First, forgive me if I use terms inaccurately, this isn't an area of tabletop I've had much experience with.

For those who are unfamiliar, Necromunda was a game by the Games Workshop where each player put together a gang of gunslingers and then competes with others for resources in a dystopian hive-city's lower depths. While the game can be played as one-off clashes, it really shines when you play it in campaign mode, where you have to roll after each clash to see who lives, who dies, who limps away with permanent injuries, who learns new skills, etc. You also get to make choices in hiring new gang members, purchasing equipment (which may or may not be available), and dealing with random events in your gang's territory.

Now this is certainly not an RPG in the conventional sense, as it lacks absolute freedom unless you are willing to negotiate new rules with the other players in the campaign, but there are certainly RPG elements as I understand them.

What I'm wondering is (outside of my own limited experiences) how satisfying are games like this in the long term? What advantages and disadvantages do they have over true RPGs?

Sure they can scratch an itch, perhaps not the same itch you'd scratch from playing some other game, role playing and otherwise, but it can be enjoyable, kind of like HeroQuest, Descent and other similar board-game dungeon crawlers can be fun in their own right. As to the actual role playing element involved, well that's really up to the participants and the way the scenarios are constructed by the group before hand, isn't it? You can play HeroQuest as an RPG in my mind, so you might be able to do the same with something like Necromunda, or 40K etc for that matter.

It depends on what you and your crew define as RPGs.

For my crew, we found that Arkham Horror, Space Hulk and Warhammer Quest were fabulous substitutes for RPG night when we didn't have enough players or the GM wasn't prepped.  But we were one of those groups that enjoyed "being in character" in any game where we got a character, regardless if it was a minis or board game.

Necromunda is an awesome game and I have run it as a RPG using Savage Worlds. Also, if you like small unit skirmish but want fantasy, I highly recommend Mordheim.

Don't much care for them, they seem to surgically remove all of the best bits of RPGs. But maybe that's playing DungeonQuest over ten times in the last week with my son talking...

I recall GW were doing something similar with Chaos warbands at one stage, there was a good article in White Dwarf chronicling a daemon prince's rise to power. They're basically skirmish minis games though, nothing to do with RPGs.

I'm all for them.  Some of my favorites are stuff from Two Hour Wargames and Goal System Delves.

I played GorkaMorka, so MORK MORK MORK! A game with mad rules, like you couldn't change the crews of your vehicles unless they HAD A FIGHT and the new guy won, and that your boss got an extra Ld point after their first victory because, up to then, nobody really trusted them anyway. And if anyone else got as much Ld, they HAD A FIGHT to see who got to be da boss now.

Totally not RPG's, but they've got the persistence elements, you really get involved in your team as they develop and you find out what they're actually made of, and you feel for your guys when they take serious injuries or die. Brilliant campaign systems, even if hilariously broken.

For me they aren't for a simple reason - I go maybe not into full competitive mode, but 90% competitive mode when playing such games. In RPGs, I'll take a suboptimal decision for story or theme reason. In such games, I try not to.

Quote from: Rincewind1;726243For me they aren't for a simple reason - I go maybe not into full competitive mode, but 90% competitive mode when playing such games. In RPGs, I'll take a suboptimal decision for story or theme reason. In such games, I try not to.

They're still war games. You should still play to win.

Unpredictable advancement throws up all sorts of unexpected tactical opportunities. That's fun.

I find those kinds of games great fun, and for me its the other side of my love for the RPG hobby made manifest. To this day I still think of RpGs and Wargames as two sides of the same coin. In both games I interact with rules and immerse in an imaginary situation, but each is heightened to a different degree in the two activities. But both are built on that same framework of "interacting with the imagination".

Which is why I like my RPGs lite and my wargames crunchier rhan a Snickers bar. I love WHF 3rd and with its awesome eules for supply wagons and playing capture the flag with warbanners , and I look at rulesets like Kreigspiel and Diplomacy and think of ways to make the game more complex, for the rules to model more and more situations that enhance the level of tactics brought to the table. And then I GM my rpgs using a variation of FASERiP not much more crunchy than Risus.

Quote from: RunningLaser;726233I'm all for them.  Some of my favorites are stuff from Two Hour Wargames...

This!  FNG was the first game to come to mind when reading the OP.  

I'm also plotting a way to integrate Risus with the Ganesha games wargames like Flying Lead - it's a sort of peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate kind of thing.

I have always thought skirmish lever wargames lenses themselves well to Rpg type campaigns. I have always wanted to do a skirmish campaign that chronicles small actions leading up to a rather large one, I have always pictured doing this with a GM to provide sort of an element of unknown. I known games like Laserburn can be used as an rpg system and the 1st edition of WFB had rules for dungeon battles and running it as an rpg. Speaking of that any one ever run the rpg system in WFB 1st?

I really fancy mixing miniature games (especially those with floorplans) with light but distinct rpg-rules.

Adding simple rpg-skills to wargames is easily doable, and if one take one squad, and let players play as one soldier each ... well, there you have it.

The Rogue Trader edition of WH:40k (2nd?) felt a lot like this.  There was a significant push in sections for players to have their specific personalities playing through scenarios with short range tactical goals.

It is a wargame that borders on being a board game. Not an RPG or even a pseudo RPG. Though you could easily plug it into Rogue Trader I'd think.

As a wargame/board game though I actually like it more than Warhammer 40k by a long long margin indeed. This was one of the games that the GW staff would preview to me often at conventions because for some reason they really liked my stuff. No clue why.

But next to Warhammer Quest, Necromunda seemed to be one they personally enjoyed playing along with Blood Bowl.

Too bad the PC version of Necromunda never saw light.

Does it satisfy like an RPG? Not even remotely. Does Clue/do satisfy like an RPG? No.

That is my viewpoint on it.  Fun game. Not an RPG or even RPG-esque.