Rules systems are different. There are a few I want to try out. The ultimate goal is to find out what really works in play and synthesize these ideas.
Obviously, I've played a lot of D&D 3E. It came out shortly after I started playing, and it was as if that was what I had to play if I wanted to play at all.
I also played a good deal of White-Wolf's World of Darkness (the 1990's editions) with my college friends. The system is sublimely simple and great for storytelling. It is however, poorly limited and easy to power-play in. You need to trust your players in this one.
Ages ago, I also played BESM 2nd edition. It was a fun, simple system. easy enough once you get past the point-buy character generation. It is also ripe for abuse.
The systems I'd like to play are:
5E D&D. Whenever I try to clean up or simplify 3E, what I wind up with is usually eerily similar to what's already in 5th edition. Friends have witnessed the moments when I have realized this; I get that sensation that my brain cells are being cooked away, and apparently this looks really funny to observers. Spoken to my group: I think maybe we should just make the conversion, cause 3E is kind of a straw man for picking apart.
Savage Worlds. Specifically designed to hearken back to the Pulp Writers of the early 20th century. This system looks wonderfully simple, and easily transferable between genres and settings. Fortunately, I have a buddy who is planning on running a campaign with these rules.
The Dragon Age RPG by Green Ronin Press. Obviously when you take a property which is already pretty much somebody's D&D setting, and make a new RPG out of it, there will be similarities. But the main mechanic in this involves rolling 3d6s, offering a bell curve of probability. I want to see if this is as awesome as I expect it to be.
DragonRaid: The infamous Christian RPG. Released in 1984 as a direct result of the Satanic Panic. People believed that D&D was an educational tool for inducting impressionable young folk in to the mysteries of the Occult. So DragonRaid is an educational tool for indoctrinating impressionable young folk in Christianity. It is specifically labeled not as an RPG, but as an ADVENTURE LEARNING SYSTEM. Really though, why shouldn't we be learning things when we play a game? The mere concept may be quite scoff-inducing, but DragonRaid is genuinely a quality product.
The basic package comes with the main rulebook, a game masters guide, mapping grids, carboard cutout miniatures (I really like these hippy-looking, non-threatening adventurers) , two dice, three adventure modules and a tutorial tape, all for way less than the cost of a new Player's Handbook. The system looks easy to run, and has some features which seem alien, but potentially brilliant. The character sheets have formulae to show exactly how to derive your values. The game is earnestly based on a genuine belief system. Rather than ability scores, your character is rated on goodness, patience, hope and the other fruits of the spirit:
Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Considering that your kindness and patience are determined by a randomly determined numeric value, I foresee all kinds of naughtiness being committed in the name of "role-playing."Also, there are no "spells" but characters may invoke bible passages to gain certain in-game effects. Even better, correctly reciting these verse from memory is how you develop your character! I see some potential for some freaky psycho-drama in this game. I found my copy on amazon.
DragonRaid comes with everything you see here. Yes. Even the cassette tape
The cassette is eerily warped-sounding though. These boxes have been sitting somewhere since the 80s after all.
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