Playing Games Part 6: Going Off the Reservation

Once I made the decision to step out of the box on D&D and see other RPGs, I was something of a “loose” GM, if you know what I mean and I think you do. I figured out pretty quick that some games were better at simulating specific genres than others. I eventually amassed a shelf full of RPGs in boxes and books, and also plastic Ziploc bags and paper envelopes, and clamshell boxes…it got out of hand. I would venture to say that about one-third of the games that I owned I never played, because they were stupid and horrible. We didn’t have the word “crunchy” to describe “lots of rules, many of which are largely not needed” in the 1980s, but we made do with the more elegant, “This sucks.” Others on my shelf were games that people wanted to play, but I didn’t necessarily care about. I ran them, with mixed results, and then never went back to them. Here’s a few of the games I spent a modest amount of table time running for others: