Sidequest: Every TTRPG Played 31-40

Many, many moons ago, when I wasn't distracted by work, conventions, and other goings on in life, I started a series of blogposts listing every tabletop roleplaying game I've ever played - inspired by a post over where the skies are blue (BlueSky) by Kieron Gillen. 

I've tried to list them in some sort of chronological order. If you want to catch up, you can find the previous posts here:

Every TTRPG I've Played 1-10

Every TTRPG I've Played 11-20

Every TTRPG I've Played 21-30

So, without further ado, let's move on to 31-40!!

31) Buffy The Vampire Slayer / Angel

Cover of Eden Studios's Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG

Oh man, where to begin with this one. I was a MASSIVE Buffy fan, so when I started doing a little work for Eden Studios and they said they'd got the Buffy and Angel licenses, I was completely ecstatic. I did some editing assisting on the Slayer's Handbook and Monster Smackdown, and got really into rewatching episodes and trying to map out locations for the unreleased Welcome to Sunnydale. 

The Buffy RPG was brilliant, still is, and a real inspiration for many games I worked on. The way CJ Carella baked in the mechanic that you had to weaken the vampires before you attempted the staking move, made it feel like the series, having a cool fight before dusting them.

Still in my Top 5 RPGs of all time in my books.

32) Deadlands

Cover of classic Deadlands RPG by Pinnacle

Played a few games of Deadlands, and they were great fun. I played one of those magic-slinging types with the cards, and it was a really cool the way the game integrated using cards, poker chips, and dice. Really gave you a great feel like you're in the Old West. 

33) Terra Primate

Cover of Terra Primate by Eden Studios

While I'd been doing some editing and stuff for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and All Flesh Must Be Eaten, my first real writing and developing work was for Eden Studios again. I'd suggested some All Flesh Must Be Eaten supplements, but George suggested a helped out with a project they had been working on called Terra Primate. The text for the settings was all done, it just needed the rules plugging in and converting from AFMBE, and testing... Had to be play tested, of course!

I never realised there were so many options for 'Planet of the Apes' style games.

34) Farscape

The cover of the Farscape RPG from AEG

Ah, it was back in the days when D20 was an open license and everyone was making games using the D20 system. Again, if ever there was a game that shouldn't be D20, it was Farscape. Man, I love Farscape. It was a weird series... everyone kept telling me I should watch it, I tried the first episode when it aired and it didn't really do anything for me, but I caught the two-parter of the end of season one/start of season two, and wondered what I was missing. I immediately bought the DVDs, caught up, and was really hooked.

When AEG (back when they used to do RPGs) announced they were doing Farscape, and wanted playtesters, I signed up. I had pages of feedback for them... pages... and then the playtesting stopped, and we heard nothing more until the game came out. Haven't played it since those playtests, but it sits on my shelf as a reminder of what could have been. 

35) GURPS/Hellboy

Deluxe limited edition of the first Hellboy RPG, powered by GURPS

Back when we had the 'RPG Reading Group' at the bookstore I worked at, the first RPG of Hellboy appeared. I loved the comics, so was excited to check out the game. However, again, it was another licensed property that I thought had a game system that didn't work for it. I'm sure it was fine, but GURPS didn't do anything for me. Sorry. We did a session as part of the group, it was fun, but... that was it. Sits on my shelf with the other limited edition books and the Hellboy collection. 

36) Conspiracy X 2.0

Cover of Conspiracy X 2.0 from Eden Studios

I've mentioned so many times on this blog how I have always been obsessed with The X-Files, and I loved the first edition of Conspiracy X. However, the game system just didn't do it for me. I'm sorry. I know there were loads of First Edition Conspiracy X fans out there who were dedicated to the system, but it just felt odd that it was the only game that Eden produced that wasn't Unisystem. I pitched a conversion to George, and in a completely unhealthy way to deal with a loss in the family, I immersed myself in converting the game for a year. 

Once again, playtesting was the key here, and a few sessions playing through some of the classic ConX scenarios. One was incredibly helpful in fixing a rule or two if I remember correctly. Really cool.

37) Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space / The Roleplaying Game

Cover of the first edition box set of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space by Cubicle 7 Games

I've talked about the Doctor Who RPG many times on my blog as well – how Chris Birch was in touch after Conspiracy X 2.0 came out, how we chatted about getting new people gaming, and how he knew people at the BBC. One thing lead to another and I developed the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG, which later became simply Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game. 

Sounding a bit like a stuck record, this was playtesting again, making sure the game system worked. I ran a couple of tiny system tests, but the bulk of the playtesting game from the volunteer groups, and they helped shape it into the flexible game it is. 

38) Fiasco

Cover of Fiasco from Bully Pulpit Games

It's not all playtesting! We played a couple of one-shots of Fiasco as well with some friends. I can't remember too much about it — it was a scenario on a space station if I remember correctly. A murder mystery, may have involved aliens, certainly involved crawling around in air ducts. It's really interesting to play something quite so improv. It's quite freeing. Sometimes you need to try different games to experience new systems and ways of playing. 

39) Star Wars (Fantasy Flight Games)

Cover of the Force and Destiny Core Rulebook for FFG's Star Wars RPG

Yeah, I know, it has weird dice. But those weird dice produced some seriously epic moments. We played a lot of Star Wars – one campaign was a cool one where we played Padawan Jedi, during the Clone Wars and mid-mission, Order 66 happened and we had to go into hiding, start a resistance unit, join the rebellion, and take down as many of them as we could. There were some awesome moments, one involved riding a crashing Aethersprite then jumping off and landing on an AT-TE and lightsabering my way in. Of course, every time Vader turned up, we ran away. That was genuinely terrifying.

We also played games as troopers who switched sides, pirates, engineers, and smugglers. I can't remember a session of it that wasn't a complete blast. Our only gripe was we could do all these cool things, and do epic stunts, but when we had to jump over a gap we just kept failing. Typical!

40) Tales From The Loop / Things From The Flood / Mutant Year Zero

The cover of the Tales from the Loop RPG by Fria Ligan (Free League)

This one's really three-in-one, but it'll make sense. First of all, I have to state that I LOVE Tales From The Loop. Really cool, gorgeous art that inspired the game. Simple system on a minimal amount of pages. It just oozes weird sci-fi alternate 80s. I love the setting, really like the system, and then, to top it off, the campaign we played was flippin' epic.

We played as teenagers in the 80s in Great Yarmouth, close to the East Anglia Loop system. We discovered wacky time travel goings on, strange robots, and creatures as expected in a Loop game. And then, things progressed. We moved into the setting's sister game, Things From The Flood, as we grew up a bit and became older teens. Weirder things were happening at the Loop, and we failed to stop it happening. Something exploded, and the area was irradiated, and we moved the game into Mutant Year Zero. Setting up a sanctuary on the pier, we investigated what was happening, and faced the worst evil – my character's mother, mutated into a strange spider creature. We finally discovered what was at the heart of it all, and how to fix it, using weird occurrences in the Loop facility to time travel back to the 80s to prevent the disaster. We reset the timeline, and saved the county. 

Epic. 

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I think a couple more of these and I'll be up to date! Stay tuned, and stay multi-classy!

#RPGaDAY2024 - DAY TWELVE: Well Supported with Campaigns

 

As a companion piece to yesterday's one about One-Shots, today is all about Campaigns (I really should have moved these to be the weekend prompts, shouldn't I?). 

I guess everyone is going to immediately go for WFRP's The Enemy Within, but I've never played it (I'm not really that into fantasy as a tabletop setting, sorry). 

I'd like to mention that Tales from the Loop have a number of excellent campaign books - Our Friends the Machines, Out of Time, and They Grow Up So Fast. I love to see this sort of content, as I'm not great at coming up with adventures or long form content like this. I mean, when I have an idea, it escalates and gets huge, but if I don't have that idea to begin with, I'm stuck.

Doctor Who had a great multipart campaign recently called A Stitch in Time, which is 10 episodes that connect like a great RTD season with an epic season finale where it all comes together. 

