#RPGaDay2015 - Day 7, Favourite Free RPG

Oooh, difficult - I'm not sure I've played any free games.

Having said that, I have played in several homebrew games, which are free! And I love my friend's Star Trek game that we sometimes cameo in when we visit - I'll mention it again when we reach 24th or 25th August - and the Final Fantasy game that is likely to be my focus on 16th.

I have played one free game, thinking about it: my friends' Dockyards game, used the Window system (see the comments section here for a bit more on that game). I like the system; it encourages players to create a character based on how real it is. Rather than focusing on how good - how many ranks or dice or whatever - your character has in a skill, you ask yourself what they're like. Rather than "I have 5 ranks in spot", you'd go for something like "I'm sharp-eyed". And the alternative could be true: 0 ranks in knowledge could change to "I'm poorly educated", or 1 rank in explosives could be "I think I know more about explosives than I do" (the encouragement is to think in adjectives: "good at dancing"; "trainee programmer"; "brilliant chef"). I like it as a way of building a character concept for any game; it's certainly something I'd like my players to consider if I were to run a game.

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 6, Most Recent RPG Played

Pathfinder (Interlude). We're still on the Starstone Trial so I'm still not posting story, but we have done enough to achieve our first mythic tier. I've given Jvala the Champion class. I took the path ability of 1's not being an auto-fail on attack and have marked legendary item as a future ability to take. I was going to create a fantastic sword for this, but then Bells (who plays Tanna) pointed out that I have a set of treasure hunter's googles, a Herolab discovery that intrigued us all and it was generally agreed were definitely something the tomb-raiding Jvala would love. So now instead I'm thinking of ways to improve those. The standard goggles provide detect secret doors (at will), identify (3 per day) and locate object (once per day and limited to 100 or more coins in a small area). True sight seems like somewhere to start - combined up with her ifrit dark vision and her ranger trick low light vision, that would be very cool. She's a two-weapon fighter rather than ranged, so maybe some kind of focus that assists her favoured enemies in identifying weakness in opponents? Feels like bonuses should generally be sight-based, although they could scroll messages, like Google Glass... 

I should have plenty of time to think before I take the ability - look forward to your suggestions!

That was last Saturday and the Friday before was when I played the intro to Exalted I mentioned on Monday - a bit out of sync because Blood Bowl tournaments are messing up the usually meeting times for that group. On which note, I've got all my notes from Gert Bowl the weekend before to write up, and then I'm actually going to Thrud Ball this year so will need to write that up soon after... And I keep promising to catch up with Aberrant...

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 5, Most Recent RPG Purchase

Kickstarters aside, I've not bought anything for ages. Intended future RPG purchases include commission art by my friend Abi of Jet Swan Art - she mostly does tokens for Magic: The Gathering (which I'm being very careful to never start playing because it appears to be addictive), but she's also done a few pieces for me for this blog (art for both Jvala and Svetlana) and I'd like a few more (I'm getting better at drawing but she's much better than me and has more drive to improve). I'm also (still) after tracking down oWoD Hunter - if I ever have free time again, I definitely will try because I have IDEAS.

But the most recent game I acquired was the beautiful Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, couresy of RPG Knights. I've put the PDF's on my phone and they are my current commuting reading material. Have ideas for games and/or game worlds there, too. Hoping to run a couple of sessions later this year - I have an idea for how to play it out and I'd like to write up as a story first (kinda like I tell Pathfinder and Aberrant, but from a more over-arcing perspective, rather than first person), then as a review of the system, from character creation (which confused me on the first read but the more I think about it the more I like it) through whatever mess of a game we end up playing. There's so much freedom to create, and that's very exciting to me.

I think it'd also be easy to adapt the system to use Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library as the setting, rather than the intended Grand Stair, and that could be lots of fun too!

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 4, Most Surprising Game

I've been having a bit of a think about how I want to handle this one. There's not really any system I've played that I would describe as "surprising", so I thought about maybe taking a session that caused surprise.

I suppose for a surprising system I could consider Midnight, which was run several years ago and which caused a few issues because it feels like D&D except that in D&D you are the big hero and in Midnight you are low down and struggling to survive - and I (having played very little D&D-style games) got that straight away, but the others didn't and the game fell apart because I wanted to follow the plot of survival and they wanted to follow the derailment of all getting killed stupidly. Which was a shame, because I was enjoying the concept.Surprise! Playing the hero will get you killed in a world where the bad guys have won.

