RPGaDay – Day 23: Coolest Looking RPG Product

Oh, thank god I already wrote this one (when I was looking at RPGs I had purchased). I had no idea where to start, because I buy things just because they look cool or pretty, and if you asked me tomorrow, I would have a different answer. Today’s answer is VHS – Very Horror Stories from Aces Games. VHS is a game that positively drips with love for trashy video nasties horror. Everything about the design of the game packs is pure joy. I’d highly recommend going and looking at the Kickstarter here to see what I mean in terms of design: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acesgames/vhs-very-horror-stories

Each individual pack is a self-contained horror story in a box designed to look like a VHS tape. The art is absolutely stunning, and all the characters and monsters have their own art cards in a way that appeals to the part of me that likes collectable card games. The maps are also gorgeous, and it’s really satisfying to fold them out. I haven’t had a chance to read the contents yet, but the physical design and art remind me so strongly of the love put into products like Dead of Night and the Final Girl board game. I can’t wait to sit down with a bunch of players and open up one of these boxes to start laying stuff out for the game.

There is something so awesome about boxed sets. They’re largely used for starter sets these days but they’re such pleasing concepts. We all like unboxing, unfolding, laying out. I was genuinely emotional when I got a contributor copy of the Doctor Who Starter Set I wrote, because having MY VERY OWN BOXED GAME WITH MY NAME IN THE FRONT was incredible. Hell, I did an unboxing of a sealed copy of The Masque of Red Death ten years ago on this very blog (https://wordpress.com/view/theanxiousgamer.wordpress.com).

The problem, of course, is that boxed sets are prohibitively expensive to make, especially for small time creators. So all the more kudos to the Aces Games team for making something so delightful to hold and open and use.

Something I’m not sure if you can get from the Kickstarter images is quite how richly designed the game boxes are. The art on the front is pitch-perfect, the VHS labels are part of the storytelling in and of themselves, and the three core games as a boxed set are just absolutely beautiful. Even the envelope for the spin-off stretch goal content is gorgeous: it makes you feel like you’re opening something forbidden, something no-one should ever see. Aces Games is doing a second VHS Kickstarter from 13th September 2023 called Opening Night with at least three more adventures, and I am so excited. Between this and Season 3 of Final Girl, I will spend all my money on lovingly-designed video nasties, and I have no regrets.

See more about VHS: Opening Night here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acesgames/vhs-very-horror-stories-opening-night

RPGaDay – Day 22: Best Secondhand RPG Purchase

My best secondhand purchase for someone else was the original Planescape boxed set in near-perfect condition for my partner one birthday. He already owns the Dark Sun original boxed set, and we both really love Planescape. His face when he opened it! I truly appreciate how much digital preservation is going on with classic RPGs right now, with a greater awareness that these items are a part of our shared cultural history meaning that they are being digitised and sold as pdfs these days. But there is something wonderful about physically opening up the map of Sigil. The art style of Planescape is like nothing else, and it conveyed such a deep sense of place and tone that really stands out.

My best secondhand purchase for myself is the full collection of the Orpheus campaign setting for Classic World of Darkness, because it was a truly fortuitous little moment. I was in one of our friendly local game shops (The Games Room in Norwich), which was my guide to gaming for such a long time.

The proprieter, Duncan, is always welcoming and lovely, kind and enthusiastic. He was there when I bought my first set of dice, he was there when I used to drift in to buy whatever FATE or 4e D&D or Chronicles of Darkness books he had in. That shop was where I found Unhallowed Metropolis, Blue Rose, Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, Etherscope, Smallville and a host of other RPGs that sparked my imagination. Duncan also has a little section of secondhand books at the back and one time I found the core book and a couple of the supplements for Orpheus back there.

I vaguely knew Orpheus by reputation, but I flipped through and knew I needed to buy these. I filled in the holes in the collection from online sites (just because they weren’t available anywhere locally) and I am always charmed by them. I keep the Orpheus books on a shelf in the study where I write RPGs so I can flip through them to feel inspired. They represent so much of what I want to be able to do with my RPG writing: mechanically rich, flavourful and memorable worlds for people to play around in.

