Day Fourteen of #RPGaDAY2023 and it's another look at one of the first year's questions. When this happened the first time around, this was timed to be a question during GenCon weekend. A little different this time around, but heck, let's go for it.
Back at the start of #RPGaDAY, answering this question, I mentioned the Thrilling Locations supplement for the Victory Games James Bond 007 RPG. Weird to think I've been to a few conventions since then, and I very rarely buy anything at them (mostly because I'm broke). So it's probably the same answer all these years later!
Day Thirteen of #RPGaDAY2023 is a bit of a gloomy one, talking about memorable character demises, but let's try to keep it epic, meaningful and exciting shall we?
I had a look at the original #RPGaDAY video post I did all those years ago for the same question, and it's about my stupid thief characters I had back in AD&D. Though it did make me smile in a slightly sad way, as my late cat, Marla, can be seen in the background of the video, with an ear poking up from her basket on the shelves behind me.
I miss Marla.
Anyway, since then there have been a host of memorable ends to my characters. A lot of them were in our FFG Star Wars games, where our characters would face unsurmountable odds, battle through and make a sacrifice for the rebellion. One of my characters, Qedra, was a zabrak - a darkside force user who managed to redeem himself, get into the jedi academy, face the troopers as Order 66 happened, and lived through to the beginnings of the rebellion.
It's been a while, but I remember him being killed in a suitably heroic manner a couple of episodes short of the epic end to our campaign, but he managed to return as a Force-Ghost to tip the scales in those final moments and help the surviving characters in their finest hour.
#RPGaDAY2023 and we're on to Day Twelve, looking at an old game you STILL play. Originally I talked about the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, mostly as it was a work of genius and perfectly emulated the series.
I haven't played anything old for a while now, mostly sticking to fairly recent games like the new version of The One Ring, Blade Runner, and Aegean. However, I have been looking through those old 'little black books' of Traveller again, amazed at how they managed to get complex rules into little 48-page A5 booklets. Kinda inspirational.
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.
Day Ten of #RPGaDAY2023 asks about your Favourite tie-in Fiction, and in the original #RPGaDAY I listed the cool Dark*Matter tie-in novels. They were really cool, but in the last ten years I don't think I've really read any tie-in novels. I mean, I'm reading The Laundry Files by Charles Stross at the moment as I'm working on the second edition of The Laundry RPG, but the novels came first so not exactly a 'tie-in' so to speak.
Honourable mentions should go to the old World of Darkness novels, I remember the first few Mage novels being pretty cool. And I also should mention that I read the first few Delta Green novels and short story collections, and really enjoyed those too - I think I read Alien Intelligence, Denied to the Enemy, and Rules of Engagement.
'This is me on Day Nine, baby. This is me on Day Nine.'
(Obscure Barenaked Ladiesreference there - went to a really good gig by them my first year at Uni, must have been about 30 people in the audience in a tiny club, a far cry from their stadium filling gigs overseas)
On Day Nine of #RPGaDAY2023 it's a look at your favourite dice. I don't think things have changed much since the original answer of that ancient d20 I first bought when I started gaming back in 1983ish.
It's very old, very used, the corners are all worn, the ink in the numbers has long faded, but it is certainly one with some significance for me, and one I'd hate to lose.
For current dice I don't think I have a favourite set. I've got to the age where I look at those lovely expensive and shiny dice with all the beautiful colours and patterns, and realise that (a) I can't afford them, and (b) I can't read the numbers easily from a distance. I keep thinking I should just get more simple and basic black and white dice so I can chuck them into the dice tray and easily see whether I've succeeded or not.
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.
And we're on to Day Seven of this year's #RPGaDAY, and the first time around the question was a little different, asking about the most 'intellectual' RPG you own.
Rather than be all high-brow, we've tweaked it a little to ask about the SMARTEST RPG you've played.
Answering that one's a tricky one. There are some really clever games out there - one that I always mention is the brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG by CJ Carella for Eden Studios. It's nothing too complex, but it's a work of genius. You can't stake a vampire in the game until their health has been reduced to a certain level. Seems simple, but it means you have to have a fight with the vampire, wear them down a bit, before you can dust them.
That simple rule means that you actually feel like you're in an episode of the series. You're kicking and punching vampires, then staking them, just like Buffy does!
Day Six of #RPGaDAY2023 and this one is the same question as the very first year of #RPGaDAY - What is your favourite game that you NEVER get to play.
Way back in the dawn of time, I answered that very question... with the Leverage RPG. You know what, I think it's probably a darn good answer. Though recently I've had a strange urge to dig out my old copy of Mage the Ascension again - had some good times with that game...
