RPGaDay #23 Coolest Looking RPG

This one's actually pretty easy. Castle Falkenstein.

While art and layout in RPG books have been continuing to improve over the years, it reached its peak in Castle Falkenstein. The original rulebook is a visual treat. The majority of the book is given over to the story of Tom Olam, who is something of an artist, that includes many drawings and painting supposedly done by him drawing from "life" in a fantastical realm. Every page, even those that are mostly text are clearly mean to be viewed as well as simply read.


While illustrations in modern gaming books are always improving, their inclusion is still just to break up the text. I can't think of any other game that has incorporated the illustrations so well and made them integral to the setting.

RPGaDay #22 Best Secondhand RPG Purchase

Secondhand games. The best friend of the gamer on a budget.

I already spent a post writing about my convention purchasing, which winds up including at least some secondhand vintage games every year. But there are some other things I could mention. Stuff I might not have gotten at a con that still felt like a score.

One item that we picked up in a local used bookstore was The Chronicles of Talislanta. Not strictly an RPG book, it's a travelogue describing the exotic lands of the continent of Talislanta. Although it would later get a full RPG treatment, and a reputation as the "Rasputin of RPGs" this book was the first description of the Talislanta setting. It is also what launched my wife's quest for all things Talislanta. There are a few things we still need, but the gap is closing every year. (Yes, I know I can get everything in PDF from Talislanta.com, but I'm a big believer in physical books and the joy of having a thing.)

We also bought the Compleat Arduin at that same book store. While based on David Hargrave's original material, it was revised and compiled by Mark Schynert some time after Hargrave's death. It wasn't until this last year that I realized that Mark Schynert was the same guy who did a lot of the organizing for DunDraCon and I had met him and corresponded with him via email in that capacity. He even ran an Arduin game at DDC this year, but my wife wound up missing out because of her newly discovered allergies.

There are times when I consider the Dream Park RPG to really be my first insight into gaming. Probably about the time I was shopping for the copy of GURPS Horror for the girl who became my wife (I told that story earlier this month), I also found a copy of the Dream Park RPG on the used shelf at the game store. Flipping through it, I wound up reading my first "What is an RPG?" section. And my mind kind of rebelled against the idea that an RPG could be such a simple thing at its core. I didn't buy it that day, but that memory stuck in my brain until I was finally able to find another copy at another used book store. It's been a part of my collection ever since.

RPGaDay #21 Favorite Licensed RPG

I've got a number of these on my shelf right now. I've got Star Wars and Star Trek. Superhero games licensed by Marvel and DC. Licensed games based on TV shows, like Red Dwarf, Battlestar Galactica, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Games based on book series, like the Dresden Files, GURPS Discworld, and Dream Park. I've even got RPGs that are licensed from other RPGs, with GURPS conversions of the old World of Darkness line, Castle Falkenstein, Deadlands and Blue Planet.

Although not technically licensed, I've even written my own RPG based on the Oz novels of L. Frank Baum. Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. The only Oz RPG mature enough to not feel the need to be so grown up.

Favorites?

I've been a Star Trek fan for as long as I can remember, so I've got nearly every Star Trek RPG (I've got all the major ones, but I hear there was an obscure one from the 70's that's probably impossible to find these days). My favorite Star Trek RPG would probably be the one from Last Unicorn Games published in the late 90's. The other games do specific parts of the setting better (The FASA RPG does bridge crew well, Prime Directive did "planet stories" in a way that made sense, and the Decipher game had strong starship combat mechanics), but I felt the LUG game line was most competent overall. Nothing really outstanding, but there was no point that I felt they dropped the ball.

Among the non-Star Trek games, my vote has to go to the Dresden Files RPG. I've been a big fan of the book series for some time, and it really shows that this game was created by fans as well. I've read some complaints about the in-character footnotes in the book, but I thought they were a clever way to let Harry Dresden's character come through in the book without making the book specifically about him.

RPGaDay #20 Will Still Play in 20 Years Time

This one's a toughie.

