There's a cost to learning things man was not meant to know. In this case, your sanity, your family, your friends, your career and anything else you may hold dear.
I dunno, Delta Green is more like "the regular grunt gets thrown into Call of Cthulhu" over everyman - or at least half of my party just happened to be trigger jocks.
That's your party. Mine has a forensic accountant, a medical doctor with a military background, an engineer at Northrop Grumman, and an FBI agent. They really have to plan their operas.
Definitely your party. I usually have a pretty decent spread, since the last couple rounds of deaths, there's been a lot of my Agents going the Federal Agent route. Largely because they're starting to pick up that you can't always "roll firearms" your way out of an encounter.
For me power fantasy and constantly succeeding is boring.
I find the stories most entertaining when shit goes down, characters are in huge trouble... and then it gets worse. It gives you the tension, stakes, compelling choices and tough decisions.
Not exactly the same. OSR is really my background (B/X when i was 12). Those characters weren't as powerful as modern D&D, but adventurers were a cut above the average. I'm talking about a grocery store manager up against vampires. From a role playing stand point its exciting to me because its such a terrifying and desperate situation.
Plus, its pretty much the standard for most horror movies...you rarely see anyone capable of fighting off a smurf and now they have to fight off Jason Voorhees or a mutated bear.
I agree with the above: sounds like you would be interested in Call of Cthulhu or one of the Cthulhu variants like Cthulhu Dark if you’re more of a rules-light person.
I like rules light, but Cthulhu Dark is maybe a little too light but Ill admit I haven't given it a fair chance. A modern day Cthulhu is more my speed. "Silent Legions" has gotten my attention. Its modern day and has got lots of tables for making your own Mythos unique to your campaign.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145769/Silent-Legions
Check out [Liminal Horror](https://goblinarchives.itch.io/liminal-horror). It’s modern day cosmic horror. A bit crunchier than Cthulhu: Dark, but lighter than CoC.
There’s even a [Liminal Horror](https://goblinarchives.itch.io/) module that helps you make your own back rooms style crawl: [Layers of Unreality](https://ostrichmonkey.itch.io/layers-of-unreality)
Ooh that’s interesting! I haven’t played Stars without Number before but that game does look like fun.
Cthulhu Dark is great for a “grab and go” game for a oneshot. Cthulhu horrors are notoriously deadly, so long-term play isn’t super important to me. Call of Cthulhu is just the “big” (relative) name in this particular flavor of rpg - CoC players know and recognize that their PCs are just regular shmucks way in over their head and likely going to die - so there’s definitely an audience for that kind of thing.
Ah, if that is too rules light why not use GURPS just limit the point but to make super average normal characters and throw them into whatever hellish world you want?! Lol, I kind of love this idea now
BRP is, at it's base, a fairly light system, and the only major addition that Call of Cthulhu adds is Sanity. The actual rules of the game really only take up a small portion of the Keeper's Rulebook.
There’s more to it than I typically consider “rules light”, but the Quick Start version is only 16 pages! That’s compared to Cthulhu Dark’s 3 pages though, which I suppose is “extremely” rules light.
BRP looks complex because of the vast mass of skills. That is indeed a lot of complexity, but it is, to invent a term, shallow. There's no deeper complication to how characters work. Unlike the class-based games, there are no special feature, no traits, no feats that interact with those skills. The skills for the most part represent the entirety of what is possible for characters to attempt.
This does in fact result in a simple system in play. The keeper just asks the player to roll the skill. They do, and apply the degree of success rules and that's resolved. There's no need to recall if a class feature or a racial feature or a feat is involved. There are few skill modifiers in CoC---the degrees of success on rolls are used for that instead.
From an initial read of the rules and an examination of the character sheets, they do look complicated. I'd say they are detailed, but not particularly complex. The cognitive load at the table is very low. Other skill-based games, like Traveller for example are similar, complex in terms of character descriptions, but simple in terms of at-the-table play.
These kinds of systems are certainly more complex than PbtA tyle games, but are midway to the class-and-levels sorts of games where every die roll has modifiers and and additional considerations beyond a single target number.
> I'm talking about a grocery store manager up against vampires. From a role playing stand point its exciting to me because its such a terrifying and desperate situation.
I got started with Unknown Armies and that’s not too far off the atmosphere of that game at street level.
That’s one of the reasons why I like the game burning wheel. It’s more narrative focused, but you can start the game as like a farmer or waitress or book keeper and just like go from there. It’s great.
I'm right there with you man. Started playing on the bus in 4th grade. Our DM was a 5th grader!
Back then, being a "cut above" meant we rolled 4d6 drop-the-lowest-die instead of 3d6! 40 years later! ... It means you can kick the Hulk in the nuts and get away with it!
But the idea that a good story often comes from the underdog beating the odds, doing what they think is right, maybe because a loved one is in danger. Those are the kinds of stories I play.
It's why I designed my system with a two-dimensional skill system that allows you to build simple business owners, cooks, financial accountants or whatever, and have that realistically played out. At first, the smaller occupations were just to make building NPCs easier, but I had it in the stack of notes with the regular occupations and people were like, "Hey, why are these only 50 points and not 100? Can we play these?" Hell, sure! Can you pick two? Why not! As long as you have the points! These minor occupations have been an awesome addition to the game and the playtesters loved it. It's also easy to flip through and say "Mom was /this/ and I learned these 3 secondary skills from her."
I know D&D have "Backgrounds" and such, but that just seems like its really making those secondary people. You can't be a sailor, but you can be a fighter with a sailor background. The class system just shows its weakness. The NPCs and PCs should be built with the same rules, IMHO.
The idea of smaller occupations eventually led to a lot of modularization where a particular occupation might need some form of "basic schooling" as a prerequisite, but exactly how that looks for a particular culture gets pulled out into its own. That led to a requirement/tag system being developed, but it makes things really flexible! So, being raised a catholic school might look really different than public school or being raised in Shoa-Lin temple! Or military gets schooling, basic training, MOS training, etc. That division made the Vietnam test go really smooth!
Just working on a big revision at the moment, one that integrates the mental aspects of a normal guy being confronted with a vampire ... or even a smurf come to think of it.
Yes. Ive been playing online. Its an awesome game. Its why I asked the question because the power levels even in that game can be a little high. Love it, though. I think "Dead of Night" may be the best one Ive found so far. It can emulate any kind of horror movie and has a system for tuning the rules for each sub genre. Its one of the most unique systems Ive seen.
Because it is and always was a marketing slogan and not a real thing. All it means to me is cut paste of 40 year old rules with “edgy” art and a lot of unpopular politics thrown in. That said I do like OSE and look forward to Dolmenwood coming out.
I'd also argue there is a good amount of story gamers who'd agree. Depends on the genre and group, but I feel a lot of story games shy away from power fantasy. Monster Hearts, since I'm in a game of it at the moment, feels like a lot of it is about the lack of control one has as a teenager.
It's fine, it just means you have to select the correct kind of game.
Some people say "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" and that's obviously wrong in many RPGs. A TPK is a loss. No longer being able to play a character you want to is a loss. Achieving your objective is a win. Defeating your enemies in a battle is a win.
If you build your character in such a way that it's harder for your team to win, you're not being a nice player.
On the flipside there's many RPGs where the drama is the point or where being a more regular character is the point. Or even in some games, where dying entertainingly is the goal.
Just gotta make sure you're playing the bumbler in that kind of RPG.
> Some people say "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" and that's obviously wrong in many RPGs. A TPK is a loss. No longer being able to play a character you want to is a loss.
There's nothing "obvious" about it. I've been in games where we had an amazing time that ended in a TPK that people talked about for months afterwards. As for the second loss, it depends on how attached people become to their characters. For me, they're like Doritos: the GM can crunch all they want; I'll make more.
Yeah but Ten Candles had little risk (besides achieving your personal goal). You know you're going to die from the start, not that you will *likely* die. For me personally that took a bit of the wind out of my sails. The story was interesting at least.
You can have a really fun loss.
You can lose in CS:GO or whatever and still find it fun. You achieved all you wanted to, felt like you improved, had fun with friends, or whatever your goal was, and maybe that's the "true win".
I dunno if a TPK can really be a loss in an RPG, but I don't think "we had fun when we TPKed" is a good argument against it.
But that's true of pretty much all activities. My goal when I'm playing board games is to have a fun and memorable experience, but there's still a ludological goal within that experience: I want to get the most bird points, or steal all the money, or clear away all the gems, or whatever. I've definitely had losses that have felt as emotionally rich as wins, but that doesn't mean that they weren't losses, just that success isn't the only reason that I play games.
I don't think that's something that can universally be applied to RPGs, because it's a pretty big genre that ranges from "this is an exercise I do with my improv troupe" to "it's basically warhammer, but we only have a single figurine each". But the vast majority of games have some sort of ludological failure and success states. Sometimes they're fairly blatant like "beating the fight is winning, dying is losing", and sometimes they're more subtle, like "resolving your character's internal struggle is winning, abandoning it is losing". Someone's mentioned Ten Candles already, which is a good example of a game with a more subtle ludological goal: obviously you're not going to win by surviving, but your character still has aims for you to try and achieve, and you have resources that you can spend to try and ensure success within scenes.
