Sidequest: Every TTRPG played 11-20

Well, it's been one of those months again. In such a funk, and kinda down, that I can't really think of anything exciting to add to my blog. It's a good job I've got these ridiculous posts listing things to keep me moderately occupied, rather than just staring into the void. 

So, to continue from the previous post, Kieron Gillen inspired me to list every tabletop roleplaying game I've played. I did the first ten in sort-of chronological order starting with those first games I ever played. Lets see how bad my memory is as continuing the list from 11-20...

#11 - The Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG

Cover of TSR's Adventures of Indiana Jones game

I know, the much maligned Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG from TSR. I freakin' loved this game. Not as free and easy as you may think, involving lots of tables and weird slide-rule thingy, along with lots of cool cardstock miniatures and 3D models. I bought everything you could get for Indiana Jones, and I loved it. I even made a video about it last year. 

Loved it. Wish there was a new version so we can explore, adventure, and punch more Nazis. 

#12 - Warhammer Fantasy (1st Edition)

Cover of the old white box Warhammer RPG

Another game bought by one of our regular players wanting to run something different to AD&D. We should have realised it was going to be very different by the name - Warhammer: The Mass Combat Fantasy Role-Playing Game. It really was quick, brutal, and our characters died very, very quickly. I don't think we got many games in, but after the GM moved to the other side of the world, that boxed set now sits on my shelves.

#13 - Golden Heroes

Cover of the Golden Heroes RPG

Next on the list is possibly our first foray into superhero gaming. We didn't do an awful lot of supers stuff, and when we played Golden Heroes it was just after I'd read Watchmen so we played with powerless vigilante characters rather than having proper 'super powers'. It was pretty cool, but the superhero Odyssey game we played later was better - not because of the game, Golden Heroes is still great, but just because someone else was GMing rather than me and they did a better job. I'm sure it'll come up in a later post...

#14 - Paranoia

Cover of the West End Games Paranoia RPG, 
published as a hardcover in the UK by Games Workshop!

Next is something a little different. Wasn't sure what I was getting into when I started running Paranoia, but it was madness and we loved it. Played all the weird adventures from the time, like HIL-Sector Blues, and Clones in Space. Heck, I even bought those Citadel miniatures and did an awful job of painting them.

#15 - Twilight: 2000

Cover of the original edition of Twilight: 2000

It was the Eighties, and (as you'll see by another later entry) things were a bit tense when it came to international relations. Good thing we sorted that out after all these years! (sarcasm) But, yes, we had a go at Twilight:2000. I don't remember much of it, just creating some characters and wandering around the roads near Krakow. I don't think we played very much of it. 

#16 - Doctor Who The Roleplaying Game (FASA)

Cover of the FASA 2nd edition of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game

Much like the old FASA Star Trek, we also played the FASA edition of the Doctor Who RPG. We were lucky to have a GM who was not only our Call of Cthulhu keeper, but also a massive Doctor Who fan who knew his stuff. Being a fan of the creepy Hinchcliffe and Holmes era of Tom Baker's run, he ensured the game played like a spooky Cthulhu adventure, with our resident Time Lord, the Collector, strangely absent most of the time (the player hardly ever turned up). 

#17 - Judge Dredd the Roleplaying Game (GW)

Cover of the original Dredd RPG

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'd been reading 2000AD since issue #2, the first appearance of Judge Dredd, and most of us in the gaming group read it to some extent. It was inevitable that we'd play the Dredd RPG. We played a handful of games, engaged in a Block War or two. I'd love to see a new edition soon - I must admit, I'd love to see a TV series done like The Rookie but only with MegaCity Judges...

#18 - Odyssey

Image from the movie ALIENS

Okay, home-brew time. This wasn't just your average home-brew, this was Pete's most epic RPG, taking up a chunky ring-binder of rules. Taking elements from RuneQuest and turning the volume up, Odyssey was Pete's generic RPG to work in any time and any genre. I remember he said "I've a murder mystery RPG to test" and we all joined in on this simple game of regular people who had won a prize to go on a cruise. We thought it was going to be a murder mystery, and then *RUG PULL* the ship sank and we were washed up on a desert island, with superpowers. Inspired by the old Elementals comic, we played the heck out of that. 

However, Odyssey really came into its own when we started using the system to play Colonial Marines in the ALIEN universe. The encumbrance system was genius, and I remember this frantic run for the drop ship and shedding my smart gun to speed up so we could escape the nuclear blast of the terraforming plant exploding. He also ran a brilliant game where one of the players was a villain, working to sabotage the plans for his own benefit. Lots of note passing to the GM, and it was only when combat started and the dice rolls started matching up did they realise who was shooting at them. Decades before Free League's game of marines and hidden agendas, Pete was doing it in the 80s. Brilliant stuff.

#19 - Ghostbusters

Cover of the legendary Ghostbusters RPG by West End Games

Here we come to one of my favourite games of all time - West End Games' Ghostbusters Roleplaying Game. You wouldn't believe how much I love this game. I've written at length about how reading this game made me want to be a game writer and designer. It's just a joy to read, brilliantly simple, and based on one of my favourite movies and franchises. How could I not love it? We played so much of this, so much that the Ghost on my Ghost-Die started to wear off. 

