9 ms·

Blade Runner RPG

76 points by Pamar 5y ago

oneoff786 5y ago
I liked both blade runner movies immensely. I don’t think I would be interested in this though. And finding a group would be even harder. The alien one sounds interesting though. Anyone done it?
- pythonaut 5y ago
  It's very cool. I particularly like the way the stress mechanic works: narratively, it sharpens your focus making you more likely to succeed but it raises the stakes for failure. It makes for some tense situations even in one-shot adventures.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Looks like I'll need to give it a try. Since I have the ultimate, most likely non-canon, US sourcebook already!
ideonexus 5y ago
So in the game we get to play Bladerunners, which are slave-catchers of the future--except their job is to murder the slaves who escape. It's weird to me that 30 years later people still don't understand that the whole point of the movie is that the Bladerunner is the replicant slave of the bad guys and the other replicants are slaves fighting for their freedom. I love the thought-provoking Bladerunner universe and this looks like it may be a thoughtful production, but playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic.
- codeyperson 5y ago
  > giving players the choice to play as either human or Replicants
  - SamBam 5y ago
    True, although if GP's analogy about slave-catchers is accurate, I think we'd also look askance about a board game that pitted US slaves against slavers, allowing you to play both sides.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - scanny 5y ago
      Wouldn’t the same apply to scenarios in the Second World War? Edit: Writing this I just thought maybe not since I can’t think of any that focus on running a PoW / Gulag / Concentration camp, whereas this focus on the slave catching.
      - jon-wood 5y ago
        Escape from Colditz has one player acting as the PoW guards, and the other players acting as prisoners trying to escape. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/715/escape-colditz https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/715/escape-colditz
    - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
      There are always people looking askance at one thing or another, especially nowadays when it's so fashionable to be that person. I'm sure you could make an absolutely offensive game about the topic, but you could also make a game that treats the subject carefully. Do you look askance at Secret Hitler?
    - uberman 5y ago
      One of the best board games (not an RPG) that I have ever played is "Liberty or Death". In it, you can play as American Patriots, The French, The British or the Indians. It is asymmetric with each faction having their own objectives. I have never run into a match were people had a problem playing any of the factions or that the game was problematic.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  So if you view the replicates as slaves, how do you view AI? And what does that make programmers that are working on AI?
  - neurobashing 5y ago
    Neuromancer had the "Turing police" monitoring AIs. Watts Blindsight universe has the "Cloudkillers", who turn off AI that gets too smart. It's becoming a more common trope in sci-fi.
  - delecti 5y ago
    It was a pretty significant part of the plot that it's nontrivial to distinguish replicants from humans, and every replicant Deckard kills is trying to escape confinement. There's also a replicant that is indistinguishable from a human. A chess playing neural network isn't anywhere close to being comparable to a slave. And IMO, merely creating such an AI isn't even immoral, as long as we don't force it into labor it wants to escape from.
    - uberman 5y ago
      "every replicant Deckard kills is trying to escape confinement" I guess that is true at some level depending on how one defines "confinement". It is not clear to me that Roy or Pris are looking to escape their professions rather, they are in love and about to die of "old age". As Roy bluntly states "I want more life".
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      If we program the AI to want to serve us, is that moral? This path pretty quickly gets you to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe levels of discomfort[1] 1: https://remotestorage.blogspot.com/2010/07/douglas-adamss-cow-that-wants-to-be.html https://remotestorage.blogspot.com/2010/07/douglas-adamss-co...
      - delecti 5y ago
        As someone on the autism spectrum, there are AI-y tasks that I would enjoy as a job but which would to most people feel as, at best, unbearably tedious. If you view "AI programmed to enjoy doing boring computer tasks" as vaguely adjacent to an autistic person, then I would say that it's perfectly moral to create such an entity, as long as we treat it well by its own standards. I'm sure there are situations that could get me to second-guess that rule of thumb, but the golden rule feels adequate.
- uberman 5y ago
  First, it is clear that the genre of "table top RPG" is littered with thieves, assassins, slavers and criminals. Hell, there is a trope that players are often little more than "murder hobos". Playing as a slaver, slave catcher, slave, escaped slave would be nothing new. Specifically to replicant blade runners, I think there is lots of room for soul searching and meaningful play in coming to grips with potentially being a tool/the tool of your own oppression. Maybe you start as a blade runner but come to champion the replicant cause. Maybe you smuggle the weak and sick off world. Maybe after your day job ticketing replicants for minor infractions you conduct corporate sabotage against the Tyrell Corporation. Maybe you play as a replicant member of an off-world kick-murder squad or captain a replicant gunship off the shoulder of Orion. Maybe you run a chop shop helping replicants bypass retinal scans. The world of Bladerunner is ripe with RP options. In my opinion, it would be a shame to dismiss the opportunity because you can only see problematic themes. To paraphrase Roy Batty You saw a slave narrative, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
