7 ms·

I'm not sure if it's resurrecting, or just improving it's image, either way it's welcome. Still, it is sad that it is so focused on one game: D&D. It's a decent

by sago 9y ago

I'm not sure if it's resurrecting, or just improving it's image, either way it's welcome. Still, it is sad that it is so focused on one game: D&D. It's a decent game, particularly fifth edition, but I can't help finding it a bit... um, artless. Which isn't a problem, sometimes that's fun. But when there are so many amazing and sophisticated RPGs, with game mechanics that expand the form and support interesting play, it is a shame that DnD still gets all the focus. I'd love to see more love for 'Night Witches', 'Dogs in the Vineyard', 'My life with Master', 'The Beast', 'Hillfolk', 'The Clay that Woke' even 'Apocalypse World', or 'Fate'. It's like programming languages, sure you can do anything in D&D (≈ Java, perhaps?), but other games have different strengths. Sometimes, being into non D&D RPGs can feel like people saying "there's more than one programming language?"

mikepurvis 9y ago
As a total noob to all of this, where would I go to find helpful commentary on how these different games compare to each other and what they offer?
- ceades 9y ago
  A good start would be the beginners guide on /rpg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/beginnersguide https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/beginnersguide If you've never seen how a particular game works and want to get a feel, search around and watch an episode or two of the game online. Rollplay on Youtube has a good channel that covers a lot of different types of games. You can also find games on Roll20's channel as well, and many more on Twitch and other channels. As for game types, many of the ones listed here are very tailored games meant to play a very specific kind of game. I'll try to give you a summary of some of the popular ones. Apocalypse World (AW) is a game, as you'd expect, about playing as a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting. Night Witches is a varient of AW about a female bomber squadron in WWII. Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about faithful 'God's Watchdogs' that go around Mormon-esque towns helping the community and enforcing the judgments of their religion. Fate Accelerated or Fate Core is a mostly generic system meant to tell a lot of different kinds of stories. Fate Accelerated specifically is a very short and very flexible rulebook for whatever you could imagine. D&D or Pathfinder are games about playing a group of adventurers in a tolkien-esque fantasy world, generally combat focused but you can play a lot of kinds of campaigns in D&D. Dungeon World is a 'rules-lite' version of D&D based on the AW ruleset, which basically means it has a lot less rules and is more focused on the collective narrative. Shadowrun is a game about telling cyberpunk heist stories in a fantasy/cyberpunk futuristic city run by megacorporations. Blades in the Dark is a game about a scoundrel crew building their gang up from scratch in a city roughly based on the Thief or Dishonored games. There's many more out there, it just depends on the kind of experience your group wants to have. Many of these rulesets are wildly different and the rules are tailored to create a specific kind of experience. Some of these rulesets are more generic and meant to be used to play a wide variety of games. Some are 'rules heavy/crunchy' which involve a lot more mechanics while some are 'rules light' and deliberately involve much less. D&D, Fate, Pathfinder are examples of more generic rulesets, whereas Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Night Witches, or Dogs in the Vineyard are much more specific.
  - sago 9y ago
    Great summaries. To round out my examples: In "My life with Master" the party play the henchmen of an evil master. It explores ideas of culpability, fear, self-loathing, humanity and, possibly, redemption. It is the only role-playing game to give me heart ache. Literally, pathos I felt as a physical reaction. "The Clay that Woke", another by Paul Czege, concerns a race of Minotaurs, more physically powerful but utterly subjugated by humans. It explores themes of racism, power, imperialism, and ethics. Not quite as good MLWM, but very much worth playing. I added "The Beast" to go all in on a game totally unlike D&D. It is a single player game, using cards and a diary, with an erotic theme, and dark overtones. I haven't finished my play through, and I'm not sure I recommend it, quite, but it has got under my skin. "Hillfolk" is Robin D Law's 'Drama system', essentially game mechanics built around generating interesting interpersonal conflict. The setting is Iron Age subsistence, but it includes several other settings, from horror to modern life.
    - cpeterso 9y ago
      http://www.story-games.com/ http://www.story-games.com/ is a forum for indie game players and designers, including some who wrote some of the games mentioned in this thread.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Funny mix of games, as most of them are rather new in RPG terms, while Shadowrun has been around since the 80s (and has maintained a mostly coherent timeline since first release).
- fibo 9y ago
