Day Twenty-Eight of #RPGaDAY2023 returns to the question of the initial year, asking what is the SCARIEST game you've played.
I'm afraid that this answer is the same as the first year - Kult, most notably 2nd Edition Kult, is still the scariest thing I've played. Really cool and unsettling, without resorting to the extremes of its most recent edition.
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.
Day Eight of #RPGaDAY2023 has a very different answer to the original one from all those years ago. Back then, I'd mostly been GMing, so my video focussed on my players' characters, and characters from the epic Mage/Kult/WitchCraft game we'd done in the past.
Now, however, I've been playing a lot more, and haven't GM'd in years. My favourite character is probably going to be 'Stevie', the daughter of a grumpy couple who ran an arcade in 1980's Yarmouth in our epic Tales From The Loop game. After discovering mind-controlling VHS tapes, weird time portals, and trying to stop the Loop facility from going horribly wrong, the characters grew and we switched into playing Things From The Flood. We failed to stop the impending apocalypse, and our game progressed into Mutant Year Zero, where we built our post-apocalypse community near the beach, and faced the horrific mutations of our family members as they became weird crab-people. We managed to get back into the Loop facility, time travelled back to the 80s, and this time we managed to stop the apocalypse.
I have to thank our good friend "Metal" Steve (as we know him) who we first met at our local comic shop. Absolute legend that he is, and a recognisable face in the local metal scene with a collection of albums that would make even the most hardcore music collector jealous. Steve introduced us to a great deal of music that we would never have experienced that really stuck with me over the years. So much so, this entry AND the following two albums were all by artists that were recommended to us by Steve. Thanks man!
Steve knew I liked Nine Inch Nails and The Sisters of Mercy, and did his best (when he wasn't recommending extreme metal from bands whose names looked like thorn bushes) to find the coolest stuff we'd be interested in. One of these was a little known band called The Whores of Babylon.
Amazing album.
Dark and operatic, with fantastically epic elements that drew upon filmic scores (even incorporating dialogue from Hellraiser at one point), the album Metropolis came along just as we were starting to play the Kult RPG (which has a realm called Metropolis). So many elements of the album (falling angels, dark urban settings, biblical themes) resonated with the game, and it's a brilliant album on top of that.
I remember they came from Bristol and had ties to fellow Bristol musicians Portishead (Beth Gibbons appears on one of the Whores tracks if I remember correctly). I wonder whatever happened to Whores of Babylon? I'd have loved to have heard more...
Last week I thought I'd start a series of blog posts about the Tarot, and how I've been influenced by their use and design over the years. On to part 2!
While attending Uni, I started hanging out at the local comic shop (Abstract Sprocket) and continued my obsession with all things Vertigo. I loved the Sandman, Shade: The Changing Man, Kid Eternity, Enigma and The Invisibles. Almost everything they brought out I loved. So, when the lovely purveyor of comics at Sprocket showed me the listing for a rather special collectors item - The Vertigo Tarot - I put in an order straight away.
The Vertigo Tarot set, published by DC Comics in 1995. Gorgeous!
What sold it to me was not only the use of Vertigo characters for the Major Arcana (The Fool is an image of John Constantine, The Empress is Titania, Queen of the Fairies from Books of Magic), but the artwork was by Dave McKean - someone whose art I've admired for years. It's a huge set, in a big white box (strangely the same size as the fabled Nobilis 2nd Edition) with the deck, and a hardback guide book that explains the images and divinatory meanings, written by Rachel Pollack. While I'd been aware of her writing from her time on Doom Patrol, I didn't know she was an authority on the Tarot as well. As I read, my eyes were opened to how the cards worked, and Rachel's explanations have become my instant go-to for Tarot readings.
However, a weird thing happened. Inspired by how cool the cards were, and the clear and informative write ups in the accompanying book, I started actually doing Tarot readings. And the weirder thing is - they seemed to be strangely accurate. I had no idea what I was doing, and maybe that is the power of the Tarot and its iconography - with the vaguest of interpretations the questioner applies the meaning to their lives and it suddenly all makes sense.
I was doing readings for myself, as well as friends from Uni and my new found gaming group...
