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

[Hatewerfer]

Really telling that every possible response beyond the worst one (which would be to say that 5e is the best one and you shouldn't play old systems), was represented in the responses.

Not quite, this thread needs a hero.

Haven't actually played a fantasy game of GURPS, but it does seem like it'd be fun, I enjoy my historical/modern games because I had D&D overload from my friends exclusively running that.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

Is AD&D 2e worth learning and playing still? Especially compared to D&D 5e and other modern fantasy TTRPGs.

Everything I say keep in mind 2e is the version I have the least experience with. I have played it, but not for very long and not in depth. With that said I echo the response of others here. I would just choose either B/X, a B/X clone. Old School Essentials is a popular one. I was just talking about Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised a few posts up and that would be my person choice. You could also just run Rules Cyclopedia which you can get for free off of the Internet Archive.

I do not hold modern "DnD" very highly. So yes I would say it is worth trying the oldie butt goldies.

ACKS is pretty seated in Roman style fantasy world. If you like Roman stuff then you will love ACKS. If you don't then I am not sure I would choose it.

Here are a few recommendations to get you started;
- Rule Cyclopedia: This is the complete collation of BECMI rules. It is also free online. Even playing S&W I will still sometimes reference my RC to check a rule or a price of something if I can't find it in S&W.
- Old School Essentials: This is a very well formatted and cleaned up B/X. Much of what it says it says more concisely than the RC. It also has a good amount of content available for it and it even has a demon-themed kickstarter coming out next month, I think. OSE is definitely the biggest retroclone on the scene and it puts out a ton of modules and stuff.
- Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised: This is my current preference. It uses a lot of Holmes D&D style rules while being kind of hybridized into AD&D 1e. It is overall extremely simple to pick up and play and I found the formatting and language to my person taste. Also it is pretty cheap.
- ACKS II: B/X with some nice economic changes. I was nice enough to be given a copy to read through but I am not a fan of the world it sets itself in. I think it has useful rules but I would be hard pressed to run it specifically.
- Blueholme Journeymanne. If Holmes D&D had been the primary ruleset and was taken to higher levels. The Prentice version (aka rule lite stripped down version) is available for free on DriveThroughRPG. I like Holmes D&D so I like this, but again, I have S&W and prefer it. I do think that if given a week I could swap some of these rules out for either optional rules in S&W, OSE or even the RC and end up with a single favorite personal version of the game. But I won't do that because I am lazy.
- The Wightbox: Very early Chainmail B/X retroclone. Even Blueholme doesn't strip down this heavily. Pretty autistic attention to detail in faithfulness. There are a couple cool rulings here but unless you like reading that kind of thing probably not worth it for most people. I prefer to have more player options available than this, but I do like reading rules and interpretations.

If you would like recommendations on useful supplementary materials like modules or monster manuals I would be happy to point you to what I found purchased or "obtained" over the years and which ones I actually found useful.

Haven't actually played a fantasy game of GURPS, but it does seem like it'd be fun, I enjoy my historical/modern games because I had D&D overload from my friends exclusively running that.

I have played GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. It's pretty good. The campaign died out due to players not being able to make it, but if you can get a group and you love spreadsheets its really fun.

 

[strawberry15]

Is AD&D 2e worth learning and playing still?

I mainly dm ad&d2e for 8 years now. Of course i have been trying other systems as well (acks and pf1e are the last systems i played) but i am very comfortable with it. Play it safe. class books are very good, but the player option books are salvagable if not unusable. Check and option, rule, kit before you implement it. the setting books are also great to use. my last game run for 3 years from level 1 to lvl 13. Then i got tired of roll 20 and because no other vtt app has a decent ad&d2e import, i stopped dming it. Still it was one of my best games. i am very fond of it.

 

[dehumanizebodyandsoul]

Does anyone here have any experience with the cyberpunk tabletop? Some friends and I were going to be doing a game of cyberpunk 2020 soon, was curious what you all thought about it. It'd be my first experience with anything tabletop outside of a singular D&D oneshot a few years back.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Now that I no longer have a terrible cough which has prevented me from playing any games for months, I have a 12 hour session planned for today. Just doing a one off to get back into the swing of things. Just not sure which game to play. Game choices include Coriolis, Four Against the Darkness, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, and Lex Arcana. There's also a choice of a one off adventure with their Traveller characters as they've been in a safe area not doing anything while I write up a full campaign for them. They've just been doing one offs side quests and solo missions for their backstories.

