Something along the lines of this strikes me as more practical for an FRPG:

Blade predates Vampire: The Masquerade by almost 20 years. V:TM was 1991. Blade was introduced in 1973. The iconic look of Blade was firmly established by the time V:TM was published; it’s far more likely that V:TM was at least partially influenced by Blade than vice versa.

The hierarchy of vampires also predates V:TM. Underworld came after, but the foundations of vampiric society were laid at the very least in Anne Rice’s œvre (the “Vampire Chronicles”) beginning, again, in the '70s. 1976 to be precise. And while Rein-Hagen claims (and I believe him) that he deliberately didn’t read Anne Rice until late in the development of V:TM, he also acknowledges that the vampire movies whose look he was borrowing from were likely very strongly influenced by Rice.

As was Underworld.

I think the “Grumpy Wizard” is grossly overstating the influence of RPGs on popular culture.

It depends very much on the characters and scenario. Sometimes I explore things I don’t want to share. Most times I’m just writing a story with dice.

I’ll add to this list:

5. Consider breaking your group up into a fluid set of sub-groups that meet at scheduleable times.

I’ve always said it: Nobody has time for things. You make time for what you value.

If you’re not making time for your hobby, you’re not all that into the hobby.

OK, mods protecting bigots. I’m out.

Removed by mod

Fate was crowd-funded for translation on Modian. They wanted 50,000 RMB for the main rule book’s translation. They got so much money (215,930.76 RMB) that they wound up translating everything Evil Hat had published for Fate up to that point.

Since then Fate has been a juggernaut here.

edited to add

If you run that page through Google Translate and scroll to the bottom, you can see an explanation for why D&D isn’t as much a juggernaut as it is in North America. I’ll quote the relevant bit:

Every time [our American friend Scott] came to JOYPIE, he would bring us a game as a gift and actively encourage us to participate in the DND games hosted by him. I tried to participate out of curiosity and for the purpose of practicing English speaking. In order to facilitate learning and operation, I decided to choose a big “double player” [probably dual-class? — ed.] - Priest profession, and selected dwarves based on racial characteristics. However, after several group experiences, I decided to give up. The reason was not the communication problem in English, but that I felt that our minds were not in the same picture at all.。

Scott and I had a candid exchange about this embarrassing experience. We both believed that it was because the fantasy background of DND was too strong. For people like me who have little in-depth understanding of the background of Western fantasy worlds, there is no way. You can do role-playing with just your imagination. From a cultural perspective, it is the cultural differences between East and West.

One of the things that always seems to come as a surprise to people trying to sell into other cultures is that, well, they’re other cultures. What might be thought of as “common tropes” in North American and European cultures may just be bewildering nonsense to others. (Like as he goes on to talk about after that snippet above, dragons here are WILDLY different than dragons in the west.) D&D is steeped heavily in western mythology and is going to feel too alien. A generic game like Fate will do better until homegrown games start popping up.

(He also takes a bit of a snipe against how D&D players tend to play the game like it’s a wargame, but I’m not certain I agree with him there; I mean yes the tendency is there, but … his rant looked a bit like BadWrongFun™ which I’m opposed to as a concept.)

Ah, yes, 8 years ago things would have been harder. (And I know the shop you mean in Wuhan for that time frame, I think. Mostly Warhammer 40K and a smattering of imported card and board games?)

Call of Cthulhu is the giant here, though D&D/Pathfinder is a pretty close second. Fate, of all things, is a decently close third as well, and going up. (There’s Chinese-native Fate modules and campaign/setting packs popping up all over the place now, along with some native CofC stuff. Native D&D stuff is rarer.) Make no mistake it’s still a fringe hobby with loads of room for growth, but it is no longer unheard of. Most people now have at least heard of it, even if they don’t know exactly what it is.

You didn’t look hard enough. It’s ALL OVER TAOBAO.

Perhaps you didn’t look in the right places?

Here’s a search for “DND”. (I ran the search through Google Translate for you.)

Here’s a search for “克苏鲁” (Cthulhu). (Again with the Google Translate.)

Here’s a search for “TRPG”. (Google Translate again!)

So if you really looked, you might have tried instead really looking where people actually go to buy these things. Different country, different customs, different ways of doing things.

edited to fix up images that my screen capture tool screwed up

“DND”, interestingly, is also how Dungeons & Dragons is referred to in Chinese translations and references. (Because the actual translation of the name itself sounds stupid.)

