Why do I never see this on Veeky Forums?

Why do I never see this on Veeky Forums?

>easy as shit to GM with very little prep needed
>way more versatile than the usual "band of heroes go on an adventure"
>very RP heavy, little dice rolling, rule lawyer nightmare
>very social PvP focused

Because Veeky Forums has gotten stale. current Veeky Forums sucks for discussion outside of a few generals

Different rp sites have different preferences.
Veeky Forums trends toward the popular and the crunchy (though not necessarily at the same time.)
Hillfolk is narrativist and not based on a mainstream property like DnD or 40k.
ergo...

Is this in da archive?

I've never heard much about it. I'm inclined to look at it if only because Robin D. Laws also made Feng Shui which is my favorite RPG ever.

Could you give me a rundown on how the system plays and what it's all about?

just found it in da UNcurated archive

Basically each player controls a character. At the start of the campaign, you say who you are, what you are, what your relationships to other characters are, and what you want from them. E.g. "My name is Paul, I am the town sheriff, my wife is *other player's female character hereby called Helena*, and I want respect/love from her." "My name is Elias and I am a waiter at a local restaurant. I have a problem with drugs and I have been arrested once by Paul already, and I want acceptance from the townspeople."

Then the game is separated in procedural and dramatic scenes. Scenes are called by players in turn, for example "I call a scene set in Paul's home as tensions rise with Helena over what I feel is lack of respect for me as a husband" would be a dramatic scene where emotional issues are resolved between players or players and important characters (could also be an officer asking for a promotion from a higher up, doesn't have to be love/friendship/whatever). These are generally resolved with less crunch and more RP (though crunch does come into it sometimes but it's very light). "I call the scene of Paul chasing an unknown suspect (Elias) for drug possession through an alleyway" would be a procedural scene, where something happens in the more traditional sense (a chase, a fight, etc.), here you pull cards to resolve much like dice rolls. This clear distinction isn't needed and fades away as you become more used to the system (you can probably see that scenes can easily be both procedural and dramatic in nature).

There's a lot more to it, you have skills (very generic, like "fighting with a 2h sword") which allow you to pull more cards (higher chance to win), bennies and tokens which let you crash scenes (insert yourself in a scene the player who called it didn't feature you), duck scenes (avoid participating), etc. but this is the basic gist of it.

What a cool exciting title! I can't wait to be some "Hillfolk"!

In addition to what the other guy said, it's possible to drop the cards/skills and stuff and just bolt the drama part on top of another system that lacks the social/dramatic scene type mechanics, and let that system handle the fights and chases and so forth while Hillfolk does the narrative scene stuff.

This poster is not very Lothar.

You also don't have to have a mundane setting like a small town with a sheriff with family issues, it can be anything from Gilgamesh ruling his city to Heaven when God suddenly disappeared (with players being angels, souls of the saved, etc) to the holy grail war from Fate to the Primarches from 40k. As long as you got characters interacting with eachother on an emotional level (so basically everything, even the most shonenshit of anime), it's good to go, though some are more suited than others. Procedural scenes aren't really the focus so combat heavy stuff is hard at the start, but as you get better at it you'll learn to make even combat be an interpersonal exchange. The rulebook itself states you can swap out the procedural system for any other you'd like, though I personally like it's simplicity, you spend more time RPing than crunching numbers.

The titular setting is about a tribe on a hill in bronze age Israel, which I find interesting but it seems I might be the only one. I would expect Veeky Forums who can fill a thread with talk about historically correct daggers and sallets to find it interesting too, but maybe I'm wrong (though there definitely are more interesting settings in the book, not sure why they didn't pick one with more normalfag appeal).

this sounds like one of those horrible korean and/or spanish low ass budget tv shows characters watch on other, more well-known tv shows.

I wanna fight monsters and kill bandits by yelling obscenities at them, not not go to jail for drug posession. I already do that in real life

user I've never even played Hillfolk but you couldn't sound more like a pleb if you tried.

Hill folk is not a game, it's work, screenwriting work.
You may make a great story but there is absolutely no immersion ever.

It sounds less like an RPG and more like a boardgame with narrativist interaction elements.

