#RPGaDAY Day Twenty Seven

"Game you'd like to see a new / improved edition of" is what the menu says for todays #RPGaDAY.

Easily, hands down, without a doubt, KULT.

Kult was the game I ran the heck out of. Loved the setting, didn't mind the system at all and enjoyed coming up with dark evil shit to happen in the games.  Kult was MY game for many years.

But it really needs a fucking reboot.

I mean stick with the main cosmological setting as it is.  Just move everything else forward to now.  How technology is working within the illusion, how some of it cracking it while some of it is sealing us deeper into the false reality.  Adjust who is and isn't in control among the Archons and Death Angels.  The powers at play have all sorts of shifts within a world where the political and social structure is collapsing.

Then pull the system out and streamline the hell out of it.  Take it to the bare minimum of what is needed in concern with physical stuff like skills, abilities and all that.  Make the magic system a bit more dynamic and interacts with the illusion and reality.  Ease of doing the rituals based on knowledge of the actual reality than just a skill rating, doing the rituals near areas where the veil is crumbling can cause the desired effect to be multiplied, things like that.  Buff up the mental stuff, something akin to the Madness Meter from Unknown Armies grafted onto the positive/negative mental balance chain.  Make it affect play more often.

Put some work into the production values, get some new, cutting edge, layouts along with artwork to make your jaw drop.  Make the book look good.  Like a tome of freaking evil ready to be cracked open and used to abuse characters.

Go controversial with it, make most grim and dark settings look like a fucking walk in the god damned park.  Show them what twisted and evil shit there is and then crank it up a few more notches. 

At least that's what I would like to see. 

#RPGaDAY Day Sixteen

"Game You Wish You Owned" is for day sixteen on #RPGaDAY.

I pretty much own every game that I really want.  But then again I've evolved into an odd breed of gamer where I don't hunt down specific printings of certain editions.  Feel no need to have the 'little brown box' or the re-release they did of it recently.  There are a couple variations and one or two modules for Twilight 2000 that I don't own, but I'm not worried about them at all.  Same with Cyberpunk from R. Talsorian games.

So I'm going to cover a rpg that I wish more people owned.

Sla Industries.  A dark cyberpunkish, psychothriller of a game that can't decide if wants to be an involved horror game or a big guns and armor game.  The creators claim its not a big guns game but some of the setting, rules and overall feel say that it is.  I think it's more of a mash of several ideas.  But damn if its not a great setting.

Lots of room to work in there, great character options, races and all that.  A really dark setting where you play what would be the bad guys in most games.  Plus the material is set for use for which ever you want, horror, psychological or big guns.  Been playing it for years and it's pretty popular in my local area.  But it seems to be popular in small pockets scattered here and there without any over all coverage.

The corebook is up for 'pay what you want' on drivethrurpg you can find it on the Nightfall Games products page.

#RPGaDAY Day fifteen

Its time for "Favorite Convention Game" for #RPGaDAY.

First off I don't have a RPG for this one.  I cannot recall playing the same game twice at any convention.  Usually when I pick games to play its the stuff I haven't tried out but have heard good things about it or ones where my friends want me to play with them. 

So I'm just giving you my favorite game to play at conventions.  Well at least it used to be.  Lunch Money from Atlas Games was a hell of a good time.  Kids on the playground beating the crap out of each other, how could you go wrong with that?  Easy to play, all you need to play is the one box of cards and something to keep track of your life on.  There was an expansion that had some fun new stuff in it but was nowhere near being necessary. 

However... it used to be my favorite game.  Then some folks wanted to play it all the time.  Getting together to talk about a campaign you are thinking of running "Hey lets play a few games of Lunch Money!".  Hanging out watching movies "Hey lets play a few games of Lunch Money!" at the pizza place eating down a few slices "Hey lets play a few games of Lunch Money!".  It began replacing rpg time in the end.  This got old really, really quick.  Currently I don't ever want to play another game of it again.  But nothing has replaced this as my favorite pick up type of game at a con.

#RPGaDAY Day Fourteen

Well here we are at #RPGaDAY number fourteen with "Best Convention Purchase".

The only time I made it to Origins was for two reasons.  First was the final official Doomtown storyline tournament and second was to pick up a specific being released there.  The tournament was sorta 'meh' but the rpg turned out to be awesome.

Of course I'm talking about Little Fears.  A simple rules light system that seemed to fit the dark and terrifying setting like a glove.  Jason Blair made one hell of a game and I wasn't the only one who thought so.  I ran the hell out of the game, had people waiting to play, multiple groups going on during the week and great times had by all.

