The Best RPGs You've Never Heard Of

[Lira]

In the interests of making this more interactive, I'd like to try something.

Tell us a game idea you've always wanted to run, whether it's a one-sentence idea fragment or a full-blown adventure / campaign concept, or a show or book or game you want to adapt to pen-and-paper. We'll pitch game systems for it and explain why we think they're a good fit.

Any takers?

[Nights Bane]

*The portal dive*

My idea for a campaign is genius.  The idea is a wizards shop which sells your goods.  The wizard has some kind of ability or his shop is located somewhere special or whatever, whereby portals can be opened to any plane.  any time.  any place.

The wizard, being smart and wizardly, doesn't jump in some portal willy nilly himself.- But hires groups of adventurers to do so.

That's where the party comes in.  The wizard opens a portal to say "Mechanus" and explains what reagent he needs.  Fun then ensues, and a time limit on when the portal closes begins the moment they enter.  Only those who entered through the portal, can return back through it, though anything they bring with them can also travel through the portal in a special "magic bag".  

The magic bag forces the player to limit what they can bring back to a few select items, or the wizards reagents.  

I could help out with some of the scripting if you decide to use NWN as a platform, or maybe you would prefer to use GoogleD20, ask Jaydemoon about it (requires a webcam and mic)

[Ryan]

I've had the idea in my head for a long time to take players through an alien abduction scenario - framing it similarly to Changeling: The Lost (except perhaps less rapey) in terms of atmosphere and tone. Hasn't progressed much beyond vague impressions, but I figure it'd be neat for a fairly brisk, narrative heavy session of roleplay.

I've entertained the thought of using this as the prelude to a full-blown conspiracy driven campaign, but it might be better to keep things short and sweet.

[Lira]

My idea for a campaign is genius.

Hah, I have way too much on my plate to jump in to a design project. What creative energy I have left after my weekend campaigns and EFU are spent on my own games, which I may end up shamelessly promoting here at some point. I'm not volunteering to run something, just to help people find games that are a good fit for "That Thing I've Always Wanted To Run" that every gamer seems to have.
 

 For your idea, there's two core elements I can see. First, it's an episodic structure: a series of self-contained challenges tied loosely to a larger concept. If it were a TV show, it would be less Game of Thrones or The Wire, and more Stargate or Firefly. Second, it's explicitly high fantasy â€" or rather, "D&D Fantasy," which is its own weird thing that doesn't cleanly fit any other genre.  
 

 There's a couple of obvious recommendations here. There's no reason you couldn't do this with your preferred edition of D&D going all the way back to AD&D and Basic. Hell, Planescape was practically designed for this. But â€" and here I'm going to show my true colors â€" nearly anything you can do with D&D outside of a strict dungeon crawl, you can do better with Dungeon World, Burning Wheel or Torchbearer depending on what sort of play experience you're going for. In this case I'd unreservedly recommend Dungeon World for two reasons. First, because it's already got a supplement based around plane-hopping called The Planarch Codex, which introduces a bunch of cool mechanics for an episodic portal-of-the-week kind of game. Second, because burden of prep on the GM to come up with new things beyond the portal every week is much more easily managed in DW than it is in D&D.
 

 Here's an example built on a self-imposed 20-minute time limit. With this plus the guidelines in the DW corebook and The Planarch Codex, you could run a complete session.


============================================
 Outline
  The Patron has acquired a portal-key to the the Seclusium of Sigrid the Many-Faceted, a planar 'observatory' in a dangerous pocket of the Astral Plane riddled with astral conduits. Sigrid's magical astrolabe can predict fortuitous planar conjunctions, and the Patron wants it. Problem: so does the cult of a dead god, who want to use it to determine the precise date when their dark master can be revived.
 

 Dangers[LIST=1]

• The Endless Void - Instinct: To dwarf mortal significance and comprehension
• Brotherhood of the Hidden Heart â€" Instinct: To awaken lost and terrible things
• Astral Ghosts - Instinct: To find a way home
• Eldritch Constructs â€" Instinct: To preserve the Seclusium
• Improbable Architecture â€" Instinct: To bar and bedevil

Custom Moves
 When you move through a field of astral conduits, roll+DEX. On a 10+ you avoid touching any of the long silvery filaments full of other lives and other worlds. On a 7-9 the conduits are all around you, humming with the vastness of the planes. Choose one:
[LIST=1]

• You're forced to go to ground, and you're Defying Danger if you press on before the astral winds open a way.
  
• You             push past before the conduits seal you in, but brush against one.             You're overwhelmed by vertigo and a sense of your own cosmic insignificance, but you can immediately Discern             Realities about             the Seclusium as though you'd rolled a 10+.

