To All New Bloggers Doing A Blog Challenge

Good on you! Even though I've been there and done that, I appreciate your enthusiasm and your posts. You're finding who you are and why you care enough to blog - don't let the naysayers like those who pished and toshed the blog challenge I ran last year get you down.

The truth is, being an OSR blogger is a bit like the movie mythology of the jedi. We follow "the old religion" whose "light is gone from the universe" - we love musty old games in an era of smartphone apps and FPS shooters. Like Padwans we each have to make our own lightsaber to cut through the darkness of everyday life, of the gaming industry and the gaming egos. It doesn't matter that people have done it before - it matters that YOU do it NOW.

Jeff Rients once quipped that a grognard making a retroclone is like a jedi making his own weapon. I think for bloggers these challenges serve much the same function.

As for me, my blogging X-wing is buried deep, deep down in the swamp of RL for the next little while. When free I get, see you in the blogosphere I will!

Oh My Zod It’s Full of RPGs ‘March Madness’ Days 30 & 31 Finale!

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.

It’s funny that although I started this blog challenge, I have fallen the most behind in it. If you know what kind of a hellish ride life has been this month, you’d probably be surprised I finished it at all.

I’d like to thank all the participants – their responses have made me laugh and add quite a few entries to my future gaming list. Personally, this challenge has served its purpose of learning about various games from people with a similar interest in, so I’ll also be watching their blogs in future.

On with the last hurrah!

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

Back in the day, Palladium used to produce a range of ‘complete guide’ books that every GM I knew had on their shelf. Want to see the difference between a voulge and a Bohemian ear spoon? The Palladium Book of Weapons & Armor is for you. Want to know the difference between a H&K 9mm SMG and a Skorpion? You need the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons. They were great for players to thumb through when the DM was in the can or working through some issue with other players.

I see that in addition to the old favorites such as the Compendium of Exotic Weapons, they have put out some newer titles, such as Weapons & Castles of the Orient. If they’ve kept up the art and research quality, definitely pick up a dead tree version at your FLS or PDF at DriveThruRPG.

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

Tough, tough question as usual due to my narrow repertoire of played games. I have seen people take PDFs of older games and print them through a POD service such as Lulu, so I guess the question is moot, but I would pay for a reissue of the Games Workshop version of Stormbringer. It was the revised Stormbringer 2e plus all the material from the first Companion stuffed into one heavy, gorgeous tome with an iconic cover image of Elric at the end of his world. 

I am sure there are better games that deserve a reprint more (Unknown Armies springs to mind), but I can’t help what I want.

And that’s a wrap! Far from being a chore, this challenge has diverted me at a time when I sorely needed diversion and made me feel far less lonely ensconced in my ivory tower where I pump out questionably useful academic writing. Thanks to all who wrote, replied, and read.

It has been a hoot as writer and reader, and inspired me with a dozen or so post and game ideas to work on the coming months. Since I am getting up 6 am for my 2 hour commute to the new workplace, in addition to fatherhood and an encroaching phd deadline, I am sorry to say the blog will be slowing back to its weekly or less pace.

Cheers!

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.

Farflung RPG ‘March Madness’ Blogwalk Days 26 and 27

I realize that by calling this blog challenge ‘Non-D&D’ I am conversely attesting to what a huge footprint that game has left on the hobby. It is close to being a proprietary eponym like “Let’s Google it.” “Let’s D&D” is understood to mean roleplaying, and does not always mean TSR’s game.

Therefore I think for the last week of this challenge I won’t be acknowledging D&D in the title. Once again, I don’t hate D&D, I just would rather give the nod to other great games without constantly harkening back to Gary’s game.

Anyway, on with the show!

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.

26 What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details.

For official products, I’d have to say my old first love Stormbringer was the most fun I had with an IP product. The wonky chargen, the deadly combat, the demon summoning just screamed Elric to me, and was a welcome relief from the intricate spells and level grinding of Gary’s game. Second runner up would be The Watchmen sourcebook for the DC RPG. Although I never got to play it, it was one finely crafted product, and any fan of the comics would be proud to have it on their shelf. It has even inspired me to write a Watchmen scenario explaining why the Keene Act was proposed, one that I hope to put on this blog someday.

