My Five Favorite Role-playing Games

Gamma World: TSR's Basic Dungeons & Dragons was the game which introduced me into ttrpg's but it was Gamma World which really opened up the endless fun to be had with the role playing format. While D&D channeled my love for Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Gamma World allowed me to play out my passion for comic books. Kamandi and TheWarlord specifically. There was a certain freedom in world building and character creation which I could not embrace with D&D. Not that there was anything wrong with D&D, I just felt, as a kid, Gamma World asking more imagination from me than a game concerned with High Fantasy.

Champions: I love, love the role play potential built into comic books and Champions got my attention with the promise of custom character builds for your superhero, and by extension, your supers game world. Issues of Marvel with Dr. Doom and Iron Man battling it out in King Arthur's court and the ubiquitous future science fantasy woven in most comics of the day made it apparent in a supers role playing game I could fold in any genre trope into the campaign. The stacks, racks and boxes of used comics throughout comic book stores told me I would never be short of adventure material for my game. The breakdown with Champions came with the self same tools for custom builds prohibited breezy world building. As a Game Master I made the mistake of using the crunchy game mechanics as the method for game prep. I bogged down and just couldn't do it anymore. But Champions holds the number two spot because I did run it more than any other superhero game. And nailing down an important Game Master realization; the mechanics are for the PC's, not the GM!

Stormbringer/Elric!: Blood and souls for my lord Arioch. Not only did this game introduce me to pulp fantasy beyond Conan, it turned me on to another way to break from the level/class scriptures of Dungeons & Dragons. The ability to build a fantasy character as I see fit was liberating.

Why can't a PC wield a sword, wear power armor, fire a gun and use magic? My favorite stories and comics all have these polyglot type of characters. Why are my games restricting me? Obviously they are not. I was just too hidebound, narrow in my thinking and only as good at gaming as I was going to be. I find indie games and their popularity similar to the popularity of paint by numbers. Create a Van Gogh, in the comfort of your own comfort zone! Just follow these easy step by step instructions. Yeah this is fun to do, but this isn't art. This is not a challenge. But Chaosium's d100 system met my young person's ability half way and gave me a system which justified my belief the depth of role play was real. Any failings in the game where not a result of system, but within myself. Made me believe that if I didn't want a bad game just don't suck.

Renaissance: A smart polish on Chaosium's venerable d100 system Cakebread & Walton's black powder era game does all the right things for those who want to tap into this historical time period for fantastic gaming. Rules for Alchemy and Witchcraft add the right amount of fantastical for adept players and game masters to hit any high note they want. Humorous and cinematic, realistic and gritty grimdark and grotty. Renaissance will do it. It is my current number two favorite role playing game of all time because it is what I am running right now. At two and a half years the system has not only satisfied myself, it has kept the same group of online players invested since the first opening adventure!

USR Sword & Sorcery: Yes my favorite role playing game of all time is the one I built from the ground up using Scott Malthouse's (U)nbelievably (S)imple (R)oleplaying game mechanics. USR is a simple set of resolution mechanics balance against a PC having few attributes while at the same time offering an extremely player facing, flexible way for character customization. I used this generic role playing system to try out a deliberate approach to a game I though Gary Gygax and D&D first challenged and thrilled me to apprehend. Pulp fantasy; Howard, Moorcock, Carter, etc. was source material which I always envision when I daydream about role playing games. Why not just rely on these stories and tropes when running a game? Shouldn't I just let the rules and mechanics lie in the background waiting to be used when required? This may be rote for better gamers than me, but I had always relied on game mechanics to deliver the package, and this is exactly contrary to what original role playing games promised. USR gave me an opportunity to approach the art fresh with young expectations and seasoned eyes. The result was USR Sword & Sorcery and it was sufficient to run, after being out of gaming for 25 years, a swingy, blood soaked pulp fantasy campaign with a dedicated group of strangers on line for three years. Mission accomplished.

Problematic Interrogating of Colonial Oppression in your Misogynistic OSR game

It is what it is. Running a role playing game in Seventeenth Century Europe where all the superstitious historical and literary tropes are real. In a game sense. We all know witches aren't real, but it was "legal" to burn people alive. We know forcing others into bondage is horrid, but slavery is matter of course. We know zombie movies are a parody of the depredations humanity visits on itself, but the next Battle of the Bulge is just around the corner.

I love the fact that the horrid human fantasy is but window dressing in the furious car chase which is my Clockwork & Cthulhu campaign. Slavery, splat. Cowardice, splat. Alien infestation, splat. Thieving and double dealing, splat. Cannibalism, splat. Gun fights and murder, and murder, and murder, splat. Taking advantage of the unhinged and mentally soft, splat.

