I've been on the hunt for an RPG that my wife would play along with family and friends. I'm an old school 0D&D and AD&D fan, also I love The Fantasy Trip- Melee & Wizard and In the Labyrinth player since I was a kid. I play solitaire (95% of the time with these systems using tables and oracles) my wife wants to play an RPG, but she dislikes High or Low Fantasy. a friend of mine told me about Tales from the Loop. I think my wife would like the setting (we were both teenagers in the 80s ). I've just started reading the rulebook today, it seems very simple and very light to me but the storyline is pretty cool. I'm wondering if anyone here has tried playing it, or studied the book? Am I wasting my time on this system? I've asked my wife what she'd like to play,since she feels left out when the kids and I play D&D. she said something sci fi but not space opera and or mystery. I'm old fashioned ( I'm perfectly content with my AD&D and TFT) but I thought if I can get everyone playing once a week would be nice.
Quote from: Mor'du;1109070I've been on the hunt for an RPG that my wife would play along with family and friends. I'm an old school 0D&D and AD&D fan, also I love The Fantasy Trip- Melee & Wizard and In the Labyrinth player since I was a kid. I play solitaire (95% of the time with these systems using tables and oracles) my wife wants to play an RPG, but she dislikes High or Low Fantasy. a friend of mine told me about Tales from the Loop. I think my wife would like the setting (we were both teenagers in the 80s ). I've just started reading the rulebook today, it seems very simple and very light to me but the storyline is pretty cool. I'm wondering if anyone here has tried playing it, or studied the book? Am I wasting my time on this system? I've asked my wife what she'd like to play,since she feels left out when the kids and I play D&D. she said something sci fi but not space opera and or mystery. I'm old fashioned ( I'm perfectly content with my AD&D and TFT) but I thought if I can get everyone playing once a week would be nice.
Well, I'm a big fan of The Fantasy Trip and OSR games. I've played Tales from the Loop, and enjoyed it. I've also played Mutant: Year Zero which uses pretty much the same rules (slight differences only between the games) and I enjoyed that as well. So there's definitely nothing in my mind to prevent you from liking this game due to other games you like. Coming from games where you don't roll for every conceivable thing is probably a bonus for getting the game to flow properly actually. However, if your wife doesn't want mystery, Tales from the Loop may not be your best bet since it is basically a "kids solving mysteries" game.
Quote from: Mor'du;1109070I've been on the hunt for an RPG that my wife would play along with family and friends. I'm an old school 0D&D and AD&D fan, also I love The Fantasy Trip- Melee & Wizard and In the Labyrinth player since I was a kid. I play solitaire (95% of the time with these systems using tables and oracles) my wife wants to play an RPG, but she dislikes High or Low Fantasy. a friend of mine told me about Tales from the Loop. I think my wife would like the setting (we were both teenagers in the 80s ). I've just started reading the rulebook today, it seems very simple and very light to me but the storyline is pretty cool. I'm wondering if anyone here has tried playing it, or studied the book? Am I wasting my time on this system? I've asked my wife what she'd like to play,since she feels left out when the kids and I play D&D. she said something sci fi but not space opera and or mystery. I'm old fashioned ( I'm perfectly content with my AD&D and TFT) but I thought if I can get everyone playing once a week would be nice.
Traveller. Not in the
Traveller Universe though. As GM make up your own story of humanity exploring in the far future. Roll up your own subsectors. Sooo... Like
Serenity or maybe
The Expanse, ...like that. She would probably like that.
It's a fun, light, nostalgic-for-the-80s game. If you liked Stranger Things you'll like this; it is somewhat darker, and fortean/paranormal events are more commonplace. Loop technology is very prevalent and has had some unintended side-effects on the world at large that occasionally manifest (dimensional travel, the aforementioned paranormal happenings), and some of what we consider future tech abounds (AI, self-motivating industrial scale robots).
There's 2 default settings, one in the American southwest and the other in Europe. I recommend doing what I did: if you grew up in the 80s just pick your city or town and set the game there. Mine was set in Orlando in the 1980s and it worked out just fine.
Understand that even though it's a sci-fi game, much of the "tech" hasn't really trickled down to the consumer level. As I told my players, while your parents' brand new 1981 Chevy Caprice Classic was shipped to the dealership in Orlando on a giant anti-gravity transport that uses Loop tech, the car itself aside from a few convenience gadgets is still the same 19mpg in the city 27mpg on the highway V-8 gas powered sedan it is in our world. But alternately, depending on the nature of the call, if you ring 911, a couple of one-and-a-half story tall robots capable of running at 55mph might show up before the human police do.
Quote from: Blankman;1109081Well, I'm a big fan of The Fantasy Trip and OSR games. I've played Tales from the Loop, and enjoyed it. I've also played Mutant: Year Zero which uses pretty much the same rules (slight differences only between the games) and I enjoyed that as well. So there's definitely nothing in my mind to prevent you from liking this game due to other games you like. Coming from games where you don't roll for every conceivable thing is probably a bonus for getting the game to flow properly actually. However, if your wife doesn't want mystery, Tales from the Loop may not be your best bet since it is basically a "kids solving mysteries" game.
awe nuts, I typed that last part wrong - she didn't want space opera sci fi but she'd said maybe mystery and or horror would be fun... that's why my friend recommended this one... I've read a bit more of the rules and it seems pretty cool. I didn't want to dive into horror because of our daughter ( even though she may or may not play - she'd tune in) I don't need her freaked out any more than what her overactive imagination any worse ( our 130 year old house makes noises and scares the hell out of her) and I think that some of our friends might like this game too. - I need to proof-read my posts a bit better next time.
I played the game once and liked it well enough, but the futuristic tech felt tagged-on to the nostalgic 80s setting.
You might also want to take a look at Dark Places & Domogorgons from Bloat Games.
Quote from: Mor'du;1109103awe nuts, I typed that last part wrong - she didn't want space opera sci fi but she'd said maybe mystery and or horror would be fun... that's why my friend recommended this one... I've read a bit more of the rules and it seems pretty cool. I didn't want to dive into horror because of our daughter ( even though she may or may not play - she'd tune in) I don't need her freaked out any more than what her overactive imagination any worse ( our 130 year old house makes noises and scares the hell out of her) and I think that some of our friends might like this game too. - I need to proof-read my posts a bit better next time.
Ah, well, no worries about the misunderstanding. In that case I think it should be fine. The game is geared toward playing kids in what could be a kid 80s movie (something like the Goonies), so only "mild terror" or similar, which should be perfectly fine for kids. One of the published adventures includes a moral crusade against action and horror films, and the kids are assumed to be on the side of not wanting those things banned, but other than horror films being mentioned there, there isn't much horror content. Unless you want to add some yourself of course. And if you do end up liking the rules, Free League makes a bunch of different RPGs that all use variations on the same rules systems, the aforementioned Mutant: Year One (post-apocalypse survival, exploration and society building), Coriolis (space operatic sci-fi) and Forbidden Lands (hexcrawl fantasy).
Quick tip, the game works best (in my opinion) when characters are pretty specialized. A team of specialists will usually do way better than a team of jacks-of-all-trades.