But, the obvious choice to massive, well supported, campaigns is Call of Cthulhu. One day, I'll get to play or run Masks of Nyarlathotep, or Horror on the Orient Express - both of which can take years to complete. Sounds amazing. 

#RPGaDAY2024 - DAY FIVE: An RPG with Great WRITING

 

Day Five of #RPGaDAY2024 and this one is a sort of companion piece to yesterday's prompt about 'great art', today asking about an RPG with great writing. I'm an old gamer, so my first RPGs definitely read like stereo instructions. Going back to some of those rulebooks, I wonder how I ever worked out how to play them.

One that really stood out for me writing-wise was Ghostbusters, the classic West End Games RPG. It was the first one I really had fun reading. It was funny, easy to read, and was the game that inspired me to get into writing tabletop games. I remember that 'if it's that much fun to read, someone must have had a blast writing it' and I knew I wanted to do that. 

Later, one of the games that really stood out as having great writing was Eden Studios' Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, written mostly by CJ Carella. CJ had taken the same sort of approach as the Ghostbusters game, kept it pretty simple, but made it fun (and funny) to read. An easily accessible style that made rules fun, and got you excited to play in the Buffyverse. 

Again, it really got me keen to write to RPGs, and I was lucky enough to be involved in playtesting, and contributed (both in writing and editing) the supplements, The Slayer's Handbook and Monster Smackdown. 

I miss Buffy...

It's been a while since I read an RPG and really had that 'I wish I had written something like this' moment. Tales From The Loop stands out recently, mostly because the game system is so simple and compact that I was blown away that it could accomplish so much with so little, basically. 

However, most recently, it was Kieron Gillen's DIE RPG, published by Rowan, Rook and Deckard, that had me squirming in that 'Damn this is so well written, I wish I could write like that' way... 

There's just something about the conversational tone of voice, and the masses upon masses of GM advice that really provides players with tonnes of options and opportunities for some seriously cool games. 

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the book is flippin' gorgeous, with some stunning layout and amazing production values as well. 

#RPGaDAY2024 - DAY FOUR: RPG with great ART

Day Four of #RPGaDAY2024, and today we're looking at RPGs with great ART. I have to say that most RPGs these days have the most amazing art that my 80s RPG playing self would never believe. 

Star Trek Adventures is one that really stands out for me as it's a licensed game that doesn't use photos from the movies and TV series, and the art really captures the feel of the universe. 

I always love a game where a particular artist is key to the game, where the publishers just use one or two artists to ensure the game maintains its theme and feel all the way through the books.

A great example of this is Raven, featuring the amazing art of Abigail Larson -

However, when it comes to art in games, and games based on art, there are two examples that really stand out, and both of them are by Free League. 

The first is Vaesen, the Nordic horror RPG based upon the art and work of Johan Egerkrans, whose stylish and evocative illustrations really bring the setting to life. And the whole book, and the production values, are flipping gorgeous. 

The other has to be one of my favourite games of the last ten years, and that's Tales from the Loop. Simon Stålenhag's artwork is amazing, and I've always loved it. It just perfectly captures that weird alternate 1980s where robots and anti-grav vehicles are fairly commonplace, and the game that was inspired by the art does just the same. It has led to some of the most memorable games I've played, and it easily one of my favourites. 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY TWENTY-NINE: Most memorable ENCOUNTER

 This one's a tricky one. Day Twenty-Nine asks about the most memorable encounter. Back when #RPGaDAY began I talked about our old Call of Cthulhu game where one of the player characters had been forceably retired, only to return as the big bad. 

It's still a very memorable encounter, though my thoughts are drawn to that Tales from the Loop game again. After failing to stop the explosion of the Loop facility as teenagers (play progressing through Things from the Flood), there's nothing more memorable than your teenage character's mother appearing, mutated and evil, with crab-like legs and a host of mutated minions under her control. 

Epic. 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY TWENTY-FOUR: COMPLEX / SIMPLE RPG you own

 Day Twenty-Four of #RPGaDAY2023 and the original question from back when RPGaDAY began asked about the most complicated RPG you own. 