Coming from a literate society and playing with others who are well read in the classics; Kirby, Beowulf, Hustler, just makes for a great game. Nothing is sacred and everything is on the table. Traditional role playing games can take any premise, any genre, any implied conceit and make it rock if the principles of good gaming are respected; Game Master with a firm grip on the genre, and Player's who do stuff. After that the setting doesn't matter cause the random mechanics of game play just add an edge to the event. This being everyone at the table has done something awesome, and you know what, you still may get fucked. Trust your Game Master or become one. Do both and be of service to gamerkind. Use POD and DriveThru to make all you have available to others. This is the golden age of gaming. It can only get better!

Scourge Books, the Royal Trux of podcasts

The anchor podcast party continues to grow and more and more episodes from anyone in the gaming universe are dropping every day. But the newest comer on this new block has got me out of the house and working on one of my game books in the parking lot where a lot of the local transients camp for the night.

Scourge Books has caught my attention with its glib attitude and basement living bombast which gets me thinking of overflowing ashtrays, empty liquor bottles and a corner of the room stacked with amps where the “band” practices. Where I’ve seen brevity reign (my podcast included) with gamer podcasts on anchor dropping in at fifteen minutes or less, Scourge Books plopped down an hour and half long first episode. A rambling bull session between “Scourge” and his “Woman”, keeping names and background absent, only revealing themselves through the dialogue; the gaming, video, music topics the two bounce through, the new show feels like a cut up four track mix reminiscent of DIY Heroin-Punk from the late eighties, except it is about table top gaming. And it is on the internet so immediately accessible. I’m sure someone can tell me in a red-hot minute who Scourge is, but for a brief moment the weird world of online content delivered me a dirty, underground thrill like reading Naked Lunch for the first time.

If Scourge and the Woman can keep it up, keep the topics revolving all hipster and eternally young and ultimately disposable Scourge Books podcasts could easily become a favorite listen of mine while I toil away on my own obscure DIY role playing projects. In a van. Down by the river.

Review of Gathox Vertical Slum Adventure Module

+David Lewis Johnson offered me a PDF copy of Quake Alley Mayhem for review. I am happy to do so because; one, I have used much of his royalty free stock art to illustrate my baby USR Sword & Sorcery,Rules Lite Roleplaying for Fantastic Pulp Fantasy Adventures, and two, I purchased Gathox Vertical Slum, a far out, gonzo science fantasy campaign setting for Swords & Wizardry White Box sight unseen because it spoke early eighties Heavy Metal magazine I bought on the down low as a young teen.

So I'm in David Lewis Johnson's camp hard. On top of this +Mike Evans edited Quake Alley Mayhem. He is the moving force behind DIY RPG Productions and does his shit soooo straight and right +Zak Smith threw Demon City at him to carry the publishing load. I buy Zak's stuff because it is some of the best RPG material available today. Mike I met at Gencon 50 and I watched him win a Silver Ennie for Hubris and he is not shy for flying a middle finger. He does not stay up as late as Jacob Hurst or Jez Gordon. So you know he actually is probably kind of a softie.

QuakeAlley Mayhem is a good example of how overworked all our best people are these days. It gives me hope that all of us on the OSR DIY sidelines figuring things out, well, we need to do so, cause everyone like David Lewis Johnson are writing fun good stuff and the pipeline for distribution is jammed. I mean stopped up! Evil Hat hasn't put out anything of value since ever. They are sooo starved for something to do all they can come up with is dissing the Ennies. The Ennies! Smart, mildly good looking men and women, on their own volition, are striving forth, putting everything on the line and producing great game talent and now they are swamped. If it wasn't for the connections at conventions and google plus being made by earnest folk in real time, well you my fellow gamer would be still playing Lost Mines of Phandelver again and again and again.

Quake Alley Mayhem is a harbinger of glee for all and everyone on the nonexistent margins of the RPG game world. Can you edit? Can you do layout? Can you write? Can you draw? Can you playtest? Do you love to proofread (there has got to be someone, right?) Can you use POD software? Gather together and make an RPG product.

Established RPG companies in the “middle ground”* trying to imitate WotC business model are in the process of being disassembled like a first level PC by a Giant Crab.

If you have enough enthusiasm and typing skills you can produce a ready to run adventure so much more interesting than anything else available on the mainstream market in an afternoon. And have people buying it and playing it by nightfall.

The regular game companies should be shitting their pants. I think they have been for the last four or five years and just can't say it. The best they can do is minimize outsider achievement. But once again outsider achievement will be on full display at this year's Gencon. The LotFP booth will sell out. The Ennies will be dominated by outsider products winning awards. These will be, in no particular order, Hot Springs Island, Hobbs and Friends, Frostbitten and Mutilated. In no way should the corporate game world see such scrappy, passionate outfits succeed, but succeed they do. There will be some hangovers after Gencon 51, but none which matter.

*an undefinded term of mine, but I'm thinking Pinnacle, Evil Hat, Green Ronin, Lumpley Games, etc.