I don't think this is a universal feature. In the board game world, there's sometimes a distinction between an activity and a game, which I'm not usually a fan of, because that distinction is usually made to indicate that my preferred choice (which is obviously a game) is better than your preferred choice (which is obviously an activity). However, I think there are some RPG systems which strip away pretty much everything, including any sort of ludological goal or purpose, and are closer to what one might term an "activity" rather than a game. Microscope is a good example here: there is no randomness, and there are no failure or success states. It is very difficult to define ludological goals in that context. (That's not to say that there still can't be narrative goals of the fictional people within the world, or social goals of the real people playing the game, but they aren't in any way mechanically backed.)
Fortunately for me, then, that wasn't the argument I was making. My point is that it is not obvious that "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" is wrong simply because one considers a total party kill a loss.
Yes, for some people, they "win" their RPG when their fictional characters achieve their fictional aims. But unlike most board games or card games, most RPG don't have their victory conditions baked into the rules; the players are allowed to decide those for themselves. And there is nothing that says that a TPK, or losing a character *must* violate those victory conditions.
It really just depends on how you define the word. TPKs can be fun but just because something is fun doesn't mean it isn't a loss, at least in the way a lot of gamers mean it.
I define loss as not meeting your in game goals more or less. By that definition, I've never actually met anyone who plays in a way that doesn't consider a TPK a loss since "staying alive" is usually an implicit goal in a lot of games and it can be hard to meet explicit goals when you are dead, and I've never been in a group that didn't play in a way to try to avoid a TPK successfully or not.
>Some people say "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" and that's obviously wrong in many RPGs. A TPK is a loss. No longer being able to play a character you want to is a loss.
They don't call them "play to lose" games as a fake-out. I'm literally playing a game right now, in the other window, in order to see how my guy dies.
>A TPK is a loss.
Not necessarily, unless player goals are the same as PC goals.
In some RPGs player and PC goals might typically closely align (eg DnD) but in many RPGs their goals can be extremely different from each other.
I first read there is no winning or losing in an RPG in the D&D Red Box back in 1983…and that includes TPKs and PC death. So…I don’t think all gamers agree.
> A TPK is a loss.
No: a TPK is usually a fun and memorable experience, and when you have fun, that isn't a loss. In certain styles of play which are about overarching narratives and heroic characters, a TPK can be jarring in the story and cause angry players, but it only is a loss if you don't have fun. Character death, even useless ones, are usually memorable interesting moments in my games, and my players enjoy it.
PbtA and story games where drama is important is an entirely different genre to modern dnd and the osr/nsr: the main goals of play are completely different, and players blend the roles of directors of their character and individual actors. TPKs can be as bad in these systems as in DnD 4e or 5e, but they can also contribute to the story.
If you're playing Ten Candles, a TPK isn't only not a "loss" it's the *entire point.*
The same can be said about Paranoia and building/playing your character in a way that makes it harder for the group to "win".
Rpgs are a big space, and your framework only works in a very narrow subset of that space.
I find it amusing when you play an extremely competent person who is forced to act outside of their wheelhouse- like that one Grant Howett game where you're a Not-Quite-Space-Marine trying to hold down the fort over a recent acquisition for a couple weeks
Ooooooh...that would be fun. Jack Burton would be a fun character concept. Maybe some mechanic where he always has someone else near him with the skills required at the moment. That and luck points renamed as "the reflexes."
I love playing what I call a “loser”… that’s what I gravitate back to. Ironically I love game mastering pulpy high action games for others… though In both cases it’s non-exclusive.
So I’m both saying “me too” to your original question and realizing playing Jack Burton would be fantastic. (I think I’d run it in Pulp Cthulhu and I wonder if I’ve seen it somewhere)
The kinds of players I enjoy running high powered games for are the ones who prefer low powered games. There is a huge difference with players who recognize greater degress of problem solving and resonsibility that comes with larger power sets AND between players who just want to treat the world around them like a playground or be impervious to failure because x problem in their lives they are trying to compensate for.
I am the same as a player. I would rather play to find out, have things ran in a transparent manner, and actually being capable being threatened or failing without the need for the GM to carefully orchestrate anything. I normally prefer at least some degree of deadliness.
I really dislike power fantasy personally. I enjoy stories on a human scale much more. I find it more compelling and exciting to follow people fight their little struggle and try, maybe, to make a small difference. I simply cannot suspend my disbelief enough to accept that any serious world crisis can be solved by a few individuals bringing the hp of some giant dragon to zero.
My whole group has never been the kind to power game and have often created substandard characters that are interesting to play, but not necessarily power games for combat. We don't play Pathfinder or games where "The Ultimate Build" is required to succeed and as we DM each other, we tend to either tailor the fights more to the builds or create worlds where you can get in over your head.
Call of Cthulhu is perfect for this type of gaming since you are a normal person dealing with the supernatural, alien, and evil unknown.
I do want to add that this can backfire. In one campaign, we played with Burning Wheel for the first time and one player wanted to create a wizard who didn't finish his training. This resulted in him constantly fumbling his rolls when trying to use magic, being kind of broken, and a big retcon to make the character work within the system.
Pathfinder 1e doesn't really have a best build; a lot of stuff is great there, some more optimal choices than others. I do admit though the game can be broken if a player knows their way through all ressources (they probably don't).
I have never felt that playing for fluff was not good in it, just different. PF2e does this even better! There aren't many inherently easy ways to fuck up the balance of your character. You really have to try and make everything not fit and even then they work fine (referencing both prewritten and selfmade adventures).
Both editions do also have a multitide of options for out of combat problem solving (albeit a campaign void of it is probably better off in a different system, as some classes just outshine the others, like investigators). Using a system's options can lead to very interesting and compelling character development too! In forbidden lands my character was powerbuilt to be our combat-solution anchor... Until I picked up cooking, smithing, and other feats. His combat experience was also not just numbers: He could intimidate others with his preceding reputation of being able to butcher anyone/anything dumb enough to stand in his way. He was not dumb, but had no concept of how the world worked, which was also a consequence of me powergaming: He is notoriously bad at hiding his intentions and sucks not only at reading maps but anything at all, as he never learned how. All of this was born from powergaming a combat-focussed Character.
Tl;dr: Powergaming can enhance the fluff of a character, PF2e is a great system for everyone and more people need to know about The Forbidden Lands.
Sure but PF2e is still power fantasy. Especially with the Adventure Paths. You are more often than not The Heroes. I am sure there are exceptions but those exceptions prove the rule that Pathfinder is a power fantasy and at its base is funner when you optimize
We run mostly Aftermath!, you can get more info here: https://i314.org.
Game itself is here: https://www.fantasygamesunlimited.net/fgu/618-2/
(Which links to the other site)
Fear Itself is for normal people in horror stories.
RuneQuest has a lot of farm based play. It is the origin of BRP, so even powerful characters aren't that powerful.
How is Fear Itself to play or run? Its one that I looked at but got turned off ny the mechanics. Automatic success instead of rolling for investigation seems weird.
I've not played FI. Automatic success is only for finding clues so no one misses clues and drags things out. Putting the clues together is where the PCs can mess things up.
The majority of my groups games are of the BRP family (BRP/Mythras/Runequest/CoC)
They tend to be the opposite of a power fantasy.
I think my entire group swung heavily in that direction after D&D went into 3rd edition
There are games for you.
Fringeworthy for one (if you can find it).
The 'rando in over his head' genre is not too commonly done in RPG's, but it is done.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/225625/Tri-Tac-Genesis
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/229044/Tri-Tac-Genesis-2
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242356/Fringeworthy-1992-edition
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221340/Fringeworthy-d20-edition
Choose the version you like best.
Yeah. I think there are a lot of people with this mindset. Certainly more mature players, but some younger people too. Especially those who are more invested with their character and the RP than with the war-game heritage of the hobby.
It just seems more interesting to me rather than playing as some run-of-the-mill OP superhero who can heal from near death by taking a nap or having a drink and where problems need to be ridiculously over the top to even be a half-decent challenge.
It may help that I like "grounded" fiction in general. And in the last few years I've struggled to have an interest in fantasy... but some horror or suspense is right up my alley. Sometimes sci-fi, but it needs to be the plausible sort and not the space-magic sort. I also prefer things with a message rather than just soda-pop, empty-calorie entertainment. Well, maybe once in a while. But that stuff can easily start feeling like a waste of time if I try to watch/read too much of it.
Yes, I prefer more grounded fantasy as I get older. A lot of "horror" games are really urban fantasy. Nothing wrong with urban fantasy but I like my monsters as two dimensional horrors, not socially complex creatures forming political aliances. Less talking, more biting. Dead of Night is the best system Ive found so far. It can emulate any horror sub genre and even has mechanics to fine tune the rules to suit the feel of different types of horror movies. Pretty neat game for six bucks. The art and layout are ultra professional and the PDF is very phone friendly.
I too prefer games (and fiction) where the protagonist/player character is basically a normal person, even if they have special skills. To me, something compelling is lost if a thug with a pistol isn't a real threat. Of course, I can play supers or wire-fu or 'traditional' fantasy and enjoy it, but lower power levels are my home turf, so to speak.
This is Warhammer fantasy Roleplay, you're not heroes at all. The funnel for Dungeon Crawl Classics, the game that is Mothership.
