I’m in official pre-production mode for Tabletop Season Three, so I’ve been looking at tons of games (seriously, thank you for all the suggestions), and playing as many of them as I can with my friends, or on my iPad (Suburbia on iPad is pretty much perfect, if you were wondering).Idea that I’m putting here, so I don’t forget: include information about tablet versions of games that we play on the show, if tablet versions exist.I’m also beginning to look at indie RPGs, because we had such a great time playing Fiasco. So far, candidates include:
- A Penny For My Thoughts
- Monsterhearts
- Durance
- The Quiet Year
- Carolina Death Crawl
- Microscope
- Dread
I don’t know if we’ll be able to make any of these work (Dread has player elimination, for example), but I just love GM-less storytelling games, and I think Tabletop is the perfect place to show them off, because most of the people who come to play with us are inherently good storytellers.I’m interested to hear your thoughts on Indie RPGs that fit with this bunch, and also if you’d like to watch us play some of these. Keep in mind that we’d be able to, at most, split it into two episodes, which means we’d have to play a satisfying session in about four hours.
As before, please leave your suggestion here, so it’s easy for me to find. Also, publishers and writers: please don’t use this as an invitation to mount a campaign to get me to play your game.
Oh, and others have mentioned Our Last Best Hope, Kagematsu, and Heroine. Yes! π
How about Anhk-Morpork?
All these games on your list are great but I especially want to say yes to Monsterhearts and The Quiet Year. (I made the videos for Quiet Year and Monsterhearts Second Skins so I could be biased… but they are great games!)
Definitely you should play Apocalypse World (The game Monsterhearts, Dungeon World, and tons of other games are based on).
It would be awesome to see you guys play The House (http://thehousethegame.blogspot.com/) since you’re supposed to be talking to a camera when you play it.
I also recommend Superhero and Slammin’ by Jackson Tegu (http://www.photographsoflightning.com/store/) and Serpent’s Tooth and Life on Mars by Ross Cowman (http://www.heartofthedeernicorn.com/store/).
I don’t have a specific game suggestion, just wanted to note that my 11-year-old daughter likes the show. We especially liked Wits & Wagers, Quirkle, & Tsuro and even had a gaming birthday party because of the show. (Well, the ones that aren’t too cussy that we let her watch, anyway.) So I just wanted to make a plug to have at least one “family edition” type game. Someone just gave us Catan and she seems to be happy with that too, so thank you so much!
How funny my kid had a gaming birthday too and so did my wife, inspired first by tabletop and by the board game room at Denver Comicon. We only went to the board game room at Comicon because of tabletop. Has been fun and we have gotten closer to family and friends because of it. Very positive outcome from tabletop.
I didn’t grok any of the Apocalypse World spawn until we started playing Monsterhearts a few weeks ago. (Although I’d only played Dungeon World and one session of Sixth World, so, hardly a statistically relevant sample.)
Now I really love it, and I’d like to see you play it.
Monsterhearts isn’t GM-less. The “Master of Ceremonies” still runs NPCs and sets up scenes, but he doesn’t really control the direction of the plot. His job is to keep stirring the pot and let the players build their own story. In a way, the MC is playing the entire setting as his “character” just the same as all the players are playing their own “skins.” He can’t just do whatever he wants. The players’ decisions and dice rolls open up “moves” the MC can do in response. It’s a really interesting dynamic.
The game has a lot of PvP play, because it’s a high school drama. Even friends screw with each other (in both senses of the word…)
I thought the Apocalypse World engine didn’t quite work in Dungeon World. The weight of the dice and the way MC moves tend to stack up meant that it was really hard to finish a fight. My big, scary Fighter got killed by a couple of wussy skeletons because I couldn’t roll high enough to hit them and there was no effective way for me to disengage without a high roll. (A feeling I’m sure you’re familiar with, Wil.)
Monsterhearts doesn’t suffer the same problem because the stakes of conflict are seldom fatal. You’re not usually trying to kill your opponent. You’re trying to turn him on or manipulate him or shut him down and humiliate him. (Or her. Or it.)
Actions are still weighted heavily toward failure (There’s a maximum cap on modifiers so you can never completely eliminate the chance you’ll screw up), but the consequences of failure are more interesting.
Monsterhearts is also such a great show to pick guests for. It’d be incredibly fun to get folks who have played monsters on Syfy shows and pick their skins (character types) completely against type. Of course if you could get Sarah Michelle Geller playing the Chosen One, Alison Hanigan playing the Witch, and Seth Green playing the Werewolf, that would be awesome. But I doubt that’d happen.
The universe could only contain enough awesome for you to have one season of a show on Syfy. There’s no way it could contain enough awesome for a Monsterhearts Buffy reunion. π
Woah, seth green is already slated for season three, maybe this is more possible then you think. It would be truly amazing.
