Bone desert

Another image that I don't know what to do with, but which is too cool to not do something!  Found it just messing around with Google Image Search.

#RPGaDay concluded

#25: Favorite RPG no one else wants to play.  Hmm... Not sure.  I've trimmed my more esoteric tastes a bit, and with my group, we can usually get people on board for at least an experimental run.  But I'll say Call of Cthulhu even though it's not literally true (three of us in our group love the game) because there is a fair bit of resistance from the other three or four players.  Dread is another one that's too out there to ever be more than an unusual one-shot very rarely, and I'd like to play it more.  I've had a great time with it in the past.

#26: Coolest character sheet.  I don't really care much about character sheets.  If I can't write my character on a piece of notebook paper like I used to in the 80s, then something is wrong.  For most d20 games, which I mostly play, I use the official character sheets printed out blank and hand-written in with pencil.  Any other character sheet (for those games) now feels wrong to me.

#27: Game You'd Like to see a new/improved edition of...  Again; I don't really know.  I think these questions are more geared towards people who play stuff a bit more out of the box without modification than I am wont to do.  I don't really need a new version of anything, and in fact, I tend to dislike new versions for its own sake.  I also tend not to love system for its own sake (although I'm always tinkering with improvements) so if there's something I'd like to play in terms of setting or theme, my favorite approach is to take my already favorite system and modify it.  With the proliferation of d20 and m20 variants, I honestly don't think I ever need a new game ever again.  Most of my "old" favorites that I'd like to revisit for nostalgia's sake (if for nothing else) I can replicate easily with those systems.  Most have, in fact, already been done so (Star Frontiers, Star*Drive and Dark○Matter being replicated explicitly in d20 Modern for instance.)  I suppose if I have to pick something, I'd like to see an explicit Lovecraftian bestiary for m20, at which point I'd have everything I could possibly need to replicate Call of Cthulhu in that system.

#28: Scariest Game you've ever played.  I'm not honestly creeped out by games, the way I'm not really very creeped out by ghost story movies or books either.  I like the genre a lot, but in terms of actually feeling scared enough for it to be memorable... I don't think that's ever happened.  Sorry.

#29: Most memorable encounter.  Lots of memorable encounters over my gaming "career", but I'll pick this one.  I still remember, probably more than most other encounters, one in our Age of Worms game in which some really tough outsider materialized in front of us.  My character, a shifter with the ability to basically "pounce" had the highest initiative, so I jumped in and did a crazy 1/3 of its total hit points in a single round (ah, barbarians!)  The sorcerer in the group then attempted to banish the creature, which was of course statistically very unlikely.  Of course, unlikely doesn't mean impossible.  The big bad evil thing rolled a natural 1 on its saving throw.  Before it even had a chance to act at all in initiative order, it was thoroughly defeated.

I think it took us a good fifteen minutes to calm down and quit high-fiving each other and laughing at that.

#30: Rarest RPG owned.  I don't think much about rarity, and mostly I play well-known and readily available games.  However, given that I tinker with homebrews and independent web-published games, I'd probably have to say something like m20 or DINO PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND or something.  I don't know if it's really rare or not, but its certainly indie.

#31: Favorite RPG of all time.  Tough one.  Based on how much I've played, I'd have to pick D&D 3.5.  Based on how much I'd like to play, I'd have to pick m20.  My favorite game for tone is probably Call of Cthulhu.

#RPGaDay continued

#19: Favorite published adventure.  I don't use a lot of published adventures.  By virtue of having used it the most, I have to pick "Exit 23" for this one, though--the one-shot (and potential campaign kick-off) included in the original DARK°MATTER setting book (for the Alternity system (although I've only ever run it for other systems, mostly d20 Modern.  Now, that makes it sound like I'm somewhat hedging and that I wouldn't necessarily pick it as my favorite.  I think that I have to go and say that yes, it is.

With more exposure to more adventures, it's certainly possible that I'd have picked others, of course.  But like I said, I rarely use published adventures.

#20: Will still play in 20 years time.  I dunno.  Who can say?  Probably some form of D&D, but exactly what form is TBD.

#21: Favorite Licensed RPG.  Some variety of Star Wars no doubt.  At least, that's my favorite setting to adapt from fiction to an RPG.  That said, both the Star Wars game that I'm in now and the Star Wars game I'd like to run myself are both homebrew systems, not one of the (several) official licensed games out there.  Eh.

#22: Best Secondhand RPG Purchase.  I don't buy a lot of second-hand purchases, really.  But I'll say that picking up the original DARK°MATTER campaign setting from a friend probably has to be it.  For a long time, that was my go-to pseudo-X-files setting.  Now, I'd rather just kitbash my own using a mishmash of urban myths, traditional horror mythos and some Yog-Sothothery for good measure.

