#RPGaDay 7

 Day 7 — Most “Intellectual” RPG Owned

(I’ll be honest, I’m a little uncertain about what the quotation marks are supposed to mean. But anyway.)

The snap response to this question is that all RPGs are, on some level, intellectual. Even the simplest or most seemingly slapstick RPG (I’m looking at you, Toon) is based on the idea of trying to create compelling narrative within a framework of storytelling rules. As such, I think it’s effectively impossible to create an RPG that doesn’t involve some amount of intellectual legwork. Though having said that, the intellectual legwork underlying an RPG can often go seriously wrong. (I’m looking at you, Carcosa.)

If I’m answering the question straight up, though, I’d have to say Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP), even though I don’t own very much of it.

Being built around the wickedly complicated Rolemaster system made MERP a game for thinking people to begin with, and the amount of Tolkienesque detail packed into the game’s setting supplements was insane. I never actually played MERP, partly because I never crossed paths with a group interested in playing it — but partly also because I always got a sense that the amount of time one could spend digging into the details of the setting and the system would quickly consume me.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

#RPGaDay 6

Day 6 — Favourite RPG You Never Get to Play

Traveller. The original box-set rules were the second RPG I ever played, a year-and-a-bit after I started RPGing with D&D. And though I’ve gotten back into/continued with D&D in a big way starting with 3rd Edition, I haven’t played a game of Traveller since about 1985.

At Gen Con last year, I think there were a grand total of three Traveller games happening — none of which I could go to because they conflicted with other stuff I was doing. I noted at the time that there were more sessions of the Ghostbusters RPG on the schedule. There’s something wrong with the world.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

#RPGaDay 5

 Day 5 — Most Old School RPG Owned

Original D&D white box, though just the end-of-product-cycle “Original Collector’s Edition”.

I never owned this set back in the day, though I procured and read the PDF versions of these OD&D rules when such things first started making their way online. The three-book set was an eBayed Christmas gift from the coolest wife and daughters in the world a few years ago, and was subsequently augmented by all the other original supplements with the exception of Chainmail, which I have yet to track down.

Even having read the PDFs, there’s something magical about actually holding these books in your hands. There’s something equally magical about reading them (which I did most recently in January, celebrating the nominal 40th anniversary of the box set’s original release) and going “How the hell did anyone ever play this game in the first place?” Because the original books have some editing/development issues.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

#RPGaDay 4

Day 4 — Most Recent RPG Purchase

The Deadlands Player’s Guide and the Deadlands Marshall’s Handbook. I desperately want my friend François to run a game at some point, because he’s a man of rare storytelling talent and would make a kick-ass GM. When he jokingly said to me, “If I ever run an RPG, it’ll have to be set in Tombstone, Arizona,” I sent him the links to the Pinnacle website and he went down the Deadlands rabbit hole like a shot. It’s just a matter of time now…

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

#RPGaDay 3

 Day 3 — First RPG Purchased

Dungeons & Dragons, Holmes blue box. If you read the first day’s entry, you’ve heard that story already, but here’s another peripheral take on it.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

#RPGaDay 2

Day 2 — First RPG Gamemastered

Dungeons & Dragons. (That’s going to be a theme throughout much of this month; sorry.)

When I started playing D&D (see yesterday’s link), my friend Kevin was my gateway DM. As the person who’d been playing the game already, he was the one who gave me the first taste of adventure through In Search of the Unknown and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, then unleashed me onto an unsuspecting world. Truth be told, though, it took me a while to start DMing because of a strange confluence of geography and finances.

The geographical factor was the reality that living in a small town of 2,000 people in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, we didn’t have a gaming store that stocked the AD&D books, meaning that missions to secure those tomes required long-distance travel. The financial factor was that me and everyone else I knew were all perpetually broke in those heady days of 11th grade. As such, when we first started playing, myself and the other two core members of the party (Dave and Mitch) only owned one book a piece — Mitch, the Players Handbook; Dave, the Dungeon Masters Guide; and me, the Monster Manual. And though we traded the books around a lot between ourselves, it wasn’t until I actually got around to securing a DM Guide of my own that I felt comfortable pushing myself onto the other side of the table.

The first adventures I ran were the Slave Lords series of modules (A1 through A4 for you old-school types). I can remember being really worried about whether I had what it took to actually run a game, despite having been playing for almost a year at that point. I remember an enormous number of rookie mistakes I made during that campaign. I also remember one moment at the beginning of the first adventure, Secret of the Slaver’s Stockade, where the party was locked down in a standoff with slaver mercenary orcs in a courtyard. The decision was made to clear the courtyard with a fireball — except the party didn’t know that the orcs had strapped together an old pushcart, a barrel of lamp oil, and a bellows to create a jury-rigged flamethrower designed to stop the frontal assault they were too smart to make.

I remember the adventure talking about how if the cart caught fire, it would explode to deal damage to the orcs nearby and that’s about it. I remember thinking, “That’s kind of boring,” and instead describing the cart blowing sky-high as the fireball hit it, an explosion of lamp oil setting fire to the nearby wooden doors as the remains of the cart arced through the air and slammed down in front of the party, forcing the characters to run like hell to get past it and into the fray.

I remember thinking “That was pretty cool.” And I haven’t looked back.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

#RPGaDay 1

So this is apparently a thing, and so I shall I make it a thing that I do!

Day 1 — First RPG Played

Dungeons & Dragons. Kind of. You can read all about it here.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)