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At Uni I rediscovered my love of tabletop roleplaying. When I'd gone into work, and then on my Graphic Design course, I'd almost put the RPG writing side of things away. I was concentrating on the comic production, and getting into Uni, and RPGs didn't really seem to be in my life. However, when I relocated to Uni I quickly fell into a game being run by my fellow students. A game that had become huge in the early 90's - Vampire: The Masquerade. The reawakening of my gaming interests has been covered before in my blog, waaaay back here.
We played a lot of Vampire, and then I kinda went off and started a new game with new players continuing the World of Darkness setting, moving over onto playing Mage: The Ascension. Wow, I loved that game. Our Mage game was huge, epic and bonkers, with some massive Paradox Backlashes that distorted reality. It inspired Debs to write her fiction, and I had my eyes opened again when they released the Mage Tarot set.
The Mage The Ascension Tarot set (pictured on the Mage rulebook)
We were very into Mage: The Ascension in a big way, so much so that Debs was the one who actually bought the Tarot set. As a card carrying Wiccan (as she liked to call herself) she took the cards very seriously, keeping them wrapped rather than boxed, and I was only allowed to handle them for short periods of time (something I respect even now - I touched them enough to put the cards on the table for the above photo before putting them carefully away).
The cards came with a little book of how to read and interpret them, though there was also a short section on using the cards to help with the RPG itself. However, the cards themselves were another revelation. Exchanging the traditional suits from Cups, Coins, Swords and Wands to Dynamism, Questing, Pattern and Primordialism was a revelation to me. You could change the suits? And use them in a roleplaying game?
Now we're getting somewhere.
The next incarnation of Mage (Mage: The Awakening) would explore this in even greater detail with a whole book called "The Keys to the Supernal Tarot" which looked at each card and how they could be used to inspire storylines and adventures. Excellent! Also helps that the art in this newer edition was bloomin' gorgeous!
Anyway, back to the right place chronologically. I had a strange moment when I wanted to continue our game but I had turned my back on the World of Darkness. I managed to fill the hole in my urban horror/magic/occult gaming with a completely different system - KULT. Again, that connection between tabletop gaming and the Tarot would come to the fore when I picked up a supplement for KULT called Taroticum.
The Taroticum supplement for 1st Edition KULT (US Edition 1994)
At its heart, Taroticum is a series of adventures that revolve around a deck of Tarot cards that can shape reality. It's an epic adventure where the characters must basically travel from London to Hell to create a missing Tarot card for the deck to save creation itself. It's wild and wacky, and I never ran it as our game morphed into a game of CJ Carella's Witchcraft.
However, the Taroticum of the game, KULT, has appeared again with the new edition (Divinity Lost) and the cards are available to purchase.
Kult: Divinity Lost set of the Taroticum cards
The Major Arcana are radically different to normal cards, 0 representing the Awakened Man (Anthropos) and 1 representing "God" (The Demiurge), 2 representing "The Devil" (Astaroth) , and the remaining 20 cards each for the 10 Archons and 10 Death Angels. The Minor Arcana is FIVE suits, rather than four, numbered 1-9 (no court cards) with each suit tied to one of the five paths of awakening - Death (Skulls), Passion (Roses), Time & Space (Hourglasses), Dream (Crescents) and Madness/Elysium (Eyes).
Having the suits represent actual elements of the game, like the Mage Tarot, has been a bit of an inspiration too. But I've gone on too long for this post. Next post will be about how I'm using the Tarot in WILD, and maybe a look at other games that use Tarot for task resolution in tabletop roleplaying.
Day twelve of #RPGaDAY2018 is the second half of WILD Weekend, asking "Wildest Character Concept". What is the weirdest character idea you've had for a game?
Most of the characters I've played have been pretty standard. I thought I was a bit radically different when we decided to play Tales from the Loop in its default setting of Sweden, but I deliberately went for an American character who knew very little Swedish...
Weirdest character concept I encountered was for a game of Kult I was GMing. All of the characters were goth-teenagers who hung around the goth clubs in London, getting drunk and messing with arcane forces. So, when a new player decided to create an eight-year-old orphan who'd escaped from a research facility and had psychic powers. I mean, interesting concept, but how a group of sulky, drunk, late teen goths would bring an eight-year-old into their group... a bit tricky. I'm sure we'd have made it work, but alas, the player generated the character and never returned, and the game never really got underway.
Oh well...
Thank you for humouring me for WILD Weekend, as a shameless way of keeping the name alive while I continue to work on WILD - the RPG of dreamshare and weirdness.
