Foreign RPGs - What are we missing?

I love how Del Debbio wrote both this game and one of the best known Brazillian works on Kabbalah. When I read the Trevas books as a teenager, I had no idea how much real misticism was part of the text.

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I wrote about it here:
https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/t/gateway-rpgs-in-different-countries/1896/7?u=dominik
but my experience is entirely different. I can’t claim that I know how everyone in my circle started but of those I know how, I can’t say I know a single person who got into rpgs through WFRP. Everyone talked about, I read about it in Magia i Miecz but people around me were mostly playing Vampire/Mage/Werewolf. We did play KC (and yeah, Oko was before that, I completely forgot about it!) and CP2020 but nobody was like “hey, WHRP is great, wanna play?”. :slight_smile: Again, it’s quite possible that I’m an exception.

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From Spain I would recommend:

Aquelarre: The first spanish RPG (1990) and one of the best ones. A D100 variant with a medieval-Spain setting full of angels and demons. The illustrations of the current edition are freaking awesome and the setting is one of the richest ever written.

Ablaneda: And awesome little jewel that few people know about even in Spain. The setting is fantastic medieval Spain (Asturias, indeed, if I remember well) and you play some sort of Night’s Watch’s bastards doing Mouse Guard-like missions. All written in a delightfully old-sounding Spanish. Uses a rules-light indie system called XD6 and all the material is available as a PWYW PDFs. It is, easily, my favorite spanish RPG right now.

Vieja Escuela: A rules-lite OSR game born in a fanzine and completely driven by an indie G+ Community (now defucnt, but still kicking in other platforms). It currently has many incarnations with the same D20 based system: Fantasy, Pulp, Cyberpunk, Western, Urban fantasy, Goonies, etc. and all of them (including the english translation of the original fantasy version) are free to download in PDF and have a ridiculous price in Lulu. Very easily the most dynamic creative community in the current spanish panorama.

WalkĂŒre: What if we reach 2075 and the Nazis are still kicking? WalkĂŒre uses a 2d6+Hability generic system called CdB Engine, has 434 wonderfully illustrated pages and is free to download. Probably it is the most complete and professional spanish RPG that you can (legaly) download for free.

Espada Negra: Rules-heavy fantasy RPG with a very devoted community. It has many side-products associated, including a board game and some novels. Uses its own rune-based system (D2-based, indeed) and it is free to download too.

and, finally,

Nosolorol: It’s probably the editorial of reference in Spain and has many interesting titles, including a whole line of products that share a generic system called Hitos (roll 3d10 and keep the middle one) but implement different settings: from you are a Lovecraftian cultist (Cultos Innombrables) to you are a masked vigilante (La Mirada del Centinela) just to mention a pair of the most successful ones.

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In France, we have a living RPG scene. A handful of publishers share the “big shots” projects, but the independent scene is solid too.

We have two magazines that are published every two months : Casus Belli and JDR Mag. We can find review, critics, scenarios, gaming aids, interviews in those.

As far as creation goes, we have a good variety.

Chroniques Oubliées is a D20-OGL (DD3) inheritor, which was first published as a light-D&D. It nows is its own system, published within Casus Belli and then in stand-alone products. There is multiple variants : Fantastic, Contemporary, Horror, Western, Galactic, Vigilantes 


HĂ©ros & Dragon is based on the D&D5 SRD, and was aimed to fill the gap that the non-translation of D&D left. Now, D&D is translated, and H&D starts to have its own line.

In the indie scene, we have PBTA games that are doing well : LibretĂ© (that has come to KS some weeks ago), Berlin XIV (cop & anticipation), La Laverie (Charles Stross’ Laundry), Dominion (play a powerful family in a SF setting, fighting to stay on top) 


We also have some decent Descended from the Queen games hosted on ForTheDrama.com

We have some weird creations around the Millevaux universe. Its author, Thomas Munier, created a haunted forest universe. That he declined in many variants (classic RPG, LARP, DFTQ, GM-less games) and all is in Public Domain. Other authors are starting to use it also in various games.

We also got a great website, http://www.legrog.org/, that is a global encyclopedia for RPG (french and others).

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A) That Descended From The Queen site looks awesome!
B) Sadly the Liberte KS was cancelled (though I think they will be rebooting soon).

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Just a brief update on Spanish RPGs:

Today the english edition of Vieja Escuela Pulp 2 has been released as a free PDF (also available as a PoD for a ridiculously low price).

Taking a look at this game is an excellent way to understand the high quality of the productions of the Vieja Escuela creative community.

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I would divide the Norwegian rpg scene into three parts.

  1. Folks playing D&D5e - This is by far the most popular game here, but oddly they are in a lot of cases not a big part of the RPG scene as such. I’m not quite sure, but my guess is that a lot of these folks find D&D through following different online venues and possibly adventure league events. At least it seems to me like their presence is a lot smaller than what I’d think it would be at cons and such.
  2. Folks playing things they played in the 90’s and 00’s, these are often 40+ years and is by my estimation the largest part of whatever RPG scene we have here. These folks play a lot of different stuff like Warhammer fantasy, Pathfinder, Runequest, Old World of Darkness stuff.
  3. A tiny Indie RPG minority. This scene used to be pretty vibrant maybe 10 years back and even generated quite a few good designs of its own like Archipelago, Itras By, Society of Dreamers and some Norwegian titles that are unknown outside of Norway. There are quite a few of these that still play and have some sort of online presence, but its less of a community today. There even used to be a con where only Indie Games, Today there we mostly meet at the yearly con and have our homegroups.

Design wise the most interesting stuff that comes out of Norway these days are larps. You can find some of the most interesting stuff at Stockholm Scenario Festival and Fastaval archives, quite a bit of it is available in english

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People from all around Vadutz,
Ron Edwards and Simon Pettersson have broadcast about it : a new freeform breeze blows in Europe. Not too surprisingly, Simon evokes a game without rules that has similarities with Thomas Munier’s Millevaux games referenced by @Gulix more than a year ago in this very thread.

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Hi, in the meantime #RPGLATAM #RPGSEA and #leTTRPG have been created to help people find non US games.

But I have a followup question for @marden.muller and @Marcio_Moreira:
What Brazilian games translated in French or needing to be could you direct me too ?
(We already found Maguax LucasRolim Roll4Tarrasque Capacle Gnarled monster on itch.)

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I love Violentina, by Eduardo Caetano. Now, I’m not up to date on its status as far as translations go, but getting in touch with the author should be no problem (his twitter handle is listed here).
Hope I’ve somehow helped.

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