I love that they are such a weird one-off part of an otherwise sprawling game line. It felt like the writers were very clear about the experience they wanted to convey, one which didn’t necessarily fit with the more lucrative Vampire: The Masquerade and associated lines. More than that, they feel like a labour of love. A toolkit laid out before the GM with excitement to see what you’ll do with it. Rich with plot hooks, but open to your own version of the story.

By the way, if you’re ever down Elm Hill in Norwich, I’d recommend popping in to see the Games Room. It’s a quiet little shop in a historic part of Norwich, and you never know what you’re going to find (make sure to bring cash though – you will almost certainly walk out with something and the nearest cash machine is a bit of a walk!) I wish I had more time to go down there these days, but a lot of my RPG tastes have evolved over the years and the lines I used to buy there are no longer around. Nevertheless, the Games Room will always be a part of my gaming DNA. It will always be part of my journey to becoming an RPG writer, and I’m lucky it was there.

RPGaDay – Day 21: Favourite Licensed RPG

There are so many really great licensed RPGs to choose from, and I’ve already mentioned many of my favourites in previous days’ posts.

I am very biased, as I worked on several books for this line, but I really love Doctor Who: The RPG. When it first came out in 2009, it took some huge risks to engage with the ideas behind Doctor Who past and present. The initiative system explicitly prioritised people who wanted to talk or problem solve over people who wanted to fight. The characters were shaped by their experiences and their inner drives far more than their physical strength or their intelligence.

The DNA of games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was evident in how it handled the differing power levels of the Doctor and Companions using story points. These days it feels weird to me that balance would be an issue, as I’m used to games like Monsterhearts where the experience of play is much more interesting than whether you succeed or fail at tasks. But the concept of partial successes and saying “no, but” to players was still largely only known in story gaming indie RPG circles.

The Second Edition carried these same concepts forward, focusing so much more on the tone and feeling of the show, the setting and stories, and the range of characters available than long lists of equipment or powers. It was genuinely a joy to write for Doctor Who, as the hope of the setting ran through every line I wrote. Characters were conflicted and faced challenges, but they changed and grew through those challenges.

In a market saturated with games where characters casually slice through disposable enemies (no shade intended, I enjoy those kinds of games too!), Doctor Who: The RPG was unequivocal that killing changed you and the story. The Doctor and their Companions have grappled with the moral implications of killing for 60 years.

I remember that in a Masks campaign, one of the teen superhero PCs killed the mastermind NPC, who was just an evil property developer without superpowers, as he was gloating that he would just get out of any legal consequences. I checked in carefully with that player and the other players to make sure everyone was OK with exploring this content, and the whole next season had a strong theme of that character, the other PCs and the NPCs who cared about them grappling with that act of murder.

It was actually really meaningful, and I love that Doctor Who: The RPG doesn’t say you can’t ever make that choice as your character. If everyone at the table is OK with it, you can take that path, just as characters in the TV show sometimes do. But it will change that character and the people around them. It’ll change their relationships, and force them to redefine themselves.

That’s a tiny focus in on a single mechanic of Doctor Who: The RPG, but to me it exemplifies what makes this RPG special. A lot of people were worried that Doctors and Daleks, the 5e adaptation of Doctor Who, would betray that set of ethics, but instead it leaned in. The writers of the system (I should note that I am listed as a writer in Doctors and Daleks, but I did not work on the system except as a playtester) thought deeply about how the Doctor and their Companions defeat enemies in the show, and how to emulate that with a satisfying play experience. I love that, and I love both versions of this RPG.

RPGaDay – Day 20: Will Still Play in Twenty Years’ Time

I feel like a broken record, but the answer to this is really a greatest hits of what I’ve already said.

