Hah! I remembered to post today so as not to screw up my NY Resolution within the month of January. Today has been kinda exhausting. K got her ear tubes put in today, which meant getting to the surgery center by 0645, a quite early morning on the heels of a week of crappy sleep due to Z and K both having issues sleeping through the night. Ugh. It's so amazing - I mean, everyone who has had children keeps telling us this, but until you've lived it... Z is sharp as a tack, and is falling in love with Star Wars, without much prodding from me. I just showed him the movies, he decided he wants to watch them all the time. He asks me some very interesting questions about the films, it's interesting the details a three-year-old can remember from films. I've still not gotten around to explaining to him about Qui-Gon falling asleep at the end of Phantom Menace. Yes, I showed him the prequels - but he saw the original trilogy FIRST. Twice each. My wife is the one that insisted we introduce him to the prequels... K amazes me by not being a baby anymore. It seems like it was just the other day she was an infant who would only fall asleep on my chest, and now she's walking, learning new words every day, using utensils when she eats... wow.
OK, so, gaming. Two things had me extremely excited about D&D products over the last two days, but one of them is only a possibility and the other may turn out to be totally disappointing to me. First of all, Wizards of the Coast, following on to their successful reprints of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons first edition and the 3.5e corebooks have decided to reprint AD&D 2nd Edition. This had me pretty excited. 2e is quite often either ignored or downplayed by the D&D community. There are quite a few people who feel that 2e lacked flavor, since TSR removed demons, devils, assassins and half-orcs from the 2nd edition. Some say the Dungeon Master's Guide was inferior to the first edition version. Some think it was either too far from 1e, or not far enough. For me, 2nd Edition was the game of choice when I was in high school. 1989 was my freshman year, and by that time I'd been playing D&D and AD&D for three years, with D&D taking the lion's share of that gaming time. My BECMI books and later the Rules Cyclopedia (more on that later) were most of my gaming where D&D was concerned. Now, don't get me wrong - during this period I played Traveller, Palladium Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Price of Freedom, Gangbusters, Gamma World, MechWarrior, Star Frontiers... lotsa stuff. But as it was for many other players, D&D and AD&D were our bread and butter.
Back to 2nd Edition. When it came out it was pretty awesome to our high-school eyes. Visually, the Easley covers were striking, the glossy interiors with some pretty iconic paintings - like Elmore's dragon hunters - were inspiring. The rules were cleaned up, things like initiative actually made sense... At the time we called it a win. The DMG was thinner, and it was missing things like Gygaxian prose and artifacts. The Monster Manual came in a three-ring binder, kind of odd, but I did later get some of the expansions that clipped into the binder. With 2nd Edition came some of the campaign settings that drove us for years. I was a fan of Ravenloft and Al-Qadim. I still keep them both on my bedroom bookshelf for before-bed reading. I loved 2e. I didn't realize at the time I was supposed to hate it... We didn't have the internet back then. Oh, and don't get me started on how amazing the actual content of the monster book was - ecology, society, behavior. You had more than a paragraph and some stats, there was real flavor to their monster writeups!
Around 1995, 2e got a revision. The covers were re-done, the interiors re-done, the errata worked into the text, and a lot of extra rulebooks like the Player's Option and DM's Option books came out. THAT, we hated. The new trade dress was just... not as heroic, not as inspiring somehow. The interiors of the books had red text on white backgrounds for section headers. Ugh. The art had changed, the "feel" had changed, and what the hell were all these extra rulebooks? No thankee.
So, I find out WoTC is going to be reprinting 2e as premium collectibles. Sold. Put me down for a copy of each book. Maybe extra copies of the PHB. But wait - is it the iconic 1989 version they're reprinting? Nope. It's the craptacular 1995 version. The one none of us played, as we were playing MechWarrior, Shadowrun, Vampire, Traveller : The New Era and a bunch of other stuff by then. The black cover books hold no nostalgia for me. I hated them when they were new, I avoid them at Half-Price Books. I'm not shelling out $50 per book for that interior layout, or that cover art. Just... no.
So... disappointment. Now for the part where I get excited. WotC has a poll to find out which product we're interested in seeing get the premium reprint next. On the list is... THE DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS RULES CYCLOPEDIA. Yes, folks, my single favorite D&D book of all time. With this volume I could run campaigns from now until doomsday and never need another book. Characters levels 1-36, mass combat, domain management, even a basic overview of The Known World and Hollow World. It's all there. THIS book summed up D&D for me. It compiled the Basic, Expert, Companion and Master's rules into one sturdy tome and delivered it for fast and easy play. Huzzah. I own three of them. There's one more at Half-Price Round Rock for $40 that I'll score if I get a 50% off coupon before someone else buys it. Why? Because my extra copies await the day some needy young gamer comes along and needs to have one bestowed upon them. In the last year I have given away copies of Star Wars D6, Shadowrun, D&D 3.0, Basic D&D, Marvel Superheroes and MechWarrior. I buy spare copies of my favorite games when I can find them cheap, and I gift them to folks who would benefit from having them. My way to propogate the gamer species.
So there's my thoughts for the week. AD&D2e, sold, but only if they go with the orignal 1989 material. Rules Cyclopedia? Definitely sold, if they decide to do the reprint. I fear if they reprint the black border 2e and it fails to sell, as the reaction of my fellow gamers on www.therpgsite.com and www.rpg.net seem to indicate it might, more reprints may not happen.
I've got a lot more thoughts, but it's late, I've gotta get to work early tomorrow, and I think I just heard K wake up crying... again...
Until next time, True Believers.
21 January 2013
14 January 2013
I suppose there's a first time for everything...
First of all, second Monday of the new year, and Huzzah, I'm posting. Heh. The title of this post refers to the fact that after many years of viewing Games Workship's Warhammer 40,000 universe with a yawn and a distinct lack of interest aside from the stellar realtime stragetgy computer game Dawn of War, I have finally found a glimmer of interest in one of their RPG books. Don't get me wrong, I get grimdark. I've played in enough dark game worlds to say that I can definitely enjoy grimdark for what it is, and dig a storyline or campaign setting that is gritty and distinctly lacks the sort of thrilling heroics often associated with the roleplaying game hobby. That said, the 40K universe just never clicked with me. Is it some form of twisted humor that what turned me off to the 40K background is that it was endless war after war after war... and yet the title of the book that caught my attention is "Only War?"OK, so Space Marines seem one-note and cartoonish to me the way they are portrayed in 40K. No, I've not read any of the novels or other media, I just know what little I've been exposed to from Dawn of War and my limited knowledge of the 40K miniatures game. Ho-hum. Yawn. So said I. When I began playing Dawn of War, I fell in love with the Imperial Guard. These folks at least *looked* like human soldiers. Their equipment, while still a bit space-Gothic, was still recognizable. They had weak but plucky infantry, and good armor and artillery. I dug them. When FFG started releasing the 40K roleplaying games, I found myself disinterested in the various lines for different reasons. Rogue Trader looked neat, but I was put off by the scale of the vessels the main characters were assigned. Dark Heresy? Mildly intriguing, but I didn't see that my game group would get a lot of milage out of it. Death Watch? Same thing. Why, then did I find Only War so interesting? Well, I blame my interest in World War One.
The Imperial Guard are almost always overmatched, under-equipped, and in for a good shellacking. They make insane charges against superior foes and do so out of love of their Emperor. For some strange reason this reminds me of Tommys in the trenches of World War One, and I find that kind of endearing. These poor bastards join the Imperial Guard to fight for their Emperor against incredible odds, most of them knowing they'll never make it home, and yet they fight. They're not genetically engineered super-soldiers like their Space Marine counterparts, they're just people. I started doing some reading about the Imperial Guard, and I came across the Imperial Infantryman's Handbook - which is, amusingly enough, designed to look like an early 20th Century book, at least looking at the cover design. The grain of the cover reminds me of my great-grandfather's 1943 Bluejacket's Manual, or the 1914 Manual of Military Training I have. I wonder if the analogy my brain drew between the IG and the poor bloody infantry of the past is intentional?From the reviews I've read, this book is an in-universe artifact that the soldiers of the IG are required to have on them at all times. The book is written from that perspective, and is supposed to be kind of humorous in that someone in the real world reading the book can see the blatant lies and propaganda being fed to the lowly trooper of the Imperial Guard. At $16 on Amazon, it might be worth my checking out.
I suppose that's what interests me about Only War. I've spent the last two years finishing up a degree that saw me reading a lot about the plight of the lowly soldier. I took a special interest in the experiences of soldiers in the First World War, but the reality of the conflicts of human experience and the viewpoint of the common trooper was always forefront in my mind. When I began this course of study, I fancied that I would be thinking about things fromt he perspective of the generals, admirals and marshals that planned and executed these massive campaigns- but instead I found myself much more engrossed by the view from the bottom, where what we would call the "Commander's Intent" was usually impossible to determine. Where the scope and focus of the Warhammer 40,000 universe would usually turn me completely off to the game - it is that possibility for being totally lost in the shuffle that leads me to find something interesting in Only War. I find the idea of telling the story of a group of soldiers that fight they know not why to be a very interesting one. Perhaps, through the perceptions of my players, I can gather some insight into the minds of the kinds of average people who find themselves in decidedly nasty circumstances with very little background on why they were there.
If I can fit these books into my budget, maybe I'll post some further thoughts about them. Being a Dad means not having as much income to spend on gaming stuff. My grandmother asked me what I did with the Christmas money she gave me and was dismayed when I said "car payment." Being an adult often sucks in a financial sense, doesn't it?
07 January 2013
Happy New Year, Dear Readers.
Today is Monday, 7 January 2013. I am going to try valiantly to publish something worth reading every week of 2013, and Monday is my target day to do so. At my day job, Monday is the day I generally take stock of what needs to get done over the course of the rest of the week, with work, home life, hobby life, etc. The rest of the week is for implementation, especially Friday as that's the day that our classroom utilization is much lower allowing me to do the maintenance that is my main function. So Mondays are when I plan to blog, and I'd love to make sure there's something fun here to read for the whole seven of you who like The Old Dragoon.
So, how was my Christmas and New Year holiday? Exhausting is the first word that comes to mind, but amazing is the second. This was in many ways our first real Christmas as parents. Last year we were beset with water leak issues, getting used to being parents, living in a hotel... there were lots of things that made the Christmas season a blur. This year, Z and K are both firmly entrenched as "our" kids and Christmas felt like Christmas - and now I can see why parents all over find magic in the holiday. The Z-Man is now a confirmed Star Wars fan. I mean talking about lightsabers and Obi-Wan and Luke and wearing a Darth Vader mask around the house and everything. Oh, and I did get him the Playskool Millennium Falcon like I said I would. The hinge breaks a lot, but we still have fun with it... I digress. Christmas was awesome. Playing with the kids, taking them to visit family, listening to K sing "Purr, purr purr..." when we sing Soft Kitty to her. More of those magic parent moments that are so deeply touching.
