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RPG Geek - Newbie-Friendly Play By Forum Signup
Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Welcome to the RPG Geek Newbie-Friendly Play-By-Forum Initiative!
See the News Post here.
The games being offered are shown below (one per geeklist entry). We've assembled some fantastic Game Masters (GMs) who will run the game and make sure you understand the rules needed. You will not need to buy any rules nor will you be required to read piles of system notes. Most games will provide a character for you and some will allow you to make one yourself (its often good to have a pre-generated character for your first foray into RPGing... our goal is to keep it simple).
The games will take several months to run online - but only require a posting frequency of once/day (i.e. check in once a day to see if you have any actions or roleplay to add).
We have a brief FAQ for how we tend to run Play-By-Forum games along with some examples. Check it out:
PLAY-By-FORUM (PbF) - FAQ & REFERENCE
RULES
 These special newbie-friendly games are open to anyone who has not played in an RPG (other than the site-wide events like Dungeon of Doom or Mountains of Madness) in the last 10 years (if you've sat in on one session of a game over that time-frame you can consider yourself still new enough to play).
 Each new player is allowed to join only one game. We may lift this restriction depending on the level of interest, but to let as many people as possible experience the joy of playing, we would like to keep it to 1 game per player.
Feel free to ask questions about any game on the list directly under that geeklist entry. If you want to sign up as a player, make that clear in a post under the geeklist entry. Do not assume that asking questions about a game implies you are playing - be direct and specific if you are signing up (though ask as many questions as you want before committing).
I hope to see many of you take advantage of this opportunity to get into the games!
Dave
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
-
The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a very traditional role-playing game released as a spin-off of the venerable Dungeons & Dragons (3.5 Edition). Released in 2009, Pathfinder has recently become the leading RPG by sales - surpassing even D&D itself. The game features high-fantasy with elements similar to what you would find in popular fantasy novels (Lord of the Rings, DragonLance, Wizard's First Rule, etc). Combat generally takes place on a grid and has a very tactile feel to it - similar to combat from popular boardgames like Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game or Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Being a traditional RPG, it combines elements of role-playing (interaction with the environment and dialog between players and other characters within the adventure) with combat (which has a very gamey feel to it).
The adventure which is being offered up here is called D0: Hollow's Last Hope and is an introductury adventure for 1st level characters. We will be using the pregenerated characters from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box so you can jump into the action with balanced characters and get right down to playing.
The intro from the adventure:
The town of Falcon's Hollow needs a miracle.
The plague has come to the town of Falcon's Hollow, and not even the town's priest can abate its wretched course. With the coughs of the sick and the wails of the dying echoing through town, the local herbalist uncovers a cure, but she needs some brave heroes to retrieve the ingredients. Finding the cure means risking the dangerous Darkmoon Vale, infiltrating a witch's haunted hut, and delving the ruins of an abandoned Dwarven monastery.
Hollow's Last Hope is a wilderness exploration and dungeon adventure for 1st-level characters, compatible with the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. This sixteen-page adventure includes details on the haunted forest and deadly ruins that hide the key ingredients to the town's salvation. Do your heroes have the skill and courage to find the cure in time?
This adventure will take 4 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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A Dirty World is the game of screwy dames and the two-fisted detectives who love them. Using the acclaimed One Roll Engine (ORE), players will find clues, romance, and trouble by rolling a fedora load of ten-sided dice. And if a chump starts crackin' wise, you'll give him a little chin music, see?
In an introductory scenario of my own devisin', a fat cat kicks the bucket under mysterious circumstances. His widow is a real classy broad, and she wants you to get to the bottom of it -- that is, if you ain't too busy gettin' to the bottom of a bottle of malt whisky.
This adventure will take 2 players. Pregenerated characters will be provided, and no knowledge of the rules is necessary.
Ring-a-ding-ding, you bozos.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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What is Call of Cthulhu?
The setting of Call of Cthulhu is a darker version of our world, based on H. P. Lovecraft's observation that "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." There are three primary eras of the original ame: the 1920s, the setting of many of Lovecraft's stories; the 1890s Gaslight supplements, a blend of occult and Holmesian mystery and mostly set in England; and modern conspiracy. The protagonists may also travel to places that are not of this earth, represented in the Dreamlands (which can be accessed through dreams as well as being physically connected to the earth), as well as travel to other planets or the voids of space.
The players take the roles of ordinary people drawn into the realm of the mysterious: detectives, criminals, scholars, artists, war veterans, etc. Often, happenings begin innocently enough, until more and more of the workings behind the scenes are revealed. As the characters learn more of the true horrors of the world and the irrelevance of humanity, their sanity inevitably withers away. The game includes a mechanism for determining how damaged a character's sanity is at any given point; encountering the horrific beings usually triggers a loss of SAN points. To gain the tools they need to defeat the horrors mystic knowledge and magic the characters may end up losing some of their sanity, though other means such as pure firepower or simply outsmarting one's opponents also exist.
What rules are we going to use?
The Window is a transparent portal into the imagination, a roleplaying system designed with the simple belief that roleplaying is about story and character and not about dice and dick waving. The Window strives to be: simple, usable, and universal.
The Window is a system working as transparently as possible, allowing them to build the story without concerning themselves with empty mechanics or mathematical charts. It will quickly and seamlessly mold itself around the stories and settings, a universal set of rules which could fit any genre without being generic and flavorless.
