Real RPGs
 

Does anyone play "real" RPGs anymore, like D&D, Call of Cthulhu, any pen and paper games? I've just gotten back into playing Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, but I used to play WAAAAAAAAAAAAY back when D&D first edition was out. My highest level character that I started at first level was my 10th level cleric.

All I see in the RPG section are posts for video games and I was just wondering if anyone still sits around a table with their friends and rolls a handful of dice.

Nah sorry, I only play Fake RPGs.

I think what you mean are Traditional RPGs, as you mention Pen and Paper. As far as those go, I never got into D&D, as the whole medieval setting along with Wizards and Elves and other traditional fantasy stuff was just thrown into every damm game at that time, and It just turned me off to that kind of thing. Closest I came to those are when I briefly tried out Magic The Gathering.

So why are pen and paper RPGs real and not digital ones?

My life is a -real- RPG, only I level up when I graduate, acquire money by paycheck. Only drawback is when I die, no Phoenix Down can help.

I'm kidding. I tried pen and paper RPGs in 2001. Although it was great, sessions were not that frequent and it was bombed after only 7 weeks.

Yeah, I still run some pen and paper stuff. Mostly ShadowRun, though Deeds Not Words sneaks in there, too. I'm actually a contributor (or was, pre-sale by FASA) to ShadowRun books, and had a hand in the 2nd module's character creation stuff. The mathematical style of character creation was worked on by a guy that runs in my group, and we put together a lot of the logistics of it and then tossed it over to FASA who refined it and made it work for their system.

I still think ShadowRun, with a proper GM, is by far the best system kicking around out there--though all this 4th gen stuff is touchy--and can hold up to pretty much anyone. Unfortunately most people turn it into a firefight-laden gunfest and ruin the point.

The only difference between pen and paper RPGs and digital ones are that the whole setting is created by the DM and imagined by the players. I find that no digital graphic can compare to what we imagine. I think that is why when you read a book, the movie never compares to it, because what to are watching is only one person's inturpertation (I know I spelled that wrong) of the setting.

Plus, you can add your own personallity into your character in a P&P game, you can't do that in a video game.

The big drawback, as Terminus pointed out, is getting all your friends together in one place.

Pen and Paper RPGS are super fun - yes, IF you have a group of committed players. What I found was that it doesn't have to soley be focused on that. You could spend a 5 hour session to play a round, go watch a Friday night movie, and then come back to the house Saturday and carry on. After that you could play action video games together.

There's several elements to make a P&P RPG workable:

1) Frequent weekly meetings. This is probably one of the more crucial aspects, as if people tend to get lazy even over "fun" events if they don't do it on schedule.

2) DM must be organized, and should keep copies of the players card stats, so he has records of the players stats so they don't try to erase their stats and make it up. Although this might be seemed as a breach of trust, each player would be held up against the DM, therefore it should be uniform.

3) Play with friends. It sounds trite and obvious, but for most RPGS, you're playing together as a team, not as a poker game. Playing with strangers and fearing of how they'd react should you try some daring stuff might not go so well.

Sorry, I'm not touching that line of phrasing that question with a 10 foot pole. That's just asking for trouble.

As for actual pen and paper RPG's, no, but I've had the chance to see them in action both at gameshops and anime conventions. Dedicated bunch, I'll say that much. Actually, one of my old roommates was really into it and I played a game with him just for the hell of it...He actually got offended when I decided to use a miniature green plastic martian for a game piece. I told him it was a dwarf. I remember he said "okay, if you roll a 1-3*, you miss. 4-5, you do some damage, 6 you kill my guy with your...uh, laser". I don't think I've ever rolled that many 6's in my life. :tpg:

Email ones are rather cool...I did one many years ago and we had a good run before in-fighting and "god-moding" (whatever it's called) set in...Basically, all of the good players (the ones who were working good together) quit and left the "know it alls" (the guys who spent "over 10 years doing this kind of stuff") to argue amongst themselves.

*I forget the actual numbers and it may have been a 20 sided dice, but that was basically the breakdown.

I used to do P&P RPGs, but this is the first I've ever heard of an e-mail RPG....

Anyway, a lot of the people who used to play D&D have either moved or have families and can't meet anymore.

Me, I'm just too busy, and the only time I can play ANY games is about 3AM. I don't think too many meets will happen then.

In high school, back in the day, we played 2nd edition D&D every day for a year during lunch. That was great because we had a set time each day. It was great; we sat around drinking dandelion wine & eating beef jerky out of these 2 grocery bags. There was about 10 lbs. of spicy jerky & 10 lbs. of plain jerky, so that lasted for about 2 months. :tpg:

The problem was, as it always is, that someone wants to be "special." In our case, it was a lamer who only wanted to be chaotic neutral so there was a chance that at any given moment he would flip out and kill one of our characters. Seriously, out of our small group of 5 everyone turned out fairly normal, but last I heard, that guy was living under a bridge in another state... :erm:

I think PnP gaming is healthier for kids than video gaming; as such, I have always been amazed at the stigma that has been attached to it. I guess for many people there is a stigma attached to video games as well, but the number of people who feel that way seems to be dwindling rapidly...

