New to RP

I'm new to this whole Veeky Forums thing. If I want to have a traditional fantasy adventure, what's the best game/medium to do so?

I hear death is a great adventure. So kill yourself, frogposter.

D&D or Pathfinder.

Theres a meme here that d&d is bad because everyone here is a hipster who plays pen and paper rpgs you'll never hear about outside of Veeky Forums unless you grew up as a turbo autist.

Make me, faggot.

Depends of the kind of games do you like.
DnD/Pathfinder are arguably the most popular, but the sistem is cluncky (and not very flexible, the way levels works is very artificial and gamey).
Then you have Sci fi games or fantasy games, depending if you like it very cinematic or more gritty some sistem works better than others.
Also some user will say GURPS for sure, than while isn't a bad sistem not many people like it.

>the way levels works is very artificial and gamey
Leveling up in a game feels like playing a game.

I will never understand this so-called criticism of game feeling to game-y

The point is it feels very limiting and artificial in a medium that naturally gives you far more freedom.

>If I want to have a traditional fantasy adventure, what's the best game/medium to do so?
Well, the best medium is a real life pen and paper group of friends or acquaintances getting together for the sole purpose of playing together, even if none of you have any idea what you're doing.
It is better if somebody is a little more familiar.

It is theoretically possible to have just as much fun playing online.

>What's the best game?
That's a bit tougher.
That's like asking where's the best place to get a burger.
The truth I would tell you is a local diner down the road that you never heard of and probably won't find or even be able to find somebody who knows where it is.
So, then the question becomes which nationally known fast food place do you want, and they all have flaws.

I'd recommend D$D 5e because it's popular, accessible, and certainly can provide a "traditional fantasy adventure."
But I personally prefer D&D 2e or GURPS, but GURPS is not that accessible to the uninitiated and unguided and 2e can be counter-intuitive and is a touch old and therefore harder to find players and games for.

I always recommend Ryuutama to beginners. Easy game to get into from a mechanics standpoint and the game has the best GM teaching tool I've seen. Particularly if you understand the role of the ryuujin, which is all about teaching a new GM how to use GM fiat skills. And you know what they say about roleplay: teach a man to be a Player, and he will play sometimes. Teach a man to be a GM and he will play forever.

The thing to keep in mind about Ryuutama is that it's not strictly traditional. It's often pitched as "Miyazaki's Oregon Trail" and it's all about NPC-types enduring rough travel between fantastic locations. It has a distinct JRPG feel, so if you're into that, you're golden.

If you're not, D&D is one of the most traditional experiences you can have. There are plenty of resources available for free and surely plenty of information out there on how to play/GM. You are also more likely to find a group with an empty seat (at least in the US, apparently in some other countries, it's not as guaranteed). There are many things people don't like about D&D and many of their critiques are valid, but if you're looking for an easy in, D&D is pretty much where it's at. I found 5e the version I prefer, but 3.5e has the most material and 4e is apparently the easiest to learn and the most MMO-like. Keeping in mind that the further back you go, the less likely you are to find people wanting to play that version.

I've also heard many people recommend Barbarians of Lemura to newbies. I know next to nothing about it, but it sounds pretty worth checking out.

>I will never understand this so-called criticism of game feeling to game-y
It totally depends on the kind of game you're playing.
Some abstractions work with immersion and some work against it.
But in a "beer and pretzels" game, immersion hardly matters.

Please don't frogpost on Veeky Forums. Thank you.

D&D 5th edition or Pathfinder. Pathfinder is hard to learn at first, but once you do there's a breadth of ways to tailor your character and really make it yours. D&D 5th edition is a lot easier to get into, but suffers from strange design decisions and a lack of content/customization options.

>breadth of ways to tailor your character
Except that you can easily end up with really weird differences where two people picked options they thought were flavourful and one ends up near useless and the other ends up amazingly powerful.

Anyone who plays pen and paper is a turbo autist.

First (real) post best post

I'd recommend D&D over Pathfinder though, D&D has less rules bloat and is easier to get a handle on. d20 systems like D&D are usually straightforward enough and have enough of a framework to them to help you get a pretty basic idea of what a tabletop RPG involves without getting too lost in the details.

Step one to being new to RPGs is to actually play. Doesn't matter the system, really. Just play in a game.

If you don't know how one goes about playing in a table top RPG, then you should check out youtube. There's millions of videos of live plays of tabletop games. Dice, Camera, Action is a good one. So are the Acquisition Inc. games.