It's also free, and short, and can be downloaded at:
http://www.mimgames.com/window/
There's a simple quickstart for character creation available at :
http://www.mimgames.com/window/rules/quickstart.html
And what about the adventure?
In this adventure, set during the 1920's, you will explore a classic setting for a Call of Cthulhu rpg, a haunted house, where strange and mysterious events are happening and your expert help is required...
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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The 4th Edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game (D&D) carries on the long tradition of the classic game in modern style, with balanced gameplay, new options and refined mechanics. It's high fantasy, with wizards and other spellcasters teaming up with those who wield power through hand and weapon. The heroes pit these powers, their skills and their wits against fantastic enemies and other hazards to win the day - whether that means defeating the evil, protecting the innocent, finding treasure or all three.
As in past editions, D&D is a mixture of combat and non-combat, with roleplaying throughout. Combat takes place in the players' minds, augmented in most cases by a gridded map and an element of randomness provided by dice rolls. Character skills are an important aspect of the game, both in and out of combat. 4th Edition strongly encourages those who referee the game, called Dungeon Masters, to "Say Yes" to player ideas and creativity. Teamwork between players and their characters is strongly encouraged, even when character alignment is other than "good."
The adventure I'll be running is called "Storm Tower" which was written and run by Chris Perkins for Scott Kurtz of pvponline.com, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, and Wil Wheaton of... well I'm betting you know Wil Wheaton. They played it at Level 3 but I will be adjusting the adventure to Level 1. I'll be offering pregenerated 1st-level characters from the first D&D adventure Keep on the Shadowfell.
The adventure is designed for 5, but can be adjusted for as few as 3.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Serenity Role Playing Game is based on both the Firefly TV Show and Serenity the movie. As a licensed game, the entire RPG drives home the setting and style of the screen fictions it is based on.
For those of you who are not familiar with Serenity and her crew, (Serenity is the name of the space ship the main characters live and fly in.), what we have here is a RPG which, at its basic level, is a western crossed with a space opera. Imagine a gritty environment in which the main characters struggle to survive and may often have to resort to illegal and possibly immoral behavior to make it day to day. Serenity RPG is about getting what you need, using a gun to defend it and to keep flying.
The 'Verse is the home of the human race in the Firefly universe, which happens to take place in the year 2517. Earth could no longer support humans in the numbers that were, so they had to strike out into the Black to find a new home. These generation ships eventually discovered a star system with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons which could be settled.
Terraforming was completed on many of these new worlds to allow human habitation, but little else was offered to settlers landing on these new planetary homes. This created a frontier type setting on many planets. The combination of frontier outer worlds and the highly developed central planets recreates a universe reminiscent of the Wild West age of America. With the central planets holding much of the political, industrial and economic power, (Eastern States), and the territorial worlds being sparsely populated, lacking an ever-present government structure and emulating the tough frontier life of the west. In addition a “civil-war” was fought between the Alliance and the Independents. The Independents lost and resent the Alliance. Players play characters from Independent backgrounds.
The game is driven by the Cortex system and is designed to be more story based as opposed to combat based. Player’s will have the opportunity to directly affect the plot of the story in a bigger way than just their character actions. And for the adventure planned here, you’re going to need all the help you can get.
I’ll be running a homemade, short adventure I call “The State Farm Jingle Does Not Work in Space”. This is a short adventure designed to introduce new players to both role-playing and Serenity RPG. Unlike many adventures, this will have little to do with killings creatures and taking their stuff. This adventure will be about surviving. You are in deep space when one of the top three things you fear most occurs. Collision! You will have to work with the other players in order to survive. Will you save yourself and others, or will you let everyone down?
This short adventure will accommodate 4-8 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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The world of Fighting Fantasy, peopled by Orcs, dragons, zombies and vampires, has captured the imagination of millions of readers world-wide. Thrilling adventures of sword and sorcery come to life in the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, where the reader is the hero, dicing with death and demons in search of villains, treasure or freedom.
With the Fighting Fantasy Introductory Role-Playing Game, you can break free from the constraints of a gamebook and enter the marvellous world of RPGs. You can choose to take any action rather than picking from a limited list; you can go back and re-explore areas you have already visited; you can take on quests with the company of other brave adventurers. The game retains the simple system of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks whilst introducing you to the greater freedom of RPGs. This makes it ideal for absolute beginners.
We will play one of the introductory adventures from the rulebook: a small dungeon filled with various encounters, very much in the style of traditional Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.
This adventure is set at the bottom of an ancient well where nobles and princes of long ago used to come, cast in their gold coins and make their wishes. All of this gold collected in the bottom of the well. When the well dried up, treasure hunters from far and wide set off to find it, hoping for riches. But when they reached the well, they found that the quests ahead of them were far more dangerous than they had thought...
This adventure will take 4 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
-
Peter Venkman. Ray Stantz. Egon Spengler, Winston Zeddemore. All great, ghostbusting, lady-killing gents. All in New York.
Unfortunately, this is Duluth MN. Luckily, Ghostbusters has become an international corporation and you, dear players, have managed to pick up a local franchise operation.
Ghostbusters International is a frightfully funny RPG that's easy to create characters for and even easier to play. Fight horrific ghosts, blow up paintings and statues, get slimed.
If you like the idea of being covered in ectoplasm. If you watched the movies and thought "Yeah, I could take down Gozer and Viggo." If you'v always wanted to have a nuclear accelerator strapped to your back, then this is the game for you.
In Ghostbusters, International, each player takes on the role of a Ghostbuster in a GBI franchise. The game mechanics are a simple "roll xd6 and add the total" type of system, with a few caveats.
