RPGs by the numbers

Profiles on blogger that list as an Interest...

Mekton: 1

Fuzion: 2 (Including the guy above.)

BESM (Tri-Stat): 12

Traveller: ~143

D&D: ~2,300

So there you go. BESM/Tri-Stat is marginally more popular than Fuzion. (And it's interesting that more wimmin than men list it as an interest.) Traveller is over ten times more popular than either. And they all get crushed by the D&D juggernaut.

I still like Fuzion, and there's more than enough material online to run a decent science fiction/mecha game. But with Tri-Stat being a more complete free game and having more appeal to wimmin, and therefore a bigger potential audience, I think I've talked myself into focusing on using it for the near future. Unless I do the smart thing and just play Traveller...or drink the D&D Kool-Aid. "Magic Missile!"

Vanishing games

It seams like the webpages devoted to the RPGs I like are vanishing at an alarming rate. This has been happening slowly over the past few years. Now that Geocities, which was home to many a RPG related page, is defunct it's really noticeable.

I'm mainly thinking of Fuzion here. Even though it never really caught on with either the Hero System or Interlock fans, there used to be a huge amount of material for it available to download for free. There were major plug-ins covering magic, psi powers, aliens, and Road Warrior style combat. Supplements like the Total Powers plug-in and the Heroic Abilities plug-in gave you complete superpowers rules. And Naughty Tentacles even provided material for hentai games. All that material is basically gone now. Even Lightspeed, one of the few games left using the Fuzion mechanics, is supposedly switching to a different system.

Action! System, which is an OGL knock off of Fuzion, hasn't fared much better. There was never as much material available for it in the first place, and now even that's disappearing. My favorite use of the game, Jamie Borg's ASsembler rules which ported OGL Mecha to A!S, vanished with Geocities. And it doesn't help that the Gold Rush Games site has been down for years, although you can still by their games at sites like RPG Now.

It's very discouraging. I have copies of most of this stuff archived, but it's hard to get people interested in playing a game they've almost never heard of and that has almost no web presence.

As it stands I think Tri-Stat dX is one of the best free games out there. It's a complete RPG, with a full-fledged power system that covers everything from mecha to superheroes. It's sort of like a free, rules-lite version of Hero System. I have a few nits to pick with the game, but nothing that a page or so of house rules can't cover. And even though Guardians of Order went under years ago, BESM/Tri-Stat have a good reputation and fairly wide recognition. Plus they have a slick, active fan site online.

Maybe I'm just in a funk because I haven't been able to get any games going lately. Aside from the occasional pick-up game with friends I haven't been able to get anything rolling. I'm probably just approaching things at the wrong angle or something, but going with more popular free system that I like may help. We'll see.

Retro-robots

Marauding metal monsters to menace your meritorious heroes.

Hydra Miniatures offers a good selection of retro-bots as part of it's Retro Raygun line.

(Robot Legionnaire)

(Warbot)

(Size comparison w/figure from Rattrap)

Wargames Supply Dump has a couple of robots as part of their Dick Garrison line.

(Khang Robot DG08)

(Khang Robot DG09)

Pulp Figs also has some robot that come straight from a mad scientist's lab.

(Promethian Killer Robots)

Killer B Games include a hovering 'bot in their G.A.F.D.O.Z. line.



('Bot comparison: Left, Rattrap's Robot Type II; Center, Killer B's GAFDOZ4; Right, Hydra's Robot Legionnaire)


And Rattrap have a robot in their .45 Adventure line of pulp models.

(unpainted Robot Type II)

Negromundheim

Rient's ongoing Mutant Future campaign has me thinking about Negromundheim. Now before you get the wrong idea, the name isn't some kind of slur. It's a punning reference the the Games Workshop games Necromunda and Mordheim. However, instead of using the overpriced GW rules, the game uses Shockforce II.

Negromundheim is a war scarred, radiation soaked, mutant infested planet somewhere in the Galactic Empire. Think Gamma World in a space opera context. It was created by a group of French gamers to use as a setting for their tongue-in-cheek battles. It's an entertaining setting with a history that makes for a fun read.

