[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, I'm Wil Wheaton.
And this is my cat Luna.
Luna's kind of an [BLEEP].
This week on Wil Wheaton presents "Not the Flog," I
wanted to talk about indie RPGs.
One of my favorite episodes last season was "Fiasco." It
was a non-traditional role-playing game that's
really just about storytelling, and character
development, and working together to build a story.
And that's one of the things that the Indie RPG movement
really, really represents very well.
And I don't know if we're every going to be able to do a
"TableTop" that really focuses on a lot of these games.
So I just wanted to introduce you all to some of them today.
Really, Riley?
Kind of trying to do a show here.
This is my show, it's not
"The Flog." All right.
So let's get started.
One of the earliest experiences I had playing in
Indie RPG is this game called "Primetime Adventures." Now
I'm not entirely sure that "Primetime Adventures" is
still in print.
Although I'm fairly certain that you can get from one of
the online retailers, or you can just get it as a PDF that
you then go and print out yourself.
But here's "Primetime Adventures," OK.
The players are all building a television show.
You get together with your friends and you pitch a TV
show to each other.
You all decide, OK, we're going to tell a
detective TV show, OK.
And we're all going to play these different characters.
You decide who the characters are.
And then one of you becomes the producer for that week.
The producer changes every time you play.
And the producer is like your supporting characters, and
maybe the adversaries.
What's really fun about this is that just like in the
actual television world, you're going to get together
the first time you play, and you're going to make a pilot.
And if everyone enjoys the pilot, then the series gets
picked up, and it runs for five or 10
episodes, or whatever.
Every time you play, a different
character is in the spotlight.
And there are different reward systems for how you make the
audience happy.
And have different things happen in the game.
And it's not about winning.
It's about working together to tell a great story.
If you enjoyed "Fiasco" and if you especially enjoyed the
writing aspects of "Fiasco," I think that you would really
enjoy "Primetime Adventures."
Another amazing Indie role-playing game is "The
Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen." This is a
game that can be played in about 45 minutes.
And is one of the most insanely fun role-playing
experiences I have ever had.
James Wallis, who is one of the designers of the game,
calls it a game of competitive lying.
You and your friends have all gathered at some kind of posh
exclusive club, typically in London in the 1600s or 1700s,
but sometimes it can be elsewhere in the world.
You are all noble lords and ladies, and admirals, and
explorers, and whatever, in the vein of Baron Munchausen.
You're getting together to tell ridiculous tall tales in
the style of Baron Munchausen.
For example, you might say, oh, Baron, tell us about that
time you lost both of your legs in the Battle of Utrecht
and how you recovered them.
Or you might say, oh, Baron, tell me how you accidentally
started the American's War of Independence.
So then the person who is the storyteller starts telling the
story of how that happened.
But at various points in the storyteller's experience,
anyone else at the table can challenge an
aspect of the story.
So you could say, but Baron, tell me again how was it that
you actually flew to the sun while being dead.
And then the person who is the storyteller would have to
accept that offer, and incorporate that into the
story, or tell that person that they are misremembering
the way the story went on, and then get back to the story.
It is so much fun.
And you're passing coins back and forth, as the
currency of the game.
And whoever wins the game has to buy a round of
drinks for the table.
And then the game starts over again.
"The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen" was out
of print for a very long time.
But it recently came back into print.
And I am told by James Wallis that it came back into print
because I played it.
I loved it.
I really wanted to keep playing it.
But I couldn't find it in print.
I could find used copies for hundreds of dollars online.
So he decided to put it back into print.
So you can buy it directly from him.
You can get it from a few retailers.
And I understand that it will be widely available soon.
And the book is hilarious.
It's written as if Baron Munchausen wrote it himself.
And it's really, really a lot of fun.
The next game I wanted to talk to you about is called "Agents
of Oblivion." I'm going to sum this up for you in just a few
words and it's all you're going to need to know.
You are members of a super secret global espionage team.
Your entire purpose in life is to stop Cthulhu and the great
old ones from coming into the world.
That's the game.
Right now you're either going, holy [BLEEP]
Wil Wheaton, how do I get my hands on a copy of that?
Or you're like, meh.
And honestly, if you're meh, I don't know how you're even
watching this, Mom.
The next Indie RPG that I really like is called "Dungeon
World." It's based on the Apocalypse World engine.
