John R Davis
Hero
I like Houses of the Bloodied. Have played/ran excellent Dune and GOT hacks.
Your Favorite Weird Game- Time To Talk About the Weirdest RPGs You Know!
GMMichael
Guide of Modos
This probably appears in more than one game, but I've always thought it's weird when a game gives you three chances to miss your opponent:
1) Fail a roll against your own skill.
2) Fail to beat your opponent's defense.
3) Roll a trivial amount of damage / opponent reduces your damage to zero.
1) Fail a roll against your own skill.
2) Fail to beat your opponent's defense.
3) Roll a trivial amount of damage / opponent reduces your damage to zero.
MuhVerisimilitude
Adventurer
It's doubly frustrating with stuff like crits.
Hoorah you rolled a crit, but you also rolled the lowest result on your dice thereby dealing the like 2 damage instead of 24 damage and wohoo it turns out the monster you attacked as a damage reduction of 5 so you deal no damage. That certainly did not feel like a crit.
aramis erak
Legend
Not so much weird once one considers that it postdates a whole raft of playing-the-monsters games - Monsters Monsters! (1981), VTM (1990?), WTA, CTD, WTO, Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic, and many more that almost no one has heard of.
Not to mention that it's a major thematic element of the Young Supers subgenre, in not just comics, but also movies, TV, and games, and of a number of anime and manga also have such a theme - Ranma 1/2 comes immediately to mind, but it's not the only one. Heck, Disney's Monster High, and the Disney/Riordan Percy Jackson series.
Voadam
Legend
For weird mechanics I like Kamigakari God Hunters which has you roll bunches of dice, and deciding which ones to use or keep or manipulate round to round with new rolls for dice that were used or not kept as they were. Different powers require different die results (two fours, four odd numbers, a straight ascending sequence) with more basic powers requiring easier dice results and stronger powers requiring harder to achieve stuff.
This gives a natural mechanic for having your Voltron Sword not be a nova blast round one every fight, but build up to it with momentum over the course of a fight.
This gives a natural mechanic for having your Voltron Sword not be a nova blast round one every fight, but build up to it with momentum over the course of a fight.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Glad to see Dialect in the OP. You need the right group of players who buy into the concept, but it can be among the most moving experiences you can have in a TTRPG.
So many good games already given, I'll add the following:
Grim. Kinda like Dread in that it is a rules light (one page) horror RPG that uses a card deck as its main mechanic. You can buy Grim cards, but can also play using a regular poker deck.
Alice is Missing. In this game, after explaining the rules and completing the setup, nobody is allowed to speak. The game is played completely by text message with certain events taking place at specific set times. It can be a pretty moving experience (which is what the writer was going for, it seems) but doesn't have to be. While the events unfold differently each time you play, I don't find it that replayable. Worth playing with the right group.
InSPECTREs. You are all part of a Ghostbuster's like group of paranormal troubleshooters. Rules are simple and easy to pick up. The mechanics allow the players to dictate what happens in a game on really good roles, so the game master needs to be comfortable with running a more improve style game. There is also a "confession booth" mechanic, where a player can go to the confession booth (a chair set aside for that purpose) and say something about another character. The player of that character can decide whether what was said is true or just gossip. It is a great beer-and-pretzels, slapstick, improv heavy game.
Oneironaut. This is a narrative solo game that you play while sleeping. "Every night, before going to sleep, you receive a mission from Ahiag̃. You will need to find an Oneiric Domain and dominate a Gnosis, as to gradually remove Yurupari's evil domain. You must try and fulfill this mission in your dreams. An Oneironaut needs to be able to control and conduct their own dreams as to shape them
according to their desire. Upon awakening, you register your dream and assess how much you contributed to the war between Ahiag̃ and Yurupari." Basically, the game uses techniques used to help lucid dreaming, though you don't have to achieve lucid dreaming to play. You bascially, want to accomplish game goals by influencing and remembering your dreams. The only tools you need beside the game book (a 20-page PDF you can print out if you wish) are a pocket notebook and pencil for dream journaling, a digital watch (or cell-phone alarm/clock app) and head phones (optional but helpful).
So many good games already given, I'll add the following:
Grim. Kinda like Dread in that it is a rules light (one page) horror RPG that uses a card deck as its main mechanic. You can buy Grim cards, but can also play using a regular poker deck.
Alice is Missing. In this game, after explaining the rules and completing the setup, nobody is allowed to speak. The game is played completely by text message with certain events taking place at specific set times. It can be a pretty moving experience (which is what the writer was going for, it seems) but doesn't have to be. While the events unfold differently each time you play, I don't find it that replayable. Worth playing with the right group.
InSPECTREs. You are all part of a Ghostbuster's like group of paranormal troubleshooters. Rules are simple and easy to pick up. The mechanics allow the players to dictate what happens in a game on really good roles, so the game master needs to be comfortable with running a more improve style game. There is also a "confession booth" mechanic, where a player can go to the confession booth (a chair set aside for that purpose) and say something about another character. The player of that character can decide whether what was said is true or just gossip. It is a great beer-and-pretzels, slapstick, improv heavy game.
Oneironaut. This is a narrative solo game that you play while sleeping. "Every night, before going to sleep, you receive a mission from Ahiag̃. You will need to find an Oneiric Domain and dominate a Gnosis, as to gradually remove Yurupari's evil domain. You must try and fulfill this mission in your dreams. An Oneironaut needs to be able to control and conduct their own dreams as to shape them
according to their desire. Upon awakening, you register your dream and assess how much you contributed to the war between Ahiag̃ and Yurupari." Basically, the game uses techniques used to help lucid dreaming, though you don't have to achieve lucid dreaming to play. You bascially, want to accomplish game goals by influencing and remembering your dreams. The only tools you need beside the game book (a 20-page PDF you can print out if you wish) are a pocket notebook and pencil for dream journaling, a digital watch (or cell-phone alarm/clock app) and head phones (optional but helpful).
ichabod
Legned
I noticed this one in the game store Tuesday. Do you think it would work on discord (text only), perhaps with a bot to handle the timed events?
Blue Orange
Gone to Texas
I see James Gasik already mentioned Nephilim. Forget dying during character creation in Traveller, your character is assumed to have died several times already... And they did the Western Esotericism thing better than most games I've seen. Correspondences out the wazoo and names that appear to have been pinched from an actual occult society's manual.
Troika and Ultraviolet Grasslands are entertainingly weird, but may be too recent.
I haven't seen Ray Winninger's Underground mentioned. It was definitely supposed to be a criticism of the Vietnam War and American consumerism and violence...but here's what I loved, they had actual rules for social change, complete with tradeoffs--raise education and wealth might go down (though if you spent enough points you could get around them.) I don't remember what happened to Winninger, I think he wound up running (googles)...D&D. Damn.
Troika and Ultraviolet Grasslands are entertainingly weird, but may be too recent.
I haven't seen Ray Winninger's Underground mentioned. It was definitely supposed to be a criticism of the Vietnam War and American consumerism and violence...but here's what I loved, they had actual rules for social change, complete with tradeoffs--raise education and wealth might go down (though if you spent enough points you could get around them.) I don't remember what happened to Winninger, I think he wound up running (googles)...D&D. Damn.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
The first time I played it, the DM ran it on Discord and it worked great. I ran it by buying the Roll20 version, but I still used Discord for the chats. One advantage of running it online is that you can just turn off voice after the instructions and setup. In person can be more intense but only if the group buys into it and can keep themselves from talking.
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