Saturday, March 29, 2014

RPG Multiverse ‘March Madness’ Days 28 & 29





Other blogs can be found HERE. It is over a dozen now, so I am pretty happy with that.

The questions can be found HERE. They’ve proven not to be perfect, but they are stimulating some good discussions and sharing of experiences.

28 What free RPG or what non-English RPG did you enjoy most? Give details.

Since the next response is about free RPGs, I’ll focus on non-English games. The first one I bought was the Japanese Creguian space opera rpg. Although I never played or ran it, it was a beautiful box set and reading it shot my Japanese level through the stratosphere. It also inspired me to start my collection of Japanese RPGs, of which I have a dozen now.

That said, I am intrigued by some of the French RPGs out there. I have mentioned Empire Galactique before, with its 1980s Metal Hurlant/Moebius art and aesthetic, and I love the look of the French Stormbringer and Hawkmoon games. That in mind, I have to find a copy of the Bloodlust RPG at some point. Bloodlust turns Stormbringer on its head – it is a game where you play the intelligent weapon that makes pawns of its human wielder. I have read a few reviews and blog postings and it seems excellent food for thought if nothing else.



Of games I have, the Japanese RPG Ryutama is something I would love to try. I have read through it but still need to wrap my head around it. It is basically D&D without the focus on fighting, but instead with a focus on character interaction and personal goals. It reminded me a lot of the anime series Spice & Wolf, which has been called "equal parts fan service, medieval romance and macro economics anime," and would need a pretty cohesive group to enjoy.





29 What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain why.

Honestly, I haven’t bought any OSR products between living on the other side of the planet, being too busy for anything but intermittent gaming, and shouldering the financial burden of school, the wife and child, as well as meself. I have interacted with OSR bloggers who refuse to consider the opinion of anyone who hasn’t either sold or bought an OSR product.

Well bollocks to that. I say nay to either the OSR as a buyer or seller’s club. I’ll do my own thing thank you very much.

When I have free time to game and money to shop I may treat myself with the cream of the crop (Vornheim, Dungeon Alphabet, Barrowmaze, ASE1, Death Frost Doom, etc), but now to have them sit on my desk or harddrive seems a waste. I have some projects I’d let to set out for free and possibly a for sale one, but these will have to wait. All this narrows my response considerably.

I would have to say the One Page Dungeon collections are by far the most useful things I have downloaded. At two different cons I ran the same adventure about an ogre or a troll in a sewer environment (I forget the name and am too lazy to look it up), one time setting it in Lankhmar the other in Anth-Morpork. Short, sweet, easy to run and drop in any setting, players at both games loved it. The one page format is just enough for a GM, and both games ran radically different. The first group interacted with the guardsmen and successfully hunted down the creature and saved the children it had kidnapped, while the second rushed in and suffered a near TPK.

I’d call that a smashing success for a one page free product.

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