Again, I'd love to see a new Ghostbusters RPG - especially as the D6 system that powers it has returned recently in the Carbon Grey and Planet of the Apes RPGs. If anyone at Ghostcorps is listening, you know who to call. 

Here's a link to another video I made!! 

#20 - James Bond 007 Roleplaying Game

The Victory Games RPG of James Bond 007

Finally for this batch, here's another one of my favourite RPGs of all time. Victory Games' official James Bond 007 RPG. Amazing game, with some brilliant and revolutionary mechanics, and some of the most amazing presentation (especially for the adventures). Absolutely love this game. 

I'm going to sound like a stuck record, but again I'd love to see a new version of a Bond RPG (who knows, it may happen now the Amazon deal has happened - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they honour such a legacy). And, again, here's a video I recorded if you want to check out what the game looks like. 

We played a heck of a lot of this too, and I ran a couple of the adventures multiple times for different groups, each with very different outcomes. Awesome.

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That's it for this batch. We're getting close to the 'break' I had from gaming, and I'm keeping track of games I've bought and not yet played, just in case I wanted to do a Sidequest of the Sidequest!! 

Until next time, stay multi-classy. 

My Nerdy Life in 100 Geeky Objects #1

Corgi James Bond Lotus Esprit (1977)

When thinking about geeky objects that made an impression on me, I struggled to think of what could be the moment that I became a geek.

1977 was definitely the year the world changed for me. So much happened, but the first instance of true geekdom involved James Bond.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but my parents had nerd tendencies. Maybe the term should be geek-adjacent. Nerd enablers.

“That’s a funny word, isn’t it? Enabler?”

My mum introduced me to Doctor Who, as she was a fan of Jon Pertwee from his comedies, but she also had a complete collection of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels - a collection I still have now. She was always an enthusiastic reader, and had a complete Agatha Christie collection too (kinda wish I still had that).

My dad could be just as enthusiastic when it came to some fandoms, but it wasn’t quite so obvious. It just crept to the surface when he got really invested, something that would be most evident in the hunt for a Darth Vader helmet in the following year or two.

However, they both were supportive, and liked introducing me to cool things. Many of which will appear on this list. From the comics that were subscribed to at the local newsagents that introduced me to the worlds of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Doctor Strange, to the beginning of a lifetime obsession with Star Wars.

Bonding with my Parents

My parents liked movies and TV. I guess that’s where I got it from. I have distinct memories of being taken to the cinema as a child. My earliest memory of this was being taken to see The Three Musketeers, the 1973 Richard Lester movie that starred Michael York and Oliver Reed. It was good swashbuckling fun, but I must have only been about six years old so it didn’t really have much of an impact on me.

The next cinema trip was The Man With the Golden Gun. It came out around Christmas 1974, so I must have seen it in 1975 towards the end of its run. Cinema trips were always a big deal and usually on quieter days for the movies. My mother was paralysed from the waist down by polio as a child, so moving around wasn’t easy, but thanks to metal callipers she could walk about. Add to this that the local cinema was fifteen miles away in the city, a place my dad didn’t really enjoy driving, you realise that the movie had to be something really special for them to venture out to the cinema.

I remember sitting on the back seat of the car, a big estate car so that it could carry my mother’s wheelchair, and asking my dad where we were going. My dad had a wicked sense of humour, and for the whole journey (what seemed like forever, but was actually only about 45 minutes) he insisted that we were going to see Gary Glitter. A joke that has aged particularly badly looking back on it now…

We entered the cinema - I was still confused as to what we were going to see - and my mum had to make her way up the many stairs to the screen itself. (Something that would put a pause in her cinema attendance in years to come, until cinemas became more wheelchair friendly). And, then, on came The Man With The Golden Gun. My mum was suitably enthralled - not only did she love James Bond movies and books, but it also starred Christopher Lee, and she was also a big fan of his Hammer movies.

I was hooked from that opening sequence in the funhouse arena Scaramanga had created. Of course, I’d not seen a Bond film before, so had no idea of the relevance of the dummy at the end of that sequence, but I soon caught up. It was great, and we discussed our favourite parts on the way home in the car. Of course, at this time I must have been about seven years old, so I just liked the car chases, the action, and the gadgets. A lot of the plot was lost on me, but it was great.

Cars & Gadgets

As I mentioned at the start, the real revelation of both mine and my parents’ geekdom really comes in 1977. We had another cinema trip between to see Disney’s The Rescuers, but it was probably late 1977 when the next James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, became quiet enough at the cinema to warrant a trip to the movies.

I was older and wiser, and knew a bit more about Bond by then. My mother had told me all about the books, telling me stories about how the plan was to kill Bond off at the end of the first book (something I believed for years - I don’t know if this is true), and letting me watch Bond movies on TV. After all, they were (and on some channels still are) the traditional bank holiday movie on TV.