The Shockforce rules themselves use the WarEngine system which can best be described as a simplified version of the D6 System adapted to wargaming. One significant change is the die rolling mechanic. Here's how the rules describe it:

"Many attributes like Attack Value and Defense use values like 2k2 or 4k3. The ‘k’ stands for ‘keep.’ You roll the number of dice before the ‘k’, but keep only the number of dice after the ‘k,’ usually the higher ones."

So if you have an AV of 4k2, you roll four dice but only count the two highest. It's a clever variation that fixes the glitch in the original D6 mechanic, but as you can imagine it leads to an uneven distribution of probabilities. (A much better implementation of the idea is EABA's mechanic where you keep the highest three dice rolled.)

Shockforce also included a simple set of point-build Special Powers that can give a model mutant abilities, which really gives them a Gamma World vibe. Unfortunately the point system used isn't very balanced -- kinda like BESM. All-in-all it's a fun game that makes for colorful skirmish battles. Plus you can get the rules for free on-line now, so what's not to like?

Negromundheim is a great example of how to make a (not-to-serious) post-catastrophe campaign setting. And by putting it in a space opera context you don't limit the players to being natives. They could be interstellar Travellers there after treasure, information, or just looking for repairs after a mishap. Who knows what they'll find...

ENnie Award

The polls are open for the 2009 ENnie Awards. This years nominees for Best Rules -- and isn't that really what makes an RPG a game? -- include A Song of Ice and Fire, Starblazer Adventures, and the juggernaut that is D&D 4th. Normally I'd be inclined to vote for Starblazer Adventures as the only SFRPG, but I don't care for the FATE game mechanics. So I may give it to Green Ronin just for being plucky indie game publishers.

As you might have noticed by that logo in the upper corner of the blog, there's some controversy over the Best Free Product category. It turns out that most of the entries are nothing more than demo versions of commercial games, including two of the nominees for Best Rules. The only entries that really are free games are Swords and Wizardry, a"retro-clone" of the 1974 original Dungeons & Dragons, and Trial and Terror: SVU, a supernatural play on the popular "Law and Order" TV show. So if it matters to you it might be something to keep in mind when you vote.

The biggest problem with the awards are that as usual I haven't even laid eyes on the majority of the entries. I might be familiar with a few of the nominees, but the most of them are a mystery to me. That means I either don't pick a second or third choice, or I just vote by the item's reputation, which is hardly fair. I guess I'll just play it by ear as usual.

Dice fetish

One of my friends once said that role playing games are just an excuse for people to indulge their dice fetish. Not to single anybody out, but a couple of recent posts at Geek Orthodox and A Rust Monster Ate My Sword... suggest he may have been right. No wonder some Traveller veterans claim D&D stands for "Dice & Dice." After all, don't most gamers carry their polyhedral dice around in luxurious velvet bags, like some precious gems looted from a dragon's hoard?

I don't have a problem with people getting excited about dice, but It's not an enthusiasm I share. I think it's one of the reasons I tend to prefer games like EABA or Fuzion that use nothing but regular six-sided dice. Not that I'm entirely immune to dice geekery. I admit I have more than a few pair of Flying Buffalo's "Death Dice" in my possession.

Maybe the only real way to escape the dice fetish is to play a diceless RPG, like Active Exploits.

Stormbringer

Christopher B. has been posting some great material form his old Stormbringer campaign. That brings back some fond memories for me as well because it was one of the first games that really clicked with me. Sure, I had fun playing D&D but the rules never made much sense to me. T&T was better, but still came up a little short. But Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying hit the sweet spot as far as I was concerned. For the longest time I swore by those rules. Every game I ran used the BRP system. Not that I'm a system snob. I'll play in any game with a good GM, regardless of the rules. It's just that when I find a rules set I like I stick with it.

One thing I really like about BRP that continues to set it apart from most other RPGs is that it completely dispenses with experience points. It seems like almost all games have some kind of mechanism by which the GM can bribe the players. BRP has none of that. No brownie points to massage die rolls or the like. No bonus XP for "good roleplaying." Characters succeed or fail based on their skill and the roll of the dice. To increase a skill you have to use it or find someone to train you. And even then it comes down to a die roll as to whether or not you'll actually benefit from it. There's something refreshingly unbiased about it all.