Belated #RPGdDay2022

I did RPG a Day (belatedly) in 2014 and 2015. I haven't done it since, but since it's at the top of my tags, I recently reread them and wondered why I haven't done it since. I found the 2022 one, which is still the most recent since this always happens in August.

Anyway, I'll do all of my answers in one go.

1) I don't know. I wish my kids were more interested in RPGs, but they really aren't. The closest I've got there is my son-in-law, who is a pretty big D&D fan.

2) My game, Dark Fantasy X, of course. Actually, I think it really is. One of the conceits of the game is that you don't actually need to know how to play it as a player, as long as the GM understands it (which isn't difficult.) Players, on the other hand, should focus on treating their character is if it were a real person in the situations described, and deciding what they would do based on that, rather than on mechanics, and the GM interprets the situation for them mechanically. Not only do I think this is the best way to play for newer players especially, because its the most intuitive, but it's just a good habit to be in in general, and caters perfectly to my playstyle and taste.

3) I think it was 1981, although I had a more thorough grounding in the game in 1982. My first exposure was from a friends who had the OD&D box, but I did better when I was exposed to the Moldvay/Cook sets.

4) In my living room, or dining room, most likely. I dunno; I don't really give too much thought to where to play. I've almost always played at someone's house, though, especially for ongoing games with friends.

5) Uh... see answer number 2, I guess? Also because although I'm not amazing, I am a pretty good GM, I think. My games are somewhat exclusive, and I make sure everyone has as good a time as I can.

6) I don't care what other people do. It's—luckily—not my job to figure out how to market the hobby to people who don't already have it. That said, I think the most successful thing in getting people playing has been Stranger Things, followed by Critical Role. There's a lot of Actual Play stuff available now, and much of it isn't very good or helpful to bringing more people into the hobby, I would guess. I would either sponsor some really good ones, like Critical Role, full of normal people and not unlikeable freaks that turn would-be customers off, and I'd see about product placement in the vein of Stranger Things. It's worked, and it ain't broke, so don't fix it.

7) This is not a system that I love, but I have really come to like 5es concept of advantage and disadvantage. I've never even read it, I just use it as it's been described to me by people who use it. (As an aside, I've run a couple of successful games of Dread without ever having owned or even read the rules for that either. Just went with how the game was described to me, and it worked great.)

8) Clark whathisname, back in grade school. That said, it was guys like Chris Ross and Stephen... uh... he had a French last name that started with D, but he moved away after that year, so I've forgotten what it was. They were the most instrumental in introducing me in a way that stuck. Stephen also introduced me to Duran Duran that same year, by the way. It was the year Rio was released, so I'd heard them on the radio here and there, but I hadn't really paid attention before to who sang what, most of the time, until then.

9) I don't remember. Either Top Secret S.I. or Traveller, I think. But I'd played others before then. I should note that I still hadn't ever bought D&D at this point, only MERP. The next one would have been Werewolf the Apocalypse. I didn't buy any D&D until 3e came out in 2000.

10) I'm sure I did it here and there in school, but I don't remember for sure doing it until I was in college in the early to mid 90s, and Top Secret S.I. was the game I GMed. I thought it was quite successful, and now I prefer to run rather than play. Although I enjoy playing too.

11) Uh... I dunno. None of my settings, certainly, which tend to be kind of dark and grounded. Maybe Classic Traveller, to the extent that it has a setting. I'd find a nice, peaceful, quiet and scenically beautiful planet with only a few people (relatively speaking) living on it, build a homestead with some fancy tech, load up on analgesics so I can live a long time in good health, and just retire peacefully and quietly to the countryside.

12) Because I was a huge fan of fantasy fiction, especially (at that point) of Lloyd Alexander and Tolkien, and I was mesmerized by the possibility of creating similar works collaboratively at the game table. 

13) I wouldn't. It all worked out well for me.

14) No, that's not a question.

15) Hmm... I dunno. One of the reasons I prefer to GM is that I feel like I do what I wish someone would do for me. I guess maybe Professor Dungeonmaster runs a game that I believe would be right up my alley, for the most part, so I'd pick him, I suppose. Although I've never seen him run.

16) Me running Dark Fantasy X for my kids and in-laws, and them really getting into it, doing voices, and all that jazz. It's a pie in the sky fantasy, but that would be perfect for me.

17) That doesn't make any sense, it's a fantasy setting, so it's not in the past, present or future. It's not in any timestream at all that you can compare to the real world.

18) The living room, with dimmed lamps, and music playing quietly out of the stereo.

19) Because I wrote it.

20) A few months. I'm not sure that I'm up for campaigns that last for years. I prefer mini-series or streaming series with fewer episodes to open-ended regular series, to use a TV analogy.