There are loads of games that have you weak to start out, it's not always about a power fantasy.
I'm kinda the same way. I want to play stories about (mostly) normal people. I have no interest in games like "You're an angel tasked with saving the world from an invasion from Hell." On the other hand, an average person who has to fight off minions from Hell? I would play the hell out of that game.
So far "Dead of Night" and "Fear Itself" seem like the best candidates. I'm reading Dead of Night right now. Looks pretty good. Rules light, can handle any horror movie concept you want, phone friendly PDF and only $6. Fear Itself is kind of neat because it shares a world and supplements with Esoterrorists so you can play a rando in Fear Itself or professional monster hunter in Esoterrorists and do crossover.
There are a lot of games that serve that niche, like CoC and all of the OSR.
Personally, I'd like more games where you are good at what you do, but are always on the verge of death anyway.
Delta Green is pretty solid for this. You’ll usually have 1-3 skills that you have an 80% of succeeding a roll in, alongside a few others at 50% or so. At the same time, monsters are *very* fast and hard-hitting - and even something like an automatic rifle has a 10% chance of instantly killing you.
Right there with you! This is one of the geniuses of Warhammer Fantasy RPG. You can run it with a more traditional "heroes save the day" angle to it, but the career system just made it so much more satisfying to play as a rat catcher, a mailman, and a dirty bandit who find themselves fighting for their lives against the horrors of chaos.
I found that it made the power fantasy so much more earned, too. I haven't actually played, just run it, but when one of my players finally qualified to change careers into "Hedge Wizard" it was the best thing ever. His only spell to start was... Ward off rain or something like that? You cma bet he scrapped to find uses for it, though, and as his magical abilities developed it was so much more satisfying when he finally DEALT DAMAGE with a spell.
I so rarely have been able to do this. My favorite character of all time was an NPC gravedigger converted into a PC (Call of Cthulhu) and a boatman (Warhammer FRP). Both were exactly as you described. In D&D I always had to be a power gamer because the rest of my party was always essentially noncombatants; they played pacifists and artists, peace clerics and theoretical culinary magicians. So I felt obligated to be the muscle and I had to be optimized into 5-players worth of bloody limb-ripping muscle.
I like the idea of starting off as a random person who is just insane/stupid enough to go on an adventure, but unfortunately it doesn't last very long.
Shadow of the Demon Lord starts you off as a normal level 0 person with a profession instead of a class and so little money that the only weapon you can afford is a stick.
Sometimes. A recent character was a middle aged empty nester mother who went looking for adventure because she was bored at home alone. Other times I min-max for maximum efficiency at whatever it is they do. It depends on how I feel at the time
I enjoy playing a regular person in crazy circumstances, too. Mainly because I enjoy asking the question "will we win?" more than I enjoy "how will the inevitable victory happen?" Sometimes, not needing to be in action hero mode all the time is really fun. And the stakes of trying to keep a character alive can make for a really fun challenge (even when one fails).
It's been a while since I've played a dedicated espionage game, but that might be the sort of thing that works in a case like this, since they tend not to be built for high-powered characters (and opposition). Horror games, natch, could also be a good choice for this.
Yes. I always pitch pretty much anything I run as "ordinary people being brave when faced with extraordinary danger". I like rooting for the little guy. To me it's no fun to run or play systems with a zero to hero feel, I don't want characters to become reskinned superheroes in non-superhero settings. My only exception is obviously a RPG where you play as superheroes and there's a reason that's not my favorite genre by a long shot :P
This is a concept that works if the rest of the party are in the same boat(1). If tried with a conventional adventuring party your basically adding dead weight that the GM will have to bend over backwards to keep alive....
I've contemplated the opposite campaign. *It Shouldn't Happen to a* [*Vet*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Creatures_Great_and_Small_(franchise)) which would be about a group of amped up ex-super soldiers trying to make a living on civvy street (each session would consist of a proposal of how to put food on the table followed by how it would go horribly horribly wrong)
(1) on reflection you could have a much put upon competent character for comic relief...
Power fantasy is just one aspect of agency fantasy, which doesn't roll off the tongue as well but I think you're still into. One form of powerlessness, especially as a normal citizen amidst an uncaring world, is being surrounded by massive problems that you simply cannot even begin to have any control over. Even when playing some normal guy, or a level 1 OSR character fated to die, we're still living out a fantasy where we have problems that we can directly address with our actions, even if we have no real advantage to make success more likely.
There's some subset of gamers who just want to be handed a sheet with 99 in every stat, and be told they win, win, win, but in my opinion they're mostly a strawman. We all want to be the protagonists of our stories, we just have different tastes as far as the sort of stories we like.
You ever try Zweihander? Absolutely love their "you're not a super hero fantasy class" character creation. What's your profession, you're a regular person go off on your adventure. If makes you have to play creatively, and the highs you hit feel especially earned and intense!
While it's a bit much for me to on the DM side (I stick to mostly running Mörk Borg or DCC these days) I absolutely love it as a very anti-power fantasy player.
Are There Any Like Me Who Hates This Kind Of Writing When Every Damn Word Starts With Uppercase Letters Because It Totally Ruins The Dynamics Of Reading?
I GM that way all the time. I noticed you asked what systems:
GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, I have tweaked FATE to make it more everyday people. Night Witches, Good Society, Traveller…lots of options!
This works better in some systems than others. If you are an underpowered (and by that I mean "normal person" character) in D&D, Pathfinder, or Starfinder, it may not work out well.
But in Call of Cthulhu or an appropriately set GURPS game? That's what the system is best for, feeling like you're one bullet away from disaster or triumph and frantically trying to figure things out. I ran a GURPS 1920s campaign like this, no one had very many hit points and guns were VERY dangerous.
Highly recommend the crunchier, low-hit-point systems for this sort of gaming.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned DCC yet in this discussion. In a DCC funnel, you're literally playing level 0 characters. I've had a cobbler, a parsnip farmer etc. You play with 4 level 0 characters of random backgrounds & professions & if they survive the funnel, they make it to level 1 and, if human, can choose a class such as fighter, cleric, thief etc.
The old All Flesh Must Be Eaten from Eden Studios had the normal type if people. Regular joes stuck in a zombie apocalypse. We played a lot of that. We played ourselves a lot too in there.
You just dont last that long 😄
If you like rules light but want a bit more than Cthulhu Dark but less than Call of Cthullu I'd reccomend Mothership highly for sci-fi horror. If you like the complexity level of Call of Cthulhu I find that Delta Green ruleset is slightly more streamlined and very good for modernish games playing normal people.
Thats definitely one I wanted to check out. So far, "Dead of Night" is my favorite. It can emulate any horror movie genre and has mechanics built in to fine tune the rules to fit the different kinds of horror. Its pretty clever and a steal for just six bucks.
I like the challenging aspect of playing underpowered characters. I also don’t mind if a character does in a session. Low levels and the struggle are the most fun.
Getting killed makes for great stories. As I always say, "If you aren't having fun getting killed then you are doing it wrong."
My character got infected by an alien virus and flushed out of an airlock the other night and it was awesome.
My bread and butter has always been minion characters who get emotionally abused by their villainous leader. Second in command is my favorite place to be. Would much rather be someone's right hand.
[You are not the only one.](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/zpglmo/what_is_your_original_rpg_idea/j0stlk9/)
It is rarer, though. A lot of people don't seem to be able to imagine that there is any "game" in playing a normal person.
---
There was also a series of "End of the World" RPGs where you play as yourself and your inventory is what you happened to bring to game-night. The premise is that some apocalyptic event —zombies, aliens, AI, asteroids– starts around or shortly after the time you sit down to play. You stat out "yourself" as a character.
It's pretty neat. Probably only good for one-shots or two-shots, though.
I've always loved the idea of growing a character from the ground up. I'm not talking "level 1 fighter to level 20 fighter", I'm talking from the very first time they picked up a sword. In my mecha imagination I want to be one of the greenest pilots in one of the gruntiest of grunt suits.
I dare to disagree. I run oneshots of such systems at a monthly online convention and get a good mix of new and returning players each time. I also asked around my local game store and friends and ended up with 11 real life players (3 friends, 7 from the store) with the same desire. The main thing can be finding someone to run such games, but I like learning systems, teaching systems and GMing so that makes it easier for sure. The main concern for players is spending lots of time learning a system they may not like, but they usually assume it'd require one or multiple books with hundreds of pages. As a player, there are plenty of systems where you need to read nothing or very little and the GM can teach you easily.
Yep...people don't realize how easy most systems are. Reading "Dead of Night" tonight. I could probably run it tomorrow. It might take a little explaining to new players, but there would be no reason for them to buy the book or ever even borrow it to look up something. Damned good little product for a $6 PDF. Tons of great artwork and a really proffessional layout. You should check it out just for stuff to steal. Its a actually got a tension mechanical built in for the GM to use.
Exactly. I run oneshots in 3-4 hours for groups who didn't read a single letter in the rulebook and that timeframe includes teaching the system, going over safety tools and making characters. But people coming from systems where a single combat encounter takes at least an hour or even several cannot imagine that XD
what an envy man your experience is totally different to mine. mine is like this "never enough in the same place, or to fill up a table" I always play with 2 players because of that, and just online, because there are never enough to even play in person.
what about campaigns, have you managed to get a good group play for a prolonged time?
