My RPG Person Profile

Your RPG Person Profile

I'm currently running (at home):

World of Darkness

Tabletop RPGs I'm currently playing (at home) include:

Iron Kingdoms, Pendragon, D&D 3.5 

I'm currently running (online):

None

Tabletop RPGs I'm currently playing (online) include:

Pathfinder

I would especially like to play/run:

Shadowrun

...but would also try:

Savage Fallout, BRP Dark Sun

I live in:

Santa Fe, NM

2 or 3 well-known RPG products other people made that I like:

Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, Pendragon

2 or 3 novels I like:

Ender's Game, Redwall, Elenium

2 or 3 movies I like:

The Fifth Element, The Thing, Samurai X

Best place to find me on-line:

Unabashed Gaming

I will read almost anything on tabletop RPGs if it's:

Post-Apocalyptic

I really do not want to hear about:

Dungeons & Dragons

I think dead orc babies are ( circle one: funny / problematic / ...well, ok, it's complicated because...)

...it's not like orcs are that evil in a lot of settings anymore. It seems like kobolds and goblins have taken first string in the main opposition standpoint of gaming, and only really in LotR do orcs really get a bad rep. The rest of the time they're pretty okay.

Games I'm in are like this.

If you know anything about Dark Sun it'd help me with a project I'm working on: a conversion from AD&D Dark Sun to BRP.

I talk about RPGs on the Unabashed Gaming podcast under the name David Schimpff

March Madness OGBC: Day 10

"What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details."

Are we talking core ruleset? Or possibly a setting? I suppose that's the difficulty with vague questions like this, you can never really be 100% sure. However, because my favorite science fiction RPG exists in multiple playable formats, I'm going to have to go with Fallout. If you want a game system to go with it, try Savage Fallout. There's also a PnP transcription of the in-game rules, which are themselves based off tabletop.

Perhaps it's unfair to put this here because I haven't actually played Savage Fallout yet. Or Fallout PnP. However, I have played the originals, which, much like Baldur's Gate before them, is a transition of a tabletop game system to a computer. Also, I don't care if it's fair; the lore is rich, the imagery is unique, and the setting is every kind of badass.

It's close to a hundred years after the end of the world and humanity survived. Cities have been razed, oceans have boiled, a radioactive sheen has been draped over the known world. Humans eke out a living doing whatever they can, some have mutated into Ghouls, others have been FEV'd into Super Mutants. There are 1950's sci-fi robots because that's awesome. Everything wants to kill you. The core games take place in Southern California.

Which is my home.

It's like Dark Sun with guns. Which solves that chicken/egg question for me. I like Dark Sun because it's like Fallout with magic. With both systems, the game is survival, and if you're not playing a videogame, being a good guy doesn't pan out very well for all the parties involved. Because GMs can be assholes (I love that I'm writing this on GM's day).

Look, if you don't know what Fallout is, I don't blame you. Just buy it, and play it, and tell me I'm wrong somehow. I won't get mad, because you're wrong.

P.S. Apparently you can't buy the original Fallouts right now because Bethesda sucks. So do that other thing. The one with a jolly roger.

March Madness OGBC: Day 9

"What superhero RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?"

I...have not played a superhero RPG.

Like, ever. I remember playing HeroClix once, and being terrible at it. I suppose I'm just not really interested in the genre. I appreciate comic books for their culture, but don't tend to read or collect them. Superhero movies are the closest I seem to get to the culture, well, that and the various amazing superhero videogames that have been released, and talking about those here feels like cheating, kind of. But seriously, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is awesome, as is Spiderman 2. And inFamous, actually.

To be honest, if I were to play a superhero RPG, I think I'd want it to be in a setting similar to the one used for inFamous. Opportunities for power-trips, but still vulnerable as a squishy human. Except when you can drop from tall buildings. Gritty, I suppose? I guess I have a hard time seeing how to limit a group of players who want to be supermen. In pre-written media you've got your hero weaknesses and vulnerabilities all worked out beforehand, but in RPGs you have CharGen, and anyone living right now has spent at least a year of their lives, collectively, figuring out exactly how they'd be an unstoppable superhero if it were possible.

The genre just seems to intentionally lend itself to min-maxing. Perhaps the existing systems can pull it off well, but like I said, it's not a genre I have interest in investing time in.

March Madness OGBC: Day 8

"What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details."

Honestly, I've not yet been in a position to play a spy RPG as of yet. However, I've run some non-spy genre games that had aspects of espionage. The most memorable was a run in the Serenity RPG's Cortex system where the heroes had to infiltrate a private security compound and steal safe codes for a bumblebee-class freighter that had crash-landed on an outlying planet.

There was a good bit of sneaking around at night, climbing walls, breaking into buildings through air conditioning chutes, and disabling security devices, with light puzzle solving based on both character skill rolls and player ingenuity.