New Year's Eve? Gaming, what else? We played Cyberpunk. The original Cyberpunk 2013 boxed set. Why? Because it's 2013, chombatta. I own two copies of CP2013, one of which is my battered and well-loved copy from 1987 and the second is a PRISTINE copy I got at Half-Price Books for $7.98 a few years back. On Ebay now that would cost me over $100 - I checked, I wanted to score one for my players. Not at those prices. Luckily, I have PDFs and a printer. Anyway, the game was a lot of fun. We rolled up characters becuase everyone present enjoys lifepaths. I always love how a lifepath gives players some roleplaying meat to chew on for a brand new character. In example - Bobby Dean's netrunner PC rolled life events that indicated he was accused of murder, and imprisoned for ten years. That became a backstory in which my wife's PC was his younger sister, and he was recruited by the mob while in prison. Mary's PC is dating the cop who put her brother away, in order to get information to clear his record. Coupla die rolls, and a lot of roleplaying material for two of the PCs involved. We had a blast, thanks to Clint, Dixie, Randi and Bobby for helping Mary and I make NYE 2013 memorable. Z and K slept through the game, thankfully... GRIN...
What can you expect from The Old Dragoon's blog in 2013? Well, I hope to do what I've been doing, only better and more frequently. My top ten games seemed to generate some interest, so I've been asked to do some more in-depth reviews and visit some other games on my also-ran or honorable mention lists. I've got a lot of 'em, lemme tell you. There's also some things I'd like to post about GM concepts, the Royal Dragoon Guards and our associated projects, story inspiration for gamers and other things. Whatever comes out, I promise I'll try not to make it read like stereo instructions.
See you next week (crosses fingers)...
So, how was my Christmas and New Year holiday? Exhausting is the first word that comes to mind, but amazing is the second. This was in many ways our first real Christmas as parents. Last year we were beset with water leak issues, getting used to being parents, living in a hotel... there were lots of things that made the Christmas season a blur. This year, Z and K are both firmly entrenched as "our" kids and Christmas felt like Christmas - and now I can see why parents all over find magic in the holiday. The Z-Man is now a confirmed Star Wars fan. I mean talking about lightsabers and Obi-Wan and Luke and wearing a Darth Vader mask around the house and everything. Oh, and I did get him the Playskool Millennium Falcon like I said I would. The hinge breaks a lot, but we still have fun with it... I digress. Christmas was awesome. Playing with the kids, taking them to visit family, listening to K sing "Purr, purr purr..." when we sing Soft Kitty to her. More of those magic parent moments that are so deeply touching.
New Year's Eve? Gaming, what else? We played Cyberpunk. The original Cyberpunk 2013 boxed set. Why? Because it's 2013, chombatta. I own two copies of CP2013, one of which is my battered and well-loved copy from 1987 and the second is a PRISTINE copy I got at Half-Price Books for $7.98 a few years back. On Ebay now that would cost me over $100 - I checked, I wanted to score one for my players. Not at those prices. Luckily, I have PDFs and a printer. Anyway, the game was a lot of fun. We rolled up characters becuase everyone present enjoys lifepaths. I always love how a lifepath gives players some roleplaying meat to chew on for a brand new character. In example - Bobby Dean's netrunner PC rolled life events that indicated he was accused of murder, and imprisoned for ten years. That became a backstory in which my wife's PC was his younger sister, and he was recruited by the mob while in prison. Mary's PC is dating the cop who put her brother away, in order to get information to clear his record. Coupla die rolls, and a lot of roleplaying material for two of the PCs involved. We had a blast, thanks to Clint, Dixie, Randi and Bobby for helping Mary and I make NYE 2013 memorable. Z and K slept through the game, thankfully... GRIN...
What can you expect from The Old Dragoon's blog in 2013? Well, I hope to do what I've been doing, only better and more frequently. My top ten games seemed to generate some interest, so I've been asked to do some more in-depth reviews and visit some other games on my also-ran or honorable mention lists. I've got a lot of 'em, lemme tell you. There's also some things I'd like to post about GM concepts, the Royal Dragoon Guards and our associated projects, story inspiration for gamers and other things. Whatever comes out, I promise I'll try not to make it read like stereo instructions.
See you next week (crosses fingers)...
11 December 2012
Episode 4e : A New Hope?
Good morning, True Believers, and sorry it's been over a month.
LOTS of things have happened since I posted my Top Ten, so let's sum up. I finished my Bachelor of Arts degree in Military History with a GPA of 3.791. Now I just have to wait until February to actually have my degree conferred. We are moving closer to adoping Z and K, and I can't wait to share photos of them with the world. Z saw Star Wars for the first time last night - he started it once before and fell asleep as we'd started it too late at night. He loved it, and wants to see it again. I am *so* trying to score him the toddler Millennium Falcon now... K is now W A L K I N G. It's amazing how quickly they grow. And also amazing all those "dad" moments I've gotten lately just playing and spending time with the kiddos. I'm halfway through my weight loss, havign lost 38lbs and having another 38 or so to go to hit my TXSG height/weight. After that, I'm trying to knock out another 17lbs or so to hit an even 200. Also, for the first time in four years, I'm no longer the lead game master for the Royal Dragoon Guards. That's right, I did not seek re-election as Battalion Commander instead opting for the top player spot, Company Commander. I'm now the lead player, and letting Bobby Dean GM for a while. Six months, at least. If he doesn't suck, and he won't, we'll see if he runs for another six.
OK, gaming. Well, first of all, since I'm not currently enrolled in any college courses for the first time in two years, I can put together a regular game session. Since the Royal Dragoons are a major sci-fi campaign and Bobby runs an occasional Star Wars game, I decided to do something fantasy-based with my game. I also wanted some folks I don't usually game with. I got both wishes, having created a D&D Essentials group with two players I don't normally game with, and one who I usually only game with at RDG. Randi and Bobby round out the group.
I know, I know. Why 4e Essentials? You guys know I'm a grognard, and that my desert island book is the Basic D&D Rules Cyclopedia (I even had Aaron Allston sign mine.) You know I've run AD&D 1e using Rules As Written. (We never even played it that way back in the 80s.) You know I regularly re-read and occasionally 1-shot things like Marvel FASERIP, Star Frontiers, Melee/Wizard, Car Wars, Gangbusters, Top Secret/S.I.... so why in the name of all that's holy did I decide to run a game using what is largely considered to be the least D&D of the D&D games?
Basic answer? Because I've never done it before. Sure, I've run Essentials when I used to DM D&D Encounters at Rogue's Gallery. That was a cycle of modules that covered levels 1-3 over and over again every few months. I've never dreamed up my own campaign and run it "in the wild" for a group. I wanted to give this a shot before deciding that the Old School was the Only School. One of my players in particular is giving me a lot of gas about running 4th Edition, claiming that all the rules get in the way of the story. Well, time will tell - and after two game sessions, it's already started to. The GM and the Players are what makes story happen, not the rules. But more on that later.
I'm going to lead off with why I hated 4e at first, and what caused me to decide to give it another try in its D&D Essentials incarnation. Part of my problem was that the game dictated HOW to run D&D to its Dungeon Masters. Thou shalt have five players. Thou shalt bludgeon them with roles and party balance. Thou shalt hand out this much treasure and no more. It shall take this long to level, and encounters should be balanced to party level. Oh, all your players really should be the same level or the math breaks... Stuff like that. On the player side, I didn't like martial classes playing like spellcasting classes. Also - since 3E the game has really encouraged the use of a battle map and counters or minis. I never used minis much in older editions - which is to say at all, except to mark marching order. I didn't hate the idea... just didn't like the more-or-less requirement. 4e made that even more mandatory with powers that relied on relative placement of combatants. Do not want, really.
Well, with Essentials came a new take on 4e. If it constituted 4.5 is a discussion for another time, but gone were things that just tweaked me off. Martial daily powers? Gone. Martial marks? Gone. In their place were stances, which made perfect sense, and defender auras, which also made a lot of sense. Something about the Essentials builds just felt more D&D to me. I tried playing a Warpriest, and lo and behold I felt like a badass Cleric from the days of old save for the turning ability. I could fight, heal and move all in the same round. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all...
So I decided to get into the D&D Encounters scene and stayed there for over a year. I really started to enjoy the game, and the playstyle. I realized that there was a good game under the hood of 4e... it just wasn't what I called Dungeons and Dragons. And that's OK. So I started planning to run my own campaign to test some of my assumptions... and got back into college, and got my two awesome foster kids. Gaming went on hold except for the RDG commitment. So here we are, and I'm getting this Essentials game going - so what do I like about it? Strangely, some of the things I hated when I had it mentally tagged as D&D.
First and most obvious - the battle map and map-based combat. This game, unlike the versions of D&D I prefer, requires them. Powers are written in bursts and blasts and ranges and adjacent and aura and you really, REALLY need a map to make them work. The powers are so much a part of each character that you risk really bringing the game engine crashing down on you if you just try to fudge it. I used to see that as a bug in my normally narrarative style dungeon mastering. What I needed to do was look at the way it played on its own merits, not as a replacement for my beloved BD&D and AD&D. Okay, so what does the system do? It's a tactical combat system in which each class has its role to play and each character potentially has a completely different set of strengths, weaknesses and abilities to bolster the party as a whole. I used to hate that Fighters were now referred to as "Defenders" and expected to be meat shields... but that's just codifying the way low-level mages hid behind the fighters anyway, isn't it? In fact, the Defender Aura makes them better at it than old-school D&D fighters were in a way. I also liked that spellcasters never ran completely out of spell juice. I loved playing Magic-Users in BD&D, but damned if it wasn't annoying to be out of spells... and that happened a LOT at low levels. In the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, Venger never ran out of those cool magical bolts...
OK, so looking at the way the game PLAYS, the PCs have to have a sense of their own abilities and those of their allies. They have to learn to use those abilities together to accomplish goals in combat. It's... tactical. Hey, wait- I love tactical. It's no different from the way we obsess over BattleMechs in Battletech and their capabilities and how they work together and separately and how best to employ them and how NEVER to employ them. So... my favorite part of Battletech can become part of my fantasy games. OK, I can dig this. It also reminds me of the great XBox game "Gladius" and Final Fantasy Tactics. I had always listened to people rail against 4e saying that it was too much like a video game, or an MMO. Thing is - I'm beginning to see that as a feature of this particular game.
Is it what I want out of all of my D&D? Negative, ghostrider. Does it work for this campaign? It's seeming to.