 

[LovisXVI]

ACKS is pretty seated in Roman style fantasy world. If you like Roman stuff then you will love ACKS. If you don't then I am not sure I would choose it.

The default setting sure, but it's an extremely thin setting and super easy to tear out. I'm right now doing preliminary work to make material to run Warhammer Fantasy in it and I don't don't feel like it's a barrier.
The judge's guide is full of information on how to make your own setting and classes and whatnot, that's even applicable beyond ACKS itself.

Does anyone here have any experience with the cyberpunk tabletop? Some friends and I were going to be doing a game of cyberpunk 2020 soon, was curious what you all thought about it. It'd be my first experience with anything tabletop outside of a singular D&D oneshot a few years back.

Don't play RED and since you seem to not be doing that, I'll recommend Interlock Unlimited.

 

[CrunkLord420]

Does anyone here have any experience with the cyberpunk tabletop? Some friends and I were going to be doing a game of cyberpunk 2020 soon, was curious what you all thought about it. It'd be my first experience with anything tabletop outside of a singular D&D oneshot a few years back.

You need to ban Skin Weave or massively reduce it's SP. It's game breaking. 2020 is just not particularly balanced. Netrunning is an entirely separate game that most people ignore. The idea you can crit yourself or an ally with a headshot on a fumble is always worrying. I've seen some house rules like using 2d6 instead of a 1d10 to make it less swingy, also massively reducing the SP values of armor: https://cyberpunk.clon01.net/htm/armor_revised.htm

Never tried RED. I prefer to the aesthetic and wackiness of CY_BORG. I don't think the rules-liteness of *BORG really affects anything. You have to be some turbo sperglord to engage with crunchy vehicle crafting of Maximum Metal.

 

[Konigsberg]

Absolutely.

I ran a campaign for about 3 years recently. (It just rolled up last year due to illness) AD&D 2E and Ravenloft on top of it. We did some Forgotten Realms too.

I had all the good stuff, so I didn't have the buy-in. It has an interesting thing where the players won't see the DMG or the MM at the store and buy them. They can't say "It's an accident" that they have the MM or the DMG.

But it's completely worth learning and playing.

THAC0 filters out retards, same with the attack matrix of 1E.

Good to hear, unfortunately if THAC0 filters retards then a couple of my guest players may be in trouble lol. We'll get them through it if it comes to it though.

The main thing is you're expected to buy and maintain a keep. The rules for this are complete, and the interlocking systems are there to ensure you do it. These systems aren't terribly complicated to manage.

I like that a lot. I really like management style systems in TTRPGs for keeps, armies, businesses, etc. It gives me the DM something to play off and the players something to really think about between game sessions. It seems not a lot of other people do though since most TTRPGs either don't have them at all or they're so abstract they're useless. I saw there's 2 editions to ACKs, is the 2nd Edition a worthy enough improvement over the 1st to justify looking into, and are they mechanically similar enough it wont throw my math off if I'm converting things?

Really telling that every possible response beyond the worst one (which would be to say that 5e is the best one and you shouldn't play old systems), was represented in the responses.

Not a lot of 5e fans around it seems.

Haven't actually played a fantasy game of GURPS, but it does seem like it'd be fun, I enjoy my historical/modern games because I had D&D overload from my friends exclusively running that.

I feel you man, some people will absolutely run a game into the ground before considering trying something new.

If you would like recommendations on useful supplementary materials like modules or monster manuals I would be happy to point you to what I found purchased or "obtained" over the years and which ones I actually found useful.

Give me a couple recommendations for your favorite modules and I'll take a look at them, thanks!

I mainly dm ad&d2e for 8 years now. Of course i have been trying other systems as well (acks and pf1e are the last systems i played) but i am very comfortable with it. Play it safe. class books are very good, but the player option books are salvagable if not unusable. Check and option, rule, kit before you implement it. the setting books are also great to use.

What should I be wary of the most in the expansion books in your opinion? Anything you'd recommend as a flat out "do not allow" sort of thing.