On a miss your silvery cord becomes tangled with the conduits, and the GM will make your life very interesting.


 When the astral ghost of Sigrid the Many-Faceted gets into your head, roll+WIS. On a 10+ she's sticking around for a while, whispering in your head and making you see and remember things that aren't there or didn't happen. On a 7-9 the hallucinations and false memories last a while and are hard to tell apart from reality. On a miss, things get weird.
 


 When you slay a cultist of the dead god Abraxus, the dark dreams of their sleeping god explode out of them, leaving a twisting miasma in the air that absorbs light, dampens energy, and fills the mind with horror. If you're within a sword's reach you also take 1d6 damage from the eruption of negative energy.
 

I've had the idea in my head for a long time to take  players through an alien abduction scenario - framing it similarly to  Changeling: The Lost (except perhaps less rapey) in terms of atmosphere  and tone.

Oh man, alien abduction. I've never even thought of this, but come to think of it, itcould definitely make for a fun scenario. You could do a lot of playing with unreliable narrators, too, which is always fun. You've stumbled on an unexploited niche here, to the best of my knowledge, but there's some possibilities. Before I go any further, are you thinking of playing through the abduction itself, the aftermath where they're dealing with what happened, or both? And is there supposed to be any doubt about whether it actually happened?

[Ryan]

It'd be framed as the PCs "meeting in a tavern," in this case a group therapy session for those who suspect they've had an experience with the otherworldly.

From there I'd go into backstory, describing the night of the abduction without any true insight into the abduction itself. From here we might do rolls to remember past the lost time they experienced (a popular hallmark of most alleged abductions,) jog out memories and the horrifying truth hidden in their heads. Ideally each "encounter" would end with some staggering revelation of the future.

[Lira]

It'd be framed as the PCs "meeting in a tavern," in this case a group therapy session for those who suspect they've had an experience with the otherworldly.

From there I'd go into backstory, describing the night of the abduction without any true insight into the abduction itself. From here we might do rolls to remember past the lost time they experienced (a popular hallmark of most alleged abductions,) jog out memories and the horrifying truth hidden in their heads. Ideally each "encounter" would end with some staggering revelation of the future.

[/SIZE]

 To me this cries out to be played in When the Dark is Gone. It's a small, free game in the late stages of beta testing that's gotten positive reviews so far, although in the interests of full disclosure I admit I haven't played it. Played in its default mode, it's about a group of people (the Clients) who united by a shared experience: when they were young children, they went together to a magical ala The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, had fantastic adventures â€" and then had to come back. They've all repressed the memories, and the repression has caused their lifes to spectacularly self-destruct. Play consists of a slow-burning exploration of those memories and the wreckage that is the Clients' lives. The (very light) mechanics aren't tied to this conceit, so you could easily reskin it to a group of abductees. At the very least, When the Dark is Gone is is worth a read just to mine ideas for another implementation.

[SN]

I was recently asked by my nerd friends to introduce them to EFU .. by running a tabletop campaign about it ..

[Ryan]

Sample material from the EFU Questing Splat Book: "You enter a room. There are Netherese magic towers here, which start to strike you painfully with their blasts of arcane energy. You try to get past them, only to trigger grease traps which cause most of your party to slip and fall. You are killed."

When the Dark is Gone.

That sounds perfect, thank you!

[Lira]

I was recently asked by my nerd friends to introduce them to EFU .. by running a tabletop campaign about it ..

Challenge accepted.

I'm going to be busy for the next few days and possibly through the weekend, so this thread's going quiet for a bit. Next time: Golden Sky Stories and other games that make you feel good about life, the universe and everything.

[SN]

Challenge accepted indeed!

I have this vision slowly coming together, of taking them through EFU1-EFU3 chapters in a slightly fast-forward mode.. and POSSIBLY dropping them into Numenera afterwards through a bit of a plot-derailing... Gods, so many notes from previous EFU chapters..

Not sure about the latter just yet, as I have not a chance to lay my hands on a Numenera core book just yet as paperback in Europe is stupidly expensive.

[Pentaxius]

Haha, funny I did the same thing : I ran 3 games of EFU-inspired DnD about 2 to 3 months ago.

Then I got Numenera and switched...

[SN]

I'm not yet sure if it will 'fit', as what I gathered about Numenera are the official tidbits released + something from reviews.

Will see when I get the book.

[Ebok]

I have both created a simple D&D styled physical engine that runs nice and smooth, and then immediately got addicted to AW.

Or... at least the engine. Good stuff.

Sagas of the Icelanders has been out for awhile and I would like to look over a few of the playbooks before deciding whether or not to drop the money on it. Do you have any good examples, or are you willing to send over part of the file?

Also Monster of the Week looks pretty fun too.