RPGaDay: The Last Post

Right, let's get this rounded up and off.

Today I'll cover the last four subjects on the list, which range from the best thing that's not RPG related to come out gaming to the favourite game I no longer play.

So without further ado...

28: Favourite Game You No Longer Play: Well, the flippant answer is 'all of them' as its about two years since I stopped playing. That being said there are a few games I don't miss, either because I found them boring or because the settings or mechanics just didn't do anything for me. There are also games like the Laundry that, even though I love them, I would be quite selective over playing because I think the 'buy in' is too high for casual gamers. I must admit, too, that I'm drawn back to the first three games I played quite a lot; Vampire, Call of Cthulhu and SLA Industries and these are the games I miss the most.

If I were to boil it down to one game, then out of the three I'd have to say Vampire because its the one that brought be into the hobby and the one that chimes most clearly with my interests.



29: Favourite RPG Related Website or Blog: This is an easy one: RPG.net. I mostly lurk there, though I have started to post occasionally (I'm on there as clockwork cat, if you post there). There's a good bunch of people there and a wealth of knowledge and experience too.

The site is responsible for a few things I've taken to heart, including 'no gaming is better than bad gaming' and that problems with a player should be addressed outside the game rather than through in game punishments, (oh and 'kill them and take their stuff').

As this is my last post I'm also going to give a shout out to Order of the Stick, the only web comic I've kept reading and one that does an excellent job of celebrating and mocking Dungeons and Dragons.



30: Favourite Roleplaying Celebrity: Right... I'll be honest, I don't really care about celebrities or keep up with their hobbies, so I'm going to nominate someone I respect, who games, and is an author. I'm torn between three people; Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emma Newman, and Juliet McKenna. All three are wonderful authors and as far as I know committed gamers (Shadows of the Apt, Adrian's series grew out of his 'bug world' RPG and Juliet's gaming world became the one she writes about in her novels).

I'm going to have chicken out here and say I don't know which of them is my favourite as I respect all of them.

And finally:

31: Favourite Non RPG thing to come out of RPGs: My relationship.

I met my wife through RPGs, We started going out at that Mage game I  mentioned a few posts ago, probably one reason it was so long was that we kept snogging when we should have been playing. Together we've gamed for nigh on 20 years, and have a weird thing where if I don't like a game, she usually doesn't either... usually for different reasons.

RPGaDay Triple Shot: Revolutionary Rules Mechanic, Inspiration, Mash Up

Right, since RPGaDay is sort of meant to finish at the end of August... um yeah, we're running over.

I've decided to round the month off over the next two days in a couple of big posts. This post will cover topics 25 to 27 and then we'll round it out tomorrow with the others.

So, 27:  Favourite Revolutionary Game Mechanic 

For me this has to be UA's Madness Meters, if only because they break all the sanity stuff in the game into categories, allowing for a more precise consideration of how horror effects people. The other thing I like about the game's madness mechanics (brushing over things like 'choose your own skill lists' and the flip flop dice for skills you're obsessed with) is the fact that passing your madness check isn't actually that a good thing. It hardens your character against that kind of influence, until eventually you're a sociopath who doesn't feel anything at all. This seems to only reinforce how much the game is about being human and fucking up, something I really like.

It reflects a very different attitude towards madness, a more compassionate approach in some respects, that seems to shift everything away from it being just a bundle of points the way Call of Cthulhu does, to something more like Warhammer's rules where you flip flop your dice to determine hit location in combat.

28: Favourite Inspiration

So, I don't have a current game going to draw on, but I find inspiration isn't really something you can pin down. I get inspired by comics, films, radio shows, books, and conversations with friends. I tend to be a touch omnivorous in my gaming influences, but at the same time I'm more drawn to spy films and things like Suicide Squad or The Manchurian Candidate than I am Five Go Mad in Mordor or something like that.

The most recent game idea I've had, a game of Night's Black Agents, focused on Carmilla and Warren Ellis' Global Frequency but for vampires.

29: Favourite Idea for Merging Two Game into One

The idea that's haunted me for a long time for this is to cross Fading Suns and Legend of the Five Rings, making a samurai space opera where Feng Lu is trying to steal the power of the stars to make an age of darkness. I'm not sure what engine I'd use for it, but I like the imagery of samurai in space, the complexities of Rokugani politics and society against the stars. There'd be lots of opportunities for monsters and other shadowland nasties to prosper, hidden planets where the Lost take up residence, not to mention the mysteries about the jump gates and the problems with the xenos.

