What's the most obscure RPG you actually own and have read (as opposed to just heard about)? Did you ever really play it? Is it any good?
>>46324756
YarrharrPDF wise I have plenty of obscure rpgs but actually owning in dead tree I would probably only say Don't Rest Your Head as my most obscure and it is not that obscure.
Played? Yes. Fun? VERY YES (assuming everyone playing get into it)
I have a copy of Alpha OMega somewhere. The art is fucking amazing. The binding sucks. We have a whole basket of house rules to overcome the few problem parts of the system and to make character creation less "Okay, how can I not gimp my character in the future with a species choice".
>>46324756
>What's the most obscure RPG you actually own and have read
I guess Engine Heart? Not so obscure for us here on /tg/, but at a wider scope.
>>46324790
You can own a PDF
>AMAZING ART.
>>46324828
Children of the Sun. It's an okay setting with rules that are just not worth the effort to play.
For example, there are three kinds of rolls that all work differently: Quality Tests, Resistance Tests, and Peril Tests. For a Quality Test, you roll a pool of dice and the highest die is your result. For Resistance, you roll a pool and count the number of dice that get above a target number. And for Peril you roll two dice and count the number that roll below a target number.
>>46324895
But I don't
>>46324756
Last year I played a game of A Thousand and One Nights.
It's a great storytelling game that works on different levels of frame narrative. You can easily play it with children or groups of non gamers. All you need is a bag of random dice.
You have to take great care for the flavor to come out right. It is made to adlib in the tone of Arabian Nights, and players have to understand that tone. Otherwise it breaks easily and becomes just story telling. If a player isn't feeling it or is chasing his own fetish then they should not become storyteller (a rotating task).
It may be more suited to introducing a group that was sitting around anyway to story games than it is to introduce a bunch of DnD veterans to Arabian Nights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt-yd0KMvfE
>>46326711
EiJ is just about as obscure as SS13.
But I have played it and I liked it.
The GM's main job is to balance the obsessions players come up with. After that it goes down the drain all by itself. Just always find a way to say "Yes, and..." quickly until the dice stop the player.
For a scenario you need people and everything has to be within 10 minutes. Then just lean back and let the players battle it out. Make sure it doesn't drag on but stays exciting. To that end you can throw out ANY reveal. Truman Show? No problem. Afterlife? Why the hell not? Suddenly abducted by aliums? Definitely! This is now the zombie apocalypse? Did that 3 times already. But usually the players come up with enough nonsense that this is not needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgE-m6AKbLU
>>46326862
Same for L&F. Everyone here knows it but for the rest of the world maybe 10 more people do?
It relies entirely on tropes. Chargen is picking 3 tropes from 3 pools of 7(?) and setting a number between lasers and feelings from 2 to 5. Then it's a simple investigation.
The clue is laserfeelings = rolling exactly your number, a 1 in 6 chance. At this point the player asks the GM a meta question and gets an honest answer. It's less game breaking than it sounds, but it means you can't be too single tracked with your mystery.
My first game I had primitives protected by cloaked advanced aliens. This scared colonists and the Raptor (the players) had to investigate. The simple fact that the primitives didn't know about the aliens protecting them really threw the players off the trail. It worked great.
If you want to fill a whole game night better have 3 missions prepared, and 2 more excuses why Cpt Darby can't be bothered.
>>46327041
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlaUy4wMPw0
https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_2740.phtml
Friend picked a copy of this up from a used book store recently. Dunno how obscure it is but we were considering scanning it and turning it into a pdf. We haven't even played it but it looks like a bad rip of WoD.
>>46324756
Shock: Social Science Fiction
Seems cool, never played
>>46324756
>What's the most obscure RPG you actually own and have read
Well, there are a number...
>own
Oh. Uh... does Corporation count as obscure?
>>46324756http://www.mediafire.com/download/6gsswnyqhe8nz1h/Normality+RPG+-+Core+Rulebook.pdf
>>46324790
DRYH is maybe the best made niche game ever. They seriously playtested this. It almost folds back in on itself with the coins balancing everything out.
Excellent chargen. Answer 5 questions to tell me your story. Then every scene you play directly references your answers in the most dramatic way possible.
Pacing is a ride. It just goes down the spiral, and the players have to gamble their madness and exhaustion to keep up. It's a supers game. But super powers are always ultimately selfish and evil, and they also hasten you along on the race to NPC.
2 Issues:
1) The setting is almost an afterthought. As soon as the Mad City has given you license to be dadaist, anachronistic, and mysterious you really don't need the cartoon villains the book suggestst. They're fine but a bit one dimensional.