Although it is not an official, licensed Walking Dead product, I’d have to give mention to Kreg Mosier’s The Dead again. Whereas DC was not a great fit for the gritty world of Watchmen, The Dead nails its subject matter in terms of fear and character interaction. Grab it if you haven’t already.

27 What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?

Wow, tough question. I think just about all of my itches have been scratched – Stormbringer, Star Wars, TMNT, Watchmen, Robotech, Firefly, and The Dead allow me to play in the gameworlds that are most alive to me because of their sources. I suppose the only IP missing would be Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, a great dark fantasy manga series about Gotts, a maimed swordsman who goes about slaying demons let loose in the world by his old comrade-at-arms, Griffith, while trying also to save his lover, warrior-woman Casca, whose mind was savaged in the same mass demon summoning that destroyed Gotts’ right eye and left hand.

Berserk has spawned some PS games, an anime series, and a recent series of gorgeously animated movies. Some people are turned off by the preamble part of the story when Gotts is traveling with Griffith and Casca before the summoning, but stick with it and the intricate art, amazeballs fantasy action, and philosophic meanderings pay off in spades. Dark Horse apparently does an English version, but the Japanese original is at the same time amazingly well-written but done in an archaic style that fits the genre but requires some work to understand.

100 Posts Preamble & It’s Not D&D ‘March Madness’ Blogathon Day 25

Wow, just realized I made 100 posts! March Madness has pushed me over the top, which is good because the next two months will see a bit of a slowdown. Big deadline end of May so wish me luck as you’re having fun gaming and blogging.

I see Dyvers’ top 10 rpg books meme, and sad to say that I won’t be answering because I don’t believe my repertoire is wide enough. I’ve read about lots of good games and supplements in the responses to Dyvers, and I hope March Madness has provided the same widening of perspective in some degree, though not as elegantly or concisely.

Anyway, on with the show!

Other blogs can be found HERE. It is up to an even 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.

  

25 Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?

Kreg Mosier’s The Dead, a free rules lite zombie survival RPG, hands down. It is a lean, mean RPG machine that does exactly what it says on the tin – emulates The Walking Dead and its focus on survival through making relationships. The game was slick, with only those rules impacting on the story remaining, but with just enough dice rolls to make you sweat when the dead came calling. The game is almost postmodern with its lazer-like focus on story-supporting mechanics.

We played two sessions and it was scary how stark yet just like the comic book the game was – this was long before the TV show. I made notes for adding occupations and advancement for a long campaign, but these are unnecessary and just show how the game inspired me.

The game originally came out free with great atmospheric art, great writing, and rules lite enough to be nearly non-existant. Mosier cleaned it up and produced a second edition, but with an art-free no charge version.

It is available HERE. Pony up and get the art dead tree if you can.

Escape from D&D ‘March Madness’ Blog Challenge days 23 & 24

Other blogs can be found HERE. It is up to an even 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.

23 What is the most broken game that you tried and were unable to play?

Oh wow, the old Aliens game based off of Phoenix Command was too terrible to run. We fudged it with BRP or GURPS (not sure which) but it all fell apart anyway. I think army blokes used to data processing could be bothered with the game, but not us mere mortals. I am itching to run or play Aliens, using the Aliens: Game Over PDF available on the web but cutting it down from d20 to an old school simulacrum and running an adventure based off that terrible colonial marines PS3 game.

24 What is the most broken game that you tried and loved to play, warts and all?

No surprise that I’d say Palladium for what I’ve run, played and enjoyed. I played in a Warhammer 3e game the other year and everyone but me seemed to enjoy it. It was mad busy with cards and chits and a sort of unholy fusion of RPG and boardgame.

Takes all kinds, it does.

Defending ‘March Madness’ Non-D&D Bloghop and Day 20 Answers

Since I started this blog challenge, some sad sacks have taken it upon themselves to comment on how worthless it is. It is sad that people feel the need to complain when they should be happy others share their hobby and are blogging at all. There have been a few points of constructive criticism, for which I am grateful, but most of it has been bitching and whining, in my estimation.

Here is a review of the main thrusts and my responses:

Point 1 - It is ‘dull.’

Riposte - Then how vapid and venal must a person who goes to the trouble of commenting on such a dull activity seem? There are almost a dozen blogs who did find it interesting enough to participate, so why waste your time commenting on it unless you’re trolling or dull yourself?

