I was curious if anyone else had tried out bringing in boardgame content/ideas into their RPG games? Minis are always great to bring in as some boardgames have some great figures to use, but also, just incorporating mechanics, settings, as a mini-game, or just the general idea of a game into an RPG seems like a great resource. There’s already alot of RPG-esque games out there that are ripe for plundering and just converting into full-blown RPGs if you wanted, you’d just be adding some additional depth on top of an already defined world. We’ve just seen Gloomhaven make the leap into an RPG as well with their new crowdfunding campaign.
I just wrapped up a one-shot game (over 3 sessions) of **Mothership RPG **where I merged the RPG with the boardgame Nemesis and it seemed to go well (everyone died, very on brand). I basically used the Nemesis map/rooms/plot and ran it as a sort of pointcrawl via FoundryVTT with randomized encounters in each room. I brought in Nemesis’ idea of giving the players competing goals and added some other elements to amp up the paranoia. The two games seemed to compliment each other fairly well, though not really suitable beyond just a one-shot. It probably could’ve went into a campaign if I had wanted, but I was happy with one of the players rigging the engines to explode and leaving on an escape pod.
Some other ideas I’ve had merge RPG elements with tabletop games have been with Kingdom Death (I had drafted up some ideas for merging it with The Quiet Year awhile back), Shadows of Brimstone (Hexcrawl, basically adding another layer on top of the game to give it more depth), and Heroquest (I tried out a Savage Worlds conversion of the game).
Root is an asymetrical board game of factions trying to control a forest. It has a companion PbtA RPG based on the setting.
I think playing a session of the boardgame to set up the beginning state of the forest, and then running the RPG (with some Blades in the Dark faction tracking) would be fun.
Alternatively, run the RPG side with Mausritter. Make it more about delving into the deep woods and breaking into faction keeps.
The book even suggest to do this. Pick 4 factions, set up the board, then play 2 rounds. Build the campaign map off of that. I’ve ran oneshots of Root and so I didn’t really care to keep track of the entire forest, but if I ran a campaign, I definitely would.
I’ve used my old heroquest stuff many a time for d&d sessions, and we always play heroquest with roleplay, in character. The straight up dungeon crawl of it makes a nice casual, improvised session.
Heroquest, by its design is excellent for a GM + single player, as well.
Imo I play DND because I don’t want to learn a new rule set every time we sit down. I would hate it if we dragged out a board game to handle some mechanics. We’re playing DND not [some other game]. Handle it with a skill check or saving roll or narrative.
I like the board game style props of The One Ring 2e. You have dice, equipment cards, stance cards, simple character sheets and a large map (bonus points for the cloth maps). Together, they make it feel similar to a board game, while still being fully “theatre of the mind”, to quote D&D. It’s kind of the best of both worlds, flexible but still stuff to touch and see.
Yea, that’s alot of how they did Forbidden Lands as well, Free League is one of my favorite RPG companies at the moment. I really love alot of the ideas, the design, the art, just alot of good stuff coming out of that group.
