amount of cat cafes and bookstores. It also was anti-establishment in all the ways that a complete libshit Australian whose brain was raped because Trump was in office could be.

Yeaaaa, that still ain't punk, and it sure as hell ain't cyberpunk. There's nothing angry about this. Not the kind of angry that makes you want to storm into a corporate office with horrific firepower and go down in a fiery storm of bullets and spite while taking some suits with you when you finally pull the pin on that belt of grenades you had on your chest.

 

[Adamska]

Yeaaaa, that still ain't punk, and it sure as hell ain't cyberpunk. There's nothing angry about this. Not the kind of angry that makes you want to storm into a corporate office with horrific firepower and go down in a fiery storm of bullets and spite while taking some suits with you when you finally pull the pin on that belt of grenades you had on your chest.

Of course not. It's the type of angry where you go complain to The Starbucks manager because they managed to get your frappuccino incorrect. It's all The fury of an incompetent who feels his ignorant stance on politics in a country that he's not even a member of would have. It's the rage of The small-minded impotent and petty middle-aged man.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

Of course not. It's the type of angry where you go complain to The Starbucks manager because they managed to get your frappuccino incorrect. It's all The fury of an incompetent who feels his
ignorant stance on politics in a country that he's not even a member of would have. It's the rage of The small-minded impotent and petty middle-aged man.

Yea, I'll pass. I want violence. I want torrid affairs with a trail of broken hearts and STD meds in my wake. I want that part of my brain taken out and replaced with another goddamned gun and maybe something that also tunes into my favorite thrash metal station even if it means risking developing schizophrenia. I want to spend that money I made fragging some corporate suit on ammmunition and getting blackout drunk to the point I might wake up in some dumpster that next morning married to an inflatable alligator and on the sex offender registry somehow.

I don't think this game is built for that.

 

[The Ugly One]

Of course not. It's the type of angry where you go complain to The Starbucks manager because they managed to get your frappuccino incorrect. It's all The fury of an incompetent who feels his ignorant stance on politics in a country that he's not even a member of would have. It's the rage of The small-minded impotent and petty middle-aged man.

In 2026, being anti-establishment means being angry that the establishment isn't doing enough to run your life.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

A cyberpunk cat cafe is easy. The cats are cute and cuddly and the cafe does really well. What the patrons don't know, though, is that the cats have received certain... augmentations. With a simple command, the keratin claws retract and are replaced with razors while their dander output increases a thousandfold. The owner possesses The Dot of Guidance, a special laser pointer built into his cybernetic eye which designates the cats' target. After that, the target will be pursued by the cyborg cat swarm until he is taken down, at which point the cats will climb all over him and knead him to shreds. Your employer is fond of cats and will pay you ten thousand credits to retrieve the Eye from its owner and herd the cats into a waiting pet carrier.

 

[CrunkLord420]

Thinking about BESM, Tiny d6, and Gorge World. I got to wondering if there's any games out there of a similar level of complexity?

Tiny is a favourite. It has some serious problems. The rolls are too swingy, the lack of tactical depth, and the lack of a proper stat blocks. But my main reason for sticking with it is it does genres I like well enough, including mech games and space ships without needing to break out calculators and spreadsheets. If I ever feel the need for a one shot in any mech or sci-fi setting, it's great good enough.

BESM I have some books, but never read them enough to run it. Supposedly it was trivial to break. It's apparently still going.

I'm after something with more crunch that the usual "rules lite" stuff without becoming autism simulators.

Been going through Mongoose Traveller 2E and I think it has a good core dice system. 2d6+mod vs. difficulty. Stats are fine. Skills can be customized. I like how to uses stats as HP. The only thing I dislike is armor as AC instead of damage reduction.

There's a psionic system that be used for magic. The spacecraft system is where Traveller becomes special. It's all optional. The Traveller Companion has additional rules if you want to add Sanity, Luck, Morale and other stats.

I agree that swinginess can feel bad, wiffy, it's one of the biggest common (valid) critiques of *BORG. Rolling on a bell curve feels right, and 2-12 is a nice number range when you consider how significant a +1 buff should be. GURPS goes further with 3d6 (but roll under your stats is lame) and FATE uses 4dF for an extreme curve. Cyberpunk 1d10 is ridiculous with it's 20% chance to crit/fumble. 1d20 is swingy. Xd6 advantage/disadvantage (like TinyD6, FU) has the issue with logarithmic probabilities where the first advantage/disadvantage is MASSIVE, and then halved each time.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

A cyberpunk cat cafe is easy. The cats are cute and cuddly and the cafe does really well. What the patrons don't know, though, is that the cats have received certain... augmentations. With a simple command, the keratin claws retract and are replaced with razors while their dander output increases a thousandfold. The owner possesses The Dot of Guidance, a special laser pointer built into his cybernetic eye which designates the cats' target. After that, the target will be pursued by the cyborg cat swarm until he is taken down, at which point the cats will climb all over him and knead him to shreds. Your employer is fond of cats and will pay you ten thousand credits to retrieve the Eye from its owner and herd the cats into a waiting pet carrier.

I would have just designated them to be faulty cloned felines that occasionally glitch out and start hunting down humans in packs, and brother, they get GOOD at killing as a swarm, but damn, that's a good one.