To answer your question, OP: This is why Veeky Forums doesn't talk about Hillfolk, apparently they can't understand it.

You aren't really supposed to immerse yourself into your character, you're supposed to play that character's role, regardless if it corresponds to what you'd do. You can absolutely not self insert in Hillfolk, unless you made the character to be basically you. As for it being work, not really, it's great fun, as long as you enjoy interpersonal conflict, you aren't really fighting between characters as much as between players, PvP in it's purest sense, and if you don't like verbal confrontations with friends, then you probably won't like Hillfolk. Also means you must absolutely avoid "that guys" at all costs, doesn't end well when someone is an autist that can't keep real life and the game separate.

Well, I think it's a lot more RPG than the vast majority of systems in the true sense of the word: it's pure roleplaying game, even characters succeeding or failing at a task is handled narratively in many cases (though other players may object to your narrative and then it comes down to tokens and stuff). Definitely not what people are used to calling an RPG though.

Maybe I'm weird, but I never really found the whole "barbarian with a GIANT AXE slaying a PLANET SIZED DRAGON with EXPLOSIONS and LIGHTNING" to be interesting let alone immersive, it gets old really quick. Always found dialogue and social interaction between characters to be way more interesting than the fights in movies and shows too (and I'm evidently not alone considering how popular shows like GoT and BrBa are).

I understand that what makes the game unique is not the system but a way of structuring a session that can easily be applied to other systems.
Other than that it's too generic to be interesting.

>you're supposed to play that character's role, regardless if it corresponds to what you'd do.
Yes, that's playing a character, and you can immerse yourself in the role doing that. It's a basis of roleplaying and acting, so I really don't understand your response.

There is a supplement call Suburban White Guys. It's just ok.

It sounds kind of boring honestly. Like a Soap Opera RPG. I'm not sure what it accomplishes that freeform couldn't, but maybe I just need to grab the rulebook and check it out.

That sounds lame, Fate Accel is fast to setup and actually fun

>>very RP heavy, little dice rolling
Is that supposed to be a good thing? at that point you're just straight up roleplaying

Because it's a narrative game.

I like crunchy systems, but Inhave heard good things from Hillfolk and that other, Bronze Age game.

>Veeky Forums trends toward the popular and the crunchy
Veeky Forums has the taste of American teenagers (who likely also make up a majority of the board) which means that unless it includes lots of over the top action and animuh wackiness it's a no go for most of the people here.

I've played this before, when it was known as "DramaSystem" and it was one of the best times I've had with a game. Easily top ten TRPGs for me; maybe as high as top five.

The best way to play it, imho, is to play it like one of those hour-long tv dramas (Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, XFiles - anything) and approach it like you are the actor-writer and if this series doesn't get renewed, you're going to lose your house.

Go all in. Play the other players. Strategically "lose" scenes and build up your bennies so in later scenes you can cash them all in and amp up the drama. As long as everyone else is playing the same way, it's going to be a great time.

I was playing a "confused German tourist" in an Over the Edge style game. Not normally my thing (and not a setting I'm very familiar with), but it meant we could do weird shit for no apparent reason. My confused German tourist kept "losing" scenes with the other characters and built up quite a nest egg of points by the time we reached the "two part season finale". The last episode had car chases, kidnappings, and the awakening of an Elder God my confused German tourist was working the whole time to summon by sacrificing one of the other characters to. (She didn't end up sacrificing him and joined the other side - but the NPC she was working for apparently found another suitable sacrifice.)

It doesn't have to be "normal people doing gritty, normal things". I think it would probably be even better with some element of the fantastic to it. But for certain if you're not ramping up the stakes and drama, you're not going to have a good time, so if you're not actually any good at roleplaying, you won't enjoy the system no matter how it's skinned.

It's name (and it's plain brown cover) ensures it will never become popular. I've flipped through the book before and watched a group play this at my flgs and it's easy to conclude that the system is more interesting as a premise or concept than to actually play.

Exactly.
Though my game groups and I play obscure and crunchy games.

A mixture of and , take a look through the catalog and tell me if you think the average person browsing Veeky Forums would be able to enjoy this.