The default setting sure, but it's an extremely thin setting and super easy to tear out.

To me that's a bonus as well. I've always liked how in D&D you can pretty much take the game to almost any setting because it's not super mechanically tied into a single setting or style. I like that apparently ACKs carries that over.

 

[Hatewerfer]

I feel you man, some people will absolutely run a game into the ground before considering trying something new.

At one point they suggested something new, a sci fi campaign which sounded kinda fun, then they said it'd be run using D&D 5E and I instantly was deflated. Never ended up happening, but people getting stuck in one system and trying to use it for shit that it is not suitable for is frustrating. Ended up playing Dark Heresy instead which was fun, just as long as you used a decent amount of house rules where needed because it's also far from the perfect system.

 

[strawberry15]

What should I be wary of the most in the expansion books in your opinion? Anything you'd recommend as a flat out "do not allow" sort of thing.

Ok
First of all all book of x are good but the kits are unbalanced. Kits are like archetypes in which they modify how you play your character. Some is like ok you have +3 to your attacks and +10 to your jp but can only fight in melee and because you lack self awereness and do not recieve pain you dont know how much dmg you recieve(berserker/battlerager) to everybody hates you so they are not balaned but tailored towards roleplay/ character gimmick. Book of elves is the worst one but i do not think it is unbalanced it is just a jerking elves.

Setting books are good but they do not always contain universally adaptable content. Ravenlofts horror and madness checks for example are not suited for any game.

Player option books has interesting opinions. Some of them (spear walls etc) are ok some of them (design you own fighter class) are problematic and some of them( have 12 attributes instead of six) is the only reason i think death penalty can be justifiable.

I will try to inspect all the rules from my perspective amd try to write how they effected my game, but currently i am in a hospital. And i dislike typing on phone.

 

[AnOminous]

I'm trying to get opinions from people who have actually played AD&D 2e, and if they think the game is fun enough and holds up well still. Or if I should just shove it and go run 5e or something if I want that classic generic fantasy D&D kind of game again.

I think it holds up fine especially if you want to do old school dungeon crawling. You may have difficulty finding takers, though. But the kind of takers, although grognards, will probably be of fairly high quality.

I love D6 games, but I'm also a PSYCHO, and my fav is still d100.

Me too. But sometimes you want a bell curve, and that's where the "handful of dice" approach comes in.

 

[The Ugly One]

I saw there's 2 editions to ACKs, is the 2nd Edition a worthy enough improvement over the 1st to justify looking into, and are they mechanically similar enough it wont throw my math off if I'm converting things?

ACKS II mainly does the following:

1. Clarifies or expands rules for people too autistic to just make a fucking decision
2. Fixes the trade mechanics, which were incomplete
3. Consolidates the best material from the ACKS I expansions
4. Removes all OGL terminology (like renaming Cleric to Crusader) because WotC had tried to retroactively change it

Not a lot of 5e fans around it seems.

I like 5e. But it's very focused on combat, murder-hoboing from levels 1 through 20. That's what a lot of people want to do, though.

 

[strawberry15]

I like 5e. But it's very focused on combat, murder-hoboing from levels 1 through 20. That's what a lot of people want to do, though.

And people were very upset about lack of out of combat things to do in 4e (yeah ecenomy etc also sucks but that another thing)
I was hopeful of 5e never had a problem with the core but when Tasha came out it shattered my hope.
1- they unnecessarily stepped into changing races in stupid ways. You could do many things for orc wizards like items, feats, subclasses etc. disregarding stat bonuses to allow every race to succeed at everything was implemented badly.
2- they added too many magical subclasses. Barbarian casts spells, fighter subclasses casts spells, everyone casts spells or have magical effect that is not a good thing to do in my opinion. I am ok to have occasional eldritch knight etc because of course magic exists and therefore it should also effect various classes but when 7 out of 10 subclasses for a martial class only has magical gimmicky subclasses and that is all the content you had it is just laziness.
3- people who wrote Tashas sis not know anything about their game. They stupidly told players to take martial weapon proficiency with fighter classes. What am idiotic thing to have.
4- gayness followed laziness. Artwork amd content in Oath of glory was so gay that my gay friend became straight out of cringe. Other arts in that book is also very shitty. The barbarian one was hilarious.