Day Thirteen of #RPGaDAY 2016 is about what makes a successful campaign? Personally, I have no idea, but I think a major contributing factor is the player's relationship with their characters. If the players really enjoy playing the characters, as I've found in a couple of games, it really seems to come together. If they can "get into character", the campaign planned can be almost completely improvised, as the characters themselves will lead the story with only a little guidance from the GM.
I remember a great Kult game we were playing, and I'd just bought a new supplement (The Judas Grail). The players remained in character, and they went off and did their own thing, dipping back into the plot of the scenario from time to time just to keep the story running. But, rather like a good serialised story, the characters and their relationships were what kept the players coming back week upon week, building an epic story that we remember even now, many years later.
So, finishing off the first column of #RPGaDAY is "What game is your group most likely to play next? Why?"
Tricky, and the simple answer is "I have no idea". We seem to be pretty happy with the Star Wars game we have going at the moment, but I guess if we were to try something else I'd be tempted to suggest going back to our roots. The game group formed playing Mage and Kult, so I guess I'd suggest the new edition of Kult, or possibly Invisible Sun, which is very intriguing...
Last night we put the band back together. Well, as best we could.
Edge (left), Stoo (via virtual reality, which worked surprisingly well) and Debs
On many occasions I've mentioned the most involved gaming sessions in my gaming history were with a few players - Edge, Tetch, Stoo and my lovely wifey. Those were some of the most intense and creepiest games when we played Mage, Kult and later WitchCraft. And I was eager to try to recapture the magic again.
Admittedly, Stoo lives miles away and had to appear via the wonders of Skype, which didn't work too badly (he could see us all and the table and everything!) and Tetch is on holiday somewhere, we thought we'd run a little trial session and see if the character creation for WILD worked.
I did a trial char-gen before, but thanks to writing the key-phrases on the WILD Cards, this worked a lot faster and easier.
Cards you say? Yes, the weird and wacky thing about WILD is that character creation involves cards. WILD can mean that your character's inner-most fears or memories can surface while dreamsharing, so it is important to have some depth to the character's history and background prior to gaming. Creating a character in WILD involves making a traditional Tarot spread using the WILD Cards.
Stoo's character creation layout.
I think it worked this time. Players who came to the table with an idea in mind for what they wanted their character to be and do still had what they wanted, but with some additional elements they hadn't considered before. Those who came without an idea had a pretty interesting launching point to get them started.
The next phase involved using a handful of spare cards each player had to create a relationship between the characters, common locations, events or people. For such a small group, there may have been too many cards involved, but that's what playtesting is all about. But it strangely worked - a location ties the characters together, and added an NPC and a person in one character's past that may have repercussions for the whole group. Not only does it tie the characters together without the "you're in a bar" first session, but it gives me as the DM (DreamMaster) some ideas for elements to draw into the game.
I talked them through the rules (not that there are many) and it all seems to make sense...
Next will be the first game. I don't know how it'll go - I have an epic and bizarre game designed for them, but it'll be the first time I put the rules into action, so we'll see how it goes.
Perfect game... wow, that's a difficult one. So may times I've thought "this is it, this game is perfect" only to discover, over time, that there are elements I'd change or do slightly differently. But, as I discuss in the video, maybe it's not so reliant upon what you actually play, more who you play it with and finding that perfect level of engagement. Special guest on the video is Ole Peder Giæver, and my sincerest apologies for my awful pronunciation of your name dude! Since chatting to him online, I've had my eyes opened to a whole new world of gaming that I never knew existed - some of it weird, some of it enlightening, and all of it very different from my gaming experiences. Seriously worth listening to what he has to say...
Tomorrow sees the start of the final week of #RPGaDAY2015 (well, the last seven days, if you include the bank holiday Monday final day)... Onto the final stretch.
Day 20, the 20th of August... just so happens to be H.P. Lovecraft's birthday. And you thought no planning went into the days and the questions! Day 20 is Favourite Horror RPG, and I've chosen a game I've spoken about many times in the past.
However, today's video also features special guest Derek Stoelting, who looks after the Unisystem books for Eden Studios, so you can probably guess his favourite straight away!
That's one of the great things about tabletop roleplaying games... They don't have to end if you don't want to. You can do some cool one shots, short adventures, and small stories, but sometimes those adventures string together into a continuing campaign that can go on and on. It's usually due to circumstances outside the game that the story ends.
