Time for a fresh new beard?

[Joose]

I was going to wait till either Pete's SR or Doggers SLA games that are currently going on had finished before starting anything myself, but Pete seems to be challenging me for my slow-game record, and im getting restless

I'm missing running a game, but I would quite like to try something different, and thought that it would be good to decide on what to play next as a group. So I invoke the mystical poll-o-tron!

The games I was considering are:

Call of Cthulhu

I dont think this needs a right lot of introduction, but just in case: its an RPG set in a Lovecraftian world. Its pretty different to what we have played so far, heavy on the horror and "oh noooooo!" moments, light on the combat. Characters tend to be things like "Librarian" and "Reporter" rather than "Gun Toting Commando", and have to worry more about their minds breaking than they do being shot.

Eclipse Phase

Quite a brilliant game, with a fairly simple game system and deep and interesting setting. Its all about transhumanism, future tech, post-scarcity society and the like. Well, that's the claim anyway, in practice its a bit like Deus Ex meets Cthulhu in space. A lot more shooty shooty bang bang than Cthulhu, but still proper scary, it looks like it will be quite different to what we have played so far whilst still being pretty recognisable overall. I've also found a brilliant intro game someone came up with, which works a bit like the in game tutorials popular with modern computer games: you start of as random doods who don't remember anything, and game concepts (both system and setting) are introduced to you gradually.

Deadlands

A bit out of left field, this choice. I don't know a lot about it, other than its a Wild West with a bit of magic and mild steampunk. It describes itself as Weird West, and is basically Jonah Hex the RPG (although hopefully less shit than the film). Could be interesting, and I've got quite a softspot for anything Wild Westy.

Vampire: The Masquerade

I wanted to stick a WoD game in here, and as most of us have played VtM: Bloodlines we should all be pretty familiar with the overall theme and politics. TSD has come up with an interesting idea on how to start this off, with you guys making pre-embrace "normal guys", and me assigning clans to fit. I would be running it very much in an "influence and intrigue" style, rather than an action based "pointy teeth and machine guns style". Basically, more subtlety and politicking, less Blade Trinity.

If any of you have other game systems you would like added to the list, feel free to throw them out there and I will add them to the poll.

[deject]

To be quite honest, I would rather continue using the characters I've made already. What would be great is if we could schedule another Skype session and see if we can do a whole mission.

[HereComesPete]

You forgot the werd to your mom option.

[Dog Pants]

I'd play any of those. I've played Call of Cthulhu and Vampire before and both have great potential. I've got the Eclipse Phase book (it's a free open source project, kids) and wanted to run it myself, but can't really concentrate on running multiple campaigns so stuck with SLA. I've only vaguely heard of Deadlands, but I did once play a Rifts West campaign that was highly enjoyable. I have great character ideas already for all but Vampire, and that would probably develop itself anyway. The only possible concern is that the more investigation based games might grind to a halt too often on the forums. So I've voted Eclipse Phase, because the space horror setting is one I've never experienced before.

[Roman Totale]

All of them.

[Joose]

To be quite honest, I would rather continue using the characters I've made already. What would be great is if we could schedule another Skype session and see if we can do a whole mission.

Don't worry, I'm not abandoning SR. It's just that I would like a break/change, I'm waiting for Hero Labs to fully support SR, and we already have one SR game going at the moment.

When we do restart SR, another Skype session would be good though.

[FatherJack]

I like having a character and telling a story with them, so don't really mind about the setting. I get a bit lost when I try to think about how they do things within the context of the game mechanics and hope the tale doesn't get bogged down by complicated dice rolls or endless combat, but I don't know enough about any of these systems to know if what I'm saying has any relevance. But I'd certainly enjoy something new, although I'd like to ressurrect my SR character from beard bash in some form at some point.

[Joose]

That's part of the reason why I've picked these games, none of them are necessarily combat heavy (some more than others).

[The Shutting Downs]

I've gone for Vampire, because I have a fondness for the game and still MeT now and then. If done well, it really can take off and the horror gets to you (personal degeneration is the way forward)

[Joose]

Right. Well. Thats about as 5punky a response as I could have hoped for

I think im going to run Eclipse Phase then, as:

1) I've been reading a bunch about it, and it looks interesting
2) I've got a cracking idea for an introductory game from an RPG podcast about it
3) Theres a load of rather good prewritten adventures for it that we can just pick up and run
4) Its free.

I'm only going to be running a small game, 2-3 people, 4 at the maximum. I want to make sure im 100% on the basic rules and settings before I start, so it wont be immediate. In the meantime, grab yourself a copy of the rules and stare at the pretty pictures.

One thing to note, in case it puts people off: It looks at first glance to be mindfuckingly complicated. Its really not in practice. To explain why I will give an example: Theres effectively 8 different currencies in the game, one of them being credits and the other being various kinds of reputation. When I saw that, I thought the writers had taken crazy pills. However, in practice, its like the real world: there are loads of different currencies in the real world, but the only one that matters is the one relevant to where you are. Similarly, in Eclipse Phase, you dont need to worry about your rep score with faction A when you are floating about in faction B's space stations. Its all like that: it would be complicated if you tried to do everything at once. But we wont be trying to do everything at once.

Eclipse Phases home page is here, you can download most of the rule books and stuff here(Just grab the quickstart rules if you want). Its all legal to grab for free, because of this.

[The Shutting Downs]

Cool, I'll rejig the last one I made for this to the new rules and send it then

[Dog Pants]

I'll try desperately to remember how the hell to make characters. Might be something on the Wiki actually.

[The Shutting Downs]

http://sites.google.com/site/eclipsephases/home/cabinet

the character generator here is what I used last time, and the author seems to have kept it up to date

[Dog Pants]

Nice work. I also remember the crazy background I had to my character too (which was going to be the NPC in my campaign, and a test for character creation).

[The Shutting Downs]

Sheet transferred, where do you want it sent?

[Joose]

Shout at me on xfire for character stuff. Although the first run through will be using characters i'll make for you, as its kind of an introductiony thing. Its only short, but it seems like a good way of introducing you all to the setting. That, plus its a rather cool little story.

Also, we may have a third player, as Mrs Joose has expressed interest. Hurrah!

[The Shutting Downs]

do you mean Mrs Joose?

[Joose]

What are you talking about?

*nonchalant whistling*

[deject]

I'll try looking through the Eclipse Phase stuff again, see if I can be bothered. I am a big fan of bearding, but rulebooks are thick and poorly written so we'll see which wins out.

[Joose]

I'll try looking through the Eclipse Phase stuff again, see if I can be bothered. I am a big fan of bearding, but rulebooks are thick and poorly written so we'll see which wins out.

Its worth noting that there is now a 3rd release of the main rules. Not sure how much of a difference it makes, but there you go.

A better fix for that problem is reading through the quickstart rules. Theres ~10 pages of stuff you need to know about the setting, ~10 pages of the basics of the system. Much easier way to learn, then you can just use the main rules as a reference book.