I’ve got to throw my hat in with Monsterhearts. Easily one of my favorite games right now. Fate suggestions are good, too.
I’ll have to vote for Durance. In addition to being a wonderful game by Jason Morningstar, it has the bonus of being the only game listed where one of the player characters is referred to as the Dimber Damber. So, yeah…
I just played slammin’ at Pax, it was slammin! Game was pretty short 1-2 hours. Might be a little adult for tabletop however.
I think Anima Prime (http://www.animaprimerpg.com/main/) would work pretty well on the show. It uses guided structure, but encourages a lot of over-the-top narrative from the players. You would probably want to use the optional “Solo and Co-op Rules” (separate download on same page), as these eliminate the GM role.
An outside possibility is .44 A Game of Automatic Fear, where people in the 1950’s are getting replaced by robots (free: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_reviews_info.php?&reviews_id=53266&products_id=79290). Technically, there is a GM in this game, but that role is fairly automated and could easily be distributed around. This is a game that becomes seriously better the players are at telling stories and playing roles.
I don’t know if it’s been suggested yet, but I think The Play’s the Thing from Magpie Games would be awesome!
http://www.magpiegames.com/our-games/theplay/
It’s a game about a group of actors trying to put on a Shakespearean play. The thing is, the Playwright only gives a vague outline of the play, and the actors are essentially making it up as they go along. Meanwhile, each actor is trying to upstage the others and get the best part for themselves. It’s a really clever game, and I could see it being lots of fun on Tabletop (especially if you can get a group of actual actors to play!).
+1 for Dungeon World. It’s easy to run and requires almost no prep. Also it’s free as in beer, having been released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license and is available on github. https://github.com/Sagelt/Dungeon-World
“Everybody is John” is a free RPG you can find the rules online. Each player plays a personality of John, who has multiple personalities in the Cthulhu mythos universe.
I’ll second (third? fourth?) the vote for Inspectres. Ghostbusters crossed with reality television.
OmegaZone is a great setting for Fate Accelerated. It’s basically Gamma World made simpler. And Fate Accelerated in general might be a better fit for Tabletop than full-blown Fate–fewer rules and concepts to explain.
+1 for Eternal Contenders! It’s GM-less like Fiasco (unlike many of the suggestions so far) and the narrative can be resolved in 1 session.
+1 for Monsterhearts. It is great and it would be hilarious to see you and the other people play out the sexy time scenes.
Of your list, I have played ‘Quiet Year’ and ‘Microscope’, and I think both would make great Tabletop episodes. Of the two, ‘Quiet Year’ might translate better to video, since it involves creating a shared map that would make a good visual piece to show off–I can imagine a time-lapse recap of the game based that just shows the map growing and changing, which could be a lot of fun, and reminiscent of the end-of-game visual recap of the map in ‘Civilization’ π ‘Microscope’ also creates a shared artifact made of cards, but the cards all have words written on them instead of pictures, which isn’t going to be as compelling in video. Perhaps if you did go with ‘Microscope’, you could amend the rules slightly so that you always had people draw a picture on the card they were adding?
The games themselves are both fun; ‘Microscope’ demands slightly more of its players by making them come up with the prompts that move the story forward, but the basic improv ‘yes and…’ works great for this, and I have not seen people actually get stuck very often. ‘Quiet Year’ provides its own prompts, which I think makes things a little less scary for newbies, but I’ve seen the game slow down a little when people try to choose between the two options on the card they draw. I be that could be skipped in editing, though. It’d be fun to have someone like your wife play with you for either game, and my guess would be she’d be less intimidated by ‘The Quiet Year’, even though I think she’d do fine at ‘Microscope’.
There are also ‘Microscope’ variants coming out that focus the game slightly–one version that focuses on a family tree, and one version that focuses on a thing. Both are also worth checking out.
Every experience I’ve had with Microscope has been great, and I think it would be a good format for your show, since on each player’s turn, they can be as expansive or focused as they choose; and in the end, the group has painted a rich canvas as a backdrop for other games. To that end, I suggest doing it early in the run, so you’d have an opportunity to use it as the setting for one of the other games you later play.
+1 for Polaris. Another GM-less game by the same author is Hot Guys Making Out (http://www.tao-games.com/hot-guys-making-out), which is also fantastic.
It occurs to me that a Ben Lehman game might be a good choice here, as he’s a big long-time influence on GM-less thinking in the Forge diaspora, and his games are fun as well as clever. Polaris (his breakthrough game) was mentioned already, and it’s definitely a solid pick for GM-less, poetic story gaming, but Ben’s authored more recent titles as well that bear consideration, if the subject matter appeals.
