July 14

Top 10 RPG list – number 4 All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

Since the first time I saw the ground-breaking Evil Dead movie I have been fascinated with zombies. I was still at school when this banned video nasty appeared and became the hot film to see. I can’t remember how I saw it but I recall it left a very strong impression on my imagination. Years later I got around to seeing the classic film of the genre, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. While Night lacked the gore of Evil Dead it appealed to me more as the group of people trapped in the farmhouse gives you an insight into what it means to be human and how far would you go to survive.

You could say at that point I was hooked and wanted to try some zombie survival horror gaming but a lack of systems and support for the genre made it a tricky prospect. I had tried beforehand using Call of Cthulhu but I was ultimately disappointed by the end results; CoC is a fantastic system but it didn’t handle things the way I wanted. I even tried using Palladium’s Beyond The Supernatural and this did work better but ultimately I was still unfulfilled.

I remember seeing an advert for All Flesh Must Be Eaten (AFMBE) and I tracked down a copy of the first printing. This piqued my interest as this was probably the first specifically themed zombie based RPG. So I ordered a copy from my FLGS and what I saw impressed me.

The main book is a somewhat unusual size, a smaller edition that a standard game-book with all the rules to play  within this one self contained volume; including yet another copy of the Unisystem rules. In my opinion Eden Studios could just publish the Unisystem rule in a single book and release source books that still tie into the setting, something similar to the Savage Worlds books.

Once inside the book presents you  with some background fiction which helps set the tone and a brief history of the genre including a discussion of the zombie.

Character creation is fairly detailed and flexible using a point buy system so you can get the sort of survivor you want to play. These points vary depending on whether your character is a “survivor”, “norm” or “enlightened” plus there are also a few archetypes for you to pick up and play with. To round things off there are also a selection of advantages and disadvantages. As this is classic Unisystem there are a number of skills available for selection including the combat skills but also some unusual ones; like Beautician for example.

The mechanics are solid, Unisystem uses a single D10 for resolution and add the result  to stat + skill and if the total is nine or more you succeed. Depending on the final total, different success levels are obtained and this can help by allowing you to accomplish tasks faster or deal more damage in combat.

There is also the obligatory chapter with a short list of equipment and weapons to purchase or acquire, although basic it does cover the bases needed to get up and running.

Zombie Masters Section.

The real meat of the game can be found in the game masters section along with the zombie creation rules are the various campaign settings you can play with called rather amusingly: Deadworlds.

Anatomy of a zombie.

This chapter details how to create the zombies that will plague the players, from various weak spots to special abilities; you can design them all. Whether you want the run of the mill shambling mindless flesh eater to some of the exotic zombies from popular video games it’s all here.

Deadworlds.

Each Deadworld has a write-up and explains what sort of undead can be encountered along with their weaknesses and powers. The standard Romero Deadworld is here with one or two unusual ideas about how the infection spreads; if you’re bored with being bitten then you can have the infection spread as an STI.

For my current campaign I had the players select from the characters in the excellent starter adventure Coffee Break Of The Living Dead, as I wanted to get the game up and running with a minimum of fuss.

Since the success of AFMBE several other games have appeared on the market. I would list them here but I haven’t really had a good chance to read through them all yet.

Website: http://www.allflesh.com/

Honourable mention:

War of the Dead.

Billed as a campaign epic for Savage Worlds and published by Daring Entertainment it certainly has a lot of meat on the bones. Each chapter is designed to be an evening entertainment and there are thirteen or so chapters to each of the four volumes in the series you have a years’ worth of play ready to go. It shouldn’t take much work to create the various characters in AFMBE and that’s what I plan to do at some point.

Website: http://www.daringentertain.com/

If you have a favourite game then why not leave a comment below and I’ll check it out.

June 7

Top 10 RPG list – number 5.