This adventure is going to be the first outing for the newly-formed team of Ghostbusters. It's a simple "the house is haunted by a ghost, go bust it" adventure. Or is it? The game will be set in the 80's, in order to stay true to the flavor of the movies.
If you've wanted to play a RPG, but something that's a mix of supernatural horror and zany comedy, this is the game for you. I'm looking for 3-5 players. This system is a great way to get your feet wet in the world of roleplaying. So come, join in the fun!
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Dragon Age has been heralded as the best introduction to table top RPGs in recent years. The Dragon Age RPG follows in the footsteps of BIOWARES famous games of the same name with Green Ronin Publishing leveraging it's deceptively simple Adventure Gaming Engine (AGE) system. Most of the game is resolved using 3 6-sided dice, 2 of a similar color, and 1 off color. This off-color die is referred to as the Dragon Die. On a roll of doubles on any of three dice the Dragon Die gives player Stunt Points to spend and perform special manuvers, called "stunts", that enhance a move, attack or spell.
Dragon Age is played as a traditional RPG, using the players imagination and descriptive ability of the Game Master (GM) to give a visual of fights.
The adventure being offered for Dragon Age is "An Arl's Ransom", an introductory adventure for 2-5 players. Pre-generated characters will be used: a Ferelden Warrior, Surface Dwarf, an Orlesian and Ferelden Rogue, as well as a Mage of the Circle.
The rumors of a new blight may be true. Arl Neruda's lands are being overrun with darkspawn, and the arl needs every able bodied soldier to stop them. However, the Arl has another job for you. Bodyguard, mercenary...babysitter? Rather than send his personal guard, the Arl has hired you to meet his children and see them home. However, it is never that simple, is it?
This adventure will take up to 5 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
-
Trail of Cthulhu is a licensed adaptation of Chaosium’s venerable Call of Cthulhu, specially designed for investigative adventures. Whereas Call takes place in the Jazz Age of the ‘20s, Trail moves it to the ‘30s where ancient horrors are encountered against the backdrop of the Great Depression and looming war.
Trail of Cthulhu uses the GUMSHOE system which focuses on investigations and mystery. Characters, known as Investigators, possess a variety of abilities to help piece together clues. The underlying premise of GUMSHOE is that finding a clue should not be left up to a die roll. If an Investigator has an appropriate skill, he or she will find it. It will then be up to her to interpret it.
The only rolls encountered, always using a single six-sided die, are those generally involving some physical task, whether it be combat, fleeing a monster, casting a spell, fixing a truck engine, or rigging a bridge to explode.
I’m offering to run a homebrew adventure set in the American West, which I’ve named These are the Songs of our Fathers, suitable for 2 or 3 players, using pre-generated characters.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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InSpectres is a game that merges the spooky, wacky world of Ghostbusters with the mundane, yet still wacky world of reality television. In a world where ghosts, demons, and things that go bump in the night are real, documented, and sources of embarrassment ("Honey, our toilet appears to be haunted!" "And we're hosting the Book Club tomorrow! How dreadful!"), InSpectres, Inc. was founded to confidentially and effectively have customers' supernatural infestations investigated and (hopefully) eliminated.
You and your fellow players will create your own franchise. You'll decide where it's located, how it's equipped, and how well it's funded. Your character will be one of the agents responsible for interviewing the client, researching and investigating, and finally going out into the field to deal with the pests. You'll be using your skills and your talents, and dealing with all the stress of confronting the supernatural as well as the stress of being a startup company trying to make it in the supernatural investigation and elimination industry.
There is lots of room for your ideas in this game; all of the players will have opportunities to decide the how and what and why of the game, not just the game master.
The publisher, Memento Mori Theatricks, provide on their website this PDF file of the Startup Rules. These were written to be a bare-bones version of the InSpectres rules, and we'll work with those. I'm looking for 3-4 players to
Join our team!
Join a team of licensed paranormal investigators. Work in an exciting,
fast-paced environment with dynamic, interesting people. Knowledge of
Angelic script, Native American burial rites, cryptozoology, 12th century
textile design, lycanthropy, Ouija board maintenance, remote viewing,
migratory patterns of sponges preferred, but not necessary.
Send cover letter, resume, and references to our headquarters.[/b]
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Tonight we're gonna roleplay like it's 1979
Dungeons & Dragons is now in its fourth incarnation, and is barely recognisable as the same game that was originally released in 1974. However many players of the early versions of the game have not moved on, and what’s more a lot of players that adopted the newer versions have found them not to their tastes, and returned to the earlier rules. With the purchase of TSR by Wizards of the Coast, and the introduction of the Open Gaming Licence, new products for the old game began to be released, and 2006 saw the publication of OSRIC - the Old School Reference and Index Compilation, which brought together and breathed new life into the old rules. New products continue to be released which are OSRIC-compatible, and times are good for old-school gamers.
So why play old rule sets, when new, carefully crafted, elegantly structured, and beautifully illustrated systems are available? For me it’s definitely about the feel of the game. Sure, you have fighting, divine, stealth, or arcane skills. But it’s still a big, unknown and dangerous world, and you’re very small and vulnerable. The later systems did not provide the mystique or danger I felt back in 1980, which I still have whenever I play AD&D.
In our short AD&D adventure, you will come to the aid of a small fishing and trading port whose economy is in jeopardy because the beacon for navigation, set high on the cliff top, has inexplicably stopped working. Five of you will undertake the mission to the Beacon at Enon Tor. This will be an adventure for 1st level, inexperienced characters.