I’ll always want to play Monsterhearts because the mechanics, narrative and character drama work together in harmony so well. The moments when games of Monsterhearts just fly are comparable to the best flow moments in creativity, and they feel truly collaborative, like you’re making the best damn paranormal romance TV show in existence. Probably Masks too for the same reasons! Hopefully I’ll get to play it.

I suspect we’re going to have a little break from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, but I am certain that I’ll play it again, or a spiritual successor. I feel that we’ve moved out of the era of playing it exactly as it is and with future games, I suspect we’ll hack it around even more than we have already to make it even more of the system we want. I look forward to it!

To be honest, though I haven’t played FATE for a while, I think it’ll always be in my back pocket as a game I’m up for, and I feel that it might get a resurgence at some point. It feels about due.

I also think that Forged in the Dark is going to go from strength to strength. Blades in the Dark is already incredibly solid, and Scum & Villainy is pretty good (it’s actually excellent but the balance issues compared to Blades mean it has to be a little lower in the rankings for me). I really want to see more of this system and how it can be used.

I hope I am still playing Chronicles of Darkness in twenty years’ time, but even more than that, I hope I am playing a new edition of it that keeps to the same vibes and design principles as the previous editions. But more on that on Day 27…

RPGaDay – Day 19: Favourite Published Adventure

Apparently I misinterpreted the con module day as published module, so I guess see Day 15 for my answer on this one? I know that’s a cop-out but I genuinely don’t tend to run or play pre-written adventures very often.

What I probably should have done is talked about my favourite one-shot systems on that day. But I think I have also talked about those before.

Weirdly, I think the published adventures I most want to run are the more recent Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons 5e ones. I have a complicated relationship with some of the 5e content: I’ve played the Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat campaigns and they feel a little half-baked. Unsurprising, considering they were written alongside the core books being written. I…have been there. It’s a challenge and often leads to a lot of last-minute rewrites (though in my case it was a good experience where I had excellent support from producers throughout).

That said, I love Candlekeep Mysteries. It’s an absolutely stellar book of adventures that I desperately want to run. I also really like Keys From the Golden Vault conceptually. It’s made me want to pick up Adventures in the Radiant Citadel and other similar books. I think these all benefit from the variety of writers. They bring fresh energy to 5e that is sometimes lacking for me. It’s the same way that I love the grab bags of rules like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The Strixhaven book has a light campaign built into the very structure of the book. It’s GREAT. More of this please. More variety and diversity of writers. More fresh takes and new ideas and bright imaginative approaches to 5e.

Edit to add: I realised right after I posted this that it was blinkered of me to praise WotC’s books without acknowledging that a lot of people of colour, disabled people and people of marginalised genders have been sidelined, dismissed and had their work rewritten by WotC. Some of those adventures I love may well have been part of that process. So…while I like what WotC is doing by bringing in a wider range of writers, they still have a way to go in terms of respecting those writers.

RPGaDay – Day 18: Favourite Game System

What a divisive pick XD Apparently this challenge woke up on checks notes Friday and chose violence. I’ve talked pretty exhaustively about game systems I love before: I’ve enthused about Monsterhearts, Masks, FATE, D&D 4e…so many systems. I haven’t even managed to get my review together for Blades in the Dark, which blew my mind as much as Monsterhearts did when I read and played it, or the reviews of my favourite solo systems, Ironsworn/Starforged and Utopia.

I guess if I had to choose a single system to have on a desert island, or a cave during a snowstorm, it would be Cortex Prime. I have talked loads about the various iterations of Cortex elsewhere, but to be honest, I’ve barely played it. I’ve played one-shots of Marvel Heroic Roleplay nd Firefly (from an older version of Cortex), but I’ve never been able to play or run anything longer.

I remember when I first got the Smallville game, which was the first iteration of what became Cortex Drama (it was a complicated thing where a previous edition, Cortex Plus, divided Cortex into different versions called Action, Drama and Heroic, I’m sorry this is so complicated to explain).

