ARBBL

So there has been some rumblings over the past year or so that some of us are looking for a more story-led game, with the chance for characters to gain advancement.

We've been looking for a while, but nothing seems to have fit the bill so far.

After some discussion a few of us have decided that we might like to start a 'proper' RPG at some point, though we're still not sure where to start.

Looking into a few options the best for starters seem to be either

FATE/FATE accelerated

Or

Dungeon World

FATE seems to be a fairly open rule set that seems to be able to have any setting, whereas Dungeon World is more high fantasy based.

I guess the questions are, who wants to be involved, does anyone have a preference on setting and does anybody particularly want to/has experience in leading?

Not trying to turn the club away from tabletop games in anyway this would be a probably once a month thing.

So who's interested?

I'd be interested, as I haven't RPG'd for over 20 years, but as usual time is the problem for me.

Never heard of either system. How beginner-friendly are they?

Fate is a very fluffy story based system where the players make things up as they go along as much as the GM.

Dungeon World hangs your traditional recognisable D&D-style RPG tropes over an exquisitely slimline system, though it does rely a lot on the GMs ability to improvise on the fly.

Both are very beginner friendly and both have their full rulesets freely available online.

https://fate-srd.com/

http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/

I've been thinking off and on about trying to run a Dungeon World game for a while...

I probably won't join in with this. These sorts of games are definitely not for me

What scale would we be using Map vs tiles ?
Any miniatures involved?
Can we pick our own characters?

I would love to revive in some way my sigmar priest, possibly as a paladin.

Neither system is really intended for minis. They're more 'theatre of the mind'.

Though I suppose you still could if you wanted for visualisation.

Tom wrote:Neither system is really intended for minis. They're more 'theatre of the mind'.

Though I suppose you still could if you wanted for visualisation.

I don't know if that is a good thing or bad with my mind. A rude, crude and vulgar paladin! More like friar tuck.

So that makes 4 of us? Thought we'd had a couple more?

Looking at FATE, and whilst the mechanics seem very very simple, there doesn't seem to be that many pre generated modules, meaning a lot more work for whoever decides to run it. I would like to give it a go at some point, but not sure if it's a good idea for a new gm...

Still drawn to pathfinder or d&d for something slightly meatier and a whole lot more resources and pre generated adventures as well! Not sure if dungeon world is better for this?

Would be happy to run a pathfinder or d&d game on an adventure path that we can choose together, but considering the amount of work required I would reserve the right to ask people to leave if they were going to just mess around the whole time and not actually role play.

Think you do need graph paper and some graphic representation of your character/monster for pathfinder at least as there are 5ft steps and areas of threat etc.

Maybe a start in the new year?

many years since I played, but we (well, our GM) used to use a small blackboard to draw whatever location we were in, and mini/card models to represent adventurers/adversaries.

I won't be volunteering to GM, I don't have the background, time or, if I'm honest, dedication to do it.

If you're after something a bit more crunchy than Dungeon World, but less full on gritty than Pathfinder, may I steer you gently towards 13th Age?

Very much a halfway house between the two in terms of complexity.

For example for movement tracking:
DW - it's all in your mind.
Pathfinder - you very much need to play on a grid map.
13A - Benefits from maps but movement is abstracted into general zones and figures are either 'engaged', 'near' or 'far' rather than accurate measuring.

And again it's all free online! What a wonderful age we live in.

http://www.13thagesrd.com/

I have the book as well if you want to borrow.