Traveller

Traveller was the first science fiction game I ever played in and was the second rpg I ever tried. I was so taken with the game that I persuaded my grandmother to purchase me a copy from Games Unlimited, it may have been a second hand unboxed copy but I didn’t care about that. I had at that point several d6 dice which Traveller makes use of so I didn’t have to spend any more money on them.

I was drawn in by the seductive red line running across the page of the black cover of the books. It was later on when I was heavily involved in collecting Traveller did I realise I had the three little black books combined into two books. Early editions of the game came published as individual volumes about A5 size and this gave rise to the term “little black books”. There was a range of supplementary books published in this format that covered all sorts of new material; careers, adventures and even library data which expanded upon the previous books.

As I understand it the rules were written to enable the referee to create their own universe for play, the adventures that were written were set in what would become the default setting of the Third Imperium. In this respect Traveller was probably the first sandbox game I had ever encountered. You could argue that games like D&D were sandboxes as well but they all seemed to revolve around gong to the dungeon and clearing it out 10 foot room by 10 foot room; almost like some sort of medieval SWAT team.

Traveller was also the first game I had encountered that had a life path system which dictated your previous history before you started adventuring; unlike some of the other life path based systems it was entirely possible to die during character creation, so the game had an element of risk to it. Later versions of the system mitigated it to your character being wounded rather than death and you finished your career at that point.

Character creation was just one of the mini-games that the rulebook had; trading was another one and also world creation. The rulebook suggests that you can play them in isolation as a solitaire activity, whether you are trying to found a new trading company by plying the space lanes or exploring strange new worlds. All examples of typical sandbox play that can be found in many typical computer games.

I suppose being a big fan of the BBC Micro computer game Elite was also a big selling point to this game. It is no surprise that most Traveller games are based around the Merchant Prince route; there was even an excellent campaign written called The Traveller Adventure which gave the players control of a ship and a trading route to ply.

By the time I was getting ready to actually referee Traveller a new edition had appeared; MegaTraveller. This new edition compiled the best of the supplementary books and the core rules into an improved system with a new and improved task system at the heart of the games skill resolution mechanic.

MegaTraveller also introduced a new background as well, expanding upon the popular Third Imperium and taking it into a new direction; the emperor had been assassinated and various factions tried to claim the iridium throne for themselves. The setting while interesting didn’t really do anything for me and I continued to run adventures based in the Spinward Marches sector. The rebellion eventually ended with an artificially intelligent virus and was the lead in for the new edition:

Traveller: The New Era was the last edition published by Game Designers Workshop, the company hit hard times and the decision was made to close it. This edition moved away from the familiar 2d6 task resolution system and used the GDW house system which was d20 based. I really liked the idea of the players having a chance to shape the new empires that arose out of the ashes of the virus. The Imperium was still there but 70 years of isolation had profound effects upon the planets. So the advance scout party often had some very old data about the systems to go on and could be surprised at what had happened during the long night.

During my tenure as referee I ran many Traveller games using the various editions I had collected and I would say that until recently MegaTraveller would have to be my personal favourite.

I’m looking to run Traveller again, this time I shall use the Mongoose edition as it has a modern take on the rules but still has the Classic Traveller feel to it. While GURPS Traveller piqued my interest for a bit, it seemed to me to lack the heart and soul of the Classic edition, characters were bought as packages of skills and advantages and gone was the random determination of your prior history.  Spaceships were regarded as an advantage so the better your starship was, the worse your character started the game.

As a result of the successful Kickstarter campaign I have a copy of Traveller 5th edition which has traded the little black books for one rather massive hardcover; while an impressive book to hold I find it lacks the simplicity that the Mongoose edition has. Both games had a parallel development and by comparing the two volumes you can see where they inspired each other.

Mongoose have also used their Traveller rules to do other licensed games they publish, the most interesting to me was Babylon 5 and it sort of worked but it was woefully lacking in certain areas.

Links:

Mongoose Traveller: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpgs/traveller.html

Far Future Enterprises: http://www.farfuture.net/

Honourable mention.

 Stars Without Number.