2) The scene structure always focuses on one character and the others can at best add dice to that player's pool. This rotates around non consecutively and even enables flashbacks, dream sequences, and other out of context stuff. So party cohesion is a big issue. Then again it isn't needed. Every character has their own plot and the GM can weave them together mid story, for short moments, or even just by implication. But having a group of characters approach something together and see it through, that can be tricky.
Dread
It is both one of the best structured horror games where tension comes from the mechanics and becomes tangible for the players, and one of the simplest beer & pretzel RPGs out there which you can play with non gamers at a moment's notice. How does it pull that off? With focus on what matters.
There are no dice, no stats, and nothing for the players to read or learn. Every challenge is tested by pulling blocks from a Jenga tower one handed and placing them on top. If the tower falls the character is out, usually dead in the most horrible way the scene could provide. So the Jenga tower models the tension curve of the story, and players have to handle it with steady hands, not just say they do.
And why should players care? How is it not just playing Jenga while telling a story? That's in the chargen. The GM designs a questionnaire of maybe 5-20 loaded questions that are designed to draw out the player emotionally and make them invest in the character, coming up with framing, justification, and explanations. A typical questionnaire query might be "Why do you lie to your mother about what you do?", or even "Whom did you have to murder in cold blood to get to where you are today, and how did you get away with it?"
At the same time the answers to those questions provide any skill or ability the character might later draw on during the game.
>Draw 3 blocks to cross the slippery rope across the chasm during a storm before your pursuer catches you.
> But I grew up touring with the circus..
>Okay, 2 blocks.
> ...and my best friend was a slackline acrobat I helped practice, look at my third answer.
>Right. 1 block.
Dread is also a really helpful book for any horror GM. It is very well edited and comes from a deep understanding of the genre. It can be an eye opener, even for veteran keepers.
The quick reference explains the basics well.
http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/games/dread/
psychadelic film-noir secret agents go on missions into the human subconciousness.
Trippy horror ensues.
This game is something of a cult favourite in my local group. It's full of intrigue and mysteries, with the book asking a bunch of questions and then hinting at what the answer might be. Reccomend it 100%
The problem with most of these examples is that, ironically, they've become so famous for their weirdness that it's now impossible to really call any of them obscure. They've gone through the entire cycle of hip.
>>46327836
so when the tower falls, do all the players then go out? Is it one tower per player?
>>46327319
I literally too dyslexic to read this book. Every time I try I end up with a headache for an hour.
>>46329530
The character of the player who broke it is removed from the story. Then the tower is rebuilt and you all continue.
>>46329530
You play using standard party Jenga rules. One tower that everyone pulls from. If it falls, that character dies/gets imprisoned/gets lost/whatever, then all the remaining players rebuild the tower and pull a couple blocks for each removed player. At that point you continue with the RPG, so that the tension doesn't drop back down to zero with every death.
I have a copy of the Scrapped Princess RPG sitting around. I haven't played it, but it's pretty uninteresting for the most part. There's a small community of Japanese fans who still love it though for some reason.
I own the physical deluxe hardcover books for Tenra Bansho Zero, but I've yet to successfully run it; I have a hard time figuring out how to structure stories and scenes to run entire campaigns in an afternoon.
Eoris Essence.
>>46324756
I guess the Warcraft RPG.
While the theme is in no way obscure, people are surprised whenever I bring it up.
Rhand Morningstar Mission
Does anyone ever played it?
>ctrl + f "dead inside"
/tg/ pls. I always feel so alone when I read this pdf. I just want someone to feel with me.
>>46330326
I'm surprised it has an rpg. I mean, I thought the anime was pretty dope and doesn't get enough love, but I didn't expect an rpg.
>>46331225
Then post it.
>>46324756
Itras' city.
A surreal rpg that is more of an impro practice than a game.
Zombie Cinema.
You're survivals in an apocalypse with some "enemy" as the cause. Dedicated one-shot system where characters die more often than not.
>>46331995
Also, haven't played Itras' city, but I did plunder their cards for the Meanwhile, Time Wizards! Homebrew I did.
Zombie Cinema I've played and loved.
>>46324756
>What's the most obscure RPG you actually own and have read
Corporia, and Shades of Earth
> Did you ever really play it?
no, because finding 2 or more people willing to try an RPG they've never heard of is actually harder than finding an IRL unicorn.
>Is it any good?
they both certainly look good.
I own a physical copy of a pretty obscure Swedish rpg called Oktoberlandet: Hammaren & Trollspöt. It's basically modern fantasy and realistic steampunk in a world inspired by 1920's Soviet. Got by asking for it at my (now defunct) FLGS, and the owner new someone who sold it for like 10 bucks. Was gonna run it for some friends, but never got further than Session 0 due to in-group drama.
There is a second, less obscure, edition coming this or next year I think.
Not obscure to /tg/ but good luck finding someone that will admit to playing it in meatspace. I played it once and it's a great time if everybody at the table embraces the absurdity of it.
