#RPGaDAY2017: Day 23 - What is the oldest game you have played, or still play?

The official question - "Which RPG has the most jaw-dropping layout?" - felt too much like a combination of Day 12 and Day 19 for me to want to answer (also the hyperbole of the question made it difficult - I could talk about RPG's with layouts I like, but I don't feel qualified to judge which is the "most jaw-dropping"), so I went back to the alternative questions. The one I've gone with reminds me of Day 5 from the first year of RPGaDAY: "Most old school game owned", but my answer there - AD&D - isn't a game I've played, so I can talk about something else here.

I've had a think and done a bit of research, and it looks like it comes down to either Call of Cthulu and Warhammer Fantasy. It all rests on which edition of Call of Cthulu Husbit's brother ran: I know I've played both first and second edition WFRP. WFRP was first published in 1986, the same year CoC reached its third edition.

Call of Cthulu was run by Husbit's elder brother either one summer holiday while I was at uni or at some point in the couple of years after. It was a 1920's game, which suggests an earlier edition. I played a dilettante, Husbit and another playing were former army officers, and I don't remember the others. It was a bit of a strange game: Jules stuck to the rules of the book, which meant that someone ended up with a phobia of horses as a result of hearing a gunshot while we were on a boat. I found the system clunky and frustrating and I've never been a fan of Lovecraft. (I'd read M R James first and wasn't surprised to learn Lovecraft was a fan: his writing always struck me as a poor copy.) Overall, it's not one I'm in any rush to revisit, for all I've heard great things about friends' games. I just think there's better horror games out there.

Husbit was the first person to run WFRP for me, which I talked about a couple of times back in that first year. It was also the first RPG I was ever exposed to: some schoolfriends had got their hands on it and wanted to play, but none of them wanted to run it, so they asked me to read the rules and run for them. I dutifully borrowed the rulebook and set up an encounter involving finding some goblins in a cave... and then no one had time to play. I've still got the rulebook!

I've had a lot of fun playing WFRP, first and second edition. One of my biggest complaints with D&D-style games is the class and levelling restrictions, so I expected to have similar dislike of the career path, but I found I really enjoyed it - far more flexible and less punishing of multi-classing. It's a game I fully intend to play again - maybe even checking out the newer versions sometime.

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RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 17, Favourite Fantasy RPG

I'm torn.

Fantasy games I've played include a couple of Homebrews that fit nicely elsewhere, D&D 3rd ed, 3.5 and 4th ed, Pathfinder and Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay. Oh, and fake D&D spoof game that Husbit was running when I met him (seeking out the secret herbs and spices that made Kobold Fried Chicken finger linkin' good). And D&D variants such as Midnight and Very Forgotten Realms (in which all sentient beings in the known world had woken some years previously with total amnesia). And our Exalted game is currently very fantasy-like, but I don't know if that's an Exalted thing or an our group thing.

I've played some very enjoyable D&D campaigns (the Midnight setting particularly stands out) and of course I adore our Pathfinder game. Meanwhile, I've yet to play a WFRP's campaign that has absorbed me as completely, yet I really, really like the system.

So I'm torn and going to break my answer down.

I think Midnight might be my favourite fantasy setting because it is a bit different and the game is inevitably lower level; darker and dirtier.

Our current Pathfinder game is my favourite fantasy campaign. I'm very much behind Svetlana and want things to work out for her. I'm (fairly) sure they will and want to see her story through.

But WFRP's is my favourite system. I prefer moving through jobs than levelling in a class. When you reach 20th level in D&D, it feels like that's it, you're done (like a level cap in a PC game) and that's a shame. In Wfrp's, you can move through another career path to conitnue improving, continue learning new skills. I also like the huge variety of careers you can follow and pick up valuable skills from - moving through peasant-type jobs isn't a penalty the way a level in commoner would be in D&D. Just a shame there's no Blood Bowl player career! (Yes, I know, it's an alternate reality in which the sport replaced war, but I'd still like to run a campaign where you start as members of a Blood Bowl team...)