I heard good things about this game published by www.sinenomine-pub.com ; it’s a worthy spiritual successor to Traveller and is also set up for sandbox play. So I tracked it down and was suitably impressed by what I found between the covers.

The system is a modern retro-clone of the world’s most popular fantasy game and uses the familiar 3d6 for character generation compared to the 2d6 Traveller required. Where Stars Without Number shines is the support for the game. The basic game is available in two versions; a free edition and a paid for core book with more material stuffed into it. There are other supplements available some of which are free and others don’t cost a great deal.

 

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May 14

Top 10 RPG list – number 6

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition

I first encountered WHFRP not long after its release and sort of fell in love with the peculiar background; The Old World with its very different fantasy tropes and unusual humour.  White Dwarf carried a number of pre-release adverts before the games release and had a teaser pull-out an issue or two before it was finally available from Games Workshop.  The book was originally published as a hard-cover with colour plates inside and contained all the rules required to play; with the exception of the upcoming magic book Realms Of Sorcery as it took several years before this book was finally  published by Hogshead Publishing.  To round things off there was even a short and very deadly adventure in the back of the book.

The game is known for the dark brooding setting, the use of humour especially puns and wordplay throughout the books; some of which are blatantly obvious if you happen to speak German.  It was also popular because of the critical hit charts which enabled you to describe the gory demise of your adversary.

Character creation.

One of the best parts of the game is the character creation system which had a myriad of character careers rolled from a collection of tables and this determined what your current career is, an advance scheme, initial skills and  some meagre equipment.  Some careers were better than others; for example the Wizard’s apprentice and some were a little underwhelming; for example the jailer.  By and large they were all were fun to play and really gave you an idea of why you decided to take up adventuring.

Advance scheme.

The career also gave you an advance scheme which allowed you to improve your character by giving you the ability to incrementally increase your stats in either +10 or +1 steps depending on whether the attributes were a percentage number or just a plain 0-9 value.  Once you had purchased a single +10 advance, if you wanted to get better you had to locate a career with a +20 advance and so forth until you had managed to get the full +40 allowed.  Upon completion of the advance scheme you would then move on to a new career either by picking a career exit or spending more experience points to select a new career.

Skills.

The game also had a very broad, diverse and somewhat unusual skill list.  Unlike most fantasy worlds of that era in WHFRP most of the Old World is illiterate, so if you were very lucky your character could posses Read / Write and be slightly ahead of the rest of the world.

Equipment.

The final piece of the equation was your starting gear, some careers gave you access to exotic weapons and armour or if you were unlucky a flask of herbal tea or a bunch of keys.  A quirk of the game was that you had to obtain the trappings of the next career you wanted to advance into once you had finished with your current career, this was great if all you needed was a collection of hats and bottles of coloured sand; not so good if you had to acquire a ship or a mercenary band.

Races.

The game also had the usual bunch of stereotypical races to play; Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling and an issue of White Dwarf introduced the Gnome as am additional playable race, if you didn’t have that issue of White Dwarf it was later reprinted in a collection of WHFRP material.   The bestiary had the standard monsters as well as a few creatures unique to the game as adversaries.

Background.

The setting is the Old World, a place where magic is a strange force be wielded by trained wizards and the forces of chaos run wild around the forests of the Empire; the Empire is very much like an early renaissance Germany with primitive black powder weapons which certain careers require before you could advance into it.   There is quite a detailed gazetteer and history of the planet in the book mostly using material found in Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd edition.

Supplements.

There were a few supplements released for the game including the long-awaited Realms of Sorcery but Games Workshop also released a few adventures for it.  There were a couple of geographical source books, and a compilation of articles that had appeared in White Dwarf, including the aforementioned Gnome.

Honourable mention.

Runequest third edition.

Runequest was the other fantasy game I got hold of another fantasy world with its own unique world: Glorantha. At the time Games Workshop had managed to secure the rights to print licensed editions of other companies games and it was the Games Workshop version I had.  The version that Games Workshop published under license was the third edition which spanned  three separate slim hardcover editions unlike the single volume of WHFRP.