Aside from Polaris my favourite BL games are
Ahem, as I was saying: my favourite BL games aside from Polaris are Drifter’s Escape and Bliss Stage. However, all three of those are best enjoyed with a bit more time in your hands.
Considering the shorter games, Hot Guys Making Out would fit well for a podcast: it’s quick to play and has an entertaining subject matter. I’d love to hear what you’d make of that one π
I for one welcome another game “like” fiasco, if not in tone then in style. fiasco was one of those games that really opened my eyes as to what player input does in rpg’s.
The idea of a 2 episode max is also great, especially when we get the wil play’s an rpg show.
I would always go for eternal contenders
I feel Dungeon World would work amaaazingly on Tabletop (and Adam Koebel, one of the designers, has a bunch of videos of him running it on Youtube, and is about to have more! I think he’d be a great guest on the show to run it, too! I’d be downright thrilled to see that.). It’s got a GM, but it’s designed to allow for a “dial” with as much or as little cooperative worldbuilding and player narrativeness as you want to run it with. It’s simple, narrative-focused, easy to grok, and can make some really great stories, with the rules totally comprehensible to those viewers who don’t even know there are RPGs not on computers and Playstations.
It’s not designed for oneshots but works perfectly fine with them – you just don’t get to use all the coolness of the bonds mechanic. Better for oneshots than Monsterhearts though, I think. But I can’t think of a better game for a certain RPG show…
I’m sure it’s already been suggested and preached about, and heck, you probably already knew of it anyway. But it seems so utterly perfect for Tabletop, I felt I must further preach it!
While all the games on your list seem good and well-suited (Carolina Death Crawl and Durance especially), Dread seems most perfect, despite the player elimination, and I hope you don’t let that stand in your way. I think it’ll just make the dread more real – give the audience an almost reality TV-esque “rooting for” people experience.
I think Dread would be great. It’s a ton of fun with a lot of tension. Great for viewing, both because of the Jenga mechanic and the tension in every pull, and the way the stories go. A two-parter of Dread with a cliffhanger? That’s swooningly good right there.
I think the player elimination is definitely worth it for how just dang perfect it is. Especially if there’s a hack for that. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking… give them control of an enemy and now they’re a “traitor” – or a Dennis Quaid in Pandorum. Or they’re ghosts in the machine. Can help out other players a bit incorporeally. Though I think that undercuts the, well, dread, a bit. Still, like I said, worth it for the perfect viewer-friendliness.
+1s for already mentioned:
The Quiet Year
Psi*Run
Lady Blackbird
To which I would add:
Project Ninja Panda Taco – gmless, your supervillain character plots to take over the world while your minion character vies for the best stuff and to become the next supervillain.
Hey Wil,
I am the publisher of Misspent Youth (misspentyouth.robertbohl.com), which I gave a copy of to you a few years ago at Gen Con. It’s a game where you play teenagers in a dystopian future who are out to stop the man from ruining their lives. If you are interested, I would be happy to give you the new screen-friendly PDF that I made that is designed for laptops and tablets.
I’d love to see Microscope on the show!
I just read your blog and although I’m not a game player I was wondering if you had thought about making a TV show out of this sort of thing? It would be a limited audience again but if you can get the manufacturers on board to sponsor it you could use the TV show as a basic introduction of the game and the basics of how it works. Then refer the viewer to a internet address where you could video tape playing the game so viewers can get an idea of how the game works. I sure don’t know how plausible all this is but I thought I’d mention it in case it helps.
Is this reply sarcastic?
+1 from me too on Eternal Contenders – one of the best non-GM games I’ve played. Or the original Contenders for that matter! PS. A lot of the ones above are GM’d aren’t they?
Colin, actually several of the ones in the OP are GMed games. I think Wil was just saying he liked GMless games, not that they had to be one. (Monster Hearts is one of a set that does a bunch of cool stuff to the GM role, but there is still a GM.)
I used Microscope to do a backstory for another RPG; this really helped to get the players immersed and invested in the world; then, we played a custom game of Fiasco to set up the characters’ relationships. Durance looks like a lot of fun as well.
I’d like to see you guys tackle Dread. I’m not familiar with any of these games, so they all sound fair play to me. I’m always up for seeing new games, but I have at least heard of Dread but have never had the opportunity to play it. I’d like to see how that sucker goes. Player elimination does sound difficult to work with though, perhaps the eliminated players could provide useless/-ful commentary?
Havok and hijinks (http://havokandhijinks.com) is a fun and quick card game – I haven’t played 4 player but 3 was fun, and its a quickly learned game. Would be good for a show with 2 or 3 games featured
Hey Wil, I think you should look into playing “Boss Monster.” by Brotherwise Games. http://brotherwisegames.com/
+1 for The Quiet Year! Post-Apocalyptic is big right now and the mechanics of physically creating a collaberative work of “art” – the map (auction it after the show on eBay for charity!) and an evolving suspenseful story would be fantastic on the show!