What I mean by that is I've begun to write this campaign as if I was writing a classic 8-Bit RPG. The enforced pacing I had hated so much in the DMG was now my ally. I could use that pacing in writing the campaign arc - since it took X number of encounters to go up a level, and encounters were figured as level-appropriate... So this means that I can now plan the pace of the game based on those assumptions. The ability to reskin 4e monsters is pretty cool, too. I've already decided that I'm going to include some creatures my players won't expect - like Oktoroks and Leevers.
We have played two sessions, and tonight is a third. I'll blog more about this game after that session, as I think three sessions is enough to get a feel for where this is going and if it's working or not. Right now, I'm cautiously saying it's working well - even my staunchest 4e hater is having a blast...
LOTS of things have happened since I posted my Top Ten, so let's sum up. I finished my Bachelor of Arts degree in Military History with a GPA of 3.791. Now I just have to wait until February to actually have my degree conferred. We are moving closer to adoping Z and K, and I can't wait to share photos of them with the world. Z saw Star Wars for the first time last night - he started it once before and fell asleep as we'd started it too late at night. He loved it, and wants to see it again. I am *so* trying to score him the toddler Millennium Falcon now... K is now W A L K I N G. It's amazing how quickly they grow. And also amazing all those "dad" moments I've gotten lately just playing and spending time with the kiddos. I'm halfway through my weight loss, havign lost 38lbs and having another 38 or so to go to hit my TXSG height/weight. After that, I'm trying to knock out another 17lbs or so to hit an even 200. Also, for the first time in four years, I'm no longer the lead game master for the Royal Dragoon Guards. That's right, I did not seek re-election as Battalion Commander instead opting for the top player spot, Company Commander. I'm now the lead player, and letting Bobby Dean GM for a while. Six months, at least. If he doesn't suck, and he won't, we'll see if he runs for another six.
OK, gaming. Well, first of all, since I'm not currently enrolled in any college courses for the first time in two years, I can put together a regular game session. Since the Royal Dragoons are a major sci-fi campaign and Bobby runs an occasional Star Wars game, I decided to do something fantasy-based with my game. I also wanted some folks I don't usually game with. I got both wishes, having created a D&D Essentials group with two players I don't normally game with, and one who I usually only game with at RDG. Randi and Bobby round out the group.
I know, I know. Why 4e Essentials? You guys know I'm a grognard, and that my desert island book is the Basic D&D Rules Cyclopedia (I even had Aaron Allston sign mine.) You know I've run AD&D 1e using Rules As Written. (We never even played it that way back in the 80s.) You know I regularly re-read and occasionally 1-shot things like Marvel FASERIP, Star Frontiers, Melee/Wizard, Car Wars, Gangbusters, Top Secret/S.I.... so why in the name of all that's holy did I decide to run a game using what is largely considered to be the least D&D of the D&D games?
Basic answer? Because I've never done it before. Sure, I've run Essentials when I used to DM D&D Encounters at Rogue's Gallery. That was a cycle of modules that covered levels 1-3 over and over again every few months. I've never dreamed up my own campaign and run it "in the wild" for a group. I wanted to give this a shot before deciding that the Old School was the Only School. One of my players in particular is giving me a lot of gas about running 4th Edition, claiming that all the rules get in the way of the story. Well, time will tell - and after two game sessions, it's already started to. The GM and the Players are what makes story happen, not the rules. But more on that later.
I'm going to lead off with why I hated 4e at first, and what caused me to decide to give it another try in its D&D Essentials incarnation. Part of my problem was that the game dictated HOW to run D&D to its Dungeon Masters. Thou shalt have five players. Thou shalt bludgeon them with roles and party balance. Thou shalt hand out this much treasure and no more. It shall take this long to level, and encounters should be balanced to party level. Oh, all your players really should be the same level or the math breaks... Stuff like that. On the player side, I didn't like martial classes playing like spellcasting classes. Also - since 3E the game has really encouraged the use of a battle map and counters or minis. I never used minis much in older editions - which is to say at all, except to mark marching order. I didn't hate the idea... just didn't like the more-or-less requirement. 4e made that even more mandatory with powers that relied on relative placement of combatants. Do not want, really.
Well, with Essentials came a new take on 4e. If it constituted 4.5 is a discussion for another time, but gone were things that just tweaked me off. Martial daily powers? Gone. Martial marks? Gone. In their place were stances, which made perfect sense, and defender auras, which also made a lot of sense. Something about the Essentials builds just felt more D&D to me. I tried playing a Warpriest, and lo and behold I felt like a badass Cleric from the days of old save for the turning ability. I could fight, heal and move all in the same round. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all...
So I decided to get into the D&D Encounters scene and stayed there for over a year. I really started to enjoy the game, and the playstyle. I realized that there was a good game under the hood of 4e... it just wasn't what I called Dungeons and Dragons. And that's OK. So I started planning to run my own campaign to test some of my assumptions... and got back into college, and got my two awesome foster kids. Gaming went on hold except for the RDG commitment. So here we are, and I'm getting this Essentials game going - so what do I like about it? Strangely, some of the things I hated when I had it mentally tagged as D&D.
First and most obvious - the battle map and map-based combat. This game, unlike the versions of D&D I prefer, requires them. Powers are written in bursts and blasts and ranges and adjacent and aura and you really, REALLY need a map to make them work. The powers are so much a part of each character that you risk really bringing the game engine crashing down on you if you just try to fudge it. I used to see that as a bug in my normally narrarative style dungeon mastering. What I needed to do was look at the way it played on its own merits, not as a replacement for my beloved BD&D and AD&D. Okay, so what does the system do? It's a tactical combat system in which each class has its role to play and each character potentially has a completely different set of strengths, weaknesses and abilities to bolster the party as a whole. I used to hate that Fighters were now referred to as "Defenders" and expected to be meat shields... but that's just codifying the way low-level mages hid behind the fighters anyway, isn't it? In fact, the Defender Aura makes them better at it than old-school D&D fighters were in a way. I also liked that spellcasters never ran completely out of spell juice. I loved playing Magic-Users in BD&D, but damned if it wasn't annoying to be out of spells... and that happened a LOT at low levels. In the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, Venger never ran out of those cool magical bolts...
OK, so looking at the way the game PLAYS, the PCs have to have a sense of their own abilities and those of their allies. They have to learn to use those abilities together to accomplish goals in combat. It's... tactical. Hey, wait- I love tactical. It's no different from the way we obsess over BattleMechs in Battletech and their capabilities and how they work together and separately and how best to employ them and how NEVER to employ them. So... my favorite part of Battletech can become part of my fantasy games. OK, I can dig this. It also reminds me of the great XBox game "Gladius" and Final Fantasy Tactics. I had always listened to people rail against 4e saying that it was too much like a video game, or an MMO. Thing is - I'm beginning to see that as a feature of this particular game.
Is it what I want out of all of my D&D? Negative, ghostrider. Does it work for this campaign? It's seeming to.
What I mean by that is I've begun to write this campaign as if I was writing a classic 8-Bit RPG. The enforced pacing I had hated so much in the DMG was now my ally. I could use that pacing in writing the campaign arc - since it took X number of encounters to go up a level, and encounters were figured as level-appropriate... So this means that I can now plan the pace of the game based on those assumptions. The ability to reskin 4e monsters is pretty cool, too. I've already decided that I'm going to include some creatures my players won't expect - like Oktoroks and Leevers.
We have played two sessions, and tonight is a third. I'll blog more about this game after that session, as I think three sessions is enough to get a feel for where this is going and if it's working or not. Right now, I'm cautiously saying it's working well - even my staunchest 4e hater is having a blast...
22 October 2012
My Top Ten RPGs and Why...
Good morning, True Believers!
I know, I keep using the Stan Lee quotes - but with my three-year-old addicted to Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, it's hard not to get caught up in Stan's exuberance.
An old friend asked me on Facebook the other day what my top ten RPGs of all time were, and why. I was about to try to answer from the hip, but damned if this is a much bigger question than I could answer without putting some serious thought into it. Surely, there are RPGs I can consider among my favorites, but to pick and rank just ten? I had to wait until I had some time to think about it, and then start working on a list- then revising the list, then throwing the list away and starting over. Sooo many games that have things I like about them, and soooo many games I have sentimental attachments to, and soooo many new games that might make this list, but I've not had the chance to see them in action yet due to school, parenting and work. So... what are the top ten RPGs of all time for The Old Dragoon as of today, 22 October 2012? Let's start with Number Ten and work our way down to #1.
10) - Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (First and Second Editions)
Publisher : TSR Hobbies
Year: 1977-1999
The Rules: Class-level. All the basic polyhedron dice, with a myriad of mechanics and sub-systems. This was the gold standard for many years, sublime in its incomprehensability.
Preferred Editions: First and Second. I played 3.0/3.5 and 4e, but they aren't on this Top Ten list.
Why I Love It: This was the Big Boys game. I first flipped through AD&D books in 1985, before I had played my first game. It was like the first time I read Stephen Hawking - I couldn't quite grasp what the book was on about, but I knew I wanted to. AD&D was the staple game of my high school years. While I never left D&D Basic behind, and we dabbled in LOTS of other games, we always came back to AD&D. I will always remember my first sojurn through Ravenloft before it was a game world, or the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I loved exceptional strength, multiclass demihumans, THAC0 - most of the things that made it complex and frustrating and were thrown out in later editions. Also - artwork. The original 1e covers are good for inspiration. The second set by Clyde Caldwell are even better for my money. The picture here, the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide's second cover, just oozes atmosphere. The Second Edition has some great cover and interior art, and truth be told, when AD&D2e came out in 1989, we switched over to it pretty exclusively for the rest of High School. Lots of folks look back at it with an unfavorable eye, but we had so damn much fun playing it I guess we were too busy to notice how much it apparently sucked. I happened to *like* 2e. I would still run it today. Same for 1e. They have their flaws, but if they were unplayable... never mind. I won't get into edition wars here. Sufficient to say AD&D (both editions) were important enough to my formative experiences as a gamer growing up in the 80s that I'll include them here separate from Basic D&D, which also appears on this list.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About AD&D:
Publisher : GDW
Year: 1989
The Rules: Skill-based, with professions that you might call classes. D6s only on this one, with various arcane subsystems to carry out various tasks. Ranged combat and melee combat on two TOTALLY different systems.
Preferred Editions: The original. The Savage Worlds redux seems OK, though.
Why I Love It: This game was Steampunk before Steampunk was a thing. A thing that is running the risk of overexposure. But let's face it, it's a COOL thing. And this game was an awesome idea that really had not been explored much in the annals of RPG history. Crown Colonies on Mars? Edison inventing the Ether Propeller? Germans riding dinosaurs on Venus? Sign me up! Add to that the really cool invention rules so that your character could be some sort of mad scientist or inventor and use their new infernal devices for good or for awesome and Space: 1889 became an instant classic for me. Problem was, most of my gamer friends just didn't "get" it, so it didn't get nearly the love it deserved in sheer play-hours. This game was supported by some really great supplements and wargames like Sky Galleons of Mars and Cloudships & Gunboats, both of which were lots of fun to play. Again, a game I love because it positively oozes the genre it's trying to emulate. The rules were a bit off-putting at first, and perhaps the new Savage Worlds take on the game would find more traction, especially now that Steampunk is a much more popular genre.
