RPGaDay 2017 #7 What was your most impactful RPG session?

It's funny that for all the time I've spent gaming, I've had very few sessions that I would call "impactful." There's been so much time spent in that "just having fun" mode that deep, emotional roleplaying moments just haven't been in the cards for me.

But I have had a couple.

In the Fate Star Wars game I played in at DunDraCon a few years back, each player was given a backstory that they got to fill in pieces of themselves. On my character, I was told that I made a fateful action in my past that set me on my path. As play progressed, one of the NPCs pointed out my fateful action and suggested that it may have been the wrong course of action for me to take. It was quite a shock to go into this scenario thinking of my character as a Big Damn Hero in her own way, only to find out that it might not be true. It actually got some real, non-roleplayed emotions out of me.

The Fiasco Fallout game that I played last year had a different, very interesting impact on me. In that session, I wound up with significant leverage over one of the other characters, which I then used to destroy their relationship with the other character in the group. That's something that I had never done as a player or GM. In a traditional, longer game, you don't really want to do that because then the group has to live with the consequences of that action. Also, the sort of casual adventure gaming that we'd been doing didn't really allow for stuff to build up to the point that it was interesting or useful to smash them down like that.

RPGaDay 2017 #6 You can game every day for a week. Describe what you’d do!

If it was me running it, I would probably dig out the Castle of the Mad Archmage and see how far the players can get at the end of the week.

I might also try a Fiasco campaign. While Fiasco is technically geared to one shot play, it is possible to run a set of linked one-shots. You can use a single playset multiple times, with each session building into the "canon" of the campaign, even though they may approach it from different angles. There are also some "historical" playsets available, some of which can be strung together to create linked stories over time. 5-7 sessions should be enough room to explore either concept, or maybe even both.

If a GM was offering to run a game for me, I'd be open to just about anything.

RPGaDay 2017 #5 Which RPG cover best captures the spirit of the game?

This is a tough one, because I find most covers illustrative rather than evocative. "Look that that character doing their thing. Your character can do that thing, too." Licensed games often less so, because they're trying to remind you of the show and therefore just have the characters from the show on the cover.

World of Darkness core books generally avoid anything simply representational. The most striking example of this would be the old Werewolf: The Apocalypse book with its claw marks slashed across the cover. The new World of Darkness core rulebook was another good one, with the image of an empty street with a shadowy, incomplete figure in the center.

Though I think I have to give the award to Golden Sky Stories. The cover depicts 3 children with animal ears enjoying a sunset on a hillside. Most of the image is given over to the warm red sky than transitions to yellow just below the middle of the cover, where we see the children. The overall mood of the piece is warm and relaxing, which is much what the game inside the book promises.

RPGaDay 2017 #4 Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?

My Pathfinder megadungeon campaign fell apart around July, so I started this period without an active campaign, either playing or running.

Since then, I've managed one session of Vampire: The Masquerade, 2 sessions of Fiasco, and 4 sessions of GURPS. The amazing thing is that I was not the GM for any of these games. The Vampire game was run by Kris Newton of the Gameable Podcast. He was playtesting a scenario that he was submitting for a contest. I played a character in Fiasco because that game doesn't have a GM, though I wound up guiding the process since I was the one most familiar with the game.

One of these days I'll dust myself off and run a game myself, but I want to make sure I do proper planning beforehand. My days of running by the seat of my pants are over.

RPGaDay 2017 #3 How do you find out about new RPGs?

Mostly from Ken Hite. He's at DunDraCon every year like I am, and every year he does a "What's Cool" seminar. Since that also happens to be when I am fairly flush with cash, I am generally able to act on his recommendations. Also, I am a regular listener of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, so I get regular updates on anything that Ken or Robin are working on.

The One Shot podcast is another source of updates. It also comes with the added bonus that I can see the rules in action. Though just as often, they'll play a game that I already own and their performance makes me want to play it for myself (which doesn't happen as often as I'd like).

Other than that, I check in on RPG.net, various Facebook groups and Tumblr to get a sense of what people are buzzing about.

RPGaDay #2 What is an RPG you would like to see published?

I would love to see a solid space/techno-fantasy game, where magic and technology are both well-integrated into the system and the setting.

For a long time it felt like magic and technology were the oil and water of RPGs. Even when they were allowed to interact, the interaction was often antagonistic. The more advanced your tech, the less effective magic is against it, and vice versa.

I think Mage: the Ascension and GURPS Technomancer are the best games in terms of modern magic. The setting for Mage does have antagonism between magic and science, but it's a conflict that is as much about people and ideas as it is about natural forces. Whichever version of reality you believe in is the one that is true for you, so getting more people to believe in magic makes magic more effective.

Also the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts were able to do magical things with technology. The Sons of Ether believed in ether science, which had been "disproven" by the Technocracy, the big bad of the setting. So even though they believed that what they were doing was science, it was technically magic. The Virtual Adepts were so "bleeding edge" that they pushed technology to do magical things. You know, like all the stuff hat movies and TV tell us that computers can do, even though people who know how computers work know that they can't.

GURPS Technomancer posited modern world where magic was a known and public force, replacing atomic energy as the driving force of the latter half of the 20th century. It did some pretty solid world building, looking at how modern people would use and view magic.

But something like either of them taken to the stars is what I would really like to see. Magic and technology working together to explore space. I've got some ideas that I may or may not develop, and the upcoming Starfinder RPG looks like it might scratch my itch, but we'll see.

RPGaDay 2017 #1 What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now?

As a player, I would love to play in a Fate game. Of the published Fate settings, I would probably like to play the Dresden Files. I know there's the new Dresden Accelerated out now, but I haven't picked that up.

I would like to try something Powered By The Apocalypse. I've got several games on my shelf, but haven't had the chance to give it a go. Monsterhearts seems like the most compelling one to play, though Masks also looks very interesting.

As a GM, my goals are a bit different. I would be interested in running Fate, though I'm perhaps more interested in something like Diaspora, with its random setting generation and social combat. I'm also more likely to pick stuff that other GMs might not have or run often. I have some nostalgia for D20 Modern that is rising back up now that I've reconnected with one of my old players.