For an in-game surprise, it's going to take a lot to beat the look of surprise on the other players' faces when Svetlana and Noleski announced their engagement, but that was other players being surprised and really I'd like to talk about something that startled me.

And I think it may have to go back to something I talked about in last year's #RPGaDay - "Most Memorable Character Death" - where we ended the camoaign by accidentally ending the world... A WFRP's game run by Husbit (I've got a bit of a hankering for old WFRP's at the moment) in which we found a mysterious cult acting badly were aiming to rid the world of Chaos. Greater good and all that, we let them get on with their sacrifices. Sigmar was summoned and in turn summoned each Chaos god to fight and defeat them in turn. Course, turned out gods and mortal realms don't easily co-exist and the world crumbled around us. That was a bit of a surprise!

 

#RPGaDAY2015 - Day 3, Favourite New Game of Last 12 Months

I tend to play in long campaigns - there's nothing wrong with one-off games, but I really enjoying getting my teeth into some good character development, and (for me at least) that really takes a bit of time. Combined up with working full time and having other hobbies (circus, Blood Bowl and writing in particular) means I don't have as much time to dedicate to RPG's as I'd prefer. Which is my roundabout way of saying I've not played any new games in the last 12 months...

Or at least, none published in the last 12 months. Our Aberrant campaign has reached the end of an arc (I will get around to writing it up, I promise. I'm just not sure when I'll have enough time) and our GM wants a bit of a break from it so he can properly plan the next stages.

So instead we had a go at Exalted, which is new to me. One session in, and a beautiful, dark intro. As with the start of Aberrant, we're playing normal mortal humans rather than Exalted characters, and in this case we're playing children. 8 year old twins, in fact. The session gave us a good sense of a happy life in a poor village (and probably featured the only use of a conviction role for a game of hide-and-seek: I botched my search role and walked into a tree but managed to suck up my tears and play on). Then, the village was wiped out - all the men killed and all women and children missing. We alone survived because we'd been hidden outside the village by our parents. Our GM did a fantastic job with this, turning what could have been a tired trope into something, as I said, both dark and beautiful. Very emotional: he and I both nearly cried. 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 2, Kickstarted Game Most Pleased I Backed

None of the games I've backed have yet been published... I'm particularly excited by Infernal, although that's not a roleplay game (yet...) so doesn't really count. I say yet - I'm aware there are hopes to expand in that direction and I know at least a few people aren't interested in a miniatures game but are intrigued by the gameworld and want to play in it...

For a roleplay game, I'm most excited by Scavengers. It's a silly game of space-looting that sounds like it would work well for a quick game or to introduce new people to roleplay. It's running a little behind schedule but looks a lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on my copy!

#RPGaDAY2015 - Day 1, Most Anticipated Forthcoming Game

It begins! I'd been intending to get the first few posts ready in advance and stay ahead so I could actually do a post a day this year... But I've been madly busy so that hasn't happened. I am going to try to get the posts done in advance, though, and release them at noon so that I can carry on posting my usual gubbins in the evenings.

So, forthcoming game I'm most looking forward to. Well, our Aberrant game has just hit an end-of-arc break so we've started an Exalted interlude (I might right now be lying about posting in advance: this one post is being prepped while waiting to be picked up for the intro to that gaem, so I can't let you know much about it). I'm also loving our usual Pathfinder game, although I do miss our primary characters (I like Jvala, but I love Svetlana).

Those are the only games I currently have time for - I prefer huge long campaigns, but it has definite drawbacks in terms of getting to try out all the different games I want to. I have huge ideas for a Hunter campaign and I know Husbit has ideas for Ravenloft, Deadlands and Cyberpunk, all of which I would love to play in...

But I've been really enjoying discovering Lords of Gossomar and Shadow (which I've barely started on. Super busy life :/ ) and I think I'm going to try and run a game even if it's just a one-off. I have lots of ideas for setting, though nothing particularly exciting plot-wise and I'm not confident with the on-the-fly style that does work well with our group. I've got fun ideas for how to write the game up, though - I'd like to write it as a short story and then in a different post write it as a review of both the game and the system.

... It's just occurred to me the idea might be not individual game but rather new system due for publication... In which case, I've backed Paranoia and Scavengers and both have me intrigued.