October 3

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 19: Favourite Supers RPG

Since I first dipped my toes into the waters of superhero gaming I’ve loved the idea of playing someone with special powers.

I did compile a list of games that I was aware of at the time that were still available to purchase and you can find the list by following this link.

There have been a few more to appear, the Valiant RPG being one of them, this still fails to knock my favourite game off the top spot; BASH.  I blogged about this game in my top 10 and you can find the original article here.

Once I get my act together, I’ll have another superhero round-up and have another poll to see what your favourite game is and this time I’ll be sure to include Supers RED 🙂

 

 

September 29

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 16: Longest Game Session

When I first started gaming and I had an almost unquenchable thirst for gaming I would think nothing of gaming for seven nights a week but even that wasn’t long enough for me as occasionally we’d game Saturday and into Sunday or Sunday into a bank holiday Monday.  One time we even played right into the new year so we could all wish ourselves a happy new year!

Looking back on it now, I realise it may have been a mistake to try and play longer and longer without much rest,  I recall arguments over trivial things when we were all sleep deprived. Stupid things like can someone with super-leaping drop down a height they can leap?

I know, daft things that seemed really important at the time.

These days I tend to game responsibly and try to not game for too long as I don’t appear to have the endurance for it these days.  Call of Cthulhu isn’t much fun when you’re unable to process the clues but tend to connect you to the great green giant itself 🙂

 

 

 

January 10

Bundle of Holding – Torg

When I was writing my top 10 list of games I mentioned the excellent cross-genre game Torg.

Now for a limited time you can get a selection of Torg books including the players guide which greatly expands upon character creation and the revised edition of Torg from the good people at Bundle of holding

So if you have ever wondered what is so good about this game you can pick them up for a steal.

September 30

Cartoon RPGs

Being sick seems to have sparked my creativity somewhat and coupled with an email about Cartoon Action Hour Season 3 I thought I’d write a few words about cartoon based roleplaying games.

The great thing about cartoon games is that unlike most games you can throw all the rules out the window and instead rely upon cartoon physics and sensibilities.

As such some gamers tend to look down upon these games as they aren’t really sensible but can be a lot of fun to try.  The shocking thing is that there doesn’t appear to be many games that play with this genre; the great grandaddy of them all Steve Jackson Games Toon, http://www.sjgames.com/toon/ and Cartoon Action Hour http://www.spectrum-games.com/cartoon-action-hour.html .  There is also Big Eyes Small Mouth but this seems more suited to anime gaming than emulating the Saturday morning cartoons of my youth.

Toon.

I first found the original Toon game and its supplements in my friendly local game store Games Unlimited.  I was able to afford the all the books and I was able to read them all on my way home on the bus.  The game was a revelation to me; well that shouldn’t be too much of a suprise as I was new to the hobby and all new games were an eye-opener!

I did try to play it with my group at the time but I didn’t have any takers as none of the players were interested in it.  It wasn’t until I meet up at the Twilight Zone comic shop where two people were trying to start up a games club did I find any takers.  The game proved to be popular as the fast character creation rules made it easy and you could run one-shot adventures in an evening.  I had at this point upgraded the single books into the later books that complied the material into a single volume plus an additional setting book.

Characters are defined by a set of fixed attributes and skills and uses a single d6 for resolution.  This also leads to one of the frequent abuses of the system, in cartoons you can be completely oblivious to a situation until you’re made aware of it; this caused many players to assign a 1 to their intelligence so that they can be oblivious to anything.

Toon has been long out of print but it can still be had a pdf from the e23 webstore.

 

Cartoon Action Hour.

Currently in its third edition this game seeks to continue the tradition of cartoon gaming. The pdf is a riot of colour and is well laid out with plenty of advice given in the body and sidebars of the book.

Rather than having fixed stats characters are defined by their traits and qualities which adds more of a free form nature.  The game seems to be very solid and robust and makes use of the forgotten die in the gamers dicebag, the d12!  To round off the genre simulation of the Saturday morning cartoons of the 1980s there are also rules to cover what happens during a commercial break.

