March Madness OGBC: Day 21

"What is the narrowest genre RPG you have ever played? How was it?"

Yeah, definitely Pendragon. A genre of RPG that exists entirely to run games set in Arthurian legend, where if you're not a knight (or at least landed), your life is hella boring, meaning you're an NPC.

And god is it fun.

There's always that adage about how restrictions having the ability to enhance creativity, and man does that ever work with Pendragon. Everything from rolling randomly to see how your family have interacted with the last hundred years of backstory, to creating your own coat of arms, to roleplaying within the strictures of the trait/passion system, if you have a player who doesn't exactly know 'how' to roleplay, I'd seriously suggest initiating them with Pendragon, or at least taking some of its mechanics with you to the rest of your games. And, because it's d100/d20 based, it works well with both BRP and D&D (also Pathfinder, D&D's bastard genius prodigy).

And, of course, if you're going to run Pendragon, you should totally run the Great Pendragon Campaign, which I'm totally playing in right now and you should all go and listen to it.

March Madness OGBC: Day 20

"Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?"

I'm vaguely curious as to whether or not my own settings can count toward my favorites. Not really curious enough to care though, because I had a hell of a good time running Dino BRP (The campaign was actually called "The Wrong Side of Everything".)

Why was it a lot of fun? Well, I tend to describe the setting as a recipe of:

1 part Serenity
1 part Jurassic Park (The Lost World, specifically)
1 part Fallout

On post-apocalyptic Earth, increased solar radiation and a new strain of influenza has resulted in the nigh-extinction of all domesticated animals. However, thanks to InGen genetically engineering fucking dinosaurs for some reason, we don't have to subsist on soy products, because apparently these 'abominations' are doing just fine in this new heat.

Of course, at least 50% of them are carriers of the dreaded new antiviral-resistant influenza, but people have to eat, and that is where Dinosaur Poachers come in.

My campaign was set in the idyllic Mexican post-apoc slum of Tetanus Falls, and my fantastic friends played a good portion of the crew of the Stork: gritty entrepreneurs set on striking it rich (or dying trying). Adventures ranged from dino hunts, to rescue missions, to contagion containment, to infiltrating underwater research bases, to a high-falutin' gambling finale on a frickin crashing airship.

Having to WorldGen the entirety of the setting wasn't so bad, it allowed me to create new diseases, alter weapons, and create a host of characters and locations my players would hear about, but never see.

Well, at least they won't see until I convert the setting to Savage Worlds because fuck that system would be perfect with this setting.

Warmachine Wednesdays: The Ironclad

There's not much one needs to say about the default Cygnar beat-stick. The Ironclad has solid hit boxes, good accuracy with melee, and a hand weapon that's capable of putting serious dents in Khador 'jacks.

Despite lacking the nigh-excessive survivability of their northern red neighbors, the Ironclad can take a few solid hits, especially when you factor in that there is really only one arm you need to be especially concerned about. Some of the best strategy that's worked for me with the Ironclad is immediately moving it into combat with the biggest 'jack in your opponent's army, or getting it entrenched with a lot of short-range targets. This negates the main problem involved with losing movement abilities and, to be honest, with the Ironclad's above-par MAT, losing its cortex isn't much of an issue, either.

Used in conjunction with jacks or casters who can inflict Knockdown on the Ironclad's target makes his tactics almost too simple. Auto-hitting with a significant bonus to damage means that almost nothing can stand against this 'jack for too long.

I'm assembling a Stormclad at the moment, for use in conjunction with some Stormblades I have yet to paint up and complete assembly on, so we'll see if this guy gets replaced or simply becomes a necessary adjunct to my lists.

March Madness OGBC: Day 19

"What is the fluffiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?"

And here we are, right back at Maid RPG. As explained before, Meido, while not exactly super light on mechanics, is easily explained and played by anyone with a pair of hands, dice, and a general understanding of the words "harem anime."

And, well, it wasn't that great. The intro scenario, "Birthday Party," is kind of the exact wrong thing you want your first time players going through. It's 90% directionless, relying on players to generate plot, objectives, drama, antagonists, protagonists...

It's a sandbox, basically. But a sandbox where your players are roleplaying Japanese Anime Maids. That already rules out 90% of any target demographic, but when you compound this hurdle with a game that is, to put things amicably, essentially aimless, you have a bunch of people sitting around a table wondering why they even give a shit.

There's a million ways to make the intro scenario more interesting, so in lieu of writing any more about players dropping out of that intro game mentally, then waiting about an hour before thanking god we needed to leave before the weather hated us, I'm going to create a simple random die roll generator to make it better.

