Cool RPG Settings

[Silence]

I am currently playing Invisible Sun, and the surrealist take with some big secrets behind the lore ... it's pretty awesome.
Also you can just solve everything with magic.

As for my own entry, I'm personally a huge fan of The Expanse and after reading the Tabletop RPG I think it makes for a fantastic RPG setting, ...

As far as I know, The Expanse is based on an actual GURPS game and setting ... so it definitely fits an RPG.

 

[Kae]

I am currently playing Invisible Sun, and the surrealist take with some big secrets behind the lore ... it's pretty awesome.
Also you can just solve everything with magic.


As far as I know, The Expanse is based on an actual GURPS game and setting ... so it definitely fits an RPG.

From what the writers have said when they started writing they actually wanted to make an RPG instead of a literary work but when the idea to write the Rocinante's storyline came up they abandoned the idea, my source is Wikipedia so take that with a grain of salt.

 

[dreng3]

Cool! I recommend starting with Full Metal Fantasy (RPG Core Rules), then going from there. That's the original steampunk setting plus associated rules with warjacks (stompy), while the more smashy warbeasts comes in Unleashed, providing expanded setting with lore to accompany it, more character classes equipment etc.

You could get both or either one and it'd be fine as its duality matches the tabletop skirmish game(s) (Warmachine for the steampunk, Hordes for the beastpunk, I guess you could call it). They have slightly different mechanics, but their rules are compatible. Both have expansions as you'd expect (Kings & Nations/Wild Adventure etc. etc.).

One pretty much unique aspect of the IKRPG is the damage system as all major characters (players/bosses) will have damage spirals as opposed to just plain HP, and knocked out spirals will have varying debuffs on the character's performance. I really like that about the system.

I'd add that the class/profession system is quite nice. If I had to mention a main gripe it would be that alot of cool stuff is locked away by being in privateer press magazines, but that might just be because Paizo spoils me by being OGL.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'd add that the class/profession system is quite nice. If I had to mention a main gripe it would be that alot of cool stuff is locked away by being in privateer press magazines, but that might just be because Paizo spoils me by being OGL.

I'm a relative n00b as far as RPGs are concerned, so I know more from the Iron Kingdoms from playing Warmachine/Hordes rather than IKRPG, so I don't know that much by way of supplementary materials aside from the smaller expansions like Urban Adventures/Unleashed: Wild Adventure/Monsternomicon etc. And, to me at any rate, the core books FMF/Unleashed have a wealth of material that it's fine even for a veteran player who's looking for something goofy to RP.

TBH, though, the base game balance can be a bit janky (having a Mage Hunter and a Warcaster in your party means a lot of ROFL-stomping), but it's still hella fun.

 

[Buyetyen]

There's a bunch of great setting for the Fate and Powered by the Apocalypse engines. In Fate you have:

-Magical house cats defending their neighborhood from supernatural threats.
-Communist planetary romance.
-Arthurian legends but in space.
-Ancient Roman spies.
-Kaiju attack clean-up crews.
-Time travelling Cthulhu mythos adventures.
-Saturday morning cartoon that never was.

Powered by the Apocalypse has a number of cool settings like Monster of the Week and Spirit of '77. It's most famous for Apocalypse World and Dungeon World where the world is build procedurally. If your thief in Dungeon World rolls to find secret doors and succeeds, then there are secret doors, even if there weren't any there before.

 

[happyninja42]

I'm a big fan of the World of Darkness settings, in particular the Werewolf ones, with Mage a close second. I also enjoyed a spinoff setting they had back in Old World of Darkness, called Hunter. Where you play as normal humans given a VERY slight power set to fight the various supernatural threats to humanity. They even made a very bad (so I've heard) game of it back in the day. Not a fan of vampires so that setting had zero appeal for me.

The Star Wars FFG setting/system I enjoy a lot, as the mechanics a VERY light, and encourage emphasis on narrative play and story, instead of number crunch.

Starfinder (the scifi variant of the Pathfinder setting apparently) was pretty fun to mess around with some friends, though we only did the one module. I liked the idea of mashing fantasy classes and magic with a scifi setting.