The Spy Who Loved Me was more over the top, more guns, gadgets, girls, and introduced Jaws, the legendary Bond villain with the steel teeth. However, the standout moment in the movie was the introduction of Bond’s new car, the Lotus Esprit. It was cool, white, and best of all, could turn into a submarine when necessary.

It was so darn cool. I could see my dad’s eyes light up at the moment it dove off of the pier and the fins came out. And that’s when the hunt began…

Still from The Spy Who Loved Me, with the Lotus diving into the water

We left the cinema and dad got it into his head that we needed to buy the Corgi James Bond Lotus Esprit right there and then. Dad always had a thing for toy cars, collecting vintage cars and even those partwork James Bond cars right up until he died. We tried shop after shop in the city, but alas, no sign. We started the journey home, even stopping at a couple of tiny independent toy shops on the way, but still nothing.

Dad tried a few more shops over the next couple of weeks, eventually coming to the conclusion that we’d missed the opportunity and they’d sold out everywhere. He came home one day from work with the Corgi Stromberg Jet Ranger helicopter, like the one piloted by Caroline Munro in the scene, but I could tell dad was a little disappointed.

Corgi Stromberg Jet Ranger - image from 007Magazine.co.uk

Swapsies

Remember the old days of being at school and swapping stuff? Trading cards, stickers, even toys. I remember a friend of mine called Darren had the Lotus Esprit, and he’d already become bored of it, and offered to swap it for something of mine. I honestly can’t remember what I swapped. I do remember he was slightly obsessed with the “Little Big Man” I had, Palitoy’s miniature version of Action Man… it may have been that. Anyway, swap done, I took the incredibly battered and bashed up Lotus home and my parents were suitably confused and slightly concerned.

I do remember there was a phone call, and Darren’s mother came around with him, and we told both of our respective parents that neither of us had stolen anything off of the other, it was a swap, we were both happy with the arrangement.

Of course, dad wasn’t happy with that. The Lotus I’d gained was very beaten up. No box, some of the missiles were missing, and the fins had a tendency to pop out when you least expected it.

The Hunt Is Over

Finally, many, many month later, long after the movie finished its run in the cinema, dad managed to get a pristine and new Lotus Esprit from one of our local stores.

Corgi James Bond Lotus Esprit - image from 007magazine.co.uk

Thus ends the story of the first of the 100 Geeky Objects that really define my sad, little, nerdy life. It’s strange, but I loved that car, loved that movie, but the enthusiasm my dad showed trying to find it made it more special and certainly more memorable. I think I still have it somewhere, though the missiles are long since lost, and while it has the box, I don’t think the inner cardboard with the submarine printed on it, or the black plastic clips that kept it in place have survived. And I don’t think the little 007 sticker on the bonnet survived either. In my pre-teen head I probably wondered why a spy would advertise their presence on their own car.

If you want to keep up to date with the other objects, be sure to subscribe to my Substack (there will be other things on there as well, don’t worry).

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: Game you'd like to see a new EDITION of...

 Onto Day Twenty-Seven of #RPGaDAY2023 and we're into weirdly prophetic territory. Back in the first year of #RPGaDAY I set the same question, and my answers were - 

... James Bond 007, the amazing cool Victory Games RPG of playing agents in the world of James Bond; and Star Trek. There had been the FASA, the Last Unicorn Games, and the Decipher versions of a Star Trek roleplaying game, but since that video I was even lucky enough to be involved in the early development stages of Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures. 

Since then Star Trek Adventures has evolved into something even bigger than I'd hoped, and it just keeps going from strength to strength. Gorgeous books, lovely minis, and now tackling things like Discovery, Lower Decks, and more. (Personally, I'd like to see a weird alternate timeline book for the Kelvinverse, but that is just me). 

Unfortunately, Bond hasn't happened. And I don't think it will for a while, at least not until EON choose a new Bond and decide what they are doing with the Bond universe. 

So what would I say now? 

I'd still love to see a new edition of Ghostbusters, capturing the spirit (pardon the pun) and humour of that first West End Games edition. I'd love to see a new Star Wars RPG, as things seem to have come to a halt with the Fantasy Flight/Edge version - had a blast playing that one. I'd also love to see a new edition of WitchCraft, maybe using Cinematic Unisystem to speed things up, and add more action, employing the magic system of Buffy. And I'd love to see a new version of Star Frontiers, but we won't mention the horrible one that almost happened recently. 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY TWENTY-TWO: Best SECONDHAND RPG Purchase

 

Day twenty-two of #RPGaDAY2023, and it's another one asking what you've been buying... weird. When I wrote these questions ten years ago I really was fixated on possessions. 

And my answers for this question the first time around were the first edition versions of CJ Carella's WitchCraft and Armageddon RPGs. 

I don't mind a good secondhand RPG, especially if it fills a gap in the collection. I managed to finally get the Octopussy supplement for James Bond 007 secondhand which completed the Bond collection, and multiple Star Trek RPGs (FASA, Last Unicorn, Decipher) when I was researching during my tenure working on Star Trek Adventures. 

One of my favourite secondhand purchases was the original Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium RPG that was produced before the corporate buyouts and so on. Only 3000 of them printed, and I managed to get it for a not horrific price (though it does smell a bit smokey - I've been trying to fumigate it with cinnamon for years, to make it smell like the spice melange). 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY NINETEEN: Favourite PUBLISHED adventure

 

On to Day Nineteen of #RPGaDAY2023, and we're asking about favourite published adventure. Back at the beginning of #RPGaDAY I narrowed it down to the rather cool For Your Eyes Only adventure for the James Bond 007 game by Victory Games, and the Judas Grail for second edition Kult. 

Has my opinion changed? They're still cool, but since then we've played the great adventures in Tales From The Loop (including Our Friends the Machines), we've done the excellent first Blade Runner adventure, and I've edited a great set of adventures (The Timeless Library, The Echo Chamber, and The Hermit's Lantern) for the Doctor Who Second Edition starter set. 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY SIXTEEN: Game you WISH you owned

 Another slightly sad one, as I looked back at the original response to Day Sixteen's question of Game You Wish You Owned, and the video featured a lot of my lovely old cat Marla. 

And there's a bit about 4:10 in where I give her a bit of a pet on the chin. Must admit, made me fill up a little there. I do miss her. 

Back to the topic, #RPGaDAY2023 asks that question again, game you wish you owned. Since I recorded that video I managed to complete my James Bond collection - hurrah!! 

So what game do I wish I owned? I dunno... I'd kinda like to have the old boxed sets of Star Frontiers again - I know they're available as POD hardcovers, but there was something nostalgic about those old TSR sets. 

I'd also like to get my grubby mitts on a copy of Invisible Sun, but I get the feeling I'd just be happy with the books rather than whole cube thing. 

Both of those things take money, so they're not going to happen for a while. Maybe if I see copies cheap at a convention or something.

Of course, the game I most wish I owned hasn't been made, it's still in my head, and requires an even more substantial investment. One day... 'maybe there's hope'.

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY FOURTEEN: Favourite CONVENTION purchase

Day Fourteen of #RPGaDAY2023 and it's another look at one of the first year's questions. When this happened the first time around, this was timed to be a question during GenCon weekend. A little different this time around, but heck, let's go for it. 

Back at the start of #RPGaDAY, answering this question, I mentioned the Thrilling Locations supplement for the Victory Games James Bond 007 RPG. Weird to think I've been to a few conventions since then, and I very rarely buy anything at them (mostly because I'm broke). So it's probably the same answer all these years later!

Your Licensed Game Is Awesome!

Been a while since I've posted anything on here, I know. The last post was prompted by some serious backlash against a game I had been collaborating on, and the internet space was all getting a bit nasty. So, I took a break from the internet, focused on my work, and doing stuff in the evenings that wasn't tabletop writing.

I dipped my toes into the internet waters again to see if there was anything good happening, and stumbled upon an article in my feed (which I won't link to) that basically said licensed tabletop roleplaying games sucked. I was angry, hurt, and offended - mostly as the image they used for it was the cover of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. So, everyone was seeing this article with the headline 'Your Game Sucks' with an image of the game I'd been working on (off and on) for the last thirteen years.

Hard not to be offended!

The actual article itself was basically saying that licensed RPGs were bad, because you (as a player) didn't have the power of a bunch of scriptwriters, and no game could feel as cool as the licensed property it was based upon. 

So I thought I'd take to the blog, and voice my rebuttal. 

Licensed RPGs are awesome.

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Some of the best roleplaying games I've played, and the most fun I've had, have been playing licensed tabletop RPGs. The first game I GM'd was Star Frontiers, and I was so obsessed with movies and TV series that I populated the epic star-scape of Star Frontiers with lightsabers, T-800 Terminators, Transformers, and more. However, when publishers started actually making RPGs based on some of the movies and series I was so fanatical about, that was when I started having the most fun with roleplaying.

The first licensed game I bought and played was the, now legendary, TSR Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG. Sure, it didn't have character creation in the basic box, and I spent hours typing up a character creation chapter of my own to allow players to generate their own globe-trotting adventurers. But we had fun with it, playing ridiculous adventures of raiding tombs, punching nazis, and action packed thrills. It was great, and something that sticks with me to this day is the excellent 'Judges Survival Pack'. In that little supplement was, not only the character creation rules I desired, but also some fantastic 'random tomb generator' tools, to ensure the GM (or Judge) had a fresh ancient tomb, filled with traps, on hand.

To top this off, there was the amazing 'Chase Flow Chart' that provided an endless stream of roads, buildings, paths, and obstacles for foot or vehicular chases. It was brilliant, and a fantastic idea that I haven't really seen again. 

Hot on the heels of that in my gaming was another legendary game — Ghostbusters. The 'Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game' produced by West End Games. 

To say this game changed my life is an understatement. It was written with a comedic tone filled with self-referential comments and jokes, that made it an absolute joy to read. I LOVE Ghostbusters. Seriously, I was obsessed with the first film, so much so that I bought the VHS when the film came out on rental, before it was available to buy, so I could watch it over and over again. 