Because China is involved and talking heads lose their minds as soon as that happens.

Hating on D&D is a past time that’s as old as D&D.

This is absolutely correct. Source: I lived it. 🤣

Chivalry & Sorcery has had, for its entire history, great tools for planning and laying out a medieval nation. The latest edition’s version of this (a sample of which is attached) covers it with a very simple set of tables and definitions.

In addition it has very good information on feudal European history, society, laws, customs, etc. that can be used to inform a GM’s campaign setting to give it a sense of verisimilitude. And finally on top of all of this is the influence system (which has been an important piece of C&S since its first edition in 1977) makes it easier to determine NPC relationships and reactions with less of the silly degrees of randomness other games have in their “reaction roll” systems (when they have any guidance of any kind at all, I mean).

Jovian Chronicles has a good base system that you can divorce from the setting pretty easily. (The same system is used in a planet-bound SF game—Heavy Gear—and an apocalyptic fantasy game—Tribe 8.) It has a pretty simple system for making vehicles which scratches your “statted ships with ship to ship combat” itch.

I’ve only seen diviners as a type handled properly in one game which, if my faulty memory is correct, was C&S (2nd edition, probably also 1st, but not 3rd onward), but I may be huffing paint thinner.

First, diviners had a group of useful spells like detecting traps, hidden things, etc. This meant you didn’t get that whole weirdo vision quest thing with “information” that was only recognizable as such long after the fact, rendering the divination kind of useless, as the only thing a diviner could do.

But even for the visions there was a decent system in place. The diviner would cast the spell and based on the results of that roll, paired with a roll (or decision) made in secret by the GM, get a degree of success that translated into percentile points. The GM’s roll/decision decided between good or bad omens.

If the GM rolled/decided on good omens, they’d come up with one of those vague, flavourful visions so beloved byirritating to players. But… at any point for the duration of the cast augury, if something that could kinda/sorta be interpreted to belong to that vision showed up in play (GMs being encouraged to err on the side of the player), the player could use some of that percentile pool to modify die rolls in their favour (or, equivalently against the opposition’s favour) to do things like turn failures into successes, or successes into critical successes or the like, thus retroactively making the vision “come true” mechanically.

If the rolled/decided omens were bad omens, the percentile pool (smaller if the player rolled well, larger if the player rolled poorly) was instead given to the GM to use to stymie and confound the players in ways related to the vision.

The end result was that the flavourful vision was there, but its application to the situation was determined in play and had mechanical relevance, which was satisfying to the players.

Chivalry & Sorcery

I played loads of this back in the 2nd edition days, but by the time 3rd edition had come out, all the people I’d played 2nd with dribbled out of my life (or I out of theirs) and that, combined with the seriously flawed nature of 3rd’s publication, left me nobody to play with. Now C&S is in its 5th edition, and it’s a powerhouse of a game, but I know of nobody anywhere who plays it. I play it solo only, now. I wish I could find a group.

Grey Ranks

You need to have a very special kind of player willing to play a game that’s as depressing and rigidly structured as Gray Ranks. I’ve never found people matching those traits. I can only read the game and imagine.

Space Opera

Yes, it has some of the most ludicrously complicated rules ever put into a game. (1.5 pages of dense-type rules for handing items from one character to another!) Yes it feels like they just took every space-based SF conceit and crammed it into the rules. But there’s a whole lot of remembered good times in those black books that very few games since have ever come close to matching.

Psi World

At a time when games from almost all companies were going crazier and crazier in complexity, with FGU, the publisher of this game, leading the pack with the insanely complicated rules of (in)famous games like Space Opera, Chivalry & Sorcery, Aftermath, and even games like Flashing Blades or Daredevils, out came the small, unassuming boxed set of Psi World with slim rules that were very simple (by the standards of the time: medium complexity by modern standards) and yet contained within them one of the best systems for psionic powers ever put to paper, and had an implied setting with more depth than you’d expect from the low page count in the main rules box.

I had loads of fun in this game playing weak psis, strong psis (verging on abusive), and psi cops. And now nobody’s even heard of it.

Yes. That’s exactly how it works. 🙄

Yes. That’s exactly how it works here.

🙄

Indeed.

Storage mode

Disassembled to show all pieces.

Dice tower mode.

Dice tower mode in action. (video link)