 

[Halbschwanz]

Are they any good?

I read the first one. It was a slightly below par but serviceable fantasy noir story. It tries to not shove the D&Disms in your face to help it stand apart from something like Dragonlance or Drizzt, but it ends up feeling a lot more generic for it. I can't attest to whether the world building or character interaction gets better after the first one, but the eBook versions aren't too hard to find if you want to chance it.

It also was anti-establishment in all the ways that a complete libshit Australian whose brain was raped because Trump was in office could be.

Managing to be more gay and toothless than Sigmata's got to be an accomplishment. Not a praiseworthy one mind, but still.

 

[Adamska]

Managing to be more gay and toothless than Sigmata's got to be an accomplishment. Not a praiseworthy one mind, but still.

Sigmata at least had you become via sailor Moon transformation a gay robot. It also put a iota of more thought into its world setting. Last but not least, it still has one of the most hardcore Powers ever, which is the radioactive mutation beam that turns the target into a pile of screaming slop and bones.

It also is a lot more playable once you get the proper rule set by getting Bombs and Balaclavas. Also on some level understood punk better. It was a crap form of punk but it understood a basic principle or two.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

For all its failures, the worst part of Hard Wired Island is that it was written by an ex-Something Awful moderator.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

For all its failures, the worst part of Hard Wired Island is that it was written by an ex-Something Awful moderator.

That makes so much sense. The "baby's trying to be edgy" vibe is pure goon.

 

[Adamska]

For all its failures, the worst part of Hard Wired Island is that it was written by an ex-Something Awful moderator.

No wonder it was so feckless and insufferable of a book that it broke my co-host, who can usually at least play devil's advocate for things others would tap out on.

 

[LovisXVI]

Here's the banner for sponsoring the thread if anyone wants to use it in the future.

Textless original

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Oh I assure you this has extremes. Hardwired Island was extremely insipid, and had an extreme amount of cat cafes and bookstores. It also was anti-establishment in all the ways that a complete libshit Australian whose brain was raped because Trump was in office could be.

Watching those Dice Scum streams on this...insult to the Cyberpunk genre only to find out that shit got crowdfunded is yet another reason why I hate most communities.

Here's the banner for sponsoring the thread if anyone wants to use it in the future.
View attachment 8902662
Textless original
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Someone better use this, I will be very sad otherwise. @Adamska you should use this sometime in a stream.

 

[LovisXVI]

Someone better use this, I will be very sad otherwise. @Adamska you should use this sometime in a stream.

I used it to sponsor this thread for 7 days, so it won't appear too often, but it isn't a time-sensitive thread so nbd.

 

[Foundinglaunderer]

I'm noticing more and more that with critical role and other vile garbage the npc goyim cattle are drawn too E5 of dnd like moths too a flame , in general Yahtzee (tho I hate his fucking guys said it best) Multiplayer is second to singleplayer. my brother , all he does is sit like a zombie on his phone or in his room and play dnd. he does go too short story groups and play cards at a local card game shop but he's very theater kid centric. that is something I've noticed about the goyim , I remember I used to go too this program for people with behavioral issues (and ig they lumped literal niggers and wiggers with people who had aspegers because Texas can't afford state programs instead of just sucking Israels dick like the rest of the establishment) but some wigger nearly chimped out and stabbed me because my computer was locked out and it had something I needed on his.

You know I used to hate people who where non tech savvy , now I might aswell be some sped in the Khmer Rouge ranks because fuck me do I hate how arrogant the average normie attempts to sound about tech and how aggressive they get if you even once tell them their wrong about tech or the ideal solution. it's like with ICE and how people complain about these karens getting their heads blown open like confetti their asking for it but the problem is we can't really solve anything on a personal level with self defense or anything really. it's mindless consumerism where a bunch of theater kids lose their shit when the next skinner pack doesn't come out correctly for magic , it's millennials version of the lottery. dnd and MP are just a side theme

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

I'm noticing more and more that with critical role and other vile garbage the npc goyim cattle are drawn too E5 of dnd like moths too a flame , in general Yahtzee (tho I hate his fucking guys said it best) Multiplayer is second to singleplayer. my brother , all he does is sit like a zombie on his phone or in his room and play dnd. he does go too short story groups and play cards at a local card game shop but he's very theater kid centric. that is something I've noticed about the goyim , I remember I used to go too this program for people with behavioral issues (and ig they lumped literal niggers and wiggers with people who had aspegers because Texas can't afford state programs instead of just sucking Israels dick like the rest of the establishment) but some wigger nearly chimped out and stabbed me because my computer was locked out and it had something I needed on his.

You know I used to hate people who where non tech savvy , now I might aswell be some sped in the Khmer Rouge ranks because fuck me do I hate how arrogant the average normie attempts to sound about tech and how aggressive they get if you even once tell them their wrong about tech or the ideal solution. it's like with ICE and how people complain about these karens getting their heads blown open like confetti their asking for it but the problem is we can't really solve anything on a personal level with self defense or anything really. it's mindless consumerism where a bunch of theater kids lose their shit when the next skinner pack doesn't come out correctly for magic , it's millennials version of the lottery. dnd and MP are just a side theme

Are you here railing against tabletop gaming or just the current state of it?