@Ludoss The other standard rule is "anything can get you killed, including not doing anything." "

What kind of games do you play? Genre ? System?

Mostly D&D, if yo uare asking me, but we recently did Great Orc Gods, which is a real hoot. Golden Sky Stories with trogdor, which is a lot of fun and nothing to do with combat. We are doing a PbTA game (fellowship) also, trying out that take in pbta ...

What kind of dnd games? high fantasy? dark fantasy?

@Ludoss Fate (core & accelerated) isn't really combat-centric. It's not really anything-centric. The mechanics are flexible, such that combat and non-combat challenges are handled similarly. Although there are plenty of modules for Fate that focus more on combat.

@Ludoss From OD&D to now? Uh, all of them? I prefer a bit of a low magic game but 5e only partly caters to that

sigh some day, 5e will release Dark Sun. I hope. sigh

I find that DnD5e is in high magic, most classes have magic.

@Ludoss Cantrips alone ramp up the amount of magic, yeah

@Ludoss Fate's pretty generic in terms of the conflict resolution mechanics in it being useful for just about anything you want to throw them at. something like Bubblegumshoe (teen sleuths) or Golden Sky Stories (animal-shapeshifter-spirits that help people) would fall into the "non-combat-centric" category

I guess I was referring to the frequency of magic item 'drops' in 5e. that is very DM dependent.

I've been in a game where nothign dropped, and in one that was Monty Haul .

Is a tactical combat heavy campaign fun with FC?

@Ludoss it can be? depends on what sort of combat experience you're after as well

Yes, okay

What kind of game was the Mounty Haul? How many items were dropped?

@Ludoss I tend towards more classical fantasy genre-wise, but have dabbled into SF stuff and urban-fantasy as well; however, I can be a bit shy about modern-day settings, and don't do supers or post-apoc at all

@Shalvenay same as I, mostly fantasy and a bit scifi if I gm.

system-wise? I've played most of the D&D editions (save for 4e, although if I could get the hang of char creation there, I would want to try it still), and a smattering of other systems (DW and Fellowship on the PbtA front, Fate, Traveller, and some lesser known stuff as well). I normally run D&D (have run 3.x but prefer 5e), and am branching out into running DW these days.

I've also run Fate once, and wish to run that again; also have a few systems I want to try playing if I get the chance, but the opportunities for those are a bit scarce

@Ludoss Well, by the time we got to session 97, hundreds of magic items.

also, most of my experience running D&D is with short-form play, so that means I don't have much experience with situations where handing out magic items is called for to begin with :P

Though a lot of them were potions that got consumed.

@KorvinStarmast hundreds of magic items, that is a lot. Why did the gm do that?

@Ludoss I never bothered to ask. It didn't really impact challenge, since he ramped it up as needed. It's the only character I've ever had that had all three attunement slots filled, one of which was a cursed sword.

@KorvinStarmast Have you read Playing at the World? There's a super-interesting chapter (maybe 80-100 pp.) on RPGs at RAND and in the military--I imagine you'd enjoy it.

@nitsua60 I have not. I expect I'll enjoy that, when I finally do.

I am in the "original blackmoor" kickstarter. Waiting for my stuff to get delivered ...

Some of Arneson's old buddies don't quite agree with John's take on the early form of the RPGs ...

John?

Isn't that the author's first name?

Oh, Peterson. Sure.

Jon. Sorry. No H

Dinner calls--back in a bit!

Cheers!

oh, and yeah -- yes I have played Golden Sky Stories. (have not played Bubblegumshoe, but I might just get the chance to play it to help test a setup I came up with for that game)

@Ludoss Now if we go back to classic Traveller, what little we got to play, a lot of our play was in trying to earn credits so that we could get a better ship.

Kickstarter: "Let's Play: Dungeons & Dragons Behind Bars." A documentary about fantasy escapism in American prisons.

@BESW It's like playing D&D on a ship at sea, but without the chance of drowning thrown in. (Variation on an infamous quote by Samuel Johnson about the Royal navy ...)

*No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

sigh I've had to put my plans of a public invitation RPG session on the shelf for now. It seems there are a lot more hoops to arrange an activity in the local library then I previously thought.