Point 2 - It is ‘attention grabbing’

Riposte - And your responses, your entire blog isn’t? This is why we blog, to connect, to share ideas and shoot the shit, to get likes and replies and all the psychological strokes a healthy ego needs. I’m not afraid to admit that or have such an inflated sense of self that I look down on community exercises.

Point 3 - It is so ‘been there, done that.’

Riposte - Well, good for you, but some of us aren’t the cool kids who’ve been around the block. With the attrition of OSR blogs you’d think this type of motivational exercise would be welcome. I have half a mind to start a repository of requisite blog hops for newcomers, or put them in Links of Wisdom.

Point 4 - It is ‘useless’ and does nothing ‘for the hobby.’

Riposte – EVERY blog does something for the hobby, even the loathsome YDIS. We even have The Other Side’s Timothy and Dennis from What A Terrible Night to Have a Curse participating, both of whom are active publishers and actually done things for the OSR, and I trust their judgment of what is ‘useful’ more than a pundit who stands on their blog alone.

As I said in response to a ‘Blog Dodge’ proposal HERE, by all means declare yourself and your blog ‘Advanced OSR’ and eschew these topics if you feel you want to. But don’t piss on the parade and then wonder why people think you’re a troll.

Anyway, end rantmission. Back to transmission.

20 Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?

Once again I’ll split this into games for reading and games for playing.

Reading – Jorune was a fantastic read, akin to good fiction, but the buy in was too high to get a game started. Similarly, games like Palladium’s FRPG have great gameworlds, but turn vanilla when you sit down to play in them. Ditto D&D’s iconic gameworlds – apart from really flavourful realms like Dark Sun or Planescape, I never knew back in the day if my character was trudging through the Forgotten Realms, Mystara, or Blackmarsh.

Playing – I suppose this is why established IPs have always stuck with me more. I’ve touched on Stormbringer’s Young Kingdoms many times before, but games I played in the Star Wars and Marvel universes stand out. I guess the only pure RPG gameworld that impressed me was Paranoia, strangely enough. The Kafkaesque dystopia of Alpha Complex really resonates with everyone I’ve talked to who has adventured there. Although Rifts was great for a gonzo shitlaugh, Paranoia’s setting felt real enough to encourage immersion around the table, with previously wooden players becoming animated as they lied and backstabbed others.

Actually, with this question I look forward to reading other people’s responses and discovering the attractions of other worlds. I am looking for a make believe place to vacation after my next thesis deadline is done in May.

This Ain’t D&D ‘March Madness’ Blogsploitation – Day 16 & 17, Tech vs Magic

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

16 Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details.

Honestly, I cannot overstate how much I dislike D&D magic. The levels have no clear taxonomy or power differences – Charm Person started as a 1^st level skill. Add to that the arbitrary nature of spells (which ones are touch versus gaze; save vs death versus no save versus save for half; etc etc) and I have a hard time wrapping my head around them. D&D lovers might see spells as crafted by tinkerers with a fine eye for balance, but I find them needlessly complicated enough that I have never played a spellcaster.

When I found the demon summoning rules for Stormbringer, I knew I was on the right track for me. Using Power points to buy demon abilities, with just a few subjective limits on how much of those points you could allocate based on your caster level, resulted in a mix of control and surprise that I felt emulated how magic should feel and especially how it was presented in the Elric books. I also had experiences with GURPS magic, but if D&D was too arbitrary, GURPS by comparison was too logical for me and sucked some of the magic out of magic use.

17 Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?

Although my experience with and memory of the old Shadowrun game was limited, I found that its simple way of allocating dice pools for the effects of tech was much more eloquent than trying to nail down every ability conferred by a technological device. Given that real world tech develops so fast and every high scifi from a few decades back is laughably outdated (look at the original Traveller’s computer size rules for example), this approach of tech-as-bonus instead of tech as a set of descriptions makes much more sense.

Non-D&D RPG ‘March Madness’ Blog Challenge – Day 14 & 15, Playing with Culture

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

14 What historical or cultural RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

15 What pseudo or alternate history RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

When I first created this blog challenge, I wanted to give as wide array of possibilities as possible to the participants. I didn’t always succeed, and these two questions are close enough that most bloggers who responded skipped or folded them together. Between the ambiguity or the questions and the narrow focus most of us have in our gaming histories, it was inevitable that this sort of issue would arise.

