Day 25: Name a game that had an impact in the last 12 months?
For sheer entertainment value, it has to be Shadowrun.
There’s probably a more serious and thoughtful answer, but not right at this moment.
Category Archives: gaming
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 24
Question 24: Which RPG do you think deserves more recognition?
I’d have to say Broken Rooms, a game of parallel worlds by Stephen Herron and published by Greymalkin Designs.
It’s a game about travel, and knowledge, and learning things about your character and the multiple doomed worlds that they can visit: a world where an asteroid hit, a world with an alien invasion, worlds of ice and fire…
It’s all bad news, but still tremendous entertainment, with plenty of depth and heart.
Oh, yeah, I wrote some bits of the game, so look out for those.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 23
Question 23: Which game do you hope to play again?
From recent times, the game I’d most like to play again is Shadowrun.
The system is not my favourite, but the setting was entertaining and the player characters were fun and we had a neat set-up as ‘popular touring musicians who are in reality an elite mercenary company’. There was a troll, a dwarf, a mysterious rigger, and an elf close-combat specialist known as Variant Rook.
Their musical stylings were eclectic and the band had a different name for every appearance:
“You’re an amazing crowd and we are…Many Machines on Ix!”
I think the premise has got legs.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018, Shadowrun
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 22
Question 22: Which non-dice system appeals to you?
Filed under Dialect, gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 21
Question 21: Which dice mechanic appeals to you?
In an earlier post I mentioned a game called Amazing Tales which has a simple ‘each ability is based off a die’ system. When you want to do that thing, you roll the die and get 3 or more. If you succeed you describe what happens, if you fail the GM tells you want went wrong.
I enjoyed this dice mechanic so much the first time I played it that I used it as the basis for a work-in-progress game about vampires which is (now) called Decadence.
Some adjustments were made to the system as we went along–better, older vampires have access to more than one die roll to attempt an action, for example, not to mention a greater spread of dice, and there’s a mechanism called Pride that raises the target for success–but the general idea is still intact and still great.
Filed under Decadence, gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 20
Question 20: Which game mechanic inspires your play the most?
The very fact that roleplaying games by their nature involve the players and GM sitting around a table (usually) and sharing in the creation of a narrative.
Sure, I, as GM, can say: “Boss Greblin wants you to take this sealed oak box to Los Angeles. Don’t open it.”
And then one of the players can have their character wait until Boss Greblin’s out of the room and be all: “I open the box.”
While the rest of the crew are shouting: “What the actual-“
The game can move wherever we want it to–sometimes in opposite directions, often with dire consequences. And yet it moves. Always.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 19
Day 19: Music that enhances your game?
Another glib cop-out answer for this one: too many pieces of music to count, everything’s an inspiration, etc…
I’ve mentioned before that particular pieces of music have sparked whole campaigns, and I continue to listen to all kinds of stuff, so there’s still plenty of stories waiting to be born.
As for when the games are being played:
We usually have something suitable playing in the background, just bubbling under and not getting in the way. Maybe something movie-soundtrack related, or music of whatever time period in which the game is set.
Unless there’s ominous music playing for an especially tense and quiet bit of gaming, I tend not to notice after a while anyway. Maybe I’d notice if it stopped.
One caveat to all of this is there’s a particular piece of music by Radiohead which for me always lets me know that we’re back in a long running game that our characters can never seem to escape…
Best not to think about it.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 18
Question 18: Art that inspires your game?
Too many to pieces to count. Anything from game-book interiors to pulp novel covers to works by the old masters and random stuff discovered on the web. Everything and anything can spark something.
And the art for the new edition of Runequest is just incredible.
One specific image which was an incredible inspiration was by the artist Angus McBride in–iirc–one of the Osprey mil-history books about German Medieval Armies.
A simple soldier, wearing mail, plate greaves and vambraces, carrying shield and falchion and with a chapel de fer upon his weary head.
This guy…
This image had so much weight of history and story in it he became a character that I called Bernhardt of Bremen.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 17
Question 17: Describe the best compliment you’ve had gaming.
As a GM, the fact the players continue to enjoy the games is compliment enough, isn’t it?
That said, the other day I was asked if the just ended session was from a published scenario or something I’d come up with myself. As I’d come up with it just that afternoon I was pretty pleased with this response.
As a player, I guess the fact we laugh a lot is where it’s at, and these days I reckon if our characters are doing cool stuff then we’re cool too, right?
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018
#RPGaDay 2018: Day 16
Question 16: Describe your plans for your next game
Tricky one, this is. I had a ‘next game’ all worked out in my head and had intended to talk about it for this question but–my slowness being what it is and external factors having an influence–I have now begun the running of that game and it is therefore my ‘current game’ rather than whatever will now be next…
I’ll fudge the answer and talk about it anyway on the basis that the session I ran the other day was envisaged as a trailer or ‘teaser’ for the main campaign. The idea was to run a couple of fresh characters through a situation that would form part of the history of the actual game when it kicked off with the full complement of players.
The game proper is called Kings of New England and is run using the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules-set. Just the basic version, I had toyed with using the newer ‘play test’ iteration of the rules but to be honest they seemed a little harsh for my purposes.
The setting is an alternative 18th century New England, in which the British failed to capture Port Royal in 1713–during the closing stages of Queen Anne’s War–and as a consequence, the French still hold on to the land they call Acadia.
The characters in the ‘teaser’ game are hunting down a man who may have fired the fatal shot that killed the British commander of the Port Royal siege. They know where he lives, at least, but actually getting their hands on him has proved a touch more awkward than expected.
The game in general, as it progresses, will involve various historical factions from the region and also a supernatural element relating to ancient magics and escaped demons. There are also going to be a lot of upstart so-called Kings and ramshackle courts of ruin.
So far it’s going well.
Filed under gaming, Kings of New England, LotFP, RPGaDAY2018