I recently picked up the paperback version of Index Card RPG (Master Edition), and its currently the leading game candidate for a weird science fantasy campaign I've been wanting to run. However, from looking around on the internet, it seems to be a game that everyone reviewed well and respects, and a lot of people talk about stealing rules from it for their games, but very few people seem to actually be playing the thing.

Has anyone around here run/played a campaign with ICRPG, and if so, whatcha think? I'm particularly curious how players respond to the game's very limited class progression system, and whether that presents a problem over the course of a full campaign. I'm also considering melding classes from several of the included settings, and wondering if there are potential pitfalls to that which I might not be seeing.

I haven't played by his rules; but i absolutely copied his usage of images on index cards, as a means of revealing small sections of a dungeon at once.  I have drawn things like a straight passage, an intersection, a left turn around a corner, a right turn around a corner, a room behind a door, a trap, treasure, a monster encounter, etc.  A cheap deck of index cards, quickly becomes a customizable or random dungeon.

I've run ICRPG a few times though not for more than a few sessions usually, though I am trying to get a full campaign going with some of my friends currently. It was well received by my players and runs smoothly on my end, nobody complained about progression, as loot was found in most sessions which allows players to mix up their abilities fairly frequently. I have melded classes between the different settings before, it worked without any hiccups for me, but none of my players are very rules savvy so they don't catch powerful synergies between abilities very often.
The most active community for ICRPG you'll find is on the runehammer forums, they can generally help with any custom classes or abilities you might want to make.

I've ran a Stranger Things inspired one-shot with it. It was okay, but I have my issues with the system.
#1.) It feels like it cant decide whether it wants to be a system, or just a book of advice.
#2.) It feels like It was written by a 14 year old with ADD in places. The master book suffers from it less than the second edition (ICRPG 2E was one of the few times I've gotten physically angry reading an rpg), but there are several things in the book that in strange places or are outright missing. This is a book put out by A professional company,  It it feels like it wasn't proofread or edited.

As for everyone talking about it and giving it the thumbs up, and then never talking about it again, it is a Modiphius game after all 

Quote from: spektrefyre on January 07, 2023, 06:44:41 PM
I've run ICRPG a few times though not for more than a few sessions usually, though I am trying to get a full campaign going with some of my friends currently. It was well received by my players and runs smoothly on my end, nobody complained about progression, as loot was found in most sessions which allows players to mix up their abilities fairly frequently. I have melded classes between the different settings before, it worked without any hiccups for me, but none of my players are very rules savvy so they don't catch powerful synergies between abilities very often.
The most active community for ICRPG you'll find is on the runehammer forums, they can generally help with any custom classes or abilities you might want to make.

Thanks for the response. I don't really have anything to add to it, but I'll try and check out the forums. I think I'd need to overhaul the "Ghost Mountain" and "Blood and Snow" classes  a little to fit them into the same formatting as the "Alfheim" and "Warp Shell" ones, so maybe I'll see if someone there has already done it.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on January 08, 2023, 09:13:10 AM
I've ran a Stranger Things inspired one-shot with it. It was okay, but I have my issues with the system.
#1.) It feels like it cant decide whether it wants to be a system, or just a book of advice.

It does seem like a lot of people just treat it as a toolkit. I thought about just doing that, but the effort system (which is what appeals to me most) would be pretty awkward to patch into another game.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on January 08, 2023, 09:13:10 AM
#2.) It feels like It was written by a 14 year old with ADD in places.

I mean, if you've seen Hankerin Furnale's YouTube videos, that isn't the biggest surprise... 

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on January 08, 2023, 09:13:10 AM
The master book suffers from it less than the second edition (ICRPG 2E was one of the few times I've gotten physically angry reading an rpg), but there are several things in the book that in strange places or are outright missing. This is a book put out by A professional company,  It it feels like it wasn't proofread or edited.

As for everyone talking about it and giving it the thumbs up, and then never talking about it again, it is a Modiphius game after all 

Weird, awkward formatting is a another consistent theme with Modiphius books, in my experience. In fairness though, I think Modiphius just publishes the hardcover version. The paperback I ordered off Drivethru doesn't have their branding on it anywhere.

This might be a dumb question, but in what way are index cards actually used in this game?  I saw an official Index Card RPG card deck being sold on DriveThruRPG.  Is purchasing this necessary to play?  Are standard D&D dice still used?

I know that some people avoid Dungeon Crawl Classics because they don't like the idea of buying extra, uncommon dice in order to play.  Is Index Card RPG similar in that you have to use extra items to play?

This vid gives a fair rundown of the system. Seems only superficially D&D. It reads like an oracle system really.

I just got ICRPG 2e in the mail. We haven't tried it in our gaming group yet. But from what I've read it looks pretty interesting. A rules lite D&D game that reminds me of Knave.

