RPG-a-Day 2023 - Week Three

 Here we go with WEEK THREE!!!

15) Favourite Convention MODULE/ONE-SHOT

I don't think I've never played a role-playing game at a convention...?

Finnegan has run a few one-shots that were fun - especially Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics funnel adventures.

I think the funnest I remember in recent history that I ran was a FATE one shot I called "Dude, Where's My Warhorse" wherein the very hung over retinue and attendants of the knight that won the king's tournament the previous day scramble to locate their masters prized warhorse that is discovered to be missing upon awaking after a night of drunken debauchery.... I've run it twice with different groups and WILDLY different outcomes.

I guess I have run miniature games at conventions... and the ones that went the best were ones where all the players were on one side and played against a common enemy run by ME... which is very similar to a role-playing game....? 

The favourite one...? probably the last one I ran - Necromunda where each player controlled a group from a different gang. They each got a character and a small handful of regular gangers. They had all sort of banded together to stop Karloth Valois and his band of zombies and scavvies from getting to a populated area of the underhive and infecting large numbers of (relatively) innocent people and growing his power. Collectively, they had to stop him, If he got through - ALL THE PLAYERS LOSE... Players gained points for taking out Scavvies and Zombies and a bunch for taking out Valois (so a "winner" could be determined), but each were handed a card with a secret agenda on it - something only they got points for and only they knew about. Most of them were "take out the leader of X gang"... which gave them points... but the leaders were very powerful and if they did that too soon, it could affect their collective strength and ability to stop Valois. People REALLY got into it!

I ran it twice, actually, once as a play-test on my birthday and once at ToonCon:

The Return of Karloth Valois - Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash

ToonCon 2020 - Part 3 - Sunday - Necromunda (and Power Grid!)

16) Game You WISH You Owned

I feel like at some point there probably were games I wished I owned or wished I'd never gotten rid of... but I've either tracked them all down or lost interest...? 

Now, there are so many games that I OWN that I'd LOVE to play, but just never get around to it... there really aren't any others that I really long for. Not many that I wish I still had... (board games, miniature games, specific miniatures.... maybe... but not so much role-playing games I really, really wish I had...). 

I guess I wouldn't mind checking out the NEW version of Twilight: 2000. I've really enjoyed reading through Blade Runner, and the new Twilight: 2000 seems to use the same system, and I have SO MUCH STUFF for the original... I have just about all the first edition adventures and sourcebooks in print - as well as pdfs... so... Also have PILES of painted modern troopers and civilians and vehicles and terrain I could use... 

(edit/update... between typing this and posting it... 

...so... not really ANY games I wish I had...)

17) FUNNIEST Game You've Played

Again, Teenagers From Outter Space or the "Dude, Where's My Warhorse" adventure I ran with FATE. 

18) Favourite Game SYSTEM

Ehhhh... I don't know... 

There are things I like about a LOT of different systems. None of them really stand out as better than all the others. My favourite system at any given moment is usually the one I'm currently planning to play. Which changes all the time. 

Right now... FATE seems really elegant, but I just don't feel like I have enough experience with it. Blade Runner and Wrath & Glory seem like they have the right balance of crunchy and streamlined simplicity. 

I really, REALLY liked Savage Worlds and ran that EXCLUSIVELY for YEARS....

I guess, in general, I like anything that's fairly simple and generic and the rules get out of the way of ROLE-PLAYING. Character CONCEPTS are more important to me than number crunching and optimizing within a complex system of rules and chaff. 

I guess I could also say my favourite game system is the ONE I'M PLAYING RIGHT NOW! (which really isn't any, at the moment, so.... maybe in the fall... or winter... when the game room is accessible again...) 

19) Favourite PUBLISHED Adventure

I have a really hard time with published adventures... I like the idea of published adventures... because I feel like it should give a sense of how the game should be run - especially if you're just starting out.. But I always find holes in the plots that I just can't seem to fill. 

Or, if *I* don't find them... my PLAYERS WILL!!! 

The first Wrath & Glory adventure I ran from Dark Tides - the first anthology of adventures. There's a murder of a high-ranking nobility of a hive world, way up in their private spires, players have to investigate. The first thing one of them asks is "well, what's on the security camera footage"... There is ZERO MENTION of security systems or cameras, which, OF COURSE they'd HAVE....!? but if there WERE, that would make it INSANELY EASY to figure out who it was... Oh, they were taken out (how did they access that)... ugh... ground the adventure to a halt when I had to suddenly come up with reasons why there was no security camera footage. 

First game in the Dragonlance series of games. They find the Disks of Mishakal... the GOAL of the adventure... a set of 160 platinum disks, each one-sixteenth of an inch thick and eighteen inches in diameter, held together with a big rivet that runs through one side so they can be shifted out and examined... One of the players asks,  how HEAVY is that... nevermind, they'll figure it out, gets out phone calculates volume of this pile cylender of disks... looks up the density of platinum... Yeah... it's only a few tons... HOW THE FUCK ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO GET THESE OUT OF THE COLLAPSING CAVERN!? I tell them if someone of good alignment carries them, it is as if they are weightless... (making shit up on the spot, at this point) because... MAAAaaaaaGIiiiiic! but wait, what if that person gets in a cart (or a gully-dwarf-powered elevator, is the person carrying them weightless... can a person of good alignment even USE a gully-dwarf-powered elevator - knowing using it will send those gully dwarves to their CERTAIN DOOM!!?? 

I guess I liked the Free City of Krakow for the old Twilight: 2000 - it was less of an adventure, per se, than a detailed location with lots of potential... 

There's a nostalgic little hit of dopamine when I think back to Keep On The Borderlands (and maybe Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh)... the excitement of those first adventures all back in the day, when everything was NEW! But I haven't looked at it in 30 years.... and... I'm a little afraid to in case they SUCK in the light of modern reexamination. I mean... Dragonlance didn't hold up... 

20) Will Still Play in TWENTY Years Time...

I have NO IDEA. I have no idea what I might be playing in a year, let along TWENTY!? 

I just hope I'm playing SOMETHING. 

(I have to admit, I have a difficult time with future predicting. I have a hard time imagining I'll even be alive in five years, let alone ten or TWENTY!? I've been this way since my teens. It's honestly led to some not great life choices... and you can well imagine my shock and disconcert at realizing I'd made it to fifty and had an adult child - all in the same year - last year!? So, at this point, I have to acknowledge it's a possibility... but it's still hard to imagine) 

21) Favourite LICENSED RPG

Right now I'm really loving Blade Runner... Maybe once I try to RUN it I'll be less enthralled. 

Wrath & Glory is, technically, a licensed product... but a licensed RPG based on a miniature skirmish game that I've played like a role-playing game... so it feels more like an extension of a game I've already played and less like something someone else made up... Regardless, it is a licensed product, I do like it... so...

One of those two, I guess. 

I really liked the CONCEPTS in Tales from the Loop... but it just didn't work out for me running it... 

Who else has a favourite one-shot or a game you wished you owned, a favourite system or tell me the funniest game you've played? What's your favourite published adventure? 

WHAT GAME DO YOU HOPE YOU'LL STILL BE PLAYING IN TWENTY YEARS?!!

Do you have a favourite licensed game?

Please let me know in the comments!