RPGaDay - Day 31 - Favorite non-RPG thing to come out of RPG-ing

Friends.

I mean, the whole thing is a group activity. You have to have other people to have a game. Hopefully people you like. They may start off as "game friends" but over time at least a few of them are bound to turn into just "friends". Fighting monsters, looting treasures, and saving the planet can be an amazing shared experience. Share it with people you like.

RPGaDay - Day 30 - Favorite RPG Playing Celebrity

Oh please - the slow rise of D-list celebrity gaming is probably my least favorite development of the last few years. I don't care when an otherwise famous person mentions that they have played RPG's. There's nothing wrong with that. I just don't care much for the "celebrity gamer" thing. I like Wil Wheaton's Tabletop show, but I don't care about buying an RPG with his name on it just because his name is on it! I don't care about watching a video of an RPG session because of who is in it. I don't care about the latest OSR kerfluffle about who said what about who. None of it matters to me as a guy who runs and plays games.

If the #1 aspect of something RPG-related is who's name is on it then it's a problem.

If people get all excited because somebody famous "came out" as an RPG player, well ...

I'm sure it stems from D&D and the whole 80's nerd/devil cultist thing that blew up back then. I grew up with it and I don't feel some desperate need to force-legitimize the thing by trying to tie it to some famous person.

It doesn't matter.

Go play your game and enjoy yourself.

RPGaDay - Day 29 - Favorite RPG Website/Blog

Because I like it, that's why

Hey, there are links right over here!

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• I check EN World at least weekly, if not more often. For D&D or Pathfinder news, it's the place to check.

• For other blogs I have 4:
• Barking Alien 
• Graphs, Paper, and Games
• Steve Kenson
• Plot Points 

• For company sites I have 3: 
• Paizo
• Green Ronin
• Pinnacle

There are also the various SRD sites listed off to the side there and those are handy too.

RPGaDay - Day 28 - Favorite Game You No Longer Play

Well this one is fairly easy. There are a bunch of games I am not playing right now that might get played again in the future, so I am going to take this as "... no longer play and are unlikely to play again." That does make it a lot easier.

I spent a lot of time playing AD&D in the 80's. We had a blast and it was the major game that formed the baseline of what "RPG" meant to me. I bought the books, read the magazines,  painted the miniatures, wore the t-shirt, and fought through innumerable adventures for a good 10-11 years, from elementary school into the college years. When the next edition came out we moved on to it and never looked back. That's sort of the problem ...

I haven't sat down to run a 1st edition AD&D game in over 20 years. I haven't played one either.  I loved this game when it was "the" game but I've never thought the mechanics were the peak of game design for all time. Everyone I played with thought 2E was an improvement and moved on. We all moved to 3E when it came out too.

When it comes to nostalgia I've considered running an old school game but when it comes up B/X D&D is the game of choice as it's simpler, cleaner, and faster. Goblinoid Games managed to add in most of the good parts of AD&D into it with their Advanced Edition Companion for Labyrinth Lord.
So there's not much need to go full-retro with AD&D just to be able to play a dwarf cleric. I suggested it to the Apprentices and they said "but we like Basic" and that was that.

For a while I even considered running Hackmaster, the older edition, which is a whole bunch of AD&D 1st & 2nd edition with some updates. No one took it seriously as an option.

While I may have some nostalgia for it, no one else is willing to spend some of their limited gaming time on an old, clunky game when there are other options, options they like better, available. So it seems unlikely, very unlikely, that I will ever run or play this again unless I stumble into a nest of old-schoolers  - and decide it's truly worth some of my limited gaming time.




Runner Up:

We had some really good times playing this game in the late 80's and 90's. You wouldn't think the end of the civilized world would be great for that but it was a lot of fun as a game. It was never the most popular RPG but it was my favorite game of that type.

This one is suffering from a similar yet different problem from AD&D. Tastes change and time moves on and my friends and the Apprentices are not terribly interested in the post-apocalyptic game as a genre anymore. With AD&D it's about the mechanics - the subject matter is still awesome, but the system has been surpassed. For Twilight 2000 the mechanics are fine, and being able to cut loose with an automatic grenade launcher from your humvee is still a cool thing, but the setting as a whole is just not something they care about.No magic,  no mecha, no powers, just normal humans and real-world gear. I'd love to run some of my current players through the epic published campaign but I doubt that will ever happen.

