Feng Shui, Paranoia and other such games

[Olaf the Stout]

I know that the vast majority of posters here on the ENWorld boards play D&D but what other games do people play. I have previously only played AD&D and 3E up along with a little bit of Cyberpunk until a couple of years ago. However my last gaming group (currently disbanded due to 2 people heading overseas) introduced me to a few different systems. We played Ars Magica, a slightly homebrewed version of Harn as well as a few wacky roleplaying games which were largely of the DM's own design.

Recently a couple of very different games have caught my eye. With the release of Paranoia XP I have an interest in running a few games of it, either as one-shots or a small campaign. I had heard about Paranoia before but usually only in relation to the fact that more PC's die in Paranoia games than any other RPG.

The other game that has suddenly interested me is Feng Shui. I think the title of the RPG, before I knew anything about it, put me off for a while. It just made me think of a game where you move around the furniture in your house! Having read more about it though it seems like a very cool game to play. In some ways it is a bit of an anti-thesis to D&D. While D&D has lots and lots of rules, Feng Shui seems to be rules-lite and more about making a cool story than trying to be realistic. It encourages players to try the impossible. Rules that slow down and detract from the game are discouraged. And there are mooks that are there for the sole purpose to get their butts kicked! Once I found out that Robin Laws was the creator of the RPG (at least as far as I know) I was sold. I have tremendous respect for Robin having read his many "The Play's The Thing" columns in Dragon as well as his "Guide to Good Game-Mastering".

What about everyone else? Are there any other systems that you have "discovered"? I'm sure that there are a whole host of little RPG's out there that are a blast to play but haven't been able to get themselves the mainstream profile for one reason or another. Thoughts?

Olaf the Stout

 

[Piratecat]

Paranoia and Feng Shui are two of my favorites. I also love Green Ronin's Spaceship Zero with a passion. It's 1950's space opera -- and you can't go wrong with hyperintelligent monkeys.

 

[GlassJaw]

I know that the vast majority of posters here on the ENWorld boards play D&D but what other games do people play

Shadowrun. I dabbled in it a long time ago but finally had the chance to get a group together in the past couple of months. The GM is great and I'm having a blast. SR is an amazing game. d20 isn't the end all, be all system. There are alternatives!!

 

[Henrix]

Well, for simplicity's sake I'll limit myself to what I am GMing or will GM, apart from D&D.

As an occasional break from my D&D campaign we play Unknown Armies, a weird modern-day fantasy horroresque game in the spirit of Tim Powers. It's a blast! We have a small campaign going, but often play one off scenarios with premade characters from the One Shots! book. (Which is great, you can kill the PCs while contributing to the story! ) Interesting character development with the madness meters.

I would like to narrate a bit of HeroQuest, a fantastic game set in the world of Glorantha (the old RuneQuest world, an old favourite of mine). The game mechanics are rather special, and allows you to do stuff in ways just not possible in most other games.

Sorcerer is another game I'd like to try my hand at. Once again remarkable game mechanics. And usable for, and available in, a lot of settings, not least Ron Edwards take on the sword and sorcery genre (presented, not surprisingly, in Sorcerer & Sword).

 

[PJ-Mason]

Wow. It would be easier to list the games i haven't played!
These are the ones i own, i have played a lot of others.

The ones i liked the best:
-DC heroes
-Warhammer frpg (go Green Ronin!!)
-palladium fantasy
-Cyberpunk 2013/2020
-Mutants & Masterminds
-Feng Shui

The others that were/are okay:
-D20
-Hero System (champions/fantasy etc)
-Gurps
-Rolemaster (the cyberpunk version of this system, Cyberspace, was very cool)
-Heroes Unlimited (the first game i ever played that i love, but it does have its problems!)
-Villains & Vigilantes
-Marvel (classic)
-shadowrun
-White Wolf/Storyteller (trinity - tres cool, aberrant, Mage, Exalted, crampvire, munchkin-wolf)
-Rifts (cool or crappy. Heavily depnds on the GM and the forebearance of the players!)


I have a lot of other games that never got played for a variety of reasons:
Cosmic Enforcers, SLA Industries, Manhunter, Manhunter/Rifts, Heroes & Heroines, Providence, Battlelords, Blood Dawn: The prophecy, Lord of the Rings.

I am sure if i scoured through my game boxes, i could find more but this is what i remembered off hand.

 

[MonsterMash]

Other RPG I've played in the past (not that recently though )
Paranoia
Runequest2e
Call of Cthulhu (BRP)

About to play
Conan RPG though it is D20 so not too big a step from D&D.

