How should I pick which one-shot tabletop RPGs to sign up for?
May 18, 2018 11:07 PM Subscribe
I've been trying to get into RPGs and LARPs but my experiences have been uneven. I've signed up for my very first local gaming convention. How do I find the events that are likely to match my preferences?
I've been to a few gaming events but I've found that what I'm looking for often doesn't line up with what I've signed up for. I'm looking for something that is heavy on roleplaying but uses mechanics more heavily than just rolling to hit in combat or the DM randomly deciding to make a skill check when you decide to do something. I love story, but I also don't want to play "tennis with the net down" -- my ideal experience is to play a character and work with the rest of the party and use creativity and our characters' abilities to solve problems together, with the mechanics injecting some randomness and challenge. Immersiveness is a huge plus. I'm also looking for something that will attract a group that is maybe on the more "socially aware/adept" side or at least that is structured in such a way that a single person can't easily derail things for everyone else -- I've had frustrating experiences with GMs who have no sense of time management or players who dominate a game, for example.
Here's what I've learned, or think I learned, about my preferences so far:
* LARPs are more aligned to my preferred play style than tabletop games are. (I think? I've only done one LARP, The Dance and the Dawn, but it was great and the other attendees were fairly serious theatrical types who dressed to the nines and got very into character. It was also structured in such a way that there were a lot of simultaneous 1:1 interactions, which gave everyone a chance to participate and prevented any single player from dominating the game.)
* Longer games are better than shorter games because shorter games lack the time to establish characters or actually use mechanics
* I also don't like systems or settings that encourage PVP
Given that all I know about these games is basic information: the system, the time it's happening, the name of the DM, whether it's LARP or tabletop, how many players, whether it's kid-friendly, whether it's newbie-friendly, and a brief description of the scenario, what other guidelines can can I follow to choose the games I'm most likely to like, and are the guidelines that I've laid down for myself even accurate? Are there particular systems that are well suited to this style of play? The most popular systems that seem to be offered are Legend of the Five Rings, D&D 5th Edition, and Call of Cthulhu, but there's also a huge diversity of systems on offer, way too many to list. The specific convention is Kubla Con, in the Bay Area, just in case anyone has leads on particularly great DMs or games that they know are likely to be there. Thanks!
I've been to a few gaming events but I've found that what I'm looking for often doesn't line up with what I've signed up for. I'm looking for something that is heavy on roleplaying but uses mechanics more heavily than just rolling to hit in combat or the DM randomly deciding to make a skill check when you decide to do something. I love story, but I also don't want to play "tennis with the net down" -- my ideal experience is to play a character and work with the rest of the party and use creativity and our characters' abilities to solve problems together, with the mechanics injecting some randomness and challenge. Immersiveness is a huge plus. I'm also looking for something that will attract a group that is maybe on the more "socially aware/adept" side or at least that is structured in such a way that a single person can't easily derail things for everyone else -- I've had frustrating experiences with GMs who have no sense of time management or players who dominate a game, for example.
Here's what I've learned, or think I learned, about my preferences so far:
* LARPs are more aligned to my preferred play style than tabletop games are. (I think? I've only done one LARP, The Dance and the Dawn, but it was great and the other attendees were fairly serious theatrical types who dressed to the nines and got very into character. It was also structured in such a way that there were a lot of simultaneous 1:1 interactions, which gave everyone a chance to participate and prevented any single player from dominating the game.)
* Longer games are better than shorter games because shorter games lack the time to establish characters or actually use mechanics
* I also don't like systems or settings that encourage PVP
Given that all I know about these games is basic information: the system, the time it's happening, the name of the DM, whether it's LARP or tabletop, how many players, whether it's kid-friendly, whether it's newbie-friendly, and a brief description of the scenario, what other guidelines can can I follow to choose the games I'm most likely to like, and are the guidelines that I've laid down for myself even accurate? Are there particular systems that are well suited to this style of play? The most popular systems that seem to be offered are Legend of the Five Rings, D&D 5th Edition, and Call of Cthulhu, but there's also a huge diversity of systems on offer, way too many to list. The specific convention is Kubla Con, in the Bay Area, just in case anyone has leads on particularly great DMs or games that they know are likely to be there. Thanks!
I don't have much experience with LARPs, but for tabletop, I'd recommend finding a game in FATE or the Cortex system.
FATE (either Core or Accelerated; they're different systems with the same approach) is designed for narrative-focused gaming: the story the group is collaborating on is the important thing, and the game structure works to make whatever details you decide are important, relevant to what happens. (Among other things, scenes get "aspects" that can give a bonus when you use them - so if the bar has an "overturned table" aspect, you can hide behind it, or trip someone over it, or pick it up and throw it at someone if you're very strong.) Bonus: The core rulebooks and a lot of accessories are free downloads.
Cortex was designed around licensed worlds: Supernatural, Smallworld, Firefly, Leverage, and a few others. The stats are designed to emulate that particular world, and allow players to create games that can roughly follow the original shows. There's also a couple of no-specific-world versions, one focused on drama-based stories (like Firefly) and one focused on action stories (like Leverage).
On tumblr, Propoketz' tabletop rpg recommendations may be worth looking at - he explains what RPGs are good for different gaming experiences, without being judgmental about any of them being "better" or "worse" than the others - he's aware that it's mostly a matter of "are you going to enjoy this?" not "does this game have lots of charts?"
