#RPGaDay Day 31: Favorite Non-RPG Thing to Come Out of RPGs

A sense of community.

God knows this hobby can get up its own ass at times with edition wars and you're playing it wrong and that book shouldn't be for sale, but then you see publishers and creators banding together, rallying around community members who have lost children, or spouses, or have learned they are very ill, or who have lost their homes due to natural disaster. Many times, our hobby rallies around people in times of disaster even when we don't know that even a single gamer was affected.

It really tends to make the standard weekly drama bearable when you remember the love and beauty that people are capable of.

#RPGaDay Day 30: Favorite RPG Playing Celebrity

You can keep your Wil Wheatons and Vin Diesels and Stephen Colberts...this one was an easy pick for me:

Credit to Stezak for creating this image.

Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs has not only won all of the awards and accolades listed above, but he's a HUGE Dungeons & Dragons fan, and - by most accounts - is a completely selfless teammate and a gentleman to deal with.

#RPGaDay Day 29: Favorite RPG Website

Honestly, I don't have a lot of destination sites. As a reviewer, I avoid other reviewer sites, especially if it's a book I haven't reviewed, so their impressions don't paint my own.

That said, there are great resources all over the internet for games that I wind up stealing from, and I access almost all of that from my Google+ stream...so Google+ it is.

#RPGaDay Day 28: Favorite RPG I No Longer Play

Cheating again on this one and adding two:

I don't think I have ran this since my friend Kenny moved to Boston. Sad, really, given how much I love it.

The next one is...

I thoroughly enjoy the Cinematic Unisystem, and my favorite incarnation is the Angel RPG with the Buffy Magic Box supplement. Anytime I run this game, people tend to enjoy it, but it never lasts for more than a couple of episodes. I'm so frustrated I no longer even try. =/

#RPGaDay Day 27: Favorite Idea for Combining Two Games

More like a setting and a game, but Midnight was sure satisfying when I used Jeff Scifert's conversion to Savage Worlds.

#RPGaDay Day 26: Favorite Inspiration for Your Games

Random tables.

Totally and completely and without fail. I love using random tables and just figuring out how to make it work. Heck, I made random adventure generators for Marvel SAGA for this reason

#RPGaDay Day 25: Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic

So for Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic, I'm going to go with the Fate Deck from Marvel SAGA, with a list of reasons why.

• It provides a nice mix of randomization, combined with resource management and decision making. Each character has a variable hand of cards, based off of their experience level, and uses that to decide what to do and when to do it, generally attempting to match up their actions with the cards in their hand. Why?
• Trump. If the card you play matches your active ability, you Trump, which means you get to flip over the top card of the Fate Deck and add it to your total. If you Trump again, you keep adding. It can make for some truly explosive moments in-game.
• Pushing. As part of that resource management, if you need just a little something extra to put you over the top on an action, you can Push. You Push by spending a card and adding it to your action total, but not redrawing it, to simulate the exertion of the effort...because sometimes you need to hold that gate just a little longer so the last civilian can slip through...
• Edge. Probably my favorite mechanic of all. The great equalizer. Every character has an Edge score. They can play any number of cards equal to, or less than, their Edge score before playing their action card. What does that mean in play? Say She-Hulk has an Edge of 2 and a Hand Size of 4. She's holding the 2 of Intellect, 8 of Doom, 6 of Agility and 4 of Agility. If she wants to punch someone (Strength), she knuckles down and uses the 8 of Doom (giving that card to the Narrator to use against her later), but she can also add that 2 of Intellect, giving her a 10 to go with her Strength of 17 (for an action total of 27 - Impressive).  Now Captain America, who has a Will of 12, wants to calm a rioting crowd. His hand includes the 3, 4 and 7 of Doom, the 6 of Will and the 4 and 6 of Strength. He can dump the 3 and 4 of Doom, plus the 4 of Will to set his score of 23...before playing the 6 of Will to push it to 29, which also Trumps! Captain America is very resourceful in SAGA, and Edge can be more important than cool powers and high scores.
  
  See kinda why I love Marvel SAGA?

#RPGaDay Day 24: Favorite House Rule

Probably my favorite house rule was  one that I did not invent, and that's the Master Class rules for Marvel SAGA. See, skills in Marvel SAGA have three levels: Unskilled (default), Skilled (Reduces the difficulty by four) and World Class (reduces the difficulty by four and makes any non-Doom card a Trump). The Master Class rules added another step in there, between Skilled and World Class, granting an additional Trump suit (physical or mental, depending on the base attribute for the skill) to allow for guys who were better than skilled, but not World Class. Really, that's about all the variance I really need in a skill system.

#RPGaDay Day 23: Perfect Game For Me

This is another that's not going to surprise anyone:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1) Perfect price point. $10 to buy into the game, which is flexible enough to run multiple genres almost out of the box (and certainly with the supplemental material).

2) Fantastic setting support, including my favorite RPG setting (Deadlands, if you missed that post).

3) I love the power curve, which allows characters to become strong and capable, but without destroying verisimilitude in the world as they become devastating world destroyers like they do in other games (why do level 20/30 characters in some D&D games listen to ANYBODY again?).

4) I know how to "bend" the system to accomplish what I want, 95% of the time. The only other system I've felt anywhere near as comfortable in that regard is the Cinematic Unisystem.

5) I have personally ran fantasy, horror, westerns and supers with it, and each game managed to feel familiar, yet mechanically distinct.

6) I love building characters for it. That's part of the reason I did the Savage Worlds Characters Are All The Same series, and why I have repeatedly done "Half-Dozen Heroes" posts various settings.