8) - Marvel Super Heroes
Publisher : TSR
Year: 1984 (Basic) 1986 (Advanced) 1991 (Revised Advanced)
The Rules: D100 with a chart that handled effects for pretty much everything. This was one of the first games I played with a true "unified mechanic" although we would not recognize it as such, because back then we just played the damn games, we didn't try to pidgeonhole them and pick them apart mechanically. With evocative ratings like "Amazing" and "Monstrous" instead of straight ability score numbers, and effects like "Slam" and "Grand Slam" this system really made a good use of its intended genre.
Preferred Editions: Most people play Advanced, I like the 1991 Revised Basic Set
Why I Love It:
Why not? What is not to love about FASERIP? Marvel is called that because the ability scores are Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurace, Reasoning, Intuition and Psyche. Face Rip. Say it with me. Anway, this game knocked it out of the park for us. The orignal basic set was written as if Spider-Man was teaching you how to play the game. It came with cards for most of the popular Marvel heroes at the time, and some basic rules for generating your own characters. We'd seen nothing like it at the time, being mostly players of games like D&D, Star Frontiers, Traveller, etc. Not only did this game handle superheroes, it was tailored for them. Getting Hulk to uproot a streetlight and knock The Thing across a city block, nearly bringing down a building? Friggin awesome when you're in the seventh grade. I ran a couple MSH games over the past year as one-shots and you know what? Still awesome. The later Advanced Set added more powers, options, and rules. It's the set most people play. The Ultimate Powers Book is a love it or hate it proposition. It gets a lot more detailed with powers, but runs the risk of overpowering your campaign. A lot. I prefer the revised 1991 Basic Set. It takes all the innovations from the Advanced Set and creates a new, smoother set of basic rules that is really all a group needs to play. I heartily recommend this system even now for all your superheroic needs. Also - you can get it for free at Classic Marvel Forever.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Marvel Superheroes:
7) - Traveller
Publisher : GDW
Year: 1977
The Rules: 2D6+Skill, with the game being skill-based while having classes of sorts represented by the services the characters took part in before the game begins. This was the first game I played where you did not begin at "first level"
Preferred Editions: Classic, and Mongoose
Why I Love It: Traveller was gifted to me by the engineers at Eaton Corporation where my Mom worked. They gave me a bunch of Traveller books and a brand new Cyberpunk boxed set. This was probably one of the best gifts I've ever gotten from older geeks to a younger geek, and this act really made me want to keep passing the geekitude along as the years go by. Traveller's little black books and the compiled "The Traveller Book" I also received got a LOT of love from me both during games, and during long hours of summer before I had to get a job when I had nothing better to do - or was waiting for the next game session to start with my friends. Traveller's character gen system was really eye-opening to me. No more did you play a fresh young "first level" character, now you could be a retired Admiral, or a grizzled veteran merchant having years of experience and a decent bankroll behind you. The ship construction system was really awesome, too - I know I tried to design the Jupiter 2 several times while watching Lost In Space reruns. I learned a lot of real science from Traveller - the damn formula for calculating travel time in space based on distance and constant acceleration is part of the game... Also, I learned how big the mass of a ton of hydrogen is. So much was packed into the three little books, allowing you to generate planets, animals, characters, ships... Plus all the supplemental books were great. There were even bootleg stats for Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in the back of one of the booklets. I made a game of trying to roll up a Merchant Captain who scores a ship upon retirement and has the title free and clear. It's not an easy thing to do, and most of the characters wash out or are candidates for a nursing home by the time they can accomplish that feat. The new version by Mongoose Publishing codifies the 2D6 throws into 2D6+Skill+Mod versus 8 across the board, somewhat cleaning up the more 70s situational approach of the original Traveller. It's very playable, aside from a few editing issues. It is a worthy successor to the original Traveller.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Traveller:
SEE ALSO:
MEGATRAVELLER - A sort of second edition that had refined character creation, but a totally changed setting as the Imperium shattered.
2300 AD - Originally marketed as "Traveller : 2300" this game is not actually related to Traveller, but rather to Twilight : 2000 as the world that arose after World War III. This was a more or less hard sci-fi game, and an excellent one that only barely did not make this list. I recommend it highly.
Traveller : The New Era - Not as well recieved as GDW had hoped, this version of Traveller reworks the system competely, and shakes up the Imperium yet again by making it a more or less post-apoc version of the Imperium bootstrapping itself back into space after Virus (a sentient computer virus) takes out... oh... everything. Vampire Fleets - vessels whose self-aware computers become affected by Virus and kill their own crews - ply the spacelanes. The Star Vikings seek to restore interstellar travel. Basically, the setting rocks, the system is a bit more modern than classic traveller... a good game to check out. Good luck on the book not falling apart, though...
6) - Star Wars (D6 Version)
Publisher : West End Games
Year: 1987
The Rules: D6s only, dice pool system. Roll the dice, add together, try to beat target number. Characters were built on a set of templates at the back of the book. Very simple, very quick.
Preferred Editions: The first one. Definitely.
Why I Love It: This game was the first time I was aware of "genre emulation" as a thing. Marvel DID it, but it didn't really click to me what it was doing. In Star Wars, Greg Costikyan wrote in a conversational tone, and offered advice on how to make the game feel like Star Wars. Ammunition? Don't worry about it, they didn't in the movies. If you don't sound convincingly like a Wookiee, don't play one. Keep things fast, keep the pace moving, make it feel like a Star Wars movie, dammit! That style of writing in an RPG book was something I'd not encountered, and as a kid who grew up with Star Wars, this game was a no-brainer. The cover art... wow. The interiors were all stills from the movies or artwork from the production staff (often Ralph McQuarrie!) that very much help set the tone of the game. The rules run pretty quick, and character creation by template is a snap. I still keep a couple of sets of these templates in a file folder in my game room for one-off Star Wars games. This is my gateway drug of choice for teaching people the hobby if for some reason D&D won't work. Why? It's easy, it uses the dice everyone already knows from Monopoly, the templates are iconic, and pretty much everyone has seen Star Wars. The Second Edition and the Revised Second Edition are good games, too - but they make the mistake or realizing they are role-playing games and correct things like not having ammo limitations for weapons and having skills that are too broad. The result is a marginally crunchier game that gets away from Star Wars, to my mind.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Star Wars:
5) - Cyberpunk (also known as Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 2020)
Publisher : R. Talsorian Games
Year: 1988
The Rules: 1D10 + Stat + Skill. Very simple system. Lifepath character generation gives you some background before you begin. Combat is unforgiving if you're not wearing armor. Probably one of my favorite base game systems ever, even if Reflexes is something of a God Stat. There are classes "roles" but they only limit the one skille each role has exclusively.
Preferred Editions: Either 2013 or 2020 are great. CP2013 was a boxed set, and represents a fairly solid core. CP2020 was a stand-alone book with some rule refinements, but the power creep began with the supplements to 2020.
Why I Love It: I was gifted this game the year it came out. I'd done space, I'd done fantasy, I'd done stuff based on anime - but this was something different. This was the Dark Future of... our Earth. Not a long time ago, etc. Not some fantasy world. This was OUR Earth. And the Japanese Megacorps ruled everything! Remember that in the 80s the fear of Japanese economic takeover was very real. This was something new to me - but somehow familiar. I had Bladerunner on VHS. I was a huge fan of the Max Headroom TV series. I had yet to read Neuromancer - but I would after playing this. This tapped into the Cyberpunk I had been exposed to in media and gave it an outlet. And it was my very first anti-hero game, where the players weren't explicity trying to be Lawful Good or anything like it. You were scraping the bottom, just trying to survive, and the future was disposable! This game brought out the worst in us in a good way. Getting to play high-tech low-lifes was a blast. Little did we know in another year there would be a twist to the genre that would blow us away again! These days, I run Cyberpunk 2020 when I run Cyberpunk - but I have been giving some thought to a limited campaign using only what was in the 2013 boxed set for the same reason I've thought about doing limited D&D (B/X only) or MechWarrior (nothing published after '89) games - to avoid power creep.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Cyberpunk:
4) - Robotech
Publisher : Palladium Books
Year: 1986
The Rules: The Palladium House System used D20s for combat - opposed rolls for dodging, parrying etc. The skill system is D100. It's class-level.
Preferred Editions: That's a tough one. The original edition was terribly flawed in that it did not accurately reflect a lot of the source material - especially the hardware. The second edition is more accurate, but has its own issues with character creation and combat. Don't let me sell you off this game, though - we had a LOT of fun with it, and you can, too.
Why I Love It: Robotech was the first cartoon I ever watched where someone died. And when that happened, boy howdy was there wailing and gnashing of teeth that day at River Hills Elementary School in Temple Terrace, FL. I think we were more upset about Roy Fokker than we were about the space shuttle. Robotech, as much as it doesn't hold up very well to adult viewing for some people, was ground-breaking. Yes, a direct translation of Macross would have been better - but it was the 80s, and I'm not sure America was ready for primetime animation that wasn't The Simpsons or The Flintstones. The Robotech RPG was the first game book I ever purchased with my own money after my birthday in 1987 when I picked up a copy at King's Hobby Shop along with a set of Koplow Games red translucent dice with white ink. Since Robotech never aired in the Round Rock area, and it had been over a year since any of us had seen it - except the three episodes that could be rented from local movie stores on VHS - we didn't notice a lot of the inconsistencies in the RPG material. The VR-052 cyclone never had chest missiles. The radar mast of the Beta Fighter wasn't a missile launcher. The Super Veritech was just a standard veritech with a FAST pack added, not a separate model...
Screw it, the game rocked. OK, so it wasn't accurate. Was it fun? HELL yes. We ran the crap outta that game, especially the Robotech II : The Sentinels core book that showed us what we would have seen if the Sentinels series had been made. Fighting the Invid with VF-series Veritechs, using mecha that never existed in the show (VF-1V Vindicator, I'm looking at YOU) and rolling with the alien concepts from the aborted TV show was a blast. To this DAY I want to run another Sentinels campaign. A lot.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Robotech:
3) - Shadowrun (And Shadowrun, Second Edition)
Publisher : FASA Corporation
Year: 1989 (Second Edition 1992)
The Rules: Dice pool of D6s, rolling for target numbers. The first game I played where dice "explode" or roll again when max value is rolled. The system is... arcane. Lots of sub-systems. 2nd Edition cleaned it up a bit. Complex, but the system really supports the game world.
