#RPGaDay2015 - Day 21, Favourite RPG Setting

Another difficult one. There are so many fantastic settings but they all boil down to what the group make of them. They're also so different I'm finding it very hard to compare.

Shadowrun and (old) World of Darkness are wonderful, versatile settings, both of which are likely to get me running to your gaming table. If you haven't tried them, I highly recommend both. Shadowrun is cyberpunk with added fantasy motifs, whilst World of Darkness has an intricate network of supernatural beings, each group with its own agenda and its own political intrigues. I think these are my favourite settings - I think the other settings I've played and loved (Deadlands, Pathfinder, Final Fantasy, Aberrant, Exalted) have been made so great by the GM & players.

So you know what, my favourite setting is the one with the most collaberative, most imaginative group turning it into something truly special. But Shadowrun and World of Darkness are good places to start.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 20, Favourite Horror RPG

Hmmm....

I'm not sure if White Wolf's World of Darkness games are horror or not. I mean, they have end of world scenarios and werewolfs and vampires and ghosts and zombies in them, but that's not enough for horror and to me they feel more like arching fantasy epics. Maybe just the games I've played, but they suit that well.

I love the idea of Ravenloft. Husbit adores it, I've read most of the fiction and the campaign played by friends at home whilst I was at uni is still spoken of by ref & players. It sounds amazing - full of gothic themes of hubris and betrayal. But I've never played it.

So the game I'm going to pick is a homebrew game from uni. It was a one-off session set in a fantasy Celtic Britain. I was the Chieftain's daughter, which meant I had a gold torque and woad paint for armour and wielded a claymore with minor magic. Another player was the weird hermit from the hills - lots of magic! Other warriors and townsfolk. No dice, as far as I recall. Not that many rules at all, really, but rather a feeling of communal story-telling: the GM told the story and we provided the detail - we got attacked by zombies in the night and had to fight them off. It was great fun.

 

#RPGaDAY2015 - Day 19, Favourite Supers RPG

ABERRANT!

Which isn't really surprising. I've played in two different Aberrant games and two other supers games whose systems I don't recall. Aberrant is from White Wolf and I like every other White Wolf game I've tried. I like rolling massive handfuls of dice. The other two systems I've played I don't really remember much about, so it kinda makes this a default win. But Aberrant is a great game.

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 18, Favourite Sci Fi RPG

I've had to think long and hard about this. I've not played very many sci fi games and mostly cyberpunk-esque. Of the regular sci-fi - 'flying around in space' sci-fi - Firefly stands out because (surprise surprise) I love, love, love the show.

All the same, I don't own the game. I know a lot of people who do - and who love the show as much as I do - yet I've only played one session. It was at uni, with the same group I played the Final Fantasy Noir game. My housemates each had a cat and a rat (I had a snake called Jayne, but he sadly died). Sith's cat was Theia and his rat Baphomet; Penny's cat was Cleo and it's frustrating me that I can't remember the name of her lovely ratattat. And this does have relevance, because whilst our game was brief (we flew to a direlict in a hired ship, hoping to make some money, and that was kinda as far as we got) I remember my character well.

Cat pictues always win, right?
Front: Theia, back: Cleo

Her name was Tawny (pronounced half-way between 'Tore-Knee' and 'Tar-Knee') and she was a mechanic. My GM tried to push me towards a Kaylee-clone but I wanted an independent character so added a few twists: rather than Kaylee's combat paralysis, Tawny used a small pistol. She brewed coffee rather than alcohol in the engine room, and played the harp. And had a pet cat called Spanner (as in "the spanner in the works").

Spanner looked a lot like Theia, but I was allergic to her

so Cleo stood in for her

But as much as I enjoyed Firefly, and as much as I'd love a copy of the book for my very own (oh, and one of these to hang on the wall), I don't think I can call it my favourite sci fi game. I think that has to be Shadowrun, although I know some argue it doesn't count because of the inclusion of fantasy elements. 

It probably helps that it was the first immersive game I played in and I got to be an elf with guns and a monowhip and magic powers! And that was hugely cool to me. Running across pressure pads without setting them off and shooting things Matrix-style? Who wouldn't want that? Yes, it was high-powered but the game was intense, too (not always - different players wanted different things, so it depended who made it to a session), really engaging and emotional - vividly real to me at times.

It's an incredibly rich setting, I think enhanced by the magic: it gives justification to the different progression of technology in the gameworld compared to the real world. The combination of tech and magic means there's many ways to create the character of your imagination, and the depth of the setting means there's as much to do as the lowest gang member as the most powerful runner.

I love the bioware, cyberware, weaponry, magic, imagery, dragons... So much flexibility. I don't like to be constrained to one genre and I love being able to combine dark and gritty with magic and dragons; to combine orcs, elves and dwarves with guns, megacorps and dystopia.

Each edition moves the world forward a few years; 3rd edition (2060) is the one I know best.

My friend Matt of NoGamesNoGlory is a huge Shadowrun fan and listening to him talk about the game is a joy because he's so full of passion and enthusiasm. I've not played in a game he's run, but I'd like to (if we ever have concurrent free time). I think his enthusiasm shows through well in this post.

Yeah. There's a lot to love in Shadowrun.

#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.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 16, Longest Game Session Played

I know my current (Pathfinder, Aberrant/Exalted) GM is doing his best to take the record, but I remember playing weekend-long sessions when I was a student, so the longest session would be part of Kella's story.