21) I love the situation in Five Fingers from the Iron Kingdoms setting, as described in the d20 Five Fingers book. The crime, the horror, the intrigue; it's wonderful. Now; I could never play it as is, because it's too closely tied to the Iron Kingdoms setting, but it'd be tons of fun to loot and pillage that for another game.

22) I'm not playing right now, so I'd say my "top" iconic Dark Fantasy X character, Stefan Clevenger.

23) Uh... see the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER tag for the long version. Hijinks, intrigue, skullduggery, being hunted by a former rival, and Big Time™ monsters.

24) Uh... this next few series of questions isn't going to be very relevant to me. I'll skip by them.

25) n/a

26) n/a

27) n/a

28) I'm not tagging anyone with anything, but I've always had a fondness for the Larry Elmore Companion set cover. It's not necessarily the best cover art, but it's my favorite. 

29) Everyone who wants to. I don't care, I dunno. That's an odd question. I don't carry torches for "celebrity gamers" or get star struck hearing about someone else's game, so I don't get why this question is relevant. To me, at least, it isn't.

30) Get back to basics. There's a lot of weird questions here. Maybe there has to be, because it's been going on for so long, but still.

31) 2014.

#RPGaDay 2015: No.s 25-31—Conclusion

#25. Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic.  Using a Jenga Tower instead of dice.  I'd love to figure out a good way to get Dread out of the one-shot mode and usable for campaigns, including with character advancement of some sort, but even without that, it's a very, very nifty (and very revolutionary) mechanic.

#26. Favorite Inspiration for Your Game.  The Black Company books by Glen Cook, probably.  Or, at least he has the most of the same inspirations thrown in: some horror, some amoral protagonist characters, intrigue and paranoia.  It's the closest thing to a one-stop shopping source of inspiration.  Other than that, the Five Fingers book for Iron Kingdoms does a great job.  I also really love browsing the Monsternomicons for inspiration.  I could build an entire campaign around ideas found in there; especially given my "monsters are set pieces for an entire smallish module" philosophy to keeping monsters from becoming banal.

#27. Favorite idea for Merging Two Games into One.  Obviously for me, Call of Cthulhu meets Dungeons & Dragons.  Otherwise, I've long toyed with outlandish and bizarre genre Frankenstein's; but I tend to see them more as amusing one-shot materials, rather than something I'd entertain on a long-term basis.

#28. Favorite Game you No Longer Play.  Although we'll probably eventually come back to it, d20, 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons.  We haven't played it in... literally a couple of years now.  But it's probably not truly accurate to say that we don't play it; we just aren't in a campaign that uses it now.

#29. Favorite RPG Website/blog.  Y'know, I don't actually really follow many gaming blogs anymore.  It's been quite a while since I really paid attention to what was going on in that sphere.

#30. Favorite RPG playing celebrity.  There aren't any celebrities, unless you count c-list guys, as far as I'm concerned.  I guess I have to pick Vin Diesel, as he's the only one that I kinda sorta even like that I can think of.  Pick for least favorite is much easier: Wil Wheaton.  Every time I see anything from that loser, it makes me want to punch him in the face.

#31. Favorite Non-RPGing thing to come out of RPGing.  That's actually surprisingly easy for me, at least this year: Jeffro's detailed and lengthy discussion of the Appendix N:  https://jeffro.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-first-draft-of-my-appendix-n-book/

#RPGaDay 2015 No.s 19-24

#19: Favorite Supers RPG.  Mutants & Masterminds.  It was really quite well done, and is a lovely, lovely book.  Granted, I bought the first edition, and because I've played it very little, I've never gone for the updates/upgrades.  I'm a little irritated, actually, by games that update too often (d20 Star Wars is another really bad example), but I don't know that the upgrades are really significant in terms of major shakeups to the rules.  I'm a little unclear on what the settings for the game ended up being produced and by whom, but that's OK—as much as I like settings, I don't actually need them, and I almost never use them as is.

#20: Favorite Horror RPG.  For one-shots: Dread, absolutely.  For campaigns, Call of Cthulhu.  I'm not actually a fan of the BRP system, though—it works well enough if you can get past the bizarrely Byzantine chargen activity, I suppose.  The d20 version is (surprisingly, at least it was to me when it was new) quite good.  I think it's important to limit level advancement either via slow advancement and time-bound campaigns, or something like E6, though.

#21: Favorite RPG Setting.  Assuming that home-brews aren't meant to be picked here, I'll probably say Iron Kingdoms.  There's a few things about it that I don't like, but not that many.  It really hits most of my high points without much in the way of low points, and I really love the tone of the setting especially.  For second favorite, I'd probably have to pick the Warhammer World.

