Title kinda says it all.
I have Foundry so that's sweet. Oh yeah, and don't be afraid to recommend me some obscure ones as well as popular ones.
Let's see... I like Star Wars, Appalachia, labor movement, Star Trek, the Pathfindner games by Owlcat, Warhammer 40k (syke! but I may get into it due to its increased popularity recently), Arthurian legends, Lord Dunsany, horror, foreign shit (like, foreign novels, foreign games, foreign everything), Chinese stuff, Chinese web novels, etc.
What else, what else... Pluto and other space shti? Eh, idk. Africa, non-European fantasy, noir, neurodiversity/autism, desert fantasy, weird fiction, Gothic literature, Nintendo, dwarves, Ottoman empire, pirates, tropical settings, OMORI, ASOIAF book series, Assassin's Creed (ig? back then, but i don't know about now as I haven't played the recent ones), history in general, sociology, Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, anything like the upcoming Dolmenwood TTRPG, and I guess anything like the Enclave TTRPG.
No to: more Viking shit (Viking shit seems to everywhere and I hate it), Orientalist two-dimensional shenanigans, "you can be the bad guys in this setting... even though they're technically the good guys now but with a dark aesthetic to them!," Numenera (I hated the video game), Game of Thrones TV show, zombies, Bethesda Game Studios, and, err, yeah, I'll leave it at that.
So yeah, now that you know what my interests are, how about I dox myself, yeah?
Okay, look down to see what I look like:
spoiler
lol jk
Okay, gimme your recommendations, of any kind, but mostly of anything that might pique my interest (based on the, well, interests I posted above).
$250 can go a very long ways if you use PDFs. Obviously, games with lots of supplements like D&D or Pathfinder can get expensive.
Honestly, I would just ask your players what they're interested in, genre-wise and complexity-wise, before committing to any purchases.
I will always recommend Lancer!
It's a mecha-themed tabletop game with tons of customization and a great emphasis on battle strategy. The combat is super fun and works a lot like a tactics video game such as XCOM. The out of combat gameplay is lighter than most, but still has plenty of stuff to customize and do. The game's lore is well-written and actually interesting, and a lot of fun to look through (but ignorable if you want to customize, of course). The game also has a ton of free modules and stuff online such as Comp/Con that allows you to customize characters and mechs easily and for free. In fact, the game as a whole is very cheap, and only requires the GM to purchase the books.
Best of all, the Devs are amazing (if they aren't leftists, they're very close) and the community is incredibly wholesome and is very LGBTQ friendly. Lots and lots of trans comrades are always talking about the game and stuff on the official Discord. The Discord also has a million free resources like maps and art and all that to make GMing that much easier.
If you want to hold campaigns where trans mech pilots destroy capitalists with heavy weaponry and eldritch-adjacent superweapons, Lancer has you covered!
I've always wanted to try out Lancer, but never found a group to play with. I wouldn't mind joining one now if anyone knows good places to look.
I play with a group in-person (when we can all get around to it), but the Lancer Discord is probably your best bet at finding groups online. I haven't tried asking myself so I can't say how easily you can get something set-up, but it's a great place to ask anything Lancer related. Plus, they're mostly leftists there (probably Western-brained ones but I'll take what I can get).
Otherwise, this project called Lancer Tactics just finished its Kickstarter campaign. It's a strategy video game intending to preserve the rules from the tabletop game. You can play the demo now! It's pretty fun (if a little buggy). Hopefully they do a solid job on the full release.
but the Lancer Discord is probably your best bet at finding groups online.
I didn't even know there was an official discord. I'll definitely check it out.
Otherwise, this project called Lancer Tactics just finished its Kickstarter campaign. It's a strategy video game intending to preserve the rules from the tabletop game.
Is it multiplayer? In any case, it sounds awesome and I'll check it out. Thank you for the advice!
Well first of all, if you're OK with PDFs then you can get a lot of things for free you know?
Pathfinder 2e is, IMO, a better and very fun version of dnd, its a good run-of-the-mill d20 fantasy system with a setting that I enjoy quite a lot with increasing queer writing in it. And ALL the rules are free and easily found and used by going to 2e.aonprd.com/, the official PRD. Yes, aallllll the rules, updated suite quickly when new stuff comes out. Foundry pf2e has great support and very nice to use, and pathbuilder is a godsend for character creation.
