Wednesday, December 26, 2012

7 RPGs, My 2 Cents

Okay, so I hope everyone had a nice Christmas.  Mine was nice and I got snow today!  Currently there is a theme bouncing around various sits about posting seven RPGs you've played and seven you've run.  So, here are mine, listed roughly in chronological order:

Seven RPGs Played
  1. Chivalry & Sorcery: introduced to the entire concept of RPGs with this game in boarding school in 1977-1978 by a fascinating fellow called Gib; for a hard-core historical wargamer only interested in "serious" games, this was like some psychedelic, mind-altering drug--and I was hooked immediately and forever.
  2. AD&D (1E): in college I finally found some gamers; I ran a C&S game and played in George's AD&D game with the monk Cressa (still one of my favorite characters of all time); bought a lot of the AD&D books to expand my knowledge of RPGs but found it awkward and clunky.
  3. AD&D (2E): played in an interesting high-level campaign for a while with my buddy Rob in England; played a monk again, but didn't like the 2E rules; didn't buy any of the books
  4. D&D 3E: joined a campaign a couple years ago run by my buddy Steve; a high-level game so I jumped in with a 14th level cleric; between this game and Rob's I've decided that I don't want to jump into high-level games anymore; the 3.5 rules are good, but very rules heavy--playing a spell caster is a pain, what with choosing spells all the darn time.
  5. Castles & Crusades: an on again/off again campaign by my buddy Kaiser; we're not sure what's going on but we're constantly running into some sort of situation; C&C is simpler than 3E/Pathfinder but not simple enough for a really clean break from them
  6. Mutants & Masterminds: my buddy Dan started a game for us; cool campaign concept of all "mutants" being sent to a new quarantine city, and then of course the real trouble starts; lots of interesting plot lines going on; M&M very complicated, too much math; also, seems like I'm the only one in our group who doesn't actually like the superhero genre.
  7. Old School Hack: my buddy Mike has run a couple games for us now and it's proving again to be a really innovative set of rules.

Seven RPGs Run
  1. Chivalry & Sorcery: when my first DM transferred to another school I was the only one with the rules and desire to DM; I quickly whipped up a simple campaign world and started a game based on the party coming into possession of a large crystal which was to be part of the villain's magical superweapon.
  2.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (in a homebrew setting): I came across this game and was intrigued by ideas for mutant animals as player races, but didn't care for the rest of it; I tossed together a near-future setting in Neo Tokyo and ran my group into a maze of X-Files wierdness with cultists, aliens, mobsters, and a secret army of mecha.
  3. Paranoia: I picked this up with some trepidation, never having seen a good humorous game before, but immediately saw the potential; I've run several one-shot or short-run games for various groups; I love this game; still have the original boxed version.
  4. Big Eyes, Small Mouth d20: I was looking for a new set of rules, just having been burned buying the D&D 3.0 books about three weeks before 3.5 came out (which I refused to buy); very cool mix of D&D 3E and point-buy based Big Eyes, Small Mouth; made up a set of classes based on the "jobs" in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance which I was playing at the time and repopulated my old C&S game map with Final Fantasy elements.
  5. Big Eyes, Small Mouth 3E: I pre-ordered this based on my experiences with BESM d20 and reviews of earlier editions, and the publisher went bankrupt; luckily it got published; again made up a set of classes based on the "jobs" in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and re-launched my campaign; very simple rules, but suffers from lack of source books to save DMs time designing everything (at least for fantasy campaigns).
  6. Pathfinder: Looking for something d20 with the support of D&D (but still bitter about my 3.0 experience) I finally bought Paizo's offering; love this game and using it for my current game in the Shackled City adventure path, but it's very rules heavy.
  7. Old School Hack: randomly came across this game while looking for gaming stuff and was immediately impressed; an entire game, including game aids, in 28 pages; it's the feel of old school D&D but with "modern technology" from D&D 4E and the talented author; have turned my new group onto it and will be running short (3-4 hour) scenarios with it.

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