#22: Perfect Gaming Environment.  Ideally, I'd game in a large conference room without windows.  Dark wood paneling on the walls, decorated with large prints of fantasy art (the Larry Elmore BECMI covers, or some big Wayne Reynolds, or some big Frazettas, etc.).  A big, round, hard-wood conference room table in the middle, surrounded by large leather-upholstered chairs.  Maybe some stuffed animal heads on the wall.  A wi-fi environment where the GM can play music and/or sound effects from his laptop during the game.  Flickering faux candles for lighting.  Imagine a classic Victorian British gentlemen's club, like the Drone's Club, but with a fantasy twist.

#23. Perfect Game for You.  This is an odd question, because I imagine anyone who blogs has already talked—probably ad nauseum—about what the perfect game for them is.  For me, it's m20.  And, ideally, I'd be running it, or playing in a game with a GM that runs just like me.  In my home-brew dark fantasy setting, played as a swashbuckling/horror pulp hybrid.

#24. Favorite House Rule.  Probably gotta be Action points.  The way that I run them, though—the original incarnation of just adding a d6 was too weak to be meaningful.  Make it a d10, and make a healing surge one of its applications; and make them reset every session instead of every level—and you've got something that really works.

#RPGaDay 2015. No.s 13-18

#13. Favorite RPG Podcast.  I haven't listened to an RPG podcast in about three years, so I'm unqualified to answer this particular question.  Good thing I'm not actually doing this one per day, or this would be a really lousy day!

#14. Favorite RPG Accessory.  A home-made custom GM screen.  I'd like to actually make another one; or modify the one I have, or something—but I don't need to.  I don't really need rules info on the screen; especially playing a really rules-lite game like m20.  But it's great to have things like: a mini-map of the setting, a list of names so I can actually name NPCs on the fly as needed, custom picked pictures for the front end, a list of things like tavern and inn names, etc.  Stuff that any self-respecting player-led GM needs to keep the game feeling smooth even without all of that creativity stifling over-preparation.  It would probably be nicer if I bought one of those folders that are already designed for this, and then put in my own inserts, but that means spending $20-30 for something that I don't really need... and I'm really cheap.

#15. Longest campaign played.  Age of Worms; the 21 or 22 level d20 D&D game that started at 1st level, and ended with us fighting the reincarnation of Kyuss, in Greyhawk.  A lot of good moments, but it actually really soured me in general terms on adventure path style campaigns, and very long campaigns in general, as well as higher level d20 gaming.  Lots of things I learned not to like in that campaign; fewer things that I decided I liked... but I still had a good enough time.

#16. Longest game session played.  I don't really do the marathon sessions.  I've never been involved in any session, actually, that I don't think fell outside of the 4-6 or so hour window.

#17. Favorite fantasy RPG. To avoid saying one or another iteration of m20 over and over again, I'm going to pass on that and say: a house-ruled Third Edition d20 with the E6 tophat would be my favorite, I think.  Favorite commercial fantasy setting, regardless of what game it is (and I've never seen the new in-house system) is either Warhammer or Iron Kingdoms... probably the latter.  Both have house systems (at least now) that I'm not very familiar with, however.  After all, I don't want to eschew just naming off one m20 iteration after another only to fall back on doing the same thing with d20...

#18. Favorite SF RPG.  I think actually playing in Star Wars is my favorite, but there's a lot of systems for that, and I've done so much homebrewing to the setting that I'm not sure it counts.  So, rather than go with that and deal with the problems that that entails, let's call Traveller my favorite SF game, eh?  The original rules.  I'd probably never play them as is anymore... but I love elements of it, especially the space hex crawl generation rules.

#RPGaDay 2015, No.s 7-12

#7. Favorite Free RPG.  This is easy.  Microlite.  In theory, this is multiple free RPGs, but y'know—let's not nitpick.  I've managed to turn this into my ideal, probably Holy Grail system, and I can make minor modifications to it to account for setting; I've already got complete and ready to roll DARK•HERITAGE, CULT OF UNDEATH and STAR WARS versions of it, and partially complete AD ASTRA pseudo-Guardians of the Galaxy superheros in space.  And no doubt, I'll have more eventually.

#8. Favorite appearance of RPGs in the Media.  I'm not 100% sure what is meant by this.  If it's referring to something like the kids playing D&D in E.T., well, stuff like that doesn't really do much for me.  I'll have to punt and say that the movement of RPGs directly into other media; i.e. tie-in fiction novels, is my favorite.  Granted; I don't like very many tie-in fiction novels, but I really like the idea of them, and some of them do manage to actually be pretty good.  Some of the earliest D&D tie-in fiction (first few Salvatore and Weiss/Hickman novels, I suppose qualify) are kinda classics, and there's some great Black Library material.  It's arguable to what extent Black Library qualifies as RPG (vs. miniature wargame) fiction, but most of the stuff I've read feels more like WFRP than it does WHFB.