I went on about the most complicated RPG I'd played (though played it a bit of a falsehood as we spent so long creating the characters I didn't get around to actually playing it) which was Space Opera, then foolishly went on about D&D - which is still, in my opinion, a bit complicated for me. 

Since then? I still love the simpler systems, and one of the biggest revelations when it comes to how simple you can make rules has to be Tales from the Loop. I remember reading that and looking at the rules section (which must be about 18 pages of the rulebook) and being amazed at how small the rules were, and how much they could handle. 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY TWENTY-ONE: Favourite Licensed RPG

 

It's Day Twenty-One of #RPGaDAY2023, and it's a very difficult one for me. Favourite licensed RPG.

Anyone who knows me or has listened to me ramble on in my videos or blogs, or even on other people's podcasts, will know I LOVE licensed RPGs. There's just something about getting to play in your favourite worlds, whether it's the oppressed space of Star Wars, or the looming threats of Middle Earth. There's just something about playing in the world of my favourite TV series or movies that appeals to me. 

Back when #RPGaDAY first started I took this opportunity to rant about the lack of a Harry Potter RPG, but times have certainly changed and while I still think it would make an excellent RPG, now is probably not the time for it.

So, to really answer the question. Favourite licensed RPG. It's difficult. Ghostbusters really stands out as that's the RPG that inspired me to write for games (even though I was unsuccessful at the time). The West End Games Star Wars RPG is the stuff of legend, and I still have my corebook, sourcebook, and Star Warriors set. 

Star Trek Adventures, while I did work on the initial concepts I feel I can just about get away with including it in my favourites. It has captured the adventure, exploration, and themes of the series so brilliantly. I may have made some bits a little simpler, but I love what Modiphius have done with it, and the idea that they're allowed to use Picard, Discovery, and even Lower Decks, just fills me with joy.

Tales from the Loop is technically a licensed game, based on the amazing art of Simon Stålenhag. A brilliant, simple, and evocative game that really captures a weird eighties full of robots and time travel.

I'd still love to see a new Ghostbusters RPG, or have the chance to work on Star Wars in some way. I'd really love to get the chance to write an official RPG based on The X-Files or Twin Peaks. We can hope...

#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 EIGHTEEN: Favourite game SYSTEM

 It's Day Eighteen of #RPGaDAY2023 and the question is a tricky one - favourite game SYSTEM. When I answered it back at the beginning of #RPGaDAY I was incredibly cheeky and picked the flipping game system I designed, Vortex, as my favourite system.

I mean, how flipping rude. 

I guess you have to like your game system to work with it, and since that video it has evolved into a second edition that's even faster and easier to use. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it, and have another couple of games in mind that I'd love to use it on, if I'm allowed (while I designed it, I don't have complete ownership of it). 

Second Edition was influenced by the eye opening simplicity of the Year Zero Engine. I read Tales from the Loop and was just amazed at how small the rules section is in the game, and how much fun the games were that we played in that setting. 

#RPGaDAY2023 - DAY EIGHT: Favourite CHARACTER

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. 

You can't get much more epic than that! 

#RPGaDay2022 - Day 11: If you could live in a game setting, where would it be?

 

Oh boy, today's question is a tricky one. Day Eleven of #RPGaDay2022 asks 'If you could live in a game setting, where would it be?'

I guess my problem is that I LOVE licensed games, so a lot of the RPG settings I'd pick are licensed settings. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in the idillic future of Star Trek, or run around with a lightsaber in Star Wars? 

Sadly, I'd have to say that my ideal choice would be Tales from the Loop. I know it's licensed, but who wouldn't want to return to your childhood in the 80s, surrounded by that cool music, iconic imagery, and add some (usually) helpful robots into the mix? Count me in!!

#RPGaDay2022 - Day 2: What is a great introductory RPG?

 

Day Two of #RPGaDay2022 and the big question is - 'What is a great introductory RPG?'

Ah, this is more like it. But where to start? 

