What RPG's have you played?

Cafe Society
21

I started out playing Car Wars in Jr High – at first we just did arena matches, but later on we actually put together campaigns. Surviving long enough to develop one’s character was difficult, and cloning was expensive. Perhaps this is what Christopher played? I remember the computer games (Autoduel for the Atari, and later Deathmatch for the PC) being lots of fun, and am eagerly awaiting a more modern game in the same vein. Anyone here played the MMOG Auto Assault? I’m curious as to how it stacks up against the pen & paper system.

AD&D of course – 2nd Edition, mostly, during high school, and just this last year I’ve participated in one 3.5 campaign set in Eberron.

Mechwarrior - played one campaign that never got past 3 sessions. The battles took most of our time, so there wasn’t much room left for character advancement, even though we were pretty good at surviving and winning.

Star Wars - I don’t remember if this was its own proprietary system, though I assume it was. We did one campaign that didn’t go very far. This was back in 1992, I think.

Toon - Rampant silliness. Playing with weird, creative people was a lot of fun.

GURPS - Many campaigns in various settings. We did high fantasy, sci-fi, modern, near-future, almost everything. The great thing about GURPS is it’s so flexible, though designing the setting took so much time. I guess that was the trade-off for flexibility and genericness.

Heroes (or was it Champions? don’t remember) - Very similar to GURPS, but super-powered. Generic and flexible, and powerful abilities cost few points. We played mostly near-future/modern settings, with sort of a pre-cyberpunk flavor. Think John Woo with a few technological face-lifts.

Paranoia - I don’t remember this campaign at all. I remember it was fun, though psychologically brutal.

Call of Cthulhu - Probably one of my favorite settings. Very difficult to keep a character, though.

22

D&D: Red Box/Blue Box

AD&D: v1 in school, v3.5 after a 20-year hiatus.

Car Wars

23

Started AD+D 1st Edition in 1979.

Still playing the same version of the same game :eek: , with a couple of the original players :cool: plus some newbies (less than 20 years experience :rolleyes: ) today.

24

ALL?

MERP. My first, and almost my last due to a nasty case of GM With Brand New Book He Overuses And Too Many Prejudices. Also the one I played longest and miss most. Many Spaniards refer to it as LOTR if you use the LOTR history and maps, as MERP if not (maybe you’re using the maps and even the monsters, whadayamean10nazgul?, but it’s definitely Not That Place).

DnD. I still was convinced that RPGs were a Cool Thing. So when I saw the First Box, I snatched it as Middlebro’s Xmas gift (knowing full well that Lilbro was a lot more likely to keep that ball rolling, but an expensive gift was easier to justify for the older sib). Boy did that ploy work. Mom, after years of being angry at me for this, ended up deciding it was a Good Thing when it triggered Lilbro into reading :smiley: (which he’d been able to do for years, he just refused to, his first book was The Hobbit, then Neverending Story, third LoTR).

Paranoia. I even managed to survive a game. Not just survive: I had all my clones! Everybody else had achieved the usual endstatus of “deader than a rusted away doornail”.

Elfquest. Couple attempts with friends, but it’s hard to get a group going for this one.

Akelarre, which is based on Middle Ages Spain (reality and legends).

I don’t remember the game’s name now, but Marvel’s Spanish edition used to carry a strip by Ñolo, Fan con Nata, where most characters were based on real people from the BarnaCity, uhm, excuse me, Barcelona comic/scifi/fantasy/rpg scene. He also did a RPG of it, which is murderously funny.

Champions. Lilbro’s current favorite since many years ago. We’ve used it in all kinds of settings.

Star Wars

Chtulhu. There came a point where I just refused to play the damn librarian AGAIN. I’m not fond of clericing, but librarian? When everybody else gets to know how to blow stuff up? Ah, no!

That’s the ones I can remember right now. There was a game I enjoyed a lot, a multi-group one based on some sort of Mad Max world, but that kind of thing is difficult to organize. Loved it, though, although our group got “forgotten” by the MegaGM after we’d gone into ambush… when group #2 was announced as the winner, we protested and, after review the GM team said “co-winners and we’re sorry!”

25

(expired time)

MrDibble, anything not made in the US will be a rare find Over There. On another note, while Rolemaster and MERP are in theory different games, I still have to meet a GM who doesn’t mix’n’match them as he sees fit. Stage #1 of any new group is usually saying “which parts are we using”.

26

A buddy found some of his older brother’s stuff and began a D&D game about 12 years ago and got the ball rolling for us.