RPGaDay - Day 27 - Favorite Idea for Merging Two Games Into One

Well this is easy. Ahem:

1. Concept
2. Framework
3. Content
4. Other Discussion

Now for #5 - How it went in actual play!

It went well! The players liked it as it merges the concept of Necessary Evil (which we had started and enjoyed years ago) with the familiar environs of Paragon City (familiar because we were all multi-year veterans of City of Heroes). They dusted off their old characters and we jumped right in to a classic comic book retcon to move it over to the new setting. 

A peaceful holding facility - before the PC's got ahold of it ...

Unfortunately it fell victim to logistics and the difficulties of having another standing game with all the complications of adult and family schedules. 

I know it works, we like both the concept and the system, and one of these days we will pick it up again. 

RPGaDay - Day 26 - Favorite Inspiration for Your Game

I've talked about my inspirations from some online games, mainly Star Trek and City of Heroes. I think that leads into a discussion of some easy places and sources of inspiration.

• IP settings like Star Trek and Star Wars certainly benefit from cross-pollination. I'm digging into The Old Republic for the first time in a long time and many of the NPC's and missions are quite steal-able for a tabletop game. The same goes for various Star Trek Online missions. Sometimes even a simple screenshot can provide both inspiration and illustration - a planet, a ship, a building, a ruin, an opponent - maybe it all starts with the visual thing.

• Beyond the games there is also a large set of books and other media too. I'm catching up on Star Wars Rebels with Apprentice Who and if that's not all about a PC adventuring party I don't know what is. With Trek there aren't any new shows on TV right now but there are several online Trek series that come up with some pretty interesting stuff. It's always been fairly easy to me to pull in characters, objects, plots, or concepts from all of these that inspire you and turn them into something new. 

• Supers is another genre that benefits from the vast universe of material out there. Tv shows, movies, comic books, novels, online videos - there is so much there you can find almost anything. Obligatory Moment of Silence for City of Heroes here ...

Crossover!

I'd say that's where my main inputs and outputs of inspiration are. The genre I run most, D&D type fantasy, I don't really look to other sources. I am not sure why, it just works differently for me. Part of it might be because I've been immersed in it more and over a longer period of time than these others. Part of it might be that  I run a lot of published stuff too. Regardless, it's working for me right now.

RPGaDay - Day 25 - Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic

There have been a lot of eyebrow-raising moments over the years when it comes to the "how" of making a game work. All of them were important to me at the time. A sample list in chronological order:

• Traveller - my first encounter with a non-class-and-level system after a couple of years of D&D. It was a very different approach and opened up my eyes to new possibilities.

• Champions - Point-based character creation! Superpowers! A mechanical framework for every object in the universe! Opposition built on the same rules as the PCs! This whole game was a revelation and is still a very different approach than most RPG's

• James Bond 007 - A unified task resolution chart was a huge innovation, one that would show up in a more popular game (Marvel Super Heroes) the following year. Figuring out how that fit into the game and how damned useful it was made this game even more fun.
  
  Also: Hero points! This is the first RPG I know of where players had a pool of points for their character that could be used to adjust die rolls on the fly. It fit the genre perfectly - after all, a 00 doesn't miss that critical shot! The GM had a similar system of points for villains. This kind of "bad roll insurance" mechanic took a while to really take off but you find something similar in a whole bunch of games nowadays.

• Shadowrun - The whole system was amazing. I have Unarmed Combat 6 and I am fighting a guy with Unarmed Combat 4. That means I roll 6 dice with a target number of 4, and my opponent rolls 4 dice with a target number of 6 - genius! How simple is that to keep track of?! Non-opposed checks have a target number, typically a 4. The whole game works like that! Now the math can be strange, and figuring probabilities can be tough, but as far as intuitive mechanics it was great and at the time we loved it. There was very little book-checking for normal stuff and that's a huge win even today. 

