TTRPG : Your Favorite Style of Campaigns / Sessions

[Oexmelin]

I encourage you to look at Blades in the Dark - it fits your themes, and is really well suited to short sessions and changing party composition. Characters are thieves, con artists, assassins, plotters and schemers in a corrupt city. The "feedback" system means a lot of the backstory is produced by the players.

[mongers]

I usually GM so it depends on what sort of characters my players are playing. I always make the world darker than the characters so for example in my current 1-on-1 game my son is playing a CN thief so the world is LE and has conspiracies and plots and secrets and things for my son to break and all that.

So I guess most of my games are: the players is struggling against more powerful and more malevolent forces to get whatever they want.

And I do play D&D but I play 2nd Edition (sort of...I play pretty fast and loose with the rules and anything I do like from later editions I just steal...and also most 2nd edition stuff is now online for free so that's nice as well) since I find from 3rd edition onwards the characters are too magical and powerful. I want my players mundane and the forces arrayed against them to seem mysterious and powerful.

But that is just me and it isn't like I have much time to play these days anyway. My poor son is always like "can we play tonight?"

I also have only dabbled in other games.

Oh, pray tell were that can be found?

[Syt]

Another 'vote' for traveller, because it seemed 'real'.

Incidentally if you haven't got access to any rule books, there's a facsimile version of the original starter set available for free here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355200?affiliate_id=31065

See above link from HumbleBundle, too (yes, it's the "modern" version, but still).

[crazy canuck]

I never had fun with D&D.

I think I mentioned it before, but I encountered RPG differently, mostly because of the availability of French translations. I knew of D&D because of the cartoon and toys, not as a RPG. The RPG I encountered were the Dark Eye (a German RPG) and Dragon Warriors (a British RPG) because both had been translated into French by the same publisher who published most "Choose your own adventure" books. I had a cousin who played the Dark Eye, and we eyed those books each time I walked into the local bookstore, because I found the covers to be amazing. But ultimately, I picked up Dragon Warriors, because that's the one the local library had.

It's realistic conceit (places were transparent analogs to medieval Europe, with just enough "wondrous locations", magic was rare and frightening, clerics were more "Jedi knight/Asian sage" than channels of existing divine powers) ruined D&D for me.

Each time I played, i did not enjoy it. Perhaps because i think I preferred  different sets of clichés ;-) or perhaps, strangely, because the other players were really into "the rules", and I never really was.

I never really was into comics either - and it seemed to me there was some sort of connection between both. Every time I have played D&D, for instance, I have encountered "murder hoboes" - and never in any other sets of rules or settings. Which may simply be bad luck in finding groups.

But I think, as Syt mentioned and Brain alluded to, that the D&D setting isn't terribly well fleshed out as a working, living, breathing society that has drawn the consequences of having so much available magic, and so many power mad people running around, despite having a ton of lore-related material.

I had the opposite early experience with DND. The DM just gave us character sheets and explained to us what our skills could do. Only the DM had the rules in the DM didn't play by the rules, but was very good at creating narration. The only real contact I had with the rules was I understood What I needed to roll on the dice, but even then a lot of the dice rolls were made by the DM. It was very enjoyable. And that largely impacted how I ran my own games by that point, of course, everybody had their own players handbook and my rule as a DM was nobody was able to pull out any of the rules during a session.

[Valmy]

I usually GM so it depends on what sort of characters my players are playing. I always make the world darker than the characters so for example in my current 1-on-1 game my son is playing a CN thief so the world is LE and has conspiracies and plots and secrets and things for my son to break and all that.

So I guess most of my games are: the players is struggling against more powerful and more malevolent forces to get whatever they want.

And I do play D&D but I play 2nd Edition (sort of...I play pretty fast and loose with the rules and anything I do like from later editions I just steal...and also most 2nd edition stuff is now online for free so that's nice as well) since I find from 3rd edition onwards the characters are too magical and powerful. I want my players mundane and the forces arrayed against them to seem mysterious and powerful.

