Many, many moons ago, 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'm still trying to follow some sort of chronological order. If you want to catch up, you can find the previous posts here:
And so, onto 41-50...
41) Star Trek Adventures
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| The cover of first edition Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius |
I wrote a long blogpost ages ago about my involvement in Star Trek Adventures. I'm a big Trek fan, and love everything it stands for. When Chris Birch at Modiphius mentioned to me that he'd secured a license that involved a five-year mission I was so excited to get involved. And involved I was. Chris had me developing the game system, how the game would look, suggesting the products, advising on art and graphics, even looking at how the minis were being developed. It was fantastic. I loved every second of working on that. It was just frustrating that I couldn't handle that and a job in retail at the same time. Something had to give, and I reluctantly backed away from Star Trek and faded back into working in retail full time...
We playtested a bit of the Trek system when we were working on it, playing with my regular gaming group to see how combat and momentum worked. Good times!
42) Spire / Heart
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| Cover of Spire by Rowan, Rook, and Decard |
This is another two-fer, as we played Spire with a lot of its companion game, Heart, involved. This was another huge revelation. The way the experience system worked, accomplishing specific goals to unlock new abilities. Really clever. And some of the themes and motivations were completely bonkers. There was a lot of exploring underground, some investigations into the Spire, and I just remember using my Zenith Ability, my final power that was so powerful it would kill my character. My strange knight's final act was to erase the concept of the Spire from existence. The tower, the elves, the ruling class that brought so much misery, all gone. Forgotten, as if they never existed. As you can imagine, that's where our game ended. I think one of the other characters used their Zenith ability too, for a truly epic finale. Awesome.
43) Aegean
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| Cover of the Aegean RPG by We-Evolve |
This one kinda started as playtesting and we just kept going. Stoo was working on an RPG based on Ancient Greek mythology, and wanted to playtest it. It felt strangely like Runequest in its detail in combat, looking at the reach of weapons, and the usefulness of armour. However, his Aegean RPG incorporated a lot of cool and heroic abilities, as well as the influence of the gods. Top all of that off with some town building mechanics, and Aegean shaped up to be incredibly cool. We played a lot of games of Aegean – including using the game system to play mythic Vikings battling frost giants and elves, and a separate game in a more traditional fantasy setting. The system holds up brilliantly, and it's no surprise Stoo is using again for his next game.
44) WILD
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| Cover of the WILD RPG by We-Evolve |
Another bit of playtesting I'm afraid. Well, you don't spend ten years working on a game and release it unplayed do you? WILD went through a lot of versions, starting off using Vortex like Doctor Who, then a different dice system, then Tarot cards in a variety of forms and styles. Without those playtests it would not have been playable. Thanks everyone.
45) Scum & Villainy / Coriolis
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| Cover of Scum and Villainy by Evil Hat Productions |
This is another one that's a strange mash up of two games. Our regular GM wanted to run Coriolis, but didn't really gel with the game system. This was long before the new Coriolis that uses the Year Zero Engine. Instead, we used the Scum and Villainy ruleset, a game that uses the Blades in the Dark system, and kinda felt like Firefly but incorporated some of the locations and mythology of Coriolis. Again, it was awesome and epic, and it was great to experience the Blades in the Dark system, with its "succeed at a cost" element from PtbA.
46) Changeling: The Lost
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| Cover of Changeling: The Lost by White Wolf |
Considering I was a massive fan of the old World of Darkness, and loved Mage: The Ascension, it wasn't until well over a decade later that I tried the 'New World of Darkness' in a game of Changeling: The Lost. We played set in Victorian York, and I based my character heavily on Timothy Dalton's character from the TV series Penny Dreadful. It was great, and whimsical, and strange. Trains full of fey markets, and weird spider-ladies. Our knowledge resource was an owl. One of the characters could communicate with the dead, and we were trying to save kids from becoming abducted from the city's orphanage.
When Covid hit and we were locked-down, playing online meant that the game became a roleplaying experience of going to cafes, sampling cakes and drinking tea, or going shopping, rather than progressing the plot – you know, all the things we couldn't do in reality!
47) Action Potential
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| Cover of Action Potential RPG by We-Evolve |
This was another bit of playtesting, back when Action Potential was in its early concept phase. Rhi had used the Forged in the Dark ruleset to create a cool RPG of being able to upload your consciousness into new 'sleeves', in a cool cyberpunk weirdness way, like Altered Carbon. We played characters sent to a space station to discover what had happened to the crew, only everyone was dead and — plot twist — the crew were our characters! We were playing backups of our consciousnesses uploaded into new bodies as our originals had been killed on the station.
Rhi worked with Debs to develop these cool character sheets where your sleeves had different stats that overlapped and you could switch them out as you changed sleeve. It was really cool, and well worth playing.
48) Hard Wired Island
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| Cover of Hard Wired Island by Weird Edge Games |
I must admit, I'd not heard of this game before we started playing it, and it surprised me by being really cool. Again, very cyberpunk, and set on a space station that feels very much like what we thought cyberpunk would be in the 80s. I played a hard-boiled detective, like someone from Sin City, who teamed up with a synth and graffiti artist to try to stop thugs from targeting a pro-synthetic club. Was really cool, and I'm definitely going to look into the second edition when it Kickstarts.
49) Doctors and Daleks
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| Cover of the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide by Cubicle 7 |
Another strange one. I didn't think Doctor Who would work with 5e Dungeons & Dragons, but the team who worked on this absolutely nailed it. They captured the feel of the series, kept true to Doctor's ideals, and introduced some amazing new non-combat conflict rules to 5e, allowing you to defeat an enemy with wits and dialogue. I was on board for the project, bringing my Doctor Who roleplaying knowledge, and did a few playtests, but did play a little on a short actual play run by Zak, which was a blast (especially as I played Graham O'Brien and got to be confused and old, just like me).
50) ALIEN
One of the tensest games I've played. So many stress-dice being rolled, so much running around panicking. I think, in true ALIEN fashion, all of the characters died, but we destroyed the ship with the xenomorphs in so they couldn't get onto another ship. Very cool, and very evocative of the source material. I'd be intrigued to see how a longer campaign would work, and really harks back to the old Odyssey game that I played waaaay back (see Number 18).
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That's it for this part. Maybe one more batch to go?
Until next time, stay multi-classy!
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