Find Our Werewolf, Please, and Try Not to Get Eaten By Him
01 October 2015
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss RPG a Day 2015, and how to get
started as a GM.
We mentioned
RPG a Day 2015 ,
Unknown Armies ,
Microscope ,
Guide to Glorantha ,
GURPS Social Engineering: Back to School ,
Aces and Eights ,
GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery ,
WaRP ,
FUDGE ,
Forgotten Futures ,
Adam Adamant Lives! ,
James Bond 007 ),
Steve Jackson Games ,
Pelgrane Press ,
Ken Hite ,
Sean Punch ,
Bill Stoddard ,
Phil Masters ,
Reign ,
the Reign Wiki for some of the art ,
the original AD&D Players' Handbook cover ,
the original Shadowrun cover ,
the Gods of Glorantha cover ,
the Pavis panorama ,
the River of Cradles cover ,
the RuneQuest III cover ,
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff ,
The Grognard Files ,
what Roger uses for a dice box ,
Chessex custom dice and
some examples ,
Roger's favourite propelling pencil ,
Roger's WWII game ,
GURPS Banestorm ,
Space Master ,
Call of Cthulhu ,
Dread ,
Transhuman Space ,
Everway ,
Pendragon ),
The Paksenarrion series ,
the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG ,
rpg.net ,
Steve Jackson Games forums ,
Meme-Free Zone ,
John Rogers' blog ,
the Far Isles Mediaeval Society ,
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space ,
Kingsman: The Secret Service ,
Captain Janeway on the Holodeck ,
GURPS Lite ,
and
Caravan to Ein Arris ,
Music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com.
Posted by Phil Masters at
12:12pm on
02 October 2015
Re. Me: Uh, Gosh. Thanks. And there I was thinking that my stuff tends to be too dry...
Re. Celebrities: One Hollywood person with the acknowledged background in RPGs who I find interesting is Jon Favreau . All due respect to Joss Whedon, but the RPG influences on his stuff seem rather obvious - see all those wisecracking ragtag bands of oddly competent misfits with skimpy motivations for saving the world. Favreau seems to have learned something slightly more subtle about storytelling from his D&D days.
Re. Media Properties: I would generally agree that we don't need to be desperately looking for stuff that "should" be licensed for games these days, though I'd honestly make a huge exception for the Discworld, and not just because I wrote that one and the second edition is currently literally in the print queue. (First, it's a really good game setting when you look, and second, it's an excuse to import non-farcical comedy into RPG'ing, which needs more of that.) But anyway, I tried to think of others, and initially came up with some very minor variants on existing themes. (Is the TV Agents of SHIELD covered by an extant Marvel license? Because, well, it may not be great, but you know, wisecracking ragtag bands of oddly competent misfits with skimpy motivations...) But then I stepped backwards and had a different thought.
The fact is, I waste far too many minutes of my days dipping into various Webcomics, and it strikes me that there's a whole fairly popular genre there that has never been addressed. An RPG license for Questionable Content or Scary-Go-Round would not only encompass high weirdness, dry irony, soap opera, and (sometimes) non-farcical comedy, it'd come with reams of above-average ready-made full colour illustrations...
Posted by Phil Masters at
12:18pm on
02 October 2015
Uh, sorry - there were meant to be paragraph breaks there...
Posted by RogerBW at
12:32pm on
02 October 2015
Yeah, sorry about that. I need to shift this over to the software that I use for my own blog.
The only webcomic tie-in I know about is GURPS Casey and Andy, and I think there was briefly talk of something for Schlock Mercenary. I agree, others might do well.
The latest Marvel RPG is Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but the licence has lapsed - even Margaret Weis Productions, who've done a lot of TV and film licence work, apparently didn't think it was worth what Marvel were charging.
Posted by RogerBW at
01:54pm on
02 October 2015
That sounds as if it might go in the direction of FATE, or the Cortex or Cortex Plus systems from Margaret Weis Productions - which have been used for things like Serenity, Leverage and Smallville where there's meant to be a balance between action and soapy stuff. I haven't played it myself, though I'd like to try it some time.
Posted by Michael Cule at
06:20pm on
02 October 2015
I'm a fan of QC too. I'm not sure there's enough plot for a game either 'drama' based or otherwise. The world is wonderful and so are the characters but there it's all about friends hanging around and interacting with each other. Not even in a 'dramatic' mode very often.
Phil, if you're really interested in this as an idea let me ask: What do the players get to do?
Posted by Phil Masters at
11:54pm on
02 October 2015
A QC game would indeed be tricky - I fear that one would have to resort to Dramasystem rules, and work out what some of these characters want from each other. But trying to work out how to turn it into a viable RPG would be a really radical challenge. I guess that thinking of it as "Chez Geek the RPG (with added robots)" might be a start; the idea is not to win conflicts, but to achieve personal satisfaction without blowing too much of your slacker cool.
Scary-Go-Round and its derivatives would probably be a better license. That does have conflict and mysteries. The only problem is that the lack of closure on a lot of the plots is actually part of its charm, in a weird way.
Posted by Owen Smith at
06:37pm on
10 October 2015
There was some discussion of GURPS Girl Genius a few years ago, but then it all went quiet when Kaja and Phil didn't have time to do it (how hard can it be, they said, apparently). There was then an announcement that SJ Games were having someone write it with Phil and Kaja reviewing, and then there was nothing after that.
Posted by RogerBW at
07:32pm on
10 October 2015
I have not heard anything I can talk about which suggests progress on this front. The last public news was in November of 2013.
For those who don't know, I track all the public news about upcoming GURPS products here , though upcoming products are not uniquely identified so it's possible that some entries actually refer to multiple items.
Posted by Owen Smith at
08:57pm on
11 October 2015
With regards to Everway going for a visual approach to character creation. I find it often helps me enormously to find some artwork to represent my character, it matters to me sufficiently that I will change some details of the character to better fit the artwork I've found. I don't always do it this way, at the moment precisely 2 out of 4 characters I have in play were inspired by artwork. But it's a tool I use a lot.
Posted by RogerBW at
01:13pm on
14 October 2015
I can't now remember whether I mentioned it in the episode, but a Thing I Always Say is that when I'm generating characters for one-shot games I always find it much easier to fill in their personality (thus many of their advantages, disadvantages and optional skills) once I've got a suitable photo for them.
And how could I resist using this bloke when I wanted a retired RN officer? (From the Grauniad .)
Posted by Mike C. at
11:54pm on
26 October 2015
You guys seem to have disappeared from iTunes and I can't subscribe thru any other catcher. Is there a problem?
Posted by Michael Cule at
11:40am on
27 October 2015
Umm, no. We're there as far as I can see. Roger seems to have added the advertising line: "A Bit Like Ken And Robin Meets History Today" (I know I didn't do it!) and we seem to have no review ratings (get your fingers out you lazy lot!) but it's there.
Posted by RogerBW at
09:16am on
29 October 2015
Looks like my error in fact; iTunes runs off the RSS feed, and the RSS feed had lost its "enclosure" elements when I switched to the new blogging engine. The RSS feed is now working again and iTunes should follow when it next checks.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.
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