 

[Kae]

I'm a big fan of the World of Darkness settings, in particular the Werewolf ones, with Mage a close second. I also enjoyed a spinoff setting they had back in Old World of Darkness, called Hunter. Where you play as normal humans given a VERY slight power set to fight the various supernatural threats to humanity. They even made a very bad (so I've heard) game of it back in the day. Not a fan of vampires so that setting had zero appeal for me.

I actually had the Hunter: The Reckoning video-game, it wasn't exactly terrible it was more like an aggressively mediocre ARPG, also there were 2 sequels but I never played any of them so I have no opinion on them.


OT: Since I'm here again, there's this really cool RPG which I bought the book for a while back but don't know anyone that wants to play it called City of Mist, it's basically Fables the RPG, it's a Neo-Noire fantasy game about characters from tales, myth, legends, etc. being alive in what basically is our modern world & I feel like it has a lot of potential, but perhaps that's just because I really like the Fables comics & The Wolf Among us videogame.

Also another thing that no one wants to play, including myself but I still think is pretty cool, is the Battletech RPG, it has so many cool stuff, ships, mechs, sabotage everything, but I feel like it's just too complex for it's own good, like you really need to commit to it which makes it not newbie or 1-shot friendly at all, so it's hard to give it a chance, I do have a lot of the books but I'm too lazy read them since it has different rules for everything every vehicle has it's own stat sheet.

 

[happyninja42]

I actually had the Hunter: The Reckoning video-game, it wasn't exactly terrible it was more like an aggressively mediocre ARPG, also there were 2 sequels but I never played any of them so I have no opinion on them.

Yeah the video games didn't really capture the narrative core of the TTRPG from what I've heard. The main thrust of the narrative is the slow decay into madness and obsession, that inevitably claims all Hunters, as their battle wears on their psyche. The powers they gain become more powerful, but also have a greater cost on mental stability and the like.

 

[Buyetyen]

I'm a big fan of the World of Darkness settings, in particular the Werewolf ones, with Mage a close second. I also enjoyed a spinoff setting they had back in Old World of Darkness, called Hunter. Where you play as normal humans given a VERY slight power set to fight the various supernatural threats to humanity. They even made a very bad (so I've heard) game of it back in the day. Not a fan of vampires so that setting had zero appeal for me.

I picked up the core book of the ruleset where it's now Chronicles of Darkness. There's some really interesting ideas and mechanics, but a friend showed me the new magic system for Mage and it's a ludicrous, broken clusterfuck. So, not all winners.

 

[happyninja42]

I picked up the core book of the ruleset where it's now Chronicles of Darkness. There's some really interesting ideas and mechanics, but a friend showed me the new magic system for Mage and it's a ludicrous, broken clusterfuck. So, not all winners.

Yeah, the mechanics systems is varying quality, depending on which version of the game you are talking about. And Mage....*sighs* Mage is infamous for batshit crazy rules, ESPECIALLY Mage: The Ascension. I never played that one specifically, but my friends who did, regaled me with stories of the insanity of the rules, and trying to implement them in a game. Mage: The Awakening was MUCH more grounded and digestable, and I frankly love that system. But, I think they've done at least 1 system revision since the version of Awakening I played? Dunno, lost track of that franchise many years ago.

Werewolf was way more grounded and straightforward, so it was always my preferred system. Mostly because I'm a huge werewolf fan, but also because the rules made way more sense, and weren't "Bending the Laws of Reality to my Whim!" kind of crazy.

Check with your friend if the mage system he showed you was Ascension, or Awakening. If Ascension, yeah I 100% concur with you it's nuts. Awakening....again, maybe they jumped the shark with the rules in a later edition, but the first edition version of Awakening was a very understandable system.

 

[Buyetyen]

Check with your friend if the mage system he showed you was Ascension, or Awakening. If Ascension, yeah I 100% concur with you it's nuts. Awakening....again, maybe they jumped the shark with the rules in a later edition, but the first edition version of Awakening was a very understandable system.

It was second edition Awakening. First edition Awakening was fine, this new model is about 4x as complicated, no exaggeration. If anything I'm under-selling it.

I've been reading through Geist: the Sin-Eaters lately and love it. I've always enjoyed ghost stories, but humanist ghost story roleplaying? *chef's kiss* I'm currently mulling the idea of a campaign mixing MR James, Guillermo del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Andy Warhol and Persona 5 into a kind of gothic pop art tableau.

