The Black Campbell

I’m a bit late for day seven, having had birthday parties for kids, myself, and other end of the summer nonsense to deal with, so let’s roll!

“impactful” is a strange word for this…do we mean the most meaningful session for the characters? The players? The storyline? In the current game(s) or from 30+ years of gaming?

I chose to go with recent games — within two years. Probably the most important and emotional session in recent memory for player, character, and for the storyline would have been in our successfully concluded Battlestar Galactica game. The rag-tag fleet had reached Kobol, which was sharply different from the one of the show. This world was overrun by Cylons and was the base of operations for “the Blaze” — some kind of jealous “god” that had destroyed the Kobolians 2000 years ago. To find the way to Earth, they needed to raid the Tomb of Athena.

This was a massive battle set-piece that took two full sessions, and included space, air, and ground battles. The first night was just the insertion of the team which saw a few PCs die. The second session was the real push session: a major NPC and love interest for the “main” character of Galactica‘s commander is fatally injured and dying, they manage to get into the tomb and find there’s a lot more going on than the holographic sky map of the show. The session gave us the deaths of major PCs and NPCs, saw the fleet have to really fight it out with the Cylons, and revealed the metaplot of the game universe — the fight between this Blaze (and his real identity), the history of the gods themselves, as well as Earth, and broke away from the RDM Galactica in a sharp way. (The synopsis here.)

It was also “impactful” in that this was the first time I ran a licensed, established universe and really broke away from canon. I had run Star Trek with a lot of caveats — certain episodes (and series) didn’t happen, tech worked a certain way (no rewiring the deflector dish to fix plot element X), and we explored what the Federation might actually look like. But for the most part, the overarching series themes from the various shows were maintained. The first abortive attempt to run BSG was much closer to the structure and canon of the Moore reboot, and our Serenity  campaign stuck pretty tightly to what we saw in Firefly.

This was the game where I finally learned to treat a universe like a Chinese salad bar: take what you want and leave the rest. It set me up well for the recently on hiatus Hollow Earth Expedition, in which I had to fight my urge to make the game more historical and realistic, instead pushing the envelop on pulp/comic outrageousness. That Galactica session probably also gave me some of the storytelling tools and confidence to really strike out on the current Dungeons & Dragons campaign — which has grown from a alternate Roman period game where a few humanoid critters take the place of other races, and has veered heavily into an intertwined Christian and Classical mythology story involving issues of morality, ethics, and the nature of gods, angels, etc.

That single session was a real jump in quality and confident as a gamemaster and storyteller. It also was one of a few sessions in that campaign that really stood out and had a effect on the players.

A better question might be: What do you play?

I took this to assume that all conditions were perfect: You’re not working (that week.) Your spouse and child have either gone on a trip or you’re still single. You have friend in the same situation, for some reason — maybe you’ve gone visiting the old buddies from college, but instead of a raucous Las Vegas trip where comedic hijinks involving prostitutes, drugs, and wild animals ensue, you’re all 40-50 somethings who just want to f***ing game again.

Assuming I would be GMing, I would put together a “trilogy” of spy-fi stories, bust out the old James Bond: 007 system Victory Games put out in the ’80s, and we would play as long as we could stay awake.

If I’m playing, I don’t care what we’re playing. I’m building a bad ass character and throwing myself into Jared Leto levels of psychotic immersion.

There are a lot of good covers out there — especially some of the Scandinavian stuff that has hit Kickstarter and seems to always have been based on fantastic concept art. There are a lot of bad covers out there — just hit DriveThruRPG for a quick selection. And there are many more pedestrian ones that do the job — most of these are connected to licensed properties that use screen caps and some photo manipulation. Games like Firefly or Atomic Robo (the latter which I really like!) fit this last category.

The one that really capture what the game is about and look damned good has to go to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Don’t like the new edition? I’m cool with that. I’m not getting drawn into edition wars BS — especially as I had sworn off d20 in 1984. Certainly the loveliness (if somewhat had to read and hence use qualities of modern RPG graphic design) helped lure me into the game. I can tell you it was one of the tiefling pictures and the intriguing concept of that race that sold me on trying. I’ve yet to use one.

Honorable mention: Hollow Earth Expedition‘s covers always captured the campy pulp novels and comics that the game as emulating, and was much better art than the equally good for telegraphing the flavor of the game that was Spirit of the Century‘s cover. The cover got me to peruse the book, the interior art sold me.

That’s simple — there’s only been two games: Hollow Earth Expedition and Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

The first game started in January 2016 as a filler for a week when the “lead character” for the Battlestar Galactica game was out on vacation. We played a “pilot” episode of HEX and it took off from there. The Galactica game ended very satisfactorily in April, and the adventures of our heroes in the Interior World zipped along until I hit a massive break point. Needing real time to figure out what the hell i was going to do, I pitched D&D5 to the group and a few others, as I had come into the books from a friend who didn’t like the system. (He’s an indie or nothing sort.)

I didn’t want to do standard high fantasy. I started thinking about a different character to D&D and hit on an earlier, less medieval setting. Then I realized I could do everything I wanted to do in a late Antiquity setting, using the monsters (humanoid ones, at least) as stnad-ins for racial differences, and this would allow me to keep deities that were known to the players from general Western culture. The choice of one of the players to have a Christian monk (and damn it, of course Late Antiquity Christianity was his focus in his history grad studies…) led me to start introducing Christian myth and characters into the world. Along the way, this has led to a tighter story, and a more nuanced view of the gods and angels, and has led to several in-character arguments about the nature of morality and the gods; and has also made Arian Christianity much more “correct” than the Nicene version of the late 300s. It’s flying along quite nicely and the players are really engaged, even the ones that were in it for the hack and slash are now interested in the metaphysics of the world, the NPCs around them, and the are enjoying the world.

