Savage worlds could work. I'm not a huge fan of their scifi setting book, but there is also Star Frontiers conversion which uses savage worlds that I can vouch for (if you are familiar with Star Frontiers from the 80s)
Additionally we'll be rolling out some Games on Demand this time around. It will be Saturday only, and 30 minutes after each normal RPG scheduled slot. Basically on Saturday by 9:30am, 2:30pm, 8:30pm, and 30 min after midnight, at Santa Monica Room C, we'll be facilitating indie RPGs on demand. Which games? All depends on who shows and how many. But I'll be there and am happy to run various Gm based and GMless games.
I got to play 5E recently, and really love all the things they've incorporated from other games around. They have the perfect mix of narrative and rules, where you can easily lean one direction to have a very narrative "in the mind's eye" type of game, or lean the other way and have miniature combat and count squares.
I played old Basic, AD&D and 2E back in the old days, and then took a hiatus. That said, I wouldn't necessarily want to play one of those systems now. Some of the retro-clones look good, and I haven't gotten to try Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) yet.
Personally I've been enjoying Dungeon World (PbtA game) in the last year, and before that I was running a fantasy Savage Worlds campaign, but that's because I found 4E too rulesy for me. That said, 5E hits pretty close to what I'd want to play... if I had to choose a D&D version to run, that'd be it.
One way to think of meetups is a way to find people you are comfortable with, and then invite them to your home after a few sessions (assuming a regular gaming group). I.e. use them as a source to find folks you game comfortably with.
Another option is to find places in your area that would want to "sponsor" the game night. This does bring them business (assuming they aren't already packed, and it's not a peak night). Helps if they're a small business or you've fostered a relationship.
Run games as one-shots. This is similar to the premise of convention games, where instead of a long story or campaign, you are sitting down for a 3-4 hour session to tell one isolated story.
In my case I have friends who are all old an doing adult stuff like me, and we live in a city of horrible traffic, so scheduling is a complete pain. I ended up doing a campaign where each game night was an episodic encounter. E.g. In my case I wanted to run fantasy, but decided on: "You are all part of a crack team of special forces in the Empire's army, on a frontier filled with conflict." This way, no matter who showed up on a given night, it would be a one-off special "mission" to go do something. In my case I also had an overriding set of things going on with the world which were coming to a head, so as a GM I could also do world and campaign-building on the side.
Also, look for games that are specifically made for quick, one-shot play. Some are GM-less (no GM, just rules to adjudicate play) some are GM-based. Things like The Quiet Year, or Microscope, or Lady Blackbird, or Powered-by-the-Apocalypse (PbtA) games like Dungeon World... all these work really well at quickly and smoothly having a game session that fits in a small space.
Oh, and to that end, if these games are out of your wheelhouse, and you know nothing about this scene, go check out local game conventions if you are lucky enough to have some. They are a great way to introduce you to the one-shot form of play as well as new game systems that work well for that!



RPGsScifi/space opera roleplaying system?Aug 31, 2016 at 9:34 PM