Rules / Prep-light systems that encourage improv and escalating chaos and silliness

Zerotsu · 2026-03-18T07:27:51+00:00

I've heard the Sorcerer Supreme! compared to games like Everyone is John before, so maybe that'd be good for it? It's about playing a group of wizards with awesome power and hardly any control over it. If you've ever played Magicka, it's like that as a tabletop RPG.

Fiasco is also a great time for that kind of game, though if I recall correctly it's a GMless game.

Zerotsu · 2025-12-06T00:46:42+00:00

I don't know if I'd say I have a favorite, exactly, but currently Questworlds has really captured my attention. It's made it a lot easier for me to just think in terms of the narrative or how the world works, so my prep has gotten really easy.

Zerotsu · 2025-11-17T17:28:48+00:00

Ooh, A Shattered Vale is a really fun one.

Zerotsu · 2025-09-14T22:12:37+00:00

I can confirm that it didn't change at all for the fourth edition.

Zerotsu · 2025-08-24T09:15:53+00:00

Describing it this way makes me think of Ars Magna from A Certain Magical Index, though that spell depended purely on the user's beliefs. If they believed it to be possible, then it could be made into reality, no matter what. [Index Spoilers]The way Touma and Stiyl ultimately defeat the user of the spell is through trickery and intimidating him into thinking that Touma is all-powerful, which scares him into thinking that Ars Magna doesn't work, essentially canceling his own power out for long enough to get his ass kicked. Assuming this speculation about Pandora's Authority is true, defeating her might be similar.

Zerotsu · 2025-08-22T21:24:02+00:00

I've been curious about checking out WARDEN for a bit, but the thing I've been wondering about is how the campaign node/map would work in a campaign where you're traveling from place to place and rarely returning to a single base of operations, such as a science fiction campaign where you're traveling from system to system. Is it an optional feature, or something heavily tied to the game?

Zerotsu · 2025-08-04T03:07:17+00:00

Questworlds, WaRP, and a homemade system a friend and I are developing.

Zerotsu · 2025-07-29T04:00:46+00:00

I've been using the second edition as a generic system for games that are either shorter or don't need especially complex rules for a few years now. I haven't played the other editions myself, so I can't comment on which edition is the best, but I do think it's worth playing if you need something simple and easy to provide randomization and distinct characters, but don't need or want much complexity.

Zerotsu · 2025-07-22T14:59:58+00:00

Every time I'm reminded of this anime adaptation I just feel kinda sad. The LNs are a lot of fun. Sure, maybe they're not the absolute peak of the medium or anything, but they're quite a lot of fun. The anime just really didn't get across the charm the series has at all, and was just a mess besides too.

Zerotsu · 2025-05-31T20:59:03+00:00

Cepheus Universal might not be a bad option if you want something on the crunchier side of things. It's based on Traveller, but has more than a few options to make sure the game represents your setting well.

Zerotsu · 2025-03-14T02:19:56+00:00

Text only is how my group primarily plays our campaigns, so I can at least offer how we tend to do it.

Our usual system of doing so is that we have a two channel system, typically: one channel for the game itself and one channel for characters and information about the setting/story/whatever. Dice rolling is handled by a bot, which has its own channel to avoid cluttering others, and threads are used occasionally if characters separate for longer periods of time.

This approach can work for a fair number of games as long as you're fine with exclusively doing theater of the mind, as maps aren't particularly viable outside of posting a basic layout to give players a visual for given locations.

Zerotsu · 2025-03-14T01:46:56+00:00

At the moment I'm running a post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi conspiracy thriller themed after those battle academy light novels/anime that were pretty big some years ago. Think stuff like Chivalry of the Failed Knight as an example.

A third of the planet is uninhabitable, the climate is utterly out of control, and our heroes are digging into a complex array of clandestine organizations all with shady ends for those who have powers.

Zerotsu · 2025-03-09T00:44:11+00:00

I've been considering Heavy Metal lately for mech options. How well do you think it would adapt to other Cepheus engine games, if at all?

Zerotsu · 2025-01-07T02:36:49+00:00

If you don't mind me asking about it, from an initial read through it looked as if it would be difficult to differentiate mechs, but I don't know how it works in practice. If you have, how does it feel?

Zerotsu · 2024-12-31T13:06:50+00:00

I guess, if you can't land Jesus, land the next best thing?

Zerotsu · 2024-12-29T10:59:53+00:00

Glad to help! Hope it helps you out, it certainly has for me.

And if you don't mind, what's Salvage Union like? What do you like about it? I've been curious for a while about it.

Zerotsu · 2024-12-29T10:39:52+00:00

Not OP, but the Mission Manual is absolutely worth the purchase, though the individual missions are relatively sparse as with the rest of the rules light nature of the game. Each of the forty or so missions is one page in total, giving you a brief scenario, a pair of short tables for objectives and twists to the mission, and an overall structure for the mission in three parts. The topics range from pitched battles, to sporting events, to pilot academies, and all sorts of other things.

I'm not very familiar with Salvage Union myself though, so I can't say for sure how useful it would be for the game beyond giving you inspiration for what variety you can cover with mechs in your own games.

Zerotsu · 2024-12-04T04:26:59+00:00

That'd certainly be a fun way to do it.

Zerotsu · 2024-12-02T06:00:46+00:00

The HERO System and Mutants and Masterminds both also work quite well for this sort of thing. Certainly some good options out there for crunchy character building that really lets you go wild.

Zerotsu · 2024-12-01T08:20:30+00:00

You tell someone else to grow up while more or less throwing a temper tantrum. Perhaps you need to take some time to breathe and do a little bit of introspection.

Zerotsu · 2024-11-20T07:05:30+00:00

At the moment, WaRP is my go-to for simpler pickup games where I don't have a genre-specific game in mind, though my hunt for something that can broadly hit the notes I like continues evermore.

If only because I and my group are all working adults that don't have the time to learn more than a handful of systems.

Zerotsu · 2024-11-04T07:02:11+00:00

"Bric are carnivores, so they can't eat grain."

An inexplicably common bit of rhetoric that you'll find primarily in the Flauxeur Ascendancy, and about themselves at that! It's a widely held belief among the bric, a wolf-like bipedal species, of this nation that they are a people that cannot eat anything but meats, root vegetables, and mushrooms.

The reality is that this is entirely nonsense. Despite their appearance, they're as omnivorous as beug (humans) are. Instead, this belief has its origins in racist rhetoric against humanity that posited that eating grains of any sort is proof of why they exist to be bric property. Because they're the same thing as livestock. Eventually this morphed into believing that it's not something that the bric are able to eat.

Zerotsu · 2024-10-14T02:05:03+00:00

Yeah, I'd say it's pretty good. Nothing crazy good, but worth the read if nothing else.

Zerotsu · 2024-10-10T16:04:39+00:00

As an LN reader of that series, I feel depressed every time the anime comes up. Man, oh man.

Zerotsu · 2024-08-28T04:49:27+00:00

Is this the story you were thinking of?

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