About 15 years ago Karthedon the wizard arrived at the seaport of Borth. He claimed that Borth was located at an ideal site to carry out magical research, and announced his intention to establish a laboratory in the town.
The local Guildmasters, while deeply honoured that Karthedon had chosen their town, were not keen to see such a dangerous place built where they lived. After much negotiation Karthedon and the Guildmasters arranged a compromise: Karthedon would be allowed to carry out his researches locally in a tower which the Guilds would build at Enon Tor. In return he would operate a navigational beacon at the tower and be on call to help the town should he be needed.
The tower was built, Karthedon moved in, and the arrangements worked well. Fewer ships were lost in the dangerous shoals and the town prospered.
One week ago however, the whole of Enon Tor was surrounded by a strange shimmering light and that evening the beacon was not lit. The foghorn in the tower, which had started to sound when the fog descended that morning, continued to blow for the next two days then was suddenly silenced and has not been heard since.
Trading activity has been light recently, but the Guildmasters are anxious to find out what has gone wrong before any ships run aground. As a result they have sought volunteers from the dockworkers to go to Enon Tor and find out why the beacon is no longer working. For this task, each of the five volunteers will be paid 100 gold pieces.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
-
The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a very traditional role-playing game released as a spin-off of the venerable Dungeons & Dragons (3.5 Edition). Released in 2009, Pathfinder has recently become the leading RPG by sales - surpassing even D&D itself. The game features high-fantasy with elements similar to what you would find in popular fantasy novels (Lord of the Rings, DragonLance, Wizard's First Rule, etc). Combat generally takes place on a grid and has a very tactile feel to it - similar to combat from popular boardgames like Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game or Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Being a traditional RPG, it combines elements of role-playing (interaction with the environment and dialog between players and other characters within the adventure) with combat (which has a very gamey feel to it).
The adventure which is being offered up here is called Master of the Fallen Fortress and is an introductory adventure for 1st level characters. We will be using the pregenerated characters from the module so you can jump into the action with balanced characters and get right down to playing.
The intro from the adventure:
The ruined siege castles outside Absalom have long beckoned adventurers looking to make a name for themselves. Now an earthquake has cracked open one of these fabled ruins, and its lost mysteries and fantastic treasures lie exposed for the first time in centuries. But the tower's empty halls once more echo with living footfalls, and a new master has claimed the Fallen Fortress as his own. Can the PCs find a way to get inside its shattered walls? What ancient dangers and fresh threats will they encounter inside its crumbling chambers? And will the PCs be able to defeat the current Master of the Fallen Fortress?
Master of the Fallen Fortress is a dungeon-based adventure for 1st-level chararacters, written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world's oldest RPG. It also serves as an introduction to Pathfinder Society Organized Play (Paizo's constantly evolving, world-wide megacampaign). The adventure involves exploring an ancient, ruined tower and rescuing the captured Pathfinder held within.
This adventure is set outside the great city of Absalom in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.
This adventure will take 4 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
-
The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a very traditional role-playing game released as a spin-off of the venerable Dungeons & Dragons (3.5 Edition). Released in 2009, Pathfinder has recently become the leading RPG by sales - surpassing even D&D itself. The game features high-fantasy with elements similar to what you would find in popular fantasy novels (Lord of the Rings, DragonLance, Wizard's First Rule, etc). Combat generally takes place on a grid and has a very tactile feel to it - similar to combat from popular boardgames like Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game or Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Being a traditional RPG, it combines elements of role-playing (interaction with the environment and dialog between players and other characters within the adventure) with combat (which has a very gamey feel to it).
The adventure which is being offered up here is called The Vile Worm of the Eldritch Oak and is an introductury adventure for 1st level characters. We will be using the pregenerated characters from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box so you can jump into the action with balanced characters and get right down to playing.
The intro from the adventure:
Deep within the forest, an ancient oak has grown huge, twisted and evil. Ages ago, a savage cult haunted these woods and this tree became the catalyst of their unspeakable rites. Below it they carved out a chamber of sacrificial horror where innocent victims were offered to a hideous worm-like god. As the centuries passed, the cult faded into the mists of time, but the twisted oak stood fast, awaiting the day when the creeping evil in the dark below would be summoned once more.
And so it happened that a crazed warrior, a savage berserker who spilled rivers of blood in the north of the world, came in his wanderings upon the great, brooding tree. In his madness he believed the tree whispered to him, invited him, shared with him its dim secrets.
Over the course of many years, the folk of the borderlands have come to know the old berserker as "the mad hermit in the woods." While pretending to be a kindly, albeit eccentric old priest, he secretly scours the forest and nearby areas for human (or humanoid) prey to be sacrificed to the "worm god" that dwells below the ancient oak.
Several nights ago the hermit attacked a shepherd family in their secluded cottage on the edge of the forest, forcing the wife and child to drag the shepherd's unconscious body through the tangled forest to the huge, ancient oak. He imprisoned the family in a chamber below the oak and offered the shepherd to the worm god...
This adventure will take 4-6 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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The latest (and last) of Wizards of the Coast's d20-based adaptations of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars Saga Edition was released in 2007 to much acclaim. In the following year, it won the Gold Ennie awards in categories such as Best Rules, Best d20/d20 OGL Product, and Best Game, along with a Silver Ennie award for Product of the Year. With rules streamlined compared to the previous d20 Star Wars editions, the game found a good following, and until WotC chose not to renew the Star Wars license in early 2010, 14 rulebooks were published under the edition, along with a free campaign spanning the levels from 1-20 published online. Though all official support of the game has ceased with WotC no longer having the license for Star Wars, the game maintains a solid following, including the Ennie-award winning Order 66 Podcast.