Non RPG - probably a lot more regularly played.
Judge Dredd the old Games Workshop boardgame - brilliant fun
Munchkin
Chez Geek

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Our group moves from system to system fairly regularly. In the past two years, we've done:

• Vampire: unfortunately, we did this before the new WoD ruleset came out.
• Feng Shui: one of my all-time favorites! And this last time I didn't have to be the GM!
• the Marvel Universe RPG: the new one with the stones, this is a very cool little game. We played a Keeper-centered Thief: The Dark Project game, and a more conventional Suicide Squad-esque supers game, and I hope we get to go back to those at some point.
• Farscape D20: a very fun game that went on for quite some time.
• GURPS: we just went back to an old favorite, a Trinity game using the GURPS ruleset (with a modified version of the card system from WEG's old Masterbook system, no less!). It's amazing how well this works.
• Deadlands: just experimenting with it, but any system that uses poker chips, playing cards, and every possible die type just begs to be experimented with. Plus, it's a western! With zombies!
• 7th Sea: Swashbuckling is cool. You have to tweak the system a little to make it possible in a short-arc game, but once you've done that, you're golden.
• Star Wars D20: an Old Republic game before "Knights of the Old Republic" made non-Rebel-era Star Wars actually seem cool again.
• D20 Modern: a whole array of one-shots; the highlights were a Waterdeep Police Department Undead Containment Unit set in a roughly 21st-century equivalent version of the FR, and a straight-up zombie movie romp in an old army base.
• Lots of little RPGNow systems: for oneshots and experimentation, of which the most fun was probably the Two-Fisted Tales game set in the Crimson Skies universe.

And in the future, we're probably going to do a Cowboy Bebop game using the Spycraft rules, and maybe an All Flesh Must Be Eaten! game. There's also some talk of trying out the new WoD ruleset (Arcanum investigators, with a healthy smattering of Poltergeist: The Legacy influence).

Past favorites include Cyberpunk 2020 (including a Cthulhupunk cops game, a repo man game, and a "Clerks"-style game set entirely within a MallPlex), Call of Cthulhu (including a Delta Green variation), Wraith (which I still think is the best WoD game White Wolf ever did), Adventure! (which we used to do a low-powered superhero game set in Gotham City just after "Batman: The Long Halloween"), the old WEG Star Wars system, In Nomine (where for some reason we generated some of the funniest dialogue we've ever had), some Paranoia to keep our usual GM happy, and a little Mage.

....I guess we're a little, um, promiscuous when it comes to game systems.

--
we've actually only played two D&D campaigns in the past 10 years, and only one of them seriously
ryan

 

[Wombat]

My main game is Ars Magica -- I play it whenever I can. Though I started with D&D, AM is the game that keeps drawing me back. I like the sense of community it engenders, the realization of the passage of time, the flexibility of the magic system, the grounding in history. It is a lovely game.

I also have enjoyed RuneQuest, Traveller (3 Little Books version), Champions, Paranoia (don't have XP yet), Over The Edge, and several others. Heck, there have been a lot of games since 1975...

 

[CarlZog]

ALTERNITY.

I've become a unabashedly huge fanboy for this system and its settings. (And in 25 years of dabbbling in everything game-related, I've NEVER been this smitten.) It came out at a time when I wasn't actively gaming, and I've only just recently discovered it and quickly picked up the entire collection.

If you're not familiar, Alternity was introduced in 1998, and was destined to be TSR's flagship science fiction game. But WotC cancelled the product line in 2000 with the release of 3e/d20.

Adaptable to any time period, Alternity boasts two primary published settings, both of which WotC is now cannabalizing for use in d20Future.

Star Drive is a far-future space opera set in the year 2501. Unlike many gimmicky sci-fi settings, SD is a profoundly detailed, diverse and believable vision of man's future in space. The amount of action, intrigue, exploration and conflict happening within this universe is overwhelming. I can't imagine every running out of ideas here, even without its dozen different sourcebooks.

Dark Matter is a wide open paranormal investigation setting with tastes of X-Files/Men in Black, etc. It too has been raided extensively for d20Modern/Future.

The core mechanics for Alternity are simple, elegant, and provide a beautiful balance between cinema and realism. Some of the features of Alternity were adopted for 3e, and others have crept into d20 since 2000, but the core is still profoundly different.

Its combat and damage systems are FAR better suited to battles with modern and futuristic weapons than the armor class and hit point systems of d20. The skill check and inititive systems are derived directly from the core attributes and allow for variable degrees of success -- generally making everything much more exciting.

The core dice mechanic confused some people when the game was released, but I've found it much simpler than the flood of modifiers that now accompany 3/3.5e, d20.

Character creation is very loosely classed, mostly allowing you to develop whatever package of skills best suits your goals.

As an out-of-print series, Alternity is available pretty cheap on ebay these days. There's a wealth of addtional support material on two active websites: www.alternity.net and www.tequilastarrise.net

I strongly encourage anyone playing with d20Modern/Furture to give Alternity a closer look. I hope to be running a number of Alternity games at GenCon next year.

Carl

 

[Wystan]

Starship Zero

I was lucky and stumbled on Starship Zero in a Used Barnes and Noble Back Section for $1.00.

I like it alot, but was surprised to find out the big secret....

Spoiler

The Shows that it was "Based" on do not even exist...

hehe