Category Archives: Roleplaying

#rpgaday2015 day 13 – favourite RPG podcast

Roleplaying, , ,

I was going to skip this one because I don’t listen to podcasts, and thus having a favourite RPG podcast would be a little odd. However, in writing a similar paragraph to begin day 14, I realised that wasn’t quite true.

I listen to Dead.FM, which isn’t an RPG podcast but does feature updates about the Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors roleplaying game. So that kind of counts.

There’s also Nearly Enough Dice, which I don’t listen to but I was featured in an interview on. My five minutes of fame talking about No Rest for the Wicked at Conpulsion.

#rpgaday2015 day 11 – favourite RPG writer

Roleplaying

Day behind on this one – didn’t have much energy for blog posts, and I didn’t prep this one before hitting a field for the weekend.

I’m not sure what to say about this one. I don’t really have a favourite writer. I can name several, and say that they’ve done work I admire, but I’m not sure I can say that any one of them wrote something so profound it made me go “they’re my favourite RPG writer”.

So, to name a few: David Hill, Chuck Wendig, Stew Wilson. These are people who I know write good work, and who I have bought into projects knowing that they’re in the teams.

David Hill’s work on the second edition of Changeling: the Lost has made me want to play it and abandon the original entirely and that it isn’t ready yet actually aches a bit weight loss supplements that actually work.

Chuck Wendig is not only a fiction author, but he’s been involved in some of my favourite bits of work in the White Wolf games including WoD Mirrors and Geist: the Sin-Eaters.

Stew Wilson also worked on WoD Mirrors and Geist: the Sin-Eaters, as well as working on Shadows of the UK which has some of my favourite fluff text including the homage to some local Edinburgh residents.

#rpgaday2015 day 10: favourite RPG publisher

Roleplaying,

So.. I don’t really know on this one, but I suppose the answer is pretty obvious: Onyx Path. I say it’s pretty obvious because I have this tendency to buy every nWoD core book they release, and there’s no setting they’ve produced that I dislike (even if I do have a stack of books still to read on my shelf).

I have other preferred publishers, but none that I follow to the extent that I do Onyx Path, and none that I support to the same extent. So it definitely seems pretty obvious what my answer here is.

Probably still in Dundee at time of publishing. Presumably knackered.

 

#rpgaday2015 day 9: favourite media you wish was an RPG

Roleplaying, TV,

As it happens… most of the media I wish was an RPG actually is an RPG already. Strange how that happens, really.

However, I’ve been watching Dark Matter and it struck me that it would make a good RPG scenario. A bunch of people wake up with no memories, just instincts and ingrained skills, and have to figure out who they are and who they want to be – not always liking the answers they find.

Maybe I’ll run that scenario one day.

Still in Dundee running No Rest for the Wicked.

 

#rpgaday2015 day 8: favourite appearance of RPGs in the media

Roleplaying, Videos, Web series, , , ,

My first thought was to highlight the entire “The Gamers” franchise by Dead Gentlemen and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. But then I realised I could do better than that, and so I present: Natural One.

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Natural One is something I Kickstarted along with its sister feature Humans & Households. Both are set in the same setting as “The Gamers” (to a degree). In “The Gamers” and the subsequent features, the worlds they explore are always fantasy ones, and Natural One changes this up by doing a cyberpunk adventure in Shadowrun.

It’s a different team behind the scenes, with familiar actors like Scott C Brown and Christian Doyle providing the background link to the overarching series while they bring in a new cast to explore this very different story.

If this serves as the gateway that gets people exploring Dead Gentlemen’s work (including the “The Gamers” franchise, Demon Hunters, Syphilitic Ninja Vampires, and more) then I’ll take that as a job well done.

Funny thing: when this is posted, I’ll actually be in Dundee running No Rest for the Wicked. Because just talking about roleplaying isn’t enough.

#rpgaday2015 day 7: favourite free RPG

Roleplaying, ,

So, my favourite free RPG. I thought about this for a while, and the choice I came to was CJ Carella’s Witchcraft. This is actually a game I paid for, and I own most of the supplements, including the sequel game Armageddon: the End Times. After the release of Armageddon (I think), Eden Studios released Witchcraft as a free PDF for anyone to download and play. I prefer my hard-copies, but a free game is a free game.

