Not What I Wanted, But It'll Have To Do

Of course, once I am home from the con, it's time for me to tell you all about the cool stuff I bought. Unfortunately, I didn't buy very much cool stuff this year. The main reason for this was a lack of core product for sale.

For example: One item that was really big this year was the Dracula Dossier, a supplement for Night's Black Agents, a game of spies versus vampires. But there were no copies of NBA to be had. After listening to Ken and Robin plug this thing all to heck on their podcast, I was looking forward to closing that gap in my collection and adding on the new hotness in one fell swoop. But it was not to be.

Supplements tend to be a tough sell with me. I either have to be running the game or sufficiently impressed with the game just by reading it to throw more money that direction. I also enjoy checking out new ideas in gaming rather than dwelling too much on the same thing.

Buying supplements also makes me feel like I'm doing a disservice to you, my dear reader. I know not all of you are tabletop gamers. Recommending a supplement to people who haven't bought the core system is like recommending DLC for a video game that other people might not have. But it seems to be what we have to work with this year.

Rifts: 3 Rifts books (and one Rifter magazine) made it into the collection this year. South America 1 and 2 written by  C.J. Carella, the one Rifts writer I've found that doesn't suck. Other Rifts fans may disagree with me, but I think his overall body of work outside of Rifts is pretty impressive and his work within the Rifts universe maintains that standard.

Men in Black: One of only 2 core rulebooks I picked up this year. It was released to tie in with the first film, so it's a pretty slim volume. It was published by West End Games using a version of their D6 System. Needless to say, I bought this one used from the Buyers Bazaar.

Doctor Who: Having picked up the Fourth Doctor sourcebook last year, I thought I would pick up some more Doctor Who supplements. So this year I got the sourcebooks for the Second and Third Doctors. The Third Doctor is pretty much my favorite Doctor, though mostly for his supporting cast rather than the specific virtues of Jon Pertwee. His era featured my favorite Master as well as my favorite companion, Sergeant Benton.

These books are something of an exception to my rule of not recommending supplements. If you are a fan of classic Doctor Who, you will find something to like in these books.

DC Universe: Another vintage buy from West End Games. I've owned the core book for some time, but this year adds the Metropolis and JLA Sourcebooks to my collection. Most of the content of these books are character write-ups with game statistics. There are interesting bits of history and setting details buried in there as well.

Licensed superhero RPGs seem to rely fairly heavily on the existing characters of the franchise. Which really sets them apart from nearly every other RPG out there. There might be a blog post in there somewhere, but for now, it's just an interesting observation.

Inner Sea Races: The wife's pick this year. I don't mean to imply that she only buys one book a year. She makes a number of game buying decisions over the course of the year. DunDraCon is just much more of a vacation and chance to play for her. Inner Sea Races is primarily a "fluff" supplement detailing racial and ethnic groups in the Inner Sea region of Golarion, the default setting for the Pathfinder RPG.

Golden Sky Stories: This is a game from Japan, translated into English and the second and last core rulebook I bought this year. It calls itself "Heartwarming Roleplaying." The characters you will create are henge, animals with magical powers, including the ability to transform into a human. The system doesn't use dice to resolve tasks, but instead gives you points to spend on your actions. These are Feelings (for mundane actions) and Wonder (to use a henge's magical abilities).

You are rewarded for helping humans with Threads and Connections to help you on later adventures. Every now and again, I'm tempted to add a more complex relationship system into AiO. But I think that exploration and discovery are major themes of the stories, so a mechanical bribe to stay in one place doesn't seem right. But for this game, it seems to work fine.

The animated films My Neighbor Totoro and Pom Poko are good inspirational material if you are going to run or play Golden Sky Stories.

Munchkin Adventure Time: Without as many RPGs to buy, I picked up a few card games. This version of Munchkin features not only monsters from the land of Ooo, but also gives you the opportunity to play as your favorite Adventure Time heroes (or their cross gender fan fiction counterparts).

The Dungeon Crawl expansion offers another new card type: Dungeon cards. These offer neat bonuses and penalties based on locations.

Fluxx: I had previously purchased the Oz version, so I decided to pick up the Zombie and Cthulhu versions of the game. The main twist here is that both of these games feature "Ungoals," which work just like Goal cards, but if their conditions are met, the bad guys win and everybody loses. However, there are also cards you can play in order to "switch sides," making a victory for the bad guys a victory for you, too.

Deck of Fate: An accessory for Fate Core. If you can't get your hands on those funky FUDGE  dice, this is an interesting alternative. The main deck can be used to simulate a roll of the dice and each card also contains a small bit of description related to how high or low you "rolled." There are 2 additional "arcana," mini-sets which are supposed to be inspirational, but I don't see much use for them at this point. Maybe when I get around to running Fate.

And yes, that is another Noteboard on the top of the stack.

 Just because my wife doesn't buy a lot of games at DDC doesn't mean she doesn't spend money. There was a nerd crafts booth, where my wife got me this: a wooden medallion with my name written in Gallifreyan burned into it.