#23: Coolest looking RPG product/book.  Oh, heck--I dunno.  I suppose I was always a fan of the boxed sets with the Larry Elmore art.  You know; the original BECMI stuff. And I think the Iron Kingdoms products are incredibly attractive; bordering on art books as much as RPG books.  But if I have to pick one product as the coolest looking regardless of content other than cool-looking, I'll probably have to pick The Art of Dragon Magazine.

#24: Most complicated RPG owned.  d20, I'm sure.  I don't often go in for very complicated RPGs, and when I've inadvertently ended up with one, I usually don't keep it.  d20 is clearly the most complicated RPG that I own and intend to continue owning.

Checking in...

As an FYI, this blog has not died.  Neither have I.

I have, on the other hand, spent two weeks out of the state, backpacking in the Rockies.  I also have spent the last several months severely swamped with both work and personal concerns.  I am however, back in town.  My personal concerns have largely been resolved (they weren't problems, they were just things that kept me busy.)  And I can see a light at the end of the tunnel for work craziness as well.

When that happens, I'd like to get back into doing what I do; that is, blogging about gaming, video gaming (on one of my other blogs) and hiking (including detailed trip reports--also on one of my other blogs.)

A few unfinished series linger here--ODD D&D being one that I had a few more thoughts on before I left it, and of course DARK•HERITAGE itself is perpetually unfinished.  As the movies approach, I'd love to continue talking about my 1000 years post Jedi Microlite20 STAR WARS setting, and anything at all I might be able to do with it.

So, again--just I apologize for the long interruption and reassure anyone still looking that I'm not dead.

Cthulhusaurus rex?

I'm not quite sure what to do with this image, but it's so cool, that I oughtta be able to think of something!

The old "pseudonatural template" applied to a T. rex seems a little pedestrian.  Then again, that's pretty much what it is, I suppose.  I've gotten away from the fiddly details of d20 creatures and templates, but mining the data there is probably fruitful even if applied to a stripped down m20 paradigm.

#RPGaDay, cont.

#13: Most Memorable character death.  Lash and Ricardo.  My favorite PCs (in a game that I GMed.)  Both died when they threw a fit around a major daemon lord.  Because it was a scene of significant carnage, their souls were kind of mixed in with a number of other dead--there had recently been a battle (in which the PCs participated) between intelligent gorillas and the amazons of the City of Naked Hotties who Ride Dinosaurs Into Battle.

To be fair, it wasn't so much the death itself that was memorable as the later consequences.  The daemon lord had a certain fondness for Ricardo in particular, so it grabbed the souls of the two PCs and stuffed them back into bodies, however it did so a little bit indiscriminately.  Womanizing playboy Ricardo was stuffed into the body of a Fast Times era Phoebe Cates amazon warrior girl, while Lash was stuck in the body of a gorilla.  That whole body-switching Freaky Friday routine ended up being tons of fun, and we ran with it for quite a while until it got a little played out and I decided to find a way to reverse it for them.  Although the players agreed that he joke was a little played out, I think they also found it just a bit disappointing to have it undone.

#14: Best Convention Purchase.  I don't really go to conventions very often, and I don't buy stuff very often when I do.  I bought the systemless Freeport book when I was at GenCon last though (it was new at the time; that's how long it's been since I've been.)  It's still one of my favorite RPG books even today.

#15: Favorite Convention Game.  That's got to be a toss-up; both were--by coincidence, True20 games, but it was the setting, the GM and the players that made them great.  A planetary romance game set on a space opera version of Saturn with a motley collection of losers as the crew of a crashed space ship, or a DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND game with... again, a motley collection of losers as the main characters.

My favorite games tend to be ensemble pieces that resemble Guardians of the Galaxy in a lot of ways.  Adjusted for genre, of course, but with pretty much the same tone anyway.

#16: Game You Wish You Owned.  There isn't really a game I wish I owned, I don't think.  If I want a game, I usually just go buy it.

That said, there are a few games that have kinda piqued my interest, but which I haven't gotten around to picking up here and there.  These would include Hollow Earth Expedition probably, Totems of the Dead—a Savage Worlds setting/game, and maybe also the new Star Wars game.

#17: Funniest Game You Played.  Had to have been a convention game of Kobolds Ate My Baby.  But it was really late, and a few of the players were kinda drunk, and it was years ago now.  I don't remember a lot of the details other than that one character died due to the amorous attentions of a dog.  Another character was in a church--at the baptism of a baby no less--and tried to swap out the baby in front of everybody with a paper mache baby, sort of like Indiana Jones with the idol at the beginning of Raiders.  Obviously it didn't work, but what a great image.  And it was hilarious.

#18: Favorite Game System.  I'm still always on the look-out for the Holy Grail of game systems that does exactly what I want exactly how I want it.  I haven't found it yet.  Currently, my favorite is Microlite20, and probably will be for some time to come.  Then again, it's a largely theoretical favorite, because I haven't actually been able to use it as much as I'd like either.