Good question! It used to be you went to the local game store, but good luck with that in some places. I used to haunt some of the game-related boards and blogs, but I think most of it comes from other RPG writers or players posting on Facebook about a Kickstarter or upcoming product from a known group like Evil Hat or Cubicle 7.

Som Kickstarter-related posts have led me to that site, only to find something even more interesting to me. That’s how I found the excellent board game Xtronaut and the soon-to-be-released Constellations by the same gang. It’s how I heard about Cam Banks’ going solo from Margaret Weiss with a new iteration of Cortex Fate (I mean, Prime…) Most of the new stuff I’ve seen, however, is all from Mödiphiüs, which has gone license-happy (rarely a good sign.) They’ve got Conan, John Carter, and Star Trek, but their 2d20 system is lackluster. (Their Thunderbirds board game is excellent, by the way!) I was keeping up with Cubicle 7’s releases for a while because I was doing work for them, but I’m not a Whovian or Tolkein fanatic, so that doesn’t leave me much.

Because my interest in spending money of new game systems if they aren’t able to do a better job than Fate or Cortex (classic, not Plus) has waned of late, I’m finding I’m not actively seeking out new games. Even D&D 5th Edition, which inspired enough nostalgia for me to start running a campaign, only to realize that the stuff I didn’t like still remains (mostly related to hit points and healing, but the “everyone gets magic” schtick is annoying, as well.)

There have been a few good settings that have surfaces. Tales From the Loop looks interesting, but I’m not really looking to spend a bunch of dosh to see pretty paintings (and they are) turned into a game setting.

Man, I’m a cranky old bugger today!

Simple: I want an updated, improved version of the old James Bond: 007 RPG.

Barring that, I’m thinking I’d like to see a game set in a retro-50s sort of universe, ala Streets of Fire or Trouble in Mind with noir styling, biker gangs, elevated trains, great old cars, coupled with ’80s style urban decay and ennui. A place where tough, laconic guys go out and under protest do the right thing — save the girl, take down the mobster, face down the biker gang leader with frickin’ sledgehammers! (Serious…if you’ve never seen Streets of Fire, stop reading, rent it, and enjoy. No, it’s not good; but you rarely achieve cool like this with a bad movie…)

I think you’d almost have to have a series of soundtrack albums to go with it. Tough and grungy stuff, like Ry Cooder.

A second choice, and one that has inspired an up-coming Black Campbell splatbook for Fate and Ubiquity would be a Porco Rosso RPG. I discovered the movie a few months back, having had it in my wish list on Amazon for a year or two. My daughter loves it. My wife loves it. I love it.

I would love to see a game where the setting really pushed the love of a vehicle, and handles combat of the same well. Think of all the movie and TV vehicles that stick with us: Millennium Falcon, USS Enterprise, or “Mad” Max Rockitansky’s ’76 Ford Falcon (XB chasis, if I’m not mistaken) posing at the V8 Interceptor, Cutter’s Goose from Tales of the Gold Monkey, or John Wick’s Shelby 350GT. Certain vehicles just link to a character. They are as totemic as a cowboy or ancient soldier’s horse, maybe more so.

This question starts off the first day of 2017’s RPGaDay, and it was a hard one for me. Right now, I’m GMing a “published” RPG (and by that I’m running with “published currently” and not anything that was published): Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. The only other game(s) I would probably want to play at this time are both Ubiquity-powered: returning to our on-hiatus Hollow Earth Expedition game, or turning to the new Space: 1889.

That said, I did pick up an e-copy of Mödiphiüs’ Star Trek Adventures RPG. I was interested to see what they’d done, although I had a taste of 2d20 through the Conan beta testing and was seriously unimpressed. Having read through this iteration of Trek,  continue to be uninspired by the 2d20 rules set. The base die mechanic is fiddly: roll 2d20 (or more, if you use their equivalent of fate/plot/hero points) and get lower than a target number (usually your relevant stat) for a success, or if you get under your focus (skill) you get two giving you up to four possible successes on a normal roll. I just described this basic rule better than any of the 2d20 books — and much of the problem for the game is just that: describing what a player does in simple terms. There’s also momentum and threat — essentially the equivalent of fate points for the player or GM respectively. Simple…except naming these differently — momentum and threat — was a point of failure during our playtesting.

The product was gorgeous, well formatted and bookmarked for the PDF version, but suffered from some of the busy graphic design that favors look over transferring information (namely how to f’ing play) to the reader. It did make me think about running Trek again, but I suspect I would use the Firefly rules that MWP put out a few years ago. (A game that i don’t think models the ‘Verse well, but does a great job for something like Star Wars or Star Trek.)

Anyway — answer: Hollow Earth Expedition or Space: 1889.

It’s that time of year: Autocratik‘s #RPGaDay celebrates the roleplaying game hobby starting on Tuesday, August 1 and ending on Thursday, August 31. We will, of course, be participating. Here are the questions for the month. Feel free to chime in as we post!