And a new addition to my collection of Star Trek nerd shirts.

RPGaDay #27 Game You'd Like To See A New/Improved Edition Of

Not many of those at the moment. Most games on my shelf are either actively supported, or niche enough that they work well enough for their niche and don't need much revising.

A couple of exceptions do exist however.

Star Trek. I would love to see an actively supported Star Trek RPG. I don't know that I'll get it though. The current film franchise is likely to be the dominant paradigm, and that has me somewhat less enthused.

Palladium. Back in the early 80's Palladium Books was an innovator in RPG design. But then the 90's came along and Palladium developed a mega-hit in their Rifts game. The problem with that is they've been milking that mega-hit pretty much ever since. Their other game lines got revised editions simply to make them more compatible with Rifts.

While the mechanics may have been awesome in the 80's and acceptable in the 90's, they're pretty atrocious by modern standards. While they may have beaten D&D to the punch with ascending Armor Class, there are other AD&D tropes that they have stubbornly adhered to. Like different experience tables for each class, and strict skill progressions. And lets not get into comparisons with non-D&D-based systems.

DDC 2014 Reviews

Fate Core: Despite all the hullaballoo surrounding the Kickstarter for this project, this was my first real opportunity to pick up this material. (I know the PDFs are PWYW, but I'm a lover of physical products whenever possible.) Fate Core is a clear step above previous Fate games I own; It's refined and flexible and robust. I haven't been able to give the System Toolkit a full grok, but it looks pretty powerful on the surface.

And that slim little volume on the top of the stack is Fate Accelerated Edition, which should not be judged on the basis of its size. It is not a stripped down version of Fate, a playable teaser to get you to buy the big book. It is a neat little game in its own right that can support campaigns as easily as one-shots.

Isle of the Unknown: This one was my wife's pick. Intended for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess retro-clone, it's pitched as a setting, but doesn't have a lot of things that would make it a setting. There are those who regard this as a feature, but I don't see it. It's pretty much just a big list of weird things. It might have been more effectively packaged as "exotic & weird random encounter table/s".

Torchbearer: Another fantasy game from the Burning Wheel gang, this one feels like a mid-point between the crunch-heavy, Tolkein-flavor-filled Burning Wheel and the really very light and approachable Mouse Guard RPG. It incorporates classes and levels very loosely, but neither really seeps into gameplay.

GURPS Fantasy II: One of Robin Law's first published works. This has been on my list of GURPS books that I really want, but didn't have for a very long time. It doesn't have many of the traditional fantasy touchstones that the main GURPS Fantasy setting (Yrth) has. It doesn't really have any of them, actually.

In the Mad Lands, magic is chaotic and distrusted. The worship of gods is suspect, because the only gods in the setting are more or less Chthonic Elder Gods (who just happen to be inspired by Winnie the Pooh and his friends). And the monsters are not random magical mutations of known animals, but people who have fallen to terrible fates. The primary focus of a Madlands campaign is survival in a world that is out to kill you.

GURPS Ice Age: Another GURPS classic. A sourcebook for playing in the eras that Creationists insist never happened. Or maybe it's the era that Creationists insist happened, with all of the early species co-existing all at once. There are even stats for a few dinosaurs, so you can run it that way if you want.

Rifts: Picked up a couple of Rifters this year. I find them rather interesting because of how much material is contributed by fans. The Rifts Sourcebook and Conversion Books were from early in the line, so they give me a good view of what early Rifts was like, before things got totally gonzo.

Ninjas & Superspies: It's a mess, but it's a clearly an enthusiastic mess. Mystic martial arts, spy gadgets & vehicles all in one crazy book.

Not pictured

Mutant City Blues: Now for what Robin Laws has been up to lately. One of the hottest things in recent years is the GUMSHOE System, which is intended for use in mystery/investigation RPGs. The primary conceit of the system is that information gathering does not require dice rolls while still letting other things get dicey. While the second edition of the first GUMSHOE game, The Esoterrorists, was on a couple of shelves, the one that grabbed my interested was Mutant City Blues. The game is intended to emulate cop drama shoes in a world where super powers exist.

The key to making this premise workable is the Quade Diagram, which lays out all of the superpowers available in the setting in relation to each other. So if you've got a crime committed by the use of one power, you don't need to know zoology to know what animal powers your suspect has or high end physics to figure out the limits of someone with energy blasts or whatever.

Even the cops get superpowers. The whole "costumed vigilante" thing got discredited fairly quickly early in the super era of the setting, with several notable incidents involving un-expert civilians being allowed into crime scenes and hot situations and flubbing them totally and tragically. So super heroes have been relegated back to the comics, though some comics companies will license the likeness and abilities of "real" superheroes, who mostly do PSAs and mall openings. If you have powers and want to fight crime, you become a cop.

This Year's Haul

As is my usual tradition, I'll be sharing my DunDraCon haul with you in this post. I do this for a couple of reasons. First of all, it gives me an opportunity to geek out (and who doesn't love an opportunity to geek out?). Also, since not all of my fans are gamers, I like to show them some of the options out there.