I read the game, chuckling away to myself at the jokes and just how cool the game was. This was fun to read, and I had that moment of clarity when I realised if it was that much fun to read, it must have been fun to write — I want to do that!!

As documented here on the blog, I spent hours sat at an electric typewriter, hammering away to create adventures for Ghostbusters, photocopying the manuscripts and sending them off to West End Games. Waiting months for it to get there, and eagerly awaiting a reply. While it was a "no", it was an encouraging no, and it is the reason I wanted to become a roleplaying game writer and designer.

Shortly after Ghostbusters, the seemingly unstoppable West End Games produced the one game I wanted more than anything in the Universe — Star Wars. I was obsessed with Star Wars from before I'd even seen it, from the moment my dad brought home those first couple of action figures for me. Everything was Star Wars, and nothing could top it for me. When I first started roleplaying, Traveller and Star Frontiers were just Star Wars in my head. So when WEG brought out the Star Wars roleplaying game, using a version of the Ghostbusters D6 system, I was instantly sold.

It was great, and we had many epic games of dodging swarms of TIE Fighters, using force powers, shooting at Stormtroopers, and sneaking around Imperial bases.

The production was cool, and after so many years of black and white illustration in roleplaying rulebooks, to have them punctuated with glossy inserts of full colour, and that "Join the Imperial Navy" advert that looked like the armed forces ads that we were familiar with, was just brilliant. Seriously loved that game.

It was towards the end of the 'golden age' of my roleplaying gaming (before I had a bit of a break from gaming) that I delved into the realms of Victory Games' James Bond 007 RPG. 

Again, another perfectly executed game, with brilliant rules to make your character the suave and educated spy that you'd expect from a Bond movie. I loved Bond movies, from my first trip to see The Man With The Golden Gun, so to get the opportunity to run games with cool gadgets, powerful villains, and dangerous henchmen, I couldn't pass it up. After picking up the main boxed set, and one of the adventures, I saw how fantastic the production values were on them, especially the amazing handouts, and saw the awesome chase rules, I just couldn't stop until I had the complete collection (a collection I only really managed to complete in the last few years).

However, the James Bond 007 RPG is often regarded as being the first game to employ 'Hero Points' — a revolutionary development that has continued into games even today. Fantastic.

I'd taken a break from gaming, and returned to the scene in the early 90's when Vampire caught my eye, but many years later I became obsessed with the TV series The X-Files. As there wasn't a roleplaying game for The X-Files, a friend of mine recommended the closest thing, in the form of Eden Studios' Conspiracy X. This got me reading Eden's games, and got me my first real writing gig in the gaming sphere... I was busy working on Terra Primate when Eden got in touch about another of my favourite TV shows of the time...

Eden Studios' Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG is another one of those brilliant licensed games that actually felt like the source material. Using a lighter version of CJ Carella's Unisystem, the Buffy RPG cleverly meant that you had to fight vampires to weaken them, before you could stake them. Just that little element meant that you had to punch and kick those pesky bloodsuckers until you could stake them, which meant it felt like an episode of Buffy. You did research, you went on patrol, you beat up some vamps, and dusted them. 

And the whole book was written in that lighthearted and accessible way that Ghostbusters was, filled with pop-culture references in the way the Buffy series was, and the way the Buffy characters talked. Just fantastic.

Filled with full colour glossy images, it was freaking glorious, and perfect for a group of vampire hunters, witches, watchers, or even slayers (if you continue from the end of season seven). I loved working on those books, and watching episodes over and over to get the floorplans for locations. 

When it comes to licensed RPGs that do things brilliantly, and perfectly reflect their source material, it's hard to ignore Leverage, published by Margaret Weiss Productions. Utilising a streamlined and modified version of their Cortex system (that was so brilliantly employed in their Smallville RPG), it boils stats and skills down to their core components, and the roles the characters have in the heist - hitter, hacker, thief, mastermind, and grifter. Everyone can do everything, but some are specialists in their field. 

Add to this the brilliant way they construct the anatomy of a heist, it's just a revelation. It was really one of those games where I read through it and kept saying 'I wish I'd thought of that' over and over again. 

Mentioning Smallville though, the relationship mapping when you're creating the game — how everyone knows each other, and significant places and events, is just brilliant. Seriously, you should check it out if you can. And it's a great supers game as well, where the characters don't feel impossibly overpowered.

Okay, you're probably getting bored by now, so I'll just do two more before I wrap up.

One of my favourite games of the last ten years — heck, one of my favourite games ever — is a licensed game. Based upon the artwork and artbook of Simon Stålenhag, Tales from the Loop is an amazing game, and an absolute revelation when I read it. In an alternate 1980s, where robots are common, and weird experiments at the Loop have resulted in time travel, weirdness, and mutation, Tales from the Loop allows players to return to school days and investigate strange goings on. 

Not only does it perfectly capture the feel of the era and the paintings, but it was a complete revelation in rules design for me. The size of the rules section was so small, with an emphasis in the book on the setting and story, constructing mysteries and investigations, it just opened my eyes to how minimal the rules of a game could be. 

We had some fantastic games of Tales from the Loop, one so epic the characters aged to enter the Things from the Flood, failed to stop the Loop going horribly wrong and sending the world into a post-apocalyptic setting of Mutant Year Zero - then time travelling back to Tales from the Loop to try to stop it! Awesome.

And I guess you can't talk licensed games, and mention Fria Ligan, without bringing up the awesome ALIEN RPG. Using a modified version of the Year Zero Engine that powered Tales from the Loop, ALIEN added new stress mechanics that really made you feel like you were in an ALIEN movie. The couple of games I've played have been some of the tensest I've experienced, with a real sense of panic from the players and characters, feeling like your character could meet a horrible fate at any moment. 

The 'acts' of the cinematic play, adding motivations that change as the acts of the story progress, are a brilliant addition, meaning you're never really sure of the other player characters' motivations, and it perfectly reflects the feel of the movies. 

I haven't seen how extended campaign play works out yet, so that's something to look into, but for a short, sharp, shocking trip into the terrors of space, it's brilliant.

Saying that I'm always in awe of Fria Ligan games is putting it mildly, and with their licensed RPG of Blade Runner launching on Kickstarter this week, you can count me in.

So there you go. I love licensed games. I want to play more of them, I want to write more of them. It's in my blood, and has been for a very, very long time. 

#RPGaDAY2021 - Day 16: MOVE

 

So this is the first day I move over from the daily video format to the blog-posts. I'm sorry, I just haven't got the time to record and edit videos - doesn't mean I won't do them eventually, they may just be a little late. To keep up with the daily posts, I thought I'd have a go at doing them here where it's a little quicker and easier... and then I saw the prompts for today.

MOVE: I remember, I started trying to record a video for this one and I couldn't think of what to discuss. So I stopped recording and gave up, and now I'm still back in the same boat.

I guess I could use this as an opportunity to talk about my favourite movement mechanics - the chase rules from Victory Games' James Bond 007 RPG. 

I mean, I talk about the game a lot on here as you know, but that game was bloody fantastic. (Typically, just as I'm typing this, the late, great Chris Cornell has just started up on the music channel on TV singing the absolutely fantastic 'You Know My Name' from my favourite Bond movie of all time - Casino Royale). 

Anyway, the chase rules (much like most of the rules in the James Bond RPG) are great and really capture the feel of the books and the films. It's all about how risky you want to get, and whether the opponent can match your risk - but if you set the stakes too high, you could crash and it could all come to an end pretty quickly.

In fact, this whole post could quickly evolve into becoming a TRIBUTE to how good that game is. And it wouldn't be the first time I have when it comes to the Bond RPG.

However, continuing the TRIBUTE to it, we can look at one of the coolest ideas for a supplement you could imagine for the James Bond RPG, and that is Villains. After all, what is a good Bond book or movie without a spectacular VILLAIN to act as the dangerous threat that Bond (or your hapless agents) has to face and stop?

The Villains supplement, much like 80% of the supplements for Bond, was another glorious boxed set that presented seven new nemesis... nemeses... nemesises... Villains, along with the structure of any organisations that they controlled, any henchpersons in their employ, and just what they are scheming. It also included an adventure that introduced SMERSH.

Awesome.

Of course, this is all a great addition to any James Bond game, because, while the core boxed set and core rulebook provided all of the stats for many of the major villains and characters from the movies, the one FIEND they couldn't include was Ernst Stavro Blofeld. This was due to the weird copyright and legal battles that plagued the Bond movies for years as the ownership of Blofeld and SPECTRE was put into dispute. It was only during the Daniel Craig era that these problems were put to rest and Blofeld could return.

Of course, with Modiphius announcing a SPECTRE boardgame coming very soon, I'm very intrigued and will be watching their future announcements very closely. I've been itching to get my hands on a new Bond RPG for decades (and been wanting to write one for just as long). 

That's it for today's #RPGaDAY post for #RPGaDAY2021.

Until tomorrow, stay safe and stay multiclassy!!

 

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 1)

These are strange and troubling times for everybody, and I've been trying to keep motivated and actually do creative stuff, but getting my brain in gear and actually doing it is tricky when your mind is racing with the mild panic and paranoia of the world today.

Just trying to think about writing a roleplaying game when your brain is racing through every worry known, wondering what the point is producing a game or two for a world that's falling apart...

But I've been getting there. The writing is happening (albeit slowly) and I've been finding that doing these little blog posts every day - little flashes back to simpler times when you could go out without being so paranoid you feel like throwing up - have been helping to get my mind in the right place.

Each day I've been doing a post about media that has had a big impact on my life. It kinda started with a look at the music that shaped me, then tabletop roleplaying games, and I moved onto the TV shows that have had an impact. Most recently I've listed the fourteen comics that had the biggest influence on my life.

So I thought I'd keep going. It gets me motivated to start writing when I actually want to sleep for about three months and hope that when I wake it'll all be back to normal. What to do next? I've done TV, roleplaying games, music, and comics. I guess the obvious thing that is missing from the list is movies - I love movies. I have always loved movies, and they've been a constant and huge influence on my life from a very young age.

