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So my game group has grown substantially over the years. We started from GM+3 and are now standing at GM+7/8 with the occasional GM+9(!).

We *could* just switch to boardgame night (and do sometimes), but it would be nice if we could play tabletop RPGs without descending into book-keeping/waiting hell during combat (which is probably why we tend to play a lot of Mage and go out of our way to avoid combat). Anything with a firm action economy (pretty much any D&D, including Pathfinder) becomes irritating to play on nights when a lot of folks show up. Gamma World seems to work okay-ish (the general silliness of the tone helps), and I was considering trying out Numenara, even though it would require re-learning a few things.


Can anyone recommend a system that isn't fighting itself quite so hard when you hit 7-8? I've heard good stuff about Fate, but never tried it.

The mountain witch might work. It's out of print at the moment but if you can find a PDF you should look over it. Character creation is pretty quick, and conflicts can be resolved quickly. All of the dark fate cards should be in play with that many so you'll have several people working against the group to create conflicts as well. If I remember correctly there are even a fee things for dead characters to do.

Would you be interested in trying something like, say, a pro-wrestling game? I have a homebrewed game my friend and I put together that's pretty good. Probably needs some good playtesting to fix bugs and such, but it's overall a pretty good system.

I don't remember how many players it supports (I think it was 4 PCs and a DM), but have you played HeroQuest?

@phil That looks really interesting! I'll have to look around for that. Thanks!

@ThatNickGuy I'm mildly intrigued, but I suspect I'd probably be the only one in my group, sorry.

@GB I have, in fact, I think my friend still has it somewhere. It's still too small, unfortunately. If we're at 5, we can play pretty much any D&D campaign we already have somewhere.

Have you guys looked into Betrayal at House on the Hill? It's expensive and hard to find, but...

I played it once at a friend's house. The 2nd ed is available on Amazon. That's a good one to save for board game night.

More info on The Mountain Witch:

Basically you're a group of Ronin who's been hired by a village to climb Mt. Fuji to slay the witch that lives at the top. When creating characters one aspect that each person will have to decide is why they are a Ronin, and not a Samurai. Remember that Ronin are Samurai without masters. It may be as simple as your master being dead, or as complex as being cast out of your house for some reason. Once I played a character who was dishonored after losing an archery contest to a rival clan, while someone else in our group was in that rival clan. He was a Ronin because his master died in a fire, which, we decided was one that I started. All of this came out over the course of the adventure as we interacted with one another.

Each character has 3 special traits that set them apart from the rest of the world. Sometimes this takes the form of a magic item, or special skill that not a lot of people would have. It's assumed that you've all been trained in your weapon and or fighting style of choice, so things like being an expert swordsman wouldn't do you much good as that's just a given. However I once played a character who's REPUTATION as a swordsman was great, and this helped give me an intimidation factor in combat. One friend of mine could turn invisible when his arms were crossed, one had a ring that detected undead, one had trick arrows (my previous rival) and things like that. It shouldn't be OP like being a Sajin or something, but that's more between the players and the GM.

Each player also gets whats called a Dark Fate. a DF is something that's specific to the character and is going to have to come into play at some point. A standard one is that this player is actually a servant of the witch. Another might be that he or she is a rival of another character, or simply that they've been here before and what that really means is up to the player.

Conflict is resolved in dice rolls, mostly d6. The GM declares his intent and assigns a d6 to each property that is going to help him. Players roll 1d6 only. Players have what are called Trust Points for each other player. Trust points can be spent in one of three ways.

1) Aid another player. You both will be rolling 1d6 and adding your total score.
2) Betraying another player. You subtract however many trust points you are spending from the other players roll.
3) Stealing Narration

Depending on the difference between the dice rolls either the GM will narrate what happens in his favor, the player will narrate what happens in HIS favor, or they both decide on narration that slightly or not at all benefits the both of them. An example of a conflict might look like this:

"There is an imp patrolling the woods and he sees you. He wants to run away and warn the other demons"

So the players involved in the conflict would declare their intentions

Bad intention: "I want to stop him from doing that". Too vague, and doesn't really allow for any other outcomes than it happening or not happening.
Good intention: "I want to talk to him" This is better because it sets the tone for the conflict and leaves the outcome up in the air to be determined by the dice.

GM: The imp will be rolling 2 dice. One for being far away and one for seeing you before you saw him

At this point the GM has the advantage so the player might try to talk one of the dice away before any rolling starts

Player 1: My ronin has an affinity to the forest and can catch up easily in a wooded area.

GM: I'll allow it.

Player 2: I'll spend a trust point to aid player 1

So now each player is going to roll 1d6 against the GM's now 1d6. The GM rolls a 1 and the players roll, well, better than that. Not only do they win but they win by enough to get exactly what they want, essentially. So player 1 wins narration rights because he was the one directly involved.

Player 1: I talk to the imp and convince him that he's a slave to the witch and that if he helps us we can free him.

GM: Sounds good. The Imp joins you.

Player 3: I'd like to spend a trust point to steal narration

GM: Ok, what happens?

Player 3: Everything that player 1 said, except that he says it in a demonic tongue that only him and the imp can understand.

So to the eyes of the other players, one of the ronin stepped forward and started speaking in a demon language and convinced an imp to join them. That's some freaky stuff to the other players and is going to cause discourse in the group. Roleplay wise, none of the other characters should trust him at this point and probably stop helping him in the future.


What I really like about the game is that the mechanics can be translated to other settings as well. Aside from the reason your ronin is a ronin, there's nothing to the mechanics that is specific to the setting. My friends adopted it once to a post apocalyptic setting where the characters were on a journey to a space elevator to try and escape from the wasteland and the growing hoard of mutants.

For what it's worth, the new 5th edition of D&D plays super fast, even in combat.

*bump*

Feng Shui

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