Right, I’m going to start up an online TTRPG. I’ve had the GM’s itch for too long, and I need some soothing ointment. Uh, figuratively speaking. Funny thing about online RPGs during a pandemic lockdown, people are, some crazy how, EVEN HARDER to find to play your game. You’d think with no pubs or cinemas or even the middle aisle for dads in Lidl there’d be a mass of people sitting around looking for something to do, but no, suddenly everyone’s just that popular or found another habit or hobby. Bah.
Anyway that’s not my problem. My problem is deciding on a game to run. That’s where you come in. I have literally and figuratively scoured WordPress for the laziest way to get a poll plugin so that you can take whatever control is left of my dreadful existence and have a say in what particular flavour of horrible adventures I get to inflict on other players. So Ka-POLL, motherfuckers!
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In case anyone is unfamiliar with the games in question, I feel the below is enough to give you a good idea of what each is about.
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play:
God, I love this game. Been playing it for years. Not a huge fan of tabletop wargames with their expensive fiddly models and such, but this is a gem of a setting jam-packed full of adventure, grim peril and Small But Vicious Dogs. Players are hapless adventurers drawn together by cruel fate to witness and battle plots and threats to the Empire of Sigmar. It’s like the Holy Roman Empire but more deep dark woods, grotesque beasts, monsters, mutants and insane cultists, if such is possible.
Coriolis: The Third Horizon:
God, I love this game. The general premise is “Arabian Nights in Space”, so players can expect a great many bazaars, opium dens, magnificent architecture, and advanced technology living uneasily beside a variety of philosophical, mystical and sometimes downright occult threats from The Darkness Between The Stars, from mad doomsday cults to starships possessed by electric djinni.
Elite: Dangerous RPG:
God, I love this game. Based off the videogame series which has been going since the 1980s, which means there’s a tonne of lore, factions, politics and perhaps most importantly, space ships. It has a short punchy rule system for players, with rather more complicated options for spaceship combat, because each player begins with their own little ship capable of FTL travel. Combat is brutally dangerous. It is possible to just play by randomly generating encounter after encounter, as they went to great lengths to make it playable without a GM if you really want.
Alien: The RPG:
God I love this game. It is perfect for capturing the mood of the first two films depending on how you want to play it. Space is cold, dark, vast, and not your friend. You might not even like the crew you were assigned to work with. But you have to depend on each other because all it takes is on fried circuitboard and everyone dies. And of course if corporate brinkmanship and interstellar cold war between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples wasn’t enough, there are murderous alien killing machines out there in the black. And I’m not even talking about the xenomorphs themselves, who are just absolutely fucking horrifying.
Four beautiful choices, four fantastic RPGs that I would dearly love to run, was I capable of running four completely different games a week like I was before my spirit was crushed and sucked dry by the lumbering uncaring behemoth of scientific academia. Please, for the love of gods help me make a choice, I can barely function as a human being right now beyond hugging my dog and hoping that this hellish plague will finally come under the control of vaccines some time next year.
Do it for Duilleog.