I was also a little disappointed that Runequest third edition used a fantasy Europe as a setting rather than Glorantha which was prevalent in the first and second editions.  Many of the printed adventures and source-books still out there used Glorantha and not the new default world and not having access to the earlier editions I was a little confused.  I later found out that this may have been that Avalon Hill had purchased the rights to use Runequest and the name but not the world of Glorantha.

Runequest used percentile dice to resolve actions and could be just as bloody as WHFRP since each limb had separate hit point totals and your arms or legs could be hacked off in battle or if you were unfortunate you could hack your own legs off if you fumbled.

 

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May 5

Top 10 RPG list – number 7

Torg.

 

Torg was the first game I encountered that allowed the party to play a mixed group of characters from a list of genres; so you could have a lost world hero rubbing shoulders with a cybernetically enhanced ninja. It was through a series of teaser adverts in Dragon that piqued my interest and it soon became a hot topic when I talked to other gamers at the local games shop.

In the beginning:

The story was that Earth had been invaded by High Lords from different realms and realities  who wish to strip the Earth of the living energy of the planet.  Each High Lord brings with them a chunk of their own reality and converts their conquered region to their reality.

Inside the box.

The core game came in a boxed set containing three books, an Infiniverse campaign newsletter, a 156 card drama deck and a possibility shard or 1d20 if you prefer 🙂

Storm Knights

In the game the player characters are Storm Knights and they have the ability to control their fates by expending possibility energy which enabled the character to do extraordainary things including re-reolling the die if the result was unfavourable. Posibilites are a great idea and its good to see that the core of this mechanic has been carried onto other games but are called Fate Points or Bennies or something of that ilk.  As the line expanded so did the meta-plot and things like a guild of Storm Knights appeared.

Infiniverse

The game also had a meta-plot running through it and by sending the results back of how your group handled certain adventures you could influence how the overall War for Reality would play out.  This was a great idea and I had never seen such a thing ever proposed, the idea that thousands of gamers worldwide had the chance to shape the overall plot arc was just mind blowing.  West End Games did publish three campaign updates based upon the results of the global Infiniverse campaign and the idea seemed to work.  It would be a very different thing to do today as the internet could make submission and compilation of campaign data much easier.

Drama Deck.

This was something else I loved the idea of using the special Drama Deck to govern initiative and also to define that if certain combat manoeuvres were used the player could be rewarded with additional cards from the Drama Deck; it would also set various combat conditions that could hinder or provide you with  bonuses depending on the cards.  Plus there were the “special cards” that players could use in any situation, cards that would allow you to define an ally or contact that you knew in the area and could call upon for help or advice when you needed it.  Apart from West End Games other system Masterbook I have yet to see anything similar to this.

Cosms.

Cosms is how the invading realities were referred to in the book. Each Cosm had their own world laws and different axiom levels.   If your character found themselves outside of their own Cosm and you failed a roll then you could find yourself disconnected from your home reality and instead become part of the invaders reality.

  • The invading Cosms were initailly the following realms:
  • Core Earth — “our” Earth, the base reality.
  • Living Land—a primitive, Lost World-style jungle.
  • Aysle—a magical, low-technology realm.
  • The Cyberpapacy—this realm which was initially a repressive, medieval theocracy.
  • Nippon Tech—an ultracapitalist nightmare society.
  • The New Nile Empire — this realm combined a restored Ancient Egypt with pulp trappings.
  • Orrorsh—a Gothic horror realm.

As the game supplements kept being released new Cosms were added to the list:

  • Land Below—not a realm but a pocket dimension involving the mixture of Living Lands and the Nile Empire.
  • Space Gods—a high-technology, space faring society very much in the style of Chariots of the Gods
  • Tharkold—home of a race of magic and technology-using demons.
  • Terra—not an invading realm but the home Cosm of the invaders from the Nile Empire.

