Quote from: Koltar;243973You guys have mentioned a lot of good stuff here....more please?

If you insist

I cannot recommend this one because it's not out yet, but based on the author, company and reports I've read, Red November looks really nifty. It's a cooperative game where Gnomish adventurers are trapped in their deteriorating submarine, trying to survive while waiting for help. Inspired by Shadows over Camelot, there's a sort of traitor mechanic. In this case, a gnome wandering in the submarine can find ways to abandon his ship and mates, leaving them to their doom. So once again you have cooperation with a bit of paranoia.

It's on my short "must buy" list.

The cooperative, immersive nature of the games I mentioned earlier (Arkham and Camelot) has been an excellent way for me to bridge between traditional board games and the abstract nature of rolepaying for newbies. I'm hoping this one will do likewise.

Red November by FFG huh?

I'll have to look forward to that at the store.

 That company usually does pretty good stuff. At least THREE of the games mentioned so far in the thread are made by them.


Some of the FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES stuff for D20 and regular roleplaying games is pretty good too.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;244078Red November by FFG huh?

I'll have to look forward to that at the store.

 That company usually does pretty good stuff. At least THREE of the games mentioned so far in the thread are made by them.

Yeah, they are creating/licensing an obscene number of games, many of which are at least very good. Many of them have very little to do with RPGs but are great nonetheless.

They're one of three companies that never disappoint me with boardgames. Also: excellent customer service after the sale, IME.

En Garde, if you could find it, is a non-roleplaying, roleplaying game. There are a couple of mechanics for you to measure social standing and events that help create a "framework" in which your duels might take place.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;243655Magic Realm is, in itself, an RPG-like boardgame. (In fact, it was in a sense a boardgame company's clueless response to the RPG phenomenon. Yet it's a great game.)

Anyway, Magic Realm has a wealth of characters, monsters, NPCs, factions, magic items, "random events", and so forth...even an implicit web of relationships between them. I think the whole thing could be used as a framework for a fantasy campaign.

Magic Realm is the closest thing to a RPG on a board I've ever played.

Downsides: out of print, expensive when you find it, and very complex.

However, you can download a full set of re-written rules (blessed by Richard Hamblen, the game's original designer) and spiffy components from boardgamegeek.

But the setting is wonderfully evocative...I've often thought of using elements for a campaign, myself.

Quote from: MoonHunter;245834En Garde, if you could find it, is a non-roleplaying, roleplaying game. There are a couple of mechanics for you to measure social standing and events that help create a "framework" in which your duels might take place.

It's been reprinted by a company that has licensed it and you can get it on Amazon in the US.  The UK Publisher's site is here.

A regular customer at our store has started weekly Boardgame Nights. This past Monday night I could actually attend. The original plan was to trey and play my copy of TANNHAUSER....


Then I waded through the rules book.
My God, that puppy has got a thick rulesbook!!
The problem is we wanted lighthearted games or ones we could in less than 3 hours or so, plus the NEW season of HGEROES was starting this past Monday night - so 3 or 4 of us we're going to cut out early before the Mall closed to catch it from the beginning.

TANNHAUSER, if we played it according to the rules would've been too involved to get out of there in time.

Instead I looked in the back of the store and found our demo copy of ZOMBIES!!. That worked fine and we had a LOT of fun. (Thats another one that could easily convert to an RPG - maybe)

The more I vread TANNHAUSER - the more I think I want to use the same premise and character names but re-work it to use either the GURPS or the SAVAGE WORLDS rules to actually play in that world.


- Ed C.

Not REALLY the same thing, but I got to play the Battlestar Galactica board game at GenCon 08 and it REALLY felt like a RPG.  At one point we were all laughing around the table screaming "No, YOU'RE the frakkin' Cylon" at each other.
There is a BG RPG now (Margaret Weiss Prod.) so that makes it moot for this topic.