Sidequest: Every TTRPG played 21-30

Continuing my previous posts listing every tabletop RPG I've ever played, we're starting to get into the Nineties! Of course, just a handful of Eighties RPGs to get through, but we're getting there. 

If you want to catch up with the list in (sorta) chronological order, check out the previous parts here:

Part 1 - 1-10

Part 2 - 11-20

And now, without further ado, let's get on with it. 

#21 - The Price of Freedom

Cover of West End Games' The Price of Freedom

The Eighties were certainly a strange time when it came to the political climate (not that it's any more stable now). In the Eighties, the threat of war influenced movies, TV series, and games. Heavily influenced by Red Dawn, West End Games' TTRPG The Price of Freedom was all about guerrilla warfare in an occupied America. It was very tactical, and came with hex maps and counters for units. It was a bit bleak, and my players didn't really want to play in that setting, so I ended up converting it to play "V", the TV series of alien invasion with a deep message mirroring the horrors of WWII. 

Instead of fighting humans, the resistance was fighting alien Visitors. The hamsters and mice needed saving!

#22 - Robotech

Palladium Games' Robotech RPG

A bit of a strange one and a bit left-field, but for some reason I wanted to play with big robots, and spotted the Robotech RPG on the shelves at our local store. I bought it, read it, was thoroughly confused (it felt a bit like D&D) and we created some characters, but that may have been as far as it went. I'd never seen Robotech, so the concept of the aliens being flippin' giants didn't even occur to me (it wasn't that clear in the book I don't think, or I was just stupid). This may have been my only exposure to the Palladium system. I think someone else in the group had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, but I never played it. 

#23 - Star Wars (West End Games)

Star Wars RPG (West End Games)

Look at it. It's beautiful. One of my favourite games of all time, up there with Ghostbusters, is the original Star Wars RPG by West End Games. I mean, I was a fan of WEG having played Ghostbusters, Paranoia, and The Price of Freedom, but when they announced they had the license for my favourite films that was me sold. 

The Star Wars RPG is just awesome. I know it has its foibles and there were times where we were rolling so many D6s that you could hardly see the table, but it was glorious. It really captured the action and feel of Star Wars. It was the last RPG I bought and ran in what I call my "Golden Age", and we played a heck of a lot of it. Probably so much my players were sick of it, but I loved it, and I loved Star Wars. Still do (with both). 

After that, things wound down for a bit. I went to college, a lot of the players went off to university, and gaming in general faded into the background for two or three years. 

#24 - Vampire: The Masquerade

Vampire: The Masquerade (1st Edition)

There is going to be a bit of a recurring theme here for a while, sorry. I went to the University of the Arts to do a degree (so I could do comics and graphic novels - see, that constant bouncing between comics and RPGs at it again). I'd gone away to Uni, met loads of new people, and immediately stumbled across a gaming group playing Vampire: The Masquerade. I'd never even heard of it, but was immediately hooked. This was back when we had student grants to help pay for our education, before it became 'loans', and I was terrible. I blew a chunk of my grant on buying a heap of Vampire books. This was going to be my next big thing. I ran a game for my old group, started another group locally with people from the comic shop, and set both games in the same city, at the same time, crossing over events and characters. 

Vampire got me back into gaming in a big way, and introduced me to my future wife. We joined the Camarilla, went to a couple of big Camarilla meetings. Heck, Debs was head of Clan Toreador for a while, while I was the second in command in Clan Tremere. 

#25 - Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1st Edition)

I told you there was going to be recurring theme... Of course, Vampire wasn't going to be enough, and when Werewolf: The Apocalypse came out, I was just as intrigued, aiming to add werewolves into our current Vampire game. As a bit of an aside, I ran a Werewolf story with my local group set in the same city as the Vampire game – their actions directly impacting upon the Vampire chronicle as a whole. It was fun! I think we did a couple of adventures like that... but then, something else came along.

#26 - Mage: The Ascension

Mage: The Ascension (1st Edition)

Oh yes, now we're talking. Vampire was cool, and goth, and moody. Werewolf was angry, and nature, and anti-corporation. Mage: The Ascension was just nuts. And we loved it. I ran a Mage game for our local group (who we still play with today) and it was amazing. Debs created a character that inspired so many works of fiction. The setting, the characters, the themes we tackled in those games were beyond anything we could hope to replicate. It was Quintessence in a bottle, rather than lightning. When the Paradox Backlashes hit, things went really weird, and yet we kept it all in the same city and story as the old Vampire game. Truly epic. Until one of the characters died...

#27 - Wraith: The Oblivion

The incredibly hard to read and over-the-top cover for Wraith: The Oblivion

So, one of the characters died in our Mage: The Ascension game, but no one wanted to see the end of that character. Luckily, White Wolf had just brought out the next in the line of World of Darkness games, with Wraith: The Oblivion. Therefore, the character remained in the Chantry, and joined in with the adventures, only as a ghost! We never played a dedicated game of Wraith, at least, not to my recollection. But we explored many of the themes and adventure ideas in the Wraith setting in our main WoD campaign. 