Smallville set my brain on fire: it was the first time I had seen this level of mechanical investment in relationships, values, the life path that helped shape your characters stats through their background and conflicts. I immediately wrote a hack for Buffy.

Same with the Leverage RPG (Cortex Heroic): the idea of your role in the team being your stat line was pure genius. You didn’t just have to be a Hacker, you could also be a Grifter (like Hardison). You didn’t just have to be a Thief, you could also be a Mastermind (like Parker).

Marvel Heroic Roleplay (RIP, the licence got pulled very suddenly before they could publish everything for it) was the best superhero system for getting people to roleplay as Iron Man, Captain America or Thor right out of the box. The mechanics felt like you were those characters, not a shadow of them designed to fit around an inadequate statting system.

Cortex Prime has now turned these subsystems into an adaptable toolkit RPG that can effectively emulate any genre. It’s genuinely a thing of beauty, like an intricate toolkit for a piece of clockwork. Problem is, right now I have no idea how to put it together. I’d love to have the time, the groups, the brainspace to try. I’d love to run the many many Cortex Prime games I have bouncing around in my head. I’d love to play endless different Cortex games for different settings, different properties, different ways of hacking it. Just reading the book is like a shot of pure inspiration, especially as the Kickstarter meant that it has lots of incredibly beautiful illustrations. I have the Dragon Prince book and I already know what campaign I want to run with it. I am hungry for the community content platform they’ve promised because I want to create for it and see what others create.

So I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite game system because that answer requires several hours of list making and ranking. But it’s the one that has the most untapped potential for me. I hope someday I get to do more with it!

RPGaDay – Day 17: Funniest Game You’ve Played

Hm, this one is interesting, because I don’t really play comedy RPGs very much. I’ve been part of some great groups who make me laugh a lot while we swash buckles on the high skies, explore dungeons or madly escalate a situation that could have been solved a lot more simply, but I don’t tend to play games specifically designed for that kind of comedy. I find that it’s hard to mechanically reflect and reward wit in an inclusive way. I’m not very quick or witty (and when I am occasionally quick I ruin it by being very proud of myself).

When there are games like FATE or D&D’s inspiration system that reward players for making the GM laugh or entertaining them, I often find myself falling behind. I also find those kind of games encourage people to showboat more and more for the GM and dominate the conversation in attempts to get the shiny rewards, because approval is a powerful incentive towards action. While that can work really well in a streamed game like Oxventure where all of the players are professional entertainers, it can be pretty exclusionary when you’re a quieter or more anxious player.

I would really like to try games like Fiasco, which are all about the escalation of a simple premise, and encourage players to create a weird and wonderful story together. Games like that are far more suitable for situations like the old 24 Hour Roleplay events we used to do with our university Games Society or when we used to all live together in student houses.

Getting people together for a regular campaign is hard enough right now, let alone a beer and pretzels wacky adventure one-shot. Everyone has a life and tiredness and responsibilities and jobs! And they all live far enough away that either we or they have to use a car to get to one another, which takes drunken nonsense games off the table. I find conventions to be an awkward place to engage with those kind of games, too, as I don’t have the rapport with the folks around me that I have with people I’ve played games with for more than a decade.

Basically, I would like more drunken irresponsible wildly escalating comedy games in my life, and I would encourage anyone who’s still at university or who lives near their friends to do those kind of RPGs now. You’ll have plenty of time for thoughtful RPGs about feelings and big issues, but madcap antics are a type of RPG that flourishes in a casual atmosphere, and it’s one that is not always possible at different stages of life.

[OK, my partner also just reminded me this second for unconnected reasons that the Secrets of Cats game I ran using FATE was actually hilarious. That was a game that managed to be fun and silly while also keeping the feelings resonant and powerful. I set up situations like a hall of Cat Distractions in a shopping mall that the villains were using to slow the PCs down and the players just ran with it. It was wonderful. Also, Lasers and Feelings is ALWAYS a good time. No matter the group, no matter the premise, it is intensely fun and hilarious, as people really lean into tropes and go on a wild ride together. So for all the doom and gloom and melancholy of the post above, I have had some incredible comedy games. Also, shows that maybe it doesn’t need to be a drunken raucous party atmosphere to have that special feeling of a night that made me laugh so much it was hard to keep going.]