• 3rd Edition D&D - while the unified mechanics got all of the attention that had been done before as far back as the 70's in everything from RuneQuest to Traveller. Feats were just Champions Advantages. The big innovation to me was per-level multiclassing. This took what had been a fairly restrictive class and level system and turned it into a modular Lego-style system where a player could build exactly the character they wanted as the levels piled up - regular classes, prestige classes, and racial levels all combined to make for a very cool and very flexible set of mechanics for creating a character.  It's not quite Hero System in flexibility but it's closer than one might think. 

• Savage Worlds - The first RPG I can recall that was expressly built with playability as the top concern. It's a radical change from the prior Deadlands system which was very very crunchy and detail-oriented. Savage Worlds chucked all of that and started rating stats and skills in dice - not number of dice (ala Star Wars or Shadowrun) but type of dice. The "Wild Die" a bonus d6, separates important characters from mooks. Target number is always a 4, with a few potential modifiers, bonus effects for exceeding the target by certain increments, and the occasional exploding die. A Savage Worlds character will never have the kind of detail found in a Pathfinder character, but they will have more mechanical differences and details than a Fate character. It's a system with a nice balance of speed and simplicity while still generating interesting outcomes.
  
  Additionally, the game uses cards for initiative. Instead of rolling a die players draw a card. This doesn't seem like much  of a change but it opens up some interesting mechanical options beyond just "who has the higher number" and adding or subtracting bonuses. First, you have a suit and a color in addition to a ranking and some effects can key off of one or more of those. Similarly, the two jokers trigger certain effects as well. Also, things that impact a character's speed or capability in an action situation can be reflected in having them draw more or fewer cards, having them choose the higher or lower card, or letting them use multiple cards in a single round. Some people might look at the cards as just a quirky difference of the system but they can be a lot more. 

• D&D 4th edition - Taunt mechanics! There were powers in the game that inflicted penalties or even damage on a target if it attacked anyone other than you! This is a surprisingly powerful thing and really does open up the option for a "tank" type character approach.
  
  Next, certain classes had the ability to lock down enemy movement as a built-in capability. When you can stop an enemy from moving on their own turn it opens up a lot of tactical options. This also added to the "tank" concept described above and seriously increased the importance of the "Attack of Opportunity" by inflicting a consequence other than straight damage. I miss this ability in other games, from Pathfinder to 5th Edition.
  
  Finally, the entire concept of forced movement of other characters: Many powers in 4E involve moving another character away from another (a "push"), or pulling them towards another (a "pull"), or moving them at the acting player's discretion (a "slide") and it really changes up combat from a relatively simple exchange of damage to a far more dynamic affair.  A pull could represent anything from an insult that strikes home and enrages the target into charging the taunter to a magical tractor beam to an entangling tentacle. A push might be anything from a magical force effect to a mighty punch. Superhero games tend to have some kind of knockback mechanic, but the only game that even comes close to accommodating some of these kinds effects is Champions, and even then it typically happens only on a character's acting turn, not as an interruption or a reaction on another character's turn.
  
  All of these innovations made a combat round in 4E far different than any other RPG combat round I have played. Just because it's "your" turn doesn't mean you're the only one that will be doing something. It's a full-table interactive process and it is a blast when running at full speed. It does mean that combat takes a while sometimes, but people have had the same complaint about Champions for years and you know what - it's worth it! If you want "crunchy" combat, where every move matters, this is a great system.

• Marvel Heroic Roleplaying - a radically different approach in mechanics for ... everything - especially when it comes to a superhero game and the way those have been traditionally handled. There's a little bit of other games from Fate to Savage Worlds but the system as a whole is not like anything else out there. One description was that it's an exercise in justification and building dice pools, so it rewards both understanding a character and a player's ability to think on their feet. On top of the innovative approach, it manages to balance Hulk and Hawkeye to where both can contribute equally well to a team, something that is tough to do in a lot of other games. Plus, it a) works in actual play and b) is a lot of fun in actual play and c) requires very little book-lookup, another strongly favorable aspect of these mechanics, especially for a superhero game. 

