How does Adventures in Middle Earth handle low-fantasy? I know it's a 5e re-skin, but there are no caster classes IIRC and the healer class is reliant on using actual medicine instead of magic.
Alternately, sell me on a good system for running low magic games
Adventures in middle earth handles shit pretty well, but it lacks variety of enemies making many encounters feel the same after a prolonged period of time. Also LOTR is pretty high fantasy once you get to certain parts of the lore, its just not as flashy.
Just play Warhammer Fantasy RPG, dude. The only RPG where you can die of dysentery for pissing off the gods.
Just play Burning Wheel.
Kids don't know about Hârn.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Ages
Pretty much a peasant simulator where characters will inevitably die or get insane by facing the horrible abominations lurking in the deep of the darkest forests.
Low fantasy as in Conan or low fantasy as in mudfucking peasants dying horribly?
Okay, let's pretend I've never played a tabletop RPG... what are systems for? Can GMs not just make shit up as they go?
If you want to go for a lotr game there are many rulesystems that are a way better cut than a d&d 5e reskin:
>Lord of the Ring Roleplaying Game (Decipher)
It's a 2d6 system, simple yet with some crunchness. I like how it handles magic: a tiresome activity yet powerfull and evocative (the spells are well taylored over what happens in the books).
>Tiers Age
A free rpg, unfortunatelly in french, with multidice mechanics (savage worlds kinda). It handles the "poetic epicness" aspect of the setting very well. Magic deliver exactly the right lotr flavor: there are charts for rolling results about what appens when casting a spell. If you roll really bad you can attract tha dark lord itself attention.
>Merp
Rolemaster lite for the lotr setting. This is the only one i wouldn't recomend but since it's a reduced, more manageble version of rolemaster it can tikle the right spot for grittyness. Magic is meh and not even close to the source material
As concisely as possible: "Give genre appropriate and consistent answers to the question 'can I do that?' "
The consistency part is difficult to do on the fly. Also, without any black-on-white rules everything becomes a question if the GM is going to allow it or not.
Also, systems put outcomes out of the hand of both GMs and players and into the hands of chance, creating tension.
If Lord of the Rings is what you're into I'd definitely recommend The One Ring. It's tailored for the setting and pretty fucking great if you ask me. The only magic there is are some broken, half-remembered spells for certain cultures (pic related for Dwarves) if you pick the right cultural "gift". Healing is more related to herblore than anything else. I imagine some people have more of an innate ability to heal, like elves, though it would not be an obvious magical thing.
Had no idea this existed and this sounds awesome
Anyone got pdfs?
Follow this trove:
$n!pli /Cthulhu
Harnmaster is the superior peasant simulator. CoC:DA is the superior setting though.
I mostly see people praising 2e, but how's 3e? I have the opportunity to buy 3e books for cheap.
It's a good game but it is absolutely nothing like other editions of WFRP at all. It's closer to something like D&D 4E and even that's a stretch.
>The only RPG where you can die of dysentery for pissing off the gods.
That can happen in any RPG.
Btw, how closely related are WRFP and Genesys?
Not at all.
Wasn't Star Wars FFG supposed to be an advanced version of WFRP 3E? With all the custom dice and shit?
Low fantasy does not mean low magic, you ignorant tard.
This is wrong.
GeneSys is a collection of the implicit background design choices that went into FFG's Star Wars line (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force and Destiny). The Star Wars games came first, GeneSys is the generic brand.
WFRP 3e came before and has a good claim to being a test-bed for the design concepts that went into FFG Star Wars.
>Things they kept
- Single roll task resolution (Your Dice + Their Dice = Pool, roll the Pool to find out what happened)
- Multi-metric resolution (not just pass/fail)
- Attributes are base dice, upgrade dice based on Skill
- Range bands, generally abstracted combat geography
- Most non-standard dice (Good Dice, Bad Dice, Circumstantial Dice)
- "Minion groups"; some enemies functionally share a health pool.
>Things they didn't keep
- Dice size are different (WFRP 3e's are d10 of different stripes, FFG Star Wars uses d6, d8, and d12)
- FFG Star Wars has two health metrics (Stamina/Wounds) while WFRP 3e had three (Fatigue? I forget what it was called-- explicitly more mental than Stamina, which was like physical endurance).
- Fewer icons; FFG SW has Success/Fail, Advantage/Threat, and Good Crit/Bad Crit. WFRP 3e had two more types of Crits (Success Crit/Fail Crit, Advantage Crit/Threat Crit? I'm working off memory, my 3e stuff is at home).
- FFG SW ditched the "stances"; in WFRP 3e you vacillated between "Reckless" and "Cautious" with each attitude giving certain benefits and drawbacks. You didn't always move between them of your own volition-- you could argue someone into "Reckless" to make them, well, reckless. Or scare them into "Cautious" and the like. I actually rather liked that.
- Fewer necessary components; WFRP 3e really tried to gamifiy a lot of modes of play that aren't usually gamified. Travel springs to mind. You also tracked how unified your party was, how in sync. You had metrics to track how an investigation was going and such.