I got to playtest the next version of the game, the Nightmare Edition, and I liked it as well.  While all the rules changes or additions make complete sense and it's a great game I still prefer the original.  But that's all just personal preference. 

You can find both editions (the original is the 10th anniversary edition) over on Drivethrurpg along with Jason's other game Streets of Bedlam.  Give them a look here.

#RPGaDAY Day Thirteen

#RPGaDAY day thirteen says "Most Memorable Character Death".

I really don't have much for this one.  In most games I rarely die as I think ahead, try to get everyone to work as a group, try to think ways safely around problems and all that.  Then when I do get a character killed its usually not in any spectacular memorable ways.

Honestly I have more memorable 'near death' character scenes than anything else.  Like managing to press the switch setting off the explosives I planted earlier to kill the cultists before blacking out from blood loss (the other PCs drug me away and kept me alive).  Being held up by the throat by a bad guy after a long fight, unarmed and about to bite it I reach down and hit the switch on my belt buckle firing off the two rounds in the hidden gun there (had it on my character since creation, it took months before I ever used it).  No telling how many times Finn ran through almost assured death.  Or Joe Genero, a traveler character rolled up just to die, who somehow becomes almost invulnerable whenever the GM rolls to hit him (yes the name is taken from the Joe Genaro comics that used to be in Shadis Magazine).

Deaths are usually, killed by a lucky shot from a guard during a small skirmish, random gunshot from a goon just happens to hit me in the head, etc.

#RPGaDAY Day Twelve

"Old RPG You Still Play/Read" is the topic for today on #RPGaDAY.

The one old RPG I still go back to, still pick up, still read bits of from time to time would have to be Cyberpunk from R. Talsorian Games.  I simply love the setting, the way most of the books are done and just the overall feel.  While some of the tech ideas are WAY out of synch with the direction and depth that modern technology has gone it's still fun.  A bit of 'retro cyberpunk' if you will. 

The original boxed set took place in 2013 and the second edition was set in 2020.  The third edition, I will just not talk about.

Metaplot was there, with some token bad ass NPCs running around.  But none of it was necessary for the game unless you really wanted to get into the 'end game' battle of the Firestorm books.  Our group never went that way and we felt no less for it.  Most of the sourcebooks were set up as a sandbox type of resource, even before people started referring to them as such.

Also I love to run this game, I love to be a player in it, I enjoy coming up with random bits for it and I just enjoy reading it. 

Cyberpunk on drivethrurpg if you are interested.

#RPGaDAY Day Eleven

It's day eleven for #RPGaDAY and it's "Weirdest RPG Owned".

For this one I give you....  The Lawnmower Man RPG from Leading Edge Games.

A company best known for either the overly detailed system that was Phoenix Command, which they then used to make a nearly unplayable Aliens RPG.  Or for created a cult favorite game setting with Living Steel.  They also got some licenses for odd movies to make games out of along with miniatures for those said games.

The one that always made me turn my head sideways and go WTF was Lawnmower Man.  The movie was okay at its best parts and not really something I would look to base a game off of.  But they did.  A virtual war of sorts taking place after the ending of the movie.  Using the same watered down version of their wanna be in-house game engine they made a game that wasn't really okay at its best parts. 

They even produced miniatures for it.  Which boggles the mind.  Ah well.

#RPGaDAY Day Ten

"Favorite Tie-In Novel/Game Fiction" for #RPGaDAY today. 

I never was much into game fiction.  Which is odd I really like to read but once it's related to a roleplaying game my interest usually drops to zero for some reason.  Maybe it's due to the amount of bad fiction that was out there early on.  But I have took a few chances and one turned out to be one hell of a good book.

Godwalker by Greg Stolze for the Unknown Armies rpg. 

This book gives you a nice good feel for the mood of the game.  The bizarreness of what is going on with those who walk in the occult underground.  I recommend it to anyone who found Unknown Armies of interest, or to those who like modern era fiction with a magical twist tossed in.  You can order the book in print here:

Godwalker on Cafepress

Or in pdf here:

Godwalker at Drivethrurpg

There you can also find a bit of synopsis that doesn't reveal to much.  Which is good because it's hard to say much of anything about the story without it being some level of a spoiler.

#RPGaDAY Day Nine

"Favorite Die/Dice Set" is the #RPGaDAY for this fine morning.

Here's where I'm the odd person out.  I don't really have a favorite die or die set.  The whole luck thing is something I don't think about anymore.  I've also gone minimal and instead of carrying around a chunk of dice now I just carry the basics of what I need.  Below is what I pack.