It was supposed to be a simple job. Pick up the cargo, deliver it on the sixth planet of the Hoth system - a remote ball of ice of no significance whatsoever to galactic events - and then, you get paid and fly off again. Finding out the planet was home to a Rebel base, your contact a high-up agent for the Rebel Alliance, well, that changed things, but it still could have gone smooth enough. They even hired you for a return flight, offering a more than fair amount of creds to deliver some weapons to another hidden outpost and then return with a medical droid and some other gear as quickly as possible. All in all, the trip was proving to be good business... that is, until the alarms went off, people started running around, and you heard about Imperial troops and walkers advancing on the base, and battleships waiting in orbit to blast anyone who'd try to escape to pieces. Why do things never go smooth?
For this game, I am seeking 4 stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herders to join a crew of smugglers independent traders for a short Rebellion-era adventure with a goal of avoiding Imperial entanglements and slipping past the blockade, help get as many Rebels off the ground as possible, and hopefully make some credits while doing so. Characters will be pre-generated, and no prior experience with the system is required to play - only a love of Star Wars and a willingness to get out there and roleplay. 
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Dungeons & Dragons (3.5 Edition) is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997. It was derived from miniature wargames with a variation of the Chainmail game serving as the initial rule system. D&D's publication is widely regarded as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry.
D&D departs from traditional wargaming and assigns each player a specific character to play instead of a military formation. These characters embark upon imaginary adventures within a fantasy setting. A Dungeon Master serves as the game's referee and storyteller, while also maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur and playing the role of the inhabitants. The characters form a party that interacts with the setting's inhabitants (and each other). Together they solve dilemmas, engage in battles and gather treasure and knowledge. In the process the characters earn experience points to become increasingly powerful over a series of sessions.[1]
[1] Thanks to Wikipedia for this information written far better than I could have!
The adventure which is being offered up here is called TC1: Into the Haunted Forest and is an introductury adventure for 1st level characters. We will be using the pregenerated characters so you can jump into the action with balanced characters and get right down to playing.
The intro from the adventure:
A barroom brawl at a country inn causes the destruction of a priceless relic and the heroes are responsible. Now they must chase down a host of ancient artifacts, lost in a haunted wood, to repay their debt. While the heroes search for the items to clear their name, another group of scoundrels plots their downfall from the depths of the mysterious forest. Only one group will emerge victorious.
Written by Greg A. Vaughan, author of Pathfinder #6: "Spires of Xin-Shalast," numerous Dungeon adventures, and co-author of Wizards of the Coast's Drow of the Underdark and Anauroch: The Empire of Shade.
This adventure will take 4 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Ghost/Echo is an oracle game where the players help the gamemaster to create the story. It could be cyberpunk, or a Victorian dystopia, or a hallucinatory fable, or something else entirely. We will all work together to spin an original tale. All we know for certain at the outset is that...
//WHILE HUNTING FOR LOOT IN THE GHOST WORLD, YOUR CREW WAS SOLD OUT. YOU'VE WALKED RIGHT INTO AN AMBUSH, WITH HUNGRY WRAITHS ON YOUR HEELS.
//QUESTIONS YOU WILL ANSWER AS YOU GO
.Why does your crew need loot?
.What ghost powers does your particular crew member possess?
.What is the ghost world?
.What are Echoes?
.What are Wraiths?
The game is for a crew of three players and the sign-up for this adventure is below. This is a free game, so players will be able to download a PDF copy of the rules to refer to during the adventure.
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17.
RPG: Fiasco
[Average Rating:8.28 Overall Rank:2]
Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Fiasco is inspired by cinematic tales of small-time capers gone disastrously wrong – particularly films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. You’ll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably collapse into a glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your guy just might end up back where he started.
The above is taken directly from the core book for Fiasco. A relatively new RPG, Fiasco has players set up a situation collaboratively, using dice rolls and charts from a Playset. The playset determines the general concept of the session, and players use the charts to narrow down the concepts until they have a situation ripe for exploring (and exploding!). Players then play out scenes, based on the situation and their own creative decisions. Halfway through some disruptive elements are introduced, and at the end, each character's fate will be determined. There is no game master. Four players will take part in the game, with one experienced RPGer explaining the rules and guiding everyone through the process of creating their own unique fiasco.
The Fiasco text provides playsets, but owning the game is not required for this game. Instead, we'll can choose from the many freely available playsets. We'll whittle down the choices to these four:
Dragon Slayers casts the players as a party of adventurers, riding into town in triumph after defeating the mythical monsters, and reaping the rewards of their actions. As the publisher says,
The bumpkins in this pissant mountain town could never have taken down that dragon. Their biggest hero hasn’t seen battle since Drozzek rode down from the Smoking Mountains three wars-to-end-all-wars ago. So yeah, we rode into town, a bunch of outsiders ready to solve that problem. And no, we don’t care what they think. And yes, we’re heroes. These yokels should worship at our feet. They sure as hell didn’t slay that dragon. That’s our dragon, and its gold is our gold. So unless you’re bringing us ale and whores, get the f*** out before we transform you into a turkey and serve you for dinner.