I started playing again P&P D&D with the same people that I stopped playing with like 20 years ago. It is alot of fun, playing with friends rather than strangers. Strangers (even in the multi-player video game RPGs) get easily offened and report you to a DM and you get in trouble, not fun. To me, the fun of an RPG is doing things and acting in ways that you never would in real life. I play by the rules and am nice to other people every day of my life, P&P gives me (and my friends) a chance to kick back and be a-holes to each other the way we never could in a video game.

It is harder to get a game going in P&P, we only play about once a month, but I find it light years more rewarding and the characters that we create, more real, then when we used to play EverQuest online together.

I tried joining an already-in-progress game of D&D once, but I stopped showing up because I was too intimidated by being the new guy. I got the sense that the current players were annoyed by having to wait for everyone to show up, go through manuals for whatever idea they had that week, work out the calculus on their character sheets, and all the other stuff that went into just getting the game started. So none of them seemed very thrilled at the idea of helping a newbie along on top of all that. I sat in for three meetings and all that happened was I felt increasingly left out as I failed to penetrate the barrier of geek jargon being tossed around. It was a little amusing seeing some real geek trivia debates between a bunch of clones of that comic shop guy from The Simpsons, though.

Now I just play Werewolf. I'd like to try something like D&D again, because I need help with the whole "interacting with people face-to-face" deal, but only if the others in the group were also newbies or, you know, somewhat inviting.

To play any P&P RPG you have to be playing with people you are comfortable with. If you are playing with strangers, it's not going to be fun, even if you know all the rules. In alot of ways, it is alot tougher than playing video game RPGs, but if you have a good group, you can have much more fun.

I started playing 3rd edition D&D and D20 Modern back in high school, but haven't been able to find a decent group since then. Since I started only about two years before 3.5 was released I'm not really interested in buying all new manuals to accomodate the few small changes that were made.

Definitely true. I managed to find an okay group at school last semester, but just kinda felt like an outsider the whole time. The DM and one of the players had been friends for ages and the two girls already knew them pretty well from living in the dorms. It was difficult trying to concentrate on the game when it felt like I was constantly one step behind all of them. Later on the DM just had to date the Rogue girl, and as usual when they broke up the campaign was over for good.

I've been checking out the local comic shops, but those campaigns are always full already.

Another difference I found about video RPGs is after I finish them, I have no memory of playing them. I can't look back years later and have warm, fuzzy memories of the fun and trouble my character caused; where-as playing D&D, I have tons and tons of laugh-out-loud stories that me ,or my friends, bring up years later.

Now I am lucky if I can get these friends together once a month. I use video game RPGs to fill in the time inbetween, but they could never take the place of live-RPGs IMO.

Have any of you played Hero Scape? That was a good "real RPG" I guess. I played it through all the way once. Everytime I tried to play it again, I and everyone else gets bored and ends up quitting, because the game is so fricken long, tedious, hard to set up, and it's easy to argue about your "range of sight" and other things.

Another Note: I think the "RPGs" we play on the screen were named "RPGs" first. Let me know if I'm wrong, but if that's true then the pen and paper stuff weren't really "RPGs", right?

Role Playing Game predates screen based RPGs by decades, Maestro. Just compare D&D to Nintendo in terms of release dates.

Wow, you know what? You're right. That's pretty interesting. Hero Scape is considered and RPG, right? Or, it might be a strategy game...because you do have multiple characters. What about Risk? That's probably a strategy too.

the only RPG games i play are really Final Fantasy and sometimes Star Ocean

to be honest i don't know the difference between real and fake RPG's

Why do you even bother posting then?

I'm still playing some D&D with my brother and some friends every now and then. (Munchkin variants are cool too even if they tend to become boring too fast.) I never thought about joining a campaign though. I'm too much of a casual player. ;)

Yeah, I'm pretty into the whole table top RPG scene. There are a ton of systems other than D&D/d20 though. Go to your local gaming/comic shop and just look around see what systems look interesting.

One I really like is Spirit of the Century. It's for modeling characters in the style of 1920s pulp fiction. You might have like a crazy mad scientist or an ace combat fighter pilot. It's pretty sweet.

There are alot of other settings other than D&D but you need to find the players for them. :( Unless you know a place where they play, or know someone that knows, you're pretty much screwed.

ShadowRun = Win. Come to terms with this and move on.

I would of been involved in something like Vampire (which over 100 people play around here) but it was too time consuming due to work and other things, but for the few rounds I did play basically as an extra body it was decent enough to go back to.

Do you guys know any good sites allowing online play (via forum)? I played quite often before I left poland and it would be a lie if I say I don't miss PnP RPG! Even the most advanced game engine won't beat the feeling and fun connected with live RPG, as you can do everything there, no bounds (maybe except you imagination and GM concept ;p). I don't expect anyone here would be interested in playing any online session (this would require a GM and I'm not a good one)? If a miracle will happen and somebody will be volunteer I can play basically any system.