RPGaDay – Day 16: Game You Wish You Owned

I almost caught up last week and then slipped entirely for the last couple of days and the weekend (one of our cats was ill and had to go to the vet, but she’s doing a lot better now).

A game I would dearly love to own but don’t currently is Fall of Magic, a GM-less RPG about a journey that uses a handmade canvas map as the main component of the game. It is only available via a particular shop in America called Heart of the Deernicorn (who are amazing in general) and while I’ve ordered internationally from them before for my much-loved Monsterhearts shirt and letter jacket (tragically I missed the Scum & Villainy shirts by a matter of hours), Fall of Magic is expensive. As it should be! It’s a beautiful piece of work and I’m glad they’ve kept to their decision to make the physical game a luxury item. It’s still possible to play it without the scroll, as you can get a pdf.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with luxurious special editions of RPGs or high-production-value RPGs. My main objection to games like Invisible Sun is that they initially required that level of buy-in just to view the rules and enter the conversation about them. They have since relented and made some of the rules available as a quickstart, I think, and a pdf version of the game available, which is a smart decision.

I absolutely adore the special editions Rowan, Rook and Decard make of their games, like the leather-bound edition of Heart, because I can still own, read and run a beautifully-produced core book with all the rules just fine with significantly less of an investment. Fall of Magic is a game where the physical elements of the game are part of the experience. And if you can’t afford the scroll version, you can buy the pdf and make your own. I just also know that I want to play this particular game using the handmade scroll and so I’m holding out till I can buy it. Unfortunately, that carries the same risk that other RPGs with high production values have: at some point, the physical copies of this beautiful object might just no longer be available. That would be a tragedy, but I’m hoping Heart of the Deernicorn continues for a long time (heartofthedeernicorn.com).

RPGaDay – Day 15: Favourite Con Module/One-Shot

I don’t tend to run or play many pre-written adventures, which seems like a shame. Early on, I did experience what a really good pre-written one-shot can be, though. My partner cemented his reputation as one of the top GMs in our University Games Society by running an annual introductory adventure called Exit 23. It was an adventure for Dark Matter/Alternity, but he adapted it for Chronicles of Darkness 1st Edition (called New World of Darkness back then).

It was so popular that one year I was even on standby to run it in case enough people came along to require two groups. Exit 23 is a wonderfully atmospheric adventure of a group of people stuck in a diner during a sudden snowstorm that has cut off the roads and all lines of communication. There’s more to it than that, but I’m being vague so as not to spoiler anything. The pre-generated characters were rich and had their own secrets. The setup had specific timed elements that came in as the adventure wore on, pushing the players in specific directions or making things more complicated. It’s an incredible flexible adventure and it basically never went the same way twice.

Some of this was to do with the set up: a mapped physical space that the player characters could explore and investigate, limited resources that they could use in clever ways, and challenges that could be solved creatively or made interesting things happen if they went wrong. It’s essentially the same set up as The Mist, or a zombie survival film. The thing that makes those stories really compelling is winding up the mechanism and seeing what happens. What happens when you get all these people in the same place, and how do they try to solve problems? What tensions arise, and how do they resolve them? What resources can they gather? How do those resources contribute to solutions or further dangers?

The idea of isolating the space refines the adventure down to a specific set of choices: the snowstorm is highly dangerous if the players decide that they’re going to abandon the diner. It starts in medias res, meaning that the crisis is very clear straight away. The narrowed possibilities are creative grist for what the players do and how their choices affect the scenario, but the scenario also keeps developing and changing even if they decide to do nothing. Instead of, say, a dungeon crawl where the progression is through a physical space, the progression in Exit 23 is through the increasing pressure of survival. It makes me wonder how a game like Last Fleet might handle that sort of scenario, if one adapted the pressure system and the playbooks for a modern day setting. In something like Last Fleet, you could even use reaction moves or doom clocks to progress things, and write a set of breaking points for that scenario.