This might be a good choice for those of you who have just finished the Mountains of Madness, and are looking for more roleplaying in the fantasy realm.
Toil and Trouble is also a playset involving wizards and magic, but with a slightly different focus. Here, the wizards are still very young, and still learning their craft at a distant, isolated school. How will the young adolescents handle the magical power? How will they handle their own hormones, and impulses?
Take a bunch of pubescent kids in a confined space out in the middle of nowhere, full of adolescent fury and desires. Now give them unfettered magical powers, the ability to open locks, summon water and fire, create love potions and sleeping draughts. You are someone of magical power, brought here to the school to learn to harness said power. But where hormones, malleable minds and magic meet… Well, let’s just say that’s a fiasco in the making.
Break a Leg is a tribute to the grand traditions and the superstitions of the Theatre. From the playset's introduction:
The director slept with half the cast, your lighting designer is homicidal and that bastard from the Daily News just panned the show in his column. You’ll be lucky on opening night if the cast remembers their lines, nobody mentions the Scottish Play and the scenery doesn’t fall down mid-performance. But hey, the art is all that’s important, right?
The possibilities are endless. Financial troubles for the theatre, actor attitudes and behaviors, corruption and greed -- any and/or all of these items could be in the script.
Horse Fever is a playset all about horse racing, bets, and backstabbing in the early 20th century.
Horseburg is a foul city, grey like the dust you breathe in the Boss’ racetrack. One breath is enough to fill your lungs with corruption, greed, and filthy lies. It’s always best to mind your own business, grasp information here and there and use it to bet heavily tomorrow. See, in this city, luck won’t be enough to make you filthy rich. There’s people out there who’d sell their own mothers for a reliable tip
Regardless of the playset chosen, you will have a situation you want to play, because you will have chosen the relationships, needs, objects, and locations to be used in your game. Characters can, and probably will, be working against one another, but the players will be working together to produce a story worthy of a Coen Brothers movie.
Obviously, Fiasco can lead to mature themes in play. But if that doesn't deter you, casting will be held in the comments below!
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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A long time ago in a galaxy far far away is now becoming here and now. Ever wanted to fly in the Millennium Falcon, attack the death star, have a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader, look no further because Star Wars WEG is the system for you. The game was first printed in the late 80's and uses a simple D6 mechanism to go through the game. When I first read and played this I was pretty impressed off how easy and slick the rules are. With my regular group all being Star Wars fans we tend to go to this system from time to time to have an adventure and be as heroic as Han and Luke.
We will be playing 'Pirates Of Prexiar', a short story in which the new rebellion members are send on their fist mission to find out what happened with a rebellion freighter and more important what happened with the supplies that where on that ship? The rebellion is planning an attack against an imperial prison but are in need of those supplies so pack your gear, board your ship and find out what happened to the ship.
No knowledge of the game is needed since it's a very easy system. We can handle 1 tot 6 players.
Join the Dark Side! Oh wait, no join the Rebellion!
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Smaug has been defeated, the Battle of Five Armies has been won, and Bilbo has returned to the Shire. The War of the Ring is still several generations away. In the relative peace, the Free Peoples of Wilderland look beyond their borders for the first time, establishing trade routes, renewing bonds between their cultures, and bringing prosperity to the region of northern Mirkwood, the Lonely Mountain, and the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains.
But much danger still remains, and from the Orc-holds of the mountains to the dark and corrupt depths of Mirkwood a darkness waits, recovering its strength, laying its plans, and slowly extending its shadow . . . .
New in 2011, the One Ring tries to recreate the atmosphere found in Tolkien's famous stories. Players take on the part of adventurers in and around Mirkwood in the time periode between the events in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Ring trilogy. Easy to learn, but with a wide variety of game mechanics, the system both tries to create an experience were the players can both feel like they are contributing to a story, but also were chance and rules creates a sense of danger. If you are new to role playing games, this might be a good game for you. The game is designed by the designers behind War of the Ring , and has a fairly structured system. I, as the game master, will help with the rules, the only thing you need to bring, is the wish to tell a story.
The adventure to be played is the introductary adventure from the core set, the Marsh-Bell. Two dwarves travelling from the Lonely mountain has gone missing. Can the characters find them, and earn Glóins favour - and reward?
This adventure will take between 3 and 5 players. Pre-generated characters can be provided, but you can easily also make your own. No knowledge of the rules is required, but some knowledge of Tolkien's world will be helpful. The sign-up for this adventure is below.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Savage Worlds is a generic role-playing game that was designed to achieve three fundamental goals, which are Fast, Furious, and Fun! The first edition of Savage Worlds was published in 2003, with four major releases of the ruleset, with the most recent being Savage Worlds Deluxe, which is the best presentation of the rules to date.
As a generic game, there is no setting directly implied, however, Savage Worlds works best when playing a pulp-style game within whatever genre you're looking for. There are a plethora of Savage Settings, which range from the Wild West (with a twist) in Deadlands: Reloaded, swashbuckling in 50 Fathoms, or even investigating what man not know in Realms of Cthulhu. Each setting tweaks the rules to add theme and depth.
The adventure that I'm offering comes from the setting, Agents of Oblivion. AoO offers a wide variety of play-styles, depending on a number of factors that you can move up and down to fit the feel of the game you'd like to achieve. For this game, I will be utilizing Spy vs Spy, which will feel much like playing in the world of Jason Bourne.
Entitled A New Cold War, this adventure will follow group of relatively raw cell of agents who will begin to unravel a plot that intends to reshape the international balance of power.