Oh well, live and learn.

At a con the other year I got to play in a game of Dogs in the Vineyard. Pornstar Zak S has stated the game as on he just doesn’t get, which is bound to happen between one’s personal preferences, gaming group dynamics and the skill of the game master (I feel the same way about Maid the RPG).

Regardless, starved for roleplaying as I was, I was open to try new games, especially story or indie ones, and we were lucky to have an ace gamemaster and a group willing to give the game an honest shot.

It was a hoot. In case you don’t know the premise, you play Mormon lawmakers in 1800s Utah. The game is rules lite but made interesting by poker style bidding to achieve actions, but has enough substance that it won the 2004 Indie Game Award.

I can’t say our session was heavy on action – we moseyed up to an isolated farmhouse where a pious old man and his two daughters lived. Our Dogs tried best to make a good impression by chopping wood, reading scripture, and mediating a dispute between the old man and his ornery brother.

Reading what I just wrote, it sounds as dull as dirt. But between the bidding mechanics and the GM’s expert explanations of the cultural context and expectations, our mixed table of Canucks and Brits unconsciously took on southwestern drawls and did our best to live up to the ideals of the Mormon church. Even though I am a devout atheist, it was no more galling than playing a cleric of Odin.

The session ended with a suspicious fire in the house in which the player who had hoarded his dice up to then splashed out for a final roll and ended up saving (and getting betrothed to!) one of the daughters.

Playing DitV taught me that a good GM who makes the cultural context come alive without going into excessive detail can really make a niche game work.

And gambling mechanics are wicked as well, providing some PvP without the bloodshed and bad feelings, instead supplying camaraderie and appreciation of a good bet made.

If you haven’t played the game and see it at a con, give it a chance, and don’t be scared off by the niche setting!

Non-D&D RPG ‘March Madness’ – Day 13, The Horror!

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

13 What horror RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

Horror is definitely the second most common genre I have played, and I suspect most people of my generation would say the same thing. I’ve played and enjoyed several, but not always because of the horror elements.

The first supposedly horror game I played was Vampire: The Masquerade back in the 1990s. DMs and players started smelling nice and wearing floofy, chest-thong shirts, and women far outnumbered men at the gaming table. VtM was about as horror as Twilight, but it somehow worked to open RPGs to people of all stripes.

We moved on to Call of Cthulhu, but I suppose our sessions were closer to Paranoia, with accusations of “She’s a cultist!” or “He’s gone mad I tell you!” flying for no good reason, followed by combat that inevitably ended the game with all investigators riddled with holes or in the belly of some Lovecraftian beast. I get the feeling I’ve never played Cthulhu ‘the right way,’ but I don’t find BRP all that amenable to the genre. Perhaps Trail of Cthulhu would be more suited, but I’d rather play Inspectres first.

There were also a few stabs at Beyond the Supernatural, but again Palladium’s overpowered PCs don’t even flinch when confronting eldritch horrors so long as they aren’t MDC. There is a section in the book that rightly gives the option to play children, which would add the powerlessness that is such a staple of horror, but why play watered down Palladium when Don’t Rest Your Head or Little Fears presumably do a much better job at it.

I guess the closest I’ve come to a horror RPG is Zombie Cinema, a co-operative storytelling boardgame I played at a con a few years back. The object as I recall was to survive through successive scenes, each player in turn adding complications and either cooperating to overcome them or sacrificing each other to avoid them. The tension as the scenes advanced was really delicious, as was the feeling of encroaching doom. In the end, we all ended up dying but told a satisfyingly scary tale.

Which is why I think the traditional RPG need for characters to survive goes against the grain of horror. If an RPG can emulate the terror of loss with the joy of telling a spinetingling tale, it will be worthy of the horror genre.

Non-D&D RPG ‘March Madness’ – Day 12, Comedy in RPGs

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

12 What humorous RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

This question actually requires three answers – which game is funny to read, which is funny to play, and which succeeds at both.

I’ve mentioned Violence the RPG as a great, scathingly witty read, but one which the author himself admits may not be playable. The OSR gem Small But Vicious Dog is another great read, but is ultimately just D&D spliced with Warhammer, and a DM who could get this across would likely have to make the effort with a fake Cockney accent and some Games Workshop goblin miniatures.

Alternately, many Palladium games like Rifts and TMNT make you laugh out loud as you play a nunchaku wielding hamster assassin, but are written with (mostly) sober intentions.

The only game that was both a hilarious read AND gaming experience was the one and only Paranoia. How this game ever got made is beyond me, as it is far too innovative and light-hearted to exist nowadays in this age of focus groups and playtesting and new products rollouts.

Maybe it was an eighties thing – TOON also comes from this period.

As a player, I remember joyfully backstabbing and being cut down by the other clones, with none of the hurt feelings of D&D or other games. When I ran Paranoia, I spent whole sessions improvising encounters where PCs were issued wrong-coloured gear, or were spray-painted by a robot, or else received a welcome card from their secret society in front of other players. We rarely got to the ‘adventure,’ and didn’t care if we did or not.

The tension of trying to hide one’s mutant power and secret society membership was palpable, as was the psychotic joy of mowing down or being gunned down by your fellows. Whereas in many games players avoid reading the weighty rulebook, the art and snappy prose of Paranoia meant that the rulebook was always lent out to someone in the group.

Not that we referenced the rules anyway. That wasn’t the point of Paranoia – the play was the thing! I think people may underestimate how good a game Paranoia was and dismiss it as a joke , when in fact the dystopian setting and character secrets drew you right in and made playing the game elbow storytelling to the side.

More game designers should be inspired by Paranoia, and more young players should do themselves a favour and give it a shot.

No Dungeons No Dragons ‘March Madness’ Blogserk – Day 10

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

10 What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

We played a lot of GURPS Space back in the day, but to be honest the chargen was a bit too involved. I’d certainly never run it, as I am a big hand-waiver as a GM.

I picked up the original Traveler off RPGNow a few years back and would like to give that a shot – minus some of the calculations. I think that game really captures the feel of the 1970s scifi I cut my teeth on. It has shades of Asimov’s Foundation and Niven’s Grasping Hand books.

Speaking of Niven, I have a copy of the Ringworld and as a BRP fan could see me running or playing that. Evidently, Niven himself used the game as a reference when writing the 3rd installment of the series!

Honestly, I have not found that many people who want to play scifi, except for Star Wars d6 or Star Trek (I’d run Far Trek or Where No Man Has Gone Before in a sec given the chance).

I think the problem with scifi that scares people off from gaming in the genre is threefold:

1)     High tech rules make GMing a taxing proposition

2)      Any setting besides an established IP requires extensive background

3)      Knowledge of physics and astrogation basics seems necessary

Fantasy gaming suffers none of these hurdles – tell someone he is an elf, let him roll up a starting spell and some equipment and they’re good to go. Maybe someone needs to write a scifi rpg that doesn’t scare off beginners of the non-scientific.

Good luck with that.

No D&D No Cry ‘Madness of March’ Blogstafarian – Day 8

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

8 What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

The more of these questions I answer, the more I see how narrow my roleplaying experience is. I think once my degree dies off and I have free time again I owe to it to myself to go Constantcon crazy and play some of these older (and even some newer) games and genres I know of but have not experienced directly.

OK, so for spy games I have only played two. The first was a disastrous run through the old Top Secret RPG. We were kids and had little clue of what we were doing, so ‘play’ is a relative term. The second time was in uni, and our traipsing around the town of Sprechenstale was a mess of gunfights and intimidations that was far removed from ‘spying.’ I figure the Admin ‘pixel bitched’ too much, expecting us to magically find the right NPC contact and get the clue, so we responded by shooting the place up. It was fun, but I think the game could have been more a classic spy game with clearer objectives, a consideration borne out by the rules themselves, which have clear roles (investigation, confiscation and assassination if I recall) for each character.

That leaves the other spy game I’ve played – Palladium’s Ninjas & Superspies. Like Top Secret I have had two runs at the game. The first was an abortive mercenary style game where the unkillable characters and plethora of attacks and martial art moves made combat a turgid mess.

I am lucky that I gave the game a second chance, for when I GMed I made lots of observations about Palladium and changes that made the game really hum. First, I realized from prior experience that the game need some lethality, so I composed the house rules that would later form the nucleus of my Palladium Patch, which floated around the internet a few years back. Here are a few of the changes:

Armor Rating – AR is changed to reflect how much damage a character or object can take. For living creatures, any damage up to AR is subtracted from SDC, while any in excess of AR is taken directly from Hit Points. Armor takes SDC damage up to AR then passes it on to the wearer. Watch players get wary of hand to hand and start running from guns…

(Also, use the optional critical damage tables! The risk of a broken arm or leg will force the characters to be creative)

Combat Momentum – Since most characters have multiple attacks/actions, a different style of adjudicating combat is necessary. Roll initiative as normal, but whichever character gets it keeps on attacking until one of the following occurs: 1) they run out of attacks, 2) they fumble (roll a natural 1) 3) they decide to stop attacking and use their remaining actions later. Implementing Combat Momentum made the game much more cinematic and sped up combat immensely.

(NB: Also, find the older unrevised edition if you can, but the newer edition works just as well. Just don't mix the two as power levels vary greatly.)

In addition to the above houserules, what made the game shine was the story we chose to copy – not James Bond, but Remo Williams. Bond may be good on paper or in the movies with scads of conversation, seduction, politics and scuttling about, but games need simpler and faster action. Remo Williams the Destroyer delivers that in spades, and with a game like Ninjas & Superspies all characters have varying degrees of Shinanju-like mystic combat prowress.

In fact, if you’re thinking of running a spy game, I’d suggest Remo Williams or Mack Bolan as inspiration. Let’s face it, for starters cheap pulp is a better fit for a game of action than stirred martinis, which needs a certain frame of mind and GM-player understanding of genre.

Makes me want to play Victory Games’ 007 now….

Anything But D&D ‘March Madness’ Human Blogipede – Day 7

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?

Looking back on this question, I maybe should have specified mechanics, setting, or whatever. Still, I find it hard to limit myself to just one answer, so I won’t.

Mechanics and setting wise, I’d have to say the old Stormbringer game and Dragon Half, a Japanese RPG I’ve reviewed last year, pleased me the most. Although Stormbringer is a member of the Basic Roleplaying family, it is not exactly the same system as Call of Cthulhu for which BRP is best known, but has certain differences that gave it a lot of unique charm.

First, the game used a series of skill set bonuses derived from the attributes. For example, Stealth skills are modified positively by Dexterity and Intelligence over 12 and Size under 9, and negatively by Dexterity and Intelligence under 9 or Size over 12. Although it was a bit fiddly, it made attributes matter in a quasi-logical way that was nerfed by the pool of points used in CoC and later iterations of Stormbringer, such as Elric! and Mongoose’s version. Second, Stormbringer uses a brutal Major Wound table that rivaled Warhammer or Rolemaster in its capacity to make melee combat feared and avoided, and had us laughing out at the amputations and disfigurements even minor scuffles would provoke. Third, the point-buy demon summoning system was a marvel of mechanical elegance that I found much more graspable than the voluminous and chaotic Vancian magic of D&D, as well as emulating the source material nicely. Finally, it goes without saying that Stormbringer was set in the Young Kingdoms of Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, an antidote to Conan that dominated the fantasy scene for anyone growing up in the 70s or 80s and thus proved a very vivid gaming experience. Add in great scenarios and art (French and Japanese versions are especially beautiful) and the continued popularity of the identical first 3 editions of the game is understandable.

Dragon Half, on the other hand, was based on manga and anime parody of D&D tropes, using a simplified version of the terribly crunchy Sword World RPG. As I’ve mentioned before, the extending of fantasy tropes to their illogical ends (“Ma is a red dragon, pa was a dragon slayer who fell in love with her.”) made the games we played quite hilarious. If questing to revive the Great Dead death metal gods, making terrible puns, and failing spectacularly seem like fun to you, you’ll enjoy doing these things as much as my old group did.

However, for pure fun and playability the old Palladium Fantasy RPG could simply not be beat. It was barely a step up from the LBBs or the original Runequest in terms of art and editing, but was it ever fun. Rolling around Kevin’s gameworld, Palladia, trying to unite humans and wolfen with a motley party of doppelganger assassins, trollish hunters, giant warriors, and gnomish elementalists cured us completely of the vanilla D&D blues of Tolkien races and uninspiring settings, and made Palladium’s rules seem almost unbroken. Too bad the 2^nd edition was a watered down Rifts clone that threw the charm of the old version under the bus.

