March Madness OGBC: Day 31

"What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?"

 Because I don't want to pay $100 on a hardcover sourcebook for this game.

I've already done a semi-retrospective of this March Madness, and honestly I can't think of a sourcebook I'd really like to have back in 'publication,' because DriveThruRPG exists and they sell .pdfs of everything I can literally think of. I mean, Mouseguard goes for $20 bucks on their site. I think I just want a hard copy of the book because I like having them.

Zing, I know.

Regardless, I've had a really great time blogging this month about what I'm just realizing is a sore lack of a spanning gaming experience, and am looking forward to rectifying this for what will hopefully be a yearly 31-day challenge.

Next month, look forward to me possibly following through on at least campaign planning for Magic World and beginning conversions for Dark Tower Pendragon (Working title Arthur Eld: The Dark Tower).

Thanks for reading, I'm sure some of my posts were likely spastic and incoherent, but I appreciate all the input!

See you next month!

March Madness OGBC: Day 30

"Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details."

"Cat-thulhu" by Gamegeneral

Now here's a game I can talk about, and that I want to talk about, and holy shit people Lovecraft loved cats so much his name has love in it and someone decided to do something about it and I'm totally not talking about the GenCon Kickstarter I totally backed and THIS IS THE INTERNET PEOPLE SO GET EXCITED ABOUT CATS!

Ha, I bet it would get really annoying if I kept writing in that voice for the rest of this post.

In all seriousness, when I'm talking Cathulhu, I'm referring to the Worlds of Cthulhu #4, which introduced CharGen rules for creating feline investigators. The mechanics of doing so are super-involved, and focus on what breed you are, as well as what adorable tricks you may have up your sleeve.

And Wash is a skill. I've homebrewed a rule, thanks to my buddy Scott, that if a catvestigator (heh) fails his roll to wash, he loses Sanity, now called Sentience.

Heh. Catvestigator, get it? Well, when one loses Sentience, they start experiencing adorable cat problems, like toilet troubles, upset tummies, or spontaneous spraying. If they lose all their sentience, cats go feral.

They can also cast spells. Cat sorcerers!

Dammit Google not that kind of cat sorcerer!

Seriously, though. Find a copy of Worlds of Cthulhu #4 and run this. It's totally worth every bit of adorability your players will create in-game.

March Madness OGBC: Day 29

"What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain how."

You know I had to Google OSR for this question? I really hope it means Old School Renaissance, because I have no experience with Old School Roleplaying. I have barely any experience with Old School Renaissance because, well, I guess I tend to play mainstreamish stuff.

The only thing that really comes close is Dungeon World, which I've played once, and the memories are a little hazy. I remember having fun, and rolling dice, and meeting a new player to our group. He took the bard character: I no longer remember what I played. It's like that.

From what I do remember, most of it was the response my GM, David Larkins of The RPG Corner fame (you can find the link to his blog on the right) had to say about it, which was that the system was easy to convert with a setting he'd already either semi-created or semi-stolen to use in another game. That kind of open-endedness is fully deserving of a more intensive look.

But who am I kidding, folks? This month I've pledged myself to:

-Create a BESM setting for Valkyria Chronicles
-Start running Magic World, creating a world setting for that
-Convert AD&D Dark Sun to BRP
-Alter Pendragon to fit the Dark Tower
-Run Shadowrun 5.0 this calendar year
-Invent a new Boardgame system to bridge the gap between Tabletop RPGs and Board games (a la HeroQuest)
-Run Lady Blackbird
-Find a way to run Redwall
-And possibly jump back into a few sessions of D&D 4e so I can revisit my earlier thoughts on the system.

All this, with a full-time job and a serious videogame addiction (Goddamnit Diablo III). You can see where I'm finally starting to realize exactly what I've put on my plate for the forthcoming calendar year. I'm also likely going to receive, thanks to Kickstarter, Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, Horror on the Orient Express, Ryuutama, Punktown, and Cathulhu this year. Possible something else. And expand wargaming in Santa Fe.

Jesus christ have I gone INSANE?

March Madness OGBC: Day 28

"What free RPG did you enjoy most? Give details."

A few years ago, when I was freshly off the car trip to Santa Fe, had only made a few gaming friends, and really only knew the extent of Call of Cthulhu, D&D 4e, and Pathfinder, I went to Bubonicon in Albuquerque, NM. There, I encountered various authors on self-funded book tours, saw a shitload of steampunk cosplay, and sat at a table for a half hour and played Lady Blackbird.