Preferred Editions: 1st and 2nd. With the publication of Shadowrun 2050, it is not possible to play a 2050s game with the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary rules set. I may try that.
Why I Love It: Ok, I loved Cyberpunk. A lot. Like I said above, Bladerunner, Max Headroom... Obviously, I liked fantasy as well. Peanut butter? Chocolate? HOLY CRAP. SHADOWRUN. This game came at me like a jacked-up Troll Go-Ganger, chummer, and it's hard for me to tell you how wiz that drek is. Yes, the slang was one of my favorite things. Another thing I loved was the "shadowtalk" in the sourcebooks, where denizens of the Shadowrun universe would hack into files and leave their own thoughts on things that might differ from the official version. The weapons commentaries in the Street Samurai Catalog were particularly amusing at times. "Now I can flatten light rounds against body armor faster than ever before!" Orcs, Trolls, Dwarves and Elves in a hypertechnological cyberpunk dystopia? Sign my ass up. This game was really, really something new. Mixed genres was something we'd never done before, even if we knew from the back of the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide that we could port Boot Hill characters into AD&D. Even if we did play Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The mix of magic and tech was a brand new thing at the time - at least to us - and we played the crap out of it. The rules were complex, but somehow felt right given the source material. There are rules holes in Shadowrun 1e you could drive an Aries Citymaster through, but if your players aren't actively trying to abuse the rules, it'll hold up well enough. Shadowrun Second Edition fixed a lot of the abuse-worthy rules, but not all. Shadowrun 2e is my go-to for Shadowrun these days, ans the Third and Fourth editions committed the unforgivable sin of moving the world forward and trying to adapt it to how modern technology was emerging. Leave by Cyberpunk firmly 20 minutes into the future of 1987, dammit! Deckers must jack in! Decks are the size of a Commodore 64! The only thing wireless is cellular phones! Anyway, Shadowrun had this great feel and vibe. We actually stopped playing straight Cyberpunk for about five years due to Shadowrun. This game has very much earned its place as #3 on my list.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Shadowrun:
2) - MechWarrior (and MechWarrior, Second Edition)
Publisher : FASA Corporation
Year: 1986 (First Edition) 1991 (Second Edition)
The Rules: 2D6 task resolution versus target number, skill-based but "classes" do exist insomuch as in-game jobs like MechWarrior or Aerospace Pilot tend to be exclusive.
Preferred Editions: First for atmosphere and feel, Second for game mechanics, my own version for both rolled into one. That one's forthcoming. May take a while, though.
Why I Love It: Because it's MechWarrior. There aren't too many game universes with as much background and development as the MechWarrior Universe. I started playing Battletech in 1986 at Chisholm Trail Middle School, we played at lunch, I played the WSP-1A Wasp a lot because I thought it looked cool. I died a lot because it was a WSP-1A Wasp. I read Battletechnology Magazine voraciously, and I loved the black and white "photos" of battlefields using models and toys and parts of Robotix sets. This was the first RPG I ever played where there were five (seven if you count The Star League and The Periphery) House books that were nothing but history and background for the factions in the game. Hundreds of pages on the political systems, religions, militaries, intelligence agencies... It was mind-boggling, and intriguing and exciting. I was a House Steiner loyalist almost from the get-go. My friend Robby Houser has the Davion flag tatoo on his arm. MechWarrior inspired a level of interest in the world and the factions I'd never encountered before. The game was amazingly deep compared to other games on the market, and the blend of post-apoc, Dune, giant robots and Starship Troopers was really, really cool to folks like me. The initial book was full of details about house retinues, landholds, Planetologists, ComStar religious zealots - and the best thing about it was the random event tables and total lack of metaplot beyond 3025 that let you lead your game where you wanted to. I will say that my deep and abiding love of the MechWarrior universe is rooted firmly in the Third Succession War era. The further one gets forward in the timeline, the less deep and abiding my love for the universe gets. My problem is not the normal gripes about The Clans and the technology they bring to the game - my gripe is about the fundamental change to the atmosphere of the game. MechWarrior 1e is about MechWarriors as Knights. Their 'Mechs, like an ancestral suit of armor, are handed down the generations. MechWarriors hold land, and rule from a position of military strength. The techno-feudal feel is strong, as is the feel of a society in its twilight after centuries of brutal war. It works for me. By the time of the 3050 setting, MechWarriors are just jet pilots as far as being special goes. Well trained, yes, respected, yes - but now that BattleMechs are rolling in ever increasing numbers off the assembly lines the BattleMech has once again become just another piece of military hardware. A lot of the post-apoc and hard-scrabble feel, not to mention the Pendragon with Giant Robots feel - has gone out the window.
The current license holders at Catalyst and their fans love to point out that the Battletech universe would have stagnated without a major shakeup. Well, if the Fourth War hadn't been glossed over in two volumes, and "20 Year Update" glossed over the rest, how much story could have been told without such a drastic shift in feel? The friggin Jihad storyline took FOURTEEN YEARS of real-time and they're saying they couldn't get more than four out of the original setting? I don't buy it. The new regime's A Time of War RPG is what we're using now for the Royal Dragoon Guards, but it really doesn't "do it" for us any more than any other edition of MechWarrior did - the rules are more than a bit cumbersome (Damage in quarter points? Really?) and the game tries to cover so much ground it really doesn't carry the feel of Battletech with it at all. With that in mind, Bobby Dean and I are working on our own take... Stay tuned for more on that...
Snapshots of Things I Remember About MechWarrior:
1) - Dungeons and Dragons Basic
Publisher : TSR Hobbies
Year: 1974-1991
The Rules : Class and Level system. Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are a class. D20 for attacks, but not "D20 System." Uses all the classic polyhedral dice, some things are roll high, some things are roll low, by modern game standards a mess. But oh, what a glorious mess!
Preferred Editions:
1983 Elmore-art Mentzer BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia Version
1980 Erol Otus-art Moldvay B/X Edition
Why I Love It: D&D was my first love. I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons during the summer of 1986 with Daniel Varner as my first DM at his house on Dry Creek/Purple Sage Drive. My love affair with roleplaying games had begun. My first D&D boxed set was the 1983 set whose cover is posted here. Larry Elmore, Jim Holloway, Jeff Easley- their art inspired me. Frank Mentzer's reworking of the Basic D&D rules was easily grasped by my middle-school mind and it wasn't long before I was DMing myself. I cannot overstress how the art in and on the books and boxes of this series inspired my early D&D games. This is still my go-to edition of D&D after all these years. The 1991 Rules Cyclopedia is my "Desert Island" RPG - if I can only have one RPG book to run from for the rest of my life, it's the most complete version of D&D that has ever existed in a single volume. In later years, I obtained the 1980 Erol Otus-cover Basic and Expert sets, as well as the earlier Holmes blue-cover edition from 1977. All of them have more than just historical merit. There has been a movement lately to base new versions of fantasy RPGs on the simplicity and completness as a game. There is SO MUCH MILAGE you can get out of just the Basic and Expert rules. Also - the default setting for the 1980 and beyond sets, the Known World or Mystara, is awesome and gonzo. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos has been the backdrop for many, many epic campaigns and entertaining one-shots.
Snapshots of Things I Remember about D&D Basic:
I have to give a shout-out to a couple of games which are derivative of D&D Basic under the OSR (Original Source Rules) movement. These are also called Retroclones, as they are clones of the rules of Basic D&D. While these games are, fundamentally, Basic D&D each one seeks to do something with the rules that Basic D&D didn't do. Here they are, and why I recommend them.
Labyrinth Lord
What It Does: Keeps Basic D&D in Print.
Why I Like It: It's a modernized presentation of B/X D&D in a sturdy, attractive volume. The rules are almost unchanged, close enough that old modules can be run with no coversion. There are modules, a GM screen, and the Advanced Edition Companion which allows it to expand to cover AD&D as well.
Oh, and it's FREE in PDF.
Stars Without Number
What it Does: Shows us what would have happened if Basic/Expert Dungeons and Dragons made sweet, sweet love to Traveller and they had a beautiful child.
Why I Like It: SWN is brilliant. I say that with a twinge of pain because I was working on my own sci-fi adapation of B/X when this came out. It did everything I wanted my version to do and more - and it did it better. Honestly, this game rocks HARD. It has a core of Basic D&D, but adds a skill system that is 2D6+Skill+Mods for a very simple, Traveller-like skill experience. It has domains and factions, and the tools to manage them and place them in conflict with one another. It has vehicle and startships - even 'Mechs. This is one hell of a one-volume game.
And oh, yeah, it's FREE in PDF.
Adventurer Conqueror King System
What it Does: Takes the endgame from Basic D&D in which PCs become rulers and influential folks, and turns it up to 12.
Why I Like It: This is Basic/Expert D&D with explicit phases of a campaign. The low levels are "Adventurer" and play like most D&D campaigns. As you ease into "Conqueror" you start finding a different flavor of adventure as your PC becomes the most proficient in the land at what it is you do. Graduating to "King" levels, your PCs are carving out their own domains. This game really brings depth and interest to the old "At 9th level the Fighter may construct a Castle..." Lots of depth. Domain management, economy, war... It's all here in wonderful detail with simple mechanics. A few new character classes round out the game, along with an explicit table showing just how good at their job a character of 1st-14th level is. 14th level, as in the original Expert set, is the upper limit of this game. I haven't gotten to run it yet, but I've read the book longingly, wondering where all my time to game has gone and then remembering oh, yeah, parenthood and college...
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG
What it Does: Sword & Sorcery roleplaying, perhaps better than D&D did it.
Why I Like It: This game gave me a hummer, then kicked me in the jimmy so hard I just had to run it. First, DCC got me with the artwork. Oh, the artwork. Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, the list goes on. It is old school in the best of ways and the art just begs to play the kind of gonzo sword-and-sorcery stuff that cries out for a million Boris Vallejo paintings. This game is brutal and beautiful at the same time. Fighters are capable of amazing deeds of might without a cumbersome feat system. Arcane spellcasters run the risk of corruption regardless of their alignment, and Clerics must take care not to offend their gods. Death waits around every corner, especially due to the fact that in the first adventure of the campaign each player rolls up multiple completely random 0-level characters. The one that survives the first adventure gets to be first level. Some might chafe at the extreme old-school sensibilities of this game, but the group I ran a 0-level grinder for loved the ever living crap out of it. This game is simply amazing in its ability to capture the feel of all those stories of "the way it was done in the 70s" and do it with modern mechanics. Don't expect modern mechanics to include class balance or any of those other newfangled concepts, though. This game is old school through-and-through, and that makes it pretty damn awesome.