The most popular system by far is D&D 5th edition. Other popular games include Pathfinder/Starfinder, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and Star Wars RPG.

There are plenty of resources for finding RPG groups online. You can play in person or via online services like Roll20. I recommend going to your friendly local gaming store and asking if they know of any RPG groups that are looking for new players. Sometimes they will have events where people play one-shot adventures, which I think is a good way to get introduced to other players.

>If I want to have a traditional fantasy adventure, what's the best game/medium to do so?

Whichever your friends want to play. Generally D&D 5th Edition is pretty foolproof and it's popular at the moment, so that's probably the go-to. You'll almost definitely be able to find a group if your friends don't want to play.

You can and should try it before you buy any books, though, just to make sure you're into it before committing to anything. The Basic rules are free and contain everything you need to play outside of a set of dice or an adventure, and you can download it from the D&D website. It's starter set is only $20 and I hear it's a good intro to playing or GMing (and also it has a set of dice and an adventure).

edit: OP, if you have any interest in Middle-Earth, this is legitimately good. Very traditional. The combat mechanics/stats are a sorta abstract, but that's not even really a complaint.

5e is most popular and simple enough for new players to handle. Easiest to find a group playing that.

I recommend against Pathfinder however, due to the fact that it explixatelt punishes you if you don't know everything about the rules.

>The One Ring
I tried this once. I liked playing it.

If you see the D&D Generals you get fantasy art, if you look at the Pathfinder Generals you get anime catgirls.

So you can pretty much tell what each fanbase is like.

If you like neither and find it a bit too convoluted, check out Dungeon World. Its a rules lite system known as PBTA with D&D stuff latched on, but if anything it has good GM advice.

Don't forget, GURPS just released their "traditional dungeon crawl" box set, dungeon fantasy.

Not sure how well it's been received though.

>I will never understand this so-called criticism of game feeling to game-y
class level mixing and matching is its own game where you could go classless instead and avoid the huge bloat of class options that you have to autistically minmax to achieve certain results
easily my least favorite part of 3.PF

>So you can pretty much tell what each fanbase is like.

you are generalizing, I think its just one avatarfag who kept posting pfg threads with anime imagery

I don't like pathfinder but hurrr they like animu is a very shity criticism

I grew up as a turbo autists and never heard of any roleplaying game other than D&D.

>a traditional fantasy adventure

Then start at the beginning.
The original adventurers weren't heroes, they didn't try to save the world. They were based off Conan and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. They were tomb raiders, grave robbers, thieves, demonslayers, pirates, bounty hunters, and sneaks.

It's certainly not what modern dnd has turned into, and not at all The One Ring. The former is about playing fantasy superheroes complete with capes and powers, and the latter is about the most exceptional people trying to save the world from a literal BBEG.

You don't have to play the original dnd. Try something simple and straightforward that captures the magic that caused the whole RPG movement to explode across the world.

Try Barbarians of Lemuria, it's really quite good. You can learn it, explain the rules to your friends, roll up some characters, and start playing tonight if you really want to.

Burning wheel will teach you how to roleplay instead of rollplaying

Depends entirely on what you want to play and what you like. Any special preferences? Daily reminder that you DO NOT NEED to play fantasy-themed games if you are not into fantasy, since there are other options out there.
Personally I would suggest to start out with Eye of Yrrhedes, but it's accessable only in Polish. But it is an extremely simplified game designed entirely with the purpose of introducing people to the hobby. Either way, don't start with any "full" game, instead pick lite versions or pocket editions. That's the best way of starting off, since you only get the basic of rules and focus more on organising the game itself, rather than searching over few books, each 400+ pages long for that "one specific rule".

>Seriously suggesting D&D to newfag
It's like you willingly want to fuck up his experience with the hobby.

Because the way how it is handled makes it as awkward and unflexible as possible, based on so much arbitrary elements it's simply bad game design. Hence why people call it out non-stop.

Shame it's also a genuinely bad game, that adds a lot of superflous, ROLLplaying elements that are intended to substitute for genuine roleplaying.
Or that it's a fucking door-stopper that needs to be memorised to play it efficiently.

>Somewhere out there are people delusional enough to believe this
If you want a game that is build for real around the concept of roleplaying and encourages it from players, try fucking FATE instead. BW is just shitty, clunky fantasy heart-breaker that is painful to read and tedious to run/play.