- Yoric 5y ago
  Well, according to the description of this game, you don't actually know whether you're a replicant and you're watching the dawn of a new age of replicants. I feel that, with the right GM, it's a very nice setting to discuss slavery.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  > the whole point of the movie is that the Bladerunner is the replicant slave of the bad guys This is far from being a settled canon. Ridley Scott claims it is so, but what does he know? Movie makers often create lore that forces fans to go great lengths to explain coherently. Remember that Kessel run in 12 parsecs?!
- archi42 5y ago
  Starting out with a horrible character that tries to turn good and undo their evil while battling their past is a common trope. So is the "the world is broken beyond fixing it". Be it movie, video game or tabletop RPG. I am not sure how that could be "seriously problematic" in this case. Remember, the world just acts a backdrop. A horrible person can still try to let their character murder-rape everyone in a Teletubbies RPG. In the end how the story unfolds depends a lot on the party & game master, and what kind of characters/game they want to play.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  > Bladerunners, which are slave-catchers That's a very reductionistic view of material. Blade Runner was always asking a question what makes someone a human. And how can you be sure you are a human? https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html Philip K. Dick's stories are everything but simple. In link above there is a story was about man undergoing surgery only to discover he has a punch tape inside him. He finds out he's an Android. So he starts messing with the tape, punching out pieces only to discover it materialized a flock of geese. In anger he tears the tape causing entire world to disappear.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Being "less than human" was a key justification for a lot of slavery, so it is quite plausible that this "reductionist view" was deliberately engendered by Dick.
    - Ygg2 5y ago
      > The two basic topics which fascinate me are “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?” Philip K Dick. To boil it down to slavery is a modern take. His other story Roog about a dog defending his home has a similar premise. His question is closely related to whether you could figure out you are a copy, whether your could tell actual reality from perceived reality, etc.
- fbanon 5y ago
  >but playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic Then don't play it?
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  > playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic Whew, glad that playing a murderous grave robber necromancer isn't.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  It's a game, you make your own rules and stories. I'm glad I could live through the 80's playing "offensive" RPG like Berlin XVIII,In Nomine Satanas or Paranoia without anybody telling me they were "problematic". That's why these are called "dystopia" and you're not necessarily playing the good guys, there is nothing "problematic" with it. I think the new "safe, diverse and inclusive" D&D version is aimed at people concerned by "problematisms". See? there are RPG for everybody.
- Jeema101 5y ago
  The great thing about tabletop RPGs, though, is that you're ultimately free to do whatever you want. It's the job of the dungeon master to roll with whatever the players do and possibly even change the entire narrative on the fly. In that way, tabletop RPGs are typically much less constrained compared to video game / computer RPGs. So it's entirely possible that you could start the game as a slave catcher, but if that's not something that you actually want your character to be, then you could definitely try to escape that role! And it would be up to the DM to decide how to respond to your actions...
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Slavery isn’t just early pre civil war American south slavery. Slavery is surely bad but so are a lot of institutions controlling the poor, and I’m not sure the moral disgust with it scales to the concept of slavery generally. Gladiators, drafts, totalitarian states, etc. A lot of them are really just slavery under a nuanced scheme that we’re all fine role playing.
ZetaZero 5y ago
Weird: ©2017 Alcon Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/blade-runner/ https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/blade-runner/ "Coming 2022"
  - rob74 5y ago
    So they took 5 years to build the website, and are now announcing a Kickstarter which will start in May? Then the title should be changed from "...RPG imminent" to "...RPG Kickstarter imminent" so people don't get their hopes up...
    - Pamar 5y ago
      "They" are https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ and have already produced a fairly solid line of games.
neurobashing 5y ago
My annoyance with this is, you can pretty much run a "Blade Runner" TTRPG with any suitable system. You barely need to do any prep: we know there's guns, space ships, FTL, extremely good computers, etc. Thats like half the existing OOTB sci-fi settings. Pick one with the desired crunch and take a few minutes to skin it (no pun intended).
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Of course. The value of this (as in any RPG set in a universe based on an existing property) is that the rule book and supplements will provide lots of additional background for the universe that wasn't already defined. I remember playing the West End Games Star Wars RPG in the 1990s before the prequels and I loved how the books expanded upon that universe beyond the original three movies.
  - neurobashing 5y ago