D&D (Played and running a game now)

**Star Wars ** (WEG Not really played a lot, but running same campaign for the past decade)

**Star Wars d20 ** (Not a fan of the system, but playing SW is playing SW, too bad it lasted only a few months)

Vampire

Deadlands (Several sessions before it dried up)

Rifts (One session, which lasted about a tenth as long as it took to write up the characters)

MechWarrior (2nd and 3rd editions, though admittedly only one short-lived campaign in 3rd, which is a shame since I love the setting and new game rules)

Shadowrun

Star Trek (Last Unicorn version. All of one session)

… Mutants and Masterminds (A friend made a big deal about puttin this campaign together … last summer. We all have characters made, he just hasn’t run. I guess that’s what alcoholism does to a person)
Many of my friends are rather more prolific than I, but I was in the military and raising a family while they stayed single and were in college for the most part.

27

I geuss our staples were

Traveler
Middle Earth
Judge Dredd

with occasional forays into
Paranoia - always good for a laugh
Call of Cuthulu - always good for thinking, then breaking out the .50 caliber
Dragon Warriors - nice and easy system - quite fun because one didn’t get bogged down.
Warhammer rpg - all around not bad - lots of background. The enemy within campaign was very good.

Dabbled in;
Living Steel - It was just so mind boggling complicated, I bought the box set way back at a convention, but after spending 20 minutes trying to resolve a single combat round, well after I DM’d one scenario it pretty much died…

2300AD - another horribly complicated combat system but the background setting was cool

Megatraveler - meh it just wasn’t as good as the original

Toon - fun, whimsical
Teenage mutant ninja turtles
Top Secret - crap IMO
Star Wars - hmm so so
Space 1889 - I don’t know why
Cyberpunk
Stormbringer

28

D&D, Deadlands, TORG, HERO (Champions’ system), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Call of Cthulhu, Mutants and Masterminds, Silver Age Sentinels, D20 Modern, RIFTS, TMNT, GURPS, ElfQuest, DC Universe, DC Heroes, Star Wars d20, Star Wars d6, Marvel Super Heroes, With Great Power, Spycraft, Middle-Earth Roleplaying, Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, Toon, Star Trek, Gamma World, Big Eyes Small Mouth, the City of Heroes RPG, Hackmaster…

Probably some more…

29

A handful of Swedish games you won’t have heard of (Sweden is basically the only country in the world where Dungeons&Dragons isn’t the default role-playing game; few people here have even played it), Chill (loved the setting), GURPS (3rd and now 4th edition), The Steve Jackson Star Wars game, and probably a couple I’m forgetting.

30

Wow… Let me think…

D&D- 2.0, 3.0, 3.5

WoD- Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith

Gurps

Rifts

Cyberpunk

Shadowrun

Call of Cthulhu

Paranoia

Mechwarrior

Mutants and Masterminds

Aeon (then renamed Trinity)

Think that’s it… for straight RPGs anyway.

31

Ahhh…thank you. That’s the one I was trying to remember. Fun little game as I recall.

32

Let’s see, I am a huge geek and have been so since the late 70’s so, as best as I recall:

D&D; Started with the blue box, have played every incarnation since, except for 3rd edition, since there is no one to play with in my current city.

Traveler: The first Sci-Fi game I recall seeing.

Space Opera: A more detailed version of Traveler. Took forever to role up characters.

Runequest: Fantasy Roleplay, with a better combat system than D&D

Toon: The best game to play drunk.

Shadowrun. A friend of mine was writing for FASA when this came out. So we kinda had to play.

Cyberpunk: Not really my genre, but fun.

Call of Chuthulu: I even had a character survive once.

Werewolf The Apocalypse: Got to work out my frustrations with all the Anne Rice “I wanna be a smelly dead thing” Goths. Killing Vampires, YAY!

Champions, Stormbringer, MERP, and a few others that we only played for a session when we were tired or our regular D&D campaign.

33

I just realized, I should add that we did Mind’s Eye Theatre, not the dice.

I wish I could still play with the group I used to. They finished Dark Ages, moved on to Elizabethan and are now working on Victorian (setting is London).

34

These are all games which are in the “more than once” category. Might not be a complete list, but people my age start to forget things…

Every version of D&D / AD&D
Champions*
Traveller
Shadowrun*
Runequest
Rolemaster & MERP (Rolemaster Lite)*
SpaceMaster (modified to a GI Joe-type campaign)*
Villians & Vigilantes
Robotech*
Marvel Super Heroes
DC Heroes*
Dr. Who
Paranoia

  • indicates GM experience. Sadly, it’s been over 10 years since I’ve played.
35

Lot of great games here…lot of great memories. However, one of my favorites hasn’t been mentioned yet: 7th Sea. It goes by **Swashbuckling Adventures ** now, but the scope of the original rulebooks – a slightly warped Renaissance-era Europe, with analogues for Russia, Germany, France, England, and Spain, in a high-drama pirates and politics, Errol Flynn-like setting. I still remember the first campaign, which ended with the heroes sliding down the velvet curtain at an operahouse to confront the villains.

