The 7 Games You've Run the Most

This article over at Gnome Stew got me to thinking about this, and I thought it was interesting enough to do myself. Anyone who has been reading the blog for any length of time can probably figure out most of them but I wanted to go through it myself and see if there were any surprises. I did the played yesterday so today is "DM'd"

The 7 Games I've Run the Most: 

1 - D&D 3rd Edition - There's no doubt about this one. I started running it in late 2000 and barring a few short gaps over the years I ran it almost continuously until the end of 2009. It's easily my longest urn as a DM and the greatest number of hours spent on any one game. It was during this time that I shifted into being pretty much a full-time DM, playing a lot less than I had in the past. Most of his was one large group that stayed together for the entire time. Settings included Greyhawk (return to the Temple of Elemental Evil), Kalamar (various published adventures), and the Scarred Lands (lots of Necromancer Games and Goodman Games adventures) as interests came and went and various TPK's occurred. It was a good long run and it's been long enough now that I could probably enjoy running it again.

2 - D&D 4th Edition - The most recent edition didn't get rolling until late 2009 for me as I initially disliked it a lot. Once it got going though, I've been running it for most of the last 3 years with a few gaps here and there for two different groups. I really like it but I and skeptical that it will dethrone the one above as the all-time most-run. I've talked about these on the blog but I've been doing a lot of conversions of older material to the new game and it's been a lot of fun.

3 - Rifts - Yeah, this surprised me a bit too. I've run about 2 years worth of Rifts, most of it in one 18-month campaign back in the 90's. Somewhere between "Masochist" and "Most awesome DM ever" lies the guy who says "I'll run Rifts" and sticks with it for more than a year. That was me. Not sure I would do it again but you never know. This is all homebrew stuff,  and the majority centered around a quest across a ruined America.

4 - AD&D 2nd Edition - I ran some of this but I played more. Most of my game was set in Greyhawk, partly because I like it and partly to distinguish it from my friend's Realms campaign. We spent a lot of time around the Nyr Dyv moving between the City of Greyhawk and Dyvers, from capturing a dragon to intervening in a gang war. This covered about 2 years of sessions, though somewhat spread out.

5 - Shadowrun - Including 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Edition I have run multiple short campaigns since the game came out, the longest lasting about 6 months. These were always set in Seattle to take advantage of the numerous resources published for that city. I ran a few published adventure, I think DNA/DOA was the first thing I ran in the game after Food Fight, and it's always been fun. I'm not sure I'm in much of cyberpunk mood these days but lord knows I have enough material for it. 

6 - Star Wars (d20) - one several month campaign, one short follow-up, then a couple of short Saga edition games and that's all I've run for Star Wars, but some of the moments were pretty memorable. I've detailed most of them on the blog.

7 - Savage Worlds - I've only run a few different games in this system but I think it still adds up to more time than some of my other candidates. Most of it was Necessary Evil, but I've done some Deadlands and some 50 Fathoms as well. 

After this we get into a lot of games where I've run one medium-length campaign or a few short runs over the years: Fantasy Hero, Champions, Deadlands, Deadlands HOE, AD&D, B/X D&D, Traveller, Warhammer, FRP, Babylon 5, Twilight 2000, Dark Conspiracy, and probably others I am forgetting.  As I noted yesterday, this batch is even more evidence that there is always a D&D game, and then there are the other games. Fortunately I now get to run more stuff than I used to. Having a captive audience helps.

ICONS and M&M are the two candidates likely to overtake the lower elements of this list. Icons I've only had ICONS for about a year and a half and though we've played it quite a bit the sessions tend to be shorter than other games. M&M has only recently become part of the rotation but I expect we will play more of it over the next year too. I'm happy that the top items in this list are the thing I run now and the thing I ran before what I run now, with some newer stuff moving into the lower ranks. I think that's a pretty good mix.

The 7 Games You've Played the Most

This article over at Gnome Stew got me to thinking about this, and I thought it was interesting enough to do myself. Anyone who has been reading the blog for any length of time can probably figure out most of them but I wanted to go through it myself and see if there were any surprises. I'll do the "played" today and the "GM'd" tomorrow.

The 7 Games I've Played the Most: (this assumes "DMing" doesn't count as "playing")

1 - AD&D  - I spent a LOT of time on this one, getting my DMG about 1980 and the rest of the books  the next year and a regular set playing group the year after that - one that stuck around for decades. This was THE game for me in the 80's, all others were secondary, and I obsessed over it like nothing since.