In "Dungeon World," you're rolling D6 to try to
accomplish all of your tasks.
But here's what happens.
When you hit your target number, you accomplish your
task and things go on as normal.
If you hit your target number and then go over a certain
amount, then you accomplish your task and something
interesting happens.
If you miss your target number and don't manage to accomplish
your task, sometimes you'll still accomplish that task,
but something interesting will happen.
And it's really up to the gamemaster to decide what sort
of interesting thing happens in the game as the
players play it.
Let's say you're trying to open up a chest, OK.
You're trying to pick a lock.
And your thief fails the role.
In D&D, generally the GM just goes, nope, you
just didn't do it.
Oh OK, well I guess we'll just keep rolling until I do.
In "Dungeon World," when your character tries to open up the
chest and fails, maybe the chest opens.
But as the lid of the chest opens it crashes into the back
of the dungeon wall and that wakes up the
goblins across the hall.
And another really cool thing about "Dungeon World" is that
it was funded entirely on Kickstarter.
In the back of the book are these names of all the people
who helped fund it.
And I just think that's really, really super cool.
And it's a great alternative to the traditional fantasy
RPGs that we all know, and let's face it, love.
No, you really do.
So the next game I wanted to talk to you about, I actually
don't have the physical book, because I play using my PDF
copy on my iPad, is a game called "A Penny for my
Thoughts." And it was designed by my friend Paul Tevis.
The conceit of the game is that all the players have come
to an institute where they are going to attempt to recover
their memories.
You can't remember anything about yourself, but all the
players have taken some kind of drug called
mnemosyne, I think.
It lets them remember the memories of the other players
of the game.
So at the beginning of the game, all the players write
down some suggestions on slips of paper and then those are
thrown into a bowl.
And then as the game is played, the slips
of paper come out.
And you have to build a story using that suggestion on that
piece of paper as a starting point.
Then other players in the game can then offer, oh right, I
remember this is what happened to you.
It's a really fun game.
It lends itself to incredibly intense, incredibly emotional
storytelling.
Or the other side is just ridiculous Gonzo storytelling.
The base game has all the players just as regular people
in the modern world.
But you can play games where you're all "Bourne Identity"
people, or you're all science fiction people.
It plays in between two and three hours, and is one of the
very few games that you can pick up the book, start
reading, and be playing almost immediately.
OK, the last thing I want to talk about today is a
throwback to the game that brought us all into
role-playing if you're 40 and me.
Actually, if you were me and not 40 that would be weird.
Because that would mean that we've somehow created some
kind of time traveler paradox.
Go back to your own timeline Wil Wheaton.
The game that I want to talk about is "Castles & Crusades."
This game is awesome.
It is very much the spiritual successor to "Dungeons &
Dragons," first edition.
If you liked those old games of real hack and slash,
dungeon crawling, village burning, dragon slaying, orc
marauding role-playing, and for whatever reason you don't
want to just go and get the first edition D&D books,
"Castles & Crusades" is a perfect re-creation of that
experience that we all had when we were in middle school
or high school in the '80s playing role-playing games for
the very first time.
And one of the things that's really great about this is
that they are constantly developing new modules and
putting out supplements for it.
And there are conversions so that you can take some of
those classic D&D modules that have recently been re-released
online, like "Keep on the Borderlands," or "Against the
Giants," or "Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh," and convert it
to use the "Castles & Crusades" rule system.
It's really great.
It's three core books--
Players Guide, the DMs guide, it's called the "Castle
Keeper's Guide," and then there's a monster manual.
I just really enjoy it.
And the guys that put this game out are also
really great guys.
I really like them.
I met them at Gen Con last year.
And I was like, I'm glad you guys are making role-playing
games instead of throwing stuff at my house.
Which generally kind of goes for everybody.
Most everybody.
Hey, thanks a lot for spending some time with me today on
"Not the Flog." I hope that this inspires you to head out
and check out some Indie RPGs.
If there's and Indie RPG that you love that I didn't talk
about, leave a comment about it and I'll check it out.
And maybe we'll do some more of these in the future.
Maybe we'll do some in the future where we
just focus on one.
Maybe we'll do more in the future where we focus on one
and I actually interview the designers.
Would that be fun?
I don't know.
That's why we're only doing this.
Thanks for watching "TableTop." And until we see
you next time, play more games.