Demon: the Descent is also really wild and innovative. Not sure I'm up to the challenge of running a game in this setting, but it's something to shoot for.

Apparently Hunter is still mediocre. Which is fine. I feel like Monster of the Week kind of nailed the monster hunter tabletop RPG niche.

 

[happyninja42]

It was second edition Awakening. First edition Awakening was fine, this new model is about 4x as complicated, no exaggeration. If anything I'm under-selling it.

I've been reading through Geist: the Sin-Eaters lately and love it. I've always enjoyed ghost stories, but humanist ghost story roleplaying? *chef's kiss* I'm currently mulling the idea of a campaign mixing MR James, Guillermo del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Andy Warhol and Persona 5 into a kind of gothic pop art tableau.

Demon: the Descent is also really wild and innovative. Not sure I'm up to the challenge of running a game in this setting, but it's something to shoot for.

Apparently Hunter is still mediocre. Which is fine. I feel like Monster of the Week kind of nailed the monster hunter tabletop RPG niche.

Yeah the Hunter reboot they did was...meh for me. If you like ghost stories, and would like to run one that has a definitive beginning and end, track down their title Orpheus. It's kind of the pre-curser to Geist if I recall correctly, but it's got some really interesting twists that they do with it.

I never played it myself, but an old roommate bought all the books and read through the story arc, and it was pretty damn cool. And as I recall, it has an actual end to it. It's not just an ongoing setting like most of their other stuff.

 

[Mister Mumbler]

Ok, so I've never played a single TTRPG or anything, but I just stumbled across Lancer, which features you piloting crazy future mechs (ranging from your standard Battletech/Titanfall big stompy bois all the way to crazy hacker collective collections of spines and weirdly alive shapes) with such a killer art style and vibe that I may try to play it. I mean, just look at this fan vid (which is made entirely of artwork from the core books);

 

[Absent]

Still hoping for more RPG-ish RPGs (Fallout2-like or Morrowind-like) set in the Old West or in Ancient Greece. Or underwater, in a setting similar to Subwar2050 (I take that one as en example because it truly felt underwater, unlike more recent vaguely blueish flight sims).

 

[Eacaraxe]

I'm piddling around with a D&D homebrew setting that's something of a cross between Stargate and Phantasy Star. Single system within a crystal sphere, ruins of a highly-advanced techno-magical civilization that disappeared for mysterious reasons, continents and planets are connected via gate network rather than naval vessels and spelljammers. Armor and weapons are all hard light/energy barriers instead of metals, ranged weapons are going to be from the "science fiction" list from D&D rather than stuff like bows and crossbows. Most common races are outside the D&D standard -- yuan-ti, gith, goliaths, owlin, tortles, instead of the standard dwarf, elf, halfling.

I ran a post-apocalyptic, Fallout-inspired, Mage the Ascension one-shot story once, that was pretty cool.

 

[Gordon_4]

Honestly, in terms of sheer newbie friendliness and available scope, I can’t look past Cyberpunk 2020. You can just as easily have a campaign where you fight only street level gang goons and maybe top out with come mid-level Corpo.

Or you can end up fighting whole Corps, Martian military, Atlantians, and space pirates. But you always end up back on Night City.

 

[Summerstorm]

Powered by the Apocalypse has a number of cool settings like Monster of the Week and Spirit of '77. It's most famous for Apocalypse World and Dungeon World where the world is build procedurally. If your thief in Dungeon World rolls to find secret doors and succeeds, then there are secret doors, even if there weren't any there before.

I am trying to get a group started for Kult: Divinity Lost - which is technically a modified PbtA game. (It is based on a traditional 90ies Horror game, but takes the "GM never rolls"-approach, but still affording them more power to tell the story than apparently usual in PbtA.)

I have been playing Shadowrun, Dark Eye since the late 90ies, and after playing Vampire, Battletech, Traveler and sadly A LOT of DnD / Pathfinder i was in the mood for something different and also darker. Bought myself Kult and Call of Cthulhu 7th. Ed.

The setting of Kult seems pretty cool (I am just a bit disappointed with the background info on the "source and true nature of humanity" - it just isn't weird enough for my taste. But the "hopelessness" and chronic evilness of the universe with just these tiny glitter of hope and empathy throughout have a nice atmosphere for gaming.