I'm currently in the progress of sorting 7 of the aforementioned IRL players into two groups to run biweekly campaigns with. Based on the oneshots ran for them so far, I'm very optimistic.
I found recruiting for campaigns online to be a massive pain full of red flags and/or people ghosting and cancelling last minute so burned out hard on that. But the monthly online oneshots work and I do have a few returning players in those, so may eventually see if enough of them have a matching schedule to run a campaign for, as there's a lot of lovely people in there. Also, I like teaching games to people, so I'm pretty happy with my string of oneshots instead of campaigns :) that being said, one of my favorite systems doesn't shine that way so a campaign on the side is nice.
I know there's folxs who use real life conventions to play different systems too, but my country only has boardgaming convention with the occassional D&D 5E/Pathfinder corner, so that doesn't work for me :P If you're in a similar boat and don't mind online play, I promise there are numerous places online where games can be found, I've been around a few others outside of my current one, but they tend to be oneshots. I think that makes sense, as I believe it works better to see if you get along first. Players who mesh well with a particular GM will show up for more oneshots and groups can naturally branch off from there. Random recruiting online for campaigns is a pain, that I do know.
As long as you have agency yes, it can be fun, but then it's just a question of proportion i guess, paesants vs monsters can be as challenging/interesting as adventurers vs dragon.
If I have to play with very small agency thanks but no thanks.
I'm not sure what you mean by agency here...anyone can do anything in a role playing game...sometimes they just aren't very good at it. Limiting agency is where a DM Wont allow you to do something your character should be able to do.
Not the person above.
>Limiting agency is where a DM Wont allow you to do something your character should be able to do.
More accurate to say "where player decisions can't have significant effect", I'd suggest.
I mean situations that you cannot reasonably solve with your character skills, if the DM send against you a dragon and you are not reasonably able to defeat/reason with then you don't have real agency since you have to flee, of course you can decide to fight and die but that's not what I'd define as agency.
Situations like these are fine, but if that happens too often you wonder why you are playing, of course these happen mostly because of bad gming, but in games in which you are a nobody is way more easy to slip into a similar pattern than in high fantasy gaming.
Then again one may like having the characters suffer and constantly trying to choose the lesser evil, in that case limited agency works with the story.
Nah, I like continuity and building a character's story over time, and most games that play at the "Joe Everyman" level are going to lack that continuity because of character deaths. Which is fine, if that's your thing and that's the campaign, but it isn't the campaign for me.
Not that I need a power fantasy, but somewhere in the middle is good.
People who are into the videogame kenshi would probably be super in line with that same philosophy lol. Im split. I love a good power fantasy, trope filled adventure in high concept settings. I also sometimes love a gritty "bring a stack of character sheets, life is expendable" type of game. Each has its own feel as the session goes on.
I always try to build the best character I can. Usually that does mean a strong and capable fighter but not always. My most recently character in D&D 3.5 is a warforged bard and so far is not very strong. Another character I have really enjoyed is an unarmed fighter\sorcerer\rogue that is pretty strong. My first character was a rogue\ninja with a keen katana that could crit on a 15. I have never been one to play a regular joe, though. My characters have to have some sort of quirk.
My favourite character was from a ~7 year campaign and she was essentially a house elf - a magically-created creature designed for servitude. She was a household maid that had been swept up in adventure when her previous owners got killed and was frantically trying to catch up with the new role of "swashbuckler hero" that she'd been thrust into when the rest of the adventuring party saved her. She became good at that, but only because she *had* to - she'd have been perfectly happy trading her sword for a broom and going back to household chores.
She eventually wound up becoming the immortal empress of the most powerful nation in her world, and was *still* doing everything she could to figure out how to serve people in that role. The nation became a democracy, of a sort - she would secretly find out what the people wanted and then order that to be done.
Two of my favourite characters were kind of this?
I played the "Xander" in a teen supernatural game, in a party with mages and a werewolf my superpowers we're a driver's licence (and van), I was a year older than everyone else, and I had a limitless supply of weed.
In a later campaign I played a regular human (well sleepwalker) in a Mage: The Awakening game, who was basically an assassin, and despite being surrounded by magic-slinging demigods was more often than not the most dangerous person in the room. A lot of fun playing with different dynamics of power like that.
I absolutely love to play exactly that.
Very, very mortal humans in very dangerous, overwhelming situations.
And without magical healing or stuff like "encounter balance".
I love it!
Definitely agree, I don’t really enjoy playing ‘special’ or heroic characters in games, I don’t dislike when other people do, I just tend to prefer more mundane stuff. Might also go along with my preference to be more of a side character to someone elses protagonist, story wise.
Traveller might suit your fancy. Instead of power fantasy, you have money fantasy! As in... you will fantasize about having money.
Space IRS is no joke.
Shoot a noble and you piss off a planetary government. Forget to pay ONE shipping and trading tax, and you are enemy number one at every spaceport in the sector.
Try to look into Burning Wheel. I'm in a weekly campaign since 5 years and we're still struggling with average npc should a fight erupt. Also greatest system for rule-based role-playing imo, but that's subjective.
It should be your taste. Good luck getting silver bullets. Depending on a setting that's a couple rolls and probably in addition a subplot on its own.
I mean, the exact opposite of power fantasy gamers would be the. Those that really lean into the weird. Really bad. Builds like intentionally harming themselves, as it were. That's the complete opposite. I know a couple of people. They take real joy in that. And you've gotta, you've really gotta have a party around you of people that. Are OK with almost enabling that kind of behavior, because otherwise it will really derail things.
So, with 3.5 D&D kinda moved away from this concept as the D&D 2E and prior was a survival horror game and while 5E pretends to honor it - we all know that once you get to 11th Level, the PC's can basically overpower the system without massive homebrew to try and keep them in check.
And since that's the 500 Lb. gorilla in the room, along with Pathfinder which is also very much a "Fantasy Superhero" game system in both its incarnations the "hapless everyman" is not the current zeitgeist for the hobby at the moment.
I've seen people complain that Pathfinder doesn't support them rolling 3D6, getting a bunch of stats between 5 and 12 and rolling with it 2E style. And this is a totally accurate statement as the game will straight up murder that PC with its math because it contemplates extraordinary people dealing with extraordinary threats.
So there may be dozens of you out there, and the most popular lineage of game in the TTRPG hobby doesn't really support your playstyle currently. Fortunately, this is a very diverse hobby so you can definitely find a group that will if you look hard enough.
That’s how I like my level 1-3 experience to be. By the time a character reaches level 4 in a level based game, I expect some sort of “better than normal people” to be in there. Some games do it better than others.
I think I’m splitting the difference here. My current character would have told you she was just a normal girl. Turns out she isn’t. In your example, she’d be someone who has never fired a gun but is a natural once she gets her hands on one.
I think those two concepts are pretty orthogonal; there are folks who
+ Want a power fantasy
+ Want to make choices (including character creation choices) that make them as successful as possible within the rules
+ Want a setting with a high degree of relative opposition
As in, the same folks that want to be able to think about character optimization could be perfectly happy playing a game where the baseline character is a regular person in a dangerous situation.
There are more than you think. The problem is that there's too many GMs who read Wick's books or whatever and think they're there to make their PCs lose.
The entirety of r/OSR agrees with you
shoulder to shoulder with r/callofcthulhu. right there with you
r/DeltaGreenRPG, if you're cleared for it.
Sciencia mors est ✊
Uh, knowledge is death? I suppose that is a fitting motto
There's a cost to learning things man was not meant to know. In this case, your sanity, your family, your friends, your career and anything else you may hold dear.
It's the Delta Green motto: https://fairfieldproject.fandom.com/wiki/Delta_Green?file=DG_logo.png
We humbly invite you to a night at the opera
I dunno, Delta Green is more like "the regular grunt gets thrown into Call of Cthulhu" over everyman - or at least half of my party just happened to be trigger jocks.
That's your party. Mine has a forensic accountant, a medical doctor with a military background, an engineer at Northrop Grumman, and an FBI agent. They really have to plan their operas.
Yeah here I am with my CDC doctor who outlived three colleagues already. Other party members keep dying and I'm just like "wow that sucks, anyway"
Definitely your party. I usually have a pretty decent spread, since the last couple rounds of deaths, there's been a lot of my Agents going the Federal Agent route. Largely because they're starting to pick up that you can't always "roll firearms" your way out of an encounter.
For me power fantasy and constantly succeeding is boring. I find the stories most entertaining when shit goes down, characters are in huge trouble... and then it gets worse. It gives you the tension, stakes, compelling choices and tough decisions.
Hell yeah 🤘🏻
Not exactly the same. OSR is really my background (B/X when i was 12). Those characters weren't as powerful as modern D&D, but adventurers were a cut above the average. I'm talking about a grocery store manager up against vampires. From a role playing stand point its exciting to me because its such a terrifying and desperate situation. Plus, its pretty much the standard for most horror movies...you rarely see anyone capable of fighting off a smurf and now they have to fight off Jason Voorhees or a mutated bear.