 

[Sheep King]

Haven't actually played a fantasy game of GURPS, but it does seem like it'd be fun, I enjoy my historical/modern games because I had D&D overload from my friends exclusively running that.

I'm currently at a table where a friend started us off with some basic D&D 5th Ed to sucker in new people at our local and has now successfully turned the game into GURPS DFRPG. The spellcasters are still getting adjusted but it went surprisingly well.
I think our second combat (against a giant skeleton in plate armour kidnapping an underground spirit hidden in a geode) was what won the other players over. The druid and thief both tried to use melee attacks only to learn plate armour actually means something now, but instead of being useless, the thief swung up and grappled the skelly's neck for a couple turns while I (Holy Warrior) fractured its sword arm with a maul, and Druid summoned a bear to keep it busy. Spells still need a bit of adjusting; GM has now adjusted the bear summoning so total obedience is now a rare success and general obedience or apathy are more common.

We experimented with GURPS' Ritual Magic module which essentially allows custom spell crafting, but ended up dropping it because it was too much hassle. Would be curious to hear if anyone else has had success with making it work in a fantasy setting.

 

[The Bogwater Flows On]

I like 5e. But it's very focused on combat, murder-hoboing from levels 1 through 20. That's what a lot of people want to do, though.

I'm running a 5e game because a friend pointed out 5etools exists. So I said "Oh that's neat" and found I had bought a bunch of 2014 stuff years ago.

The more I play it, the more I want to do another Warhammer Fantasy RPG, just change the setting up a bit and make magic a bit more prevalent. I do plan on giving ACKS a look at some point. Even if I don't run it directly, I'm sure there's some fun stuff there I can rip for other games.

 

[AnOminous]

We experimented with GURPS' Ritual Magic module which essentially allows custom spell crafting, but ended up dropping it because it was too much hassle.

This is pretty much all of GURPS and why you can never get anyone to play it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Going back to an earlier topic about common mechanics that you can't make fun.

Spell components.
Learning spells from some hard to find NPC.

Not a lot of 5e fans around it seems.

5e has some major problems, but when compared to DnD 3 and 4, 5 is a massive upgrade.

The real issue is how it's treated. The casuals who refuse to learn another game (because 5e is complex) and try to force it to work with everything. The grognards who shoot down any positive discussion because they blow minor issues out of proportion in the name of nostalgia. The killer DMs and contrarians who sneer at the idea of heroic fantasy.

For me, 5e's biggest crime is it's slow. It's biggest benefit is that it does heroic fantasy really well. But if I'm going for heroic fantasy now, there are other games I'd pick.

 

[Halbschwanz]

Not a lot of 5e fans around it seems.

It's not terrible, but it feels like a focus group game. File down as many past edition issues as possible and improve low level survivability to keep people playing. Problem is it doesn't have a real strong grab beyond "draw in the people that like the marketing." It's slightly too crunchy for new players or snappy gameplay and too restrictive and safe to do much interesting for people who get properly familiar with it.

This is pretty much all of GURPS and why you can never get anyone to play it.

I've got a family friend who has a decent number of pre-2000 GURPS books, but he's basically avoided all mention of them in the nearly 20 odd years I've known him. The only other person I met that ever had a rulebook for it ran 15 person 5e games where he'd insert SCPs and other creepypasta characters blatantly into his games and floated the idea of running a Fallout game using goddamn FATE of all things, so who knows what he'd have done with the holy autism simulator of the tabletop world.

 

[Ghostse]

Spell components.
Learning spells from some hard to find NPC.

Wrong. Very wrong.

Spell components are a great way to limit a powerful spell. You can give the players a very powerful "Summon Ghostly Guardian" spell, but one of the material components is "The still-beating heart of an Orc". Watch combat tactics shift DRASTICALLY.
And allignments too. "What do you MEAN keeping a dozen orc slaves chained for sacrifice makes me evil now?! Was it because I had them blinded? "

Learning a spell from a hidden master is great adventure by itself, and is a great downtime activity. this one is really fun in "Bloodline" games as spell book get passed from generation to generation.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

If a warrior can go on a quest to obtain a powerful magical blade, a wizard can go on a quest to obtain a long lost spell.