So, without further ado, here we have:

Maid RPG Intro. It's Master's Birthday, But (roll 1d6)...

1: Master Wants to Go to the Circus But is Terrified of Clowns
2: Aliens Abduct the Birthday Cake
3: A Zombie Bit the Master
4: Master is Missing (Or Did He Ever Exist to Begin With?)
5: All the Master's Guests are Assassins Hired to Kill Him
6: The Rival Master Next Door Ordered All the Jolly Jumps In Town

Welp, that looks fixed.

*drops mic*

March Madness OGBC: Day 18

"What is the crunchiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?"

Oh man GURPS. It's rare that I'll run a game and never look back. But when it comes to the Generic Universal RolePlaying System, yeah. I'll play it, but there's no way in hell I want to dredge through the mire of all its assorted sourcebooks and add ons to get what I want to do together.

I'll even come out and admit it. When I ran GURPS, I didn't even look at the rules more than once. I winged everything after the first session, because I didn't want to deal with the crunch. Part of that may have stemmed from the fact that in my party was a player who had more experience with the system than I cared to learn.

Regardless, after I shucked the rulebook I found things to proceed smoothly enough. Players were never in any danger, of course, because I had no idea how to kill them, and I'm talking mechanically, not fluff-wise. At the same time, the campaign, which was basically a "what if all those steampunk people who dress up today actually came from somewhere real," was a pretty interesting concept piece in cooperative world-building, so I had a player who had his own personal automaton mecha, a player who didn't want to CharGen himself so I made him have unintentional superpowers, and a character that knew all the rules so she gave herself an OP sniper rifle.

And a player who dropped out after the first session because she realized she didn't like RPGs.

So yeah, it was a fun experience, but only because I ignored the crunch.

...Does this blog post even count anymore? I feel like I cheated or something.

March Madness OGBC: Day 17

"Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?"

Despite the above image reading for Shadowrun, I'm willing to pimp Interface Zero for the Savage Worlds system as well. Both have great hacking systems that incorporate aspect of the Matrix, Augmented Reality, and a dystopian worldview regarding the eventual destination of social media (Shadowrun predicting this before the advent of social media, even)

In each game, hackers/deckers 'jack in' to their respective Matrices and mess around with various systems (that, due to their worlds' interest in keeping things as automated and interconnected as possible) which perform a variety of operations, from operating streetlights to deep fryers in fast-food joints.

This concept is interesting in itself, but the crunchy depth each system goes into, whether describing the visual representation of firewalls to Intrusion Countermeasures installed in a database, or explaining how pieces of tech/custom programs interact with each other in the Matrix, is like (at least to me) taking a Comp-Sci class with no prerequisites. I'm honestly baffled by a lot of the stuff put into these, and that isn't the case with a lot of the other sci-fi games I've come across, where a spaceship is a vessel that flies in space, or a laser pistol is a handgun that shoots lasers.

It's oh so complex, but I'm hoping to crack it soon. Later, chummers.

March Madness OGBC: Day 16

"Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details."

Who knew I'd be talking about the Iron Kingdoms again so soon? Or maybe not so soon. This pre-posting stuff is starting to give me an anachronistic viewpoint on life. Regardless, currently my favorite magic system is utilized in Iron Kingdoms, and I favor it over D&D because it eschews the traditional concept of spell failure percentages when wearing heavy armor.

In D&D, wearing anything heavier than basically a tee shirt gave you a chance for your spell to fizzle in the casting of it, probably to prevent casters from walking around wearing plate mail. Iron Kingdoms says to hell with that and decks their Warcasters out in powered plate mail, carrying swords and guns and sledgehammers, and proceeds to beat the everloving piss out of the opposing Warcaster, who is also decked out similarly. In Iron Kingdoms, magic doesn't have to define who you are. You can be a sniper and still cast spells. You can be a warcaster and a Stormblade. This is a setting that looks at the Rule of Cool and asks what else it has up its sleeve, because while giant steam-powered robots are cool and all, what about people who want horse-drawn tanks?

There's also the lore around magic, which involves certain gods disappearing, certain races being really pissed at others and blaming them for the disappearance of their gods, and certain races who use necromancy to cross oceans and enslave entire civilizations.

So, to summarize, in Iron Kingdoms, you can use magic to cast spells, telepathically link with steam-powered automatons, infuse bullets with magic spells, and inscribe non-magical weapons and armor with slottable rune magic (or the souls of your victims, if that sort of thing's your bag, baby.)

God I love this system.