Other Modes of RPG Play?

[darjr]

Oh and LARPS and “forum” games.

By forum games I mean the play where folks just seem to tell a shared story in some kind of forum. No rules really, except social ones. I stumbled upon it when my Son mentioned it.

 

[Malmuria]

• Ironsworn with its one-on-one or solo play.
• Thousand Year Old Vampire with its journalistic play.
• Powered by the Apocalypse games with their focus on story-driving mechanics.
• Super-light games like Lasers and Feelings and Honey Heist.
• Kid-focused games like No Thank You Evil.
• The mystery / horror aspects of Call of Cthulhu.
• Completely collaborative games like Fiasco.
• Old-school focused games like Shadowdark and OSE.

Perhaps here you've answered your question. Not only are the games you mention here different modes of play, but they each have their own full ecosystem of games with their own variations. Just think of how many people have made games with "story-driving mechanics" as opposed to the dnd-style mode of play. Or how many different old school games, not just retroclones but new games as well, that attempt to address the dungeon crawling style of play. So "dnd" does have many different modes of play, if only one looks to the wider ttrpg hobby.

Anyway, in terms of a lunch hour game, that might actually be the perfect set up for a megadungeon campaign. You might get through 4-6 rooms at a go.

 

[TwoSix]

There are a decent amount of collobarative storytelling games, that often use some kind of prop to provide prompts, such as the cards in "For the Queen". A solid bit of roleplaying in under an hour.

I think the trick here is how to do a "progression game" (where each player has a character/avatar they use repeatedly, and that character will change and grow over time) on a shorter, frequently played scale. Character progression is really the killer app for RPGs that keeps people coming back.

 

[John Dallman]

Toon is hard to play for more than an hour: the necessary maniac pace gets tiring.

A set of modes that I've tinkered with go like this:

• The classic mode is one GM and several players, with the GM running many NPCs and the players each running one PC.
• One reasonably common variation has some or all of the players running more than one PC.
• Others are a single player, with a single PC, or a single player with multiple PCs.
• Additional GMs can be applied to any of these, though it's usually necessary for the extra GMs to be working to a principal GM's outline plan. Where that isn't the case, you have multiple independent games in the same setting, and matters can get confused.

A more radical variation that I tried out was a single GM, and three players, who shared control of a single PC. I accepted actions from any player who announced them clearly. There was a fair bit of thrashing around at first, of course, but the players settled into something that resembled the Freudian concepts of id, ego and superego.

I ran this under Amber Diceless Roleplaying, since I wanted the sole PC to be fairly robust. It worked, although it took more effort than a more normal setup.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Toon is hard to play for more than an hour: the necessary maniac pace gets tiring.

Oh, and Paranoia here too.

 

[User51]

I would love to see a card-based combat system for 5e. It would be interesting to switch between narrative, die-driven exploration and interaction and then switch to cards for a combat scene.

 

[timbannock]

Dunno if I'm splitting hairs, but games like Cortex and Sentinels (and maybe Fate?) are narrative-ish like PbtA but also scene-focused in a different way that emulates comics or TV sitcoms in terms of pacing and "how much information is encapsulated in a single dice roll." I don't really know how to explain that in terms of a different mode of play, but it's very session-focused, in a way that's almost one-shot-y (players will likely experience an "arc" for their characters that changes them over the course of a single session) but often assumes at least a bit of advancement over a couple of sessions (completing the arc of not just each individual character but also likely a single "bigger" storyline).

 

[Voadam]

I know little of Magic and less of Warhammer but I know in magic, there are many formats, some of them community-driven like Commander. There's

• Commander
• Standard
• Booster draft
• Sealed Deck

and so on:

All of them are still magic but the way they play and feel, and even which cards you use or how many, can change a lot.

MTG Formats | Magic: The Gathering

Learn about different ways to play Magic: The Gathering, including number of players, legal cards, and how to build your deck.

magic.wizards.com

That seems analogous to in D&D using core books only, corebook and Tashas and Xanathar's, Any WotC, or select OGL sources allowed. All still D&D but what resources you use and the play and feel can change a lot.

 

[SlyFlourish]

That seems analogous to in D&D using core books only, corebook and Tashas and Xanathar's, Any WotC, or select OGL sources allowed. All still D&D but what resources you use and the play and feel can change a lot.

Yeah, I think limiting and selecting specific sourcebooks is a great way to get one game to feel different than another. I did this with my various Midgard games.

 

[Aldarc]

I know little of Magic and less of Warhammer but I know in magic, there are many formats, some of them community-driven like Commander. There's

• Commander
• Standard
• Booster draft
• Sealed Deck

and so on:

All of them are still magic but the way they play and feel, and even which cards you use or how many, can change a lot.

MTG Formats | Magic: The Gathering

Learn about different ways to play Magic: The Gathering, including number of players, legal cards, and how to build your deck.

magic.wizards.com

There are a few potential modes that I could see working with TTRPGs:

• Solo Mode: you play the solo with oracles, tables, and the like. Could include the below modes.
• Trials: Trials are found in ICRPG. They are maybe just a battle scenario or mini-dungeon that you play in an hour.
• Tournament: Dragonbane has a free scenario called The Sinking Tower that is played across 1-2 hours in real time. There are points for how much loot is hauled and what you accomplished in that time, often using pre-gens. That's essentially tournament style play.
• AP Campaign: more of a long-form of the game with a linear GM-curated adventure. Not in one hour obviously, but still a mode of play.
• Sandbox (and/or West Marches): the freeform campaign with possible rotating group of players each session