    Those actually created big parts of the SW EU! Stuff that was written for those games got authorized into canon. Star Wars also produced a ton of new material for its EU. It was a living universe, ripe for gaming. Blade Runner is 2 movies. (Or 14 or something, if you count all the directors cuts)
    - aequitas 5y ago
      > Blade Runner is 2 movies. And a video game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game)
    - thereddaikon 5y ago
      Three movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(1998_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(1998_American_film)
      - Pamar 5y ago
        Ah, a true Connoisseur ... hat tip to you!
supermatt 5y ago
Id love to get into some TTRPG, but I live in the middle of a tiny village, in a tiny country, where i dont yet speak the language. As an RPG novice (only ever played CRPGs, cards and boardgames) is there somewhere I can go online to learn the ropes and participate? More than happy to pay for the experience.
- Yoric 5y ago
  You could look on r/lfg ("looking for game") on Reddit.
  - nicolas_t 5y ago
    Or you can join the RPG by forum on rpggeek. They're starting a lot of games this week aimed at people who have little to no experience with RPGs
- bovermyer 5y ago
  There's also a category of tabletop RPGs meant to be played just by yourself. It's "solo RPGs." It's a pretty big category and growing fast. If you're willing to pay to play online, I'd recommend https://startplaying.games https://startplaying.games. I believe it's a YC alumn, even.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  I don’t have an answer for you, but this is a niche I look forward to if AR ever becomes “real”. The ability to negate personal location in a way that feels natural would unlocks all sorts of fulfilling opportunities - like playing TTRPGs with a group scattered all over the world. I would also like to enjoy the pleasure of interaction and role play involved in traditional TTRPGs while hiding the design complexity behind some video game assistance (because I’m old and busy and can’t hardly devote the time to prepping a 5e DND adventure even though I’ve done it several times before).
- simonh 5y ago
  The Gauntlet is an online-first RPG club with a packed calendar of games. They tend to not use the various online virtual tabletops, but instead have developed their own resources for running games online using things like Google Sheets for character starts and various free group video calling systems. They're a teeny bit on the woke side, teeny bit, but I've had fun in their games and they're a well meaning bunch with an actually genuinely very diverse membership. I've got on with them no problem. They tend towards indie RPGs and story games, which suits me fine, but you can find all sorts in the schedule. They have also started publishing games developed by the core club team. Even if you don't play with them their resources are well worth checking out for anyone who wants to play online. https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/
languagehacker 5y ago
This is some funko pop junk Why wouldn't you just play Shadowrun
- scbrg 5y ago
  The world is quite different, in that the Shadowrun is full of magic and fantasy creatures, creating a very different feel. Also, Free League might perhaps create a rules system that doesn't suck ;-) A better question would possibly be: Why wouldn't you just play Cyberpunk?
  - jhbadger 5y ago
    Although Blade Runner is often called cyberpunk, it isn't really. There's basically no computers whatsoever (unless you want to call Deckard's photo editing tool a computer) and no cyberspace. I think the only connections with cyberpunk is that Blade Runner's setting is gritty and it's implied that Asia has taken over from the US/Europe as the primary culture.
    - scbrg 5y ago
      Absolutely, I agree. My comment was written in the context of Shadowrun as an approximation of Bladerunner though. I'd say Shadowrun is strictly further away from Bladerunner than Cyberpunk, given that it's essentially just Cyberpunk + every fantasy trope you can think of.
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      Fredric Jameson considered the key feature of cyberpunk to be transgression, that is to say the erosion of boundaries. Cyberspace is cyberpunk because it erodes the line between physical and digital space, mind and body. Megacorporation's are cyberpunk because they erode the lines between private and public life, national borders, and so on. Transgression is also the key theme in Blade Runner. What is being transgressed is the distinction between machine and organic body. Synthetic and natural life, person and machine, authentic and inauthentic memory, and so on. Computers are only one particular artifact of the cyberpunk genre because they're a great example of a tool that breaks down barriers. But Blade Runner has every reason to be situated in the genre as well, because it deals with the exact same topic, merely placing focus on a different technology.
imglorp 5y ago
About the site: Please don't assume my window height and steal control of my scrolling. It's super annoying to have the viewport yanked out of your hand.
hajile 5y ago
That scrolling is awful.
aidenn0 5y ago
I know I've been away from gaming for too long when I don't know any of the games that the team lists as their previous hits.
ersii 5y ago
Neat that the music in the trailer is done by the swede Simon Stålenhag who's also doing great retro art, which got turned into the quirky Tales From The Loop TV-series
clem 5y ago
I hope that they adopt something along the lines of the Gumshoe RPG System that provides a little more depth to the investigative aspects. Blade Runner shouldn't be just a combat-based shoot 'em up; it demands attention to its roots in noir detective fiction.
- Pamar 5y ago
  They will use their own house system (https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/) which they tailor to specific settings.