7) The proof is in the fun. We have a blast with the game, and I have rarely had a bad session.

It is perfect? No. Can it do everything? Maybe, but sometimes you are bending it to the point of breaking if you do, and there's other games that can handle it better. But if you told me I could only run one game forever, then I would grab Savage Worlds and be set.

#RPGaDay Day 22: Perfect Gaming Environment

This one is simple really...anywhere my players are and my books are easily accessible. Generally, this means my dining room table. I can be comfortable, have the family around doing the things they want to do, my players' kids can play with my kids...nothing fancy at all.

#RPGaDay Day 21: Favorite Setting

Easy. I have long said Deadlands is my favorite setting. The horror, the weirdness and the Old West. I love it to pieces.

#RPGaDay Day 20: Favorite Horror RPG

Favorite horror RPG? I could say Deadlands Classic or Witchcraft or All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but - mechanics-wise - those games were supplanted by other RPGs for me. And I love Ravenloft, but I've never been in love with the *games* attached to Ravenloft. So I am torn. So I'm going to split the difference again:

Savage Worlds and the Cinematic Unisystem have a major thing in common: They both have a metagame currency that can scale the whole thing up into the high level of heroic...but if you take that away, the game gets deceptively brutal and frightening. A Buffy campaign with all White Hats and scaled back drama points can get out of control, fast. Savage Worlds with a stifled bennie flow can do the same. The best part is, I know both systems well enough to get the "feel" for how to push and pull them to get what I want.

tremulus was alllllmost there, but honestly, I'm only a so-so Cthulhu guy. If it were veered for more "standard" horror than Lovecraftian, we might be having a different conversation. Fantastic game, though. Ghostories 2nd Edition, by Precis Intermedia Games, is another one that I want to toss out there from *reading*, but I've never actually *played* it, so it would be disingenuous of me to call it my "favorite".

#RPGaDay Day 19: Favorite Supers RPG

To the surprise of absolutely no one who has been paying attention to me:

I'm not saying this game is perfect. God knows it isn't. Despite all the flaws, though, it has provided the most amazing superhero action I have ever experienced in an RPG, bar none. I would dearly love to get some version of this back in print because, aside from Savage Worlds, it's my favorite RPG of all time, and the lack of a digital edition, combined with the lack of in-print Fate Deck means this game is largely dead.

#RPGaDay Day 18: Favorite Sci-Fi RPG

Okay, so I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi games, aside from stretching the definition of "supers" to fit Sci-Fi, which isn't that hard, really. I have played a few Sci-Fi games over the years, and had fun with them, but couldn't rank them very highly now, for different reasons. I've owned and read a few games that I think I would love (Firefly, Atomic Robo, Interface Zero, to name a few), but I have never actually PLAYED them. So my vote on this one goes to:

At the time, I said that I wished D&D 4th Edition had been more like Star Wars SAGA Edition. No dead levels, the Feats and Talents added a ton of variety, the skills involved less bean counting and the Prestige Classes were easier to dip into.

Now I look at it, and I still like it, but I want to redo the math in the game to make it more in line with 5th Edition, with smaller to-hit bonuses, and a lower range of armor classes. Still my favorite game to bear the d20 logo.

Alternately, I would probably have to answer:

#RPGaDay Day 17: Favorite Fantasy RPG

Favorite Fantasy RPG?

It would pretty much have to be D&D 5th Edition right now. Though, in a pinch, I could also answer: 

Either one.

#RPGaDay Day 16: Longest Game Session

Hell, I don't know, but I'm sure it was in high school and it was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. There's a real good chance that I was a player and not the DM, because one of my pet peeves is GMs who don't know when to call it a night.

#RPGaDay Day 15: Longest Campaign

This is a good question...not sure how to answer it.

My D&D 5e game has several characters and elements from my old AD&D2e game in it, so technically it would qualify (though they are background characters and nothing more). That would be about a 20 year span, though certainly not uninterrupted.

My Marvel game started in '95, with Marvel FASERIP and ran on and off until a couple of years ago...but again, lots of interruptions.

A Deadlands game that I started off as a player in, but then took over a Marshal, was still going as of last year.

The longest continuing game that had a solid beginning and ending would be Necessary Evil, which took us about four years to get through, but again, lots of interruptions.

These days, my current group aims to end campaigns in a timely fashion, with about a year being standard.

#RPGaDay Day 14: Favorite RPG Accessory

It's almost too essential to the game to call it an accessory, but I've seen people even calling dice accessories, so I will say it counts: The Fate Deck for the Marvel SAGA roleplaying game. I love this resolution mechanic so much, with all the neat tricks it provides (especially Edge and Trump). So, so, so good.

My second choice, which is definitely more optional, would be the Savage Worlds Adventure Deck, which has flipped many a game on its ear in the best possible way.

#RPGaDay Day 13: Favorite RPG Podcast

Okay, I don't really listen to podcasts. I'm a reader, not a listener. It's just how I'm wired.

HOWEVER...The BAMF Podcast has had me on (twice! Most people politely avoid me after the first time) and have invited me back to talk about the BAMFies, but we couldn't get the schedule worked out. This is how I really learned about Fiasco as well, which is a win all its own.

#RPGaDay Day 12: Favorite RPG Illustration

Day 12 of RPG a Day is Favorite RPG Illustration. I could probably make a laundry list of these, but the one I am about to post is the iconic image of my favorite game setting: Stone, as depicted by Brom, on the cover of the original Deadlands RPG: