#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 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! 

I Didn't See That Coming - Watching the Walkers

 

Watching 'Fear the Walking Dead' has reminded me of one of the biggest rug-pulls in my roleplaying game playing.

Let's set the scene - in one of my recent blog-posts I mentioned that, after I stopped watching The Walking Dead when they killed off one of my favourite characters in the most brutal way, I finally went back to watching the series, and kinda binged the last five seasons in a couple of weeks. I must say, considering I couldn't see the appeal of Negan, especially after that scene, and wondered why they'd chosen him for a sequel series with Maggie - I finally see it. Negan's story arc was actually really good, and by the end I could honestly see a guy who felt remorse for the horrific things he'd done, and was trying to do better.

We finished season 11 last night, and my wife surprised me by saying she actually missed watching the series already - so I dug out the first season of Fear the Walking Dead that she'd bought for me on DVD back when we were really into the series and the comics... just before we stopped watching completely. About half-way through the incredibly tense first episode I had a weird flashback to an RPG we played as teenagers - and how Free League could do the same with their cool The Walking Dead Universe RPG.

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Back in the 80's, one of our usual GMs (Pete) ran a game for us using his homebrew Odyssey game system. He said it was just to test things out and make sure it all worked, and we generated some pretty ordinary characters. As it was a homebrew, we had generic character sheets, and we all played ordinary people invited onto a cruise ship as a prize for a mysterious contest, and we figured it was going to be one of those murder-mystery type games. 

The sessions continued, and suddenly the ship started sinking, and disaster! We washed up on an island, and figured 'oh, it's going to be a survival game, where we're shipwrecked and there will be badguys and stuff like that'. (Bear in mind, this was decades before Lost. 

But that wasn't it. Something happened, and suddenly we gained superpowers. Yes, we'd started a superhero game, but had no idea that we were playing a superhero game until the powers mysteriously kicked in. I did not see that coming. None of us did. Pete looked pleased that his plan had come together, and his RPG based on the comic series The Elementals came into fruition.

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Why did Fear the Walking Dead remind me of this? Watching that first episode I just thought how cool it would be to be a player in a The Walking Dead Universe RPG campaign, but not actually know that was the game you're playing. 

Have character sheets that don't have the logo, or any really obvious rule bits. Have the players generate generic characters, and make them think they're going to play a cool murder-mystery game or something else - anything that doesn't involve the walking dead. Play a couple of intriguing games with the players thinking the game is one thing, maybe some news reports in the background of rising tensions, and then... the murder-mystery changes genre suddenly when the body at the murder scene gets back up and starts attacking!

I know it's unlikely with licensed games like this, as you kinda have to have the logo and copyright on the character sheet, but it's certainly something that can be done easily by GMs with a bit of tweaking to the sheets. It's like taking a 'Session Zero' in a different direction.

Like the prelude bit in the old Vampire: The Masquerade games, but if you didn't know you were going to play Vampire. 

I could really see Free League doing a 'set up' book, just filled with GM advice and campaign ideas so that players could experience that same rug-pull moment. It'd be awesome. 

In the mid-80s, when we played that Odyssey game, it was amazing and revolutionary. I'm sure you're all doing something similar in your games now...

Building Better Worlds

I should really plan my blog posts better, but sometimes you watch or read something and just feel like putting words on paper, so-to-speak. Please forgive me if this gets a bit ramble-y and off topic.

Many years ago I fell out of love with The Walking Dead. I loved the series, and loved the comics before it, avidly watching the TV series, and reading the comics every month as they came out - then buying those cool collector's hardcovers just so I had them safe and accessible without having to drag out the comic boxes and open each issue's bag one by one. It got to the arrival of Negan, and there was a scene that absolutely shocked me and turned my stomach. I kept reading the comics, but the memory of a certain character's demise (and one of my favourite characters in the Walking Dead universe) kept creeping in. 