I've played a few long running campaigns - the longest is probably the Vampire: The Masquerade game that became Mage: The Awakening (and then morphed into Kult, and eventually WitchCraft).
You can find out all about it in the video below, which also features a special guest in the form of gaming guru Robin D. Laws.
It's that time again. A whole month of me going on about tabletop roleplaying games again.
I'm sure there will be a few days around the end of week one when things will get a bit tight on the schedule and days may be a little late, but I'm hoping my organisation skills will save me, and my preparations will pay off.
Each day I'm hoping to post a video detailing my response, and a short-ish (depending upon how busy things get with the day-job) blog post that'll embed it.
Last year, #RPGaDAY was great, a huge success that spread further around the globe than I could have ever hoped. This year, I'm just happy to have you take part again. Thanks everyone.
So, lets get this show on the road...
Day 1 - Forthcoming Game You're Most Looking Forward To
Today's video I'm helped out by the ever cool Dominic McDowall-Thomas, who sent me his video from the incredibly warm GenCon 2015 dealer hall during set-up day this week. Thanks Dom!
Definitely, the game I'm most looking forward to is the new edition of Kult. I loved Kult, and I'm eager to see what it's like with a new game system.
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Above all, I hope you enjoy #RPGaDAY2015. I know a lot of people enjoyed last year and found it motivating with the writing and videoblogging, and inspirational.
Wow. Well, August is over, and #RPGaDAY was amazing. I thought it would just be a bit of fun - August is a bad month for a number of reasons, and it would be a good distraction - and I thought it would be nice to talk about the cool and positive side of tabletop gaming, and get everyone reminiscing and feeling nostalgic for those great games we've played, characters we loved, and encounters that have stayed with us over the years.
I really wasn't expecting it to be so readily adopted by so many people worldwide. To hear the name "Autocratik" being spoken on Brazilian vid-casts as people the other side of the planet to me started discussing their favourite adventure and favourite games was just amazing.
Thank you everybody who took part, started following me on Twitter or liked the Facebook page, or just spread the word about #RPGaDAY. Thank you everyone.
I've seen people comment saying that it has helped with their word count to get their blog-writing motivation going, some have said that it has helped them through a bad month as well, some even mentioned that they've learned a lot about writing through working through the questions. I'm just stunned. I'm really overwhelmed that people got so much out of it. Fantastic.
Quite a few people I've followed have summed up their 31 entries in a simple, single blog entry and have suggested that I do the same. So here goes!
Day 1 - First Game Played
As chronicled many, many, many, many months ago, it was original LBB Traveller.
Day 2 - First RPG Gamemastered
Again, chronicled in the early days of this blog, it was the glorious Star Frontiers.
Day 3 - First RPG Purchased
The blue (wizard) covered AD&D Player's Handbook. Bought that before Star Frontiers, to join in with the AD&D game. Still owned today.
Day 4 - Most Recent RPG Purchase
The rather awesome Atomic Robo RPG (powered by Fate), bought at the same time as the new D&D 5th Edition / D&D Next Starter Set.
Day 5 - Most Old-School RPG Owned
While I looked at the old white-box Warhammer, I plumped for TSR's old spy RPG Top Secret. (Finding it hard to write that without the exclamation point, but that's a whole different kind of game involving Val Kilmer...)
Day 6 - Favourite RPG You Never Get to Play
I went for Leverage. Amazing looking game, just don't really have any players...
Day 7 - Most Intellectual RPG Owned
Had to be Nobilis. Gorgeous, but way, waaaay smarter than I am.
Day 8 - Favourite Character
As I don't get to play much, as I GM more than I play, I opted for a bunch of characters that I enjoyed GMing for - the old Mage / Kult / WitchCraft game I used to play. The rather amazing little group of goths that hung around a strange mansion in north London. Awesome.
Day 9 - Favourite Die / Dice Set
I went for my very first D20, which I store in a sad little display box...
Day 10 - Favourite tie in Novel / Game Fiction
The rather amazing Dark*Matter novels which captured the weird X-Files feeling perfectly and kept my head in the right mood for writing Conspiracy X 2.0.