And we're on to Day Five of #RPGaDAY2023 and we're onto a rewording of the first year's question which was "Most Old-school RPG owned". Old-School can mean a lot of different things, so I thought we'd rephrase it to be Oldest Game You've Played.
Oldest is tricky, as the first games I played weren't until around 1983ish, but the games themselves had been around a while. I started with Traveller, which came out in 1977, then moved on to Runequest (first released in 1978), and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (first released 1977-78). I guess, technically it'd be Traveller! Weird how these things come around, Traveller really seems to be having a fifth or sixth renaissance at the moment.
Anyway, here's the original video from the first year, where I look at Warhammer (the old white box) and Top Secret.
Day Four of #RPGaDAY2023, and this time we're asking what is the most recent RPG you've bought.
What do you think I am, made of money? Ha! I must admit, there have been a load of cool RPGs I've wanted to buy, like Triangle Agency, or Rectify, but I can't really justify buying them. I know I probably won't play them, or have chance to.
After all, the first #RPGaDAY asked the same question and I mentioned Atomic Robo that I'd bought from my FLGS (The Games Room).
Awesome looking book, brilliantly illustrating the rules with comic art. Really, really cool. Bought it ten years ago, read through it, never played it, still sitting on my shelf.
Shame, it does look cool.
Most recent game I've actually paid out money for has been funding The Walking Dead Universe Kickstarter from Free League. I don't know if we'll get around to playing it, but I didn't think we'd play the Blade Runner RPG and we've done a couple of adventures of that and it's been a blast!
Onto Day Three of this year's #RPGaDAY, and we're revisiting the First RPG Bought - again, I added 'this year' just in case you haven't already answered this question in the very first #RPGaDAY.
Of course, the first RPG I bought was technically the AD&D Player's Handbook... you can see my stupid face talking about it in the video from all those years ago -
As I've already answered that question, I guess it's onto the first of this year? In that case, it'll going to be one I Kickstarted last year, which is the rather lovely (and ENnie nominated) Flabbergasted published by Wanderer's Tome.
It's really gorgeous, and a great game of farce, and P G Wodehouse hilarity and social faux pas, and brilliantly constructed and designed.
Day Two of #RPGaDAY2023, and I'm sorry, I'm still doing it as blogposts rather than videos. Maybe I should get into Podcasting, but then, doesn't everyone have a podcast?
You may have noticed that there's a difference in the wording from the first incarnation of this prompt - which was First RPG Gamemastered, to being First RPG Gamemaster. This way you can interpret it how you like. In the original RPGaDAY, I discussed the first RPG I'd ever gamemastered which was the old TSR game, Star Frontiers.
However, the first Gamemaster I encountered would probably be Pete - at least I think it was. It was a heck of a long time ago, over at JR's place playing Traveller for the first time. I rolled up a character, and kinda just watched in wonder, trying to understand what was going on. It was pretty epic. Pete ran loads of games for us, AD&D, Runequest, Odyssey, and more, and is still our Dungeon Master in our current D&D game all these years later. Thanks Pete!
It's RPGaDAY time again, and I pondered long and hard about whether I was going to do videos or text based entries this year - especially as it's the 10th one of these we've done. I charged the camera, dug out the tripod, and looked at my unappealing mug and thought maybe I'll just do this as text. I may change my mind as the month goes on, but I'm having one of those low days so we'll just make do with a blogpost this time. Okay? I'm sorry.
The point of this year's questions is to look back at the answers from the first RPGaDAY (if you took part) and see if things have changed.
DAY ONE - FIRST RPG played (this year)
I put the 'this year' bit on the end just in case you took part in the first RPGaDAY, as the answer to the first RPG you played won't have changed (unless you've suddenly remembered one you'd forgotten about).
My response to the first one ever was Traveller, you can check out my recounting of the tale in that video from all those years ago -
Look at that gormless face.
Anyway, as I've already answered the question for the First RPG I've ever played, then it's going to be the first RPG I played this year. Missing out by a day would be Hard Wired Island, a rather massive book of cyberpunk goodness from Weird Age Games that had us chuckling. Our characters were investigating some vandalism on the weird orbital station. It was pretty cool - I played a grumpy ex-military gumshoe. Really must get back to playing that, it was really cool. Lots of cool tech, a great setting, and not a horribly complex system. Definitely check it out.
The actual first game I played this year would probably be our The One Ring game that we'd been playing. Kept getting killed - that was a strangely brutal system. Half of the time you could be epic, just like the heroes in The Lord of the Rings, fighting of massive armies of orcs, and then, a couple of bad rolls later, and the whole party would be wiped out.