It's always hard to make 20-year predictions. or even 5- or 10-year predictions. I'm going to start by assuming that my interest in gaming will not have diminished over the next 20 years. I will also assume that my financial situation will have improved so that I can buy more of the games I want and I can go to more cons. Maybe have kids that I can introduce to gaming, but that depends on having the financial ability to support them and convincing my wife.


My overall hope for my gaming career is to branch out and try new things. So what games will I be playing in 20 years? With any luck, games that are less than 20 years old.

RPGaDay#19 Favorite Published Adventure

Overall, I have little use for published adventures. When I was just starting out, I really leaned on them. The fact that I had purchased adventures was what originally positioned me as DM for whatever friends wanted to play D&D. When I started running other games, one of my first criteria was that it be something that I had adventures for.

The first time I tried writing my own script was for Exalted. Technically, there was a book of adventures for Exalted, but it was really very loosely written and hard to use. Especially when compared to the more detailed adventures that had been written for other games. So even though it was my reason for putting Exalted on my list of games to run, I wound up not using it at all. The amazing thing, at least to my mind, is that my players had a good time using the material that I had written.

I still use published adventures for D&D games. Plots and such come fairly easy to me and D&D, with its rules for encounter balancing and treasure placement, feels like more baggage and work than any other system requires of me when writing an adventure. Combined with the ready availability of adventures for that system in its various incarnations, it is far easier to use a published adventure than to write my own.

But in terms of picking a favorite, I think long-time readers know my picks.

The Castle of the Mad Archmage from BRW Games. Not a single adventure, but an entire campaign worth of things to do.

The Jaded City of Oz, the sample adventure in Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. It doesn't create a sets of hoops to jump through, but instead provides an amusing set of scenarios to explore.

RPGaDay #18 Favorite Game System

You guys probably think I'm going to say GURPS here, don't you?

And it's a fair assessment. GURPS is where I got my start. I've run a lot of GURPS over the years, and the GURPS section of my gaming shelf is second only to my d20/D&D collection (my wife's preferred system).

But is it my favorite system? Yes and no.

One of the things I've learned about myself over the course of my gaming career is that I am a system nut. Even though I have not played every system on my shelf, I have given all of them a thorough read through until I understood the basics of each one. How the game meshed system and setting, how it managed genre emulation, or even how poorly it managed these things.

So there are things I will do in GURPS. There are also things for which GURPS is a terrible fit. And I have enough other systems that are a great fit for those concepts. Though maybe one or two more wouldn't hurt...

RPGaDay #17 Funniest Game You've Ever Played

There are very few comedy games on my shelf at the moment. A quick survey shows 3: Stuperpowers, Red Dwarf, and Pandemonium: Adventures in Tabloid World. Of the 3, I have only played 1. I recall quite some time ago running a quick one-shot with the sample adventures in the book. It was amusing, but very little sticks in my brain. Other than the fact that someone actually found a use for the power to turn 1 city block into Amish country.

A few years ago at DunDraCon, I got to play in a Spaceballs game, where I got to play Mel Brooks' Yoda-like character of Yogurt. The plot revolved around the fact that Pizza the Hut led a secret life as a stripper at a place called Gals, Guys and Otherwise. His death as described in the original film left not only a leadership gap in his crime ring, but also left certain elements of his (er, her) stripper obligations unresolved.

The system they used felt a little clunky, but workable. It was the GM who really sold the scenario. She really knew her stuff and was able to improvise quite well. A day you can hit a bad guy upside the head with Spaceballs: The Frying Pan is a good day indeed.

The most amusing scenario I've ever run of my own creation would have to be during my Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road playtest. I placed a hidden ninja village in the Munchkin Country. The characters were initially attacked by a group of Kawasaki ninjas, but then got tied up in the conflict between the Foot Clan and the Hand Ninjas. (For the true nerds out there, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics were intended as a parody of Frank Miller's excessive grittiness. The Turtle's origin was tied in to Daredevil's, so the Turtle's enemy the Foot Clan were a mirror to the Hand Ninjas that plagued Daredevil.)

One of my favorite jokes of the scenario was the fact that ninjas were not necessarily masters of stealth. Instead, the people of the village were trained to ignore anyone in ninja pajamas as if they weren't there.