76 points by Pamar 5y ago

I liked both blade runner movies immensely. I don’t think I would be interested in this though. And finding a group would be even harder. The alien one sounds interesting though. Anyone done it?

pythonaut 5y ago
It's very cool. I particularly like the way the stress mechanic works: narratively, it sharpens your focus making you more likely to succeed but it raises the stakes for failure. It makes for some tense situations even in one-shot adventures.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Looks like I'll need to give it a try. Since I have the ultimate, most likely non-canon, US sourcebook already!

ideonexus 5y ago

So in the game we get to play Bladerunners, which are slave-catchers of the future--except their job is to murder the slaves who escape. It's weird to me that 30 years later people still don't understand that the whole point of the movie is that the Bladerunner is the replicant slave of the bad guys and the other replicants are slaves fighting for their freedom. I love the thought-provoking Bladerunner universe and this looks like it may be a thoughtful production, but playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic.

codeyperson 5y ago
> giving players the choice to play as either human or Replicants
- SamBam 5y ago
  True, although if GP's analogy about slave-catchers is accurate, I think we'd also look askance about a board game that pitted US slaves against slavers, allowing you to play both sides.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - scanny 5y ago
    Wouldn’t the same apply to scenarios in the Second World War? Edit: Writing this I just thought maybe not since I can’t think of any that focus on running a PoW / Gulag / Concentration camp, whereas this focus on the slave catching.
    - jon-wood 5y ago
      Escape from Colditz has one player acting as the PoW guards, and the other players acting as prisoners trying to escape. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/715/escape-colditz https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/715/escape-colditz
  - ifyoubuildit 5y ago
    There are always people looking askance at one thing or another, especially nowadays when it's so fashionable to be that person. I'm sure you could make an absolutely offensive game about the topic, but you could also make a game that treats the subject carefully. Do you look askance at Secret Hitler?
  - uberman 5y ago
    One of the best board games (not an RPG) that I have ever played is "Liberty or Death". In it, you can play as American Patriots, The French, The British or the Indians. It is asymmetric with each faction having their own objectives. I have never run into a match were people had a problem playing any of the factions or that the game was problematic.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
themaninthedark 5y ago
So if you view the replicates as slaves, how do you view AI? And what does that make programmers that are working on AI?
- neurobashing 5y ago
  Neuromancer had the "Turing police" monitoring AIs. Watts Blindsight universe has the "Cloudkillers", who turn off AI that gets too smart. It's becoming a more common trope in sci-fi.
- delecti 5y ago
  It was a pretty significant part of the plot that it's nontrivial to distinguish replicants from humans, and every replicant Deckard kills is trying to escape confinement. There's also a replicant that is indistinguishable from a human. A chess playing neural network isn't anywhere close to being comparable to a slave. And IMO, merely creating such an AI isn't even immoral, as long as we don't force it into labor it wants to escape from.
  - uberman 5y ago
    "every replicant Deckard kills is trying to escape confinement" I guess that is true at some level depending on how one defines "confinement". It is not clear to me that Roy or Pris are looking to escape their professions rather, they are in love and about to die of "old age". As Roy bluntly states "I want more life".
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    If we program the AI to want to serve us, is that moral? This path pretty quickly gets you to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe levels of discomfort[1] 1: https://remotestorage.blogspot.com/2010/07/douglas-adamss-cow-that-wants-to-be.html https://remotestorage.blogspot.com/2010/07/douglas-adamss-co...
    - delecti 5y ago
      As someone on the autism spectrum, there are AI-y tasks that I would enjoy as a job but which would to most people feel as, at best, unbearably tedious. If you view "AI programmed to enjoy doing boring computer tasks" as vaguely adjacent to an autistic person, then I would say that it's perfectly moral to create such an entity, as long as we treat it well by its own standards. I'm sure there are situations that could get me to second-guess that rule of thumb, but the golden rule feels adequate.
uberman 5y ago