I'm not sure though. There is so much variation and variety and home rules and personalisation available to fantasy that I'm sure there are many better systems and settings out there, and I look forward to discovering more of them.

 

RPGaDay Day 29 - Most Memorable Encounter

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Day Twenty Nine – Most Memorable Encounter

I’m giving this a whole post to myself because it amuses me. Husbit is less amused.

This is the other time Husbit ran WFRP’s for us – I mentioned one under Day 13 (most memorable character death) in which he achieved a TPK. Something about him running WFRP’s it seems…

We were playing a group of people from the same village, strictly human and strictly pastoral-style careers. I started as a goatherd with the intention of becoming a druid; I forget what the others were. Husbit wanted us to appreciate that we were from a rural backwater in the Empire – somewhere clinging to an older, more druidic faith, very anti-unnatural things like machinery and the undead and stuff.

Something happened to cause us to have to team up and leave our village (it probably burned down), and off into the big, wide Warhammer world we went.

The scenario Husbit really wanted to run was one he’d adapted from Ravenloft, his favourite setting. It was a murder mystery, maybe film noir-esque scenario – one I would love to revisit and actually solve. One day. When I’ve won the lottery and never have to worry about money again so can spend my days reading, writing and roleplaying…

Anyway, in passing during a session not all players had made it to, Husbit stated that we shouldn’t be alone. My memory is that this was told to us by an NPC, although it may have been GM speech and I think that’s Husbit’s recollection. It turned out to be rather important, so we were rather cross that it wasn’t reiterated to us in or out of character at any point, such as the start of the next session or when it was clear we hadn’t remembered/noticed and all split up.

Once every character had had a moment of being alone, we all awoke in a dark chamber, somewhere deep underground. It was quickly explained that, in that moment we’d been alone, we’d been killed and some form of doppelganger put in our place in the town outside so the other players didn’t notice. The wizened man before us had then resurrected us…

And this is where it all fell down and Husbit learnt a valuable lesson in ensuring players have the right information: in the Warhammer world, there is no resurrection. Returning from death makes you undead. Husbit had made quite a point of this, and we were playing rural, old faith characters who hated the undead.

So when the man we’d never met before tried to convince us we really were alive again, we weren’t having any of it: if we’d been dead, we were now undead. The guy explained we needed to solve the murders before the worm thing he’d put into us ate into our hearts and killed us again – destroyed us. We refused.

I wanted to go to the surface, to die finally with the sun on my face, but my companions pointed out that abominations such as we’d become we didn’t deserve sunlight and so we sat there, in the dark, until the worm things killed us.

With thanks again to Autocratik.

RPGaDay Days 20 to 23

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Day Twenty – Will Still Play in 20 Years

Really difficult question, because it isn’t just about the games I love but about what the people around me want to play (hence my distinct lack of World of Darkness since uni :( ). Which probably means something D&D based, even though I’m not the biggest fan (I am loving Pathfinder but that’s down to the campaign; there are other systems and settings I prefer).

Hopefully, though, periodic Deadlands, something Cyberpunk’y (such as ShadowRun or Cyberpunk), something supernaturalish (like World of Darkness or Buffy). And also homebrew systems and settings.

Day Twenty One – Favourite Licenced RPG

I’ve played two – Buffy and Firefly (there’s a slight theme here…). I loved both, although I think Buffy was a simpler system (that could just be because I joined a pre-existing game so they’d had time to get their heads around any kinks or quirks, whereas I was in the pilot Firefly game with a brand new book so none of us knew how it worked until we started).

In a similar vein (although, as a homebrew, not strictly a licenced RPG), I did love the game my friend ran based on Final Fantasy 10.

Day Twenty Two – Best Second Hand RPG Purchase

Thank gods for Ebay! A lot of my books (that haven’t been inherited or donated by way of permanent loan) have come to me from Ebay. My favourite? Hmm… It’s hard to choose but I’m going to go for the Nuwisha sourcebook for old World of Darkness’s Werewolf.

