Episode 86: When the Lynch Mob Comes For You, Roger

Role-playing games Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice
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This month, Roger and Mike resolve their challenge, and look to the future (not in the culty way, honest).

We mentioned Stygian Fox at the Bundle of Holding, Old Indie games at the Bundle of Holding, The Cthulhu Hack, GUMSHOE, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Roll20, Teburu, the “wireless dice” Kickstarter campaign Good Society, Dr Bob’s SF adventures, Critical Role, The Dragonmeet panel on actual-play podcasts Whartson Hall, yog-sothoth.com, the Rune RPG, Titansgrave, and H. M. Bateman.

We have a tip jar (please tell us how you’d like to be acknowledged on the show).

Music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com.

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Thanks for the plug of my military SF scenarios! :grinning:

The only thing I paid for when writing those adventures was the cover for the Squaddies setting book. That was done by a professional artist I know (Andy Bigwood). He did it for mates rates rather than charging me full whack.

For all the others I did my own covers.

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On the question of why would anyone play an RPG when he is more interested in the “G” than in the “RP”:

You seem to think that the currently extant boardgames are complete replacements for RPGs for those people. Since I am sometimes “those people” and play lots of boardgames, I can tell you that they aren’t. No boardgame actually replaces GURPS, HERO System, Pathfinder, or RuneQuest (for instance) as a complex combat and skill sim. And a bit of roleplaying alongside the “G” is fun, too.

Boardgames are great for a shorter, more regulated experience. I have and play Descent, and Clank!, and a variety of other dungeon crawl boardgames. But they do not have anything like the flexibility and tactical depth of a complex RPG and they don’t provide anything like the same experience in play.

You might as well ask why anyone would bother to play GURPS, when Fate is strictly better (since it concentrates on the RP without all that distracting mechanical stuff). The end of that road is pure cooperative storytelling, which is, I am sure, a fine thing. But it’s not a thing for me.

That you (collectively) don’t much enjoy the mechanical elements of a tactically focused RPG is a data point and I suspect a strongly held opinion. But it does not invalidate my experience. I’ll have fun in my own way and let you have fun in yours.

None of which should be taken as anything other than a response to the instant issue. There’s a reason I keep coming back to listen every month. :nerd_face:

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Doug, I’m sorry if I came off as deprecating a play style - it’s specifically the not-really-roleplaying dungeon bash that I think is better handled by modern boardgames. I’ve been in games that were entirely about killing the monster, taking the treasure, levelling up… and for that I don’t see any virtue in the baroque complexity of D&D when the boardgames can provide the same mechanical fun. If you want to go beyond that basic mechanistic game, then sure, any RPG will support it well – but for a lot of groups that desire doesn’t seem to be there.