I will run this adventure for 2-4 players. Previous experience is not required, as I am more than happy to teach along the way. Characters will be provided, but you will have the opportunity to provide input before the character is finalized.
The signup for this adventure is below!
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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In the fall of 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, embarked on a new series of high-energy experiments. No one knows exactly what they were attempting to do , but a little after 3PM on a Thursday afternoon came the Big Mistake. Something unexpected happened, and in the blink of an eye, many possible universes all condensed into a single reality.
In some of these universes, little had changed; it didn't make a big difference which team won the 2011 World Series, for example. In other universes, there were more important divergences: The Gray emissary, who was carrying gifts of advanced technology, wasn't shot down at Roswell in 1947, the Black Death didn't devastate the known world in the 14th century, the dinosaurs didn't die out, Nikolai Tesla did conquer the world with a robot army, and so on. The Cold War went nuclear in 83 percent of the possible universes, and in 3 percent of the universes, the French unloaded their entire nuclear arsenal on the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, because it had to be done. When reality stabilized again, an instant after the Big Mistake, the familiar Earth of the 21st century was replaced by one formed from many different realities.
The year is now 2162 (or 151, or 32, 173, or Six Monkey Slap-Slap, depending on your point of view). It's been a hundred and fifty years since the Big Mistake, and the Earth is a very different place. The ruins of the Ancients (that's you and me) litter a landscape of radioactive deserts, mutated jungles, and vast, unexplored wildernesses. Strange new creatures, such as beetles the size of cars and super-evolved badgers with Napoleonic complexes, roam the world. The survivors of humanity gather in primitive tribes or huddle in trade towns that rarely rise above the technology of the Dark Ages. Even the nature of humanity is now different, because generations of exposure to radiation, mutagens, and the debris of other realities have transformed humans into a race of mutants who have major physical alterations and potent mental abilities.
What is the D&D Gamma World game?
The D&D GAMMA WORLD game is a science-fantasy roleplaying game. Heroes armed with amazing mutant powers and advanced technology fight to survive the perils of the world and drive back savagery, ignorance, and inhuman menaces threatening to extinguish what little hope is left for the broken world.
The mutant abilities your character gains and the advanced tech he or she finds are highly unpredictable. One minute, you could have feelers that help you avoid walking into walls in the dark, and the next minute, you might manifest a deadly disintegrating touch. The gear you find might be a 25th century teddy bear or a fusion rifle. These variable aspects of your character are reflected by the Alpha Mutation and Omega Tech cards you draw during play.
It's a lot like the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game and similar games, but instead of a classic fantasy setting of elves, dragons, orcs, and such, you're exploring a world of bizarre, mutated monsters, killer robots, and bloodthirsty marauders. The D&D GAMMA WORLD game is a game of your imagination. It's part storytelling, part social interaction, part war game, part card game, and part dice game. You and your friends create heroic characters (also known as heroes, adventurers, or explorers) who develop and grow with every challenge they overcome. Only instead of saving the world, players will be tasked with saving themselves from the world.
Steading of the Iron King It started a month ago. A robot rolled down from the foothills to the village edge. The Ancient device buzzed and blinked, then blew up. The same thing happened the next day, and the next, and almost every day since. However, on at least four occasions, a robot succeeded in reaching the village periphery, buzzed, blinked, and fired a rocket at the wall (without much effect). What the heck is going on up in the foothills?
This adventure will take 1-5 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Adventure Awaits...
The Old World. A dark and grim place filled with peril and riven by war. From the teeming cities of the Empire to the Elf haunted forests to the lofty crags of the Worlds' Edge mountains where Dwarfs battle with Goblins and their vile kin, a shadow hangs over the world, cast by the dark corrupting hand of Chaos. All along its borders, the Old World's greatest nation, the Empire, seeks to hold back the dark tide. But even within the Empire there are enemies. Twisted cultists seek to bring about the Empire's fall, cold-hearted Beastmen stalk the forests, and loathsome Skaven ratmen spread plague and sickness from their suburban lairs.
In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, you are unlikely heroes in a grim world of perilous adventure. You venture into the dark corners of the Empire and deal with the threats that others cannot or will not face. You'll probably die alone in some festering hellhole, but maybe, just maybe, you'll survive foul Mutants, horrible diseases, insidious plots, and sanity-blasting rituals to reap Fate's rewards.
A slim man comes to you. He smiles meekly, but his hands shake while he brings you a bottle of Southland Brandy from the bar. You motion him to sit. He sits and bends forward. You do the same. Now that he's near you can see his eyelids traced with black and red for lack of sleep.
"If I get up from this table," he wispers, "I'm a dead man. You're my last hope..."
I'll need 1 to 3 players for this very short adventure.
I'll present you with up to 9 pre-generated characters to choose from. Choose wisely, a man's life, and yours, will be soon at stake.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Imagine you could go anywhere. This world or countless others, encountering strange alien races, new cultures or hostile environments. Now imagine you could travel to any time. See the pyramids and the Sphinx (back when she had a nose!), discover who (or what) really built Stonehenge, meet the first Emperor of Japan, or travel into the far future as humanity spreads to the stars. Where would you go?
With Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, the power is in your hands! You can go anywhere or anywhen in the universe. It's not going to be easy. It'll probably be dangerous. The universe is a hostile place, full of Daleks, Slitheen, Krillitane, Sontarans, Plasmavores, Cybermen, Sycorax, Judoon and worse. There will be fear, heartbreak and excitement, but above all, it'll be the trip of a lifetime.