• It's very gear heavy with no classes. Your character class is the equipment you are holding
• Attribute bonuses without attribute scores. Players will have a CON of 4 instead of 18. When leveling up you can raise attribute bonuses.
• The other die types are divided by category. All mundane weapons do a d6, energy is a d8, magic is a d10, etc.
• The Effort mechanic is really interesting. Everything has hit points essentially. You have a lockpick that does a d8 of effort and the door has 15 effort points. This mechanic is used for everything, even spells, so more powerful spells just take more than one round to fire off.
• Like a lot of OSR games the handful of settings are very bare bones. So I'm looking forward to using it with Dark Sun or Greyhawk or something more detailed that I already own.

I have run two campaigns with it, the first with 1e and the second with ICRPG Magic.  In both cases it ran well and the players loved the game.  The first ran for 30 session and the second for about 18.  (Due to the nature of my work I run short, intense campaigns rather than longer ones.)  The second campaign was actually done at the behest of my players.

I also have adapted many innovations in the book into other games.  The effort rules and the encounter difficulty rules especially.

Quote#2.) It feels like It was written by a 14 year old with ADD in places.

It is.  Watch the Runehammer channel. 

To be fair, I learned how to use the system watching his channel.  In fact, you could watch his channel and take notes and end up with the complete rules set for ICRPG.

QuoteThis might be a dumb question, but in what way are index cards actually used in this game?  I saw an official Index Card RPG card deck being sold on DriveThruRPG.  Is purchasing this necessary to play?  Are standard D&D dice still used?

I'll answer these in reverse.

ICRPG uses your standard polyhedral set.

You do not need any other official items in order to run a game beside the book.  The cards are just pre-made cards with his art.

Hank uses index cards for all kinds of things while running the his games.  His channel has a lot of videos giving advice on running games and in many of them he encourages GMs to use index cards for all kinds of things from character sheets, to loot items to give players, to monster encounter notes.  You don't need to use index cards at all but it's how he runs his games, not just ICRPG.

I've read the quickstart rules. I like a lot of the concepts: especially how well they lay out the different kinds of actions.

I like their use of hearts and how it unifies a lot of the mechanics. (I'm not in the school of "everything needs its own mechanic". I'm in the school of "I have a bad memory and a complex job, and get paid to do complex stuff".)

Mastery is cool too. Feels Traveller-like, in how it could be slow and is linked to what the character actually does.

Last time I read the quickstart, the writing drove me insane. Glancing over it now, it seems to read OK. I will give it another real reading to check it out more.

Interesting. Bought it a few years ago and ditched it.  I'm one of those superficial people who doesn't give a product much of a chance if I can't glean at least "some" understanding of "some" of the rules/concepts upon a skim through.  I didn't pick it up then and, when revisiting later more thoroughly, was turned off by the writing.

Had the same experience with Dungeon World, for what it's worth. Maybe it's just me...

Quote from: FASAfan on December 13, 2023, 11:24:40 AM
Interesting. Bought it a few years ago and ditched it.  I'm one of those superficial people who doesn't give a product much of a chance if I can't glean at least "some" understanding of "some" of the rules/concepts upon a skim through.  I didn't pick it up then and, when revisiting later more thoroughly, was turned off by the writing.

Had the same experience with Dungeon World, for what it's worth. Maybe it's just me...

I had the same issue with the writing. Doesn't seem as bad right now. (It might depend on how much writing/editing I've been doing on our fiction.)

Quote from: FASAfan on December 13, 2023, 11:24:40 AM
Interesting. Bought it a few years ago and ditched it.  I'm one of those superficial people who doesn't give a product much of a chance if I can't glean at least "some" understanding of "some" of the rules/concepts upon a skim through.  I didn't pick it up then and, when revisiting later more thoroughly, was turned off by the writing.

Had the same experience with Dungeon World, for what it's worth. Maybe it's just me...

Furnale has acknowledged Dungeon World as a big influence on ICRPG. I think what people are picking up on which is shared between the two games is a "flavor first" approach to writing a game. Both games are written in a way which prioritizes how awesome the adventure is going to be over pretty much anything else. They're both close to being "Rule of Cool: the Game". The difference to me is that while Dungeon World's underlying mechanics are questionable at best, ICRPG's are pretty solid.

I know the whole GSN thing is controversial, but I think it's instructive here. Neither Dungeon World nor ICRPG gives a fraction of a flying f*ck about simulation. But while Dungeon World's approach is heavily narrative-focused, ICRPG is almost purely gamist.

Ultimately, I never wound up running ICRPG. After a year or so of re-reading the book and ruminating on it, I think the ruleset is just a little too lightweight for my tastes. Maybe I'll pull it out for a one shot someday, but it's not what I look for for a campaign. But the reason I re-read it so many times is there's a lot of good stuff in there. I still think it has one of the best GM advice sections in any book I've read, I like the idea of giving non-combat tasks a hit-point analogue, and I love the way the monsters are designed.