I know, I keep using the Stan Lee quotes - but with my three-year-old addicted to Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, it's hard not to get caught up in Stan's exuberance.
An old friend asked me on Facebook the other day what my top ten RPGs of all time were, and why. I was about to try to answer from the hip, but damned if this is a much bigger question than I could answer without putting some serious thought into it. Surely, there are RPGs I can consider among my favorites, but to pick and rank just ten? I had to wait until I had some time to think about it, and then start working on a list- then revising the list, then throwing the list away and starting over. Sooo many games that have things I like about them, and soooo many games I have sentimental attachments to, and soooo many new games that might make this list, but I've not had the chance to see them in action yet due to school, parenting and work. So... what are the top ten RPGs of all time for The Old Dragoon as of today, 22 October 2012? Let's start with Number Ten and work our way down to #1.
10) - Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (First and Second Editions)
Publisher : TSR HobbiesYear: 1977-1999
The Rules: Class-level. All the basic polyhedron dice, with a myriad of mechanics and sub-systems. This was the gold standard for many years, sublime in its incomprehensability.
Preferred Editions: First and Second. I played 3.0/3.5 and 4e, but they aren't on this Top Ten list.
Why I Love It: This was the Big Boys game. I first flipped through AD&D books in 1985, before I had played my first game. It was like the first time I read Stephen Hawking - I couldn't quite grasp what the book was on about, but I knew I wanted to. AD&D was the staple game of my high school years. While I never left D&D Basic behind, and we dabbled in LOTS of other games, we always came back to AD&D. I will always remember my first sojurn through Ravenloft before it was a game world, or the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I loved exceptional strength, multiclass demihumans, THAC0 - most of the things that made it complex and frustrating and were thrown out in later editions. Also - artwork. The original 1e covers are good for inspiration. The second set by Clyde Caldwell are even better for my money. The picture here, the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide's second cover, just oozes atmosphere. The Second Edition has some great cover and interior art, and truth be told, when AD&D2e came out in 1989, we switched over to it pretty exclusively for the rest of High School. Lots of folks look back at it with an unfavorable eye, but we had so damn much fun playing it I guess we were too busy to notice how much it apparently sucked. I happened to *like* 2e. I would still run it today. Same for 1e. They have their flaws, but if they were unplayable... never mind. I won't get into edition wars here. Sufficient to say AD&D (both editions) were important enough to my formative experiences as a gamer growing up in the 80s that I'll include them here separate from Basic D&D, which also appears on this list.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About AD&D:
- (V,S,M) - Spell requirements. Holy crap the game actually takes into account *how* the spell is cast, not just that it is. That's cool! Likewise, page requirements for spellbooks. Detailed memorization times... Advanced, indeed!
- NON WEAPON PROFICIENCIES FTW!
- The Dragonlance hardcover book for AD&D 1e. Wow. Just... wow. Krynn really caught my imagination back then, and the classes for Krynn were awesome. I still want to play a Solamnic Knight by those rules someday.
- UNEARTHED ARCANA! I loved playing Cavaliers. Too bad none of them made it past third level.
Year: 1989
The Rules: Skill-based, with professions that you might call classes. D6s only on this one, with various arcane subsystems to carry out various tasks. Ranged combat and melee combat on two TOTALLY different systems.
Preferred Editions: The original. The Savage Worlds redux seems OK, though.
Why I Love It: This game was Steampunk before Steampunk was a thing. A thing that is running the risk of overexposure. But let's face it, it's a COOL thing. And this game was an awesome idea that really had not been explored much in the annals of RPG history. Crown Colonies on Mars? Edison inventing the Ether Propeller? Germans riding dinosaurs on Venus? Sign me up! Add to that the really cool invention rules so that your character could be some sort of mad scientist or inventor and use their new infernal devices for good or for awesome and Space: 1889 became an instant classic for me. Problem was, most of my gamer friends just didn't "get" it, so it didn't get nearly the love it deserved in sheer play-hours. This game was supported by some really great supplements and wargames like Sky Galleons of Mars and Cloudships & Gunboats, both of which were lots of fun to play. Again, a game I love because it positively oozes the genre it's trying to emulate. The rules were a bit off-putting at first, and perhaps the new Savage Worlds take on the game would find more traction, especially now that Steampunk is a much more popular genre.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Space: 1889:
- The look of the book interior was very, very nice. Good paper stock, old-fashioned illustrations, lots of sidebars on history both real and imagined.
- Lloyd Bates' Criminal Mastermind and his henchman, Jiri. If you don't like it, Lloyd will have Jiri stab you.
- The Royal Geographic Society's race 'round the inner planets campaign that I never ran. I designed ten completly different Ether Flyers for the NPC participants of the race.
8) - Marvel Super Heroes
Year: 1984 (Basic) 1986 (Advanced) 1991 (Revised Advanced)
The Rules: D100 with a chart that handled effects for pretty much everything. This was one of the first games I played with a true "unified mechanic" although we would not recognize it as such, because back then we just played the damn games, we didn't try to pidgeonhole them and pick them apart mechanically. With evocative ratings like "Amazing" and "Monstrous" instead of straight ability score numbers, and effects like "Slam" and "Grand Slam" this system really made a good use of its intended genre.
Preferred Editions: Most people play Advanced, I like the 1991 Revised Basic Set
Why I Love It:
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Marvel Superheroes:
- Rolling up TONS of random supers.
- Cody Hammock's shapeshifting Penguin with ice generation powers.
- Realizing how boned the PC's Karma Pool is when they get into a fight in town.
- Thinking about running Secret Wars for the umpteenth time...
7) - Traveller
Year: 1977
The Rules: 2D6+Skill, with the game being skill-based while having classes of sorts represented by the services the characters took part in before the game begins. This was the first game I played where you did not begin at "first level"
Preferred Editions: Classic, and Mongoose
Why I Love It: Traveller was gifted to me by the engineers at Eaton Corporation where my Mom worked. They gave me a bunch of Traveller books and a brand new Cyberpunk boxed set. This was probably one of the best gifts I've ever gotten from older geeks to a younger geek, and this act really made me want to keep passing the geekitude along as the years go by. Traveller's little black books and the compiled "The Traveller Book" I also received got a LOT of love from me both during games, and during long hours of summer before I had to get a job when I had nothing better to do - or was waiting for the next game session to start with my friends. Traveller's character gen system was really eye-opening to me. No more did you play a fresh young "first level" character, now you could be a retired Admiral, or a grizzled veteran merchant having years of experience and a decent bankroll behind you. The ship construction system was really awesome, too - I know I tried to design the Jupiter 2 several times while watching Lost In Space reruns. I learned a lot of real science from Traveller - the damn formula for calculating travel time in space based on distance and constant acceleration is part of the game... Also, I learned how big the mass of a ton of hydrogen is. So much was packed into the three little books, allowing you to generate planets, animals, characters, ships... Plus all the supplemental books were great. There were even bootleg stats for Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in the back of one of the booklets. I made a game of trying to roll up a Merchant Captain who scores a ship upon retirement and has the title free and clear. It's not an easy thing to do, and most of the characters wash out or are candidates for a nursing home by the time they can accomplish that feat. The new version by Mongoose Publishing codifies the 2D6 throws into 2D6+Skill+Mod versus 8 across the board, somewhat cleaning up the more 70s situational approach of the original Traveller. It's very playable, aside from a few editing issues. It is a worthy successor to the original Traveller.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Traveller:
- Rolling up TONS AND TONS AND TONS of characters. Because character gen was fun. And yes, you could die.
- Getting really pissed off because the Army had an easy promotion roll... but a 50% chance of getting booted out of the service every damn term.
- Reading the part where they describe the kinds of weapons in terms of modern firearms... then having a mental image of troops in Battle Dress powered-armor storming off an assault cutter wielding Garands.
SEE ALSO:
MEGATRAVELLER - A sort of second edition that had refined character creation, but a totally changed setting as the Imperium shattered.
2300 AD - Originally marketed as "Traveller : 2300" this game is not actually related to Traveller, but rather to Twilight : 2000 as the world that arose after World War III. This was a more or less hard sci-fi game, and an excellent one that only barely did not make this list. I recommend it highly.
Traveller : The New Era - Not as well recieved as GDW had hoped, this version of Traveller reworks the system competely, and shakes up the Imperium yet again by making it a more or less post-apoc version of the Imperium bootstrapping itself back into space after Virus (a sentient computer virus) takes out... oh... everything. Vampire Fleets - vessels whose self-aware computers become affected by Virus and kill their own crews - ply the spacelanes. The Star Vikings seek to restore interstellar travel. Basically, the setting rocks, the system is a bit more modern than classic traveller... a good game to check out. Good luck on the book not falling apart, though...
6) - Star Wars (D6 Version)
Year: 1987
The Rules: D6s only, dice pool system. Roll the dice, add together, try to beat target number. Characters were built on a set of templates at the back of the book. Very simple, very quick.
Preferred Editions: The first one. Definitely.
Why I Love It: This game was the first time I was aware of "genre emulation" as a thing. Marvel DID it, but it didn't really click to me what it was doing. In Star Wars, Greg Costikyan wrote in a conversational tone, and offered advice on how to make the game feel like Star Wars. Ammunition? Don't worry about it, they didn't in the movies. If you don't sound convincingly like a Wookiee, don't play one. Keep things fast, keep the pace moving, make it feel like a Star Wars movie, dammit! That style of writing in an RPG book was something I'd not encountered, and as a kid who grew up with Star Wars, this game was a no-brainer. The cover art... wow. The interiors were all stills from the movies or artwork from the production staff (often Ralph McQuarrie!) that very much help set the tone of the game. The rules run pretty quick, and character creation by template is a snap. I still keep a couple of sets of these templates in a file folder in my game room for one-off Star Wars games. This is my gateway drug of choice for teaching people the hobby if for some reason D&D won't work. Why? It's easy, it uses the dice everyone already knows from Monopoly, the templates are iconic, and pretty much everyone has seen Star Wars. The Second Edition and the Revised Second Edition are good games, too - but they make the mistake or realizing they are role-playing games and correct things like not having ammo limitations for weapons and having skills that are too broad. The result is a marginally crunchier game that gets away from Star Wars, to my mind.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Star Wars:
- Putting a Butter Krust book cover on the core book so I could read it in Saturday Detention.
- Using my vinyl copy of the original Star Wars soundtrack on a turntable to add ambience to the game.
- This game is when I became aware of my endearing love of the Y-Wing.
- The Star Warriors fighter combat game (which I got used in Tampa, FL the Christmas we invaded Panama) was awesome, and your RPG characters could be used in it without any need for conversion or modification.