As an explanation of the setting: All of our history and everything you see, measure and experience is an illusion to placate humanity at large. Humans are godlike, immortal monsters and were tricked/imprisoned by an intricate system of beliefs, customs and mundanity. Humans are re-incarated and "recycled" all over, either by being alone and forgetting everything they experienced or by being tortured to and beyond insanity. (Something like heaven and hell respectively) This cycle keeps the "Illusion"-Machine running - but the Demiurge (Overgod and designer of this prison) has been missing a while now. Some Archons, something like "Principals" of the illusion (Community, Safety, Conformity, Law etc.), went rogue or died. Everything is a mess and old gods, Death-Angels, weird outer-dimension creatures stuck in prison with us, or we with them, clinging to existence through us or trying to exact revenge on us are either trying to either make this prison work, break us out, use our souls and power for themselves or cower in fear expecting humanity to break free any time now.

And through all the questions of morality, and who or what is the worse evil and such. Pretty bleak stuff. But for the players: They are just normal (if often troubled, "dissenting" or weird) modern dudes and dudettes who experience more and more weird shit up to cosmic horror.

I'll see how it runs technically and if i am able to craft a nice campaign.

 

[Kae]

Ok, so I've never played a single TTRPG or anything, but I just stumbled across Lancer, which features you piloting crazy future mechs (ranging from your standard Battletech/Titanfall big stompy bois all the way to crazy hacker collective collections of spines and weirdly alive shapes) with such a killer art style and vibe that I may try to play it. I mean, just look at this fan vid (which is made entirely of artwork from the core books);

Lancer is super cool, if you can try it, it's a lot of fun, it's also mostly focused on combat so it might be easier to get into for someone not as familiar with TTRPGs, I mean since the focus is Mechas, you'd pretty much only be in one if you're in a mission, so it lends itself a bit better to focusing on combat above anything else, I did find the out of combat rules for when you're not piloting a Mech a bit lacking in that they are pretty close to non-existent but I mean you're supposed to be in the Mech most of the time so I get why they didn't write much on that, but yeah the setting is super cool, clearly takes inspiration from Gundam and other popular Mech media like Battletech but it dares to tackle political themes very head on, explaining how a post-scarcity communist regime could look like and what consequence would happen, downsides of it, upsides of it and lots of other stuff, kinda smart to set it in a communist society where money doesn't theoretically exist though, as that way you don't have to micromanage your cash to fix Mecha after every mission, super cool game and setting.

That being said I haven't played it yet, I do have the books (Digitally) but my friends didn't want to try it and I don't like playing with strangers too much, sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not good at all.

BTW, if you can't play the TTRPG, they are making a videogame about it, it's pretty low budget pixel-art game but it might allow you to experience the setting.

Here's a link to the videogame's kickstarter, it's closed already but you can read up on it for updates and to see what to expect.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Honestly, in terms of sheer newbie friendliness and available scope, I can’t look past Cyberpunk 2020...

That's West End Games' Star Wars d6 for me. You can go from never having played it before and no clue how the mechanics work, to having a blast in a game in five minutes. I ran a WEG d6 Star Wars campaign for three and a half years, based entirely on "I'm not feeling Mage tonight, you guys feel the same? Fuck it, let's play Star Wars."

Same campaign I had all those badass stories from, by the way.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Honestly, in terms of sheer newbie friendliness and available scope, I can’t look past Cyberpunk 2020. You can just as easily have a campaign where you fight only street level gang goons and maybe top out with come mid-level Corpo.

Or you can end up fighting whole Corps, Martian military, Atlantians, and space pirates. But you always end up back on Night City.

That's what I loved about that game. You want to be a bunch of college kids in a band? Can do. A cadre of cybered up special forces operators in a guerilla warfare scenario? No problem, you can do that right out of the gate.

I wouldn't necessarily call it newbie friendly though, looking back it was kinda crunchy and you at least need your GM to be pretty familiar with the game if you have new players. New player + new GM is probably going to end up with a lot of dead PCs/sudden GM fudging. Though I suppose a novice GM can do that to anything. I always found I had to do a lot of coaching to new players that had only played DnD or similar to stop them getting into a lot of trouble very quickly.