There are so many cool and interesting systems to try out there and really you should try them, a lot of them are simple and easy to setup and you can easily get a one shot going to see if you want to keep going.
If you need any PF1 or PF2 PDFs, imu. And in general of you need any ttrpg PDFs of any kind, I'm pretty good at finding them (except the tiny Indy stuff that gets crowd funded, sometimes you can find it but its much harder)
I do want at least some physical copies. It's just not the same, you know? Without physical copies, I mean. And yes, I've consider Pathfinder 2e as well. Increasing queer writing in it? I like the sound of that. I'll save the link you gave me as well. What is Foundry pf2e, btw? And what does "imu" mean (I'm just curious)? Yeah, I could use all the Pathfinder 2e PDFs as I like to collect them, though I would like some physical copies too.
Also regarding the setting of Golarion and the increase in writing quality in second edition, check out for example the book "Knights of Lastwall" which has badass undead-fighting knights like Clarethe Iomedar (nonbinary) or their badass mother Kalabrynne Iomedar (trans woman) who's on the cover :
Show
Another personal favourite is the minor god Alseta who is literally the god of transitions, including gender transitions : https://2e.aonprd.com/Deities.aspx?ID=30
There's a lot of little things that are gradually being added and the younger writers, designers and freelancers or Paizo are very queer.
Damn I meant hmu as in "hit me up", woops.
I meant the PF2e system implementation for Foundry VTT since you mentionned it. It is one of the best, if not the absolute best, system implementation on foundry. Complete, great character sheets, lots of great automation, very motivated and active community, and now Paizo (the pathfinder people) sell modules and adventures as Foundry modules. The community, and the stuff on Pathfinder infinite or drivethru for example, also tend to sell their stuff as a Foundry module on top of the rest. There's some really good 3PP stuff for pathfinder 2e now, like all the Battlezoo/Roll for combat stuff which is basically Paizo quality, and has wide popularity (a lot of people use it on foundry and there's even options for it in Pathbuilder).
Yeah, I was, like, thinking "why does she miss me?"
Anyway, this all seems pretty good. I have Foundry and I'll soon have the core books for Pathfinder 2e. Sounds good. Thank you!
I've made a 3GB .zip of ALL the PF2 pdfs I have, I'm sending it in PM.
Anyone else interested I can send it to you as well.
If anyone also has PF2e PDFs, I'm looking to complete some stuff. I only have the adventure paths up to around Quest for the Frozen Flame and beyond that it's incomplete or absent. Same for modules, it's been a while since I searched for the latest ones.
I'm subscribed to the Core and Lost Omens line which is why I have all of them, and I pass them through something to remove my name/email/account info. If you have some PDFs I might be missing please send them to me I need the collection to be compleeeete.
Fun fact: The entire rules for Pathfinder (both 1E and 2E) are on this website
The only things not present are flavor bits, world information and the pre-written adventures
So, you could get pretty far without spending a single dollar
Fantasy Flight Star Wars is good for Star Wars
FATE is general purpose, good for anything narrative heavy
there are many i could recommend given the time lolWhat is FATE? Also, aren't there two Star Wars TTRPGs? Or do I misunderstand?
FATE is a rules-light, narrative heavy system, it can be used for pretty much any setting or story you want
there are a few star wars systems, the one i linked is the fantasy flight one, which is the best imoFunnily, there are at least 3 official Star Wars ttrpgs, the Star Wars d6 system by West End Games from before I got into roleplaying, the Star Wars d20 system by Wizards of the Coast from the 2000s, and the current offerings by Fantasy Flight Gaming. If you don't mind needing to get custom dice, the FFG games are widely considered the best from a moment to moment point of view.
Beam Saber looks pretty cool if you and/or the friends you are playing with like giant robots and sci fi anime.
You could go for Call of Cthulhu or its more action-oriented offshoot Delta Green. That one is like Men in Black or X-Files. There's also plenty of cheap and free modules to run with for that. Another Option is Savage Lands. That's a very barebones system that can be applied to anything, much like GURPS. But unlike GURPS, it's super basic in its rules and relies healthily on cheat tokens. If you go with Savage Lands, buy it online since it comes with a PDF code if you buy it off the webstore. With the basebook and some Deadlands materials, you could run a really simple, but exciting Southern Gothic action-adventure for under $100.