But that is just me and it isn't like I have much time to play these days anyway. My poor son is always like "can we play tonight?"

I also have only dabbled in other games.

Oh, pray tell were that can be found?

Well first you can download the entire core rules of AD&D 2nd Edition right here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156530/For-Gold--Glory

Yeah it is a 3rd party OSR book but it is the 2nd Edition rules, at least the base ones from 1989. So use that if you don't have old books.

And lots of 2nd edition stuff can be had for free or very little at drivethrurpg but generally if it is really old you can just google it and download a pdf of it from someplace pretty quick.

[mongers]

I usually GM so it depends on what sort of characters my players are playing. I always make the world darker than the characters so for example in my current 1-on-1 game my son is playing a CN thief so the world is LE and has conspiracies and plots and secrets and things for my son to break and all that.

So I guess most of my games are: the players is struggling against more powerful and more malevolent forces to get whatever they want.

And I do play D&D but I play 2nd Edition (sort of...I play pretty fast and loose with the rules and anything I do like from later editions I just steal...and also most 2nd edition stuff is now online for free so that's nice as well) since I find from 3rd edition onwards the characters are too magical and powerful. I want my players mundane and the forces arrayed against them to seem mysterious and powerful.

But that is just me and it isn't like I have much time to play these days anyway. My poor son is always like "can we play tonight?"

I also have only dabbled in other games.

Oh, pray tell were that can be found?

Well first you can download the entire core rules of AD&D 2nd Edition right here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156530/For-Gold--Glory

Yeah it is a 3rd party OSR book but it is the 2nd Edition rules, at least the base ones from 1989. So use that if you don't have old books.

And lots of 2nd edition stuff can be had for free or very little at drivethrurpg but generally if it is really old you can just google it and download a pdf of it from someplace pretty quick.

oh thanks for that Valmy, I'll give it a spin.

[Savonarola]

I prefer an over-arching story line, interesting setting and characters who are invested in the story.  The genre doesn't matter so much to me, one of the best campaigns we did was Call of Cthulhu () set in 1930s Detroit, but I've had a lot of fun with Cyberpunk, Medieval Japan, Star Wars, The Crusades, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones world and high fantasy.  The game system is also not that important, so long as it isn't too bogged down in the rules.  GURPS is probably the most infamous in that regard; although it does allow for exotic storylines.  I thought the Fourth Edition of AD&D was poorly done as combat dragged on forever (although it did fix the class-balance issues that had been problematic in earlier editions.)

[11B4V]

I encourage you to look at Blades in the Dark - it fits your themes, and is really well suited to short sessions and changing party composition. Characters are thieves, con artists, assassins, plotters and schemers in a corrupt city. The "feedback" system means a lot of the backstory is produced by the players.

Yup

[mongers]

I encourage you to look at Blades in the Dark - it fits your themes, and is really well suited to short sessions and changing party composition. Characters are thieves, con artists, assassins, plotters and schemers in a corrupt city. The "feedback" system means a lot of the backstory is produced by the players.

Yup

Hello 11B4V, long time no see, how are you doing?

[11B4V]

I encourage you to look at Blades in the Dark - it fits your themes, and is really well suited to short sessions and changing party composition. Characters are thieves, con artists, assassins, plotters and schemers in a corrupt city. The "feedback" system means a lot of the backstory is produced by the players.

Yup

Hello 11B4V, long time no see, how are you doing?

Good, just busy. I pass through lurking though.

[mongers]

I encourage you to look at Blades in the Dark - it fits your themes, and is really well suited to short sessions and changing party composition. Characters are thieves, con artists, assassins, plotters and schemers in a corrupt city. The "feedback" system means a lot of the backstory is produced by the players.

Yup

Hello 11B4V, long time no see, how are you doing?

Good, just busy. I pass through lurking though.

Sensible, I should probably follow your example instead of me spamming the forum.