More #RPGaDay questions

7th: Most "intellectual" RPG owned.  I'm not even 100% sure what this is meant to mean.  Cerebral in terms of high concept?  If so, that's not a paradigm that I'm interested in.  Or does it, maybe, mean truly innovative in terms of mechanics?  I doubt that's what it means, but that at least gives me somewhere with which to answer the question.  I'm a big fan of the intellectual underpinnings of Dread.  The mechanics and the concept and the match to genre are truly extraordinary and quite brilliant.

8th: Favorite character.  I've answered this before on the 30 Day Challenge.  My answer is still the same: Lash and Ricardo.

9th: Favorite Die/Dice Set.  I don't get overly attached to dice, for the most part, but I do have a non-matching d20 that I bought years ago that I prefer to roll to any other that I have.  It's just a little larger than standard, and has a strange symbol in place of the 20.  It doesn't necessarily give me great results (although it doesn't necessarily give me poor ones either) but I just prefer the heft of it in my hand to slightly smaller, lighter, standard-sized dice.

10th: Favorite Tie-in Novel/Game Fiction.  This is a little hard, because most of it isn't really very good.  I've enjoyed some Black Library fiction, although I have to admit that much of it is kind of forgettable, at least it's not actively bad.  The original Dragonlance series was the proof of concept that made tie-in game fiction viable.  The Arkham Horror fiction is probably the best I've read recently.  But, I'm going to say something just a little unusual and go with the Riftwar Series.  It isn't technically tie-in or game fiction, although it unofficially is; it's kind of the fictional back story to some guy's home game; the author, one Raymond Feist.  It feels very D&D too, in many respects, although it clearly has a different magic system, which plays out significantly during the course of the novels.

11th: Weirdest RPG Owned.  I don't actually enjoy owning weird RPGs.  But, if you consider a number of the free minigames that came in Polyhedron magazine back in the day, then I think Hijinx is definitely the winner.  Playing a 70s groovy band of teenagers a la Josey & the Pussycats, Speed Buggy or Scooby-doo and the gang is as weird as any concept I've played.  Although I don't own them, honorable mention of games I've played have to include Kobolds Ate My Baby and Paranoia.  But like I said; I don't really care for overt weirdness, except for novelty value on one-off conventional style games.

12th: Old RPG you still play/read.  I don't really.  And what does "old" mean?  Does d20 count?  I still play that fairly regularly.  Otherwise, I recently bought and read much of the Moldvay game on pdf.  I still occasionally break out my MegaTraveller sourcebooks.  But in general, I'm not really into older games nearly as much as some, and I don't consider myself an OSR connoisseur by any means.

#RPGaDay

I can't do this.  I'm already four days behind, and I'm going to spend the better part of two and a half weeks away this month, completely inaccessible to any device that would allow me to update my blog.

However, I'm going to do it anyway.  If I straggle in over the finish line sometime in late September, that's OK.  If I end up bundling a bunch of posts together and not necessarily saying a lot about my answers, that's OK too.  After all, some of these questions don't really lend themselves to a lot of discussion; you just answer them and that's that.  And some of them are the same (or at least very similar) to my 30 DAY CHALLENGE questions that I answered a while ago anyway.

Today's the 4th, but I'm going to get a little big ahead and answer the first six questions today.

1st: First RPG Played.  Technically, I have to say brown box OD&D.  However, I was a somewhat unwilling participant in that game, so I often don't count it and instead point to my 5th grade Moldvay BD&D excursions as my first real game.

2nd: First RPG Gamemastered.  Wow, I don't actually remember.  I didn't do a lot of GMing back in the day, so I'm going to say Top Secret S.I. in college was the first one that I did so for a reasonable length of time and actually knew what I was doing.  I doubt it was truly the first I ever game-mastered, but any GMing excursions prior to that were one-offs that I simply don't remember any details of anymore.

3rd: First RPG Purchased.  I'm notoriously cheap, and didn't actually buy a lot of the games that I played in the past.  At one point in middle school, however, I was kind of interested in the TolkienQuest gamebooks, which had conversion notes to MERP.  I think I have to call MERP my first game purchased.  Curiously, I've never played it.

4th: Most recent RPG purchase.  If downloads of freely available online source material counts, I probably have to go with some of that.  If it doesn't--hmm... I haven't bought anything in the last several months.  My last purchase was either a Pathfinder sourcebook or other, or my Moldvay digital purchase from DriveThruRPG.  I don't remember for sure that chronology, but I think the latter is literally my last purchase.  I bought the Basic set, the Expert set, B2 Keep on the Borderlands and X1 Isle of Dread.

5th: Most Old School RPG owned.  I'm not really a fan of old school in general, but clearly the most old school game I own is the Moldvay game, which are not just old school, but actually old.  Other than that, more modern games that have some old school vibe to them include Microlite 74, Labyrinth Lord (a retroclone of Moldvay) and Swords & Wizardry.  I don't actually play much of them, though.

6th: Favorite RPG that you never get to play.  Microlite, naturally.  I love this game and have only ever run a few one-shots and never actually played it myself at all.