Starting from the top of the pile, we have:

Dungeon World:  This game uses the rules of another game (in this case Apocalypse World) and rebuilds them into a D&D style game. It's a pretty thick book that I haven't gotten entirely through, but the system works on the basis of "moves." Some moves are unique to a character, like a skill or power, but other moves can be made by anyone, and the GM even has moves. While it looks like a potentially fun fantasy game, I have a hard time seeing it handle the good ol' player vs. environment, dungeon crawling playstyle of old-school D&D.

Monsterhearts (not pictured): This game also uses the Apocalypse World engine. Since it's a smaller game with fewer moves, it's somewhat easier to grok. It aims to model the supernatural horror/teen drama genre made popular by shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and True Blood. As it encompasses sex and violence as well as angst, you might want to be careful who you play this with.

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: The latest licensed game from Margaret Weis Productions. It uses a modified version of the Cortex+ system originally developed for their Smallville game, then modified even further for more action-oriented drama. Like most Marvel RPGs I've seen, they presume that you will be playing an existing Marvel character. This book provides a modest set of these, as well as tips for assigning stats and powers for existing characters. There is also a free download of random tables for creating original characters. (There are currently no rules for "point-based" or designed characters, but there's nothing stopping you from simply choosing on the random tables rather than rolling.)

Arduin Eternal: This one was actually something my wife bought. Many years ago, we found the two-volume Compleat Arduin set at a used bookstore. I thought it was a neat, if slightly kludgy system, but my wife fell in love with the plethora of exotic races. When she saw that there was a new, updated edition of the system, she did an impressive impersonation of Igor from the Dork Tower comic strip (catchphrase "IT MUST BE MINE!"). It looks much cleaner than the Compleat Arduin, though I have not yet looked to see if the critical hit charts still include the possibility of losing a buttock. (Yes, I just typed "losing a buttock." Meaning the character will sit lopsided for the rest of their days.)

Five Nations: A setting sourcebook for D&D's Eberron setting.

Stormwrack: A D&D environment sourcebook giving campaign options and adventure tips when sailing the seven seas (or however many seas there are in any given fantasy world).

Pathfinder Core Rulebook: Actually, we already have one of these. And all the other hardcover books that Paizo has published. But having an extra copy is always nice. That way, it takes two people looking up rules for all of the books to be taken up rather than just one.

Amazing Adventures: This is a pulp-style RPG using the SIEGE Engine, the same rules that power the Castles & Crusades fantasy RPG. Although it is a fun read and looks like it would be fun to play, I have a a hard time grasping the idea of a "level 1 pulp hero." When I think of pulp heroes, I think of people who are already at the top of their game.

Rifter #10: Due to a number of issues with Palladium's business practices, I prefer to buy their books on the secondary market. That is, used. In previous years, the Buyer's Bazaar has offered a decent selection, but this year, I only found one Palladium product. On the up side, the GM advice from Hugh King is worth its weight in gold for any Rifts GM.

Don't Rest Your Head (not pictured): A very surreal game about insomniacs who find themselves in the Mad City, a place of Neil Gaiman-esque nightmares.

Munchkin Deluxe: I already had Munchkin, but this was just too cool to pass up. The set includes not just the cards and die (just one die) from the original game, but a playboard with a very cool dungeon-style level tracker and Munchkin shaped pawns, more cards, color illustrations on all the cards, and two-sided cards for tracking a player's gender (which can change at the drop of a hat in this game).

Don't Stop Now!

Now that Adventures in Oz is in the hands of other people (editing, layout and such), I am recalling a bit of writing advice I picked up some time ago: Don't stop writing. Especially with my realistic (read cynical) outlook on life, I should not expect to be resting on my laurels with only one product to my name.

But what's next? After a little thought, I've come up with a few ideas. In no particular order, they are:

Real Raw Wrestling: This was proposed to me some time ago and the idea is interesting. Especially since most wrestling RPGs that I've heard of rely on hit point attrition rather than modeling how wrestlers actually fight. As you can tell by my work on Oz, working out alternate combat systems is a fun challenge for me.

Better Than Rifts: For those of you unfamiliar with Rifts, it is a monster of an RPG. The rules themselves are crude, artifacts of an earlier time that haven't been updated in almost 20 years. But the setting itself is a wonderful, anything-goes madhouse. My goal here would be to create a rules system that can handle all of the gonzo joy of Rifts (the original rules really didn't do that good of a job) while actually appealing to the modern gamer.

Adventures in Oz: Adventure Supplement #1: This would be a book full of scenarios for an AiO Narrator who may not have the time to develop a fully fleshed scenario on their own or just needs a little kick to the imagination.

Adventures in Oz: Beyond the Deadly Desert: This would be a setting supplement for AiO. In the main book, I focus primarily on the land of Oz itself. This one would focus on the other lands of the Nonestic continent, such as Ev, Mo, The Nome Kingdom and others.

What do you guys think? Take the poll!