2 -AD&D Second Edition - Yeah this kind of surprised me, but we had a full 11 year run on this as we started the day it came out in 1989 and played it regularly until the 3rd edition launch in 2000. The center of this time was a nice long ongoing campaign set in the Forgotten Realms that a friend of mine ran pretty much this entire run, which was basically "the 90's".

3 - Gamma World  - I'm cheating a bit by lumping all editions together here but it was really one ongoing campaign that started in 2nd edition with one set of characters about 1983 and continued through 3rd edition (convert and move on!) and 4th edition into the 1990's. Run by the same friend, this was set from the ruins of Louisiana up to the Great Lakes over the years.Part D&D, part Western, part Superheroes, we had a lot of fun with this game.

4 - D&D 3rd Edition - I'm going by hours here, as over the years I played this quite a bit but never in a good long sustained campaign. Added up it's probably the fourth most-played game but it tended to be in very small chunks here and there. The biggest problem here is that I was running so much I didn't have time to play 

5 - Mechwarrior - I am again lumping all editions together here. This game came out in 1986 and we jumped on it immediately, having a fondness for the giant robot war story campaign that never really went away. Again, a friend of mine ran it, and a group of about 4 of us played it in sustained bursts for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions, through the original succession wars, and into the clan invasion. We painted the mini's, read the novels, and waged war on a planetary scale at times. Most of our Battletech games were tied in to our Mechwarrior campaign, wherever it happened to be at the time. It's a whole different way to play the game as having to consider "what happens next" gives one a different perspective on combat, from character fates to repairs, to transportation - it was a lot of fun.

6 - Twilight 2000 - I was pulled into a campaign of this in the late 80's run by one friend and it became a regular part of the rotation with another friend running campaigns of it as well. It's a fairly realistic game - there are no magical healers, radiation kills you instead of granting superpowers, and there are no giant robots, zombies, ninjas, or wizards.It's just a group of relatively normal humans trying to make their way in a broken world. Overcoming those challenges makes for a fun game though not  everyone likes that kind of thing. We played 1st edition, 2nd edition, 2.2 all back forth from about 1987 into the 90's and even had a short run of 1st edition just a few years ago.

7 - Star Trek - Fasa edition. Besides the various D&D's this is the only entry that covers only one edition of a game but it was a lot of fun. Creating a single character and running him over most of a decade (on and off) is something I have not done before or since. There have been other Trek games but this is the only one I experienced as a player.

After this we get into a long tail of Traveller, Boot Hill, Marvel Super Heroes, Champions, Shadowrun, Warhammer FRP, Rifts, Gurps, B/X D&D, Star Wars, 4E D&D etc. I've played a lot of games but the ones listed above form the core of my playing experience. One thing should be clear from the above: There is always a D&D game, then are the side games or temporary diversions. I don;t expect that will change anytime soon.

Overreaction Tuesday

• There's a little EN World retrospective here with some comments from both the originator and the current keeper of the site. I remember finding it in 1999 and soaking up every tidbit of information on the coming edition. That makes it about the same age as one of my kids, which simultaneously feels like a long time ago and yesterday.

• State of the Mongoose for 2012 - I really like these articles as they are straight from the source - not a rumor, not a press release, but a status report from the guy running the company. Mongoose has had its ups and downs but as a fan of Traveller and Victory at Sea I'm glad to see things are going alright. He does mention that the RPG print market ain't great. I don't think that's a surprise to most of us but it's somewhat sobering to hear from a guy with real skin in the game.

•  New D&D Playtest packet is out. Might have to give this one a chance over the break.

• New article on D&D: Moving Target Edition specifically covering Prestige Classes and stating basically the same goals for them that 3E originally stated for them, which lasted until about the first supplement, if that long. As stated, I like the concept - but I liked it in 2000 too and I saw where it went and didn't like that much at all. Maybe it will be different Next time  - but that's a tall order. As long as I get my Frenzied Berserker then I will give them a chance ...

• Obligatory national article on D&D coinciding with The Hobbit. Sure, I expect D&D to go mainstream any day now. 

• And if you missed it here is the Paizo 2011 retrospective. The main item of interest for me was the tale of the Beginner Box. I think it's a big deal and I liked reading the backstory on how it came about.