  I cannot suggest a comparison list. I can tell you I played D&D but I liked more Stormbringer (both are Fantasy) and even more Cyberpunk2020.
dcw303 9y ago
If we're going to go off on a tangent of comparing rpgs to programming languages, I fondly remember GMing a Paranoia campaign back in the day where I took great delight in breaking the rules to kill off the player's clones in quick and gruesome succession. And then they all had lots of fun backstabbing each other to death. I guess you'd call that RPG the equivalent of INTERCAL.
- andybak 9y ago
  The Paranoia rulebooks were a joy to read. Comedic masterpieces in themselves.
  - labster 9y ago
    Dissemination of classified material from Paranoia rulebooks is treason, citizen.
    - viridian 9y ago
      Typically though, if a blue or green or what have you reveals information that is classified to infrareds, the solution is just to execute the infrareds.
pfooti 9y ago
We've got this amazing supply of great and interesting RPG engines out now, which I think the broad internet community (just people getting together to DIY stuff) and crowdfunding (lots of these systems are kickstarted) sort of came together to support. That said, I think that most systems authors need to start with a paragraph or two about "why this RPG engine is necessary, instead of making it work as a plugin to GURPS / Fate / d20 / Apocalypse world." There's a lot of good reasons to do this, but there's also a lot of cruddy systems with half-baked rules that are ripe for rules-lawyering and just bad implementation details (looking at you, FFG Star Wars). Writing a well-crafted, minimal-bug RPG engine is similar to writing a front end framework or something along those lines.
- sago 9y ago
  I mostly agree, as a long-time FUDGE fan. And recently it's been interesting to see how much AW has captured the imagination of the indie community. It just really seems to work, and we're seeing it pop-up in so many other places. I've been absolutely adoring Night Witches this year, for example. I slightly disagree, only inasmuch as I like to see exploration and innovation. Sometimes you're right it really doesn't work, But setting specific mechanics are important, sometimes essential, if very difficult to get right. Call of Cthulhu never worked in it's d20 incarnation, imho. Sometimes, I think, it is better to try and fail, than to take the safer route.
  - pfooti 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm also in favor of experimentation and a rich ecosystem of ideas. Worst case is one of those heavily-contextual rpg engines that only lives in one system, such as Rotted Capes. It's an okay enough system (but mathematically flawed in some ways), and a pretty neat idea (zombie and b-list superhero mashup), but it would be considerably better if it were built on a different game engine. Then the author could spend more time building out the world and storyline, instead of making lists of superpowers and stuff. Even then, though, I often back stuff on Kickstarter at the PDF level knowing full well what I'll really be doing is mining the product for ideas, setting, and story rather than mechanics. Then again, I'm probably just like one of those people who says, "why would you write code in anything but LISP?"
glogla 9y ago
Try Nobilis or Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. It's something completely new again - no dice rolls and more about "what do you do with power?" than "what can you do?". Oh and the author has incredible command of English so it read like poetry, and she has PhD in Computer Science and it shows - the games are modular, the algorithms are precise, etc.
- sago 9y ago
  Thanks. I've not read or played Chuubo, but my 1ed Nobilis is a prize possession! A wonderful achievement, and seminal, at least for my journey in the hobby. Though I'm tempted to say mechanically now it does feel a little tired (or perhaps my memory is biased, it's been quite a few years since I played it). James Wallace (of Hogshead as was, who published Nobilis, and other really groundbreaking games like De Profundis, and his own Adventures of Baron Munchausen) has been slow-motion (i.e. mostly failing at) releasing an interesting game "Alas Vegas" via kickstarter for a few years now. Given the esteem he was held in at one point, it's a shame to see so many folks who felt burned by the kickstarter. His publishing decisions definitely helped get the hobby where it is today. Nobilis being a particularly good example.
- messel 9y ago
  I'll give these a look, I also highly recommend Amber diceless (based on Zelazney's books)
  - zacclark 9y ago
    Nobilis was heavily inspired both by the world in Zelazney's Amber books, and also by that system. If you like Amber diceless you'll probably enjoy it.
  - bartvk 9y ago
    Wow, it's been some time since I've seen that RPG mentioned. I have it, unplayed but very much read from back to back. For some reason, we stick to 5E currently.
malloryerik 9y ago
Maybe then a new game could be related to D&D as Clojure is to Java? Like, built on the D&D runtime?
- a-saleh 9y ago