The case is from a company called MS Clean when I backed their Kickstarter.  They made a gun cleaning kit case the size and shape of an M-16 magazine.  The person starting it was an ex-Marine I believe and hated the cleaning kits they were issued.  He came up with a nice hard case that could be carried easily in a magazine pouch and fit in with the rest of their gear.  I, of course, saw it and had another idea.  The Kickstarter was successful, his company is doing well, and I had a new dice box.

The dice inside are bog standard dice, nothing special, just grabbed out of my collection at home.  The only exception is the D20.  D20's made now are just a hair to tall for the case, so I dug out an artifact from when they weren't so large.  That's the D20 that came with my Dungeons and Dragons red box.

Also included are two pencils, one wooden and the other mechanical, and a flash drive for any info or pdfs that I need to bring.  For you to see laid out on top of some good gaming books.

 

 

#RPGaDAY Day Eight

"Favorite Character" is todays topic on #RPGaDAY.

Easy, hands down, it's Finn.  Or Feingalf, Fincube, or many other names he's had hung on him.  He is what happens when you read way to much Poison Elves before gaming.  A half elf with a few drops of some sort of demon blood tossed in for good measure with a huge chip on his shoulder and a whole lot of hate built up inside of him.  To make it even better you talk other players into going along with you.

Ended up with Finns half brother (same scumbag father) Fin-decano (played by my actual brother) who was wanting to track down our father and kill him, which I was just fine with.  Goats Ass, the result of rolling the lowest possible number for appearance, then taking a bogey that makes it worse.  A few others off and on that just added to the insanity.  We made a bunch of thug, dirt bag, drug using, asshole elves and quickly got the group nicknamed "The Insane Elf Posse".

The kicker was we never played characters like this before.  Full on scum bag characters.  We caused all manner of mayhem and chaos every where we went.  But, and this is the real kicker, I had some goals in mind and the madness we created was nothing more than a smoke screen so I could work towards them.

One, kill my father.  High ranking military officer in the Hykorian army... and a rapist piece of shit who cared nothing for the lives of others.  This one has been accomplished with the help of my brother and we also managed a LOT of property damage in the process. 

Two, recuse my mother.  She made a deal with a demon to protect me.  The kickers were that when I turn thirteen she had to return to his world with him and I got a few drops of his blood in me.  So yeah I need to jump through a gate, fight through whatever he has protecting the place, kill the bastard, get my mother and make it back through.  Still working on this one.  Problem is the only gate I know of is in the Elven city of Firelake and they don't like me.  But I have a plan to raise all sorts of merry hell as a distraction to get where I need to go.

Three, find out who the bastard who exiled my mother in the first place (before I was even conceived) and kill their asses.

Four... and to sit on my thrown as the prince of Bel-Air or some such.

In the course of this I've become a quite good user of Earth and Sea magic, been trained by some of the most skilled sword fighters in the world, scavenged a small arsenal of magic items some of which are basically weapons of mass destruction and so much more.  It's been years of playing this character and hopefully years more just to get where I need to go.  Finn sees everything as something to be used to achieve those goals, people, objects, everything.  If he's being nice to you, helping you out, it's because you have potential of being a tool.

#RPGaDAY Day Seven

"Most "Intellectual" RPG Owned" is todays #RPGaDAY.

I really don't know what to put here as I'm not entirely sure of what they mean.  The hobby seems to be chock full of people who enjoy redefining everything from time to time (like what an 'indie' game is). Hmmm...

So I'm going to wing it and go with, what I think, is the brain challenging game that I own.  Well at least challenging in the 'doing the math' department.  For this I give you Millenniums End from Chameleon Eclectic.  It's a 'few years in the future' setting where you play members of a seceurity company called Black Eagle/Black Eagle.  Pretty straight forward idea there.  Character creation can get a bit  extended but overall isn't to bad.  However when it comes time to swing a punch, pull a trigger or swing a knife may you find the patience that most will never have.

There are modifiers on top of modifiers.  Not just plus one or two, but multiplication of a number, several times.  Nothing that you need to break out the Algebra books for but there is just so much of it.  Then you also have a clear overlay target map system, that would be neat if it wasn't for the damage resolution mathwork afterwards. 

Strangely I think I own every single supplement for this game as well.

#RPGaDAY Day Six

"Favorite RPG Never Get To Play" is todays #RPGaDay.