Definitely one to seek out.

**Deadlands ** is right up there, too. If done right, spooky as all hell. I’m talking the Weird West, not the Wasted West or Lost Colony versions. I need to take a look at the new edition one of these days.

**Harn ** is an incredibly detailed, immersive world, but I can’t say I like the rules system too much. But for those who are very much into the intricacies of a middle ages period where even the most minute details of a village is provided, seek it out. It’s a very clever design, with some very nicely produced materials in three-hole-punch format so you can organize your rules however you want, and most home-made materials you find online respect that format and have created some beautiful stuff for that game.

**Star Wars ** was fantastic under West End Games (so was their Indiana Jones game, for that matter, but I only played it once). Tragically, Wizards killed the game as far as I’m concerned. I’ll glance at the new rulebook, but it seems like it’s just an engine to sell more minis now.

The FASA **Middle Earth ** was a lot of fun, but we were playing it all wrong, which I didn’t realize until much later. Wonder how much fun it would have been if we followed the rules correctly…

I bought every **Legend of the Five Rings ** book and never played the damn thing. Was it any good?

Oh, and my latest heartbreak – Stargate. They only produced four or five books for it, and I loved it! Used the Spycraft rules, and they lost the lisence after only one year. We need to pull that out again…but after finding a planet inhabited by vampires, where can you go, really?

It Came From the Late, Late Show. You’re actors playing characters in bad movies, so you could play any genre. That was more fun coming up with ideas than playing, but it was an absolute blast. “Dial A for Alien” and “Attack of the Ninja Vampires - The Musical!” were my favorites. The GM actually made us write songs and sing. My contribution - “Don’t Leave Home Without Your Crucifix.” I still remember the words. Heh.

And that’s only the tip…God, I was a nerdy kid!

36

Hey anyody here remember the christian role playing game? One of the kids in the neighborhood had parents who wouldn’t let him play D&D, so they bought him a christian one. We gave it a try for a while. It was pretty similar, except that your armor was things the like breastplate of righteosness, and in stead on magic, you memorised bible passages and said them out loud. I still have a starlot(10 sided die that made a star when you pointed it toward the light. It was interesting, but not very complex, so we went back to normal D&D and he lied to his parents. :wink:

37

Found it, DragonRaid.

38

Okay, that sounds like it might be almost as much fun to play than Toon or Paranoia when drunk. :slight_smile:

39

D&D, AD&D (1[sup]st[/sup] and 2[sup]nd[/sup]), D&D 3.0/3.5–Started when I was 11, sitting in on a session with my older brother and his friends (and bailing their party out of trouble, much to their embarrassment). I’ve played Oerth campaigns, Realms campaigns, and lots of homebrew settings.

Star Frontiers–Does anyone else even remember this game? Lots of aliens, and having to choose either armor against laser weapons or armor against ballistic weapons. I played a character from the insectoid race because they reminded me of Thranx.

Paranoia–Yes, I have had missions where we never got out of the briefing.

Toon–This was always a lot of silly fun if you could get a group that was good at improvising and understood that dignity was overrated.

Lost Souls–I loved the premise of this game. Your character starts out dead; you play one of a number of different kinds of ghost. The goal is to finish whatever unfinished business is holding you to the world. Even relatively trivial tasks are hard, because ghosts are extremely vulnerable to earthly phenomena (wind can hurt them badly), but have very limited ways to act on the physical world. As a result, they have to cooperate to get the job done. As you play, you get karma points for how well you do things, for roleplaying, and so forth. When (and if) you eventually succeed, you get reincarnated; the book has a chart showing what new form your karma earns you (ranging from “Pond Scum” to “Higher Being”).

Vampire: The Masquerade–Depressing game, but it had its moments.

Shadowrun–I always seemed to wind up playing a magician of one sort or another, and could never get into the cyber side.

Ars Magica–Oddly enough, I never actually played a Hermetic magician. I played a hedge wizard from one of the supplements; he couldn’t do spontaneous spell-casting, but in some ways he was actually more powerful than the Hermetics in the campaign. Also, the fact that he could just find vis while walking along the road drove the other players up the wall. :slight_smile:

Nobilis–Essentially, you play Powers, minor godlike beings with very specific portfolios. Your primary goal is to defend the structure of reality against forces that are trying to unmake it. The gameplay relies heavily on improvisation, description, and storytelling. We tried to get a group together on the SDMB to play, but it fell through. I played a few sessions locally, but the group broke up before we really got anywhere. The rulebook makes a better coffee-table book than any other RPG book I’ve seen, I think.

40

Oh I just have to add a little known game that was a large part of my childhood.
Teenagers From Outer Space! (or TFOS to the old gang)
What really sold it was the rulebook was hilariously written.