As the game line progressed it started to become somewhat unwieldy to play as a visiting games master unless you could drive, each book added extra weight to the bags.

Templates.

The game also enabled you to get the game going with templated characters and by adding a few skill packages to the template you could be up and running in no time.  I always got the suspicion that templates found in later books  appeared to much cooler than the ones in the boxed set and each exotic template could only be found in that specific book.

There was a lot to make the game interesting and special but I think the growing number of books required to play coupled with the somewhat bizarre characters that appeared in the books; for example Skippy  , did make me wonder what was going on at West End Games HQ.

How do I do?

The game also used a universal chart for doing things which allegedly enabled you to convert from time to weight just by reading a different line.  I say allegedly as  I could never really figure it out and tended to fudge it when rolls had to be made.

When you came to take an action that required a success roll; you would roll the d2o and consult the success table on the bottom of the character sheet, then you add that bonus value to your skill roll for the action total and this is the final number that had to beat the target number of the gamesmaster.

 

The good news is that there is a revised and expanded version of Torg available if you want to play in the wars once more. and there is still a lot of good stuff to be had in the book.

If I was to play Torg these days I would use the background provided but use a different system like Savage Worlds as the two games do share several common features.

Honourable mention:

Rifts.

The other game dealing with multiple genre action Rifts takes a different slant on things and I had many fun hours playing this game.  It has been criticised by several parties about power creep and I agree the game does have some issues when playing with some of the later books but I have always said you can use the main rulebook and the books for the region we’re going to be playing in.

 

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April 28

Top 10 RPG list – number 8

Cyberpunk 2020.

I encountered the first edition of Cyberpunk at my local Games Workshop in Hammersmith back in the day when Games Workshop sold more than just their own products.

I was intrigued by the line-art on the box and the blurb on the back really gripped me as I had seen no other game where you could play someone who could hack into satellites to play music they liked.

While I liked the system, it did seem to be a little unbalanced in places especially in the way it handled combat as the combat system Friday Night Firefight had rifles that do enough bullet damage to vaporise an un-armoured person.

So I put the game aside after running it a couple of times and thought no more of it.

It was a few years later that I purchased the second edition titled 2020 and it is this edition that I used to run several campaigns with.

I was surprised to find that very little had changed from the original version, some things were simplified and the combat system had been given an overhaul.  Best of all my favourite part of the game remained intact:  The lifepath.

I have mentioned before how I like systems that give you a background for the character and this not only did that but it would also give you plot hooks galore as well as allies, lovers, friends and enemies.  Fitting in with the dystopian hedonism that certain cyberpunk books had the lifepath could as a result of a few dice rolls dictate that your character could be straight, bi or homosexual.  Of course I never made a player accept any result that made them feel uncomfortable with.  The lifepath was such fun I had one player try to make his character as old as possible so that they could play this mini game for as long as they could.

The game was also resplendent with chrome and had all sorts of stuff that a player could desire; whereas some games publish veritable arms catalogues as supplements, the four Chromebooks are a futuristic lifestyle magazine the products within are presented as fake advertisements.  It looks like the design team took some cues from the film Robocop and the Chromebooks added a much needed touch of polish and some great 21st century ideas for household living.

Cyberwear was a big part of the game and you could implant all sorts of gadgets into your body.  Cyerbarms and legs were par for the course and owing to the lessened lethality of the combat system which meant you no longer turned into red mist you could instead find your arm or leg being destroyed.

Honourable mention.

Shadowrun.

I think I picked Shadowrun 1st edition up after Cyberpunk as I was drawn to the evocative cover painting on the hardback and I although found the system a bit wonky in places it was good fun to play.

It was touted as fusion of cyberpunk and fantasy, it had the classic fantasy races; humans, orcs, elves and dwarves.  The lack of an integrated lifepath system also irked me but the archetypes made up for it.

This was one of the first games I encountered to use an archetype based character creation system and the archetypes where just that a standard character you could pick up and with a small amount of customisation play.

