View Topic

This came up on Discord recently; since the forums are probably the easiest place to make a poll, I figured I'd start a topic where people can register 1) interest in playing and/or 2) interest in running a game, after which time we can get a sense of what sorts of RPG people had in mind.

I'll be first to state my interest.

I'm also interested and have done this before.

I can play 5e and Pathfinder (1e), and I am able to run Pathfinder (1e) and potentially DnD 5e (albeit I am less familiar with this from a DM's standpoint). If there is interest I could also do some Pathfinder (2e) sessions, but I'm not familiar with this system at all.

I'm very familiar with DnD 5e. I would DM a campaign, but I'm already DMing two campaigns at the moment.

I am interested and have no preference for what we'll be doing, because I've never done it before.

I'm interested and can run DnD 3.5 and Starfinder if desired.

I'd be intrested in playing

I would be interested

I'm interested and can DM 5e or any of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPGs.

As a player, I'm interested. I played tabletop RPGs quite a while ago, mostly D&D 4e when that was new, and I've been meaning to look for an online group to play a tRPG with since I'm usually a bit busy for IRL games.

As a GM...eh. Maybe. I have experience with D&D 3.5e and 4e, and I have several other systems that I've read but haven't played. I've spent the most time reading FATE Core, Blades in the Dark, d20 Modern, and GURPS. I have ideas for campaigns but little practical experience in running games and doubtful reserves of motivation to keep one going.

I'm interested, I have some experience with playing 5e but none when it comes to running a game.

Key takeaways:
10 people have expressed interest so far - that suggests at least 2 groups, maybe more if people are interested in multiple games and so can overlap.
Also in terms of knowledge/experience, we've got the following:

Pathfinder (me, Chanku, presumably Pightmark since 3.5 and Pathfinder are basically the same)
5e (me, Chanku, Aragonn, Excalibur, Ender)
Starfinder (Silv) (Unsure how different Starfinder and Pathfinder are; presumably core rules are the same)
Star Wars RPGs (Excalibur)
FATE Core (Me, Pightmark)
4e (Pightmark)
Blades in the Dark (me, Pightmark)
D20 Modern (Pightmark)
GURPS (Pightmark)
World of Darkness (me)
WH40K RPGs (me)
Monsters and Other Childish Things (me)

Unsurprisingly, people have the most overall experience with D&D-adjacent games, and so that might be the move if people don't want to learn new rulesets.
I think an equally important question would be for everyone to note exactly what sort of RPG experience they want; for example, if you have experience in D&D but would rather instead do some urban fantasy or whatever then D&D might not be your first choice.
So essentially you're all assigned to do a 5-minute google on the options above - maybe even others if you see any that pique your interest - and then ranked-choice your, say, top 3 or even top 5 so I can sort people into groups of mutual interest.

What do you mean we can't do an urban fantasy campaign in DnD? You can do anything fantasy in DnD. There's even some rules for adding sci-fi into DnD. It's a pretty versatile game.

Here are my top 5 systems, leaning towards those that at least one other person knows about:

• Blades in the Dark
• D20 Modern¹
• FATE Core²
• Pathfinder/3.5e
• Starfinder (I'll get a book)

¹ Quick note: this is heavily based on 3.5e but with mechanics for characters in the "modern" mid-2000s. The Urban Arcana supplement makes it perfect for an urban fantasy setting.
² I've heard that this system doesn't translate well to forum play because the Fate mechanic often requires some haggling, so this might fall off the list if the RP is 100% forum-based.

I'm a big fan of campaigns with original worlds, a mix of conflict and character-focused scenes, mildly open-ended progression (you have a definite long-term goal but how you go about it is up to the party), and most importantly, a focus on telling a good story through RP. Generally, I like exploration, immersion, and creativity. Bonus points if you pick a setting that isn't the standard high/medieval/Tolkien-esque fantasy - I enjoy it but it's nice to see something new every now and again.

What do you mean we can't do an urban fantasy campaign in DnD? You can do anything fantasy in DnD. There's even some rules for adding sci-fi into DnD. It's a pretty versatile game.

I mean, you can, but then it's essentially just D20 modern.
Also, on reflection you might not be aware of what 'urban fantasy' connotes, but to clarify - while it might take the form of dungeonpunk (which, I'll note, meshes perfectly with some D&D settings - Planescape or Eberron, for example, are very dungeonpunk), other examples of urban fantasy would be things like The Wolf Among Us, The Dresden Files, or Supernatural. 'Urban fantasy' in its generic mode is very modern, and D&D, regardless of edition, is almost invariably in a high fantasy - and thus by extension medieval - setting.
Obviously there's differences if you switch settings - Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Planescape all stand out (Dying Earth, Gothic horror, dungeonpunk) - but the default settings D&D has been set in (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Mystara), are all quintessentially high fantasy places (Golarion, the default setting for Pathfinder, is the same way).
So essentially what I was trying to get at was that if you were trying to have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer experience, your best bet would probably be something more like FATE or a WoD game (Hunter: The Vigil probably) rather than D&D.

I've heard that this system doesn't translate well to forum play because the Fate mechanic often requires some haggling, so this might fall off the list if the RP is 100% forum-based.

Well, as the title of the thread suggests, I was assuming it was going to be Discord-based, where people would pick a time to all be online and in voicechat, and play that way, using Sidekick for dicerolls.

As a personal note, I find FATE to be fantastic, especially if the game shifts towards troupe-based play instead of being focused on a single party of PCs, and it's incredibly flexible; I've run FATE games in high fantasy (Glorantha; I didn't want to learn Runequest but I'd played KODP and loved it), hard-SF (some may recall my Diaspora RP proposal, which I wound up using in my RPG group so that scratched the itch for that and that's why I never went back to it, I'm a bad person), and superhero settings, and it's worked great in all cases.
It does lend itself much more to seat-of-the-pants sort of games, rather than intricately plotted ones, but the flipside is that it also often requires a bit more out of players since they can often spend fate points to change certain elements in gameplay (e.g. "I need a Computer roll if you want to try and figure out his password". 'What if I spend a fate point, could we say that the director is forgetful, and so he left his computer password on a post-it note?' "I like that idea, I'll add that to him as an aspect, Absent-Minded, no need for that roll.") If that seems like it could make things too easy, the flipside is that people tend to hoard their fate points in case they'll need them for something later so the notion that stuff like that may become gamebreaking sort of flies out the window pretty quick.