As mentioned on Day 12, she's one of my favourite characters of all time and a large part of that was down to how immersed we as players became in the game, which was assisted by being able to play for extended periods: I shared a house with the GM (Sith) and his girlfriend (Penny), who played Kyann, and our friend Owen (Rax) was the other main player and practically lived there too - and when Rowan (Reisha) joined he was just around the corner too. I know we needed to cram a lot in to make sure we finished the game before I finished uni, so I suspect the final session was the longest.

I've never played Final Fantasy X, the inspiration for this game, so I don't exactly know how it deviates. Our game was set 1,000 years or more before the computer game. The world has a strange mix of magic and and technology-esque items - leaning more towards magic than the world I remember from my foray into Final Fantasy VII, although that is a different place. Kella was Besaid born and bred, golden-brown skin, long hair thick and dark, and a love of Blitzball - the sport that unites the world and is particularly popular in her corner of it. She has a stocky, athletic build and plays passionately, but it's her younger sister Elin who has a real talent for the game. By the end of the game, she'd progressed from white mage to summoner.

Rax (short for Sycorax) was a chocobo breeder, as I recall. He became convinced he'd died and wanted Kella to send him on - I remember the GM saying he was a bit worried because Rax hadn't died but he was so convinced of it, the GM half expected if I tried a sending it would work!

Reisha was a man out of time. When the party was attempting to convince Phoenix to join them as part of Kella's available summons, they found him or Phoenix returned him to the world and left him to their care - I was never entirely sure which, or if something else entirely was going on. I think this was the first time he muttered "I could get used to waking up next to you" on seeing Kella - and then blushing bright red on realising he'd spoken out loud.

Whilst Reisha was the oldest player character in terms of time since birthed, Kyann was oldest in time lived and in maturity. She was a strong, steely woman - good in a fight, but her strength was predominantly that of will. A bit of a loner, she accepted the company thrust on her by fate and circumstance before realising she was fond of the others - close enough to call them friends.

It was her strength of character that meant Kella could survive her final encounter.

It's sadly hazy now, but I do remember avoiding an intended boss battle with the Behemoth King. I'd picked up a ring that enabled me to talk to animals and we ended up recruiting him as part of the party. We climbed Mount Gagazet where Reisha and Kella finally admitted to their mutual attraction. Kella had just enough time to realise she was pregnant before Reisha was killed (?) to save the party - by this time, everyone knew they had to get Kella to the top of the mountain, had to keep her alive so she could sacrifice herself...

It was revealed to them - a vision from the future (characters in the computer game) - that Kella didn't need to die. She chose Kyann to be her final summoned creature - the one destined to kill her. Kyann was taken over and indeed went to fight - but she was fighting within herself because she was determined not to kill her friend - and she won, staying the sin growing within her.

The Behemoth King returned to his herd and the surviving party - Kella, Rax and an NPC, Natasha (daughter of another NPC who'd died along the way) - returned to Besaid for the epilogue: Rax, who'd accepted his life during the final battles and who'd fallen in love with Elin before that, was married to Kella's younger sister and they had twins - Rain and Sky. Rax was on the beach with Kella, watching Elin play Blitzball and watching his twins and Kella's son, Zet, when something fell from the sky, and Kella knew it was Reisha coming home to her - and of course it was. And that's what the picture I chose for Day 12 illustrates. I wrote the scene as a fan-fiction after, and it still makes me cry to read it.

 

#RPGaDay2105 - Day 15, Longest Campaign Played

I thought I'd have to think quite hard about this because I tend to play long campaigns, but it turns out Pathfinder wins fairly easily - even if you take the Interlude characters we're currently playing as seperate from the main Pathfinder game, I think it's still just in front.

The Awesome Uni World of Darkness campaign I played definitely needs a mention. I was still in the first year of my three year degree when I joined - I'm not sure how long it had run before that, a year or more, maybe? The game wrapped up before I finished uni, though I forget exactly at what point. I certainly played for at least 2 years, probably nearer 3, and if we were taking game world time this would be the one that won hands down because I joined Vampire in the Dark Ages - Sabbat styley. The others had played generations in both Vampire and Werewolf from Roman times and had recently played through Dark Ages as Masquerading vampires and reached Modern Day in Werewolf (we all much preferred Werewolf - something about the intimacy of the pack versus the mistrust of the cotierie, I suspect). Once Vampire reached Modern Day, we added Hunters to the mix, including some players who weren't involved in the other games and that was a lot of fun.

After uni, we had a regular roleplay group that fell to pieces and reformed in various forms on various occasions. We'd settled into a fairly steady pattern of alternate Sundays and running short campaigns in different systems when Rich took the reigns with Pathfinder. He wanted to run the Kingmaker campaign, so we created Brevic characters and went with it. I'd recovered from the aversion to D&D-type games my very first roleplay group had inflcited on me (it was something they all agreed on: D&D was too clunky and too overpowered and I should never bother trying it because it was just rubbish); their influence still colours my opinion (it is clunky), but I've found the right group and/or the right storyline means this is not insurmountable (maybe this is why I'm more forgiving of 4th Ed than D&D fans seem to be?)

And the Pathfinder game turned out to have a very powerful storyline, even if 3 or 4 years on (or longer...) we still haven't technically completed the first book of the campaign we were meant to be on. We got to a suitable stopping point - defeating the Stag Lord - and Rich offered up his seat, knowing Husbit wanted to run some more Deadlands or 'Punk and there being a few other games being mooted - but we were enjoying this game and the other games weren't quite ready so we carried on and sort of forgot about switching...

In an ideal world, I'd love enough free time and disposable income for me and my gaming network to play, prepare and run all the games we want. There would be a lot more long campaigns - and I think a lot more fiction flowing therefrom, from several members of the group.