Witchcraft was one of the first tabletop games I ever played, and it’s stuck there as a favourite. The Unisystem rules within it are still some of my favourite mechanics – so much so that I proposed that the Isles of Darkness use the Unisystem resolution mechanics instead of the MET ones, but that didn’t go anywhere.

One of the things I like about it is how it handles magic. Psychic powers are an expression of your will, and as such they don’t go wrong – they either work, or they don’t; the downside is that they’re more limited in what they can do. Invocation draws upon the knowledge of centuries to create magical effects of mythic potential – if you can draw enough power and don’t accidentally blow yourself up. Necromancy works similarly to Invocation, in that you’re drawing in essence to deal with ghosts and there are consequences for getting it wrong, but my memory is a little hazier on Necromancy. There are other disciplines in the supplements, including advanced versions of the basic Invocations, were-creatures, vampires, and more.

It’s a game that handles urban fantasy[1] well, and once you crack open Armageddon, it has a meta-plot as well – one with global consequences. I’d say other people thought it handled urban fantasy well too, as the Unisystem was adapted for the Buffy RPG, the Angel RPG, Conspiracy X (an X-Files style game), All Flesh Must Be Eaten (zombie survival), Terra Primate (Planet of the Apes), and more.

 

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. ↑ I don’t really like the term urban fantasy, but it’s the one that’s coming into use for describing the vague genre of “modern-day situation with magic/aliens/other”

#rpgaday2015 day 6: most recent RPG played

Empire, LRP, Roleplaying, , ,

So, this is another one of these where I can break it down into LARP vs tabletop.

The most recent LARP I’ve played is Empire by Profound Decisions. That was a mere two weekends ago in Spernal. Empire is a fantasy LARP with a lot of features I like in the game and a huge range in scope with people being able to play just within their own group, within their nation, or within the entire Empire with a other sub-groups you can get involved in as well. For myself, I’m getting heavily involved with the Shuttered Lantern (one of the mage orders) and the Military Council (the council of Army Generals) as I take steps to organise military scrying across the Empire. My next event is already part-planned as I try and organise exactly what I’m doing and who I need to speak to.

The most recent tabletop RPG I’ve played was a Deathwatch game run by Rob. It kinda trickled out of existence as these things sometimes do. It was followed by the last tabletop game I ran (Black Crusade) which has ended up trickling out of existence in a similar manner.

#rpgaday2015 day 5: most recent RPG purchase

Computer Games, Empire, LRP, Roleplaying, , ,

My most recent RPG purchase… Huh. I don’t actually know.

My most recent LARP purchase (of a personal rather than business kind) was my new buckler, bought from Eldritch at the last Empire, but I think I should go for a tabletop answer here.

On the assumption that Kickstarters count, my last RPG-related Kickstarter was Space Roller, which just funded in the last week. Sci-fi dice with glowing centres.

My last RPG Kickstarter was the Planet Mercenary Kickstarter, which is bring the world of Schlock Mercenary to the roleplaying table. Still in production.

The most recent RPG that I’ve had arrive after purchase is Feng Shui 2, otherwise known as one of the only Kickstarters I wish I’d backed out of instead of leaving my pledge in. Still, I have my copy now and it’s sitting on my shelf waiting to possibly be read at a later date.

The last RPG video game I bought was probably Skyrim, which is absorbing all of my time. On a related note, my Skyrim saves were on the cloud, so losing my HDD did not lose me all of my progress.

#rpgaday2015 day 2: Kickstarted game I’m most pleased I backed

Musings, Roleplaying,

You know, I don’t actually know which game I’m happiest with. Doesn’t help that many of the games I’ve backed I’ve not yet been able to play yet.

Should try and fix that. I’m thinking to run Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors soon. Kickstarted that, and am damn pleased I did. One of the projects I’ve sunk the most money into ever. Should be a lot of fun.