I was going to do fourteen - like the comics - so it would last two weeks. But movies have been such a major part of my life that I decided to do twenty.

There will be humour, horror, excitement and tears. Hope I don't bore you too much with my memories.

--

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)

May as well start your movie going life with a big one! Not the first film I saw at the cinema, that would be Snow White from what I was told. I can't remember that at all, I was waaaay too young. I have a really vague memory of going to see The Three Musketeers (1973) - the version with Michael York and Oliver Reed. I must have only been about five or six at the time, but it was fun, and a cool day out with my parents.

But it was the next film that really stuck in my mind and really got me into movies in a big way. That was The Man With The Golden Gun. It was a bit of a weird one, as I have this memory of my parents not telling me where we were going. A trip to the cinema was a bit of a day out for us, as the nearest cinema was a good 45min drive away into the nearest city (and my dad really didn't like driving there much). I got into the car and they didn't tell me anything. We were getting close to the city and I asked where we were going, and I remember my dad saying we were going to see a particular glam rock artist who won't be named here (I didn't like him then, and he's since become a bit of a controversial figure). I was annoyed, upset and disappointed as you can imagine...

Luckily, it was all a ruse to keep me guessing and we were soon going into the old Cecil cinema for my first experience of a James Bond movie. Couldn't have asked for a better introduction, with the cool opening sequence in Saramanga's weird funhouse target range.

The whole thing was just great, especially when you think I must have been about six or seven (it wasn't busy so it must have been after the Christmas it was released, and into the following year). It had car chases, an insane car jump, guns, martial arts, tracking devices, and a face off at the end in that creepy funhouse target range again.

From then I was hooked. My mum was a big fan of Bond, and owned all of the novels (old Pan editions that I still have today), and she encouraged my fandom. We watched the movies when they were on TV, and we made another cinema trip in 1977 to go and see The Spy Who Loved Me. I have a distinct memory of us stopping at the toy shops on the way home from the cinema, my dad almost as enthusiastic as me, to try and get a Corgi Lotus Esprit that turned into a submarine. Of course, the toy shops were sold out, the car being immensely popular. I think my dad ended up buying me/us the Stromberg Jet Ranger helicopter helicopter that fired little missiles.

Anyway, that was the first big movie that shaped my life, making me a Bond fan from a very early age.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Games That Shaped Me (Part 3)

James Bond 007 Roleplaying Game - Victory Games (1983)

Oh boy. Number three in my list of seven tabletop roleplaying games that had a massive impact on me and my gaming is another one of my favourite games of all time. Victory Games' James Bond 007 RPG. It's hard to know where to begin with this one.

My gaming group had diminished a little as a huge chunk of them had vanished off to university, and I was looking for a game I could run with fewer players. Couple that with me being a massive fan of James Bond, it was an ideal choice. Little did I know what I was getting into.

The game is simply stunning and presented some revolutionary game design that has inspired game systems for years since. It ran brilliantly, and tackled aspects that you'd expect from being a secret agent in Bond's world - chases, shootouts, gambling, seduction, torture, and being an expert in high class luxury.

The supplements are something I absolutely adore. Each supplement (well, most of them anyway) came as a boxed set with an envelope of props marked "For Your Eyes Only", along with a mini GM screen, maps, and more. The added genius of it was it took the plots of the movies/books and turned them completely on their heads. If you went into an adventure and you were familiar with the movie, you could assume the way the plot was going to head - but it wouldn't do you any good. It updated the plots, twisted them around, and kept the players on their toes.

The "A View to A Kill" adventure - so darned cool

I ran a lot of the adventures - I seem to remember running For Your Eyes Only two or three times with different players, each with very different outcomes.

I managed to complete the collection a couple of years ago (though I still haven't tracked down an affordable copy of Assault! The tabletop battles game based around the end of You Only Live Twice) when I finally tracked down a relatively cheap copy of Octopussy.

It's still an awesome game, and one I've longed to revive in a new edition for many, many years. Heck, I've written to, called and emailed EON a few times, and even started to put together a pitch for a new Bond RPG... but I wonder if it, like Harry Potter, is an impossible quest.

One day maybe.

Tarotica (Part I)

Let's get back to normal things shall we? By that I mean my usual mix of nostalgia, game design and rambling on about stuff. I had this weird idea a number of months ago to do a few blog posts about Tarot.

I know, it's weird, but I've always had this strange fascination with Tarot. One that I remember from my dim and distant childhood and has stayed with me right into the development of my roleplaying game - WILD.

The first real memory I have of Tarot is from James Bond. My parents got me interested in movies at a young age, and one of the first movies I remember them taking me to see was The Man With the Golden Gun. I was instantly hooked. My mum dug out her collection of Ian Fleming novels for me to have a look at and one of the first records I ever bought was an LP of James Bond themes. Yes, I got obsessed with things very easily. I guess some things never change!