Also Racial Holy War for the same reasons.
mite be cool
A toss up between Alpha Omega or Hong Kong Action Theater. HKAT is actually a lot of fun for playing campy John Woo gun fu games.
>>46335631
Also a game called Cold And Dark, which is basically !Deadspace: The Tabletop. It does sci-fi horror pretty well if the GM can write it and the players can get into it.
>>46325080
I too, have children of the sun. I like the setting, but yeah, the rules are fucked.
I have Continuum (Roleplaying in the Yet Again), Runebearer, and Albedo, and I think Continuum and Runebearer are my most obscure; not including the very few from 1KM1KT that survived my mother wiping my harddrive.
>>46324756
Genius the Transgression.
Good times. Uses the nWoD rules.
![10064[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/H72OxRp.jpg "10064[1].jpg")
The French Revolution turned into the rise of an eldritch god right after the end of the Terror, there is a tear in reality in the sky of Paris, cultists run the country, a few concerned citizen (including the players) take up arms and begin sabotaging the powers in place.
It was okay. The setting was cool, so was the campaign, but I don't remember much about the mechanics.
>>46334583
RaHoWa is playable? I thought it was only half-finished and lacked a good chunck of the rules to run properly.
>>46336159
I think we just used the setting with BRP or something, it was a while ago.
>>46324756
Wisher, Fatalist, Theurgist, and the Weaver of Their Fates?
It's the most obscure thing I have that's made by an actual published RPG author, I think, unless you go REALLY indie in which case it's probably Retail Magic.
But WTF feels like it deserves to be my answer. I really want to play it some day.
Noumenon, the game about Gnostic mantis men exploring a hotel outside of space and time. Large portions of the rulebook are just poetry.
>>46336159
>RaHoWa is playable? I thought it was only half-finished and lacked a good chunck of the rules to run properly.
It's not. Car Lesbians is at least a functional ruleset.
>>46327319
I'm losing my shit reading this
>>46338751
What is it?
>>46342307
> In this game you play as a person living in a world where God may or may not have been lobotomized and that may or may not have screwed-up the world. Facts about the game's setting are hard to come by as most details (save for a few in the DM supplement) are all presented as being far from certain, which is the goal of the game, as it is said to reach for an abstract, expressionist insight into the setting in opposition to a clear-cut specific setting, which would allow players to seperate themselves emotionnaly from the characters they play.
>>46342427
Sounds like a first-year PHIL student masturbated into a book and called it an RPG.
>>46331225
There's a surprisingly large amount of anime that have RPG adaptations running on SRS or FEAR.
I own the RPG for Macademy Wasshoi! since I love the show and I thought I might be able to take a crack translating it with my moderate moonrune knowledge, but I way overestimated myself.
>>46342427
Clearly some elaborate troll attempt.
Or the master of all edgelords.
This used to be talked about more here, but I haven't seen it mentioned in recent years.
Setting takes place in the future where a super religious scientist figures out how to separate the human mind and place it in a robotic sphere that can remote control multiple bodies. He then does this to his whole family and over hundreds of years tears down the old hedonistic future and creates a new Eden where they watch over it as agents of God, occasionally uplifting new people with these sphere brains but only telling them they are angels with a magic rock that must be protected for reasons.
This goes ok until one of his sons falls for a human woman and tries to make her immortal, and the father kills her in front of the son to teach him a lesson. Cue the son going rogue and tearing the world a new asshole with his legion of angels that he's revealed the truth to.
PCs are angels loyal to the old ways trying to avoid getting murdered.
>>46342457
>Sounds like a first-year PHIL student masturbated into a book and called it an RPG.
I'm too fucking tired. I tried at least 40 seconds to divine what PHIL was the acronym for.
>>46327319
That's some advanced level wankery.
>>46342746
>what PHIL was the acronym for.
Productivity, Heuristics, and Internal Logistics.
>>46328769
Lacuna is seriously one of my all time favorite RPGs. The BPM system is a brilliant way of pacing the game and keeping up tension.
>>46324756
Monkey Pirate Ninja Robot. I don't remember it very well, but it was fun.
>>46342561
>FEAR system
It's hot garbage outside of one-shots. Trust me, I've run it for four months now.
>>46324756
I am currently running a game of Pendragon, an RPG set in Arthuriam legend. Kinda obscure, but quite a bit of fun.
>>46324756
Over The Edge is the best modern horror-conspiracy-occult-weirdscience-althist rpg ever printed. It's setting is great and it's rules are awesome and the fact that no-one has ever heard of it is a crime against justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_the_Edge_(game)
>>46345758
I have the feeling this somehow inspired Unknown Armies.
>>46346122
Greg Stolze (UA designer) got his start in the industry working for Jonathan Tweet (OTE designer) so that's pretty likely.
