RPGaDAY 2017

For the last three years Eric over at Gaming with the Gnomies has been doing this and it looks like a lot of fun, so I thought I’d join in this year. The idea is you answer a question about Role-playing games every day for the month of August. More information and the list of questions can be found HERE.

Some of the questions though… well… I have these Q&A a Day books that I do with the family (The Girl has Q&A A Day for Kids, Finnegan just has the Q&A a Day, Amanda and I do the OUR Q&A a Day) and they’re sometimes fun and sometimes interesting, but sometimes we (especially me) wonder: “Well… what do they mean by….” (I often tend to over think things…). And some of these seem the same (as you shall see). Some of the questions I have no idea about, some just do not apply to me, and I don’t know… some of the questions I’ve looked at made me think: “I guess they used up all the good questions over the last three years”.

So, I might just dig out one of the questions from 2014-16 to answer if I’ve got nothing for the actual question for the day for 2017… or I might just answer questions from multiple years past. I might try to answer every day, but I may end up posting answers in batches if I don’t get to it every damned day… I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes.

Question #1 (for 1 August 2017, I know, I’m a day late… I was up last night and was planning to answer it, but then I got distracted by something else and ended up going to bed without answering it - or turning the computer off!?)

What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now?

Well we’re already starting off with a “Well what do you mean by…” question. By “playing” do they actually mean playing in a game that someone else is running – or do they mean it could be a game I’m running? By “right now” do they mean RIGHT NOW this morning instead of answering this question or a more general “right now” as in “what game do you wish your regular game group was playing right now instead of or in addition to the game you’re currently playing”? (or what game do you wish your game group was playing if you actually HAD a regular game group, for those without). Or does it mean what game would you like to play with a regular gaming group if it was your DREAM GAME GROUP (you know, like if you could game with any of the people you’d gamed with ever – which I think was a question itself for a previous year) because, you know, different groups are… well… different a game that would be a riot with one group, could just fall flat with another...

See what I mean? Waaaaaaay overthinking it…

If it were “RIGHT NOW this morning” with games and people I have on had (entirely possible, I’m in a house full of games and two eager youngsters that would probably love to play a role-playing game!). I think I’d like The Girl to run Shadowrun. She picked it up last year sometime and was SUPER STOKED about it at the time. Picked up a pile of the novels – some of the newer ones from the game store, and some of the older ones from a used book store. I’m not sure she actually finished reading any of the novels – or the rulebook… so many other things she’s interested in. Also, she did try running a quickstart adventure from the Beginner Box for us at one point, but discovered it’s actually really hard to run a role-playing game, so interest waned after that. Anyway, it’s a game I’ve always wanted to try - I bought the original version when it first came out... but I'm not sure I ever PLAYED it – so I hope she’ll have a go at it again sometime.

If it were “what do I wish my game group was playing right now”? Well, first I’d like to say I’ve been really enjoying playing the D&D 5E Primeval Thule game we’ve been playing. More than I expected to, actually!

Our Game Master Bruce is planning to wrap up the campaign by the end of September and so this question has been weighing on my mind a lot lately – what WOULD I like to play in the fall… I may be taking over the role of GM so there are a lot of factors to consider – what am I willing and able and interested to run, as well as what are the people I’m playing with going to be willing and interested to PLAY…?

There are a bunch I’ve been thinking about over the last few months…

I’ve been interested to play or run a couple of the (now recently out of print) 40K RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games – Rogue Trader or Only War. I picked up most of the books for both games over the last few years at the FFG annual Black Friday sale. I have to admit this is partly because I have a lot of fun miniatures I could use with the game and it would tie in nicely with a renewed interest in possibly playing Warhammer 40000. I also have a soft spot for military RPGs like Only War – I always enjoyed playing Recon or Twilight:2000 or Behind Enemy Lines or Top Secret (to a certain extent) and assorted Traveller or GURPS games where players were members of some military-like organization. It’s really easy for the GM – the players superiors give them a mission, the players attempt to carry out the mission (well... maybe not so much in Twilight:2000, but…). There’s never the “well what do we want to do next?” and never the worry that the players won’t pick up on you plot hook for the next adventure.

I’ve also been thinking about Cthulhu Invictus (though I’d probably NOT use the actual Chaosium game rules, I’d run it with something else – I would have used Savage Worlds at one point, but I’ve been thinking of an even simpler homebrew set based on the Song of Blades and Heroes game engine).

Tales from the Loop aslo looks interesting… well… the ART looks fabulous… and I have a soft spot for 80s kids adventure movies – Goonies, Space Camp, Band of the Hand, Lost Boys, Stand By ME, E.T., BMX Bandits, etc. I’m sure they’d all be crap if I saw them now as an adult… but as a kid in the 80s, they were good fun. Seems like that’s the vibe I’m getting off of Tales from the Loop.

There are LOADS of others I’d love to run or play that I can’t even begin to list, but these are the ones I’m considering for the fall. I’m not sure if any of those will fly with my current group, but I’ll bring them up as possibilities. I can’t really just PICK one for them, because some of them may not dig on that setting or style of play…

So I guess the question is really about What game would you like to play right now ASSUMING YOU ACTUALLY HAD A GROUP THAT WAS WILLING AND INTERESTED TO PLAY IT…?

Hmmmmm….

If I had to pick ONE…

GAH!?

This is too hard…

Maybe I should just roll a die.

Good old d4 says: Rogue Trader. Yeah. I’d go with Rogue Trader.

I also asked the kids what they’d like to play. Without missing a beat The Girl said Shadowrun. For Finnegan the question was pure existential torture (TOO MANY CHOICES!).

Question #2: What is an RPG you would like to see published?

Yeah… I don’t know… like with a particular setting…? At this point I kind of feel like; What setting is out there that HASN’T been published!? I’m drawing a blank on this one. When I polled the kids Finnegan was equally unsure, but The Girl said she’d like to see HER RPG get published (it’s a pretty generic fantasy RPG) or one based on a series of books she’s been reading called “Tales of a Red-Headed Sea Witch”.