I was lucky that I got to see different iterations of such a rich scenario early on. It’s undoubtedly helped me as a designer and writer, and showed me that pre-written adventures could provide a satisfying one-shot game experience.

RPGaDay – Day 14: Favourite Convention Purchase

My favourite convention purchase this year wasn’t actually a game. I found a stall with ita bags (which have a dedicated clear pocket for displaying pin badges) shaped like a Jack o’Lantern, and it has become one of my absolute favourite possessions. I’ve been searching for a good ita bag for ages, so this was a joy to find. I also bought a really fantastic poster of a cut-through wizard’s academy that I really need to get framed and hang up in the house.

To be honest, a huge amount of the stuff I get from conventions that really stands out to me are the weird and wonderful pieces of art, miniatures and ephemera that I can’t get elsewhere. It’s like a goblin market of beautiful things, and I can even meet the creators and tell them how incredible their stuff is! I got to buy some fantastic pieces from Bad Squidoo Minis and also tell Annie how awesome she is.

I did also rather impulsively buy the Dark Crystal RPG because the Dark Crystal was a formative influence on me, and a producer friend of mine really rates the layout of it. I’m really glad I picked it up, as the visuals are gorgeous and it feels completely steeped in love for the setting. The fold-out dungeons are inspired and it’s a gorgeous book that feels like an artefact in itself.

My other favourite convention purchase this year was the convention-exclusive Star Wars Legion model, Strike Me Down. Legion and Shatterpoint have ruined me for other miniatures games, so of course I queued to get this…I guess diorama? It’s basically a display piece with models you can take out. We got posters for buying it as well, AND we got to talk to some of the Atomic Mass Games designers which was a joy. They were really lovely and signed a poster for us.

It was particularly cool because we got to watch their panel, which we thought would be primarily trailering and revealing Shatterpoint, but was actually a really in-depth look at their top-down design approach for Legion and Shatterpoint (with reference to Armada and X-Wing as well).

I don’t think it was filmed, or at least I couldn’t find it online, but it was a genuinely fascinating look at the choices they made, from art style (which is notably more cartoony for Shatterpoint and more naturalistic for Legion) to scenery (specifically incorporating more multi-level scenery for Shatterpoint to reflect the more cinematic movement mechanics) to unique character fighting styles.

The comment that I really came away with is their observation that in Star Wars, the action and fight scenes are a huge part of telling that character’s story. So, you can instantly tell who Dooku is by the way he fights. You can read so much from how Bo Katan and Moff Gideon face off. You have more than just physical injury at stake when characters face each other, whether it’s Mace Windu and Darth Sidious fighting over the very future of the Republic, or the deep-seated emotional pain of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader locked in one fight of an eternal battle to the death.

Seeing AMG talk about their games made me appreciate how intentional every aspect of their design is, both to bring out the themes they want and, crucially, to make the game into the kind of player experience that they want to present. That’s why Legion and Shatterpoint are pretty much all I play right now: they make you feel the way the Star Wars films and TV shows do. I find myself narrating how the Inquisitor throws Barris Offee from a high point to claim the objective, or hissing lines in character as Maul.

Shatterpoint is the only competitive miniatures game where I always have fun, even though I consistently lose. I’m a bad loser and if I keep losing at a game, I’m likely to give up on it. I’ve just managed to scrape precisely one win in Shatterpoint (when playing 1v1) and yet my enthusiasm is undaunted. It reminds me of when I got into Marvel Dice Masters: every fight was a chance to refine my tactics and try out different squad builds. That’s by design, and it was truly special to meet designers from AMG and tell them how much I loved their games. That’s the true magic of conventions for me: showing people how much you value the care they put into their games.