  Ha, there actually are engines, that many of the new RPGs share. But I am not sure D&D (or at least 5e) is well suited for being a base for many different games, because i.m.o. it has a strong focus on combat. If you want a game with lot of encounters with monsters to defeat, getting more and more powerful to defeat even harder enemies, with combat system that is not overly complex but still tactical, you definitely could (and maybe even should) base your game on D&D Heroic fantasy works. I could imagine Witcher, or Monster Hunter, even aliens style sci-fi reskin, fighting monsters in derelict space-ships should work... but i.e. Shadow of the Colossus would be harder, and Game of Thrones style political intrigue might turn into really simplistic dice-rolls. But this is probably true of many games, i.e. I heard that Fate is really good if you want to do something with a structure of action-adventure tv-show, but probably not a psychological horror :P But doing i.e. politics in that system might be more fun than in i.e. base 5e D&D. Probably the most succesful engine I have seen is in the powered-by-the-apocalypse games. Apocalypse World invented a really simple base machanic, where if your character wants to accomplish something, you roll two 6-sided die, sum the numbers, and if it is 10/11/12, you just do the thing, if it is 7/8/9, you do the thing, but something bad happens, and if it is 1 to 6, you don't do the thing and something bad happens. Probably my favourite system I have played so far :-)
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > you roll two 6-sided die, sum the numbers, and if it is 10/11/12, you just do the thing, if it is 7/8/9, you do the thing, but something bad happens, and if it is 1 to 6, you don't do the thing and something bad happens Seems too similar to my real life experience. That's uncanny.
  - dzdt 9y ago
    And if the sum is 1, something REALLY bad happens? ;^)
digi_owl 9y ago
I am of two mind of some of those games. They seem to have taken the role out of roleplaying, and instead involve a group of authors gambling over who gets to write the next page or so of story.
- sago 9y ago
  Which, specifically? I chose them because, in my experience, they have deeper roleplaying than vanilla D&D (which, in the old threefold model is much more simulationist).
ghostDancer 9y ago
I found this game Rêve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%AAve:_the_Dream_Ouroboros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%AAve:_the_Dream_Ouroboros and it was different but not easy to be the DM.
tehwalrus 9y ago
> "It's like programming languages, sure you can do anything in D&D (≈ Java, perhaps?)" I love it. But I would choose different languages: AD&D: C D&D 3.5: C++ D&D 4: Java/C# D&D 5: C++11 Fate Core: Python :)
- KON_Air 9y ago
  C# should cover everything (or GURPS), it can do anything, if you can keep up with its caprices (a billion rulebooks) and afford the hardware (7/24 caffeine injections) to keep it going.
  - tehwalrus 9y ago
    I would compare GURPS to lisp, given that it tried to encompass any possibility with increasing complexity!
- Yuioup 9y ago
  D&D First Edition is Assembly?
  - artimaeis 9y ago
    I think most of the time AD&D is referred to as First Edition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Drago... But to extend on your point - maybe Original D&D is like Forth in this analogy?
    - walshemj 9y ago
      depends when you started 1st ed for me was the 3 brown books
- artimaeis 9y ago
  In fairness to Java/C# I think D&D 4 might be better represented as Scratch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)
norlys 9y ago
Actually, D&D is a very American thing. In Germany we have a pretty active Pen & Paper scene as well, but D&D is not so common. Instead, the "major" system is DSA (The Black Eye). But I have a feeling that we have a higher variety of systems played on this side of the sea. I played D&D once and didn't like it that much. Too much focus on being the hero, too much encouragement of powergaming for my taste. But that might be a cultural thing as well.
- dagw 9y ago
  I disagree that (A)D&D was a very American thing. Certainly in Norway and Sweden it was huge (or at least as huge as pen & paper rpgs can be) when I was growing up. Sweden did have its own RPG home grown scene going on with both the other D&D (Drakar & Demoner) and Mutant being quite popular, but on the whole I'd say AD&D was by far the most popular game.
- ddoran 9y ago
  It was (is?) big in Britain and Ireland too. Maybe it's an English-language thing?
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  As an avid boardgamer, I've noticed there's a big difference between American and European board games (and probably also table top RPG frameworks) in the sense that the American tendency is to favour luck and hail Mary rolls to save the day. Eurogames tend to be focused on resource management and long term strategy. So definitely a cultural thing. Both systems do have their merits, but "rolling for combat" is traditionally associated with "Ameritrash" games, a term used both lovingly and derogatorily. I see that The Dark Eye does use rolling for combat, but it calculates armour differently, in a more predictable manner (for example, in D&D armour makes you less likely to be hit, whereas in The Dark Eye it makes you take less damage) which I think demonstrates the different tendencies.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 9y ago