It was about this time I considered going back into writing roleplaying games again. 

However, things happened, I got grumpy, over-reacted, and turned my back on World of Darkness. I wanted to keep running the game we had going in Mage, keeping with weird magic and ghosts and supernatural stuff. That's when I turned to the next game in the list...

#28 - KULT

KULT (1st Edition)

The replacement for World of Darkness was an easy conversion over to the grim and terrifying world of Kult. Sure, the magic wasn't as easy to cast, but it made the game more creepy and somewhat sinister. The Mage character's Chantry was a pocket in the Metropolis, and things took a decidedly darker turn. There were still vampires and evil creatures, but the influences of Hellraiser were definitely there. Possibly the tensest games I've ever run, and some of the scariest stuff we've played, but it was cool and very 90s goth.

And that 2nd edition with the cool typography (rumoured to be done in MSWord)... oh, Lordy. That's so good. 

Maybe a little too dark, though, which lead to converting our existing game once again to yet another system...

#29 - CJ Carella's WitchCraft

CJ Carella's WitchCraft

More closely in line with the themes and tone of our old World of Darkness game, we switched over to CJ Carella's WitchCraft. I was initially drawn to the cover design, and that the game was a smaller digest format rather than the usual sized gamebook. It was smaller, easier to carry, had some great art, and the system felt very like the old World of Darkness. Of course, this introduced me to Eden Studios...

#30 - All Flesh Must Be Eaten

All Flesh Must Be Eaten (1st Edition)

We'd relocated to the other side of the country, and the gaming had come to a halt again. But there was a little gaming store on my way into work. In there, I spotted another one of Eden's smaller digest RPGs, the legendary All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a game of zombie survival horror. I didn't actually get to play it until many years later, after we'd moved back to where we were before, and I started hosting an RPG bookclub at the bookstore I was working at. Instead of reading a book and talking about it once a month, we'd pick a game, and run a short one-shot once a month. The members of the group could then buy it at a small discount if they liked it. 

I ended up running a quick one-shot of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, set on one of my sixth-form school trips. It was suitably over-the-top and complete carnage, but great fun. 

--

That's it for the latest section. Possibly only a couple more of these to go, I find I'm buying games and reading them more than I get chance to play them these days. You may be surprised at the omissions when it comes to what I haven't played!! 

Until next time, stay multi-classy!

#RPGaDAY2024 - DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: Marvellous Miniature

 We're down to the last few prompts now, and unfortunately this is another one that isn't too relevant to me - I don't really use miniatures, but there have been a few recently that have really stood out as being incredibly tempting.

The ones that really leap out are all from Crooked Dice Game Design Studio - they do some really cool minis that are heavily influenced by some great genre movies and TV series from my past. One that really got me far to overexcited was when they announced their "Alien Invaders" range of humanoid aliens (that may secretly be lizards if you know what I mean) and their iconic red jumpsuits. I have fond memories of playing West End Games' 'Price of Freedom' RPG only with the Soviet forces switched out for the same lizard-like humanoid aliens.

So when they showed off the range of minis that included this little beauty...

.... oooooooooh. How cool. And it's not a bad price either at £30. Considering it's in scale with their little characters. 

The other one is this little beauty... They do one of the flying thingies (which I won't name) as well as the tanks...  Flippin' gorgeous. I'd want some cool glowing paint for it though...

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY ELEVEN: WEIRDEST game you've played

Day Eleven of #RPGaDAY2023 is slightly different to the one from all those years ago, asking which is the weirdest game you've played (rather than weirdest game you own - what's with all the ownership going on in the original questions?) 

My original response looked at Price of Freedom, a game that has aged really badly considering the current climate. Weird? No, it certainly wasn't at the time when we had movies like Red Dawn or series like Amerika. And it's horribly pertinent now, and not something that should be trivialised in a 'game'. 

My other response was the awesome Neon Genesis Evangelion RPG that I couldn't read as it was all in Japanese. I do still love the look and design of it, and I still love Evangelion (currently watching the rebuilds for the first time - so confused...).

Weird games I've played since then? I played Heart, which incorporated a bit of Spire, and that was brilliant but bonkers. I loved the way you gained abilities until you ended up with an epic ability that would almost destroy massive amounts of things and your character along with it. As characters from the Heart, we fought against the tyranny of the elves in the Spire, and my character's Zenith ability was to eradicate a concept from existence (along with myself). The obvious choice was the remove the Spire from world, and all memory of it ever being there. 

