Lasers & Feelings
Nothing ever goes smoothly for the crew of the Raptor.
They boldly go where many have gone before, and try to do better.
Lasers & Feelings is a simple, star trek style game filled with space adventure. Each episode features a different crew undertaking a different mission, exploring the wild frontier of space in their own unique, selfish, misguided way.
Written by John Harper, Lasers and Feelings is an extremely elegant game that fits entirely on one page, making it excellent for a pick up and play adventure.
Lasers & Feelings episode art was drawn by Lloyd Jones.
Season 1 Episodes
The possibly irreputable Captain Darcy (Ikks)'s scout ship Raptor is hazardously staffed by podcast fanatic Dottore Baldoro (Mark), regular polygon Dr. Hexagon (Medibot), inexplicable canines Lil Bee (Ashley) and Lil Fly (Nate), and the state-of-the-art Autotarget 9000 (PoorWeather).
When mines across the sector are targeted by pirates and the Fleet's first, second, and third choices of teams are unavailable, the Raptor is dispatched to track down the pirates and put a stop to their plunder.
Dr Hexagon, Lil B, and Autotarget 9000 of the Raptor continue a guerrilla assault, having successfully infiltrated the enemy ranks. At the center of deadly cannons, thick armor, and blazing ion storms lurks the nefarious perpetrator of this plot, Captain "Queen" Anne.
How can one measly crew hope to compare to the ultimate weapon of Pirate Space's combined might?!
When sacrifices must be made for the sake of the free galaxy, feelings flare and lasers lance-- just as advertised!
If you've never listened to tabletalk before... now's the time.
Season 2 Episodes
The scout ship Raptor C was on a standard diplomatic escort mission to a galactic peace summit, when suddenly the entire crew fell prey to a highly contagious space disease!
With 99% of the crew's carbon-based population unconscious, the robots are in charge.
Join Comrade Core (Gnome), Winter (Panzerskank), and SU-NIT (Poorweather) as they try to save the ship with the help of Benjamin Darkley (Patrick O), the only human who didn't get taken out by the disease.
The Raptor C was nearly ambushed by a ship full of Tuvisian cyber zombies, but with quick thinking and a handy cloaking field, our heroes managed to turn the odds in their favor.
With the ship's regular crew still unconscious, its up to Comrade Core (Gnome), Winter (Panzerskank), SU-NIT (Poorweather), and Benjamin Darkley (Patrick O) to stop the cyber zombies from attacking the peace summit!
Unfortunately for our meager crew, not everyone is after the same thing.
Will this barely-formed crew save the day?
Or will they tear themselves apart, chasing their own selfish agendas?
Podchat
Special guests and RPG beginners Mark Soloff and Ashley Davis join us to discuss just what to do when you've never played an RPG before.
Here are our recommendations for D&D4e's player types!
Actors
Golden Sky Stories: A focus on developing your character as a complete (and cute) individual
Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, Nobilis - in both games, your character is literally center stage, and the world revolves around them. Advancing your character is based around developing the desires and the responsibilities they gain from their newfound powers.
Becoming - everyone plays as the same hero, and the goal of the game is to flesh them out and determine how they overcome challenges and why they are a hero.
FATE (Core and Accelerated Edition): A game engine based on playing to your character’s aspects, for good or ill.
WWWRPG: Of all the *World games, none gives you a stronger character role to play with.
Explorers
Eclipse Phase, Ashen Stars, Malifaux, and other games with strong established settings
Last Stand: All the GM advice is built around setting up unique fight scenarios and cool locations and big flashy one-time events
Instigators
DANGER PATROL: Leap into action, don’t bother thinking about it! That is the core mechanic of Danger Patrol: the more danger you are in, the better your dice rolls get.
Costume Fairy Adventures: Causing shenanigans is the goal of the game and how you win at being fairies.
Everyone is John: This is like Becoming, above, except extremely silly and the goal is to Kill John.
Power Gamers
D&D 4e: Fully customizable, robust character classes, with potential for fun synergies.
Double Cross: Probably the best point-buy supers game currently on the market!
Last Stand: It is a save-the-world fightgame where you rip apart giant monsters!
Strike! RPG: A simplified battle system designed for quick fights and lots of ‘em
Storytellers
13th Age: Encourages characters to have relationships with the established setting
Breakfast Cult: Cooperative and competitive; each player has a secret objective for plenty of intrigue
Fiasco: The perfect game for telling a story where everything goes wrong. GM-less.
Final Bid: For the exact same reasons as Fiasco.
Monster Hearts: If you want to play Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the RPG, this is where it is, and it hits the sense of drama perfectly.
Thinkers
Retrocausality: This game is all about time travel, and the core mechanic is messing with the time stream in a way that gets you what you want out of it, but without causing unintended consequences
The GUMSHOE line: Various games all about finding information and piecing it together to solve a mystery.
The Quiet Year: This is a game where everyone has to spend a year preparing for a horrible disaster that they don't know what it is, and do what they think is best to save their community from the coming disaster. Problem solving is the name of the game.
Microscope: Microscope is a game you play before another game. Microscope is a collaborative worldbuilding game where everyone works together to figure out what elements of the setting everyone cares about and wants to explore, and building a setting around those ideas.
Watchers
Apocalypse World: no turn order, meaning players can play whenever they feel comfortable
Dungeon World: Same reasons as Apocalypse World, except for people who want the classic D&D feel. DW also has probably the best handouts of any *World game out there, which are nice for beginners.
Law’s Out: the players are actors on the set of an Old West movie-- games are as fun to watch as they are to play, and the auction mechanic is good for beginners or those uncomfortable with number-crunching.