(Yay, hyperlinks!)

What I recollect from those halcyon thirty minutes of gaming was a game plot that sounded like the love child of Star Wars Episode IV and Space Balls, and the complete and utter open-endedness of the game. There was nothing plotted out in it, either story or geographically. The included rules specifically state not to plan anything, but to ask your players questions, and let them answer them for you. So I found myself, along with a couple friends, manufacturing an escape from an enemy airship, occasionally rolling dice from a pool mechanic that borders on genius in its approachability, and generally having a great time roleplaying as a varied cast of characters with their own secret motivations and dreams.

My only regret is that the game was so brief (much like this post), but hope springs eternal because the rules are still there, still free, and have options for character advancement, so someday I may find myself in the GM's chair asking my players exactly how they intend to get Lady Blackbird to her wedding in time.

BRP Releases Advanced Sorcery

And so BRP have released their Advanced Sorcery supplement for their Magic World sourcebook, my current bedside reading material.

I've auto-purchased this, and hope to receive it this coming Monday, which will coincide splendidly with the conclusion of my March Madness OSR blog posts. I'm sure you've all (all one of you) enjoyed reading my thoughts on the various dozen or so systems I have experience either playing or running, so perhaps this is an appropriate place to announce that my project for April will be creating a new original setting for running BRP Magic World with these new supplemental rules.

I'm very excited to see what new pieces of lore and sorcery I can discover by delving through this particular grimoire, and how that information will inform to my worldbuilding.

Time will tell.

(Oooh...time magic. That's an interesting concept.)

March Madness OGBC: Day 27

"What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details."

To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the Cortex system. It feels a lot like a more complicated take on Savage World's dice-increase-by-size mechanics, while tacking on a significant series of ancillary rules that require an encyclopedic knowledge of the ruleset to run anything smoothly.

That said, the best time I've ever had running an existing IP game was with Serenity RPG, and it's all because of the fanbase.

Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity space cowboy universe is, well, almost universally hailed as one of the great original concepts for television in the last decade, and memes lamenting its cancellation still propagate my facebook feed to this day. These are dedicated people, full of fervor and excitement for the setting, and more than willing to do the legwork to feel right at home there. By luck, or pure social statistics, I have a goodly amount of friends who are a few wardrobe pieces away from being browncoats themselves, and they were more than willing to jump into a quickly written adventure that I wrote to take place about a year after the events of Serenity.

I think it's a testament to the 'verse's original look and feel that each player knew how their character would fit into the setting, and it's really rare in most games to know that everyone has a cohesive view of how everything works. Not having to run through an introduction to the basic universe details, or stop every few minutes when a new piece of terminology comes up, even being able to explain new concepts by referring to knowledge players already had by experiencing the show...well, if that's not a windfall for a GM I really don't know what is.

It's one of my regrets as a GM that my Serenity RPG campaign only lasted three or four sessions; the players really enjoyed it, I enjoyed writing for it. Perhaps I can return to it sometime in the future, but then again, there are a lot of things I need to return to in the future, and Diablo III isn't helping.

March Madness OGBC: Day 26

"What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?"

Oh, hey there childhood, fancy meeting you here.

"Redwall Tribute" by Simbaro

First of all, I'm aware that Mouseguard is a thing. It doesn't have otters.

I started reading the Redwall series in elementary school, and didn't really stop until sometime after I graduated from high school. I fell out of the loop with the series and universe, taking up alternate fantasy authors like Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, and David Eddings. Reading through their works. But while just about any RPG setting can be converted to accommodate human characters in fantasy settings (And the Wheel of Time already got a D&D 3.0 sourcebook), the only anthropomorphic animal setting I've heard about reliably is Mouseguard, which currently sits at around $100- used- on Amazon.

And it doesn't have otters.

The Redwall universe has such a unique and interesting setting, with characters juxtaposed from all types of fantasy tropes. And because of the anachronistic style of product release for the series, there is a varied and plentiful history to work from, spanning generations (which, in animal years, might just mean that it encompasses like two decades). Regardless, the loving way that Jacques tells his stories, infusing them with mystery, danger, and camaraderie, really strikes home with me as a GM, and the solid cultures created for each segment of the animal kingdom means that I don't have to guess as to how I'm going to run NPCs, because I have a series of manuals to how each species acts, where they live, and what their diet consists of.

Honestly, I'm surprised someone hasn't homebrewed this already.