[Burnsaber]

Holy crap! This thread just got into epic levels. I never thought that there would be so many replies.

Originally Posted by atul

I own WFRP core book, have only GM'ed a couple sessions though. It has both great and poor sides, I especially like the class progression where you actually take a trade and advance instead of some concept. On the poor side, all the mechanics really rub it on that you're playing a RP version of a tabletop wargame.

The core rules need..some fine-tuning, I admit. But RPG's are 90% setting and 10% rules. Besides, doing some fine-tuning to the rules is pretty easy. Like you probably saw, the early levels are pretty painful because none of the players can really do anything well. At least the first career serves as a lesson in 'humility' as one of the players is bound to lose a fate point. I circumvented the first career problems it by giving a lot of circumstance bonuses and some extra exp until they hit their second career.

The character generation is pure gold, like you mentioned. At least it was to me as GM when my players rolled their guys. The excitment! The pure multitude of options! My first group was: 1) Dwarf Miner, 2) Elf Outlaw, 3) Human Apprentice Wizard, 4) Human Squire. I was pretty surprised, they rolled quite a good “adventuring” party. My other group was a lot more down-to-earth thought: 1) Halfling Merchant 2) Elf Messenger 3) Human Fisherman, 4) Human Servant (Waitress, to be exact).

Originally Posted by atul

Dunno about recommendations. Paranoia's always good for laughs, and actually that Finnish rpg Stalker seemed pretty interesting. Haven't played it though.

Heh, Paranoia is pretty funny. And I've only read the book! Haven't had the chance to play. I'll have to take it up one time with my veteran group sometime. Every time I think of the nuclear hand grenade (you can throw it to only to a maximum 50 meters and it has explosion radius of 200 meters), I simply explode.. to laughter.

Originally Posted by atul

Usually there are, though at least some university gaming groups are a bit... strange.

At least I didn't join my Uni's group because of the vibes I got from few of the regulars. But they're worth checking out, anyway.

I personally restarted rpgs only after finding like-minded people at work. Has worked fine, thus far.

Yeah, the 'creeps' can be, well, creepy. Internet is full of horror stories about creepy players, I once spent a day reading a thread dedicated to these players in some RPG forums. The horror.. *shudder*

Luckily I haven't bumped into anything really bad. I've had generally bad players (“backround? Couldn't care less”, powergamers, etc..), worst was this one player with some power gaming tendencies who had the habit of raising a temper whenever his character didn't perform as well as he presumed.

Work seems like a 'safe' place to recruit players, now that you mention it.

Originally Posted by Lavaere

I've read loads of RPG system books, but since its just me and my older brother. You can't really have that much play the P&P game.
Cyberpunk was a nice one, as I use to like playing as a Netrunner.
Another would be the Mystara setting for D&D.

And never could find a group online to stick around long enough to play a game session over aim or something. I've just tended to do freeform roleplaying with a couple friends. I think if you can be creative enough and like stories, roleplaying something like that without rules. And with people who will actually let there characters take damage bring out some really also stories.

I've never really played a 0% rules game. Could be interesting, thought. I probably aren't good enough GM to create something like that and make it work.

The most important part about rules is that they flow well. Every time you need to check something from a book, the rules aren't actually helping, just being a nuisance. One of the reasons why I moved away from D&D was the constant need to check rules. There were just so many of the damned things!

Originally Posted by Dragar

I love rpgs, haven't played in a while unfortunately it's not so much about what thee game is as the group of players, very difficult to get a really good group together and keep them together! To be honest I've had years of mediocre rpging with small windows of brilliance that were the highlights of my gaming light. They aren't necessarily the best games, but the most fun I've had has been with first ed DnD, Vampire: The Masquerade, d6 Star Wars and Alternity. I've played far mroe dnD that anything else, lots of 3 and 3.5, but I do find the game lacking a bit - or in all likelihood the group wasn't up to scratch

If anyone has a good group going in Perth I'm keen!

Yeah, getting a good group is hard. Even one disruptive player is enough to spoil the fun for everyone. One thing I have noticed is that the players have to get along well even outside the game. When every player is friends with every other players (no “friends of a friend”) it's very easy to get along. Social meetings with no-RPG:ing are good to bring the group closer.

Originally Posted by Demantiae

My advice for using the setting as a backdrop would be to focus on a small part of the Dominions lore. Rather than throwing in all the nations of the game and flooding players with information just focus on one or two of them, and a couple others that thematically fit your campaign as neighbouring realms.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Besides, figuring out why a C'tissian Lizardman, Caelum birdman, Abyssian and a Ashdod Anakite are travelling together might be tough. Sounds more like a build-up to a joke than a PC party. Besides, most of the dom3 races won't really make good player characters. Caelumian with the ability to fly is tough to make work, but perhaps plausible. But a Jotun PC, for example? No way. If I were to make a campaign on dom3 world, it probably would be mostly about humans trying to simply survive with all this epic stuff going around (of course, the more they try to escape, the more tangled up they get in the epic mess). But that just might be my WRFP experience talking.

“Elemental” based magic of dom3 also could play out well. Characters with supernatural powers work best when their powers are limited in both power and diversity. D&D wizards are basically best at everything with the right selection of spells (“oh, you have put all your skill ranks in Climb. I don't have to do really anything and still I'm better at it than you ever can be.” 'Spider Climb'), another reason why I changed system.

If a mage character started with say Water 1 magic, he'd only be able to cast water spells, which can be quite limited in function. When he levels up it might a tough choice to either diversify in another path (to get spells with a wider range of functions) or just take up another level of water. Note that this Water 1 magic probably wouldn't be the same "power-level" as W1 on dom3 mage, more like 0,5 water.