RPGaDay 2015 #7 Favorite Free RPG

Free is such a funny word.

Some games are freely available for the downloading. Just find the right link and go. I'm not trying to condone piracy here. Only pointing out that there are games that the designers released into the wild for no charge. My favorite here would probably be Lasers and Feelings. It looks light and fun, as well as being inspired by a really fun song by the Doubleclicks.

Then there are the SRDs. When the Open Gaming License became a thing, it meant that system designers had to take the first step and release some of their content so third-party publishers had something to work with. Thus was born the SRD, or System Reference Document. For Wizards of the Coast, the SRD was a different beast than their actual rulebooks. Their intent was to release enough information that 3ppublishers could use, but not so much that they lost their ability to make money from their own content. So their SRD did not contain rules for character generation or advancement for players, and a couple of the more iconic D&D monsters from the first Monster Manual were left out.

Later publishers have been less strict about what they include in an SRD. For example, the Diaspora SRD pretty much gives you the entire game. But the most open Open Gaming Content would have to be Paizo's Pathfinder PRD. Every time they put out one of their hardcover rulebooks, the content winds up on their website a few months later.

The final category would have to be Pay What You Want. Evil Hat started this trend with their Fate Core project, but a lot of other people have jumped on the bandwagon (including me!). And $0.00 is a valid price, so they could be said to be free. In fact, both Fate Accelerated and Aether Sea (from my Day 3 post) are PWYW in PDF, so you can pick up that Complete Gaming Package I was talking about for a song (or less).

RPGaDay #6 Most Recent RPG Played

Well, the most recent session I participated in would be a session of the Pathfinder version of the Castle of the Mad Archmage. But I'm the GM, not the player, so you might not count that.

As a player, I most recently played 1st Edition D&D in a friend's campaign. That was actually a few weeks ago. My character died after being stomped by an immense giant (Last words: "You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny!"), though I've been told that it was all some sort of magical holodeck and that my character is actually fine.

I've also gotten around to playing Fiasco a few times. That's GM-less, so I got to be a player even though I'm the one who owns that game and said "Hey guys! Let's try this!"

RPGaDay 2015 #5 Most Recent RPG Purchase

My overall game buying has slowed down, but on my wife's insistence I do maintain a subscription with Paizo for their hardcover rulebooks. So a week or so ago, I received their latest book, Occult Adventures.

Occult Adventures looks like Paizo's official take on psionics. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I have never been impressed with the way Wizards of the Coast handled psionics for D&D 3.x. It never felt like psychic powers from any other media.

Paizo nailed it. They lean a bit closer to horror movie tropes than my preferred science-fiction approach, but it finally feels like someone actually looked at how psychic powers work in media before writing a big expensive book of psionics rules.

RPGaDay 2015 #4 Most Surprising Game

It's kind of hard to think of a game as surprising. I mean, sure, somewhere in all of that D&D merchandising back in the 80's there must have been a pop-up book with monsters that jump out at you. But a regular old game book?

Well, maybe a few things have surprised me.

I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed reading Monsterhearts. While I don't know that I could really go for the PVP/teen drama style of play, I liked how it encouraged thinking about supernatural powers as a metaphor for puberty, queerness, or both. Being the awkward kid who didn't fit in at school when I was younger, that resonated with me.

Diaspora was another game that surprised me. It's a small book that is mostly rules, but nearly everything about it is brilliant. The overall setting is very broad, with relatively few hard facts. Because of how the FTL drive of the setting works, civilization is divided into clusters, groups of solar systems that are connected by hyperspace links. The play group is assumed to create their own cluster, randomly rolling the stats for each system and deciding exactly what that collection of stats looks like.

It offers spaceship combat and tactical squad combat that work in the FATE milieu and are playable as separate minigames if you want to. But the real kicker is the social combat system. Most other social combat systems I've seen are not very different from the game's physical combat system. But Diaspora's social combat is more about positioning and maneuvering. The result feels much more like a system where you're trying to change someone's mind rather than just whacking away at their resistance to doing what you want.

RPGaDay 2015 #3 Favorite New Game Of The Last 12 Months

Games I have purchased in the last year is a fairly small set. Games I have purchased that were released in the last year is an even smaller set.

Picking a favorite, I would have to say Aether Sea, a space fantasy setting for Fate Accelerated that I purchased at DunDraCon. Not only is it written for Accelerated, it's also a slim, inexpensive volume itself. The pair of books come to a total of $15 in print (both are Pay What You Want PDFs), making them a handy Complete Gaming Package. Proper Fate Dice do add some to this total, but it's still a pretty darn good deal.

It's nearly as good a deal as my own game, Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. Though AiO has a better sample adventure, IMHO.

RPGaDay 2015 #2 Kickstarted Game You're Most Pleased You Backed

Unfortunately, this one doesn't really apply to me. Among the things that have been dragging me down has been a slowing down of the cash flow, so I haven't been able to throw any money at all of the things that strike my fancy.

There are, however, a small number of items that have made it onto my shelf that have benefited from being Kickstarted.

The one I have gotten the most mileage out of has been Adventures Dark & Deep. I had been running Joe Bloch's original version of Castle of the Mad Archmage for some time, so he already had a reputation for quality work in my book when he announced the Kickstarter for Adventures Dark & Deep. While I didn't have money to throw his way during the Kickstarter period, I did put it on my wishlist to pick up when money did present itself. So about 2 years ago, that three volume set became my birthday present to myself.

RPGaDay 2015 #1 Forthcoming Game You Are Most Looking Forward To.

Now to see if I can get any kind of groove going on with this. I've been in too much of a rut for too long and I want to try to kick it.

To address the first topic of the blogfest, the forthcoming game that I am most looking forward to would have to be GURPS Discworld, Second Edition.

I have been a fan of the novels for quite some time, owning most of them. It's one of the only fantasy series I will pick up on my own. I also own the prior edition of the game, as well as the supplement, GURPS Discworld Also.

Considering the reputation for boring realism that GURPS has, it might seem surprising that such a system would be used for a comedy setting. But I think it fits. The one character who has appeared in every novel in the series is Death. Now, we all know that Death's not a bad sort of fellow at all, but if you're going to have a setting where he pops up with any regularity, a "slapstick" system that denies his presence seems like the wrong way to go.