There’s something about Tricksters that captivates me. I’ve said before that I’ve grown up on fairy tales and world mythologies and Trickster lore is a part of that – not maybe an area I am as knowledgeable as others (on developing a fear of vampires as a small child, my Dad explained they weren’t real – but then taught me how to defend against them. I slept with a stake by my bed and garlic on the window sill for years), but certainly an area that fascinates me.

I think it’s partly the moral relativity of Tricksters (I’m particularly thinking of the Norse god Loki and of fey Red Caps at the moment) – I’m incredibly, frustratingly, embarrassingly socially compliant in most ways, so the freedom that the Trickster’s code represents is something I crave and fear.

I really like the fluff. Gaia’s Tricksters showed up in the epic Apocalypse campaign I played at uni, and when I attempted to run a game after that I made sure they were around. Very pleased with the purchase.

Day Twenty Three – Coolest Looking Product

I think technically ‘product’ implies ‘item released for general sale’ – which would mean ploughing through my dice collection once more (it’s grown since I last mentioned it: Husbit picked up a ‘pound of dice’ and I carefully scavved the ones I liked best). So instead I’m going to show off again some of the shiny things my GM (Pathfinder and Aberrant) has made/bought for us.

For Aberrant: ALL THE QUANTUM!!! is represented by glass beads.

ALL THE QUANTUM!!!

In Pathfinder, as well as some lovely envelopes and scrolls complete with wax seals, we’ve got this wonderful book that slowly fills as we manage to translate more and more of it – and the accompanying runes (handmade, again). Some of the runes within the book actually come from the magic system a GURPS game my brother ran that my GM played in, which is a nice bit of crossover. I wasn’t in the game, but I know my brother was really pleased with the magic system. Something to do with building words. It sounded really clever and interesting.

Beneath the book and paper the runs are on, you can see our homemade battle board - plywood with a grid drawn on then plasti-coated. That's also pretty useful, but less cool.

With thanks again to Autocratik. 

RPGaDay Day 13 - Most Memorable Character Death

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Still using the migraine excuse for why I’ve not written up Saturday’s Pathfinder yet. It will happen – it was all exciting and stuff and Evander tried tripping a door and Svetlana got to see Noleski and got choked by a necklace. And Alexei and Aaron and Keiran did stuff and stuff. But I’m still feeling not quite right so will have to wait for now.

Day Thirteen – Most Memorable Character Death

I think only 4 of my characters have died. Svetlana came back – it was a bit Buffy-like, in that she was all in heaven and if she gets killed again she’ll probably resist coming back. So I really hope that doesn’t happen because I really like playing her!

Another was a vampire whose name eludes me and who was there to die easily: we were viewing the Apocalypse through the eyes of new vampires who didn’t have a clue. Kinda fun, but not exactly memorable.

The other two were both TPK’s, both in WFRP’s and both GM’d by Husbit. One I’m using for my most memorable encounter later, so I’ll use the other here.

We were a low-level party who’d discovered a ritual was being prepared to summon Sigmar to defeat the Chaos gods. It seemed like a really good idea to us, so we went down the ‘greater good’ scheme and let the children or whatever be sacrificed to complete the ritual. At which point, Sigmar arrived and summoned the Chaos gods one at a time to fight them to the death… and the world ended around us because it wasn’t designed to hold gods! Ooops…

In terms of other characters’ deaths, I’ll not forget poor old Devo-Morph, the dragon-born ranger with an awesome both that turned into two swords. He fell into a deep body of water. My little halfling druid jumped in to save him but was too weak… so nicked his sword ‘to remember him by’. Also Paul’s ShadowRun ganger who stole a bus and then didn’t know what to do to escape so carried on the bus route, collecting and depositing passengers until a SWAT guy shot him in the head. We always felt the GM was being a little unfair there.

And I recall playing an angry mob (home from uni for a couple of weeks so assisting Husbit in running his game by taking on various NPC roles) and chasing my brother with flaming torches. To avoid burning to death, he ran into a lake. Clad in full-plate…

With thanks again to Autocratik. His Day 13 is here.