I’m also rather pleased to see that the game is very well supported by supplementary material and other campaign settings.

I’d certainly love to give this a good read through and play with the right group as it looks like a lot of fun.

 

Big Eyes, Small Mouth or BESM

This is a very strange beast of a game, relying upon three stats and either a roll under or roll over mechanism depending on the edition.  You can pretty much create anything you want with this system which seems to emulate the anime genre.  I’d love to comment more on anime but all I’ve really seen is Akira or Ghost in the Shell.  I suppose you could pull off Battle of the Planets using it but the version I have is a rather slim book with just the rules.

I understand that there were supplements produced for it but I heard about the game long after it had ceased printing and trying to find these books on the second hand market is tricky.

September 28

Feng Shui 2

Feng Shui was one of those games I always wanted to play but never had the chance to do so.  It ticked so many boxes for me; a multi-genre war for reality; mixed parties of different genres and a light rules system which sounded perfect.

The book has had a bit of a chequered history as the full colour first edition was supposedly sold at a loss.  So each copy sold cost Daedalus Entertainment money and that’s not the way to run a business.  The second edition was a more reasonable black and white edition but compared to today’s modern games the layout looked a bit dull.

I did eventaully get around to playing this game at Killercon in Runnymede a long time ago and had a lot of fun with it.  Our group was tasked to recover a crystal skull before it fell into the hands of Nazi Germany.  The adventure worked really well and the game hurtled along; just the sort of convention game I like.
I was somewhat surprised to find that there is currently a Kickstarter project under-way to fund a second edition of the game and I am interested to see what it looks like.

You can find the Kickstarter link here : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasgames/feng-shui-2-action-movie-roleplaying-game-by-robin

August 25

#RPGaDAY Day 4: Most recent RPG purchase

The last RPG I bought was the One Roll Engine from Bundle of Holding. A collection of books and supplements using the One Roll Engine system.

I guess I really wanted it for the Better Angels RPG, a game where you play a supervillian granted their powers after they struck a deal with a demon.  Character creation is co-operative and sees you create not only your villain but also influencing the demon of another player character.

 

 

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August 23

#RPGaDAY Day 3: First RPG Purchased

The first game I ever purchased was the Marvel Superheroes basic set and I picked this up after seeing various adverts for it in the Marvel comics I was reading at the time.  This wasn’t an easy find especially since I was on holiday at the time.  I seem to remember getting strange looks from the staff at the Virgin store when I bought it and it cost me £12 or so of my holiday money.

The next problem was trying to understand it and then trying very hard to teach my parents and grandparents how to play.  I gave up in the end and had to wait to get home before I could inflict it upon my willing victims, err, friends 🙂

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August 18

#RPGaDAY

David F Chapman http://autocratik.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/rpgaday-in-august.html came up with the great idea of having people discuss role-playing games each day during the month of August.

I know I’m a little late to the party as I was on holiday for the first couple of weeks but I’m going to try and catch up.

I’ll start the ball rolling later tonight.

1st – First RPG Played
2nd – First RPG Gamemastered
3rd – First RPG Purchased
4th – Most recent RPG purchase
5th – Most Old School RPG owned
6th – Favourite RPG Never get to play
7th – Most “intellectual” RPG owned
8th – Favourite character
9th – Favourite Die / Dice Set
10th – Favourite tie-in Novel / Game Fiction
11th – Weirdest RPG owned
12th – Old RPG you still play / read
13th – Most Memorable Character Death

14th – Best Convention Purchase
15th – Favourite Convention Game
16th – Game you wish you owned
17th – Funniest Game you’ve played

18th – Favourite Game System
19th – Favourite Published Adventure
20th – Will still play in 20 years time…
21st – Favourite Licensed RPG
22nd – Best Secondhand RPG Purchase
23rd – Coolest looking RPG product / book
24th – Most Complicated RPG Owned
25th – Favourite RPG no one else wants to play
26th – Coolest character sheet
27th – Game You’d like to see a new / improved edition of…
28th – Scariest Game you’ve played
29th – Most memorable encounter
30th – Rarest RPG Owned
31st – Favourite RPG of all time

 

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