RPG from France and elsewhere

[kjetilkverndokken]

Kjetil, I have an extra question for you : what attracted you in "shadows of Esteren"? I'm really curious to have the point of view of someone with a different culture (than the french-speaking one) about this!

Moreover, I envy you a little bit : Norway seems to be a so beautiful country...

Yes, Norway is beautiful , though weber have crappy roads besides the mane roads. Shadow of Esteren is one of those games I have been waiting for. Good and gritty fantasy, also a fantasy that seems to do monastic orders right. Always wanted to do a small campaign were everybody are monk's. I also like the overhanging mystery in the world, also the small bit of steampunk in there is not a bad thing either . And the art and layout is beautiful, are every French RPG this good looking?

[iznurda]

First, welcome here Kjetil !

I hope you will find here the answers to your questions.

iz

PS : like everywhere, our RPG exist in different quality and looking.
Honestly, in the case of the SoE, the illustrations have seduce most of us before the content of the core rules. That, and the community.

PS2 : piuffff it's hard to me to communicate in english. I hope to be clear enough.

[kjetilkverndokken]

As I were posting from my phone earlier, it became kind of a short post with stupid typos... So my full reasoning for getting Esteren is as follows:

There is something about gaming with a world that feels real - it can be as fantastic as any, but the mood must feel real. I love reading through the Hârn setting books, and i myself have designed and continue to build up a Hârn like world for my fantasy rpg group.

But when one of my facebook friends, Angus Abranson backed of the english version on kickstarter, I had to take a look. The artwork alone almost sold me. The mechanics description were and is kind of diffuse, but on rpg.net there was a small run through of it, so I think its solid. The description of the mental chapter is also something that attracted me.
I really like that there is only 3 pages of combat rules, i like easy combat rules thats not much to remember - thats the part were most rpg's break down. i do hope combat still is excited as i know very little of how that works.

The factions in the game is also something I really liked, especially the one about the One True Faith/God, as I always wanted to have a small campaign with the focus of a group of monastic monks against the darkness.

As for Norway and types of rpg's we like, its extremely varied. Only three games have actually been fully published - Fabula (standard fantasy), Draug (Norway 1700-1800 century romanticized fantasy) and Itras By (a game of surrealism). The next is probably my Brent Jord (Burnt Earth - post apocalyptic game with a real focus on survival and Hope).
But from what I see, there seems to be some very well made rpg's in France - Yggdrasil among them, and this one, only three other games have had near this level of layout and art production value (Alpha/Omega, One Ring and Cthulhutech), and thats impressive!

(Dont worry about your english, its better then most americans I have chatted with )

[Pierstoval]

About the french RPGs, you talk about Yggdrasil, which is good. But there is one major problem with this rpg : the rules. The background is really awesome, it's more history than fantasy, and I chatted a bit with one of the author who told me that she read thousands of pages about Scandinavian mythology, and it's really a huge job they made.

But when I read about the rules, I had to read it at least three times to make the link between the basics and the skills, and I don't remember now cause i didn't touch the book for a long time, but what I remember is that when I played (not as GM but as player), even the GM had problems in explaining us the rules...

Anyway, I may read it again one day to verify all of this, but Yggdrasil is really good.

I think french people are kinda good in making RPGs

[makiyaa]

Yggrdrasill's rules arent't very hard.
When I read a RPG book, I always think the rules complicate. But when I start play, it become automatic.

And yes, Yggdrasill is a very good game and the new 7e cercle's game "Keltia" looks awesome too (the same thing as Yggdrasill but with a celtic mythology, during the reign of the King Arthur) ... but the best is Shadow of Esteren

Pardon my english

[Les Ombres]

Dear friends,

I cut this thread so you can freely discuss the RPG from France and elsewhere.

I also added the tag [FR] that identifies that this thread is in English.

Regards,
Les Ombres

[Iris]

I suppose you mean the tag [EN]


...

[Tosheros]

And the art and layout is beautiful, are every French RPG this good looking?

Shadows of Esteren is especially good looking, but since a few years french roleplayer appears to have become especially demanding for the arts.
Though the same phenomenon appears to touch the american industry as well, it's harder and harder to find a french RPG without at least some stunning artworks.
When you look back a few decades...


Here are a few artworks from other french games I really liked ^^

Aventures dans le Monde Intérieur (Adventures in the Inner World - close to Hollow Earth Expedition, yet different... Closer to the stories of Jules Vernes rather than the pulp adventures of the 30's, starring gentlemens explorers rather than Indiana Jones)
Link
Link

Z-Corps (Resident Evil inspired Zombie game)
Link

Shade (a fantasy world inspired by Italian Renaissance, the players assume the role of spies blessed/cursed with a living shadow)
Link

Polaris (science fiction, almost "space opera" but underwater rather than in space ; after the world was almost destroyed by terrible cataclysms, the only safe place to live protected from these meteorological and cosmic threats is at least 200m under the seas)
Link
Link
Link
Link

Luchadores (parodic super-hero game inspired by the Lucha Libre wrestlers and Lovecraft, in a Rio de Janeiro + Bermuda Triangle + Aztec jungles setting)
I just love the map of this game
Link

Wasteland (Hawkmoon like setting, post-apocalyptic returned to medieval, with Arthur Mythos in it)
Link
Link

I should stop before posting all the GROG on this thread, but you get an idea.

[kjetilkverndokken]

Well that is just awesome

[Ursus Maior]

Hi folks!

My overall impression is that since the RPG market of the 1990s went down after the rise of the internet, it somewhat consolidated in the last 2-3 years. For 5-10 years D20 dominated the market and the availability of scanned PDFs made it much harder for some of the smaller companies to survive. By now the market has changed: Either big companies go the way of D&D 4th Edition crossbreeding into wargaming with miniatures etc. or RPG-books become high quality items with a story telling systems like SoE.

The latter needs much more creativity though and each will most likely stay niche products since story-heavy approaches demand a lot of empathy from their customers and ultimately will always only adress smaller groups: The more details you add, the more likely some will conflict with buyer's interests. Unless you manage to fuse several similiar backgrounds into one metaplot, like White Wolf did with the old WoD.

That being said, SoE is the most impressive RPG I've helt in hands for years. The artwork is astonishing and as a historian I simply love the idea of an "all point-of-view source" system of texts in the book. My old group joined forces again for over two years because of SoE and we ordered three core rulebooks and the PDFs. The story will begin on 19th of October.