• D&D 5th Edition - Advantage/Disadvantage. Such a simple concept! Such a simple mechanic! Now everyone can be a 4th Edition Avenger! One of my players ran an Avenger in 4th edition so I have seen the power of "roll twice take the highest" when applied on a large scale and it is great. It can wipe out a large number of modifiers - instead of a bonus or penalty for certain actions or circumstances you have advantage or disadvantage. It's a great example of innovation that improves a game in every way. 

RPGaDay - Day 24 - Favorite House Rule

Well if we go by the one we used the most it's probably "4d6 and drop the lowest" for rolling up D&D characters going back to sometime in the 80's.

Other than that we don't usually need a ton of house rules, at least not a codified set of them. Lord knows Pathfinder has enough rules already. Savage Worlds works pretty well as-written. M&M does too.

I've played around with some tweaks for ICONS here. It's the kind of game that inspires some mechanical exploration.

All of my rules-related posts are here so I'll just let that stand as the rest of my entry for this one.

RPGaDay - Day 23 - Perfect Game for You

Ha Ha - no ...

I don't think there is a perfect game out there and in a way there doesn't need to be. in my experience games tend to be better when they specialize in a particular style or genre or level of complication. There's no reason to limit yourself to one game or even one system.

Also a "no"

• For example, I love the Hero System, especially for supers and I like it a lot for fantasy as well. I tried playing "Western hero" once and it was terrible - it just did not emphasize things I wanted from a western game. The system is great for a lot of other things though.

• I see people trying to turn old school D&D into various genres and most of them are just not my cup of tea, I played a ton of D&D/AD&D and had a lot of fun but there's no way I'd be looking to adapt it to some of the stuff I see coming out. Why not use a system built and tuned specifically for that type of game?

• The whole d20 thing has proven more versatile than I ever expected. From Pathfinder to Mutants and Masterminds (as my main current uses of it) it's amazing to me that those grew out of the same set of mechanics. Spycraft was another one that had an interesting approach and made me actually consider using these mechanics for a genre I never would have considered before. As much as I like it though, I don't always want levels and rounds and some of the mechanical heft that d20 brings.

I love the wide range of games we're seeing now, from simple PDFs to 500 page full color hardbacks on every subject and setting you can think of and so widely differing in mechanical approach you might wonder if they're even  in the same hobby.

All that said if I had to narrow it down to one game it would probably be some yet-to-be-distilled combination of Hero for flexibility and Savage Worlds for play-ability.  I'm not sure what it would look like but if I'm using existing games as a guide that's where I would start.

RPGaDay - Day 22 - Perfect Gaming Environment

I'm a little fuzzy on this one so I'll keep it simple:

• My house
• In the game room
• Around a table
• With friends

...and that's really it. How much more do you need? I've played outdoors -at a picnic table or around a pool or in a tent. I've played in different arrangements indoors - no table, multiple tables  - and we're all pretty comfortable with our "standard deployment" now. 

RPGaDay - Day 21 - Favorite RPG Setting

Wow, so many to choose from when it comes to game settings. I've spent a lot of time over the years in Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, the Third Imperium, Gamma Terra, Federation Space, and Golarion. I have various settings I have created myself as well but posting that I like my own setting best doesn't really tell anyone else a whole lot so I'll keep to published settings for this one.

It's hard to choose a favorite - they all tend to do something well. Can I say I've had more fun in Greyhawk than the Realms? One I tended to run and one I tended to play so I'm not sure that even makes sense.

The Big One:

If I focus on the last couple of years I'll say "Golarion", the Pathfinder campaign setting. I've been running and playing in it and it's good - really good. Made by some former Greyhawk proponents and by a team that was clearly making a world to be used in a game it strikes a really nice balance of information without over-detailing and history without overflowing with legendary NPCs. It's a very game-able world and I like it a lot. Reading through the main book there were a lot of areas where I said "I'd like to explore that" or "I'd like to run a game there" and that's really what I want from a game setting.

Runner Up: 

For Supers I like Freedom City. It has a similar level of interesting details without overwhelming, and a decent level of history and other supers without going completely over the top, It's another setting built to be used specifically for an RPG and one that works very well. I'd consider using it with a completely different system and that should indicate just how much  I like it. I almost used it for Necessary Evil the last time, and I've looked at it for ICONS too.



