What is your TTRPG Comfort Food?

[Reynard]

When you want an RPG experience to help alleviate stress or feel better or just get through a rainy day, what do you reach for? Does an old school dungeon crawl harm your heart? Do you want to be an evil smashing superhero? Do you want to explore the unknown in the depths of space? Do you not car about that, but want to play your favorite game in particular? Do you want to run a game?

When I want a game specifically for the purpose of feeling good, I want to play or run something high octane and gonzo -- super heroes, over the top space opera, WoW Cinematic level fantasy. I want to either crush hordes and bosses, or throw hordes and bosses at PCs that can crush them. I want to feel awesome either way. There's probably going to be power armor and beam weapons, no matter what the actual genre is.

Note: this is different than my general preferences in play otherwise. I like more grounded stuff most of the time (not mundane or realistic, but less over the top).

What about you?

ETA: Also, it is probably going to be Savage Worlds because I can throw that together intantly, regardless of the trappings/genre I pick.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

For me it's usually going be a supers game, preferably with a somewhat gonzo Silver Age tone that leans into comic tropes without deconstructing them. The system doesn't matter much, but something that doesn't require much thought/optimization during character gen is best, eg Villains & Vigilantes or Sentinel Comics or Masks.

For me that's the TTRPG gaming equivalent to zoning out watching old cartoons or re-reading a trashy pulp novel. I like more serious/grounded/thoughtful supers games too, but they aren't comfort food the way the goofier stuff is.

 

[payn]

I need to start with my mind space around RPG "comfort food" To me this implies a common treat that is usually unsophisticated, easily accessible, and takes little work. The first thing that comes to mind for me is unloading the cognitive load. Which means doing something like HeroQuest the board game. With a little more thought I reach for Fiasco. Digging just a bit deeper a Call of Cthulhu one shot. The one shot in general is underrated in my opinion.

 

[Reynard]

I need to start with my mind space around RPG "comfort food" To me this implies a common treat that is usually unsophisticated, easily accessible, and takes little work. The first thing that comes to mind for me is unloading the cognitive load. Which means doing something like HeroQuest the board game. With a little more thought I reach for Fiasco. Digging just a bit deeper a Call of Cthulhu one shot. The one shot in general is underrated in my opinion.

Definitely, especially as an impromptu thing. There are days where I want nothing more than to be able to grab 3 friends to spend a few hours drinking beers and trying to assassinate Jabba or some other nonsense. I find it difficult to do that without scheduling, though.

 

[payn]

Definitely, especially as an impromptu thing. There are days where I want nothing more than to be able to grab 3 friends to spend a few hours drinking beers and trying to assassinate Jabba or some other nonsense. I find it difficult to do that without scheduling, though.

Thats one thing Ive come to appreciate about being a Battletech player. I can fill a table with a bunch of players, or just one other person and do it impromptu with little set up. Even the current campaign im running can handle this style of out of nowhere initiation. Most my RPGs, traditionally, take more players and set up and thus are bad for impromptu play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I got into RPGs mostly by reading the books, so comfort food for me is going over my old favorites: AD&D 2e campaign settings, classic Dragon Magazine, Cyberpunk 2020, pre-FFG Legend of the Five Rings, and so on.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The one shot in general is underrated in my opinion.

Very much agreed. Not everything needs to be a grand campaign to be enjoyable.

The fact that one-shots fit well into superhero comic tropes may bias my opinion a bit, of course.