Better Than It Sounds/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions

** Many internet searches have turned up nothing about any tabletop game called "ammo," (though several did advise me on what ammunition to use in a [[Fun With Acronyms|Rocket Propelled Grenade]]). What the devil is this game?!

* {{spoiler|''[[Arkham Horror]]''}}: It's [[The Roaring Twenties]]. You and up to seven of your friends run around a small town in Massachusetts trying to avert [[The End of the World As We Know It]].

* {{spoiler|''[[Betrayal At House On the Hill]]''}}: You and 3-5 friends are exploring a mansion. You won't know the rules of the game until the session is halfway over, and then, someone will be playing by different rules that lets them inch towards [[Game Breaker]] territory. Teamwork is both encouraged and punished.

* {{spoiler|''[[Chess (Tabletop Game)|Chess]]''}}: Tabletop strategy game where you control an [[Extraordinarily Empowered Girl]], [[Church Militant|Church Militants]], and [[Genius Loci|giant, mobile stone buildings]]. If they can make it to the end, your weakest units can [[Took a Level In Badass|take a level in badass]]. The object of the game is to corner your opponent's second-weakest piece.

** {{spoiler|''[[Makruk (Tabletop Game)|Makruk]]''}}: The girl is not extraordinarily empowered, the weakest units start closer to the action and [[Take a Level In Badass]] sooner, and the Church Militants can't go so fast.

** {{spoiler|''[[Shogi (Tabletop Game)|Shogi]]''}}: A battle where those who are captured [[Turncoat|change sides]].

** {{spoiler|''[[Sittuyin (Tabletop Game)|Sittuyin]]''}}: Finish assembling your forces and fight.

** {{spoiler|''[[Xiangqi (Tabletop Game)|Xiangqi]]''}}: Homebodies on opposite sides of a river send armies against each other.

*** {{spoiler|''[[Janggi (Tabletop Game)|Janggi]]''}}: The same except: there is no river, the homebodies and their guards have equal strength, and the heavy artillery (living and not) and the Rank-And-File guys move differently.

** {{spoiler|''Chez Cthulhu''}}: As above, in the world of [[HP Lovecraft]].

* {{spoiler|''[[Cthulhu Tech]]''}}: You know that ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' / [[HP Lovecraft]] crossover [[Fanfic]]? Throw in some ''[[Macross]]'' and some ''[[Guyver]]'', and it's kinda like that. Now with added [[Ghost in The Shell]] and Akira, from the companion book.

* {{spoiler|[[Dogs in The Vineyard]]}}: [[Badass Preacher|Mormon Paladins]] punish the sinners and save the virtuous in an alternate old west.

* {{spoiler|''[[Feng Shui (Tabletop Game)|Feng Shui]]''}}: Life is a Hong Kong action movie. [[Mooks]] get their own statistic system.

* {{spoiler|''[[Go]]''}}: Stones [[The Princess Bride (Film)|start a land war in Asia]].

* {{spoiler|''[[In Nomine (Tabletop Game)|In Nomine]]''}}: Angels and Demons are real, and basically muck about in modern day promoting the agenda of a more powerful patron being. To be fair to everyone, God is there but never seen, and nobody really knows what Lucifer is up to. Oh, but using your Celestial Powers openly is bad, since not only are humans not supposed to know (except when they are) and Celestials doing things tends to attract other Celestials, which can be very bad. To top it off, a lot of angels are dicks.

* {{spoiler|''[[Magic the Gathering]]''}}: Dimension-hopping wizards fight each other.

** {{spoiler|''Shards of Alara'' block}}: One world becomes five after a freak accident, each world populated by [[Knight in Shining Armor|knights,]] [[Magitek|cyborg wizards,]] [[Zombie Apocalypse|zombies,]] [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragons]] and [[Barbarian Hero|barbarians,]] and [[Nature Hero|magic hippies]] who worship [[Attack of the Fifty Foot Whatever|Godzilla,]] respectively. Part two: They meet each other.

* {{spoiler|''[[Monsterpocalypse]]''}}: [[Humongous Mecha|Giant robots]] backed by the U.N., [[Eldritch Abomination|Cthulhu]] [[Captain Ersatz|look-alikes]], [[Attack of the Fifty Foot Whatever|fifty-foot]] cyborg [[Ninja|ninjas]], [[Kaiju|giant aliens]] [[Horde of Alien Locusts|who see Earth as an all-you-can-eat buffet]], [[Animal Wrongs Group|ecoterrorist-backed]] mutant [[Everything's Better With Dinosaurs|dinosaurs]], and [[Alien Invasion|Martians]] vie for control of the Earth. [[Revenue Enhancing Devices|Collect them all!]]

** {{spoiler|''Monsterpocalypse Now''}}: The guys from above are joined by reclusive [[Samurai]] powered by [[Elemental Powers|the classical elements]], slave-taking [[Beneath the Earth|mole-men]], [[Evil Knockoff|robot duplicates]] of some of the other monsters, [[Big Creepy Crawlies|really big bugs]], [[Gaia's Vengeance|pollution-hating]] [[Everything's Better With Monkeys|giant apes]], and [[Sea Monster|fish-men]].

* {{spoiler|''[[Munchkin (Tabletop Game)|Munchkin]]''}}: To win this card game, you have to do everything you're not supposed to do in a fantasy role-playing game.

** {{spoiler|''Munchkin Bites!''}}: As above, but in a pastiche of ''[[The World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|The World of Darkness]]''.

