If someone was interested in understanding as much as possible what the world of TTRPGs and story games had to offer, which 5 games would you suggest they play first, and why?

Ideally this would include a broad array of mechanics, themes and settings.

Inspired by a discussion over at !rpgmemes@ttrpg.network : https://lemmy.world/post/33918016/18604654

  • Ziggurat@jlai.lu
    0·
    3 months ago

    That’s a tricky question, but let’s try-it

    1. A D20, level based, high fantasy game, so let’s say D&D/Pathfinder or one of the many clones

    2. A prompt based, narrative immersive game with a lot of bleed potential let’s say Alice is missing

    3. A horror games, I would say Call of Chtulhu because it’s the classic one, but also to show player a percent-based skill mechanic

    4. Iron-sworn in GM-less mode, as it ticks both the narrative consequence driven game (PBTA) and the GM-less box

    5. A sci-fi game, in order to get a recent design, and a sample of dice pool I would say Coriolis

    Only 5 games is actually quite restrictive, especially to show different game type and mechanics. I am a bit annoyed that I didn’t found any slot for Vampire/World-of-Darkness (considering how popular is the franchise) and that Iron sworn is the only PBTA (especially considering it’s not the classical PBTA) I would also love to add a Cyberpunk game (Shadowrun or Red) as it’s also a popular franchise, extend the D&D clones with OSR, and add Blade in the Dark considering it’s massive influence on the recent RPG scene

    • naught101@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      3 months ago

      Cool answer, thanks. I like the way you explore and combine attributes.

      What do you mean by “bleed potential”?

      • Ziggurat@jlai.lu
        1·
        3 months ago

        What do you mean by “bleed potential”?

        Bleed is that moment where your in-game emotion starts to mix with your IRL emotional system. A non RPG example would be crying while reading a book/wathcing a movie. The same can happen in RPG where you’re feeling angry, sad, happy because your character feels so. It’s something that some RPG player (Mostly narrative games and nordic LARP) players look for.

        The word actually comes from nordic larp but is also commonly used in tabletop https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Bleed