There was also a full blown character creation system but that to me is where the system started to break down;  a lack of guidance on how to handle to priority system led to some incorrect characters which were naturally more powerful than the archetypes by several orders of magnitude.

Second edition tried to simplify the system which it did but the creep of the splatbooks didn’t help either as it appeared to me that each book was trying to outdo the previous ones.  By the time the bioware book came out things were tottering on the edge of collapse.  This one volume gave your character several implants that could function with cyberwear and having this book at character creation you could turn out some very potent characters.

My personal favorite was Rockwell the troll who was the very epitome of a meta-human tank.  I sank all I the attribute points and cybernetic enhancements I could into his Body stat which ended up at a mind boggling 17!  He once endured three rounds of hand to hand combat with a dragon and got away with nothing more than a moderate wound; it was at that point the GM cheated and decided that the dragon would use magic against him, something that Rockwell couldn’t cope with and he dropped like a stone after one mana bolt later.

Wonky rules aside, Shadowrun did have a meta-plot which runs through the supplements and the comments in the sidebars and footers of the books are very witty and add to the feel of the expanded universe.

I’ve discussed two books which rode the coattails of the popularity of the cyberpunk genre, Cyberpunk 2020 for me is best when it comes to Style but Shadowrun has the edge when it comes to substance.

 

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April 20

Top 10 RPG list – number 9

Pathfinder.

The latest step in the evolution of the worlds most popular RPG Pathfinder has a lot going for it.  Released when Wizards of the Coast moved on to do D&D4e there were always going to be gamers who refused to change to the new edition.  Pathfinder took the mantle of 3.5 and applied a lot of what I suspect to be several houserules and codified them into a single cohesive whole. This is a  game where you really can get away with nothing more than the core rulebook, sure the bestiary is a nice touch but you can find all of the Pathfinder monsters on the http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ Pathfinder System reference document.

I remember the resistance offered when TSR released AD&D 2nd edition, the wailing and gnashing of teeth as gamers perceived their beloved loopholes being closed up in the new edition.  There was a similar reluctance for D&D3 as the cleaner design removed many trappings of the system that some people held onto like a security blanket.  I was a little hesitant to get the new edition as I had recently purchased the excellent Core Rules 2 campaign package; a suite of digital tools that enabled character creation; writing handouts, dice roller and mapper in an all in one package.  The new edition put paid to me using it again which was a pity since Core Rules 2 was a most excellent tool.

Although having everything in one book does make for a monster (ho-ho) tome, it is not the largest game book on my shelf; something that I will discuss in a future top ten posting.

I think where Pathfinder really shines though are the adventure path series, a series typically containing six books which form the basis for a campaign.  In an age of every increasing splat books, it is a refreshing change to see a company willing to support their core line with a series of pre-packaged campaigns.  Even if you don’t use them as written you can always mine them for inspiration and use them as a basis for a new campaign.

Honourable mentions.

There are quite a few other fantasy games available and many appear to draw inspiration from D&D in one shape or another.

Pendragon.

Pendragon casts you as a knight in the tales of King Arthur which isn’t a bad thing; using a familiar setting makes it easier for players to get a sense of what is going on and at least an idea of what may happen.  There is one campaign adventure available The Great Pendragon Campaign which enables you to play through the rise and fall of King Arthur.  Since this is a rather long campaign, the game provides you with the chance to create and play knights from different generations, with the game clock running it is somewhat important to find time to get married and try to start a family to ensure that there are future generations to carry the family name.  Since the system is derived from Runequest combat can be quite deadly and another reason to have an heir and a spare to hand 🙂

Maelstrom Domesday.

Back in the 1980’s, riding the wave of success of the Fighting Fantasy game books a slim paperback RPG appeared called Maelstrom.  It was simple to play and had everything you needed in one volume and this little gem quickly disappeared until the rights to the game were recently acquired and a facsimile edition was reprinted.

