Lilith, Mother of Darkness3d ago

I was flabbergasted when I learned that for many, many people who play ttrpgs, that hobby essentially means D&D. Seemed like very few had played, or actually even heard, about other systems.
Which seems insane to me, considering how many other systems there are.

Play D&D if you like it, that's absolutely okay. I'm certainly not knocking it. I just personally don't really care for it. To me, it kind of is like picking the vanilla flavour, when there are so many other different options to choose from.

Also, a little side note regarding how ttrpgs are more acceptable now, and more mainstream. While I'm happy to have more people in the hobby, there is one downside: we old timers lost all street cred the hobby gave to us.  
When people saw us carrying a bunch of roleplaying books in the streets, they feared us! Parents ushered their kids to other side of the street, scared that I will use my demonic witch powers to convert little Timmy-Sally to a goth who plays vampire the masquerade.
That is respect. Well, that's fear, to be precise. But fear is better. Respect can vanish quickly, but most people can't stop fearing easily. 🤘

#ttrpg

Show threadUnholy/Syn(ACK) 3d ago

@Lunalucardrose20 That's an interesting take on TTRPGs, and I can sort of identify with it. As a kid that grew up right in the midst of the Satanic Panic, D&D was (of course) the gateway straight to hell and it was the one that engendered all that fear that you mentioned in your post.  

However, when I got into college in the early 90s, I knew so many more people that played things other than D&D - and honestly I didn't know very many people that did play it. College was where I learned about Shadowrun, G.U.R.P.S., Paranoia, Chill, Vampire: The Masquerade, and probably a few more. My crew was pretty heavy into Shadowrun at that time. I did a short stint in D&D with a crew from my first "real job" after college, but once I moved to my current city of residence it was pretty much all Shadowrun, all the time. And most recently Cyberpunk 2020/Red (although I haven't actually played the TTRPG of that with live people - just have some of the sourcebooks).

D&D was the most popular by far, and I think that popularity served to sort of water it down in the circles I ran with because that was the only one that most "normies" knew. I think that once more genre-specific TTRPGs came to be that a lot of the TTRPG players finally found what they were looking for and left the "vanilla" stuff to the hardcore fans and n00bs. 

Show threadLilith, Mother of Darkness3d ago

@SynAck Hmm, that's a good point about leaving the "vanilla" stuff to those groups.

We've seemingly played a lot of the same systems. Although Chill is definitely one that I'm not familiar with.
My biggest ttrpg loves will always be Cyberpunk 2020 and Vampire the masquerade. (Well, really the whole old world of darkness as a whole, but Vampire is the one dearest to my black heart)

Show threadUnholy/Syn(ACK) 3d ago

@Lunalucardrose20 Chill was a horror-based TTRPG kind of based around classic movie monsters in modern times - mummies, werewolves, vampires (of the "blah-blah-I-vant-to-suck-your-blood" type) kind of mixed with a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/Van Helsing monster-hunter vibe. It was interesting.

One other one that I remember was one called TORG, which was like a horror/cyberpunk/sci-fi mish-mash game that also seemed to have a lot of techno-religious overtones to it (like one of the major NPC villains was the "cyber-papacy" where the pope was like some sort of AI). I didn't play that one, but found a couple of sourcebooks at a garage sale or something at one point and it seemed interesting enough.

Chill was pretty fun, though. Played that one for about a year or so.

Show threadLilith, Mother of Darkness3d ago
@SynAck Sounds interesting, I'm going to try and find those in some form. Would like to read them.
Show threadUnholy/Syn(ACK) 3d ago
@Lunalucardrose20 well, if it helps, TORG was published by West End Games and Chill was a Mayfair Games property.
Show threadLilith, Mother of Darkness

@SynAck This will undoubtedly help, thanks choom.  

I'm really interested in older ttrpgs. And board games... and card games. I seem to have a thing for gaming that existed before or shortly after I was born. 

Mar 26 at 2:31amWeb