Day 11 - Weirdest RPG Owned
There were a few that leapt to mind. I went for Price of Freedom, which was an odd choice for a subject for a game. While I nearly went for the Xena and Hercules RPG by WEG, I also picked out the Neon Genesis Evangelion RPG, which I've never read as it's entirely in Japanese.
Day 12 - Old RPG You Still Play / Read
I've just started playing a fantasy game that uses the Buffy version of Cinematic Unisystem, so that's really the old RPG I still play (possibly because it's the only game I still play at the moment).
Day 13 - Most Memorable Character Death
Ah, my poor and stupid thief character who enjoyed setting off traps. I guess he deserved everything he got. Pull those levers, see what they do!!!
Day 14 - Best Convention Purchase
One of the elusive supplements for the James Bond RPG - Thrilling Locations!
Day 15 - Favourite Convention Game
CJ Carella's demos of Buffy that were happening on the table next to the Eden Studios stand at Gen Con UK was amazing.
Day 16 - Game You Wish You Owned
Coming back to the awesome James Bond RPG by Victory Games, I picked the Assault tabletop battle game that I was missing. And possibly some of the other Bond supplements I'm missing like Dr No and Octopussy...
Day 17 - Funniest Game You've Played
It could only really be one choice, and that was Ghostbusters... love that game.
Day 18 - Favourite Game System
While I love Unisystem, really enjoyed oWoD, and WEG's D6 system, I've had the most fun writing and using the Vortex system. Bit of a gratuitous self-plug, but it's not because it's the best game system, but one I've had the most fun with.
Day 19 - Favourite Published Adventure
I picked out two - again with the James Bond with For Your Eyes Only, and secondly with the immensely creepy Kult RPG's "The Judas Grail".
Day 20 - Game You'll Still Play in 20 Years' Time
Again, I went for something a little self-referential, and mentioned WILD.
Day 21 - Favourite Licensed RPG
While I could have mentioned James Bond, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Buffy, Firefly, etc... I decided to rant about the lack of Harry Potter RPG, and how much I want to write it...
Day 22 - Best Secondhand RPG Purchase
Which were the first editions of CJ Carella's games WitchCraft and Armageddon. One day I'll get them signed...
Day 23 - Coolest Looking RPG Product
I love square books... so it has to be Nobilis again!
Day 24 - Most Complicated RPG Owned
I own a lot of complicated games, but I think GURPS and 4th Edition D&D would probably win... But a special mention goes to Space Opera.
Day 25 - Favourite RPG no one else wants to play...
Everway look amazing, but I get the feeling that I'd never get any of the players I know to give it a go...
Day 26 - Coolest Character Sheet
The coolest character sheet that I've seen in recent years has to be the amazing Numenera RPG's sheet... very cool, gorgeous and folds in an interesting way!
Day 27 - Game You'd Most Like to See A New / Improved Version Of...
Again, another chance for me to rant about games I'd love to write - James Bond and Star Trek.
Day 28 - Scariest RPG Played
Some of the events and encounters in the Kult game were incredibly tense, and one of the most jittery experiences of gaming I've had.
Day 29 - Most Memorable Encounter
This one had to be John's Call of Cthulhu game, with one of our player characters going mad and running off to become a follower of Y'golonac, sprouting mouths in the palms of his hands. Really creepy.
Day 30 - Rarest RPG Owned
I love the limited editions of games, but like a lot of avid RPG collectors, the rarest and favourite of my RPG collection is Last Unicorn Games' "Dune" RPG.
Day 31 - Favourite RPG of all time...
Surprising everyone, my favourite RPG (well certainly the one I have the fondest memories of) is West End Games' Star Wars RPG. Glorious game, setting the bar for licensed RPGs to follow...
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And that was it!!
If you want to suggest topics for the daily questions for next year, feel free to drop me a line in the comments.
This doesn't mean scenario you've had published, just a scenario that was published that you've run or played in and enjoyed. It can be a purchased scenario, or one that was printed in a magazine, or a freebie download or something.
In my case, I had difficulty choosing between two. The first being the rather awesome James Bond RPG - I ran the "For Your Eyes Only" scenario three or four times for different people and had very different outcomes each time. Fantastic game.
The other was The Judas Grail scenario for the legendary RPG "Kult". Never finished running the game, the players kept getting distracted and going off in different directions, but it was great fun and Kult is still an amazing game that has stayed in mind all this time.