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:26 PM on May 19, 2018
FATE (either Core or Accelerated; they're different systems with the same approach) is designed for narrative-focused gaming: the story the group is collaborating on is the important thing, and the game structure works to make whatever details you decide are important, relevant to what happens. (Among other things, scenes get "aspects" that can give a bonus when you use them - so if the bar has an "overturned table" aspect, you can hide behind it, or trip someone over it, or pick it up and throw it at someone if you're very strong.) Bonus: The core rulebooks and a lot of accessories are free downloads.
Cortex was designed around licensed worlds: Supernatural, Smallworld, Firefly, Leverage, and a few others. The stats are designed to emulate that particular world, and allow players to create games that can roughly follow the original shows. There's also a couple of no-specific-world versions, one focused on drama-based stories (like Firefly) and one focused on action stories (like Leverage).
On tumblr, Propoketz' tabletop rpg recommendations may be worth looking at - he explains what RPGs are good for different gaming experiences, without being judgmental about any of them being "better" or "worse" than the others - he's aware that it's mostly a matter of "are you going to enjoy this?" not "does this game have lots of charts?"
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:26 PM on May 19, 2018
Nthing FATE, especially FATE Accelerated. These systems are friendly and flexible enough that even newcomers usually get over the "rules freeze" pretty quickly and they make for some really fun one-shots.
If you're okay with rules-heavy systems and like a complex, immersive world, Shadowrun might be a good one for you to check out if you like fantasy cyberpunk. These sessions usually run longer and are pretty mechanically intense. Dungeon Crawl Classics (or any in that vein) might also be worth checking out, as they seem like they tick most of your boxes.
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:52 AM on May 21, 2018
If you're okay with rules-heavy systems and like a complex, immersive world, Shadowrun might be a good one for you to check out if you like fantasy cyberpunk. These sessions usually run longer and are pretty mechanically intense. Dungeon Crawl Classics (or any in that vein) might also be worth checking out, as they seem like they tick most of your boxes.
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:52 AM on May 21, 2018
Response by poster: For the benefit of anyone who sees this in the future:
I came back from the convention. I played 2 good games and 3 bad ones.
As far as I can tell, there was a 1:1 correlation between whether I liked the game and whether the GM wrote the scenario himself. The bad games involved GMs reading directly from the scenario sheets, and the good games involved them doing really fluid improvisation and interaction with the players. So my advice for future players is to look for GMs doing scenarios that don't appear to be pre-written, or where they have run the same scenario a bunch of times, and be especially cautious of setups where GMs are last-minute assigned or swapped between games.
Also, I also learned to seek out games that are meant to be played as one-shots. I stopped in for a couple of games that were part of larger campaigns, and they sucked because a) they were written by somebody else / pre-published, because most DMs don't have the time to write a major campaign for a convention, and as noted above the pre-written games are not as fun and b) the pacing is all fucked up if you are playing them as a one-shot. I was utterly confused when one game ended but practically nothing had happened -- and it turned out it was meant to be part 1 out of something like 70. Yeah, I wasn't going to be playing the 70 game campaign and it was totally unsatisfying on its own.
Finally I was also surprised by how much the *tone* of the game mattered to me. I love a combination of seriousness and lightheartedness, and it turned out to be a good idea to sign up for games whose description matched that -- I had an absolute blast. By contrast, when I signed up for something with a setting that was Srs Bizness, I found it to be kind of a drag.
posted by phoenixy at 10:24 PM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
I came back from the convention. I played 2 good games and 3 bad ones.
As far as I can tell, there was a 1:1 correlation between whether I liked the game and whether the GM wrote the scenario himself. The bad games involved GMs reading directly from the scenario sheets, and the good games involved them doing really fluid improvisation and interaction with the players. So my advice for future players is to look for GMs doing scenarios that don't appear to be pre-written, or where they have run the same scenario a bunch of times, and be especially cautious of setups where GMs are last-minute assigned or swapped between games.
Also, I also learned to seek out games that are meant to be played as one-shots. I stopped in for a couple of games that were part of larger campaigns, and they sucked because a) they were written by somebody else / pre-published, because most DMs don't have the time to write a major campaign for a convention, and as noted above the pre-written games are not as fun and b) the pacing is all fucked up if you are playing them as a one-shot. I was utterly confused when one game ended but practically nothing had happened -- and it turned out it was meant to be part 1 out of something like 70. Yeah, I wasn't going to be playing the 70 game campaign and it was totally unsatisfying on its own.
Finally I was also surprised by how much the *tone* of the game mattered to me. I love a combination of seriousness and lightheartedness, and it turned out to be a good idea to sign up for games whose description matched that -- I had an absolute blast. By contrast, when I signed up for something with a setting that was Srs Bizness, I found it to be kind of a drag.
posted by phoenixy at 10:24 PM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
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I felt the same way until I began to think of gaming conventions principally as learning experiences: samplers, demos, etc. Like, for LARPs, read the descriptions and pick what makes you think, "I wonder how they'll handle that." And for RPGs, same--or try a system you haven't played before. The results are sometimes awkward and sometimes awesome, but either way, you'll usually gain insight into what you might try with a group of gamers you know better, some of whom you might meet at the convention. Oh, you could also try poking around the Wayback Machine for schedules from previous years. Some of my favorite convention experiences were GM'ed by folks who returned year after year with a particular style/theme they knew how to handle really well.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:05 AM on May 19, 2018 [2 favorites]