by sago 9y ago

mikepurvis 9y ago

As a total noob to all of this, where would I go to find helpful commentary on how these different games compare to each other and what they offer?

ceades 9y ago
A good start would be the beginners guide on /rpg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/beginnersguide https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/beginnersguide If you've never seen how a particular game works and want to get a feel, search around and watch an episode or two of the game online. Rollplay on Youtube has a good channel that covers a lot of different types of games. You can also find games on Roll20's channel as well, and many more on Twitch and other channels. As for game types, many of the ones listed here are very tailored games meant to play a very specific kind of game. I'll try to give you a summary of some of the popular ones. Apocalypse World (AW) is a game, as you'd expect, about playing as a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting. Night Witches is a varient of AW about a female bomber squadron in WWII. Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about faithful 'God's Watchdogs' that go around Mormon-esque towns helping the community and enforcing the judgments of their religion. Fate Accelerated or Fate Core is a mostly generic system meant to tell a lot of different kinds of stories. Fate Accelerated specifically is a very short and very flexible rulebook for whatever you could imagine. D&D or Pathfinder are games about playing a group of adventurers in a tolkien-esque fantasy world, generally combat focused but you can play a lot of kinds of campaigns in D&D. Dungeon World is a 'rules-lite' version of D&D based on the AW ruleset, which basically means it has a lot less rules and is more focused on the collective narrative. Shadowrun is a game about telling cyberpunk heist stories in a fantasy/cyberpunk futuristic city run by megacorporations. Blades in the Dark is a game about a scoundrel crew building their gang up from scratch in a city roughly based on the Thief or Dishonored games. There's many more out there, it just depends on the kind of experience your group wants to have. Many of these rulesets are wildly different and the rules are tailored to create a specific kind of experience. Some of these rulesets are more generic and meant to be used to play a wide variety of games. Some are 'rules heavy/crunchy' which involve a lot more mechanics while some are 'rules light' and deliberately involve much less. D&D, Fate, Pathfinder are examples of more generic rulesets, whereas Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Night Witches, or Dogs in the Vineyard are much more specific.
- sago 9y ago
  Great summaries. To round out my examples: In "My life with Master" the party play the henchmen of an evil master. It explores ideas of culpability, fear, self-loathing, humanity and, possibly, redemption. It is the only role-playing game to give me heart ache. Literally, pathos I felt as a physical reaction. "The Clay that Woke", another by Paul Czege, concerns a race of Minotaurs, more physically powerful but utterly subjugated by humans. It explores themes of racism, power, imperialism, and ethics. Not quite as good MLWM, but very much worth playing. I added "The Beast" to go all in on a game totally unlike D&D. It is a single player game, using cards and a diary, with an erotic theme, and dark overtones. I haven't finished my play through, and I'm not sure I recommend it, quite, but it has got under my skin. "Hillfolk" is Robin D Law's 'Drama system', essentially game mechanics built around generating interesting interpersonal conflict. The setting is Iron Age subsistence, but it includes several other settings, from horror to modern life.
  - cpeterso 9y ago
    http://www.story-games.com/ http://www.story-games.com/ is a forum for indie game players and designers, including some who wrote some of the games mentioned in this thread.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Funny mix of games, as most of them are rather new in RPG terms, while Shadowrun has been around since the 80s (and has maintained a mostly coherent timeline since first release).
fibo 9y ago
I cannot suggest a comparison list. I can tell you I played D&D but I liked more Stormbringer (both are Fantasy) and even more Cyberpunk2020.

dcw303 9y ago

If we're going to go off on a tangent of comparing rpgs to programming languages, I fondly remember GMing a Paranoia campaign back in the day where I took great delight in breaking the rules to kill off the player's clones in quick and gruesome succession. And then they all had lots of fun backstabbing each other to death. I guess you'd call that RPG the equivalent of INTERCAL.