A Superhero Nugget

City of Heroes Nugget: Titan Networks has published a means to unlock the CoH character creator - YES! Check it out here.

Motivational Monday

Easy Saturday Scattershooting

• I may have written more at Barking Alien's blog this week than I did on my own. He has some good stuff on sandbox vs. story vs. both so check it out here.

• Nothing directly to do with gaming but big stuff for Lady Blacksteel and I on TV recently has been Mad Men, Walking Dead, and Boardwalk Empire. we finally caught all of Season 5 for Mad Men last month, we caught up on Walking Dead in time for the "midseason finale", and watched Boardwalk in real time, which ended a week or two ago ... and it feels like I'm out of TV now! There's nothing I feel compelled to watch on Netflix or DVR. We try to always have a show we watch together and right now we really don't.

• Paizo is working on a Pathfinder Megadungeon and the writing line-up looks pretty strong. It's certainly another reason to consider putting a little bit into the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter. Have to think about that one.

Hobbit Friday

Beyond Sinbad movies, Robin Hood & Three Musketeers movies, Greek and Norse myths, and various fairy tales, the animated Hobbit is what got me really fired up about fantasy in general. After I saw it, and found out there was a longer sequel in the works, I sought out the books (all 4 of them) and acquired them thanks to an encouraging aunt of mine and that was pretty much what started the whole thing. It was the spark that lit the smoldering mass into a full-on flame. For years afterwards I read the whole thing over again every year. Within a few more years I had discovered D&D, then later Conan and Fafhrd and the Mouser and Sanctuary and a whole bunch of other books and games and all those same bad movies we all watched back then. It also led to Warhammer and that whole miniatures addiction thing that takes up an interesting amount of space around the house to this day. A few years ago I discovered it all over again when I started reading it to my kids as a bedtime story, one chapter per night.

What makes it so good? Enough has been written that I'll keep it short: For me it starts with a low key hero (no special bloodline, prophecy, power, or skill) who is dragged into an adventure where it seems like everyone else knows more about what's going on than he does, which is not a bad metaphor for several stages of life in my experience. Once in this situation, while he doesn't seek danger he doesn't automatically run from it either. Instead he deals with it as it comes, to the best of his abilities, and in the end he makes it through with some new friends and some good stories to tell - who doesn't want that?

As far as movies go, while I'm sure some hate it, the animated version all over this post pretty much defined the look of a lot of fantasy creatures for me. From Gandalf, to the dwarves, to those goblins (!) and Smaug, I still find myself picturing things in this style from time to time even now. It's very distinct and one that's never left my head or been totally overwritten. I had the animated movie eventually but before that I had the book & cassette and saw the filmstrip - remember those, kids?- in school more than once. So it was around a lot.

 I'm sure the new movie will be good, and it will be a nice way to introduce people to the book with a modern look. I loved the LOTR movies and trust Peter Jackson to handle it well. I am concerned about the decision to make it into 3 movies - even with the appendices and all I think that may be stretching the material a bit thin. We'll just have to see. I am looking forward to the big release today. I probably will see it later in the weekend but I will be there, ready for the latest version of a story I have been following for a long long time.

The Local D&D Update for December

• With Apprentice Red getting his first job this week* and being remarkably busy with theater and other school activities, the ToEE campaign has slowed way down. This is somewhat frustrating for Apprentice Blaster - and for me too - but it's just how things work. If we're lucky we will get some time in during the holiday break but how much remains to be seen.

• In contrast the Impiltur campaign as been zooming onward with the speed of regular weekly sessions - yes "weekly", not "bi-weekly", or "monthly" or "hey when are we going to play again?" - This means we're up to around 16 sessions now and about halfway through the Red Hand of Doom. Everyone seems to be having a good time with it and hopefully that continues. Additionally, somewhat to my surprise, the players were wondering where their recaps had gone. I noted that they rarely read them, and were even less likely to comment on them, so I stopped doing them. Apparently at least some of them think it's a big deal, so look for some catch-up summaries on the Savage Swords of Impiltur campaign this month.

• Apprentice Who has inquired about playing more D&D, perhaps even wanting his own books, but that may be premature yet. I'm considering going back to Basic to keep the speed of play up, as Who hated 4E when he tried it but loved Basic when Apprentice Blaster ran it for him a while back. I'm hoping his renewed interest helps offset the loss of time with Red.