I don't really play an awful lot, so instead I used Day 8 of #RPGaDAY to talk about some of the cool characters I've GMd for over the years. My favourite being this group of sulky goth Mages...
A bit of a follow up to this week’s earlier E3 post (“I got your backwards compatibility right here!”), I’ve been following the big announcements from E3 to see if there was anything that remotely made me excited for video games again. On the whole, it’s just been shooty-shooty-shooty. There was the surprising announcement that Microsoft were launching a new Xbox360 and were dedicated to supporting the console for the next twelve months. Lots of new games coming out for it, but it’s really just putting off the inevitable – when the 360 has become a thing of the past and all my old games are redundant. Microsoft were not doing themselves any favours with their comments about the 360 being their product for people who don’t want to be connected to the internet all of the time, and Sony’s potential library of back catalogue being available may give us some hope that older games are going to be available to keep in some form or another (though probably not). But on the whole, besides a couple of interesting exceptions to the rule, the whole of E3 was about carrying a gun, and shooting someone. Or carrying a sword and stabbing them. Or maybe just punching them in the face. I’m not the only one bored by it all. Variety reported an interesting panel at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where the biggest names in cinema – George Lucas and Steven Spielberg – discussed the future of movies and video games. Lucas said, “the games industry can and will create empathic characters, but it hasn’t so far because it’s been driven by hard-core gamers who enjoy onscreen violence.” I’ll come back to that panel in a future blog post to discuss Lucas’ theory of entertainment taking to controlling your dreams. However, in amongst all of the bloodshed, shooting, fast cars and the inevitable zombie plagues, there was one phrase that kept being repeated over and over again. Open World Environment. They’re taking it to mean that you can go anywhere, and do anything you like. The first one I really remember being like this was Grand Theft Auto, though (in my opinion) this was truly perfected in Red Dead Redemption. But let’s stick to GTA shall we?
GTA IV - Gorgeous looking isn't it?
Before I start, let’s just get this clear – I LOVE GTA. GTA IV, and Red Dead Redemption are possibly my favourite video games ever. Sure, you could say they’re the usual men-shooting-each-other games, but certainly in Red Dead’s case, the shooting was done reluctantly, and there was an emotional plot that would but many blockbuster movies to shame. Grand Theft Auto IV is another work of genius. The “open world environment” is huge, the whole of Liberty City (though this is tiny compared to the open plains of Red Dead). Once the plot had opened up all of the islands of Liberty City, you could drive around everywhere. Get in a boat and go out in the sea, or take a helicopter around the city. Fantastic. You could do lots of cool and crazy stuff, like jump out of helicopters, drive cars off of rooftops or through the subway system, or just take in the sights. Go to the bar, have a few drinks. Go to the golf driving range, play darts, or just cause mayhem and wait for the police to take you down. Seems pretty open world doesn’t it? Let's look at this...
It’s an image of the game, looking at a borough of Liberty City. Fantastic isn’t it? The detail, the size of it all. However, can you go in the buildings? Well, you can, but only a select few. You can go into the shops, the bars, the houses that you own, and ones that are either locations of prearranged action scenes and missions, or the houses of the filthy crims you’re working for. But that's it. The rest are just blocks that have graphic images of fake windows and doors. Suddenly, your open world isn’t quite so open. You can drive into the airport, but you can’t book a flight on a plane. You can steal a helicopter, but you can’t leave Liberty City. You can hijack a boat, but you can’t sail off into the sunset. Your open world is a snowglobe, filled with fake plastic buildings with fake doors that don’t open. This is not a criticism against Rockstar Games. As I’ve said, I love GTA, I love them all with a passion, and I still play GTA IV now, many years after it came out. I can’t wait for GTAV, though I get the feeling that I’m going to be rubbish at it (because, as I discuss elsewhere on this blog, I’m bad at video games). No, this is the limitation of the console, of the computing power, and what it can do. My wife is brilliant. I’m not just saying it because she’s my wife, but she has this knack – this ability to think outside of the box. She loves video games too – she plays a lot more than I do. She’s actually finished Assassin’s Creed (all of them), the new Tomb Raider, and all of the Halo games (I still haven't finished 4 yet). But while she’s playing video games, you can see the frustration there. She doesn’t want to run into the next area to start shooting at the next wave of pre-destined goons. She wants to have a look around, see the scenery, look for any little areas she may have missed, look for secret passageways, and find the cool stuff. This may come from the first couple of Tomb Raider games where you could take your time, find new ways around, find secret areas