I’ve wanted to play other games, notably Ars Magica and MERP, but never found the time or players – hopefully Constantcon can make this a reality after my studies finish.

Non-D&D ‘March Mania’ Blogcornocopia - Day 6

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The questions can be found HERE.

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?

Jeez, what was I thinking when I made this question up? I think D&D is iconic largely because of its monsters, so that gives it a huge edge over other games in terms of memorability. As for Cthulhu, a lot of people would go there, but since its bestiary is ripped from Lovecraft, I’ll try and stick with a non-IP game.

And that game would be RIFTS! Palladium’s Rifts is bubbling over with gonzo ideas, some great and some terrible, and so it is with its monsters. There is a cybernetic-stealing demon in one of the smaller supplement books (I forget the name) that had us quaking in our boots back when I played the game. Since non-magic characters invest heavily in body modifications to even survive in Rifts’ crazy Megadamage world, having some dimensional being rip them off your body (OUCH), attach them to its own, then use them against you is both terrifying and iconic for the game.

Sadly, PCs are usually so overpowered in Rifts that even this creature didn’t have as big an impact as it should have. When I GMed Rifts, only the times that I gave monsters every power and trick and let them use equipment and subterfuge would they pose much of a challenge to the player characters, who often cried foul that monsters and NPCs could act as intelligent and duplicitous as them. Sad that the lack of menace due to player entitlement undercut so much promise in the game and its bestiary.

Non-D&D ‘March Madness’ Blogarrhea Day 5

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The questions can be found HERE.

Question 5 - What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?

I’m gonna come out of left field here and nominate another TSR game – Top Secret from 1980. Not that it was the greatest game, but that it had two pop cultural factors working for it that should have but failed to make it The Next Big Thing.

Consider the evidence:

1 – There was a movie about the game. No, I am not talking the 1984 Val Kilmer slapstick spy comedy that shared the game’s title, although that popular movie could also be considered a factor in the game’s favour. I am instead referencing another film from the same year, Cloak and Dagger. The film starred Henry Thomas – you know, the kid who was HUGE at the time for playing the main frickin role in ET – as Davey, a boy obsessed with the Cloak and Dagger video and roleplaying games. Davey stumbles upon classified information hidden in a game cartridge and goes about finding out who put it there and why while taking advice from Jack Flack, his imaginary friend based on his character in the roleplaying game. There is even a scene where Davey and friends play a suspiciously Top Secret-like RPG and Davey’s figurine of Jack Flack is crushed by a giant d20.

Talk about product placement!

2 – It caused an FBI visit to TSR headquarters because of a presidential assassination reference in its material. Just as D&D’s ‘Satanic Panic’ would conversely steer kids toward the game in droves by giving it an unwarranted veneer of danger, FBI attention should have created some controversial buzz for TSR and Top Secret. Fortunately or not, TSR downplayed the investigation and nothing came of it. Ditto the brouhaha about the original cover, which featured US money but had to be scrapped after it was discovered that printing photos of American currency is illegal.

Conversely, when Steve Jackson Games was also investigated by the US Secret Service due to hacking references in their GURPS Cyberpunk sourcebook, they rode the free publicity for all it was worth, putting a sticker proclaiming the book ‘confiscated by the US Secret Service!’ GURPS Cyberpunk was one of SJ Games best selling sourcebooks of the 90s.

What a lost opportunity for TSR!

Then again, Top Secret also had a few points against it. First and foremost, its main competitor was Victory Games’ James Bond 007 RPG. The Bond franchise is the grande dame of spy fiction, and its name recognition factor would have been hard to beat. Even TSR couldn’t help mimicking Bond iconography – the tuxedo clad spy on the cover of the Admin’s Screen could only be 007.

Second, the 2nd edition of the game, entitled Top Secret SPI, is generally perceived as  having better setting information but inferior mechanics.

Finally, maybe Top Secret in particular and spy games in general were just too real to be popular. People play games, and RPGs especially, to escape their reality. Top Secrets’ scenarios were all more plausible than James Bond stories, with hijacking terrorists and cold war spies instead of monocled megalomaniacs. Maybe the ‘lightening in a bottle’ that was D&D could only have been a fantasy game, as far removed from our reality as imagination would possibly allow.