** {{spoiler|''Munchkin [[Axe Cop (Webcomic)|Axe Cop]]''}}: As above, but with the cast of an [[Crazy Awesome|over-the-top]] [[Web Comic]].

* {{spoiler|[[Nobilis (Tabletop Game)|Nobilis]]}}: Starting characters are usually capable of destroying the sun. A trivial spell that every PC knows and is able to cast will make you immune to nuclear weaponry for a while. You spend a lot of time tending your flower garden and worrying that someone will find out about your latest crush.

* {{spoiler|[[Strike Legion (Tabletop Game)|Strike Legion]]}}: Everything fights everything, with ridiculous amounts of collateral damage. You can buy an underbarrel mount that can destroy the planet you're standing on.

* {{spoiler|''[[Toon (Tabletop Game)|Toon]]''}}: You play loony characters who can defy basic logic and the laws of physics [[Rule of Funny|as long as it's funny.]]

* {{spoiler|[[Unknown Armies (Tabletop Game)|Unknown Armies]]}}: There's magic all over modern day Earth if you know where to look. It can be accessed only by acting obsessively in open defiance of logic - self-mutilation, constant TV watching, and recreating in perfect detail the sexual adventures of a goddess on a secret pornographic videotape are three popular paths. Alternatively, you can become the living embodiment of an [[Archetype]] such as the MVP, the Flying Woman, or the Mystic Hermaphrodite. The [[Backstory]] actually ties this all together. It's too long to spoil here, but the Comte de Saint-Germain is deeply involved.

* {{spoiler|''[[The World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|The World of Darkness]]''}}: A world that looks like our own, but there's secret monster societies hidden in ''every'' shadow. Vampires angst about being vampires and play politics, werewolves are either ecoterrorists or spiritual border patrol guards depending on the version, and mages fight against reality. And it's entirely debatable whether the humans who fight the monsters are any better than the creatures they hunt.

** {{spoiler|''[[Promethean: The Created (Tabletop Game)|Promethean: The Created]]''}} You are an undead [[Walking Wasteland]] animated by living fire. Vicious monsters born from your kind's reproductive cycle gone wrong want to eat your flesh. If you stick around humans too long, they begin to build up to [[Torches and Pitchforks]]. Your goal is to [[To Become Human|lose your superpowers]].

** {{spoiler|''[[Changeling: The Lost (Tabletop Game)|Changeling: The Lost]]''}} You're a refugee from slavery in [[Another Dimension]]. When you get back, you find that you may have [[Year Inside, Hour Outside|aged strangely]] when trapped over there, and the otherworldly entities who kidnapped you have created an identical duplicate of you, who [[Evil Twin|may or may not be evil.]] You join a power group who either wants to hide from, destroy or ignore the beings and often travel between the dimensions, not knowing that the eventual ending of your life is that you will (assuming you don't die or go mad first) evolve to ''become'' one of your race of tormentors. Not science fiction.

** {{spoiler|''[[Mage: The Ascension (Tabletop Game)|Mage: The Ascension]]''}}: Scientists oppress new-agers with cyborgs and plasma cannons.

** {{spoiler|''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken (Tabletop Game)|Werewolf: The Forsaken]]''}}: The job of border guards is complicated by Nazi-equivalents.

** {{spoiler|''[[Hunter: The Reckoning (Tabletop Game)|Hunter: The Reckoning]]''}}: You are a human surrounded by monster nobody else can see. You have powers, but they only work on monsters, and they aren't as powerful as those the monsters are using, except for the ultimate spell of your class, which you are mathematically incapable of learning. You will probably go insane, even if you utilize the magically hidden support system, which is basically 4chan.

** {{spoiler|''[[Hunter: The Vigil (Tabletop Game)|Hunter: The Vigil]]''}}: As previous description, minus the powers, unless you are recruited by a [[Mega Corp]], one of a pair of [[Church Militant]], mystic drug dealers or the Devil herself (maybe), all of which involves [[Body Horror]], insanity with no trade off, addiction with no trade off or sudden death with no explanation, respectively, and even then, you might not get any powers at all. The rules do make you a [[Determinator]], but that probably won't help. The best bonuses you can get are from your day job. No, seriously.

** {{spoiler|''[[Genius: The Transgression (Tabletop Game)|Genius: The Transgression]]''}}: Crazy people work on very strange science projects. The whole game was made by one guy.

** {{spoiler|''[[Geist: The Sin Eaters (Tabletop Game)|Geist: The Sin Eaters]]''}}: You're [[Michael J Fox]] in ''[[The Frighteners]]'', only you have [[Beetlejuice (Film)|Betelgeuse]] rattling around in the back of your head, [[Necromancer|necromancy]] powers, and some folks in Tartarus who are ''very'' angry at you.

** {{spoiler|''[[Demon: The Fallen (Tabletop Game)|Demon: The Fallen]]'' }}: Parasites from [[Hell]] latch onto dying people to fight against similar parasites latched onto inanimate objects. They have less than a decade before [[The End of the World As We Know It]] strikes.

** {{spoiler|''[[Wraith: The Oblivion (Tabletop Game)|Wraith: The Oblivion]]''}}: You're dead, then you awaken in a nightmare that would make [[HR Giger]] stain his drawers, and then it gets much, much worse. Eventually the players decide to play a more cheerful game like ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''.

** {{spoiler|''[[Old World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|Old World of Darkness]]''}}: The two parts dealing with the death of hope and human potential are widely considered the ''happiest'' of the lot.