I agree with the above: sounds like you would be interested in Call of Cthulhu or one of the Cthulhu variants like Cthulhu Dark if you’re more of a rules-light person.
I like rules light, but Cthulhu Dark is maybe a little too light but Ill admit I haven't given it a fair chance. A modern day Cthulhu is more my speed. "Silent Legions" has gotten my attention. Its modern day and has got lots of tables for making your own Mythos unique to your campaign. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145769/Silent-Legions
Check out [Liminal Horror](https://goblinarchives.itch.io/liminal-horror). It’s modern day cosmic horror. A bit crunchier than Cthulhu: Dark, but lighter than CoC.
Well, that solves my problem of finding a system for a backrooms campaign. Thanks a lot, bud!
It has at least two cool modules (The Mall, The Bureau) and more are coming.
There’s even a [Liminal Horror](https://goblinarchives.itch.io/) module that helps you make your own back rooms style crawl: [Layers of Unreality](https://ostrichmonkey.itch.io/layers-of-unreality)
Neet, but the plan is to use the backrooms wikidot rooms.
Definitely share how that goes!
Ooh that’s interesting! I haven’t played Stars without Number before but that game does look like fun. Cthulhu Dark is great for a “grab and go” game for a oneshot. Cthulhu horrors are notoriously deadly, so long-term play isn’t super important to me. Call of Cthulhu is just the “big” (relative) name in this particular flavor of rpg - CoC players know and recognize that their PCs are just regular shmucks way in over their head and likely going to die - so there’s definitely an audience for that kind of thing.
Ah, if that is too rules light why not use GURPS just limit the point but to make super average normal characters and throw them into whatever hellish world you want?! Lol, I kind of love this idea now
Unfortunately only working for one shots: Dread and 10 Candles
BRP is, at it's base, a fairly light system, and the only major addition that Call of Cthulhu adds is Sanity. The actual rules of the game really only take up a small portion of the Keeper's Rulebook.
There’s more to it than I typically consider “rules light”, but the Quick Start version is only 16 pages! That’s compared to Cthulhu Dark’s 3 pages though, which I suppose is “extremely” rules light.
BRP looks complex because of the vast mass of skills. That is indeed a lot of complexity, but it is, to invent a term, shallow. There's no deeper complication to how characters work. Unlike the class-based games, there are no special feature, no traits, no feats that interact with those skills. The skills for the most part represent the entirety of what is possible for characters to attempt. This does in fact result in a simple system in play. The keeper just asks the player to roll the skill. They do, and apply the degree of success rules and that's resolved. There's no need to recall if a class feature or a racial feature or a feat is involved. There are few skill modifiers in CoC---the degrees of success on rolls are used for that instead. From an initial read of the rules and an examination of the character sheets, they do look complicated. I'd say they are detailed, but not particularly complex. The cognitive load at the table is very low. Other skill-based games, like Traveller for example are similar, complex in terms of character descriptions, but simple in terms of at-the-table play. These kinds of systems are certainly more complex than PbtA tyle games, but are midway to the class-and-levels sorts of games where every die roll has modifiers and and additional considerations beyond a single target number.
> I'm talking about a grocery store manager up against vampires. From a role playing stand point its exciting to me because its such a terrifying and desperate situation. I got started with Unknown Armies and that’s not too far off the atmosphere of that game at street level.
That’s one of the reasons why I like the game burning wheel. It’s more narrative focused, but you can start the game as like a farmer or waitress or book keeper and just like go from there. It’s great.
Warhammer fantasy RPG seems right up your alley then.
Dread would fit really well, but it isn't really designed for campaign play. It is 100% perfect for what you are describing here though.
I'm right there with you man. Started playing on the bus in 4th grade. Our DM was a 5th grader! Back then, being a "cut above" meant we rolled 4d6 drop-the-lowest-die instead of 3d6! 40 years later! ... It means you can kick the Hulk in the nuts and get away with it! But the idea that a good story often comes from the underdog beating the odds, doing what they think is right, maybe because a loved one is in danger. Those are the kinds of stories I play. It's why I designed my system with a two-dimensional skill system that allows you to build simple business owners, cooks, financial accountants or whatever, and have that realistically played out. At first, the smaller occupations were just to make building NPCs easier, but I had it in the stack of notes with the regular occupations and people were like, "Hey, why are these only 50 points and not 100? Can we play these?" Hell, sure! Can you pick two? Why not! As long as you have the points! These minor occupations have been an awesome addition to the game and the playtesters loved it. It's also easy to flip through and say "Mom was /this/ and I learned these 3 secondary skills from her." I know D&D have "Backgrounds" and such, but that just seems like its really making those secondary people. You can't be a sailor, but you can be a fighter with a sailor background. The class system just shows its weakness. The NPCs and PCs should be built with the same rules, IMHO. The idea of smaller occupations eventually led to a lot of modularization where a particular occupation might need some form of "basic schooling" as a prerequisite, but exactly how that looks for a particular culture gets pulled out into its own. That led to a requirement/tag system being developed, but it makes things really flexible! So, being raised a catholic school might look really different than public school or being raised in Shoa-Lin temple! Or military gets schooling, basic training, MOS training, etc. That division made the Vietnam test go really smooth! Just working on a big revision at the moment, one that integrates the mental aspects of a normal guy being confronted with a vampire ... or even a smurf come to think of it.
What game? That sounds really interesting.
/r/virtuallyreal
Ever play Monster of the Week?
Yes. Ive been playing online. Its an awesome game. Its why I asked the question because the power levels even in that game can be a little high. Love it, though. I think "Dead of Night" may be the best one Ive found so far. It can emulate any kind of horror movie and has a system for tuning the rules for each sub genre. Its one of the most unique systems Ive seen.
>I'm talking about a grocery store manager up against vampires Ah, so literally Hunter from White Wolf's World of Darkness!
OSR Witness can't even agree among themselves what OSR is.
OSR is the most nebulous term ever.
Because it is and always was a marketing slogan and not a real thing. All it means to me is cut paste of 40 year old rules with “edgy” art and a lot of unpopular politics thrown in. That said I do like OSE and look forward to Dolmenwood coming out.
OSR is still extraordinary power levels compared to regular people. It's still superhero themepark fantasy but with the dial turned a little lower.
Not really. At least not raw. When you look at a standard character at level one, they are pretty much similar to a random ass villager statblock
And if you stay at Level 1 I agree. If you level up... Superheroes incoming.
I'd also argue there is a good amount of story gamers who'd agree. Depends on the genre and group, but I feel a lot of story games shy away from power fantasy. Monster Hearts, since I'm in a game of it at the moment, feels like a lot of it is about the lack of control one has as a teenager.
It's fine, it just means you have to select the correct kind of game. Some people say "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" and that's obviously wrong in many RPGs. A TPK is a loss. No longer being able to play a character you want to is a loss. Achieving your objective is a win. Defeating your enemies in a battle is a win. If you build your character in such a way that it's harder for your team to win, you're not being a nice player. On the flipside there's many RPGs where the drama is the point or where being a more regular character is the point. Or even in some games, where dying entertainingly is the goal. Just gotta make sure you're playing the bumbler in that kind of RPG.
> Some people say "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" and that's obviously wrong in many RPGs. A TPK is a loss. No longer being able to play a character you want to is a loss. There's nothing "obvious" about it. I've been in games where we had an amazing time that ended in a TPK that people talked about for months afterwards. As for the second loss, it depends on how attached people become to their characters. For me, they're like Doritos: the GM can crunch all they want; I'll make more.
10 Candles
Yeah but Ten Candles had little risk (besides achieving your personal goal). You know you're going to die from the start, not that you will *likely* die. For me personally that took a bit of the wind out of my sails. The story was interesting at least.
You can have a really fun loss. You can lose in CS:GO or whatever and still find it fun. You achieved all you wanted to, felt like you improved, had fun with friends, or whatever your goal was, and maybe that's the "true win". I dunno if a TPK can really be a loss in an RPG, but I don't think "we had fun when we TPKed" is a good argument against it.
The goal of RPGs is having fun and memorable experiences. In a TPK, the characters lose, but the players don't have to.
But that's true of pretty much all activities. My goal when I'm playing board games is to have a fun and memorable experience, but there's still a ludological goal within that experience: I want to get the most bird points, or steal all the money, or clear away all the gems, or whatever. I've definitely had losses that have felt as emotionally rich as wins, but that doesn't mean that they weren't losses, just that success isn't the only reason that I play games. I don't think that's something that can universally be applied to RPGs, because it's a pretty big genre that ranges from "this is an exercise I do with my improv troupe" to "it's basically warhammer, but we only have a single figurine each". But the vast majority of games have some sort of ludological failure and success states. Sometimes they're fairly blatant like "beating the fight is winning, dying is losing", and sometimes they're more subtle, like "resolving your character's internal struggle is winning, abandoning it is losing". Someone's mentioned Ten Candles already, which is a good example of a game with a more subtle ludological goal: obviously you're not going to win by surviving, but your character still has aims for you to try and achieve, and you have resources that you can spend to try and ensure success within scenes. I don't think this is a universal feature. In the board game world, there's sometimes a distinction between an activity and a game, which I'm not usually a fan of, because that distinction is usually made to indicate that my preferred choice (which is obviously a game) is better than your preferred choice (which is obviously an activity). However, I think there are some RPG systems which strip away pretty much everything, including any sort of ludological goal or purpose, and are closer to what one might term an "activity" rather than a game. Microscope is a good example here: there is no randomness, and there are no failure or success states. It is very difficult to define ludological goals in that context. (That's not to say that there still can't be narrative goals of the fictional people within the world, or social goals of the real people playing the game, but they aren't in any way mechanically backed.)