About ten or fifteen issues later, I remember reading it and thinking "why am I reading this? This just feels like prolonged trauma." Rather than put myself through the misery of watching these people suffer any further, I bit the bullet and cancelled my order for it at the comic shop, turning to other comics that didn't feel miserable... 

And then, that happened in The Walking Dead TV series. (Season 7, episode 1). You know the bit. And it all came flooding back. My wife stopped watching, and I gave up there and then. 

Many years have passed, and then along came Free League's announcement of The Walking Dead Universe RPG, and I thought to myself... "should I go back to the TV series?" And I did... I started from the episode after the trauma inducing incident where I stopped watching, and I'm getting back into it... Sure, I hate Negan with a passion, but you're supposed to. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is absolutely brilliant in the part, but why do people love him so? How does he get to be in a spin off? I'm still in Season 7, so don't tell me, but honestly, I think there should have been a #JusticeForGlenn hashtag going around. 

I backed the Kickstarter for the RPG, of course, because I love Free League's games, but the thing that really stood out for me was their announcement the team behind the TV series were involved with the 'game universe' to ensure that the events that play out in the game, and their streamed game fits in with the series. I think the plan is that the events of the streamed game is 'canon' to the Walking Dead setting. 

It's a brilliant marriage of game and license. And it could work both ways. Just look at the history of licensed games. Back in the dim and distant past, when there were only three Star Wars movies, and my favourite game company in the 80s (West End Games) produced the first (and amazing) Star Wars Roleplaying Game, WEG created new worlds, new characters, locations, droids... 

And some of those locations and characters have made it into Star Wars canon, mostly thanks to the Heir to the Empire trilogy if Wikipedia is to be believed. More recently, license-holders have seen the value of tabletop RPGs as a way to spread the word of their media, with the Carnival Row RPG (a free downloadable PDF through Nerdist and Monte Cook Games) that was created to promote the Amazon TV series, and The Green Knight RPG that A24 created as a full 'starter set' format game to promote their movie of the same name.

Heck, when I was working with Eden Studios on the Buffy RPG, we were putting the Slayer's Handbook together and remember us saying "Maybe we could ask Fox what Faith and Kendra's last names are?" Eden asked, months passed, but we got a reply - they didn't have last names, but Joss Whedon decided what they would be (Lehane and Young) - and those names became part of canon for the Buffyverse ever since.

Tabletop RPGs can fill in those blanks in a chronology, or missing information. And I guess that's why I called this post "Building Better Worlds" like the Weyland Yutani Corp. Just think of your favourite TV series or movie, and think of how small the actual place or time is involved. TTRPGs can expand and develop areas you've never imagined. Just like the Shackleton Expanse in the Star Trek Adventures RPG by Modiphius - a region of space unused by the series or novels, but on the map of the Star Trek galaxy. 

Here are some examples - 

The Magicians - one of my favourite book series and a fantastic TV series. But what about other students at Brakebills? Other years? What else could be going on in Fillory?

Twin Peaks - one of my favourite TV series. There were 20+ years where we didn't see what happened in that strange little town. And what's happened since Cooper changed the course of history? 

Battlestar Galactica - another ship in the fleet, or another Battlestar that was lost?

James Bond - he's 007, what about the other Double-O's? 

Stranger Things - What happened in the 70's? The 90's? What about the rest of the lab's experiments? Other 'gates' to the Upside-down? 

The X-Files - What happens after Season 11? What about between Season 9 and 10, when the X-Files were 'shut down'? New agents, continuing the investigations even if it's in an 'off the books' capacity. 

Sapphire and Steel - we only really saw Sapphire, Steel, Lead, and Silver in action, what about all those other medium-atomic weights investigating temporal disturbances?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - after Season 7, there are many Slayers out there in the world, all needing training, guidance, and with their own Scooby-gang to help face the demons and vampires.

I guess, the familiar universe and setting, but the potential to do your own thing within those worlds, is why I love licensed RPGs. And while the publishers are fleshing out the world(s), the IP-holders can take this as inspiration for their universes and build bigger worlds.