Honorable Mention:

Shadowrun has a really interesting setting, one that never bored me. It also includes more Native American cultural influences than most RPG's, alongside more Japanese influences than you will find in most RPGs, along with the dragons and cyberware too.  It's more than just a mish-mash of game concepts like "cyberpunk meets fantasy" - there's a world in there that's pretty interesting on its own. I'm talking about more than just Seattle too - the whole world has been given some interesting twists over the years and I would happily spend more time there.

RPGaDay - Day 20 - Favorite Horror RPG

I should probably just pass on this one as I'm not a big fan of Horror RPG's. I played Call of Cthulu a couple of times and it just wasn't for me. Chill looked like it might be more fun but I never found anyone locally who ran or played it.

The closest thing I've ever seen to what I think horror RPGs are going for is when running or playing old school D&D and the party runs into level-draining undead. That's where fear becomes evident on the players faces and the mighty player characters begin running around like startled rabbits.

Other than that I don't see "horror" as a genre I'm interested in pursuing as a campaign of it's own. Using it as an occasional element in some other kind of campaign - sure. I've seen various "weird" D&D adventures, I've seen attempts at horror in some supers games, and I've seen a horror adventure for Traveller set on a ship in jump space where it seems like something is trying to get into the ship - that one was actually pretty decent. But as a dedicated campaign? Not for me.

Poison was also known to have a similar effect to level drain at times.

The closest thing to this kind of campaign I could embrace is a zombie apocalypse game. It's really more of a fusion of horror and post-apocalyptic so it's probably not "pure" horror but I could definitely play or run a zombie game. Overdone or not it, it's a popular genre and I still think there's plenty of fun to be had there.

What, I have to pick a game? Fine:

This version is for Savage Worlds but regardless of system I love the way it begins and the first several chapters. I've only read so far into it but I do like the part I have read. One of these days ...

RPGaDay - Day 19 - Favorite Supers RPG

Now the opposite problem from yesterday's post - I have most of the supers type RPG's published over the last 30+ years and I have run or played almost all of them at some point. There are so many of them now and in my opinion most of them have some quality that makes them interesting or worthy of some attention.

• First Supers Game: Champions
• Different and Cool: Marvel Super Heroes
• Overlooked Gem of the 80's: DC Heroes
• Cool but never as excited about it as some other people were: Villains and Vigilantes
• If only we had known what was to come: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

That pretty much covers the 80's. The only other superhero game of note I can recall then was Superworld and I never met anyone who played it.

In the 90's I mainly stayed with Champions as Marvel petered out and DC never took off with my group. 

The with the turn of the millennium a new age of superhero games just exploded: Mutants and Masterminds, Silver Age Sentinels, BASH, Hero 5th edition, Necessary Evil, and even Heroes Unlimited's third wind. Later we got a new Marvel game, a new DC game, ICONS, Supers, and a bunch of others, at least partially related to the acceptance of PDFs as valid game books.

I've run a lot of these newer wave games over the last 5 years, and some of the older ones too. I can find something to like about almost all of them. In the 80's we pretty much had the "Big 3" of Champions, Marvel, and DC and that was fine but now it is just amazing. Much like the golden age of superhero movies we are seeing, we are in a golden age of superhero RPG's as well. 

So there are tons of them and they're mostly good. How about a favorite? Once again, it depends ...

• If I'm just looking to run a one-off game with superheroes, especially with less-experienced players or with a tight time constraint I'm going with ICONS. Its easily learned, it plays fast, and we've always had a good time with it.

• If I'm starting a campaign with an experienced, older crew I'd love to start them up with a full-on Champions campaign. Tremendous detail, the absolute most flexibility with characters, vehicles, bases, and really ... everything. It's a great system that I have been away from too long. 

• Overall though, the best middle ground between simplicity, flexibility, and supporting a full campaign is Mutants and Masterminds. It's well-supported but not ridiculously so. There is some mechanical complexity but less than Hero system. It strikes a nice balance of crunch and speed of play that works really well for us and so it is the "main" game when it comes to supers for me.