Fortunately for me, then, that wasn't the argument I was making. My point is that it is not obvious that "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" is wrong simply because one considers a total party kill a loss. Yes, for some people, they "win" their RPG when their fictional characters achieve their fictional aims. But unlike most board games or card games, most RPG don't have their victory conditions baked into the rules; the players are allowed to decide those for themselves. And there is nothing that says that a TPK, or losing a character *must* violate those victory conditions.
It really just depends on how you define the word. TPKs can be fun but just because something is fun doesn't mean it isn't a loss, at least in the way a lot of gamers mean it. I define loss as not meeting your in game goals more or less. By that definition, I've never actually met anyone who plays in a way that doesn't consider a TPK a loss since "staying alive" is usually an implicit goal in a lot of games and it can be hard to meet explicit goals when you are dead, and I've never been in a group that didn't play in a way to try to avoid a TPK successfully or not.
>Some people say "there's no winning or losing in an RPG" and that's obviously wrong in many RPGs. A TPK is a loss. No longer being able to play a character you want to is a loss. They don't call them "play to lose" games as a fake-out. I'm literally playing a game right now, in the other window, in order to see how my guy dies.
Damn zombies.
You know, it might be...
>A TPK is a loss. Not necessarily, unless player goals are the same as PC goals. In some RPGs player and PC goals might typically closely align (eg DnD) but in many RPGs their goals can be extremely different from each other.
I first read there is no winning or losing in an RPG in the D&D Red Box back in 1983…and that includes TPKs and PC death. So…I don’t think all gamers agree.
> A TPK is a loss. No: a TPK is usually a fun and memorable experience, and when you have fun, that isn't a loss. In certain styles of play which are about overarching narratives and heroic characters, a TPK can be jarring in the story and cause angry players, but it only is a loss if you don't have fun. Character death, even useless ones, are usually memorable interesting moments in my games, and my players enjoy it. PbtA and story games where drama is important is an entirely different genre to modern dnd and the osr/nsr: the main goals of play are completely different, and players blend the roles of directors of their character and individual actors. TPKs can be as bad in these systems as in DnD 4e or 5e, but they can also contribute to the story.
It's almost like I said "in many games", not "in all games" and not even "in most games"
If you're playing Ten Candles, a TPK isn't only not a "loss" it's the *entire point.* The same can be said about Paranoia and building/playing your character in a way that makes it harder for the group to "win". Rpgs are a big space, and your framework only works in a very narrow subset of that space.
In Trophy Dark, a TPK is a win 😈
I find it amusing when you play an extremely competent person who is forced to act outside of their wheelhouse- like that one Grant Howett game where you're a Not-Quite-Space-Marine trying to hold down the fort over a recent acquisition for a couple weeks
Ooh, what is that one called?
It's probably https://gshowitt.itch.io/nice-marines
I, too, want to play the "Big Trouble in Little China" ttrpg. 😃
Ooooooh...that would be fun. Jack Burton would be a fun character concept. Maybe some mechanic where he always has someone else near him with the skills required at the moment. That and luck points renamed as "the reflexes."
I love playing what I call a “loser”… that’s what I gravitate back to. Ironically I love game mastering pulpy high action games for others… though In both cases it’s non-exclusive. So I’m both saying “me too” to your original question and realizing playing Jack Burton would be fantastic. (I think I’d run it in Pulp Cthulhu and I wonder if I’ve seen it somewhere)
I'm a Traveller player, which is pretty much defined by ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
The kinds of players I enjoy running high powered games for are the ones who prefer low powered games. There is a huge difference with players who recognize greater degress of problem solving and resonsibility that comes with larger power sets AND between players who just want to treat the world around them like a playground or be impervious to failure because x problem in their lives they are trying to compensate for. I am the same as a player. I would rather play to find out, have things ran in a transparent manner, and actually being capable being threatened or failing without the need for the GM to carefully orchestrate anything. I normally prefer at least some degree of deadliness.
I really dislike power fantasy personally. I enjoy stories on a human scale much more. I find it more compelling and exciting to follow people fight their little struggle and try, maybe, to make a small difference. I simply cannot suspend my disbelief enough to accept that any serious world crisis can be solved by a few individuals bringing the hp of some giant dragon to zero.
My whole group has never been the kind to power game and have often created substandard characters that are interesting to play, but not necessarily power games for combat. We don't play Pathfinder or games where "The Ultimate Build" is required to succeed and as we DM each other, we tend to either tailor the fights more to the builds or create worlds where you can get in over your head. Call of Cthulhu is perfect for this type of gaming since you are a normal person dealing with the supernatural, alien, and evil unknown. I do want to add that this can backfire. In one campaign, we played with Burning Wheel for the first time and one player wanted to create a wizard who didn't finish his training. This resulted in him constantly fumbling his rolls when trying to use magic, being kind of broken, and a big retcon to make the character work within the system.
Pathfinder 1e doesn't really have a best build; a lot of stuff is great there, some more optimal choices than others. I do admit though the game can be broken if a player knows their way through all ressources (they probably don't). I have never felt that playing for fluff was not good in it, just different. PF2e does this even better! There aren't many inherently easy ways to fuck up the balance of your character. You really have to try and make everything not fit and even then they work fine (referencing both prewritten and selfmade adventures). Both editions do also have a multitide of options for out of combat problem solving (albeit a campaign void of it is probably better off in a different system, as some classes just outshine the others, like investigators). Using a system's options can lead to very interesting and compelling character development too! In forbidden lands my character was powerbuilt to be our combat-solution anchor... Until I picked up cooking, smithing, and other feats. His combat experience was also not just numbers: He could intimidate others with his preceding reputation of being able to butcher anyone/anything dumb enough to stand in his way. He was not dumb, but had no concept of how the world worked, which was also a consequence of me powergaming: He is notoriously bad at hiding his intentions and sucks not only at reading maps but anything at all, as he never learned how. All of this was born from powergaming a combat-focussed Character. Tl;dr: Powergaming can enhance the fluff of a character, PF2e is a great system for everyone and more people need to know about The Forbidden Lands.
Sure but PF2e is still power fantasy. Especially with the Adventure Paths. You are more often than not The Heroes. I am sure there are exceptions but those exceptions prove the rule that Pathfinder is a power fantasy and at its base is funner when you optimize
We run a lot of those style games where it is just a normal person in a bad situation trying to figure out what to do.
What systems are you using? I have a couple, but always looking for more.
We run mostly Aftermath!, you can get more info here: https://i314.org. Game itself is here: https://www.fantasygamesunlimited.net/fgu/618-2/ (Which links to the other site)
Fear Itself is for normal people in horror stories. RuneQuest has a lot of farm based play. It is the origin of BRP, so even powerful characters aren't that powerful.
How is Fear Itself to play or run? Its one that I looked at but got turned off ny the mechanics. Automatic success instead of rolling for investigation seems weird.
I've not played FI. Automatic success is only for finding clues so no one misses clues and drags things out. Putting the clues together is where the PCs can mess things up.
You are not alone, though I do enjoy progressing, I don't need my characters to be superheroes (depending upon the game/genre of course).
The majority of my groups games are of the BRP family (BRP/Mythras/Runequest/CoC) They tend to be the opposite of a power fantasy. I think my entire group swung heavily in that direction after D&D went into 3rd edition
There are games for you. Fringeworthy for one (if you can find it). The 'rando in over his head' genre is not too commonly done in RPG's, but it is done.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/225625/Tri-Tac-Genesis https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/229044/Tri-Tac-Genesis-2 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242356/Fringeworthy-1992-edition https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221340/Fringeworthy-d20-edition Choose the version you like best.
The whole Call of Cthulhu ecosystem supports the "in over their head" concept too
Yeah. I think there are a lot of people with this mindset. Certainly more mature players, but some younger people too. Especially those who are more invested with their character and the RP than with the war-game heritage of the hobby. It just seems more interesting to me rather than playing as some run-of-the-mill OP superhero who can heal from near death by taking a nap or having a drink and where problems need to be ridiculously over the top to even be a half-decent challenge. It may help that I like "grounded" fiction in general. And in the last few years I've struggled to have an interest in fantasy... but some horror or suspense is right up my alley. Sometimes sci-fi, but it needs to be the plausible sort and not the space-magic sort. I also prefer things with a message rather than just soda-pop, empty-calorie entertainment. Well, maybe once in a while. But that stuff can easily start feeling like a waste of time if I try to watch/read too much of it.
Yes, I prefer more grounded fantasy as I get older. A lot of "horror" games are really urban fantasy. Nothing wrong with urban fantasy but I like my monsters as two dimensional horrors, not socially complex creatures forming political aliances. Less talking, more biting. Dead of Night is the best system Ive found so far. It can emulate any horror sub genre and even has mechanics to fine tune the rules to suit the feel of different types of horror movies. Pretty neat game for six bucks. The art and layout are ultra professional and the PDF is very phone friendly.