That's absolutely not true. The basic rules that are all you need to get a game going are 20 pages long, and everything else is purely optional.

it's honestly weird that people actually think this

>ITT People trolling newfag into playing DnD
It's fucking Christmas, you cunts! Cut OP some slack

>Basic rules are 20 pages long
Which brings us back to the fact it's a door-stopper. If you can't summarise basic rules on 3 pages (or less), there is something seriously wrong with your game.
And we both know Burning Wheel just can't get below 15.

Fuck you too buddy.

Now you're just making stuff up to complain about. 20 A5 sized pages is not a "door stopper" by any definition.

I know great games that have FULL ruleset below 50 pages and can be summarised in few sentences. They also tend to encourage roleplaying much, much stronger than BW ever does, exactly because they are so compact.

Name them, please.

Only that Burning Wheel is not 20 pages long, user. The fact you can short the fucking book into 20 pages doesn't change the fact it's 500+ pages long in full version

Note that I wasn't talking about a summary, but the entire ruleset.

600 A5 sized pages, mind you. The gold edition contains splat books that were originally printed separate. Saying that you need to read and memorize that in entirety to play is absurd.

I'm on phone, so I can't post them, but from the top of my head comes mentioned by another user Eye of Yrrhedes, which is what? 20 pages long? 21?
There is also The Hard Way. And the one where you are solving a small-town mystery. And GURPS Lite is 35 pages long

Unironically try Fighting Fantasy and see how it suits you.

Which begs to question why the book is so long, if you don't need that.
We get it. You like Burning Wheel. Thing is - it's not a game for newfags.

Thanks, user.

D&D is not inherently bad.
People complaining about D&D not being exactly what they want while ignoring other systems are why "Have you tried not playing D&D" is a thing.
Retards with no reading comprehension or attention span then mistook that for meaning that D&D is bad.
And you mistook retards for people whose opinions matter.

Pathfinder.

There is also the fact that after 40 years of patch-work fixes, the game is nowdays very poorly designed, with a lot of rules being nothing else but "muh tradition".
And we are living in the post-3.X era, which singlehandly managed to turn already tarnished reputation of DnD into a punchline of jokes, with absolutely toxic playerbase.

But the game itself is easy to learn and fun to play if you don't go in expecting something other than pulpy high fantasy.

If you like fantasy (be it sword and sorcery, Dungeon Crawlers and the like) Mythras is pretty good. It's based in d100 and it's like a Spin off of the BRP system, than it's quite good too and has plenty of games than you can play with (like call of Cthulu). It's more for gritty games, in high fantasy setting with very epic characters it tends to fall apart, but unless it's that what you are searching for, is very fun (and deadly).

Why are ease of summary and undersized rulebooks your main two selling points for a system, brah? Are you *trying* to sound like all your opinions are disregard-able bullshit?

>Why are ease of summary and undersized rulebooks your main two selling points for a system, brah
Because it indicates simplicity. If you can't explain something to a 5 year old in a way the 5 year old will understand, it's either too long or you know jack-shit about it. And the exact same applies to tabletops. If a rulebook has more than 50 pages of essential stuff, something is very, very wrong with it. Solely because it's too damn long.
Threre is also the part about getting new players. What's easier to propose? A 500+ pages long book that just looks like a brick when you bring it (or it in two volumes) OR the one that fits into your pocket, yet retains all the complexity?
And then, of course, is the fact how flexible a short system is. Since it's condensed to bare minimum OR so well organised that it fits on so little pages, it simply has to be flexible, on the principle of not being overly fixated on this or that rule, instead providing rulings.
Since we are about it - games that provide rulings over rules are inherently better, as they allow much more creativity on both player and GM side, rather than leading to rigid, by-the-book, within-the-lines approach.

Is it clear now?
Or you are too dense and needs rules for everything, including every itteration of common situations and occurences, since you are playing for rolling dice and gettimg maximum bonus to your rolls?
There is nothing wrong in playing simulationist games (since those DO NEED so many rules), but if you are playing non-simulationist game with 500+ pages of rules - what the fuck are you doing, "brah"?

>implying anyone on /tg actually plays rpgs
>implying posters here dont exist purely to be contrarian shits

to answer OP's question. Pick up the 5e D&D starter box set. Run it straight from the box. Have fun.

5e is acceptable but suboptimal to recommend to a new guy. Recommending Pathfinder to literally anyone, though? May you get the most agonizing form of ass cancer known to man


I personally recommend a nice older system like Labyrinth Lord, The Dark Eye, or Runequest. All pretty varied but have a traditional heroic but not superheroic fantasy feel

What's Pathfinder actually?