RPGaDay 24: Favourite House Rule

Another toughie, especially as I'm not particularly good with rules.

I think it would be the rule we instituted in Vampire that you got willpower back everytime you woke (though that may not actually be a house rule now that I think about it). As we generally ignored Nature and Demeanour rules this was a really good way to recover willpower, because otherwise you could risk emptying your bar and just going nuts.

RPGaDay 23: The Perfect Game for me

So today's entry is 'the perfect game for me' and I think that that's something where a title or a set of rules isn't really enough. They're a good place to start but if I'm honest I think people make games much more than sets of rules do, and what works with one group won't work with another. That's not to say there aren't games that do nothing for me, Fantasy and Space Opera are my hard sells and I find that more often than not they don't work me at all. That isn't to say though that in the right group I wouldn't fall in love with D&D or Traveller though; it's just that I haven't so far and my time is too precious these days to play something I dislike.

In terms of a group, my perfect game would be one where everyone pitches in a little, even if it's just knowing when to keep their jokes to a minimum and let something stand by itself. Ideally I'd want something where everyone had a hand in designing the campaign, throwing ideas into the pot and letting them mix together to make something great. I think too, that my perfect game would have everyone paying attention to the game, not letting tangents about TV or the internet get in the way of playing.

If you want to get into titles then I really don't know, as I chop and change too often for my own good. At the moment I'm reading Eclipse Phase and, gear porn aside, that seems pretty good. I wouldn't want to run it without Transhuman though; the 1000 points for character gen in the original book seems like a punishment rather than a feature. But I'm also eyeing up Yggdrasil and Keltia as historical fantasy games. Whether any of these are perfect though, would very much depend on who I was playing them with; especially as I've got more fernickity rather than less, as I've grown older.

RPGaDay 22: Perfect Gaming Environment

This can be taken a couple of ways.

First, the physical. My preference is for somewhere quiet and whilst not isolated, let's say that at least you don't want people barging in to ask what you're doing. Quiet is good to, because I don't really like having to shout or talk over people, in part because I think interrupting people is just rude.

Secondly, for me there has to be an element of respect between players, and a willingness to jump in and share ideas even if you think you might look silly. So the environment has to be able to foster that, too.

RPGaDay 21: Favourite Gaming Setting

Wow, another hard one.

I think that when I have to think it through, this could be a lot of games, L5R, Warhammer Fantasy, the World of Darkness in general. That being said, I think my favourite setting at the moment is the Unknown Armies one, even though I've only read the game, not played it.

What I like is the absence of things outside of humanity; even vampires are myth in comparison to the various cabals and general weirdness that populates the game. The humanistic element is important to me, as is the fact that magic, bluntly, fucks you up. It's also the only game I know that truly embraces the outsider without shoehorning them directly into a faction or club, which is nice if you want to run a game about people surviving on their own without being screwed over. World of Darkness is good at saying if you don't belong you'll struggle, even as it feeds the romance of being outside the system. UA doesn't do that, if anything it takes the view that you start at the outside, and that's your purest state; joining a club will inevitably cost you something.

RPGaDay: Favourite Horror Game

There's only one option for me on this one; Mage the Ascension.

Whilst on the surface it seems to be the least horrific of the old World of Darkness games, to me it has a number of advantages over even the other World of Darkness games. In part that's because it isn't about being a monster in the literal sense, or about things that are so arcane it sometimes isn't that clear how they intersect with the rest of the world. In Mage everything boils down to us, normal humanity, and the extremes we can go to. I like that there's no real 'good' side in the Ascension War, only which one will screw us over the least. No mater which set of Mages win we could lose. As with the other games in the line, there are attractive options to play, but you can never quite shake the feeling that all the factions would be insufferable if they won.

From the perspective of playing the game I'm fond of the fact that at one level the game gives you access to more or less unlimited power, if you can work out how to use it, but at the same time makes you have to consider how to use it without pulling a lot of pain down onto yourself. Paradox is a powerful tool, one that ties really well into the rest of the game.

This is what really makes it a horror game to me, that knowledge that you could do anything, be anything and yet we choose to dwell the way we do. That's powerful.