But good news: I introduced some people to Fiasco and the game went very well!

@RedRiderX *Congrats! Yay

It went so well that now we're discussing a longer term RPG.

But now I'm not sure what system to choose for group that really embraced Fiasco.

@RedRiderX nice!

Isn't Fiasco a fate based game?

@KorvinStarmast Nah it's someone very different from most RPGs

Nope, guess not,

completely different from most most other systems I know too

@Shalvenay Mostly I've gotten the direction of Fantasy, Fantastic Beasts Movies, and "I'm down for what ever"

For me the attraction is "GM-less" ...

@KorvinStarmast Oh definitely

Also it has a very well defined game pace

So you know exactly how long it'll take to play.

@RedRiderX that strikes me as either more of a higher-magic style of fantasy, or urban fantasy type stuff for that matter, staying away from grimdark

is that a fair assessment?

Yes that sounds right

@BESW Oooh, interesting

At the moment I think I'm leaning to FATE, and I'll just try to find some sourcebooks to help me build a campaign.

@RedRiderX If you're down for playing a reality show about capturing fantastic beasts, you could play Inspectres with very slight modifications.

Ooh interesting.

Definitely would need some mods but it sounds like the structure is there.

Oh yeah, that'd work really well.

It's fairly light and improv like Fiasco and has the same rough limits to structure - a job has a payout, and when you get enough successes to get the payout, the job's over.

@RedRiderX an InSpectres hack could work for the Fantastic Beasts theme...Fellowship could be cool as well if they're looking for something more classical storyline-wise, although it does hew very closely to the Tolkienesque pattern of "some Overlord is threatening communities and a small band of heroes need to defeat said Overlord"

It's very low prep because the GM only needs to prepare the opening scene where the client hires the company.

@RedRiderX I take it you'd prefer to start them with something outside of D&D or D&Dlikes, thematically?

Inspectres looks like a great party game ...

Just glancing over the theme it seems to be about exterminating "weird things" and I feel like that's not really the thrust of Fantastic Beasts.

So having not read much farther I assume some things would need to be tweaked because of that

@Shalvenay I think I misread this statement the first time. I'm keeping D&D on the table (I know most of the party is familiar with it) but I also want to explore some other options

@RedRiderX ah. familiar with it in that they've seen references to it, or familiar with it in that they've played it before?

It's about being the Ghostbusters.

@Shalvenay At least half the party has played it I think

And as a GM I'm familiar with it.

OK

if you want a non-D&D system that stays within the "dungeon crawl" thematics, Dungeon World would be my vote

Yes definitely on my short list too, I've GM'd a DW game.

@RedRiderX cool :) I'm running one (a bit intermittently due to player availability issues) myself these days, full length campaign even

Admittedly Inspectres is more about playing the premise of Fantastic Beasts, that is, functionaries of the Wizarding World trying to contain beasts before they wreak too much havoc among the unsuspecting. It's not too good at actually playing for the stakes the movies play for.

Oh no I'm more looking for replicating the setting of Fantastic Beasts, not the plot

I don't think this is the space to describe in detail how much I don't want to replicate the plot of Fantastic Beasts.

@Glazius or have too much havok wreaked upon them by the unsuspecting. looks at a crater in the middle of England left by some poor Welsh Green who tried to tailgate an A380

The only interesting part of those movies for me was Newt Scamander's approach to Magizooligy

never watched the Fantastic Beasts films

@RedRiderX yeah, a good way to put it is "what sort of premise are you after here?"

@RedRiderX I live in that frustrating space in my RL group(s) that "keeping D&D on the table" inevitably means "playing D&D." But, playing an RPG is better than not (for me), so I can't complain too much.

@Shalvenay I think seeing people here word it as "containing" beasts I think cleared up the confusion for me.

I still saw the system as just a way to fight ghosts.

But now I see it could be applied to a premise that is less "extermination" and more "collect and care for"

@RedRiderX I meant generally, not in the context of hacking InSpectres :)

@RedRiderX Yeah, the nature of the job is almost entirely immaterial to the system.