I know a lot of people would say 'Start with D&D' - very valid. Especially with some great starter sets out there to get to playing fairly quickly. But if D&D isn't your thing, or if it's a bit too complicated to ease the new players in gently, what could you go for?

I'd go with something extremely fun and simple - first suggestion would be Ghostbusters. I mean, who doesn't like Ghostbusters?

The West End Games Ghostbusters RPG is incredibly quick and simple. Really fast to play, hilarious to read, and just really cool. It's the game that made me want to write tabletop RPGs.

Of course, if you don't have access to a game that came out in the late 1980s, you could go for the next best thing - EN Publishing's 'Awfully Cheerful Engine' or ACE for short. The game system is basically a retroclone of Ghostbusters, so it keeps the character stats quick and easy and can be recorded on a character sheet the size of an index card. 

It has a host of great adventures that new players will recognise, not just ones that I've contributed to - Spirits of Manhattan is a Ghostbusters-like parody which was an absolute blast to write, and Strange Science will appeal to fans of Stranger Things, Weird Science, and Back to the Future. 

I'm all about the retro.

On the subject of Stranger Things, the other game I'd use for an introduction would be Tales from the Loop. I love that game - it's so simple and easy, but oozing in setting and feel. (I've used the image of a French supplement I'm still pondering getting, just for completists sake). 

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. 

[Roll Your Own Life] The Games That Shaped Me (Part 7)

Tales From The Loop - Fria Ligan (2017)

The final entry on my "Games That Shaped Me" little blog series is the most recent one too. I've tried to make it as chronological as possible, and this is definitely the game that has had a big impact on me. You're probably already familiar with the game set in the 1980s where a mysterious company has built a CERN-like particle accelerator style facility known as The Loop. It's the 80s you remember, kids on bikes, walkmans, VHS-tapes, skateboards and so on. But it's "the 80s that never was", so the world is the same, but there are robots, anti-grav vehicles, and weird science experiments that have unleashed dinosaurs and portals onto the rural landscape.

Based on the amazing paintings and art book of Simon Stålenhag, the art alone was to sell the game to me, but then the reviews started appearing and it was obvious that the game was something special.

Why did it have such an impact?

I grew up playing tabletop games in my teens, and so you could kinda call me an old-school gamer. I was used to pages and pages of rules, options, systems, and intricate details of how combat or car chases or crazy science works. Combat turns, rounds, initiative and the like...

Then along comes this game. This simple, beautiful game.

I mean, Character Creation is 16 pages. And 8 of those are full page descriptions of the Archetypes.

The whole game system is on 12 pages. And these are heavily illustrated with the gorgeous art.

Okay, I don't want to name and shame anyone so I'll pick a game I designed. The Doctor Who RPG, in its most recent incarnation (12th Doctor) has 46 pages of character creation, and 51 pages of rules. And I thought when I was working on Doctor Who that it was rules light, and I think it was for the time! I guess it is when you compare it to something like 5e D&D with 154 pages of character creation (just in the Player's Handbook). 

I read Tales from the Loop and thought "I need to rethink my life choices!" 

Okay, so Loop has a great system, but sometimes actually succeeding at a task is hard (nothing like rolling nine D6 and not getting a single success) but that's helped with the way you can push a roll, use your Pride, or take a condition to succeed. And you're playing children. So battling a security robot with a stick, a water pistol and a flashlight is going to be tough. 

It has certainly shaken up my game design. I guess at my age I can't be bothered to read pages upon pages of rules. I want it to be simple, quick, and not take me out of the story, while still influencing the narrative. Something I hope the Doctor Who RPG does anyway.

Looking at the rules for WILD I've been working on, the simplicity of Tales From The Loop (and to come extent Blades In The Dark) have certainly made me consider what you need to detail. At the moment, the complete rules for WILD run to about 10 pages. While it's a far cry from the awesome games that are being produced on a single page (I don't think I can ever be smart enough to do that), I feel this is a step in the right direction for me. 