Pathfinder isnt bad if you use it to run a traditional fantasy rpg. Its the turbo autists who use it to play their furry shota snowflake races that make it a cancerous format.

I didnt expect this thread to hit 50 or to get this many (you)s for christmas. Thanks sperglords.

It's still pretty broken if you want to do that, and Paizo actively encourages gonzo snowflake bullshit. I mean being a shota foxboi magical girl (male) is possible with only 1st party materials. I suppose you can play a traditional fantasy campaign with it, but you'd need to do so much fiddling and there are systems a lot better suited towards it that I don't really see the point.

he posted frog though

This. D&D is good for what it is. The problem is that people try and shoehorn D&D into their custom settings that it's not made for then bitch that it doesn't work. If you want a cyberpunk lovecraftian mech game, maybe don't try and force D&D to work for that setting and instead use CthulhuTech.

>Barbarians of Lemuria
This

>800+ pages, almost all crunch

>easy to learn

It's Christmas user, do yourself a gift and think before writing.

>800+ pages
Never go full splatbooks

Not him, but shame the game doesn't fucking work without those.

D&D is retardedly easy on first glance, but then you realise after 2-5 games that either you rework your character entirely and invest into splatbook or five, or you might as well go search for different system, since vanilla won't work.

A variation on 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons that has a well-justified and even better established position of being unbalanced piece of shit actively punishing players for not memorising few dozen of splat-books, minmaxing their characters and generally being the epitome of everything wrong with D&D.

>If you want a cyberpunk lovecraftian mech game, maybe don't try and force D&D to work for that setting and instead use CthulhuTech
Considering how fucking bad CthulhuTech is, I say it's easier to get the setting running on fucking anything, FATAL and AD&D 2e included, than use CT own rules. That game is simply shit-tier.

-Lamentations of the Flame Princess, with Veins of the Earth.
-5th Edition D&D
-Pic related, just refluff the Russian agent thing to Salmon Merfolk in Shining Armor

Pathfinder is way too legalistic for a first-timer.

BoL is great, especially for swords and sorcery stuff.

>All d&d is 3,5

Unironically 5e.

>Simple and straightforward
>Unlike some systems, its pretty easy to make a balanced encounter (since the DMG does 90% of the work)
>lots of archetypes that fit probably 95% of what people want to play
>catalog of spells and magic items you can pick and choose from
>published modules and adventures galore if u just want to jump in and learn with your hand held
>popular so easier to find people

It definitely has weaknesses and its not my favorite system, but 5e is probably a great place to start for fantasy

Unless you are running 0D&D or first itteration of AD&D, then yeah, all D&D is like that.

Barbarians of Lemuria is your safest bet for "traditional fantasy adventure", especially if you never before had any contact with the hobby. It's simple, it's compact, it doesn't have any sort of bloat and can be fully explained within 10 minutes, without missing anything at all.

Also, all those people suggesting D&D and especially Pathfinder are trolling you. Ignore them.

>Barbarians of Lemuria is compact, it doesn't have any sort of bloat and can be fully explained within 10 minutes, without missing anything at all.
That does sound perfect for a beginner.

>Also, all those people suggesting D&D and especially Pathfinder are trolling you.
I was trolling when I recommended 5e.
This guy nutshelled it well.

But I've never played BoL.

Recommending Pathfinder to a beginner looking for traditional fantasy is evil trolling through.

While not technically wrong, your post fails to mention that it remains popular and many people seem to genuinely enjoy it, for some reason.

I continue to refuse to believe anyone who uses Veeky Forums is unable to figure this out for himself
kys frogposter

>I continue to refuse to believe anyone who uses Veeky Forums is unable to figure this out for himself
I challenge this assertion wholeheartedly.

>kys frogposter
This, however, is just good etiquette.

Easy to pick up then.
You need about one hour, two at most, to make a character and read up on the mechanics they'll get involved with.

fuck you and your nazi dubs

>Try Barbarians of Lemuria, it's really quite good.

Double dubs speaks the truth.

There are tons of solo CYOA books out there, many of which focus on traditional fantasy.

I know everyone else suggested ttrpgs, but I assume that as a frogposter you have no friends.

you should probably try not frogspamming.

Being popular =/= being good, user.
It's like you never heard about guilty pleasure. Or autism meme.

I've suggested Fighitng Fantasy to him. Probably best choice to have a cake and eat it while being friendless frogposter

Also, there is the infamous issue of 3.PF being popular on the twisted logic circle of:
3e is popular (never mind it was due to extensive marketing) -> 3e must be good -> 3.PF is expanded version of 3e -> 3.PF must be good
It's fucking retarded, but oh well, marketing at its finest. The problem only rises when people act as if there was anything ELSE than multimillion marketing that made 3e and its derivetives popular, thus creating the stupid notion that it just can't be bad if it's popular.
Meanwhile, even AD&D's THAC0 and weapon speed rules weren't that fucking bad as 3.X are, which is an achievement all by itself.

>play this obscure Polish RPG instead of D&D

Hipsters need to go and stay gone.

Ever occured to you he might be a Pole, just like I am? And it's not obscure at all. It's literally how we teach newfags how to play.
Plus, ANYTHING is better than playing D&D, so go fucking figure.

>New to RP Anonymous 12/24/17(Sun)22:52:43 No.57

First, welcome to the hobby. Hope you will have fun user.
As It has been said, D&D fifth edition is probably the better game for you at the moment. Find a group, and play It IRL, It's the best way, only play online if you have by no means no other options.
I don't like D&D nowdays, but I have been roleplaying for at least 17 years, and I still believe It's a great game for newcomers. When you play It as long as a lot of people have It's only natural that the game problems will surface easier, that's usually when people change game systems.

>Eye of Yrrhedes
>Obscure
Baguette here and even I've heard about it. Did you missed the Witcher craze going for past few years or something?

Even obscure Polish RPGs are better than D&D. Especially since this one is in fact a really good game. Veeky Forums even translated it almost 4 years ago, how new are you?

>Being popular =/= being good, user.
>3.PF being popular
I just meant:
1. being popular means being accessible
2. Being accessible is a positive trait that was left out
3. Having a positive trait =/= being good enough to be considered "good"

>Ever occured to you he might be a Pole, just like I am?
Nonsense.
We've determined that all of Veeky Forums is one really drunk Finn talking to himself.
And we am.

>The former is about playing fantasy superheroes complete with capes and powers
That's a good way to put it. People these days sit around discussing powers and builds and other shit like that far more than they're discussing treasures and stories and close encounters.

>Being popular means being accessible
You can't buy D&D in Poland, unless you feel like getting it in English and at triple the price of typical TTRPG. Supposedly it's the most popular RPG in the world
>Being accessible is a positive trait that was left out
That's like saying smokes are great, because you can buy them everywhere.

>People these days sit around discussing powers and builds and other shit like that far more than they're discussing treasures and stories and close encounters
Obligatory "Veeky Forums complains department", but I'm posting from phone, so go figure.
Unless you are playing a game obsessed with optimal minmaxing (like 3.X does, or D&D in general, really), you won't even touch that shit. And you don't need to play some sort of meme freeform either. Just a game that doesn't assume obssessive minmaxing.

I don't think Veeky Forums complains department applies because I don't think he was suggesting D&D.

>You can't buy D&D in Poland
Being accessible doesn't necessarily mean being accessible everywhere for free.
Go figure.

>That's like saying smokes are great, because you can buy them everywhere.
No, that's like saying a positive trait of smokes is that you can find them everywhere.
See the difference?
No?
Then stop being dumb and maybe you will.

I never said "for free" - I specifically noted artificially bloated price and lack of translation in a country with population of 38 millions and pretty active RPG scene.

Who the fuck cares

The only people recommending DND are trolls and scrubs.

Ryuutama and Barbarians of Lemuria are actually solid recommendations for a brand new player to the hobby.

>BoL
... which I recommended too.
Along with our own Eye of Yrrhedes, which has a pretty good English translation thanks to Veeky Forums

Do you have a link?

>Frogposter

It's Christmas, user. Which means I'm dirty phoneposter until I'll go back to campus after New Year.
Try 4plebs, search for Yrrhedes or Yrrhedesa

D&d 5e / pathfinder will give you "superhero fantasy" where you start out as a chump and grow into gods, if stuff like magic the gathering gatewatch and dr. Strange and thor are your thing.

D&d can do weaker power levels if you cap the whole world at a lower level, like 6-8.

5e has less fiddly rules and youre less likely to blunder into a nonfunctional character.

PF has free online rules, and far more customization, but character building is a lot more work.

Decent Alternatives include:

Dungeons and zombies + buffy / angrl / ghosts of albion.
Dungeon Fantasy rpg.
Savage worlds.
D6 fantasy.
Fate.

Depending on what youre looking for from the game. They can all deliver fantasy gaming at various power levels, with different focuses.