For most people who, even with the corner of their ear, have heard about desktop RPGs, they are usually associated with Dungeons & Dragons – The ancestor of modern NRI. She is famous for her stories about legendary heroes and omnipotent villains, about terrible dungeons, lost treasures, gods, demons and indefatigable bards who are trying to seduce everything that moves. All these stamps have long been sweet to the heart of any rolevik, and therefore it is no wonder that they are slowly but surely leaking into pop culture: after all, the classic does not age, and the popularity of d & D is now just on the rise.
However, the world of desktop role -playing is not limited to the scope of fantasy or, for that matter, any other genre. With the help of paper, imagination and pairs of cubes, an infinite number of different ideas, settings and a mechanic can be realized. If D&D, Pathfinder Or some other popular system has already blessed in order and want to slightly change the situation, then why not just dig a little deeper? In this text, I collected four rather unusual, extremely dissimilar table role -playing role. Some of them are definitely entertainment for an amateur, but to play in them (or spend as a master) at least once it is still worth.
Blades in the Dark
IN Blades in the Dark Players have to get used to the role of professional criminals, who have just put their own gang in Doskvol-the city in the aesthetics of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, where the eternal night came. In the distant past, an unknown cataclysm literally split the sun into pieces, plunging the whole world into darkness, and with it destroyed the gates into the afterlife. Now the only thing that separates the city from the endless wasteland, where the souls of the restless dead are wandering is an electric barrier, navigated by the blood of sea monsters. The “Pearl of the Empire” once, the Doskvol balances on the verge between technology and magic, unheard of luxury and absolute poverty. The city is about to collapse under the weight of the class struggle, the strife between politicians, gnawing throats in the pursuit of power, and street gangs who are looking for their corner under the dead sun. No one is glad that a new player has appeared in the criminal world: there are no free links in this food chain for a long time. But this will not stop you, true?
The title theme of the series "Sharp visors" Behind the authorship of Nick Kave, it fits perfectly on the game. It is not surprising, given that it was in it Blades in the Dark and drew inspiration
If many NRI offer the master to play the game according to a pre -prepared scenario, Blades in the Dark is almost completely imprisoned for improvisation. She puts at the disposal of the group a large, detailed “sandbox”, where the players themselves decide who to be friends with, with whom to be at enmity and what crime to earn a living – and from their actions a global plot gradually develops. There is a thousand and one way to rise from mud to the cities in the Doskvol, so Blades in the Dark is able to tell exciting stories in a variety of genres: from militants to spy thrillers and even space horror. Players can create a gang of smugglers and transport illegal goods through city channels. They can establish a traditional mafia family, hunting a racketeering, a “patronage” of a business and others in 100% legal affairs. No one interferes with the creation of their own guild of thieves in order to boldly rob banks, museums and mansions of the arrogant rich, or to establish a team of hired killers with a strict code of honor. And you can, like my group, go to businessmen and accidentally offend dangerous people in an attempt to get ingredients to create a design drug. On the way to the conspiracy, a foreign embassy, a guild of merchants, a gang of small thieves and one dashing admiral of a whaling ship were drawn, although everything began innocently. Who knew that in addition to the load of oranges, the guys would find girls locked in cells?
Screenshot of the card card from the campaign, which I lead to Roll20. Each timer (the game calls them “hours”) is someone's insidious plan, threat or long-term plan. And the players noted memorable events where they occurred where they occurred
However, Blades in the Dark is curious not only by intriguing setting and freedom of action – the author of the game John Harper also made sure that gameplay mechanics correspond to the surroundings of the gangster film with elements of mystic. There are few classes, but among them there is not a single useless or boring: there is a place in the gang at least bug with customs, at least eloquent diplomat, an alchemist engineer or even a seer who speaks with spirits. Each business that the group goes is dynamically, like a competently mounted TV show series. Players do not need to plan a conditional robbery for a long time: facing some sudden obstacle, they are in style "Eleven friends of Ocean" – They can ask the master a short flashback and deal with the problem in the past. Buy a guard at the entrance to the warehouse, fake invitations to a charity ball, prepare a sabotage – all this was already part of the plan, just “behind the scenes”. Blades in the Dark gives the players a huge scope for improvisation, but in return forces at every step to take risks and be prepared for the consequences of their actions, which makes the game a good tense, unpredictable. And if you are not confident in your abilities, you can always ask the master a real deal with the devil in exchange for an additional cube – the only question is what price you will have to pay for him.