We played Tales from the Loop for ages last year and it lead to some really cool and quite tense gaming - something I haven't encountered since those old Kult games. We took a break for some Aegean and Scum & Villainy, but have recently returned to Tales From The Loop - this time set in the late 80's ready to progress into its sequel game, Things From The Flood - where the Loop has closed after something bad has happened, and weird creatures are emerging from the floodwaters. Awesome

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Well, that's the last of my seven Games That Shaped Me entries. I've just been challenged to do something similar with TV Series, which is going to be really difficult considering the amount of TV I've absorbed over the years...

Stay tuned...

Stay Safe...

Stay Home!

#RPGaDAY 2019 - DAY 13: MYSTERY

Doctor Strange Heroclix. Cool custom Autocratik dice thanks to www.chimericdesigns.co.uk

Day Thirteen for #RPGaDAY 2019 is "MYSTERY", and that word conjures up one game in particular in my mind - Tales from the Loop. It's all about solving and uncovering mysteries. So much so, the setting for your campaign is called the Mystery Landscape, and like a great episode of Scooby-Doo you discover that strange things are going on in your neighbourhood. Whether this is the original setting of the Swedish Loop, the US version in Boulder, or one designed around your hometown, the kids discover cool robots, time-travel, dinosaurs, odd technology and weird devices that weave together to make an awesome setting for any RPG.

The games we've played of Tales from the Loop have been great - we've done the whole of the campaign from the corebook - and I'm looking forward to continuing our characters (somehow - one was locked up for his violent tendencies, another ran away) in the darker and creepier Things from the Flood. Same setting, but the experiments at the Loop have let "things" into our reality, and it's all going horribly wrong. 

Fantastic. Love it.

I love the game system so much, and its brilliant simplicity, that I started working out how it could be used to play Harry Potter - after all, that's kids and teenagers uncovering mysteries... You can read about it here.

#RPGaDAY2018 - DAY 30: Share something you learned about playing your character

Day thirty of #RPGaDAY2018 asks us to share something you learned about playing your character.

Another tricky one. I spent a lot of my youth being the GM, so I didn't really have a specific character. My longest running character from back then was actually someone else's who gave up playing their 8th level Paladin, just as a new player joined their group - me!

More recently, I've played a lot of FFG's Star Wars, and we've played the main campaign of Tales from the Loop. The Star Wars game was a bit of a revelation to me. Especially playing in Star Wars - where you assume the majority of the game is going to be fighting. My character, Qedra, was a Zabrak who was Dark Side, but had joined the Jedi Academy to control his darker feelings and do good. Teamed up with a couple of Jedi apprentices, we had our fair share of fights and battles - especially after Order 66 and we had to go on the run, and into hiding, before joining the beginnings of the Rebellion. But, after a few over violent moments, I discovered as my character was becoming more Light Side, I was becoming more and more reluctant, and slightly repulsed, by my killing everything in sight.

While I was a double lightsaber wielding powerhouse who could kill four stormtroopers in a turn, I started becoming more and more pacifist. The killing was becoming too much for my character, and me as a player. I was aiming to disarm, remove the threat, but reluctant to simply kill the villains off. It may have something to say about me, rather than the character.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes with the new Star Wars game we've just started, as I'm playing a kid, who (along with a host of bizarre characters) has survived their ship crashing on a remote planet. Playing a lone character who has no attachment to the others, who just wants to survive and escape - to hide from the Empire - one so desperate to do anything to remain alive and hidden, is going to be a challenge.

Until tomorrow, may the Force be with you!

#RPGaDAY2018 - DAY 25: Game that had an impact on you in the last 12 months

Day twenty-five of #RPGaDAY2018 launches a weekend of "12-month" questions. Starting with "Game that had an impact on you in the last 12 months".

I'm afraid it's a bit of a short and sweet answer for that one, as the game we've played the most in the last 12 months is Tales from the Loop, and one that has really left an impact. The game system is so bloomin' simple. Character creation takes minutes, the game is designed to avoid combat, while giving you a real sense of danger as the kids struggle to face rogue robots, dinosaurs from the past, mind controlled teachers, and more.

Great fun, and a real eye opener to how simple a game system can be and actually work really well.

So impressed I was, that I started adapting it for Harry Potter...