Mine would be Legend of the Five Rings.  I have never got to play a single session, only made characters for it.  Nobody around here seems to have any interest in running it and it's not something that I want to run.  I just want to play it... dammit.

My original interest in it came from the CCG.  It got a bit popular around here after a friend (Norm) and I picked up some Emerald Edition starters and gave it a shot.  At one time we had around ten or more people into it.  I had a ton of cards for it at one time, but I liked the setting more, especially the whole clan war storyline they had going on at the time.  Sadly the Hidden Emperor rolling thunder expansion line killed it deader than hell and it never came back in locally.

Would love to play a campaign in that setting.  Specifically either the setting in the 1st edition RPG, right before the clan war starts or during the clan war as in the CCG.  But I don't see that happening... ever.... especially around here.

#RPGaDAY day five

"Most Old School RPG Owned" is today's #RPGaDAY request.

I'm mentioning some of the same games a few times here.  Hopefully I'll spread out to some of the variety that I have on my shelf.  But for this I have to say it is the old red box edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  The box is long since gone, I have at least one of the original dice still and the books are looking a bit rough around the edges.

Oddly enough though as many call it old school I like to think of it as 'early rules lite' or some such.  I mean honestly there isn't much to it rules wise with a lot less crunch than many other popular systems of the time.  Fast character creation and fast resolution for pretty much everything.

Granted this picture has a newer set of dice than what was originally in the box.  Still at least I'm didn't use the same image as before.  Gotta work some variety in here someplace.

#RPGaDAY day four

"Most Recent RPG Purchase" is what #RPGaDAY says I need to talk about now.

Well my buying habits have been greatly reduced over the years.  I've honestly sold three times more than I have bought, at least three time, maybe more.  But occasionally I still buy stuff.

It was Ryubix Manor most recently.  It was self published by a local gamer who ran a successful Kickstarter to get his funding.  I somehow missed backing it but I bought a copy from him through Amazon (so I could give him some good feedback). Had already looked through the proof copy he got weeks before and liked what I saw.  Also I have put up a review for it.

Ryubix Manor review

Hopefully it sounds like something you are interested in and snag up a copy.  I'm always one to support local gamers.

#RPGaDay day three

#RPGaDAY continues and it's "First RPG Purchased".

Well the answer is the same as yesterday actually.  Vampire: The Masquerade first edition.  Up until this point I had pretty much used other peoples stuff.  But that seemed like the norm around here, the GM bought the books and the others just played.  If anybody else had the books it was because they also ran the game as well when they weren't playing.

I went all in for Vampire, bought pretty much everything that came along for it.  The local game shop (The Bonne Terre Hobby Shop now long out of business) ordered an extra copy for me whenever they ordered it for their shelf.  Well they actually ordered several copies as I wasn't the only person hooked on the game.  There were several groups in the area, some had converted it to a fantasy setting, others were doing epic global spanning chronicles, some were going monty haul with it.

#RPGaDay day two

Today it's "First RPG Gamemastered" on #RPGaDAY.

This one is easy.  First time I ever ran a game it was Vampire: The Masquerade first edition maybe just a few weeks after its release.  I was always looking for the game I wanted to try and run, fantasy just wasn't something I wanted to do though.  Finally one month in a Dragon magazine they reviewed two games that caught my interest.  One was Dark Conspiracy from GDW and the other was Vampire: The Masquerade from White Wolf. 

I firmly believe I made the right decision.  Years later I picked up Dark Conspiracy and can say I would never have ran it at that time.  But Vampire was different, it was trying to push around the norms that I had been used to in gaming, plus it was modern horror and the dice mechanics looked pretty cool.

Ran that game all sorts of wrong.  Lots of bad plots, stories, homebrewed rules, etc.  But it was one hell of a learning experience.  Vampire was a great rpg, Ron Edwards can go fuck himself over his statements on it, so can a few others actually.  I still have that first edition book someplace, it's just in a three ring binder now because I ran that thing until it fell to pieces. 

#RPGaDay day one.

Going to participate in the #RPGaDay idea from Autocratik.  Today is "First RPG Played".

That would be the old Dungeons and Dragons red box edition.  My brother had picked up a copy of Dragon magazine from someplace and thought a lot of what he saw was pretty cool.  So he followed an ad in there for a mail order hobby shop type company.  His first purchase was the boxed set and some miniatures that looked neat.

I'm absolutely we didn't play it right, he also didn't enjoy it as much as I did.  He walked off to the next thing that captured his interest while I sat and read over those two red manuals over and over again.  It would be years before I gamed again but the spark was set then and it remained bright all that time.