The circle is now complete. (March Madness Day 31!)

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

Well, I started this month long challenge out with Star Frontiers, it makes sense that I come back to it for the finale.

Yes, I know, the Starfrontiersman web site has their “digitally remastered” version for free on their website with WotC's blessing. And lots of additional content through the Star Frontiersman zine. But having the actual box set of Alpha Dawn back in print would be cool. The digital remaster version doesn't have the cool fold-out map or counters, for one thing (although I think they do have a scan of the counter sheet that you can use to make your own... or at least somewhere you can get it, as I did make a duplicate set when I was in Japan).

No, it's not the best sci fi game out there. It's “futuristic technology” is really dated. The options for character creation are limited by today's standards. But you know what? The game works. It's fun. It's well designed for game play that involves exploring of alien worlds and/or combat against bad guy aliens like the Sathar and their terrorist agents. It's not designed to be a generic sci fi game. It has its subgenre down fairly pat, and does a good job filling it.

If it were to come back in print, I'd definitely pick up an extra set or two (probably the Knight Hawks expansion that I never had as a kid as well). Heck, I'd probably even spring for a reprint of Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space even though I don't like how they tried to revise the system to use the Marvel color-coded chart for resolution, or the even sillier cast of alien races it adds.

It would be great to have all that stuff in order to play with my son, since my own original books and poster map are really worn out.  It might also make it a bit easier to get new players into the game, especially kids who might dig the maps and counters more than they would a pdf of a 30+ year old game.

Move along, nothing to see here (March Madness Day 30)

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

I've never been much of a supplement guy. As a relatively well-read and imaginative kid (and a poor one to boot), we just made up everything for our D&D and Star Frontiers games. We didn't have many modules. We had few supplements. So when I grew up and started making enough money to buy other games, I never went overboard with buying supplements (with the exception of the original run of 3.0 splat books – Sword & Fist, Song & Silence, Tome & Blood, etc. and yes, I feel like I got kinda burned by them).

So I don't know of any supplements that I consider a must have. I've used supplements for inspiration, but it's usually just cherry picking what I like and leaving the rest.

So, no recommendation from me here, I'm afraid.

But if I ever put out a supplement for Flying Swordsmen or Chanbara, let me just say that it will rock your world on toast or whatever the kids say these days and you should definitely pay me large amounts of money for said future supplement, if and when it ever does appear. ;)

I promise, though, even if that mythical supplement appears, it will NOT lead to a vast churning pile of splat.  Not that I don't have the ambition, I just really don't have the time!

This one's a no-brainer (March Madness Day 29)

29 What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain why.

Flying Swordsmen RPG.

What, I can't use this month long blog-a-rama to promote my own game? Well, I'm gonna, because creating FSRPG was a ton of fun for me. Playing it, on the few instances where I have played it, was also really fun. I just wish I had more time to run games, or better yet, someone else actually wanted to run Flying Swordsmen and I could be a player!

That's right, I, like many other DIY designers, created the game I want to play. One of the reasons I enjoyed creating it so much.

Back when I started working on it, I had a lot of notes left over from my run at a d20 Oriental Adventures game campaign world. That work became the foundation of the Zhongyang Dalu setting (the map is different, the non-human races have been removed, Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese/Indian/Thai cultural elements have been removed or marginalized, but a lot of the provinces are more or less as they were.

Lots of folks were working on retro-clones. Basic Fantasy and OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord were all popular. Dragon Fist had a small but dedicated fan base clustered on the Green Ronin message boards, for the most part, yet none of them were talking about doing a retro-clone of this quirky little wuxia freebie.

So I decided to do it myself. Glad I did, and hopefully Chanbara will get just as much praise as Flying Swordsmen has.

A bilingual wish-list (March Madness, Day 28)

28 What free RPG or what non-English RPG did you enjoy most? Give details.

I've already talked a bunch about free RPGs on this blog, since I'm into the OSR's DIY and give it away free or cheap philosophy. And I don't think I've played in a non-English RPG, despite my living overseas for the past 16 years. So let me tell you about one I probably should have played.

When I was a junior in college, I had a crush on Naomi Matsumoto. The crush never went anywhere, since it was one-sided, but we did become good friends and still keep in contact today. One of the reasons I liked her was that she was also a gamer, and she played Sword World.

You've probably heard about Sword World. It was made by the guys who made the Record of Lodoss War anime (which, if you've seen it, you know is pretty much D&D). I guess the story is that one of the creators studied in the U.S. and became a fan of D&D. Although the Mentzer box sets were translated into Japanese and sold there (I still kick myself for not picking up the Basic Set in nihongo when I had the chance), he had no RPG resources when he got home, so he and his buddies sort of reconstructed D&D from his memories and played it. They published the record of their campaign, it became popular, and was turned into an anime. And they published their home brew as Sword World.

Despite living in Japan for a decade, I never found a copy of Sword World to pick up, and never thought to order one over the internet. I guess I still could. Shipping from Japan to Korea is cheap. Of course, if I were to order it today, it would just languish on my bookshelf. I really should have picked it up when I was still single and in Japan.