First, it is clear that the genre of "table top RPG" is littered with thieves, assassins, slavers and criminals. Hell, there is a trope that players are often little more than "murder hobos". Playing as a slaver, slave catcher, slave, escaped slave would be nothing new. Specifically to replicant blade runners, I think there is lots of room for soul searching and meaningful play in coming to grips with potentially being a tool/the tool of your own oppression. Maybe you start as a blade runner but come to champion the replicant cause. Maybe you smuggle the weak and sick off world. Maybe after your day job ticketing replicants for minor infractions you conduct corporate sabotage against the Tyrell Corporation. Maybe you play as a replicant member of an off-world kick-murder squad or captain a replicant gunship off the shoulder of Orion. Maybe you run a chop shop helping replicants bypass retinal scans. The world of Bladerunner is ripe with RP options. In my opinion, it would be a shame to dismiss the opportunity because you can only see problematic themes. To paraphrase Roy Batty You saw a slave narrative, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Yoric 5y ago
Well, according to the description of this game, you don't actually know whether you're a replicant and you're watching the dawn of a new age of replicants. I feel that, with the right GM, it's a very nice setting to discuss slavery.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> the whole point of the movie is that the Bladerunner is the replicant slave of the bad guys This is far from being a settled canon. Ridley Scott claims it is so, but what does he know? Movie makers often create lore that forces fans to go great lengths to explain coherently. Remember that Kessel run in 12 parsecs?!
archi42 5y ago
Starting out with a horrible character that tries to turn good and undo their evil while battling their past is a common trope. So is the "the world is broken beyond fixing it". Be it movie, video game or tabletop RPG. I am not sure how that could be "seriously problematic" in this case. Remember, the world just acts a backdrop. A horrible person can still try to let their character murder-rape everyone in a Teletubbies RPG. In the end how the story unfolds depends a lot on the party & game master, and what kind of characters/game they want to play.
Ygg2 5y ago
> Bladerunners, which are slave-catchers That's a very reductionistic view of material. Blade Runner was always asking a question what makes someone a human. And how can you be sure you are a human? https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html Philip K. Dick's stories are everything but simple. In link above there is a story was about man undergoing surgery only to discover he has a punch tape inside him. He finds out he's an Android. So he starts messing with the tape, punching out pieces only to discover it materialized a flock of geese. In anger he tears the tape causing entire world to disappear.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Being "less than human" was a key justification for a lot of slavery, so it is quite plausible that this "reductionist view" was deliberately engendered by Dick.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    > The two basic topics which fascinate me are “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?” Philip K Dick. To boil it down to slavery is a modern take. His other story Roog about a dog defending his home has a similar premise. His question is closely related to whether you could figure out you are a copy, whether your could tell actual reality from perceived reality, etc.
fbanon 5y ago
>but playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic Then don't play it?
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic Whew, glad that playing a murderous grave robber necromancer isn't.
throw_m239339 5y ago
It's a game, you make your own rules and stories. I'm glad I could live through the 80's playing "offensive" RPG like Berlin XVIII,In Nomine Satanas or Paranoia without anybody telling me they were "problematic". That's why these are called "dystopia" and you're not necessarily playing the good guys, there is nothing "problematic" with it. I think the new "safe, diverse and inclusive" D&D version is aimed at people concerned by "problematisms". See? there are RPG for everybody.
Jeema101 5y ago
The great thing about tabletop RPGs, though, is that you're ultimately free to do whatever you want. It's the job of the dungeon master to roll with whatever the players do and possibly even change the entire narrative on the fly. In that way, tabletop RPGs are typically much less constrained compared to video game / computer RPGs. So it's entirely possible that you could start the game as a slave catcher, but if that's not something that you actually want your character to be, then you could definitely try to escape that role! And it would be up to the DM to decide how to respond to your actions...
oneoff786 5y ago
Slavery isn’t just early pre civil war American south slavery. Slavery is surely bad but so are a lot of institutions controlling the poor, and I’m not sure the moral disgust with it scales to the concept of slavery generally. Gladiators, drafts, totalitarian states, etc. A lot of them are really just slavery under a nuanced scheme that we’re all fine role playing.