5) - Cyberpunk (also known as Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 2020)
Year: 1988
The Rules: 1D10 + Stat + Skill. Very simple system. Lifepath character generation gives you some background before you begin. Combat is unforgiving if you're not wearing armor. Probably one of my favorite base game systems ever, even if Reflexes is something of a God Stat. There are classes "roles" but they only limit the one skille each role has exclusively.
Preferred Editions: Either 2013 or 2020 are great. CP2013 was a boxed set, and represents a fairly solid core. CP2020 was a stand-alone book with some rule refinements, but the power creep began with the supplements to 2020.
Why I Love It: I was gifted this game the year it came out. I'd done space, I'd done fantasy, I'd done stuff based on anime - but this was something different. This was the Dark Future of... our Earth. Not a long time ago, etc. Not some fantasy world. This was OUR Earth. And the Japanese Megacorps ruled everything! Remember that in the 80s the fear of Japanese economic takeover was very real. This was something new to me - but somehow familiar. I had Bladerunner on VHS. I was a huge fan of the Max Headroom TV series. I had yet to read Neuromancer - but I would after playing this. This tapped into the Cyberpunk I had been exposed to in media and gave it an outlet. And it was my very first anti-hero game, where the players weren't explicity trying to be Lawful Good or anything like it. You were scraping the bottom, just trying to survive, and the future was disposable! This game brought out the worst in us in a good way. Getting to play high-tech low-lifes was a blast. Little did we know in another year there would be a twist to the genre that would blow us away again! These days, I run Cyberpunk 2020 when I run Cyberpunk - but I have been giving some thought to a limited campaign using only what was in the 2013 boxed set for the same reason I've thought about doing limited D&D (B/X only) or MechWarrior (nothing published after '89) games - to avoid power creep.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Cyberpunk:
- Thinking being a Netrunner would be the coolest thing ever.
- Thinking that it would be pretty damn stupid to put all your personal and banking information on some kind of world-wide computer network where it could be hacked. I mean, that's grotesquely stupid, isn't it?
- Soviet Cyberware. Soviet anything. Yakov Smirnoff would still be funny for another year or two when this was written.
- Jennifer Milburn's solo who liked to kill opponents with a hammer. A plain old hardware-store hammer.
4) - Robotech
Year: 1986
The Rules: The Palladium House System used D20s for combat - opposed rolls for dodging, parrying etc. The skill system is D100. It's class-level.
Preferred Editions: That's a tough one. The original edition was terribly flawed in that it did not accurately reflect a lot of the source material - especially the hardware. The second edition is more accurate, but has its own issues with character creation and combat. Don't let me sell you off this game, though - we had a LOT of fun with it, and you can, too.
Why I Love It: Robotech was the first cartoon I ever watched where someone died. And when that happened, boy howdy was there wailing and gnashing of teeth that day at River Hills Elementary School in Temple Terrace, FL. I think we were more upset about Roy Fokker than we were about the space shuttle. Robotech, as much as it doesn't hold up very well to adult viewing for some people, was ground-breaking. Yes, a direct translation of Macross would have been better - but it was the 80s, and I'm not sure America was ready for primetime animation that wasn't The Simpsons or The Flintstones. The Robotech RPG was the first game book I ever purchased with my own money after my birthday in 1987 when I picked up a copy at King's Hobby Shop along with a set of Koplow Games red translucent dice with white ink. Since Robotech never aired in the Round Rock area, and it had been over a year since any of us had seen it - except the three episodes that could be rented from local movie stores on VHS - we didn't notice a lot of the inconsistencies in the RPG material. The VR-052 cyclone never had chest missiles. The radar mast of the Beta Fighter wasn't a missile launcher. The Super Veritech was just a standard veritech with a FAST pack added, not a separate model...
Screw it, the game rocked. OK, so it wasn't accurate. Was it fun? HELL yes. We ran the crap outta that game, especially the Robotech II : The Sentinels core book that showed us what we would have seen if the Sentinels series had been made. Fighting the Invid with VF-series Veritechs, using mecha that never existed in the show (VF-1V Vindicator, I'm looking at YOU) and rolling with the alien concepts from the aborted TV show was a blast. To this DAY I want to run another Sentinels campaign. A lot.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Robotech:
- The field scientist kit, chock full of useful items and specimen containers. You know, for all that science 7th graders do when fighting aliens.
- PERYTONIAN ENERGY WIZARDS, BITCHES!
- Handguns that did more damage than tank guns.
- Personal armor that could take a tank shell. WTF?!?
- The books thankfully included no Minmei recordings.
3) - Shadowrun (And Shadowrun, Second Edition)
Year: 1989 (Second Edition 1992)
The Rules: Dice pool of D6s, rolling for target numbers. The first game I played where dice "explode" or roll again when max value is rolled. The system is... arcane. Lots of sub-systems. 2nd Edition cleaned it up a bit. Complex, but the system really supports the game world.
Preferred Editions: 1st and 2nd. With the publication of Shadowrun 2050, it is not possible to play a 2050s game with the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary rules set. I may try that.
Why I Love It: Ok, I loved Cyberpunk. A lot. Like I said above, Bladerunner, Max Headroom... Obviously, I liked fantasy as well. Peanut butter? Chocolate? HOLY CRAP. SHADOWRUN. This game came at me like a jacked-up Troll Go-Ganger, chummer, and it's hard for me to tell you how wiz that drek is. Yes, the slang was one of my favorite things. Another thing I loved was the "shadowtalk" in the sourcebooks, where denizens of the Shadowrun universe would hack into files and leave their own thoughts on things that might differ from the official version. The weapons commentaries in the Street Samurai Catalog were particularly amusing at times. "Now I can flatten light rounds against body armor faster than ever before!" Orcs, Trolls, Dwarves and Elves in a hypertechnological cyberpunk dystopia? Sign my ass up. This game was really, really something new. Mixed genres was something we'd never done before, even if we knew from the back of the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide that we could port Boot Hill characters into AD&D. Even if we did play Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The mix of magic and tech was a brand new thing at the time - at least to us - and we played the crap out of it. The rules were complex, but somehow felt right given the source material. There are rules holes in Shadowrun 1e you could drive an Aries Citymaster through, but if your players aren't actively trying to abuse the rules, it'll hold up well enough. Shadowrun Second Edition fixed a lot of the abuse-worthy rules, but not all. Shadowrun 2e is my go-to for Shadowrun these days, ans the Third and Fourth editions committed the unforgivable sin of moving the world forward and trying to adapt it to how modern technology was emerging. Leave by Cyberpunk firmly 20 minutes into the future of 1987, dammit! Deckers must jack in! Decks are the size of a Commodore 64! The only thing wireless is cellular phones! Anyway, Shadowrun had this great feel and vibe. We actually stopped playing straight Cyberpunk for about five years due to Shadowrun. This game has very much earned its place as #3 on my list.
Snapshots of Things I Remember About Shadowrun:
- Running the Universal Brotherhood module for three girls. It was amazing. Girls are brutal, heartless and cunning. Read all about it.
- My former girlfriend Amy, the Great Love of My Life(tm) and The One That Got Away(tm) as far as my teenage mind was concerned, coming to play dressed as her character. I still have my Shadowrun First Edition hardcover in which she pinpointed the location of her character's apartment on the Seattle map.
- The absolutely jaw-dropping combat ability of a cybered-up troll with an axe. More damage than a 20mm cannon you say? Yes, most definitely.
- The ability of that same cybered-up troll to eat three .50 machinegun rounds and only take a wound level of "Moderate"
2) - MechWarrior (and MechWarrior, Second Edition)
Year: 1986 (First Edition) 1991 (Second Edition)
The Rules: 2D6 task resolution versus target number, skill-based but "classes" do exist insomuch as in-game jobs like MechWarrior or Aerospace Pilot tend to be exclusive.
Preferred Editions: First for atmosphere and feel, Second for game mechanics, my own version for both rolled into one. That one's forthcoming. May take a while, though.
Why I Love It: Because it's MechWarrior. There aren't too many game universes with as much background and development as the MechWarrior Universe. I started playing Battletech in 1986 at Chisholm Trail Middle School, we played at lunch, I played the WSP-1A Wasp a lot because I thought it looked cool. I died a lot because it was a WSP-1A Wasp. I read Battletechnology Magazine voraciously, and I loved the black and white "photos" of battlefields using models and toys and parts of Robotix sets. This was the first RPG I ever played where there were five (seven if you count The Star League and The Periphery) House books that were nothing but history and background for the factions in the game. Hundreds of pages on the political systems, religions, militaries, intelligence agencies... It was mind-boggling, and intriguing and exciting. I was a House Steiner loyalist almost from the get-go. My friend Robby Houser has the Davion flag tatoo on his arm. MechWarrior inspired a level of interest in the world and the factions I'd never encountered before. The game was amazingly deep compared to other games on the market, and the blend of post-apoc, Dune, giant robots and Starship Troopers was really, really cool to folks like me. The initial book was full of details about house retinues, landholds, Planetologists, ComStar religious zealots - and the best thing about it was the random event tables and total lack of metaplot beyond 3025 that let you lead your game where you wanted to. I will say that my deep and abiding love of the MechWarrior universe is rooted firmly in the Third Succession War era. The further one gets forward in the timeline, the less deep and abiding my love for the universe gets. My problem is not the normal gripes about The Clans and the technology they bring to the game - my gripe is about the fundamental change to the atmosphere of the game. MechWarrior 1e is about MechWarriors as Knights. Their 'Mechs, like an ancestral suit of armor, are handed down the generations. MechWarriors hold land, and rule from a position of military strength. The techno-feudal feel is strong, as is the feel of a society in its twilight after centuries of brutal war. It works for me. By the time of the 3050 setting, MechWarriors are just jet pilots as far as being special goes. Well trained, yes, respected, yes - but now that BattleMechs are rolling in ever increasing numbers off the assembly lines the BattleMech has once again become just another piece of military hardware. A lot of the post-apoc and hard-scrabble feel, not to mention the Pendragon with Giant Robots feel - has gone out the window.
The current license holders at Catalyst and their fans love to point out that the Battletech universe would have stagnated without a major shakeup. Well, if the Fourth War hadn't been glossed over in two volumes, and "20 Year Update" glossed over the rest, how much story could have been told without such a drastic shift in feel? The friggin Jihad storyline took FOURTEEN YEARS of real-time and they're saying they couldn't get more than four out of the original setting? I don't buy it. The new regime's A Time of War RPG is what we're using now for the Royal Dragoon Guards, but it really doesn't "do it" for us any more than any other edition of MechWarrior did - the rules are more than a bit cumbersome (Damage in quarter points? Really?) and the game tries to cover so much ground it really doesn't carry the feel of Battletech with it at all. With that in mind, Bobby Dean and I are working on our own take... Stay tuned for more on that...
Snapshots of Things I Remember About MechWarrior:
- Being a young, inexperienced GM and throwing the Slayers from Krull into a MechWarrior game.