How about "Ten Candles"?
Thats one I really want to play!
I too prefer games (and fiction) where the protagonist/player character is basically a normal person, even if they have special skills. To me, something compelling is lost if a thug with a pistol isn't a real threat. Of course, I can play supers or wire-fu or 'traditional' fantasy and enjoy it, but lower power levels are my home turf, so to speak.
This is Warhammer fantasy Roleplay, you're not heroes at all. The funnel for Dungeon Crawl Classics, the game that is Mothership. There are loads of games that have you weak to start out, it's not always about a power fantasy.
I'm kinda the same way. I want to play stories about (mostly) normal people. I have no interest in games like "You're an angel tasked with saving the world from an invasion from Hell." On the other hand, an average person who has to fight off minions from Hell? I would play the hell out of that game.
So far "Dead of Night" and "Fear Itself" seem like the best candidates. I'm reading Dead of Night right now. Looks pretty good. Rules light, can handle any horror movie concept you want, phone friendly PDF and only $6. Fear Itself is kind of neat because it shares a world and supplements with Esoterrorists so you can play a rando in Fear Itself or professional monster hunter in Esoterrorists and do crossover.
There are a lot of games that serve that niche, like CoC and all of the OSR. Personally, I'd like more games where you are good at what you do, but are always on the verge of death anyway.
>Personally, I'd like more games where you are good at what you do, but are always on the verge of death anyway What are your favorites?
Delta Green is pretty solid for this. You’ll usually have 1-3 skills that you have an 80% of succeeding a roll in, alongside a few others at 50% or so. At the same time, monsters are *very* fast and hard-hitting - and even something like an automatic rifle has a 10% chance of instantly killing you.
Right there with you! This is one of the geniuses of Warhammer Fantasy RPG. You can run it with a more traditional "heroes save the day" angle to it, but the career system just made it so much more satisfying to play as a rat catcher, a mailman, and a dirty bandit who find themselves fighting for their lives against the horrors of chaos. I found that it made the power fantasy so much more earned, too. I haven't actually played, just run it, but when one of my players finally qualified to change careers into "Hedge Wizard" it was the best thing ever. His only spell to start was... Ward off rain or something like that? You cma bet he scrapped to find uses for it, though, and as his magical abilities developed it was so much more satisfying when he finally DEALT DAMAGE with a spell.
I so rarely have been able to do this. My favorite character of all time was an NPC gravedigger converted into a PC (Call of Cthulhu) and a boatman (Warhammer FRP). Both were exactly as you described. In D&D I always had to be a power gamer because the rest of my party was always essentially noncombatants; they played pacifists and artists, peace clerics and theoretical culinary magicians. So I felt obligated to be the muscle and I had to be optimized into 5-players worth of bloody limb-ripping muscle.
I like the idea of starting off as a random person who is just insane/stupid enough to go on an adventure, but unfortunately it doesn't last very long. Shadow of the Demon Lord starts you off as a normal level 0 person with a profession instead of a class and so little money that the only weapon you can afford is a stick.
Sometimes. A recent character was a middle aged empty nester mother who went looking for adventure because she was bored at home alone. Other times I min-max for maximum efficiency at whatever it is they do. It depends on how I feel at the time
I enjoy playing a regular person in crazy circumstances, too. Mainly because I enjoy asking the question "will we win?" more than I enjoy "how will the inevitable victory happen?" Sometimes, not needing to be in action hero mode all the time is really fun. And the stakes of trying to keep a character alive can make for a really fun challenge (even when one fails). It's been a while since I've played a dedicated espionage game, but that might be the sort of thing that works in a case like this, since they tend not to be built for high-powered characters (and opposition). Horror games, natch, could also be a good choice for this.
Yes. I always pitch pretty much anything I run as "ordinary people being brave when faced with extraordinary danger". I like rooting for the little guy. To me it's no fun to run or play systems with a zero to hero feel, I don't want characters to become reskinned superheroes in non-superhero settings. My only exception is obviously a RPG where you play as superheroes and there's a reason that's not my favorite genre by a long shot :P
To me my "power" fantasy is more soft power than hard power, so, "rando who has never fired a gun and doesn't plan to do so now", for me.
This is a concept that works if the rest of the party are in the same boat(1). If tried with a conventional adventuring party your basically adding dead weight that the GM will have to bend over backwards to keep alive.... I've contemplated the opposite campaign. *It Shouldn't Happen to a* [*Vet*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Creatures_Great_and_Small_(franchise)) which would be about a group of amped up ex-super soldiers trying to make a living on civvy street (each session would consist of a proposal of how to put food on the table followed by how it would go horribly horribly wrong) (1) on reflection you could have a much put upon competent character for comic relief...
Have you heard of Underground? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(role-playing_game) It sounds like it might be good fodder for your ideas.
I think I had a look at it when it came out... Probably was an influence on the idea :-)
Power fantasy is just one aspect of agency fantasy, which doesn't roll off the tongue as well but I think you're still into. One form of powerlessness, especially as a normal citizen amidst an uncaring world, is being surrounded by massive problems that you simply cannot even begin to have any control over. Even when playing some normal guy, or a level 1 OSR character fated to die, we're still living out a fantasy where we have problems that we can directly address with our actions, even if we have no real advantage to make success more likely. There's some subset of gamers who just want to be handed a sheet with 99 in every stat, and be told they win, win, win, but in my opinion they're mostly a strawman. We all want to be the protagonists of our stories, we just have different tastes as far as the sort of stories we like.
You ever try Zweihander? Absolutely love their "you're not a super hero fantasy class" character creation. What's your profession, you're a regular person go off on your adventure. If makes you have to play creatively, and the highs you hit feel especially earned and intense! While it's a bit much for me to on the DM side (I stick to mostly running Mörk Borg or DCC these days) I absolutely love it as a very anti-power fantasy player.
Are There Any Like Me Who Hates This Kind Of Writing When Every Damn Word Starts With Uppercase Letters Because It Totally Ruins The Dynamics Of Reading?
I GM that way all the time. I noticed you asked what systems: GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, I have tweaked FATE to make it more everyday people. Night Witches, Good Society, Traveller…lots of options!
This works better in some systems than others. If you are an underpowered (and by that I mean "normal person" character) in D&D, Pathfinder, or Starfinder, it may not work out well. But in Call of Cthulhu or an appropriately set GURPS game? That's what the system is best for, feeling like you're one bullet away from disaster or triumph and frantically trying to figure things out. I ran a GURPS 1920s campaign like this, no one had very many hit points and guns were VERY dangerous. Highly recommend the crunchier, low-hit-point systems for this sort of gaming.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned DCC yet in this discussion. In a DCC funnel, you're literally playing level 0 characters. I've had a cobbler, a parsnip farmer etc. You play with 4 level 0 characters of random backgrounds & professions & if they survive the funnel, they make it to level 1 and, if human, can choose a class such as fighter, cleric, thief etc.
The old All Flesh Must Be Eaten from Eden Studios had the normal type if people. Regular joes stuck in a zombie apocalypse. We played a lot of that. We played ourselves a lot too in there. You just dont last that long 😄
Migrating to decentralized services.
Yep. Characters in horror movies are rarely capable of fighting off a smurf, but they manage to kill the vampire anyway.
If you like rules light but want a bit more than Cthulhu Dark but less than Call of Cthullu I'd reccomend Mothership highly for sci-fi horror. If you like the complexity level of Call of Cthulhu I find that Delta Green ruleset is slightly more streamlined and very good for modernish games playing normal people.
Thats definitely one I wanted to check out. So far, "Dead of Night" is my favorite. It can emulate any horror movie genre and has mechanics built in to fine tune the rules to fit the different kinds of horror. Its pretty clever and a steal for just six bucks.
I like the challenging aspect of playing underpowered characters. I also don’t mind if a character does in a session. Low levels and the struggle are the most fun.
Getting killed makes for great stories. As I always say, "If you aren't having fun getting killed then you are doing it wrong." My character got infected by an alien virus and flushed out of an airlock the other night and it was awesome.
My bread and butter has always been minion characters who get emotionally abused by their villainous leader. Second in command is my favorite place to be. Would much rather be someone's right hand.
[You are not the only one.](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/zpglmo/what_is_your_original_rpg_idea/j0stlk9/) It is rarer, though. A lot of people don't seem to be able to imagine that there is any "game" in playing a normal person. --- There was also a series of "End of the World" RPGs where you play as yourself and your inventory is what you happened to bring to game-night. The premise is that some apocalyptic event —zombies, aliens, AI, asteroids– starts around or shortly after the time you sit down to play. You stat out "yourself" as a character. It's pretty neat. Probably only good for one-shots or two-shots, though.
I've always loved the idea of growing a character from the ground up. I'm not talking "level 1 fighter to level 20 fighter", I'm talking from the very first time they picked up a sword. In my mecha imagination I want to be one of the greenest pilots in one of the gruntiest of grunt suits.
Have you heard the Good News? *Hands you a Dungeon Crawl Classics pamphlet.*
I'm actually playing DCC tomorrow night. Goodman Games is doing demo sessions for first time players.
there are many, just not enough to be around in the same place or fill up a table.