Lastly, though, was the daring escape with a stolen security skimmer that burned the faces off the night watchmen.

I really enjoy the ability to switch the play style of RPGs on the fly and find out how your players plan on running with things, though having a system dedicated to a particular play style is also a valid option. That said, I'm really interested in trying out Shadowrun 5th, and seeing what all the fuss is about.

Acceptable Casualties: Wargaming With Feeling

I never thought I'd enjoy wargaming. It always felt too close to the RTS genre of gaming, a section of the industry that I am unskilled and unwilling to get better at. It was with this perception that I continued in my RPG career, wargaming an occasional twinkle in my periphery that I could easily ignore. But it was not meant to last. This year, I made a resolution to learn Wargaming.

Learn it, play it, paint minis for it.

And thus far, it's been quite a bit of fun. Less Starcraft and more, well, chess I suppose. I was concerned that the nuance would escape me, and perhaps some of it still does; after all, my opponents and I are still learning the system. However, working with what limited experience we have at the moment, things proceed hectically and viciously, and you can really feel it when those last few activations come down to the wire and you need to rely on good dice rolls to end the game quickly before your opponent has time to take advantage of your overexertion.

Hence the need to understand acceptable casualties. Playing WarmaHordes (or HorMachine) exclusively, I don't have an excessive amount of experience with other types of wargames and therefore don't have enough experience to make blanket statements. However, I imagine there is still a significant amount of give and take with other games, as you need to constantly evaluate which parts of your army are expendable, or usable to block important parts of your opponent's army.

There's also a good bit of rock-paper-scissor that comes into play, determining which forces work best at harrying, advancing, and damaging your opponent. I'm looking forward to seeing what strategies I can bring to the table in the future, and possibly expanding talks like this with more actual experience than generic statements.

But, for now, I'll just say that Cygnar is pretty badass.

March Madness OBGC: Day 7

"What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?"

"The Walk" by Privateer Press

Not that I wouldn't love to talk about Pendragon again, but goddamn Iron Kingdoms is so badass and totally has a 1d4chan page I can link to. IK was originally released as a setting for the d20 D&D ruleset, then progressed into becoming the completely amazing wargame Warmachine (ha! linked again!), then was popular enough to regenerate its RPG system based on the mechanics of the wargame. Holy shit that's like a Möbius strip of everything good about tabletop gaming.

Iron Kingdoms could be classified as a Steampunk RPG set during the Industrial Revolution, if the Industrial Revolution was catalyzed by magic and the need to drive tyrannic necromancers from a coalition of enslaved lands, using giant steam-powered robots. That brings me to the first thing I adore about the setting: its rich history. The various countries and citizens of Immoren have a good 800 years of back history, all painstakingly created with the kind of immersion that high school history books only wished they could pull off.

What's really impressive, though, is that the written lore in the core book only really covers a small portion of what is likely a very large planet.

For reference, Western Immoren seems to be roughly the size of our Europe.

The d6 dice mechanic may seem like a bit of a letdown compared to various other systems that utilize multiple polyhedrals, but the simplicity of the system allows for new players to pick up and play quickly and- best of all- allows the IK ruleset to work nigh-seamlessly with the WarmaHordes wargame, creating all kinds of options for adding enemies from various armies, rather than relying on the bestiary of the core book which focuses mainly on enemies you won't find in WH. So perhaps they planned all along for this curious synergy.

Which is awesome.

Lastly, I must talk about CharGen, because I love CharGen. Iron Kingdoms features a unique variant on character creation, starting off new heroes with a mechanic that is almost dual-classing, but creates narrative options from your choices. So instead of choosing to be a fighter, or a thief, or a magic-user, you choose two Careers (Like Knight, Cutthroat, or Warcaster) at the outset, and these define the weapon and non-combat skills you both begin and progress with. What's really cool about the system is that each choice made during CharGen informs to your character's origin and potential progress, so by the time you've got a filled out character sheet you'll have a few hints towards your hero's backstory.

It's really a great game, and you should totally check it out.

March Madness OGBC: Day 6

"What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?"

Can I use Cthulhu?

No?

I'm using Cthulhu anyway, bitches.

If "Cthulhu Meme" has 456,000 results, then fuck you I'm using Cthulhu

At this point, we should probably be arguing that some D&D monsters are as iconic as Cthulhu. He's headlining two major RPG core rulebooks, and is apparently also a cat now. The concept of subversive cults worshipping a dark entity while living out the rest of their lives without their nearest and dearest knowing they are batshit insane is a fantasy a lot of us have an easy time buying into, because holy shit the GOP am I right guys?

Joking aside, Cthulhu has appeared in such an insane number of media entities that he's transcended the popularity of his creator, H.P. Lovecraft. That's like people recognizing IT and not knowing who the hell Stephen King is.

Oh, and apparently some scientists named a spider after Cthulhu, because Californians never wanted to sleep again, anyway. Enjoy!