August 13

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day Eleven: Favourite RPG Writer

As the month has progressed I’m finding it harder and harder to answer these questions which is a good thing.  I find there is no challenge to be had  writing about something if it is easy when you can write about something that makes you think.

I am tempted to name one of my friends here but I believe that is cheating and so I won’t stoop so low.  There is one writer who really got me interested in the whole conspiracy genre and he was a prolific writer so I have many of his books; I say late because he died in 1995 aged 35.  I am referring to Nigel D Findley.

I wish Nigel was still here beavering away at his keyboard writing some new project or game supplement.   I only regret not buying the Shadowrun supplement Universal Brotherhood as that was one hell of a sourcebook and it is a shame that I don’t have it as I never got around to finish reading it.

Gurps Illuminati really opened my eyes to the whole conspiracy genre which had me seek out Conspiracy X  and eventually do some freelancing work for Eden Studios on one of their unreleased supplements for Conspiracy X.

 

Category: Modern, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 12

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 10: Favourite RPG Publisher

Well this is probably going to be a very tricky question to answer as I’ve met a few of the UK publishers and know a couple of them as friends, I’ve also play-tested for Eden studios so this is going to be a tough question to answer.  Now if this was favourite game designer I may be on shaky ground.

My favourite publisher is no longer in business which makes things somewhat easier as I can’t be accused of favouritism in any way shape or form.

So without further ado my all time favourite is the long lamented Hogshead Publishing. Partly because the reprints of The Enemy Within campaign gave me years of play and was a real joy to referee, I’m more enamoured with the New Style of games that they put out especially The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen.  A wonderful story game with subtle humour and a very light mechanic can give you an evening of raucous laughter as you try and out do each other.

Oh and just to be clear about one thing; James is one of the aforementioned friends I talked about in the opening paragraph.

Now did I ever tell about the time we decided to invade the hollow earth armed only with an egg whisk, spatula and the band of the Coldstream guards……….

Category: fantasy, Modern, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 5

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 3: Favourite New Game of the Last 12 Months

Thanks to the deals offered by Bundle of Holding I’ve bought several games in the last twelve months, so trying to pick a favourite is going to be tricky and the whole point of this challenge is to select one game from my collection.

Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of playing a 60s campaign after the fun I had with the supers game I did a few years back.

One of the bundles yielded me this gem

THE AGENCY
A roleplaying game of sixties spies
and the supernatural
by Matt Machell

It’s a wonderful example of design, simple and keeps the action flowing which is the sort of thing I’m favouring these days.

There was another game I wanted to pick but it falls outside the remit of the challenge, perhaps another day?

Link to Matt’s homepage: http://eclecticdreams.com/

Category: Modern, RPG, spy | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 30

RPG Blog Carnival April 2015 – The Combat Experience

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This month the subject of the carnival is The Combat Experience and it is being hosted by RPG Alchemy.

Love it or leave it combat is one of those parts of the system that has more than it’s fair share of table time so finding a system that the players engage with is something that is always something I look for.

At school I studied fencing and attended an after school fencing club, the romantic ideal of swinging a blade was what attracted me to the idea. Since then I’ve always checked to see how a combat system models something as simple as feints, parries and riposte.

When I started gaming combat was something I enjoyed, as it gave me an outlet to swing swords or blast away with rayguns.  I remember finding Pheonix Command and relished looking up on the various tables to see where someone had been shot.  While this appealed to me as a games master it was very time consuming for the players as I had to perform a few calculations and look up the result.

While Phoenix Command handles gunfights and the aftermath of being shot I was very disappointed by the hand to hand side of things; even with the hand to hand supplement things never got any better.  Millenniums End also had a novel way of doing things, align a template over a silhouette of a person and then you could work out where you hit.  This also worked for hand to hand and I remember an afternoon of two players consistently kicking each other in the groin for what seemed like ages; the happy spree was broken up when one of the combatants switched locations and axe-kicked his opponent in the head.

I even tried playing Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) but I was confused more by the game mechanics than the combat system, add percentage this to skills etc.

Warhammer 1st edition had a pretty solid combat system that was only slightly wonky but did cater for hit locations.

In the end I decided that I preferred a system that gave me the detail if I was after it, something the narrative games like FATE cater for and the system is a lot more cinematic and pulpy which is something I always enjoy playing with.

 

 

 

Category: Cyberpunk, fantasy, FATE, Modern, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 1

April 1st – The Silly Season

With the 1st of April once more upon us I had to find out what the latest practical jokes were being offered to the internet.

It seems that the rapid expansion of the world wide web has led to April 1st being used as a media circus to promote things that sound plausible enough to be real but are utter hogwash.  You would think that people would be able to search online to verify the facts being presented to them but that doesn’t often appear to be the case.

Which made me wonder, what if some of these ideas could be real?  Take any one you like from the current crop or an event from the past and present it in your game world as a truth, then you have something to expand upon your campaign.

What if spaghetti was in fact grown on trees and harvested for food?  Think of the fun you could have when the crop is threatened with a beetle that likes to eat a food staple.

What if there was a translation system for pets that enabled you to talk to the animals?

How about an army of pigeons that classify search results?

I used to purchase a popular American tabloid and I mined that for campaign ideas for Dark Conspiracy and Conspiracy X; some of the articles were very inspiring indeed.

Plenty of campaign fodder there to spice up a dull session

Category: horror, Modern, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT