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Day 4 of #RPGaDay2015 beckons! The first question which requires a bit of sussing out: Most Surprising Game. Does this mean a game where you were expecting one thing, but got another? A game which surprised you in and of itself, or a time you were surprised by events occurring in-game? Personally, I’m going to go with this: A game where your expectations where completely blown away, and your way of thinking about games was fundamentally altered in some way.

I’m sure that a lot of people are going to list some indie darling, which approaches gaming in a unique way — the field is certainly full of that; some successful, some less so, but it’s sort of the hallmark of the “brand”, if you will. As for me, though: I’m going to be a doddering old grognard and pick a game that completely changed the way I looked at game design, when I first encountered it over 30 years ago — James Bond 007: Roleplaying On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Gerry Klug, published by Victory Games.

Readers of last year’s #RPGaDay entries will recall that I waxed rhapsodic about this game a couple of times — it even took the coveted “Favorite RPG of All Time” category. James Bond 007 was the game that made me want to become a game designer. Before it, I had never seen a game system that emulated a genre — systems were, in my meagre experience of the time, mathematical models of action, and that’s it. But Klug’s design in this game showed me that you could create systems that not only modeled HOW something happened, but could bring across the feel of a thing — the emotions and sensations. The chase rules, for example, bring the tension and rising stakes of a chase directly to the players through the rules, not just the results. It was an epiphany.

So definitely, that qualifies as my “Most Surprising Game”, since I was not expecting it at all — and everything after it was changed.

Here is Dave Chapman’s video entry for today, along with his special guest, Becky Annison of Black Armada:

So now you know what surprised us. What about you?
 
 
 

Another day, another entry into #RPGaDay2015. Today’s topic is Favorite New RPG of the Past 12 Months, which is a tricky one. Tricky for a couple of reasons: One, some of the best games released during the past 12 months have been new versions of older games, so the question remains whether or not they qualify as “New”; and Two, I haven’t actually gotten to play an RPG in the past 12 months — in fact, due to the combination of no local playing group, my medical dramas of 2014, and a slew of late projects which have been taking all of my time, I haven’t had a chance to play RPGs in a couple of years now. Depressing, innit?

Let’s take a look at Dave’s video entry for the day, with special guest Paco Garcia of GMS Magazine:

My own response to this topic came down to a new edition of an old game. There were a number of cool games released this year, but looking ahead on the topic list, I see some days where the topic would fit those games, and so I’ll save them for later. Plus, this was undoubtedly the biggest release of the year, and the one that I had the greatest enjoyment reading: the new 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. I had worked professionally producing 3rd Edition compatible material for years, and the proliferation of feats and bonuses and stats and exceptions made my head ache. The 4th edition was, in my opinion, a drastic swing away from the core of the game in an ill-advised attempt to emulate console & PC games. 5th Edition hearkens back to the simplicity of early 2nd edition (before the “Complete X” Kit books), while keeping some elements of 3rd and 4th, producing a game that undeniably feels like D&D. And within this new-yet-familiar game, Mike Mearls and the design team manage to include some new rules systems that are so good, I lament the fact that they weren’t always a part of the game from the beginning. The Advantage system does away with the bean-counting of bonuses and penalties, and the Inspiration mechanic is a seamless inclusion of role-playing rewards into the nuts-and-bolts of the system. My only regrets so far with D&D 5th Edition: I have not had a chance to play, and there is currently no third-party publishing license for support, despite assurances that one would appear “after the core books were released.” I still have my fingers crossed.

So that’s mine — what about yours?
 
 

Here we are with Day 2 of #RPGaDay2015. Today’s topic is: Kickstarter Game You’re Most Pleased You Backed. Its been really interesting to see how much Kickstarter has become an accepted part of the tabletop games business over the past 5 years. Now, it seems like a game is unusual if it gets released without having first been kickstarted — and a lot of companies who probably don’t actually need to crowdfund are using it too, primarily as a marketing effort, and a way to defray development costs.

Here’s Dave Chapman’s video entry for the day, with special guest James Holloway, from Gonzo History Gaming:

For me, I have a couple of projects that I’ve backed that I’m really pleased about, and no matter how much I mulled them over, I couldn’t come up with one that I was most pleased with — so I’m going to fudge a bit here and list two.

The first project is The Dracula Dossier by Pelgrane Press. The physical copies haven’t shipped yet, but I’ve gotten the PDFs, and they’re every bit as brilliant as I was expecting from the team of Kenneth Hite, Gareth Hanrahan, et. al. A two book set — the first, The Dracula Dossier is a campaign sourcebook for running a game of Ken’s spies-vs-vampires game Night’s Black Agents, centered around the most powerful vampire of them all. The second book, Dracula Unredacted, is an expanded and annotated version of the original Bram Stoker novel — the conceit is that what we think is a novel was actually a heavily-edited after-action report of an encounter between British Intelligence and the Count, released as a smoke-screen. The Unredacted version adds sections (and characters) who had been edited out for security reasons, as well as adding annotation notes from the next several encounters between the Intelligence services and Dracula — in World War 2, in the 1970s, and in the War on Terror. It is, quite frankly, brilliant.

The second project is Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade”, a wuxia fantasy setting for FATE by Jack Norris. Wuxia is one of my greatest loves, and Jack knows the genre really well, and has produced a great fantasy setting based on it. Not only that, but it’s one of the best expansions of FATE that I’ve ever seen — including a fantastic modular system for Kung Fu which made me exceedingly jealous the moment that I read it. The kickstarter also included Tianxia Accelerated, adapting the setting for the FATE Accelerated rules system, and Path of Destiny, a full Lifepath generator for creating characters — and I absolutely eat up random-generation systems as idea-sparkers, so this was right up my alley. The production values on Tianxia are also phenomenal — especially the artwork by Denise Jones, which perfectly captures the genre, while also maintaining a unique look.

Both of the projects I mentioned here began as Kickstarters, but are currently commercially available — and you absolutely should track them down and pick them up.

So those are my answers to the topic — what’s yours?