Many, many moons ago, when I wasn't distracted by work, conventions, and other goings on in life, I started a series of blogposts listing every tabletop roleplaying game I've ever played - inspired by a post over where the skies are blue (BlueSky) by Kieron Gillen.
I've tried to list them in some sort of chronological order. If you want to catch up, you can find the previous posts here:
So, without further ado, let's move on to 31-40!!
31) Buffy The Vampire Slayer / Angel
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| Cover of Eden Studios's Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG |
Oh man, where to begin with this one. I was a MASSIVE Buffy fan, so when I started doing a little work for Eden Studios and they said they'd got the Buffy and Angel licenses, I was completely ecstatic. I did some editing assisting on the Slayer's Handbook and Monster Smackdown, and got really into rewatching episodes and trying to map out locations for the unreleased Welcome to Sunnydale.
The Buffy RPG was brilliant, still is, and a real inspiration for many games I worked on. The way CJ Carella baked in the mechanic that you had to weaken the vampires before you attempted the staking move, made it feel like the series, having a cool fight before dusting them.
Still in my Top 5 RPGs of all time in my books.
32) Deadlands
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| Cover of classic Deadlands RPG by Pinnacle |
Played a few games of Deadlands, and they were great fun. I played one of those magic-slinging types with the cards, and it was a really cool the way the game integrated using cards, poker chips, and dice. Really gave you a great feel like you're in the Old West.
33) Terra Primate
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| Cover of Terra Primate by Eden Studios |
While I'd been doing some editing and stuff for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and All Flesh Must Be Eaten, my first real writing and developing work was for Eden Studios again. I'd suggested some All Flesh Must Be Eaten supplements, but George suggested a helped out with a project they had been working on called Terra Primate. The text for the settings was all done, it just needed the rules plugging in and converting from AFMBE, and testing... Had to be play tested, of course!
I never realised there were so many options for 'Planet of the Apes' style games.
34) Farscape
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| The cover of the Farscape RPG from AEG |
Ah, it was back in the days when D20 was an open license and everyone was making games using the D20 system. Again, if ever there was a game that shouldn't be D20, it was Farscape. Man, I love Farscape. It was a weird series... everyone kept telling me I should watch it, I tried the first episode when it aired and it didn't really do anything for me, but I caught the two-parter of the end of season one/start of season two, and wondered what I was missing. I immediately bought the DVDs, caught up, and was really hooked.
When AEG (back when they used to do RPGs) announced they were doing Farscape, and wanted playtesters, I signed up. I had pages of feedback for them... pages... and then the playtesting stopped, and we heard nothing more until the game came out. Haven't played it since those playtests, but it sits on my shelf as a reminder of what could have been.
35) GURPS/Hellboy
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| Deluxe limited edition of the first Hellboy RPG, powered by GURPS |
Back when we had the 'RPG Reading Group' at the bookstore I worked at, the first RPG of Hellboy appeared. I loved the comics, so was excited to check out the game. However, again, it was another licensed property that I thought had a game system that didn't work for it. I'm sure it was fine, but GURPS didn't do anything for me. Sorry. We did a session as part of the group, it was fun, but... that was it. Sits on my shelf with the other limited edition books and the Hellboy collection.
36) Conspiracy X 2.0
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| Cover of Conspiracy X 2.0 from Eden Studios |
I've mentioned so many times on this blog how I have always been obsessed with The X-Files, and I loved the first edition of Conspiracy X. However, the game system just didn't do it for me. I'm sorry. I know there were loads of First Edition Conspiracy X fans out there who were dedicated to the system, but it just felt odd that it was the only game that Eden produced that wasn't Unisystem. I pitched a conversion to George, and in a completely unhealthy way to deal with a loss in the family, I immersed myself in converting the game for a year.
Once again, playtesting was the key here, and a few sessions playing through some of the classic ConX scenarios. One was incredibly helpful in fixing a rule or two if I remember correctly. Really cool.
37) Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space / The Roleplaying Game
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| Cover of the first edition box set of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space by Cubicle 7 Games |
I've talked about the Doctor Who RPG many times on my blog as well – how Chris Birch was in touch after Conspiracy X 2.0 came out, how we chatted about getting new people gaming, and how he knew people at the BBC. One thing lead to another and I developed the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG, which later became simply Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game.
Sounding a bit like a stuck record, this was playtesting again, making sure the game system worked. I ran a couple of tiny system tests, but the bulk of the playtesting game from the volunteer groups, and they helped shape it into the flexible game it is.
38) Fiasco
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| Cover of Fiasco from Bully Pulpit Games |
It's not all playtesting! We played a couple of one-shots of Fiasco as well with some friends. I can't remember too much about it — it was a scenario on a space station if I remember correctly. A murder mystery, may have involved aliens, certainly involved crawling around in air ducts. It's really interesting to play something quite so improv. It's quite freeing. Sometimes you need to try different games to experience new systems and ways of playing.
39) Star Wars (Fantasy Flight Games)
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| Cover of the Force and Destiny Core Rulebook for FFG's Star Wars RPG |
Yeah, I know, it has weird dice. But those weird dice produced some seriously epic moments. We played a lot of Star Wars – one campaign was a cool one where we played Padawan Jedi, during the Clone Wars and mid-mission, Order 66 happened and we had to go into hiding, start a resistance unit, join the rebellion, and take down as many of them as we could. There were some awesome moments, one involved riding a crashing Aethersprite then jumping off and landing on an AT-TE and lightsabering my way in. Of course, every time Vader turned up, we ran away. That was genuinely terrifying.
We also played games as troopers who switched sides, pirates, engineers, and smugglers. I can't remember a session of it that wasn't a complete blast. Our only gripe was we could do all these cool things, and do epic stunts, but when we had to jump over a gap we just kept failing. Typical!
40) Tales From The Loop / Things From The Flood / Mutant Year Zero
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| The cover of the Tales from the Loop RPG by Fria Ligan (Free League) |
This one's really three-in-one, but it'll make sense. First of all, I have to state that I LOVE Tales From The Loop. Really cool, gorgeous art that inspired the game. Simple system on a minimal amount of pages. It just oozes weird sci-fi alternate 80s. I love the setting, really like the system, and then, to top it off, the campaign we played was flippin' epic.
We played as teenagers in the 80s in Great Yarmouth, close to the East Anglia Loop system. We discovered wacky time travel goings on, strange robots, and creatures as expected in a Loop game. And then, things progressed. We moved into the setting's sister game, Things From The Flood, as we grew up a bit and became older teens. Weirder things were happening at the Loop, and we failed to stop it happening. Something exploded, and the area was irradiated, and we moved the game into Mutant Year Zero. Setting up a sanctuary on the pier, we investigated what was happening, and faced the worst evil – my character's mother, mutated into a strange spider creature. We finally discovered what was at the heart of it all, and how to fix it, using weird occurrences in the Loop facility to time travel back to the 80s to prevent the disaster. We reset the timeline, and saved the county.
Epic.
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I think a couple more of these and I'll be up to date! Stay tuned, and stay multi-classy!
