Since I moved to the Bay area, I took the habit to bring French Roleplaying games to the local players.
Some are old, some are unknown, and some were translated into English since.
My tradition is to always run at least one of them as oneshot during the BigBadCon convention.
Here is a list of different games over the years.
- Wastburg
- This is a game from Cédric Ferrand, where the players are “Guards” from a medieval city. It’s quick, easy, and fun to play that hotchpotch of cops doing a procedural investigation in the dirt.
- Dragon de Poche 2
- I did not bring this one to BBC, but ran a full campaign. This is a game from John Grümph, a light OSR-style way of playing Dnd adventures.
- Contrôleur d’intrigue
- This one is a personal creation, it’s a fun game about Roleplaying Game industry. The players are in the shoes of “Men in black” of the RPG bureaucracy, they have the scenario script and strict orders to make sure the scenario runs smoothly, they are backstage behind the fake dungeon walls, with the actors costumed to do the extra. Then the GM throws the PC party of “clients” in the game and all goes sideways.
- Some examples: the orcs extra are on strike, the PC team decided to wander outside of the map, the FX team informs you that there is a shortage of spell special effects, the BBG lost his script…
- It is a very quick and satisfying game, where we flip the sides from the usual tabletop structure. And as a GM, it’s quite juicy to throw curveballs back at your usual players.
- WhogShrog
- Hommage to that 80’s game from Siroz Prod editor (the editor who later became Asmodée). WhogShrog is a decadent science fiction game where the players are the baddies, indoctrinated deadly soldiers from the army of the “Butcher of the Universe”. The game takes inspiration from the Sardaukars from Dune, and illustrations from Philippe Druillet, Predator …
- In the original game, the Whogs had a way to learn humanity and eventually turn their side to become renegades “Locks”, but it was very slow. In my version, I transposed the game to a PBTA, and made a very quick and intense game where the characters were balanced between accumulating “rage” tokens to boost their combat moves or gaining “mercy” tokens by learning fear and reducing their killer instinct.
- Mordiou!
- Another game from John Grümph, about Musketeer’s adventures. It has an interesting action allocation system, and I converted it to use a purse of tokens instead of dice pools.
- Demiurges
- Great game from the late Frédéric Sintes, about teens’ drama with powers. He ingested and internalized many lessons from the Forge. The system is a blast, especially the conflict resolution. It has an escalation mechanism and sacrifice options. The players are competing to see who will narrate the outcome, and who will inflict fallout consequences.
- Libreté
- Game from Vivien Féasson, which has been translated into English. It is a PBTA, game in his world of the “Rainiverse”. The players are lost kids in a city under the rain, it’s a mix of Peter Pan, Mad Max Thunderdome, and horror slashers.
- INS/MV
- “In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas” is the first game of Asmodée prod, from Croc. I also ran this one as a campaign outside of BBC. It is a long-standing French game, with many editions, it also had one adaptation in English by Steve Jacksons Games (but watered down a bit). For this one, I used the rules from the last one “Génération Perdue”, but in an older setting.
- This is an iconoclast game about Heaven and Hell being in a secret war, and the players are Angels or Demons incarnated on Earth to advance their side. But in reality, it’s a very humorous, and critical game about religion where there is no real black&white. The original game was messing around with Catholicism and French society issues of the time, but it has been all over since. The closest you could find in English literacy would be the “Good Omens” from Gaiman&Pratchett.
Plans for the future :
Next year, I’d like to bring new games, on my list “Trip to Skye” from Romaric Briand.