and investigate. But this seems to be lost with modern games and their “run in blasting and don’t look at the surroundings” mentality. If she was playing GTA, she’d be off wondering why she couldn’t go into the neighbour’s building, go into that shop, climb to that roof… all of the things you can’t do. In order to be able to go into every house, to leave the city, to talk to random people, to go off on new adventures that are spontaneous you'd need a computer the size of a college dorm, or to get into MMORPGs. But you know what does have a truly open world environment? Tabletop roleplaying games. Yes, we’re back to that argument again. Want to go into the neighbour’s house? No problem. Talk to the neighbours and ask if there have been any strange happenings recently? Maybe the neighbours have been having a problem being hassled by a cruel and manipulative landlord in an unexpected plot that the gamemaster is making up on the spot. A plot that’ll lead to a whole new adventure going off on a tangent that’ll last weeks. Who knows? That’s one of the wonders of tabletop gaming. No limitations. Sure, the GM may have put a lot of work into an adventure or setting, but the option is certainly there for the player characters to do something different, leave the area, and find something new to discover. Not only is wifey brilliant at questioning the logic of games (not only video games, but also roleplaying games – certainly keeps me on my toes when game designing) but she’s great at doing the unexpected. I remember we’d been playing Kult quite intensely, and I’d just purchased the epic and gorgeously designed Judas Grail adventure for it. I set the game up, tweak a couple of the characters so it fits with our current storyline, and start the game… only to have her lead the entire group to a completely different location, and end up in a nightclub full of vampires. But it didn't matter. The game was still awesome, and everything that came out of it was just as unexpected and cool for me as the GM as it was for the players. And that's something video games cannot do. At least not yet. Not for a long while. Speaking of game designing though, I should get back to that. WILD isn’t going to write itself. Until next time, stay multi-classy.
I'm getting a little ahead of myself with bringing up Conspiracy X. Let's rewind a bit to 1999.
We moved to Bournemouth. Wasn't a great idea, but it was one of those "If you don't try it, you'll never know and regret it the rest of your life" decisions. My lovely wife had an excellent job offer doing layout and design for cool video game magazines, and the move to the other side of the country seemed like a good idea.
We met some awesome people who we're still in touch with, and some awesome people we've lost contact with as well... but we just didn't really get on with the city. We knew it was a bad sign when the local council were encouraging people to come to the place by equating it with Ibiza.
Odeon Bournemouth
I got a job at the Odeon, and while it wasn't brilliant pay, the job was fun. I worked in the box office, on the food stand, and ushering in an ancient building that once saw the Beatles perform on stage, before being converted into a six screen cinema with an ominous collection of dark corridors, old dressing rooms and a deserted flat on the top floor that looked like something from The Blair Witch Project.
Initially, I was taken on to work just for the duration of the new Star Wars movie (Episode I: The Phantom Menace) as they knew it was going to be huge. I remember seeing it for the first time at the midnight test that the projectionist was doing to make sure the film worked and coming out at 2.30am feeling like I'd been punched in the gut. This is what they'd done to Star Wars? I loved Star Wars, and this was what they did to it?
The benefit of working at the cinema was getting to watch it many times, and after the eighth or ninth time I grew to love it. It's not a great film, but my favourite out of the prequels. I do find Episodes 2 and 3 almost painful to watch sometimes.
But the cinema also showed me films I would never have normally seen... Fight Club was certainly one of them. I had no interest in Fight Club. The posters just looked like a dull film about bare-knuckle boxing. Not my sort of thing. But ushering meant I got to see the first ten minutes... and I was hooked. I saw it as many times as I could, and read the book, and until Inception came along it was my all-time favourite movie.
However, the town lived up to its publicity, and I remember coming home after the midnight screenings of the Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre had emptied, in the cabs the Odeon had laid on for the staff. As we turned the corner, there were crowds of drunken revellers pouring out of a nightclub, swarming around a police riot van, rocking it and trying to tip it over like a mass of zombies.
That was one of the defining moments that told us we should move.
But that's not the reason for the post.
All Flesh Must Be Eaten, 1st Edition Core Rulebook
There was a cool comics/roleplaying games shop on one of the roundabouts that we passed every morning and evening on the way to and from our works. Going my Google's street view it doesn't seem to be there any more, which is a shame, but they had some really cool RPGs in there. While I didn't have a game group in Bournemouth, I did pop in every week or so to see if there was anything cool in there.
