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Monday, August 28, 2023

RPG-a-Day 2023 - Week Four

 Still doing this...? I guess so... I feel like so many of my answers are the same. 

22) Best SECONDHAND RPG Purchase

Star Frontiers

I picked up just the BASIC Star Frontiers rulebook for $4 from Bob's Book Exchange in...? 1983 or 84...? probably the summer between grades seven and eight. Me and a friend played SO MUCH with just that basic rules book... I later picked up the advanced rules (or maybe the full boxed set) and later Knighthawks and Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space... That Basic rulesbook probably generated the most play per dollar spent out of ANY game EVER for me... 


23) COOLEST Looking RPG Product/Book

There have been so many... I'll say I really like some of the older black and white books... loved the early Timothy Bradstreet illustrations in the first edition Twilight: 2000 books. 

I don't LOVE all the full-colour hardcover books everyone seems to feel like they NEED to publish these days... so many just have very rushed, sloppy digital illustrations that just leave me feeling cold... 

That being said... the new Blade Runner games just looks AMAZING. I also really liked Tales from the Loop - but they had entire books full of Simon Stålenhag’s work to draw upon. 


24) COMPLEX/SIMPLE Game You Play

I like simple. Detest complex. 

I think FATE, in a way, is very simple... and elegant in that simplicity... but also one of the harder ones for people for people to wrap their heads around. Some people who have played a lot of RPGs really like things to be clearly defined and codified in the rules. FATE is wildly open to interpretation. I'd love to play it MORE and get MY own head wrapped around how some of the mechanics work better and the FATE point economy... 


25) UNPLAYED RPG You Own

So many. 

SOOOOOOO Many.... 

Even more that I've only played once or twice, and many many more adventures and supplements I've never made use  of... 

But in terms of actual game systems that I have and have never used...

High Colonies and Those Dark Places - two hard sci-fi role-playing games (the latter relatively new, the former ANCIENT!) that I really liked the look/concept of... but never really played. I often thought of using the premise of High Colonies to play with some other system... but never got around to that either. 

Jackals and ΑΓΩΝ - two role-playing games set in the Bronze Ages... 

Justifiers - a small RPG published in the late 80s. also kind of a hard sci-fi game where you play a human-animal hybrid made by a corporation to go out and explore space. it was small and relatively inexpensive and seemed like a neat idea... I feel like there were a bunch of supplements or adventures for it, which I may or may not have had as well... I know I kept the core rules for a long time, but it eventually got chewed on by a dog...

Hellboy - very recent... we got to making characters... but there were just too many rules to read... maybe I'll get to is SOME day... 

Mouseguard - we might have made characters at some point, for an game Finnegan was going to try and run at one point... but then didn't get to it. 

Burrows and Bunnies - you play a rabbit... seemed interesting at the time and so very. VERY different from anything else - I mean, it was published in 1976!? I picked up a copy around 1986...? 

Legend of the Five Rings - I have stuff from a few different editions, and i HAVE used ONE of the adventures - but played it using...? Savage Worlds...? I think...? 

Gear Krieg - I don't THINK we ever played this one... I might have used the setting as inspriation for another Savage Worlds game. 

There are others... these are just the ones that come to mind off the top of my head!? 


26) Favourite CHARACTER SHEET

I can't think of any particular character sheet from any particular game... I definitely like black and white and printable sheets with adequate space to write things down. Large spaces for the stats and stuff you need to reference most often. 

I like ones where you have space to make a sketch of your character too... 

I can't stand all these new ones with full colour character sheets that just turn into a mess when you try to print them off on a black and white laser printer. Or preprinted ones on a type of paper that you can't write on with a freaking pencil. 


27) Game you'd like a new EDITION of...

None... I just don't care to buy any more books... 

I wish Tales from the Loop used the dice system that Blade Runner uses (two base dice of differing types, rather than pools of d6s). BUT I don't need to see a whole new edition of those books for that, though. If I ever run it again, I'll just make those changes!?  


28) SCARIEST RPG You've Played. 

I ran a GURPS Horror game many, many years ago that at least one player admitted feeling some tension/scariness while playing...? I think it might have been the one set during the Great War...? 


How about the rest of you? 

What are YOUR Best secondhand EPG purchases? 

What was RPGs are you holding onto that you've never ever played? Are any of them scary? 

Are there any RPGs you'd like to see a new edition of? 

Do YOU have a favourite character sheet!? 

Let Me Know!!!






1 comment:

  1. It's not just you.

    Good stuff,. Week 4 of this RPGaDay just feels a little too grueling for everyone this year. Everything seems to be hitting that wall that marathon runners do, but instead of exhaustion you must push through, it's a growing apathy for a month long process. The last three days seem a little more inspiring, and hopefully we all finish strong.

    It took me awhile to write something upon the Unplayed RPGs I have currently, but it was nostalgic and reaffirming that I've managed to make something of three of the seven Unplayed RPGs I listed a decade ago. Funny that my Star Wars d6 game, which just posted it's last episode today, didn't even make the list, probably because I had run a one-shot or two in the late 2000s.

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