• I'm also considering giving Next another go as the alternative game for the Blaster-Who team when Red is not available. It seems like a reasonable compromise if I can convince Blaster to give it another try after rendering his verdict a few months ago.

• Apprentice Blaster prefers 4E and wants to continue the Temple campaign, but failing that he might be up for Basic. He's also been asking about giving 3rd Edition a try since he's looked at my wall of stuff for it and concluded it might be worth a look. If I can get a decent character generator up and running then he and Apprentice Who may be giving that one a try as well. I figure a few one-off sessions of various editions of D&D  should help us find a sweet spot. I may even work in a D&D-flavored Savage Worlds game, just to mix things up.

*His first day of his first job ever is working at a movie theater the day The Hobbit opens. I told him that at least he will have a nice little story to tell down the road.

Not So Recent Gaming Innovations: Presence Attack!

I could cite Champions for a lot of innovations: First effect-based system, first appearance of advantages/disadvantages, the concepts of Hunteds and Dependent NPC's, the separation of lethal and non-lethal damage as a core part of the game, and hey, the first point-based character generation system. Sure, those were all pretty important, but the one thing I think is overlooked and underrated is the Presence Attack.

What is a Presence Attack? Why it's simply a mechanical system for frightening, intimidating, charming, commanding, or otherwise imposing your will on an NPC without making an actual, physical* attack on them. Presence is a stat that all characters possess (it defaults to 10 for a normal human) and the mechanic is this: Roll 1d6 per 5 points of Presence, compare your total to the target's Presence, then based on how much your roll has exceeded their score various effects can happen, from losing an action as they hesitate to total surrender or obedience. There are situational modifiers - things like being outnumbered can lessen your chances while doing something impressive like bending a steel bar can improve them.

Yes, that's right - a game system known for number-crunching tactical combat has a system that allows a character to walk in a room and tell everyone "get out" - one that works, is fairly simple to resolve, but has rich options that reward player creativity in play - wow that sounds kind of modern! When was that published? 1981?!

I've seen this used in Champions of course, but I've also seen it work in Fantasy Hero, a sort of Rifts-Hero**, a Traveller Hero campaign, and a Mechwarrior Hero. It seems that if you give players a system for doing this kind of thing, at least some of them will try it out! Nothing makes a player feel like a badass more than having their character walk in to a room full of ninjas, say "Leave" and then watching as they do so, clearing the area for the big confrontation with the Overninja. No powers needed, no magic items needed, no special intimidate skill or feat needed - just the character's innate badassery.

There are those who claim this should be strictly a role-playing thing. I disagree. A mechanical framework for interpersonal interaction is not a straitjacket. Sometimes it's what makes certain things possible. I can tell you that without some kind of mechanical yardstick the scenario above would rarely happen in my games - I tend to play my ninjas as overconfident bad guys. I cannot tell you the lengths a player would have to go to in order to overawe a whole group of them like that. With the Presence Attack though, it's not just an arbitrary call by me - it's something a player can investigate, work towards, and invoke on their own initiative with a pretty good chance to evaluate when it's a good idea and when it is not - and those things are what make this system great.

Now I've tended to focus on the fear aspect of Presence Attacks but that is not the only option. There are other ways to use the system too ...

Yeah - that one doesn't come up as much when it's just the guys playing, but Lady Blacksteel has a tendency towards the lesser forms of mind control when it comes to her characters, which adds an interesting angle for the DM. Don't get me wrong, she likes to play badasses too, hers just have more of a curveball to them than most male characters.

Now the thing that is a little disappointing is that more games haven't included a mechanic like this one. D20 games often have some kind of Bluff mechanic, but what if it's not a bluff? What if you are that good? Some of them have an Intimidate skill as well and it can work in a similar way, but few have the non-fear aspect built in as well. Sure, they have Diplomacy or Streetwise, but those have a different flavor to them than having a 30 or 40 Presence would in Hero.

To sum up: More games should have something like this! In level based games it would be really easy to do - something like level + Charisma bonus + a Feat bonus if you take the "Presence" feat, roll that vs. the target's willpower equivalent and resolve. Other games would require a more specific solution but the concept works in almost any game, and almost every game would be better for it.

*or energy - Champions humor!

** It was harmless college experimentation, I swear!

Motivational Monday