ZetaZero 5y ago

huhtenberg 5y ago
https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/blade-runner/ https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/blade-runner/ "Coming 2022"
- rob74 5y ago
  So they took 5 years to build the website, and are now announcing a Kickstarter which will start in May? Then the title should be changed from "...RPG imminent" to "...RPG Kickstarter imminent" so people don't get their hopes up...
  - Pamar 5y ago
    "They" are https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ and have already produced a fairly solid line of games.

neurobashing 5y ago

My annoyance with this is, you can pretty much run a "Blade Runner" TTRPG with any suitable system. You barely need to do any prep: we know there's guns, space ships, FTL, extremely good computers, etc. Thats like half the existing OOTB sci-fi settings. Pick one with the desired crunch and take a few minutes to skin it (no pun intended).

jhbadger 5y ago
Of course. The value of this (as in any RPG set in a universe based on an existing property) is that the rule book and supplements will provide lots of additional background for the universe that wasn't already defined. I remember playing the West End Games Star Wars RPG in the 1990s before the prequels and I loved how the books expanded upon that universe beyond the original three movies.
- neurobashing 5y ago
  Those actually created big parts of the SW EU! Stuff that was written for those games got authorized into canon. Star Wars also produced a ton of new material for its EU. It was a living universe, ripe for gaming. Blade Runner is 2 movies. (Or 14 or something, if you count all the directors cuts)
  - aequitas 5y ago
    > Blade Runner is 2 movies. And a video game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game)
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    Three movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(1998_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(1998_American_film)
    - Pamar 5y ago
      Ah, a true Connoisseur ... hat tip to you!

supermatt 5y ago

Id love to get into some TTRPG, but I live in the middle of a tiny village, in a tiny country, where i dont yet speak the language. As an RPG novice (only ever played CRPGs, cards and boardgames) is there somewhere I can go online to learn the ropes and participate? More than happy to pay for the experience.