andybak 9y ago
The Paranoia rulebooks were a joy to read. Comedic masterpieces in themselves.
- labster 9y ago
  Dissemination of classified material from Paranoia rulebooks is treason, citizen.
  - viridian 9y ago
    Typically though, if a blue or green or what have you reveals information that is classified to infrareds, the solution is just to execute the infrareds.

pfooti 9y ago

We've got this amazing supply of great and interesting RPG engines out now, which I think the broad internet community (just people getting together to DIY stuff) and crowdfunding (lots of these systems are kickstarted) sort of came together to support. That said, I think that most systems authors need to start with a paragraph or two about "why this RPG engine is necessary, instead of making it work as a plugin to GURPS / Fate / d20 / Apocalypse world." There's a lot of good reasons to do this, but there's also a lot of cruddy systems with half-baked rules that are ripe for rules-lawyering and just bad implementation details (looking at you, FFG Star Wars). Writing a well-crafted, minimal-bug RPG engine is similar to writing a front end framework or something along those lines.

sago 9y ago
I mostly agree, as a long-time FUDGE fan. And recently it's been interesting to see how much AW has captured the imagination of the indie community. It just really seems to work, and we're seeing it pop-up in so many other places. I've been absolutely adoring Night Witches this year, for example. I slightly disagree, only inasmuch as I like to see exploration and innovation. Sometimes you're right it really doesn't work, But setting specific mechanics are important, sometimes essential, if very difficult to get right. Call of Cthulhu never worked in it's d20 incarnation, imho. Sometimes, I think, it is better to try and fail, than to take the safer route.
- pfooti 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm also in favor of experimentation and a rich ecosystem of ideas. Worst case is one of those heavily-contextual rpg engines that only lives in one system, such as Rotted Capes. It's an okay enough system (but mathematically flawed in some ways), and a pretty neat idea (zombie and b-list superhero mashup), but it would be considerably better if it were built on a different game engine. Then the author could spend more time building out the world and storyline, instead of making lists of superpowers and stuff. Even then, though, I often back stuff on Kickstarter at the PDF level knowing full well what I'll really be doing is mining the product for ideas, setting, and story rather than mechanics. Then again, I'm probably just like one of those people who says, "why would you write code in anything but LISP?"

glogla 9y ago

Try Nobilis or Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. It's something completely new again - no dice rolls and more about "what do you do with power?" than "what can you do?". Oh and the author has incredible command of English so it read like poetry, and she has PhD in Computer Science and it shows - the games are modular, the algorithms are precise, etc.

sago 9y ago
Thanks. I've not read or played Chuubo, but my 1ed Nobilis is a prize possession! A wonderful achievement, and seminal, at least for my journey in the hobby. Though I'm tempted to say mechanically now it does feel a little tired (or perhaps my memory is biased, it's been quite a few years since I played it). James Wallace (of Hogshead as was, who published Nobilis, and other really groundbreaking games like De Profundis, and his own Adventures of Baron Munchausen) has been slow-motion (i.e. mostly failing at) releasing an interesting game "Alas Vegas" via kickstarter for a few years now. Given the esteem he was held in at one point, it's a shame to see so many folks who felt burned by the kickstarter. His publishing decisions definitely helped get the hobby where it is today. Nobilis being a particularly good example.
messel 9y ago
I'll give these a look, I also highly recommend Amber diceless (based on Zelazney's books)
- zacclark 9y ago
  Nobilis was heavily inspired both by the world in Zelazney's Amber books, and also by that system. If you like Amber diceless you'll probably enjoy it.
- bartvk 9y ago
  Wow, it's been some time since I've seen that RPG mentioned. I have it, unplayed but very much read from back to back. For some reason, we stick to 5E currently.

malloryerik 9y ago

Maybe then a new game could be related to D&D as Clojure is to Java? Like, built on the D&D runtime?