Last year a brand new edition was crowd-funded and subsequently released the afore mentioned Domesday edition which rather than being a small standard sized paperback is available in both soft and hard cover.  The game is set in York in 1086 and has a lifepath based character creation system that reminded me of Warhammer 1st edition and by the end of it you have not only a character but a rich background for you to hang plot hooks off of.  I’m always in favour of lifepath systems for this very reason.

Website: http://www.arion-games.com/MaelstromDomesday.html

 

April 14

Top 10 RPG list – number 10

To kick things off number 10 on my list is a BASH Ultimate Edition the super RPG.

I’ve always had a thing for super-powered gaming, I guess this stems from my love of the comics.  My first super game was Marvel Superheroes basic set, a bright yellow box containing a few books, dice and maps.  From there I picked up one or two more other games but found myself desiring something else.

BASH is one of those happy accidental purchases which I seem to have made a few of in my time; as I thought I was originally buying a different game and was happily surprised with what I actually bought.

BASH was going to be the game to introduce a new player to the group and I wanted something that enabled everybody to be heroes and do good deeds while protecting the innocent.  It would also allow us to evaluate the new player before we could resume the regular Pendragon campaign.

I also wanted a simple game with flexible character creation options and BASH gave me all of them, requiring nothing more than a pair of six sided dice and using multiplication to do all the super stuff.  In practice the game does work rather well plus the book has a table reminiscent of the old Marvel table which I thought was a nice touch.

There are other point based systems on the market but since this was going to be an introductory game I eschewed them all in favour of this one.  Like most systems you pick a set point level and you can exceed the points you spend but your character tends to attract bad stuff.

There are supplemental power books with one or two new powers to be found within and the rest of the book is filled with powers based upon existing ones in the main book; as well as organising them into various categories like attack and utility powers.

BASH has some good advice on different eras of play and I had no trouble with the Golden Age, the characters were going to be part of a task force operating in the City Of London during the 1960s.

After some discussion we ironed out the kinks for certain advantages and the players certainly came up with some interesting concepts including; a water elemental from an alternate dimension,  an immortal Scotsman, a ghost who could posses the wheelchair bound host and someone in a suit of power armour.

I don’t normally discuss behind the scenes stuff about adventures but in this case I shall since it was such a wonderful idea I feel it has to be told.  I have no fear of my players using the information as I will not be returning to my unfinished creation because the sad news is that but three weeks into the adventure the new player suddenly died and I was unable to contemplate continuing it.

The idea was borrowed from an old episode of Doctor Who, something that was written as a period piece in the 1960s and concerned the Post Office tower, a slightly sentient supercomputer who could control minds and it was all under the control of the then postmaster general.  I had fun writing or rather adapting it to the group and I was able to use the stock resources provided by the main book to flesh things out.

Honourable mentions.

Mutants and Masterminds was probably the best OGL version of a supers game I ever ran across, it was flexible and you could certainly create the characters that you wanted but it got a bit fiddly in places and I found the odd point here and there which I couldn’t easily spend.  The system did away with hit points and had you make damage saves instead.  I have only experienced the first edition and I understand some changes were made in later versions but I never had the desire to purchase them.

Golden Heroes.  The second supers game I ever bought as Games Workshop had it all on sale and I was intrigued by it.  The first game I encountered that had everyone roll for their powers randomly and you had to rationalise them, any that couldn’t be explained had to be discarded.  This did have the wonderful rationale from one of the players that the CIA had messed with his DNA.   Until I found BASH this would have to be my favourite supers game as it was simple, elegant and had you rolling a detailed PC up in half an hour or so.  I understand the game lives on as Squadron UK.

 

April 13

Top ten rpg list.

Every gamer out there has a list of their favourite games; either ones that really resonate with the player as a result of a killer setting or perhaps it is that the game brings happy memories of a golden time.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to countdown my top ten list of pen and paper games and give you my notes on why it deserves a spot in my list.

Come back tomorrow when the countdown will start.

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