- Clint Hill pulling off a rock star character in a Solaris VII campaign and making it work. Downward Spiral will henceforth appear in all my Solaris VII games regardless of time period.
- How the Jim Holloway cover art from MW1e just got my imagination rolling.
- Falling in love with Melissa Steiner only to see her marry Hanse Davion. Well played, Hanse. Well played.
1) - Dungeons and Dragons Basic
Year: 1974-1991
The Rules : Class and Level system. Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are a class. D20 for attacks, but not "D20 System." Uses all the classic polyhedral dice, some things are roll high, some things are roll low, by modern game standards a mess. But oh, what a glorious mess!
Preferred Editions:
1983 Elmore-art Mentzer BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia Version
1980 Erol Otus-art Moldvay B/X Edition
Why I Love It: D&D was my first love. I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons during the summer of 1986 with Daniel Varner as my first DM at his house on Dry Creek/Purple Sage Drive. My love affair with roleplaying games had begun. My first D&D boxed set was the 1983 set whose cover is posted here. Larry Elmore, Jim Holloway, Jeff Easley- their art inspired me. Frank Mentzer's reworking of the Basic D&D rules was easily grasped by my middle-school mind and it wasn't long before I was DMing myself. I cannot overstress how the art in and on the books and boxes of this series inspired my early D&D games. This is still my go-to edition of D&D after all these years. The 1991 Rules Cyclopedia is my "Desert Island" RPG - if I can only have one RPG book to run from for the rest of my life, it's the most complete version of D&D that has ever existed in a single volume. In later years, I obtained the 1980 Erol Otus-cover Basic and Expert sets, as well as the earlier Holmes blue-cover edition from 1977. All of them have more than just historical merit. There has been a movement lately to base new versions of fantasy RPGs on the simplicity and completness as a game. There is SO MUCH MILAGE you can get out of just the Basic and Expert rules. Also - the default setting for the 1980 and beyond sets, the Known World or Mystara, is awesome and gonzo. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos has been the backdrop for many, many epic campaigns and entertaining one-shots.
Snapshots of Things I Remember about D&D Basic:
- You never forget your first. Come on, that has to count for something.
- My Cleric, Brother Maynard of the Holy Outhouse, bravely fighting demons all summer at Lost Pines Scout Camp, where Troop 145 was much more interested in D&D than they were in all that scouting stuff...
- My first wizard being killed by the acid breath of a dragon we had subdued while attempting to feed bag the dragon. This was done by the DM intentionally because said wizard was around 20th level and way too powerful for the campaign, which we played most days after school and almost every Saturday for 6th, 7th and part of 8th grades.
- Thinking level limits on demihumans was awesome - because hey, an 8th-level Halfling becomes SHERRIFF OF HIS OWN FRIGGIN SHIRE. How cool is that? Also, the artifacts each demi-human race was able to create as they levelled up. Who needed levels when you kept advancing in Attack Rank anyway?
I have to give a shout-out to a couple of games which are derivative of D&D Basic under the OSR (Original Source Rules) movement. These are also called Retroclones, as they are clones of the rules of Basic D&D. While these games are, fundamentally, Basic D&D each one seeks to do something with the rules that Basic D&D didn't do. Here they are, and why I recommend them.
Labyrinth Lord
Why I Like It: It's a modernized presentation of B/X D&D in a sturdy, attractive volume. The rules are almost unchanged, close enough that old modules can be run with no coversion. There are modules, a GM screen, and the Advanced Edition Companion which allows it to expand to cover AD&D as well.
Oh, and it's FREE in PDF.
Stars Without Number
Why I Like It: SWN is brilliant. I say that with a twinge of pain because I was working on my own sci-fi adapation of B/X when this came out. It did everything I wanted my version to do and more - and it did it better. Honestly, this game rocks HARD. It has a core of Basic D&D, but adds a skill system that is 2D6+Skill+Mods for a very simple, Traveller-like skill experience. It has domains and factions, and the tools to manage them and place them in conflict with one another. It has vehicle and startships - even 'Mechs. This is one hell of a one-volume game.
And oh, yeah, it's FREE in PDF.
Adventurer Conqueror King System
Why I Like It: This is Basic/Expert D&D with explicit phases of a campaign. The low levels are "Adventurer" and play like most D&D campaigns. As you ease into "Conqueror" you start finding a different flavor of adventure as your PC becomes the most proficient in the land at what it is you do. Graduating to "King" levels, your PCs are carving out their own domains. This game really brings depth and interest to the old "At 9th level the Fighter may construct a Castle..." Lots of depth. Domain management, economy, war... It's all here in wonderful detail with simple mechanics. A few new character classes round out the game, along with an explicit table showing just how good at their job a character of 1st-14th level is. 14th level, as in the original Expert set, is the upper limit of this game. I haven't gotten to run it yet, but I've read the book longingly, wondering where all my time to game has gone and then remembering oh, yeah, parenthood and college...
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG
Why I Like It: This game gave me a hummer, then kicked me in the jimmy so hard I just had to run it. First, DCC got me with the artwork. Oh, the artwork. Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, the list goes on. It is old school in the best of ways and the art just begs to play the kind of gonzo sword-and-sorcery stuff that cries out for a million Boris Vallejo paintings. This game is brutal and beautiful at the same time. Fighters are capable of amazing deeds of might without a cumbersome feat system. Arcane spellcasters run the risk of corruption regardless of their alignment, and Clerics must take care not to offend their gods. Death waits around every corner, especially due to the fact that in the first adventure of the campaign each player rolls up multiple completely random 0-level characters. The one that survives the first adventure gets to be first level. Some might chafe at the extreme old-school sensibilities of this game, but the group I ran a 0-level grinder for loved the ever living crap out of it. This game is simply amazing in its ability to capture the feel of all those stories of "the way it was done in the 70s" and do it with modern mechanics. Don't expect modern mechanics to include class balance or any of those other newfangled concepts, though. This game is old school through-and-through, and that makes it pretty damn awesome.
And Parents We Shall Be!
Greetings, True Believers!
Court on 19 OCT went well. Very well. We were told to expect to have an adoption date set sometime in February or March. HUZZAH! I cannot wait to make the world an introduction to the kids, as we're not allowed to do so while they're still in foster care. No public photos, and I can't really even mention their full names.
So... if everything goes well with the 90-day waiting period - IE, no close relatives come unexpectedly out of the woodwork... Mary and I will be the legal parents of our foster kids and there will be much rejoicing.
Excelsior!
(With apologies to The Man)
The Old Dragoon
Court on 19 OCT went well. Very well. We were told to expect to have an adoption date set sometime in February or March. HUZZAH! I cannot wait to make the world an introduction to the kids, as we're not allowed to do so while they're still in foster care. No public photos, and I can't really even mention their full names.
So... if everything goes well with the 90-day waiting period - IE, no close relatives come unexpectedly out of the woodwork... Mary and I will be the legal parents of our foster kids and there will be much rejoicing.
Excelsior!
(With apologies to The Man)
The Old Dragoon
26 September 2012
Long awaited update...
This past weekend the Royal Dragoons hosted an Open Game Day, which was attended by Jeff Dee, who presented a demo of his new game, Cavemaster. We invited a lot of folks, a LOT of folks... in the end, we had around thirty participants. What was nice was we saw some folks we haven't seen in quite some time - Sean, Patrick, Sarah, Kathy, Alan, Mitchell and especially Larry. Was good to see you all. More about that in a bit.
Life updates before I get all philosophical. Everyone who reads my sporadic posts is pretty well aquainted with my hectic life. In fact, I'll have to post most posts as I can about some of the revelations I've had recently thanks to life, children and the therapist I've been seeing for almost a year now. Anyway... From a maximum weight of 308, I am now down to 265 on my way to my TXSG weight of 217. Actually, I'm shooting for 200. Nice round number - one I haven't seen since my junior year of High School, but what the hell, right? Gotta have goals. I am two classes away from my BA - I finish my last final this week for the current semester, then I start Korean War History and War and Society on Monday. By just after Thanksgiving, I'll be done. Huzzah. On the kid front, we've had some great frustration with CPS and our daycare arrangements that required me to spend three days off work taking care of K. I loved every minute of it. She and I had some wonderful daddy-daughter time.
Remember that moment in Jurassic Park when people freaked out when they realized Raptors could open doors? Problem-solving intelligence? Well, my 16-month-old has shown me in the past days that not only does she understand the relationship between the X-Box controller and the television, but she understands that Cat5 cable goes into the wall (and attempted to plug one in herself) and that the "Windows" key on my keyboard makes something immediately happen on my PC or laptop. Holy crap this little girl is SHARP.
Anyway... so the mediation was yesterday where the parties to the case discussed the future of the kiddos. and after angsting about what was going to come out of that meeting I find out we're not ALLOWED to know what happened in that meeting. As Foster Parents of less than one year in duration, we're still not legally parties to the case. Still just the babysitters. Damnit.
I'll have some gaming-related posts later this week. Since I'm finishing my classwork tomorrow AM hopefully, I'll have some time to post about the awesome stuff I've come across in the last couple of months...
Life updates before I get all philosophical. Everyone who reads my sporadic posts is pretty well aquainted with my hectic life. In fact, I'll have to post most posts as I can about some of the revelations I've had recently thanks to life, children and the therapist I've been seeing for almost a year now. Anyway... From a maximum weight of 308, I am now down to 265 on my way to my TXSG weight of 217. Actually, I'm shooting for 200. Nice round number - one I haven't seen since my junior year of High School, but what the hell, right? Gotta have goals. I am two classes away from my BA - I finish my last final this week for the current semester, then I start Korean War History and War and Society on Monday. By just after Thanksgiving, I'll be done. Huzzah. On the kid front, we've had some great frustration with CPS and our daycare arrangements that required me to spend three days off work taking care of K. I loved every minute of it. She and I had some wonderful daddy-daughter time.
Remember that moment in Jurassic Park when people freaked out when they realized Raptors could open doors? Problem-solving intelligence? Well, my 16-month-old has shown me in the past days that not only does she understand the relationship between the X-Box controller and the television, but she understands that Cat5 cable goes into the wall (and attempted to plug one in herself) and that the "Windows" key on my keyboard makes something immediately happen on my PC or laptop. Holy crap this little girl is SHARP.
Anyway... so the mediation was yesterday where the parties to the case discussed the future of the kiddos. and after angsting about what was going to come out of that meeting I find out we're not ALLOWED to know what happened in that meeting. As Foster Parents of less than one year in duration, we're still not legally parties to the case. Still just the babysitters. Damnit.
I'll have some gaming-related posts later this week. Since I'm finishing my classwork tomorrow AM hopefully, I'll have some time to post about the awesome stuff I've come across in the last couple of months...
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