Yeah, I've heard great things about Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu by extension, but especially Delta Green. I don't mind the Men in Black-type story-telling to Delta Green at all. What is Deadlands, btw? Never heard of Savage Lands, though I do want to try GURPS.
Savage Lands is a game system that involves really low dice (basically higher value dice based on the level of the relates stat), poker chips that can be spent on rerolls or blocking attacks, and a very simple quirk sytem (like the quirks in Shadowrun). Deadlands is pretty much DnD, but in the Wild West. There's a portal to hell and you play classes that would relate to the kind of setting, like gunslingers or voodun. Deadlands is particularly known for using a deck of 51 over dice rolls in some of its versions.
First things first, try to pirate everything you can from here before you buy anything (fair warning: it's from 4chan but it's too good a source to pass up). Since you seem to be fine with any of fantasy, sci-fi, or historical games, I think the two most important questions are how willing/able you and, more importantly, your players are to read rules/learn complicated systems, and what kind of gameplay the group interested in. A lot of the things you list off as likes are more things that you would build into the setting during your planning, where the system itself won't necessarily matter.
- Pathfinder/D&D is super combat heavy and generally complex. You can run these in non-european settings with some work (PF has a few regions that are fleshed out IIRC).
- Call of Cthulhu is a lot less focused on concrete rules and focuses on investigation into things beyond mortal comprehension, with combat usually resulting in horrible death because the party are rando investigators and not professional soldiers. Set in the 1930s, could easily swap out time period and location with some trimming of the skill list (eg probably no guns skill in the late Ottoman empire).
- GUMSHOE systems have more concrete rules (and thus complexity) than CoC, and also primarily focus on investigation (Trail of Cthulhu for CoC, Night's Black Agents for modern-day vampire hunters, etc).
- Traveller (Mongoose 2E) is about travelling between planets in space, with a focus on trade, which can go from background noise behind regular adventures to "spreadsheets in space".
- Worlds Without Number/Stars Without Number are generic, rules light fantasy and sci-fi systems that focus heavily on providing the GM with material with which to make a sandbox setting for the players to get involved with.
- Lancer is the communist tactical mech combat game.
For properties you specifically listed off:
- There are a bunch of Star Wars systems, from WEG d6 (very rules-light) to Saga d20 (basically D&D) to FFG's three systems (decently complex with a focus on narrative, uses weird dice).
- Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius exists, but I've never played so no comment on quality.
- There's an ASOIAF system out there where players play as one noble house, with things like hard-coded rules for social manipulation.
Good advice.
I feel like it would be better to invest in a tablet and to use pirated PDFs to trial out the different systems and then maybe to purchase a few books if you really like a system and you want a hardcopy of the system.
I'm good at sourcing PDFs btw and there's a whole pile of game PDFs that ended up on LibGen because of... my friend who fulfilled requests. Lmk if there are any PDFs you're looking for that you can't find elsewhere and I'll go searching for them.
get the beginner box for pathfinder 2e! i strongly recommend it, best ttrpg product ive ever fucking bought, EVER. and ive played a lot of systems. the rub of it is its basically like a board game, but for dnd, and its easy as fuck to bring to family gatherings and such and hand out characters for them to play. the materials are very high quality and it comes with pawns and maps and a prewritten adventure and is probably the best intro to a system ive ever played. 10/10 no notes
Oho, quite the recommendation and with the glowingn review too.
I'll think about getting it and probably will.
its a great fucking value, unionization gets the goods (paizo is the first ttrpg company to unionize)
"you can be the bad guys in this setting... even though they're technically the good guys now but with a dark aesthetic to them!,"
Emphasis on this, ig
Seriously, so many web novels, manga, etc. have this "Let's follow the bad guys... who never do bad shit and are essentially the good guys but with cooler aesthetics."
To be honest: I don't like "villain protagonist" stories anyway but I don't like "villain protagonist fights the snobbish good guy and is probably good themself anyway."
I personally enjoy WOIN a lot. It has a nice approach to building a character where you can slot in levels and improve attributes with XP. Classes are open and mostly non-restrictive, and all the attributes are useful to every class.
It does everything I want it to do, and only a few things I don't which immediately gives it a leg up on 5E.
If you ever do want to try and play it, there's a guy who made a sort of functioning module for Foundry 9 which is floating around somewhere.
Mork Borg is a black metal ttrpg with the dopest aesthetic of any I've seen. I've never played it but I bought the book just because it looks so cool.