The intro from the adventure:
Since you first met him, you’ve seen the Doctor react in countless ways. You’ve seen him act with absolute compassion towards the helpless, seen him talk his way out of impossible danger, seen him face down terrifying enemies with nothing but his voice and a rage so powerful it seemed to bend light.
You’ve never seen him speechless though…until now. He turns back to you, eyebrows raised so high they look like they’re standing at attention.
“What did you just say?”
“Only that I’ve never been to the seaside.”
“WHAT?! But it’s brilliant! Sticks of rock and fish and chips and donkey rides! How could you never have been to the seaside – you’ll be saying you never went to the Isle of Man next?”
You look at him. His eyebrows climb higher.
“You’ve never been to the Isle of Man? With the rally and the…the…cats? With the tiny tails? And the sheep?” He sets his jaw and nods. “Right! We’re going to the seaside, then I’m going to take you to the Isle of Man.”
“…Will it be cold?”
“’Course not! Well, probably, but it’ll be character building.”
You watch as he pounds one control, spins another and pulls what looks suspiciously like a spring out of the console. The TARDIS rocks and turns and suddenly lands, with a dull thud. The Doctor looks at his companions, beams, and strides down the ramp, grabbing his coat as he goes. “Come on! Chips to eat! Ruins to stare at, we don’t have all day!”
The system is easy and straightforward and the unique initiative system does a great job of modeling an episode of Doctor Who – talk your way out of trouble, or run away from it, or stop it somehow, but don’t use violence.
This adventure will take 4 players. Pregenerated characters from the core box will be provided.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Yes, another offering of this thanks to another willing GM!
The world of Fighting Fantasy, peopled by Orcs, dragons, zombies and vampires, has captured the imagination of millions of readers world-wide. Thrilling adventures of sword and sorcery come to life in the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, where the reader is the hero, dicing with death and demons in search of villains, treasure or freedom.
With the Fighting Fantasy Introductory Role-Playing Game, you can break free from the constraints of a gamebook and enter the marvellous world of RPGs. You can choose to take any action rather than picking from a limited list; you can go back and re-explore areas you have already visited; you can take on quests with the company of other brave adventurers. The game retains the simple system of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks whilst introducing you to the greater freedom of RPGs. This makes it ideal for absolute beginners.
We will play one of the introductory adventures from the rulebook: a small dungeon filled with various encounters, very much in the style of traditional Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.
This adventure is set at the bottom of an ancient well where nobles and princes of long ago used to come, cast in their gold coins and make their wishes. All of this gold collected in the bottom of the well. When the well dried up, treasure hunters from far and wide set off to find it, hoping for riches. But when they reached the well, they found that the quests ahead of them were far more dangerous than they had thought...
This adventure will take 4 players.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars
It is the Far Future. Mankind has progressed and expanded to where there is no disease, society is stable, crime non-existent, and poverty unknown. Natural death has become an option, not a certainty.
It's boring, really.
And it's up to the Expeditionary Force to keep it that way. Mankind may be happy with their little part of the universe, but there a lot of other species out there that might not like us. Might want our planets. Might possibly invade us. Maybe.
That's certainly not how the recruitment posters put it though.
"SEE THE UNIVERSE!"
"Drink Cocktails on an Exotic Beach 12,000 light years away!"
"Save Humanity from deadly enemies!"
"For Humanity!"
"See a Starkiller in Action!"
"Make Your Mother Proud!"
"Live an EXCITING LIFE!"
It sure sounded more interesting than watching the vidtanks for another sixteen decades or so...
Join the 16th Brigade of the Third Army! Come see distant planets! Exotic flora and fauna! Experience alien cultures! And make sure they will never, ever, ever threaten humanity. Grab your weapon, Trooper! We have some First (and Last) Contact to make!
Carnage Amongst the Stars is a rules light space combat RPG designed to simulate a squad's advance through a jaded military corps eradicating potential enemies on world-wide scales. Combat is fast, furious, and completely destructive. The system is designed to be more story-based than rules based -- you only have two skills: Fighting Ability, and Non-Fighting Ability. Along the way, we'll discover why you joined the Expeditionary Force and what you hope for...
AND KILL BUGS!
Expeditionary Forces Recruiting is looking for 4-6 Raw Recruits to bring Humanity to the Enemy...
You'll get all the training you need in bootcamp, so what are you waiting for?
JOIN NOW! SEE THE STARS! SAVE TERRA!
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The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a very traditional role-playing game released as a spin-off of the venerable Dungeons & Dragons (3.5 Edition). Released in 2009, Pathfinder has recently become the leading RPG by sales - surpassing even D&D itself. The game features high-fantasy with elements similar to what you would find in popular fantasy novels (Lord of the Rings, DragonLance, Wizard's First Rule, etc). Combat generally takes place on a grid and has a very tactile feel to it - similar to combat from popular boardgames like Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game or Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Being a traditional RPG, it combines elements of role-playing (interaction with the environment and dialog between players and other characters within the adventure) with combat (which has a very gamey feel to it).
I've been dying to learn to play Pathfinder!! Any chance there'll be another opportunity??
That filled up faster than I expected! The first four posters are Duckster, weateallthepies, tivowatcher, ColdFrog. I see that peter100, davwj, Neil Thomson got places on a second table below. My apologies to ejlittle and Crissie100 for not being able to offer you a spot this time. But if this goes well, I may perhaps run it again and will give you first refusal at that time.