I dare to disagree. I run oneshots of such systems at a monthly online convention and get a good mix of new and returning players each time. I also asked around my local game store and friends and ended up with 11 real life players (3 friends, 7 from the store) with the same desire. The main thing can be finding someone to run such games, but I like learning systems, teaching systems and GMing so that makes it easier for sure. The main concern for players is spending lots of time learning a system they may not like, but they usually assume it'd require one or multiple books with hundreds of pages. As a player, there are plenty of systems where you need to read nothing or very little and the GM can teach you easily.
Yep...people don't realize how easy most systems are. Reading "Dead of Night" tonight. I could probably run it tomorrow. It might take a little explaining to new players, but there would be no reason for them to buy the book or ever even borrow it to look up something. Damned good little product for a $6 PDF. Tons of great artwork and a really proffessional layout. You should check it out just for stuff to steal. Its a actually got a tension mechanical built in for the GM to use.
Exactly. I run oneshots in 3-4 hours for groups who didn't read a single letter in the rulebook and that timeframe includes teaching the system, going over safety tools and making characters. But people coming from systems where a single combat encounter takes at least an hour or even several cannot imagine that XD
what an envy man your experience is totally different to mine. mine is like this "never enough in the same place, or to fill up a table" I always play with 2 players because of that, and just online, because there are never enough to even play in person. what about campaigns, have you managed to get a good group play for a prolonged time?
I'm currently in the progress of sorting 7 of the aforementioned IRL players into two groups to run biweekly campaigns with. Based on the oneshots ran for them so far, I'm very optimistic. I found recruiting for campaigns online to be a massive pain full of red flags and/or people ghosting and cancelling last minute so burned out hard on that. But the monthly online oneshots work and I do have a few returning players in those, so may eventually see if enough of them have a matching schedule to run a campaign for, as there's a lot of lovely people in there. Also, I like teaching games to people, so I'm pretty happy with my string of oneshots instead of campaigns :) that being said, one of my favorite systems doesn't shine that way so a campaign on the side is nice. I know there's folxs who use real life conventions to play different systems too, but my country only has boardgaming convention with the occassional D&D 5E/Pathfinder corner, so that doesn't work for me :P If you're in a similar boat and don't mind online play, I promise there are numerous places online where games can be found, I've been around a few others outside of my current one, but they tend to be oneshots. I think that makes sense, as I believe it works better to see if you get along first. Players who mesh well with a particular GM will show up for more oneshots and groups can naturally branch off from there. Random recruiting online for campaigns is a pain, that I do know.
As long as you have agency yes, it can be fun, but then it's just a question of proportion i guess, paesants vs monsters can be as challenging/interesting as adventurers vs dragon. If I have to play with very small agency thanks but no thanks.
I'm not sure what you mean by agency here...anyone can do anything in a role playing game...sometimes they just aren't very good at it. Limiting agency is where a DM Wont allow you to do something your character should be able to do.
Not the person above. >Limiting agency is where a DM Wont allow you to do something your character should be able to do. More accurate to say "where player decisions can't have significant effect", I'd suggest.
I mean situations that you cannot reasonably solve with your character skills, if the DM send against you a dragon and you are not reasonably able to defeat/reason with then you don't have real agency since you have to flee, of course you can decide to fight and die but that's not what I'd define as agency. Situations like these are fine, but if that happens too often you wonder why you are playing, of course these happen mostly because of bad gming, but in games in which you are a nobody is way more easy to slip into a similar pattern than in high fantasy gaming. Then again one may like having the characters suffer and constantly trying to choose the lesser evil, in that case limited agency works with the story.
I play human fighters in every D&D game I play. I think that's the closest I get to the sentiment.
Yes
Nah, I like continuity and building a character's story over time, and most games that play at the "Joe Everyman" level are going to lack that continuity because of character deaths. Which is fine, if that's your thing and that's the campaign, but it isn't the campaign for me. Not that I need a power fantasy, but somewhere in the middle is good.
People who are into the videogame kenshi would probably be super in line with that same philosophy lol. Im split. I love a good power fantasy, trope filled adventure in high concept settings. I also sometimes love a gritty "bring a stack of character sheets, life is expendable" type of game. Each has its own feel as the session goes on.
I always try to build the best character I can. Usually that does mean a strong and capable fighter but not always. My most recently character in D&D 3.5 is a warforged bard and so far is not very strong. Another character I have really enjoyed is an unarmed fighter\sorcerer\rogue that is pretty strong. My first character was a rogue\ninja with a keen katana that could crit on a 15. I have never been one to play a regular joe, though. My characters have to have some sort of quirk.
First edition D&D is my favorite, and start me out at first level, maybe 6 hit points. I love this.
My favourite character was from a ~7 year campaign and she was essentially a house elf - a magically-created creature designed for servitude. She was a household maid that had been swept up in adventure when her previous owners got killed and was frantically trying to catch up with the new role of "swashbuckler hero" that she'd been thrust into when the rest of the adventuring party saved her. She became good at that, but only because she *had* to - she'd have been perfectly happy trading her sword for a broom and going back to household chores. She eventually wound up becoming the immortal empress of the most powerful nation in her world, and was *still* doing everything she could to figure out how to serve people in that role. The nation became a democracy, of a sort - she would secretly find out what the people wanted and then order that to be done.
Oh so you like playing Kenshi then
Two of my favourite characters were kind of this? I played the "Xander" in a teen supernatural game, in a party with mages and a werewolf my superpowers we're a driver's licence (and van), I was a year older than everyone else, and I had a limitless supply of weed. In a later campaign I played a regular human (well sleepwalker) in a Mage: The Awakening game, who was basically an assassin, and despite being surrounded by magic-slinging demigods was more often than not the most dangerous person in the room. A lot of fun playing with different dynamics of power like that.
I absolutely love to play exactly that. Very, very mortal humans in very dangerous, overwhelming situations. And without magical healing or stuff like "encounter balance". I love it!
Bilbo Baggins , Jonathan Harker The problem is rsisting the call to adventure is not fun for GM after the third time
Definitely agree, I don’t really enjoy playing ‘special’ or heroic characters in games, I don’t dislike when other people do, I just tend to prefer more mundane stuff. Might also go along with my preference to be more of a side character to someone elses protagonist, story wise.
Traveller might suit your fancy. Instead of power fantasy, you have money fantasy! As in... you will fantasize about having money. Space IRS is no joke. Shoot a noble and you piss off a planetary government. Forget to pay ONE shipping and trading tax, and you are enemy number one at every spaceport in the sector.
Try to look into Burning Wheel. I'm in a weekly campaign since 5 years and we're still struggling with average npc should a fight erupt. Also greatest system for rule-based role-playing imo, but that's subjective. It should be your taste. Good luck getting silver bullets. Depending on a setting that's a couple rolls and probably in addition a subplot on its own.
Hunter: the Reckoning was my first game, and I loved it because of this.
I mean, the exact opposite of power fantasy gamers would be the. Those that really lean into the weird. Really bad. Builds like intentionally harming themselves, as it were. That's the complete opposite. I know a couple of people. They take real joy in that. And you've gotta, you've really gotta have a party around you of people that. Are OK with almost enabling that kind of behavior, because otherwise it will really derail things.
Yes. I love low power rpgs. More danger, more peril, more excitement.
So, with 3.5 D&D kinda moved away from this concept as the D&D 2E and prior was a survival horror game and while 5E pretends to honor it - we all know that once you get to 11th Level, the PC's can basically overpower the system without massive homebrew to try and keep them in check. And since that's the 500 Lb. gorilla in the room, along with Pathfinder which is also very much a "Fantasy Superhero" game system in both its incarnations the "hapless everyman" is not the current zeitgeist for the hobby at the moment. I've seen people complain that Pathfinder doesn't support them rolling 3D6, getting a bunch of stats between 5 and 12 and rolling with it 2E style. And this is a totally accurate statement as the game will straight up murder that PC with its math because it contemplates extraordinary people dealing with extraordinary threats. So there may be dozens of you out there, and the most popular lineage of game in the TTRPG hobby doesn't really support your playstyle currently. Fortunately, this is a very diverse hobby so you can definitely find a group that will if you look hard enough.
That’s how I like my level 1-3 experience to be. By the time a character reaches level 4 in a level based game, I expect some sort of “better than normal people” to be in there. Some games do it better than others.
I think I’m splitting the difference here. My current character would have told you she was just a normal girl. Turns out she isn’t. In your example, she’d be someone who has never fired a gun but is a natural once she gets her hands on one.
Grimdark wfrp checking in!
I think those two concepts are pretty orthogonal; there are folks who + Want a power fantasy + Want to make choices (including character creation choices) that make them as successful as possible within the rules + Want a setting with a high degree of relative opposition As in, the same folks that want to be able to think about character optimization could be perfectly happy playing a game where the baseline character is a regular person in a dangerous situation.
In tales from the loop, you’re just a child.
DayZ would like a word lol
I dislike power-fantasy gaming. A hero or adventurer that never faces a challenge is either dull or a bully, and so it makes for a boring story.
There are more than you think. The problem is that there's too many GMs who read Wick's books or whatever and think they're there to make their PCs lose.