Looking forward to Penny for your Thoughts. Haven’t been able to make that happen yet, but really want to.
Polaris and In a Wicked Age are both good options for one shots.
I think you could easily do a one shot of Don’t Rest Your Head – the game has a very awesome style, lots of room for weirdness and humor and an incredibly interesting and engaging dice mechanic.
Love In The Time of Seith or Witch are both excellent and are fun to watch because people that play will have their own versions of the same story to compare and contract with yours.
Saga of the Icelanders is an Apoc World hack that essentially is like the TV show Vikings.
If ‘A Penny For My Thoughts’ is too dark to do on the show then I’ve played a variant along the lines of ‘A Hangover For My Thoughts’ where the only difference is that it’s framed as trying to recall what happened the night before rather than as a form of therapy for a traumatic event. It very easily turns into quite a fun game of escalating debauchery.
Hi Wil.
Give a look also to Trollbabe, PSI*RUN and Dungeon World.
Well I already see Monsterhearts on the list, but I think all of the AW Engine games would work quite well. Especially Monster of the Week is very suited for a single session game, if you have a 2 parter, pretty much all of them would be awesome. Would love to see what you make of Apocalypse World π
Of the ones you’ve mentioned, the only one I’ve played is Dread – but it was awesome!! (though, it was GM’d when I played it)
I played it at GottaCon, a PAX-like con in Victoria, BC. It fit into their 4-hour event window, I think with time to spare.
The tension was palpable! By the end of the game everyone was sitting a foot back from the table, least we knock anything over! Oh, I guess you’d have to flatten your playing table, or you’d have a lot more deaths. Unless that’s what you’re going for. π
For the first time, I’m considering buying an Ipad. Being able to join a gaming community for table top games would be amazing as there isn’t much in my area.
Taste for murder.
It a bit like fiasco , but better.
Ihmo since I never played either of them myself.
Don’t know if you have ever heard of a board game called SMARTASS. It is a REAL game that even a dumb ass can play, and is a great gift to give to all the smartass people that wander the fringes of our life. A little passive aggressiveness is good for the soul!! Chaoscat
Have you looked at the new RPGs from Monte Cook Games? Numenera & The Strange. They’re very story driven with rather simple mechanics and the story is a collaboration between GM & players.
I just saw the promos for The End of the World by Fantasy Flight. Themes sound awesome. You play as yourself!
I’m not sure if you are sticking with games in print. If so, Don’t Rest Your Head is quite unique and Spirit of the Century by that company as well. If you ever get to try what’s out of print, there’s The Mountain Witch, Dogs in the Vineyard and my personal favorite Primetime Adventures. I think what they all have in common is that the personalities of your characters actually get into the mechanics in interesting ways. The classic GM-less game is Polaris if I recall correctly.
ICONS superhero rpg – it’s fun, fast, easy
New Star Wars RPG – it’s not really Indy but it unique and it’s Star Wars.
Dr Who RPG – again not Indy but it’s Dr Who.
If you want an awesome little indie RPG that does storytelling the best (for me), I would recommend One Last Job, a game that is the manifestation of every heist movie ever created. I think it’d be a perfect fit for you, especially after the Fiasco! episode.
You might have enough suggestions already, but an indie game I really enjoy, that is great for one-shots and does a completely different kind of content/genre from most RPGs, is Hot Guys Making Out
http://www.tao-games.com/hot-guys-making-out/
…no, stop laughing, “Hot Guys Making Out’ is really what it’s called. It’s a romance game based on yaoi manga. It can be as tasteful or as explicit as you want. Every time I’ve played it (even with a 100% heterosexual group) has been a blast. It brings out the most absurd, hilarious, naughty creativity from people you thought were totally straight-laced. It could make for a really unique and entertaining show.
(HGMO is also the game my wife used to introduce role-playing to her anime club. It’s pretty good for reaching out to people who are active in fandom but have never role-played before.)
My go to RPG systems are:
Dread (for one shots)
Savage Worlds (for small arch 2-5 session campaigns)
OGL / 3.5 (for anything longer than 6 sessions)
Can We PLEASE see you guys playing the Baron Munchausen RPG! It would be amazing to see everyone speaking in ridiculous accents while trying to outdo each other with outlandishly improbable stories (all true of course).
I have always been interested if Mythic RPG. Is (or can be) a GM’less system. Pick a setting, build a character, and let the situation evolve however the fate chart decides. It seems like the perfect rpg if you have a group of people who are good storytellers. This is my vote anyway.
http://www.mythic.wordpr.com/page14/page14.html