A rose, a key, a door, a revolver (March Madness, Day 27)

27 What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?

Stephen King's Dark Tower novels.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

How evocative is that? Add in vast tracts of desert, a tough kid from late 70's New York, succubi/incubi, slow mutants, a wise-ass heroin addict, lobstrosities, heroin kingpins, sadomasochistic psychopaths, a multiple personality disorder demure civil rights lawyer/foul-mouthed cracker-hating nymphomaniac, giant cyborg bears, irradiated wastelands, deranged AI trains, The Wizard of Oz, Marvel comics, Star Wars, vampires, an evil organization dedicated to using psychic slaves to destroy the world, robot banditos, references to many of King's earlier and subsequent works, universe-hopping doorways, cthuloid horrors, evil crystal balls, cowboy knights-errant, Randall Flagg, six-guns forged from Excalibur, IT, and at the end of the path, in End World, surrounded by a vast field of roses called Kan'-ka No Rey, that tall black twisting spire, the Dark Tower itself.

An abstract map of a world where time and space have come unglued

Talk about a kitchen sink RPG! It's a Western post-apocalyptic sci fi fantasy horror transdimensional setting.

I had plans way back when (when King was finally finishing up the series) of running it with a mishmash of d20 system source books. These days, if I were to run it, and there wasn't a dedicated game for the setting, I'd run a mishmash of OSR stuff (Labyrinth Lord, Stars Without Number, Go Fer Yer Gun, Mutant Future).

The game could definitely benefit from a dedicated system/rule book. Mr. King, are you reading this? Or your agent? You've successfully marketed the series in book and comic book format, with talk of TV and/or movie deals. How about an RPG?

And really, this seems to me like a great setting for an RPG. Got just about any sort of character concept? Well, there are doors between all sorts of worlds. And the ruined mess that is Mid-World is ripe with adventure.

I like to keep this handy [click, click] for close encounters (March Madness Day 26)

26 What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details.

Hmm, probably d20 Conan or d6 Star Wars. Assuming we're talking about RPGs based on IP BEFORE they were RPGs. Marvel Supers is fun, too. I guess if I had to pick, it would be the Conan game, but it's also pretty much D&D with no magic, and this is the Non-D&D blog challenge, so...

What RPG based on an IP have I never played but would like to try? That's a better question for me.

For a few years, I got the “Mail Order Hobby Shop”, TSR's mail order catalog (at least I assume it came from TSR's brick-and-mortar storefront, since it was from Lake Geneva and D&D and other TSR games were heavily featured). My brother and I would go through it, Killing Machine and my cousin Ben as well, from time to time, and we'd make wish-lists that for the most part never got fulfilled.

Listed in there was an Aliens RPG, based of course on the movie. Space marines versus xenomorphs sounded to us like a great way to spend some RPG time. Since we never had the actual licensed game, we made due with Star Frontiers. Our intrepid space explorers had several instances where we met up with a company of colonial marines (with the same names as the movie characters, even if they'd died the time before...which, just like in the movie, they usually did – although usually not in the same manner as they died in the movie) and trounce a nest of Giger xenomorphs.

Later, in my d20 days with the Ebisu group, as I mentioned, I used Michael Tresca's free PDF resources for Aliens, Predator and Terminator along with d20 Modern and Future to run an Aliens/Predator game. I've mentioned that before.

Despite all that, I'm still curious if the original licensed Aliens RPG was any good. Some day, maybe I'll get my hands on a copy, either digitally or in print, and find out.

I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum (March Madness, Day 25)

25 Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?

Let's take a closer look at All Outta Bubblegum, since I haven't looked at it in a few years, and it's only one page long.

Each PC starts with eight sticks of bubblegum. All rolls are made with a d10. For non-ass-kicking activities, roll your bubblegum or lower. For ass-kicking activities, roll over your bubblegum. You may sacrifice a stick of bubblegum to automatically pass a non-ass-kicking activity. If you take damage, you lose a stick of bubblegum. When you're all out of bubblegum, you're unstoppable in combat, but completely useless for anything else. In this situation, if someone else succeeds on ass-kicking against you, they roll a d10, if it's a 10 you're knocked out. Non-combat situations may also confound you and lead to defeat.

That's fairly elegant, is it not?

The one time we played it, as I mentioned in a previous post, we had to come up with a suitable action genre to play in.  Zombies being popular these days, that was one of the first things we hit on.  Then, someone of course made the connection to the game's title to John Carpenter's "They Live" and suggested we play in that milieu.  Rowdy Roddy Piper starred in the movie, so someone suggested all our characters should be WWF wrestlers from the 80's.  Then we came full circle, with someone suggesting WWF wrestlers vs. zombies.   

Now, surely you could have a genre, milieu and adventures planned before hand with this game, but it is a true beer-and-pretzels sort of game, really.  There's no advancement mechanic, no "goal of play" other than to kick ass, and no rules for creating opponents/challenges.  Pretty much everything fits under the "not ass-kicking" category, or the "ass-kicking" category, determining your chance of success.  A clever GM could give opponents their own bubblegum, but there's not much point.  Pretty much everything rests on the players' side for rolling, so it's fairly easy to just wing the whole thing.  

At least, I managed to wing an entertaining, if overly silly, game while drinking beers in a dark bar!