a-saleh 9y ago
Ha, there actually are engines, that many of the new RPGs share. But I am not sure D&D (or at least 5e) is well suited for being a base for many different games, because i.m.o. it has a strong focus on combat. If you want a game with lot of encounters with monsters to defeat, getting more and more powerful to defeat even harder enemies, with combat system that is not overly complex but still tactical, you definitely could (and maybe even should) base your game on D&D Heroic fantasy works. I could imagine Witcher, or Monster Hunter, even aliens style sci-fi reskin, fighting monsters in derelict space-ships should work... but i.e. Shadow of the Colossus would be harder, and Game of Thrones style political intrigue might turn into really simplistic dice-rolls. But this is probably true of many games, i.e. I heard that Fate is really good if you want to do something with a structure of action-adventure tv-show, but probably not a psychological horror :P But doing i.e. politics in that system might be more fun than in i.e. base 5e D&D. Probably the most succesful engine I have seen is in the powered-by-the-apocalypse games. Apocalypse World invented a really simple base machanic, where if your character wants to accomplish something, you roll two 6-sided die, sum the numbers, and if it is 10/11/12, you just do the thing, if it is 7/8/9, you do the thing, but something bad happens, and if it is 1 to 6, you don't do the thing and something bad happens. Probably my favourite system I have played so far :-)
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > you roll two 6-sided die, sum the numbers, and if it is 10/11/12, you just do the thing, if it is 7/8/9, you do the thing, but something bad happens, and if it is 1 to 6, you don't do the thing and something bad happens Seems too similar to my real life experience. That's uncanny.
- dzdt 9y ago
  And if the sum is 1, something REALLY bad happens? ;^)

digi_owl 9y ago

I am of two mind of some of those games. They seem to have taken the role out of roleplaying, and instead involve a group of authors gambling over who gets to write the next page or so of story.

sago 9y ago
Which, specifically? I chose them because, in my experience, they have deeper roleplaying than vanilla D&D (which, in the old threefold model is much more simulationist).

ghostDancer 9y ago

I found this game Rêve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%AAve:_the_Dream_Ouroboros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%AAve:_the_Dream_Ouroboros and it was different but not easy to be the DM.

tehwalrus 9y ago

> "It's like programming languages, sure you can do anything in D&D (≈ Java, perhaps?)" I love it. But I would choose different languages: AD&D: C D&D 3.5: C++ D&D 4: Java/C# D&D 5: C++11 Fate Core: Python :)

KON_Air 9y ago
C# should cover everything (or GURPS), it can do anything, if you can keep up with its caprices (a billion rulebooks) and afford the hardware (7/24 caffeine injections) to keep it going.
- tehwalrus 9y ago
  I would compare GURPS to lisp, given that it tried to encompass any possibility with increasing complexity!
Yuioup 9y ago
D&D First Edition is Assembly?
- artimaeis 9y ago
  I think most of the time AD&D is referred to as First Edition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Drago... But to extend on your point - maybe Original D&D is like Forth in this analogy?
  - walshemj 9y ago
    depends when you started 1st ed for me was the 3 brown books
artimaeis 9y ago
In fairness to Java/C# I think D&D 4 might be better represented as Scratch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

norlys 9y ago

Actually, D&D is a very American thing. In Germany we have a pretty active Pen & Paper scene as well, but D&D is not so common. Instead, the "major" system is DSA (The Black Eye). But I have a feeling that we have a higher variety of systems played on this side of the sea. I played D&D once and didn't like it that much. Too much focus on being the hero, too much encouragement of powergaming for my taste. But that might be a cultural thing as well.

dagw 9y ago
I disagree that (A)D&D was a very American thing. Certainly in Norway and Sweden it was huge (or at least as huge as pen & paper rpgs can be) when I was growing up. Sweden did have its own RPG home grown scene going on with both the other D&D (Drakar & Demoner) and Mutant being quite popular, but on the whole I'd say AD&D was by far the most popular game.
ddoran 9y ago
It was (is?) big in Britain and Ireland too. Maybe it's an English-language thing?
mfoy_ 9y ago
As an avid boardgamer, I've noticed there's a big difference between American and European board games (and probably also table top RPG frameworks) in the sense that the American tendency is to favour luck and hail Mary rolls to save the day. Eurogames tend to be focused on resource management and long term strategy. So definitely a cultural thing. Both systems do have their merits, but "rolling for combat" is traditionally associated with "Ameritrash" games, a term used both lovingly and derogatorily. I see that The Dark Eye does use rolling for combat, but it calculates armour differently, in a more predictable manner (for example, in D&D armour makes you less likely to be hit, whereas in The Dark Eye it makes you take less damage) which I think demonstrates the different tendencies.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 9y ago