#RPGaDAY - Day 11: Weirdest RPG Owned

Day 11 of #RPGaDAY is "Weirdest RPG Owned". There are a lot of very strange RPGs out there. One of which I wouldn't mind getting hold of is the official Dallas RPG, based on the TV series (apparently, despite the weird idea of running a game set in the world of JR and Sue Ellen, it's supposed to be a very good game!)

However, I'm going to have to go with one I've never actually read, even though I've had it for years...

Roll Your Own Life (9) - Dice of Freedom

Been a while since I posted about my ancient gaming history, and it's a good exercise in getting back into writing again - WILD is progressing nicely, I know the backstory, know the system, worked out character creation, know how the book's going to look and the style of art and layout, I just need to actually crack on with writing the damn thing. I seriously think it's going to be a real experience to play and read, but I just need to get on with it. Maybe I'm just putting myself off, worrying that what I put on the page will never live up to the scope and madness that I've envisioned in my head.

Anyway, back to the "Entire History of Me," - a rather vain and ponderous reflection on my history in gaming. My way of revisiting the past, and getting all nostalgic for a slightly less painful time.

Last time I posted (in Roll Your Own Life (8) - Ghostwriting for the USA) I told you about sitting in my bedroom after I'd left school, typing away on the huge electric typewriter, desperately hoping to get a job writing Ghostbusters RPG scenarios. Well, as you can guess, I never did become a paid Ghostbusters writer, and there was only so long I could spend sitting around at home without getting a paid job.

Me at the desk in "Clerk/Tracer" mode 1989

Luckily, the job centre managed to point me in the direction of the local county council who were looking for what they called a "Clerk/Tracer". Yes, a job tracing. I can just imagine all the "Mallrats" jokes now about inkers being nothing but glorified tracers, but this was absolutely skill-less. It really was tracing. The job was working for the council's nature conservation unit, updating their ordnance survey maps for sites of scientific interest. In the days before doing it all on computer, this involved taking their big sheets of film with the map printed on it, and drawing and colouring in the areas of interest. If the area changed, the ink was scraped off of the film carefully with a scalpel blade before being re-inked to incorporate the alteration.

Tedious? Yes. Part time? Yes. But it paid well, got me off of the dole, and gave me enough spare time to continue writing, but we'll come back to that later.



How did I get the job? Well, I showed off my comic drawing that I used to do (the old Wormbusters stuff) which proved I could use a rotring pen, and I could type...  but the thing that clinched the deal, and got me the job?

I roleplayed.

Doug Smith at the Nature Conservation office - 1989

I was interviewed by two guys, one was the head of a department for the council (nice chap called Mark), and the other was the leader of the team I'd be joining, a guy called Doug Smith.

Doug told me after I'd been given the job that they had a few people apply for the post, and it was a close thing between me and some other guy, but the thing that swayed their decision in my favour was roleplaying. Doug had played D&D and thought that because I was a gamer I would know how to work as part of a team, could problem solve, had the imagination and self reliance to take the initiative, and could draw maps.

Obviously, Doug had never witnessed my D&D playing or he'd have probably thought differently!

It was a pretty easy job, I got on well with the team, although they vanished off doing surveys of the places I was drawing the maps of, driving all around the county in their little yellow council van. Gave me plenty of time to do the map work, and plot my next bit of writing.

I'd advanced onto using a word processor - wow, I know it sounds like nothing these days, but back then I didn't have access to a real computer. I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum which was mostly used to play video games. In order to do word processing, certainly something I could print out and send to West End Games, I needed something a bit more professional. At that time, it was an Amstrad with a green screen that I could use at the town's "adult education centre". They saw it as me getting experience using word processors and writing, I saw it as a way to write.

The Price of Freedom RPG core boxed set

However, I'd moved on from Ghostbusters, but remained loyal to West End Games. I picked up a copy of "Red Dawn" inspired RPG "The Price of Freedom". A controversial game at the time, as it featured guerilla warfare in an America occupied after a Soviet invasion. Very Red Dawn.

However, I had two problems.

One was that none of my players wanted to play Americans fighting Russians. Maybe they saw it as being politically incorrect, maybe they just didn't like the idea, so I eventually ended up replacing the Soviet forces with Visitors and running the game as "V", based on the TV series.

The second problem I had was that I wanted to write for West End Games, but I had no ideas of a plot for an adventure to submit to them. I ended up taking the basic plot of Star Wars, having the vice president as a woman being captured by the Soviets, and the player characters attempt to rescue her from a fortified train that had some huge gun on it. Basically, it was rescue the princess from the Death Star before it gets within range of the resistance's base and it gets destroyed. I don't remember much about it other than the spell checker on the computer kept trying to change the name of one of the NPCs from Suzie Morgan to "Saucy Organ" which amused me to no end.

I never finished the adventure, I guess I lost enthusiasm after I couldn't find anyone to playtest it, but my interest in Price of Freedom was wavering after West End Games brought out their newest game... STAR WARS.