Geek Gab Talks Kingsman: The Golden Circle (And More)

The Geek Gab gang got together again today for another episode. Today they talked about the new Kingsman movie, Logan Lucky, and Warpig Rants About Stuff. You know you're in for a good time.

In the live chat we picked up the idea of playing in the setting of the Kingsman films as a RPG. Since no videogames are coming, that means tabletop play, and fortunately there are a couple of easy options to take up. Well, if you can find them. Do note that you're playing a Tactical game regardless of your choice here; your PC is That Guy, not his boss.

• Spycraft: This is one of the breakout games of the d20 System explosion. I prefer the first edition, but the second is better for all you all-in-one sorts. Minimal house-ruling is needed; just make certain that ONLY the PCs (being the very Kingsmen or Statesmen or whatever) and NPCs of their caliber or better get the use of certain mechanics (e.g. Vitality Points). Play up the gadgets. Restrict the character options. Done.
• Ninjas & Superspies: It's a Palladium game, so you WILL need to house-rule it, but coming up with a fast-playing game isn't as hard as it seems; the real bitch of it is speeding up character generations. That means slimming down the options, and speeding up the process. Do that, and you're good. Only the GM needs to mess with the Organization rules, and quite frankly that's not even necessary.
• Feng Shui: Go figure that a game made for Hong Kong action cinema gaming would work well here. What you will need to do is (again) trim character options and adjust setting-specific stuff to suit, but that's all on the GM; for players, it's literally "Show up, pick template, tweak, GO!" and sharing a pair of standard dice is all you need.

Sure, someone's going to come along and say that HERO or GURPS or Special Snowflake System Supreme will be best. Nope. Gotta go fast, and gotta be a real game. HERO/GURPS aren't fast, and snowflakes aren't real games. So fuck all of them. Those are your three best options for playing a tabletop RPG in the aforementioned setting. Have it at.

Aside: Tabletop RPGs that work are ones that you can do cold (no preparation) and stupid (no prior/outside knowledge) that start fast and play fast. That this is still a chronic fucking problem 40+ years on is why tabletop RPGs remain a fucking ghetto.. This is not hard; it's a solved problem, which makes its persistence even more infuriating to me to see people who ought to know better go on about their cargo cult bullshit instead of applying the known solution. And no, you can't shirk this on to the SJWs; you "pros" have been this willfully stupid well before the death cult came knocking.