But this was the late 1970s, and we didn't have things like video recorders and so on. Luckily, in January 1980, ITV in the UK showed Live and Let Die for the first time. In the TVTimes before it aired there were production drawings and designs for the gadgets and the stunts, and I kept those pages for many years to come. However, during Live and Let Die, the now famous scene introducing Jane Seymour's character - Solitaire, I was a bit confused by the weird cards she was using.

Solitaire reads the Tarot cards - Live and Let Die

Colour me sheltered, but up until this point my eleven year old brain was purely focused on spaceships, lego, and Star Wars figures, and certainly not on the esoteric.

My dad told me about Tarot cards, and how they were used for fortune telling, but they sounded weird and mysterious, and not to be messed with.

It wasn't long after this that my father bought his first (and to my knowledge, his only) deck of Tarot cards. Maybe he was as inspired by watching Bond as I was? Dad was always intrigued by these things and I remember him bringing the pack home, though I wasn't allowed to play with them.

Course, it wouldn't be long before my obsession with James Bond movies would collide with my biggest pastime - tabletop roleplaying games. When the James Bond RPG came out from Victory Games I was not only amazed at the incredible production values, but the game was fantastic too. We played a LOT of sessions of the Bond RPG. A LOT!

But something was different about the Bond RPG. Due to the licensing issues at the time, a certain villain and his vast organisation that featured so heavily in the movies could not be used. Instead of Ernst Stavro Blofeld we had Karl Ferenc Skorpios. And instead of SPECTRE, we had TAROT.

Intriguing.

Dad eventually decided he was never going to use those Tarot cards, and gave them to me. I still have that set now - the "Tarot Fortune Telling Game" as it was called came complete with a book to assist in working out the divinatory meanings of the cards, as well as a sheet that showed you where to place the cards, and explained what each card position meant.

My dad's one and only Tarot set, purchased in the early 1980's.

They weren't anything too fancy or pretty, very old and traditional illustrations. I don't know if it's because the names of the cards were in French, but they felt mysterious. Like that book cover of a horror novel that scares you but you can't help but look at. I never did a reading, looked at the cards once in a while but didn't really return to them for many years.

It wouldn't really be until the very early 1990s that I would find myself drawn to the cards again...

--

I had left school, was unemployed for a little and, after a spell working in Nature Conservation and Archaeology, had gone back to college to do art and graphic design (much to my mother's delight). At the end of my BTEC the course tutors were really keen to get all of their students onto degree courses around the country. While initially I wasn't too fussed about going away to a university, I still applied as it kept the tutors quiet. My first couple of choices of places to go didn't accept my application, but my third choice asked me for an interview.

Before the interview, well in advance, the University sent a letter - an assignment that was part of the interview process. I was tasked with painting, drawing, sculpting or whatever, a self portrait. For some strange reason, I can't remember why, I decided that for my self portrait I'd create a deck of Tarot cards. Time was limited, so I focused on the Major Arcana.

To make it a self portrait, I looked at the meaning of each of the cards, and how that related to my life at the time. Then, I got some friends to take photos of me in various poses, and used them as a basis for a mixed media collage for each card. I know, it's a pretty lame idea, but it seemed to be okay. The cards were very oversized - each one A5 - and I created a box for them with a suitable quote from David Byrne on it: "People will remember you better if you always wear the same outfit." As I always wore completely black, I thought this particularly apt.

My first, rather bad, attempt at creating my first Tarot deck, as part of a self portrait assignment for University.

It seemed to work as I was accepted at the University, and while I could tell the tutors in the interview were underwhelmed by my portfolio, they liked the originality of a self portrait presented as Tarot cards.

I'll continue the Tarot stuff later, looking at my favourite decks, and look a bit more at creating a specific deck for WILD.

Until next time, who knows what fortune awaits?

#RPGaDAY2018 - DAY 23: Which game do you hope to play again?

Day twenty-three of #RPGaDAY2018 asks "which game do you hope to play again?"

So many games! So, so many!

We've just finished playing an epic game of Tales from the Loop, running through the "Four Seasons of Mad Science" that is in the core rulebook, and that was a complete blast. Really enjoyed playing that, and look forward to playing Tales from the Loop again sometime in the future.

I guess I could dial it right back on the way-back machine and think of the old games that I used to love and haven't revisited. I mean, I'd love to play WitchCraft again, but I'd be tempted to run it with cinematic Unisystem instead of the full "classic" Unisystem. I kinda miss playing urban fantasy horror. The Mage/Kult/WitchCraft game that we played over many years was awesome.

Further back, I'd love to play James Bond again, just to see if it is still as much fun as I remember. Still one of the biggest influences on me, along with the Ghostbusters RPG. I still have the complete set of the Bond RPG (minus the mini-games and the Assault desktop battles game) and it's still a gorgeous work. I started thinking about merging the system with Vortex a while ago... maybe I'll give it another tinker sometime.

I did have a weird desire to reread Star Frontiers, going way back to my start of gaming back in the early 80's. I wonder how that holds up after all these years?

There we go, what do you hope to play again?

Until tomorrow's question, stay multi-classy!!