City of Mist
City of Mist – This is a game about ordinary people with unusual abilities. She is close in spirit "American gods" Neil Gaiman and comic book Fables (source The Wolf Among Us ), only here not fabulous creatures try to live a normal life, but rather: normal people try to reconcile with something supernatural inside themselves. The nameless city where they live is similar to any other modern metropolis: its inhabitants go to work, dream, make up, quarrel, start friends and find love. But the mystical fog, as if possessing consciousness and reason, hides a shocking truth from them: the city is a place where legends come to life. Myths that left an imprint on human history break through the veil of the fog and find the embodiment of awakened people who become guides – owners of superpowers. In the city, the top manager of the largest bank can own the golden hand of King Midas, turning everything that he touches into capital, and the boxer, known for his remarkable endurance, will easily turn out to be incarnated by Hercules or Rocky Balboa himself. And what? Films, books, games and music are also in a sense of myths, and they also want to tell themselves.
Somewhere in the web of urban intrigues and puzzles, players live: a group https://playojo-gb-casino.co.uk/ of awakened, united for the sake of a common goal. Perhaps they wanted to use their strength for the benefit to fight crime, or, on the contrary, do dirty work for some dubious, but powerful organization. Whatever the group decides to do, in any case it is waiting for a very “comic” detective story in the best traditions of Neo-Nuar. The City of Mist system is primarily focused on narrative: there is no clear class system and role progression; The actions of the characters and their result often depend not on the rigidly prescribed rules or properties, but on how the players and the master interpret them. In the end, the concept of “myth” in City of Mist is so extensible that your awakened can serve as a conductor of any popular look, folklore character or phenomenon. Gods and heroes of ancient legends are still flowers. How do you like a dentist who at night earned a bustle hunting, wielding vintage revolvers in the style of the legendary Doc Hollide? What superpilies would the guide of the biblical gran or philosophical stone possess? What about the famous literary characters: Hamlet, Viktor Frankenstein (and his monster) or Sherlock Holmes?
At the same time, despite the fantastic of the world, the characters of City of Mist remain people with simple human affection. They have relationships with loved ones, work, dear belongings and memories, injuries of the past, hopes for the future – things that can be lost overnight, completely surrendered to the power of their myth. Investigating the countless secrets of the city and faced with other guides, the heroes constantly risk losing their own humanity, but it is also impossible to cling to the echoes of a “normal” life with excessive perseverance – otherwise the influence of the myth will weaken. City of Mist masterfully deconstructs pop-cultural stereotypes about superheroes, and does this completely unobtrusively, handing all the freedom of creativity to the players.
Characters from the starting set of City of Mist
The Quiet Year
The Quiet Year It is difficult to call a desktop role in the usual sense of the word, because it will not have to play any roles in it: it is necessary to draw in it. Players together have been the annals of one year from the life of a small settlement that survived the apocalypse, using an improvised card on A4 sheet. Believe me, in practice it works much easier than in words: the party always begins with the fact that the group collectively throws a common landscape. Say, one player can portray a forest somewhere in the corner, the other will divide the card in two with a long river, the third will draw a few huts along the shore-as a result, a small fishing village will turn out. Then, in their move, the players pull the card from the standard playing deck and, peering into the book of the rules, look at what happened this week in the settlement. Maybe the Caravan of refugees arrived in the village – local residents accepted them with bread and salt or drove them away from sin away? Or maybe a wave of pogroms swept through the village – that the pogromers destroyed and why they decided to resort to violence?