>>46346122
>>46346231
>Stolze had met John Scott Tynes when they collaborated with Robin Laws to write Wildest Dreams (1993) , a supplement for Tweet's Over the Edge.[1]:255 Stolze and Tynes later co-designed the roleplaying game Unknown Armies; Stolze helped write the mechanics for the game, based on a setting Tynes had been developing for a few years.[1]:255
>>46346231
>Greg Stolze (UA designer) got his start in the industry working for Jonathan Tweet (OTE designer) so that's pretty likely.
It's kind of weird how Stolze seems to have made a FUCKTON of really well-regarded stuff but never quite made the huge waves Wick did.
>>46346251
RPGs are a niche industry, talented writers often languish while the likes of Monte Cooke make bank.
>>46346268
>RPGs are a niche industry, talented writers often languish while the likes of Monte Cooke make bank.
Sigh, I guess. Makes me wish I could recruit Stolze and the Legends of the Wulin guys to make something together, then pressure-cook it until it's as sleek as Ironclaw and as over-edited (indulge me) as the 5E PHB.
#MakeDicepoolsGreatAgain
>>46346251
Wick is an attention whore who enjoys all publicity, whether good or bad. Other folk like Stolze just keep their heads down and work.
>>46346295
>Wick is an attention whore who enjoys all publicity, whether good or bad.
Yes, but it seems to commercially work for him as well.
> Other folk like Stolze just keep their heads down and work.
Someone hand him a whip and the keys to Rose Bailey's/Rich Thomas house. He'd clean out ST well and good if you let him.
>>46324756
The Mountain Witch. Polaris and Thou art but a warrior. Sorcerer. Do pilgrims of flying temple.
I think most of those are obscure by /tg/ standards.
Probably the rarest would be Tools of Ignorance.
Own hardcopies of all of them. Played 0.
My group were boring and pretty much would only play D&D shit. Got a descent minicampaig of Riddle of Steel out of them at least.
At this point I'm more of a collector than an actual player though for what its worth.
Also the worst RPG I've played too.
Let's see if PDFs are allowed:
D02 ("own", read played, great fun), Big Motherfucking Crab Truckers (Ditto), Ghostbusters RPG (Was alright but mostly just cause of the group)
Dead tree format: Monsters and other childish things/secrets of candlewick manor/road trip (All different aspects of the same system. Great games that are highly imagination driven but not mechanically balanced at all [cause that's not really the point]), Ironclaw (Read it, like it, sadly will likely never play it. Everyone I know is too oversensitive to the very concept of furries to get within a ten foot radius of the game and there's no way in hell I'd try running/playing it with the only people apparently interested, actual furries, so...).
I also definitely don't have a copy of a Paranoia rulebook that absolutely does not actually exist. I certainly haven't read or played it and it definitely wasn't fun despite being an inferior and, in fact, non-existent product in every way.
Kawaii Sharks
You play as anime school girl sharks who have to balance aggression and sensitivity and express your love to your senpai (another random player determined by drawing lots) while managing the stress of going to a shark high school with a big feeding frenzy/prom coming up.
A Tsundere tiger shark almost pulled off the win, but her gift of a necklace made out of lousiana license plates fell flat when she presented it to the dense Great White and it caused her rolls to fall just short of having her love reciprocated. She was crushed emotionally, which made her seem weak to the other sharks so she was promptly devoured.
In the resulting tiger shark feast the mako convinced the white tip that they would make the perfect waifu and they swam off to be super shark lesbians netting the big W at the end of the night.
It was by far the dumbest game I have played.
>>46343195
I just read that all and now i have even more questions jesus christ that was fantastic
Anybody know anything more about Lacuna? Played it?
>>46324756
Armored Descent
AFAIK there were only ever 2 groups that played it, I was in the second one.
I think total, there were about 17 people who have ever played that
>>46327319
I used this once, not as a game but a handout (with a couple of the more gamey pages missing) in an Unknown Armies game.
It was a Macguffin that a bunch of groups were after for a host of reasons, only one of which was partially correct (it described the broken down incarnation of a previous universe after the invisible clergy hit the reset button, basically a shitty equivalent to Dirk Allen's '333').
bumperoo
>>46346455
Now I want a PDF of that just to see how bad it is.
The official Armored Trooper VOTOMS RPG. I don't have it on hand but it's somewhere on my old computer, got it off of /rs/.
Pretty fast and loose on the mech rules iirc but it was fun, I did a couple of one shots in it and it's a nice killteam sorta game.
/tg/'s own Time Wizards is probably the most obscure in terms of being unknown and out there, though I'd love to try a game of it. In actual published material the Misborn RPG or Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Machine, both games that I'd like to try gut probably never will
