devilsjunkshop

Interesting question this one: Who introduced you to RPGs?

As I mentioned before, I discovered RPGs by reading advertisements, buying D&D and then just flailing around with that for a couple of years and running various trial combats and also Dungeon Module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

I met some other gamers in a local shop, or rather I asked the bloke behind the counter if they knew anyone who played D&D and they did. After four or five years of just that particular group, and some friends of friends, things expanded a little with the QUB gaming society and people heading off and starting their own little groups in various places, myself included. So, certainly so far as I remember it, RPGs just kind of happened, and then I went looking for others who played. And found my people.

Playing catch-up, as is traditional, and on to day five, Friday’s question, which was: Why will they like this game?

It’ll be fun. Simple as that really. I mean, I presume they understand the general idea of RPGs, of what they’re getting into by showing up. The first game will be not too taxing stuff — maybe with pre-gen characters, maybe not — where the characters have to find this, stop that, rescue the whoever. Adventure, excitement, and really wild things. What’s not to like?

Day six, Saturday’s question: How would you get more people playing RPGs?

Tough one. I’m not sure there are many people who are unaware of RPGs at the moment, as they seem to be getting into more and more ‘general culture’ spaces these days. I think if I really wanted to give them a boost I’d maybe try for a big budget, star-name action adventure movie that shares the name of one of the main RPG systems. That might work?

Day seven, System Sunday: Describe a cool part of a system that you love.

If you’ve read any of my previous years of RPGaDay (I figure there’s bound to be one) then you probably already know I’m not that focused on systems. I’m more concerned with background, setting, genre, overall vibes, you know? I like a system that doesn’t get in the way. That said, there are bits and pieces of various systems that I do like.

For example:

The ‘tags’ for gear in the slow-dying-Earth environments of Apocalypse World are a neat aspect of the rules. They can be mechanical (eg combat rules stuff like armour piercing, amount of damage), constraints on how an item is used (takes time, needs to be close etc), or merely cues that suggest something to be said about the item (it’s big, it’s high-tech). Take for instance a revolver, rated in the game as “2-harm, close reload loud” – which describes the damage it does, the range, that it needs reloading, the fact that it’s not subtle. Say it’s a revolver with a scope on it and that adds ‘+far’ to the range options, meaning you can hit stuff further away. If you want it to be ornate, that adds ‘+valuable’ to the weapon – maybe it’s a particularly shiny example of the type.

It’s easy to come up with any amount of makeshift and custom weapons for your post-apocalyptic wanderings, simply by saying you want a big, messy, loud, bladed nightmare, or whatever else comes to mind.

I also like the dice mechanic that I think I first encountered in Amazing Tales, which is that there’s a single target score of ‘3 or more’ for everything, and what changes is the level of skill your character is using, represented by different dice. So if you’re playing a swashbuckling pirate, your sword skill may be a D12 but your horse-riding might be D6. You still have to get three plus whether you’re rolling to win a duel against an angry duke, or stealing a horse and fleeing the town.

In fact, I liked this mechanic so much I used a variation of it for Decadence, my game with vampires in it. Indeed I said much the same thing back when I was talking about that.

Scraping in under the wire (depending on time zone) for day two of this thing, and the question was: What is a great introductory RPG?

Most recently I’ve used AMAZING TALES and HERO KIDS; both are simple systems that are easy to pick up and play, and both are mainly aimed at getting kids involved in RPGS.

My own kids enjoyed them both, and whilst the older ones have since moved on to other more complicated systems with their own groups, the youngster still enjoys the occasional game of Hero Kids (when not distracted by Minecraft or some other electronic entertainment).

Obviously, for the older potential gamer, I’d be more inclined to run something like Call of Cthulhu: it’s a pretty solid basis for a beginners’ game–especially if you play dilettantes and academics, just ‘helping out a friend’–as long as you don’t rush headlong into the non-euclidean geometries and SAN loss. There’s even a starter set now with pre-gen characters. There’s a similar thing with Runequest, but it might be a touch overwhelming for a first game.

I should probably mention Broken Rooms, a game about variant worlds and multiple disasters. Players start as ordinary people facing terrible events, and then find out they’re not so ordinary people after all.

Maybe even Electric Bastionland, which starts strange from the off but has a fantastic style and sense of place: that place being a bizarre, new-weird, last-city-standing metropolis with a heavy dying earth kind of vibe over everything.

Any game could be a fine starting point. It all depends on the group, which is true for everything RPG related really: what does the group want, what are they expecting, how can you best provide that so everyone has fun.

In which I stumble over my plans to do this ‘properly’ this year…after an extended break…and instead just post some random thoughts.

First question was: Who would you like to introduce to RPGs?

Everyone, basically. Which is a glib and obvious answer I guess, but I do believe they are a tremendous entertainment, education and maybe, if we’re lucky, enlightenment. Who wouldn’t benefit from a more advanced form of “Let’s pretend”?.