The beauty of The Quiet Year is that these questions should be answered not by word, but by deed – more precisely, a pattern. Any decision made, any event is necessarily marked on the map, let even one tiny symbol. If a flock of wolves approaches the village, then around it you can draw a picket fence around it; A sudden yield of berries will create a cute meadow in the neighborhood, and the funeral of the elders will leave behind a funeral fire with a smoke-outlet. Once an abstract settlement gradually acquires an increasingly clear outline, and schematic squiggles and icons have a meaning. Based on the drawings, players instinctively think of the way of life of non -existent people, their traditions, even individual important characters – it was not for nothing that the elder was buried with such honors.
Photo: Shut Up & SIT Down
With each next crisis, more and more details appear on the map, which are gradually intertwined into a single whole and tell in surprise a bright story. Not always harmonious or thoughtful, but from beginning to end unique, understandable only to artists who painted it. Joint creativity gives truly magical emotions, let the collaboration are not always productive: after all, several people draw a card, and everyone can have their own ideas regarding the plot. Nevertheless, The Quiet Year will serve as an excellent leisure for the evening in the company of friends: the minimum of rules, an affordable, extremely entertaining gameplay, a maximum of impressions. In addition, the resulting small world can be dragged into some other NRI as a setting or just an important location for a future campaign!
A thousand year old vampire
A thousand year old vampire , Perhaps it looks a little strange in this collection: this is not a traditional role-playing game, but rather a hybrid of a hood and book-books, designed for one person (although if you wish, you can play a group). The player has to keep a diary on behalf of, as you can guess by the name, a millennium vampire, telling about events from his mortal life and turning to the undead to the inevitable death. The gameplay itself is a good day: you just need to throw two cubes, jump to the paragraph of the text and fulfill its prescription. Sometimes the game can ask a question: say, having horrified from his transformation into a monster, the character avoids human society – where he hides, what he eats? At other moments, A Thusand Year Old Vampire, it is calmly facing the facts that change the character and his environment: distraught from hunger, your vampire killed a person close to him, or, even worse, turned the bloodsucker against his will. In the first case, the character will receive the skill “bloodthirsty”, and in the second – “flour of conscience”.
You can describe these events in personal records as details as you like: someone will cost one short offer, and someone will begin to lead a full chronicle, getting used to the role. After all, in fact, a thousand year old vampire is not about vampires at all, but about oblivion and inexorable course. Each paragraph passed in the character leaves an emotional experience in the character, and different experiences are gradually combined into memories associated with general leitmotif. Unfortunately, sooner or later these memories will have to be parted: vampires are physically unable to remember everything that happened to them over hundreds of years of stormy life. Therefore, they have no other choice but to forget. Forget about your past before contacting the undead: about a long -dead family, friends, first love, even your own name. Forget about the heavy load of guilt and ruined fate of people killed in a fit of rage, thirst for blood or primitive curiosity. Finally, forget the face of a mysterious lady or gentleman who once gave you immortality and a scar from fangs on a neck that will never cease to hurt.
Before his death, the character will preserve only a few most expensive memories, carefully discharged in a separate diary, but what they will be and what they will have to sacrifice – decide the player. A Thousand Year Old Vampire shows the burden of immortality from an unexpectedly human angle full of melancholy, bright sadness and black humor. She is endlessly far from the stories about glamorous children of the night, weaving intrigues in luxurious Gothic castles and VIP-halls of prestigious nightclubs. The game gives an extremely specific experience, which will not be to everyone, but the impression of it will remain for a long time. Perhaps for the next thousand years.
Well, on this, probably, while we stop. In addition to these four games, I also wanted to include in the selection 10 Candles (horror, in which you need to play strictly by candlelight) and Bluebeard’s Bride (shift the fairy tale about the blue beard in a new way), but I will be honest: even after reading the rules, I did not really understand how to write about them better. If I suddenly play, I will definitely share my impressions in the next material.
What about you? What unusual nry did you like, what happened to play? I will be glad to hear your recommendations in the comments!
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