It was then that something caught my eye. A game book smaller than the others on the shelves, with a rather gross colour scheme that looked a bit like brains. The game was "All Flesh Must Be Eaten", and I picked it up purely out of a strange fascination with the cover more than anything else. Maybe it was the same thing that drove me to buy Kult all those years before...
All Flesh Must Be Eaten was cool. A really good, simple system (Unisystem) where one roll was used for everything. There was none of this "The rule for jumping is this, but you roll different dice for an attack or use a different formula for using magic". Unisystem - one rule for everything. The problem was, I didn't have a gaming group, and I didn't think they wanted to play zombie survival horror.
While AFMBE was cool, I was drawn to the artwork in the back in the adverts. It was CJ Carella's WitchCraft. A gorgeous piece of artwork that meant I had to go back to that game shop and order WitchCraft the following week.
WitchCraft, 2nd Edition cover.
WitchCraft was awesome. Still is, and it wasn't long before I decided Unisystem would be my system of choice now, and promptly started converting those Kult characters (formerly World of Darkness characters) over to WitchCraft.
I'll stop rambling about my time in Bournemouth and continue the history at another time. Meanwhile, you can see just what I was so enthralled about by downloading the WitchCraft core rulebook here, legally, for free! Give it a look if you haven't before. It's rather fab.
Last time I did a little nostalgia piece I was talking about the old WorldofDarkness and how we all got very into playing Vampire and Mage, and then I had a bit of a falling out with WhiteWolf, mostly due to the way my wife and I were treated by the nasty minority in TheCamarilla.
The cover for KULT 1st Edition
I did, however, still really like the characters and the setting that we'd formed for the game, and I wanted to continue the story of the tabletop game, but on a smaller scale. The multiple games in the same setting was too demanding considering I was supposed to be doing college work, so I reeled it back to the basics - just one game running at once, just a handful of players. But what I needed was a new system to play dark urban occult fantasy with. And, as usually happens with my game buying, there was one game sitting on the shelves that intrigued me with its striking cover - Kult.
I don't know what it was about Kult, but there was something scary about it. The cover was cool, but it seemed a little sinister too. Maybe that's what drew me to it, that strange scared fascination you have to see something that you're not really sure you want to see. Like TheTexasChainsawMassacre. When I was a kid, that film came out and it was legendary. The stories of how people were fainting during it, it was something that was almost too scary to watch, but you were fascinated enough to almost dare yourself to try.
Kult was the same for me. Its inspiration from Hellraiser was obvious, but I gave in, bought the rule book, and was hooked. Not in a "tear your soul apart" way, but just in the way that it was crafted. I set to converting the characters from the Mage game and soon we were back in action.
The cover for KULT 2nd Edition
Just awesome and wacky.
Kult allowed us to do some really weird things in game. One of the characters was killed - not even a player character, just a reliable NPC, and one of the PCs vowed to bring him back by using a host of powerful and available spells from Kult to make the character pregnant, to put the dead character's spirit back in the unborn baby, and to travel back in time to leave the child with foster parents so the character could still be alive today. Of course, he was radically different when they returned. He wasn't a vampire anymore for starters.
It was very cool, and the way that The Metropolis worked, the city behind the illusion of reality, would be something I would always remember in future projects.
When second edition Kult came out with its awesome typography and design, I was shown a whole new world of how rulebooks could be presented. They didn't need to be plain or basic, they could play with the conventions of typography and layout, experiment with the way that the game could be published, and laugh in the face of mundanity. The two supplements for magic were so bizarre in their layout that some pages were almost unreadable, but that just made it cooler. And the JudasGrail adventure was so bonkers, I don't think the players got very far with it. Love that game.
Layout design for the Purgatory supplement
courtesy of www.kult-rpg.com
The following versions of the game just didn't have the same scary coolness or wacky graphic design as that or the first edition, and for now Kult seems to have faded into obscurity.
However, it was at this time that weird things were happening outside of the game.
I'd set up a comic publishing company, AutocratikPress (also known as AutocratikForTheMasses) with the backing of the Prince's Trust, and my attention to games and games writing had taken a back seat while I created a different world of my own. The world of my comic, Missing.