Yoric 5y ago
You could look on r/lfg ("looking for game") on Reddit.
- nicolas_t 5y ago
  Or you can join the RPG by forum on rpggeek. They're starting a lot of games this week aimed at people who have little to no experience with RPGs
bovermyer 5y ago
There's also a category of tabletop RPGs meant to be played just by yourself. It's "solo RPGs." It's a pretty big category and growing fast. If you're willing to pay to play online, I'd recommend https://startplaying.games https://startplaying.games. I believe it's a YC alumn, even.
germinalphrase 5y ago
I don’t have an answer for you, but this is a niche I look forward to if AR ever becomes “real”. The ability to negate personal location in a way that feels natural would unlocks all sorts of fulfilling opportunities - like playing TTRPGs with a group scattered all over the world. I would also like to enjoy the pleasure of interaction and role play involved in traditional TTRPGs while hiding the design complexity behind some video game assistance (because I’m old and busy and can’t hardly devote the time to prepping a 5e DND adventure even though I’ve done it several times before).
simonh 5y ago
The Gauntlet is an online-first RPG club with a packed calendar of games. They tend to not use the various online virtual tabletops, but instead have developed their own resources for running games online using things like Google Sheets for character starts and various free group video calling systems. They're a teeny bit on the woke side, teeny bit, but I've had fun in their games and they're a well meaning bunch with an actually genuinely very diverse membership. I've got on with them no problem. They tend towards indie RPGs and story games, which suits me fine, but you can find all sorts in the schedule. They have also started publishing games developed by the core club team. Even if you don't play with them their resources are well worth checking out for anyone who wants to play online. https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/

languagehacker 5y ago

This is some funko pop junk Why wouldn't you just play Shadowrun

scbrg 5y ago
The world is quite different, in that the Shadowrun is full of magic and fantasy creatures, creating a very different feel. Also, Free League might perhaps create a rules system that doesn't suck ;-) A better question would possibly be: Why wouldn't you just play Cyberpunk?
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Although Blade Runner is often called cyberpunk, it isn't really. There's basically no computers whatsoever (unless you want to call Deckard's photo editing tool a computer) and no cyberspace. I think the only connections with cyberpunk is that Blade Runner's setting is gritty and it's implied that Asia has taken over from the US/Europe as the primary culture.
  - scbrg 5y ago
    Absolutely, I agree. My comment was written in the context of Shadowrun as an approximation of Bladerunner though. I'd say Shadowrun is strictly further away from Bladerunner than Cyberpunk, given that it's essentially just Cyberpunk + every fantasy trope you can think of.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    Fredric Jameson considered the key feature of cyberpunk to be transgression, that is to say the erosion of boundaries. Cyberspace is cyberpunk because it erodes the line between physical and digital space, mind and body. Megacorporation's are cyberpunk because they erode the lines between private and public life, national borders, and so on. Transgression is also the key theme in Blade Runner. What is being transgressed is the distinction between machine and organic body. Synthetic and natural life, person and machine, authentic and inauthentic memory, and so on. Computers are only one particular artifact of the cyberpunk genre because they're a great example of a tool that breaks down barriers. But Blade Runner has every reason to be situated in the genre as well, because it deals with the exact same topic, merely placing focus on a different technology.

imglorp 5y ago

About the site: Please don't assume my window height and steal control of my scrolling. It's super annoying to have the viewport yanked out of your hand.

hajile 5y ago

That scrolling is awful.

aidenn0 5y ago

I know I've been away from gaming for too long when I don't know any of the games that the team lists as their previous hits.

ersii 5y ago

Neat that the music in the trailer is done by the swede Simon Stålenhag who's also doing great retro art, which got turned into the quirky Tales From The Loop TV-series

clem 5y ago

I hope that they adopt something along the lines of the Gumshoe RPG System that provides a little more depth to the investigative aspects. Blade Runner shouldn't be just a combat-based shoot 'em up; it demands attention to its roots in noir detective fiction.

Pamar 5y ago
They will use their own house system (https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/) which they tailor to specific settings.