#9. Favorite Media you wish was an RPG.  Honestly, I don't wish for conversions of media into RPG for various reasons.  And if I do, I just whip up some conversion of some system I already like anyway (i.e., my m20 Star Wars.)  And in many cases, the media I wish was an RPG is an RPG... although not necessarily one that I like or really want to play, because I'm not interested in its system.  So this is a harder question to answer than it sounds like it should be.  What I guess I really would like to see is a good Middle-earth game that feels less like swashbuckling sword & sorcery and more like the actual writings of Tolkien.  I've been intrigued yet ultimately dissatisfied with both Iron Crown and Decipher's offerings in this field, and I've never even looked at Cubicle 7's current game... although given that my requirements in this regard are very particular, most likely it's not what I want either.

#10. Favorite RPG Publisher.  Paizo, I suppose.  They've kinda lost their way (or to be more accurate; I've gradually lost interest in various of the directions that they're going) but I still think I'm more likely to be interested in something that they're doing rather than anyone else.  Part of the problem with this question (and many of these lines of questions in this #RPGaDay survey overall) is that I'm fundamentally too much of a DIY gamer with a system that I already like and can hack with ease, rather than the kind of guy who is interested in really buying a bunch of pre-fabbed gaming.  So some products catch my eye because they offer me something interesting... but my tastes are fairly eclectic.

#11. Favorite RPG Writer.  Oh, good heavens, I don't know.  I've liked a lot of stuff by Wolfgang Baur, Doug Seacat, and Rob Schwalb before.

#12. Favorite RPG Illustration.  My favorite illustration of all time for any RPG ever?  Ooof.  That's too tall an order.  I can't pick that.  A handful of my favorites, then—the final Dungeon Magazine cover by Paizo by Wayne Reynolds with Demogorgon kicking the iconic characters' butts (granted; that was a very strange collection of iconics at the time.)  The original Player's Handbook cover art; with the statue of the efreet and the guys trying to steal its gemstone eyes.  Almost anything published by Privateer Press. Most of the cover art from Freeport, Eberron or Pathfinder by Wayne Reynolds.  The BECMI boxes cover art by Larry Elmore; especially the Expert and Companion ones.

#RPGaDay 2015: No.s 1-6

I should have guessed; there's another #RPGaDay challenge.  I did this in 2014; here's the 2015 version (suitably late.  Shows how well I pay attention to trends in the gaming blogopshere.)

As with the prior one I did, I don't think each question truly merits a full post.  I ended up doing the 2014 challenge in a series of 4 posts, with 6 questions answered each post.  I'll do that again.

Here's the list of questions:

#1: Forthcoming game you're most looking forward to.  Ugh.  Tough question right off the bat for me, given that I don't really pay attention to what's forthcoming.  Gulp.  One question in, and I'm already asking for a pass!

#2: Kickstarted game most pleased you backed.  I've never backed a kickstarter game.  That said; two guys in my group backed the Horror on the Orient Express kickstarter by Chaosium, which we're now playing.  So does that one count?  I'm enjoying it so far, but admittedly, we're only on our third session.

#3: Favorite new game of the last 12 months.  I haven't gotten any new games in the last 12 months.  That said; I'm interested in running down the brand new, huge and hugely expanded Freeport book, which I think is now only compatible with Pathfinder these days, to update my excellent systemless Freeport book of 7-8 or so years ago—or however long its been.  Although I don't actually have it, that came out in the last 12 months, and it's one of the few products that has that I'm genuinely interested in checking out.  Other than that—one of these days, I really would like to try out 5th edition.  At least one guy in our group actually bought it, but I don't think he runs.  None of the usual suspects in our group even bothered picking it up.

#4: Most surprising game.  I have to say that I've probably been most surprised by Dread—because it's so unusual that I'm not sure that I believed it could really work.  It does; in fact, it's tons of fun.  I'm not quite sure whether or not it can be turned into a campaign or not... I'd like to see someone try it, though.

#5: Most recent RPG purchase.  I'm pretty sure it'll have to be Pathfinder Bestiary 5.  I simply can't pass up a good monster book, and Pathfinder has done a good job with them.  Their pdfs are cheap enough that they're worth buying for the artwork alone.

#6: Most recent RPG played.  Call of Cthulhu.  We're in a campaign of it as we speak.  Granted; we don't play all that often (once a month seems to be more or less our speed) but as it happens, we're playing this coming Saturday.

#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.

#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.