Category: Geek Interest

Welcome to Day 11 of #RPGaDay2015, and today’s topic is another tough one: Favorite RPG Writer. Now, after yesterday’s pains to avoid setting one group of friends above any others, you’d think that I’ve have similar difficulty with this topic — and even more so, since it requires that I name ONE person. Well, funny enough, that’s not actually true. I thought it would be the case, but when I thought about my answer, I realized that none of the other game writers that I know would feel slighted or give me any push-back on this choice at all. I’m pretty sure that upon hearing my choice, almost everyone working in the business would nod their heads and say “yeah, fair enough.”

My favorite RPG writer is Ken Hite. I’ve known Ken for about 20 years or so, first through his work with Steve Jackson Games on various GURPS titles and his absolutely brilliant SUPPRESSED TRANSMISSIONS online column and collected editions. From then, up until recently, with his work for Pelgrane Press (notably TRAIL OF CTHULHU, and supplements like SHADOWS OVER FILMLAND and BOOKHOUNDS OF LONDON, to his spies-vs-vampires game NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS), Ken has never failed to impress the hell out of me with his sharp mind, inventive concepts and erudite prose. The stuff that he casually tosses out as mere conversation, never to revisit, is the kind of stuff that most writers would kill to have come up with. I am reminded of something that Robert Rodriguez once said about Quentin Tarantino, which I feel definitely applies here: Being friends with him is like being friends with Clark Kent… He’s just like any one of your other friends… and then you see something he’s created and get reminded: Oh yeah, he’s also Superman.

So that’s my answer. Let’s check in with Dave Chapman to see his…

Today’s topic for #RPGaDay2015 is a difficult one: Favorite RPG Publisher. This is difficult for a couple of reasons: One, there are a metric ass-ton of games publshers out there, and quite a lot of them are truly excellent, which would make narrowing the choice down to a single publisher much more effort than I’m willing to expend for a brief blog post. Two, I work in the industry, and most of the publishers out there are either owned by my friends, or have friends of mine working for them in some way. This, as you might imagine, makes the choice difficult because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by saying that Friend Company A is my favorite, while Friends B through ZZZ are not. There are precious few rewards to working in this business, and I don’t want to add to anyone’s burdens by saying “sorry, pal, but I like this other guy’s stuff better than yours.”

It seems that Dave Chapman has given me a good way out of this though, in his video entry:

Dave, smartly, chooses a publisher from the past. So, I’ll go with that… sort of.

For me, my Favorite RPG Publisher is, hands-down, Chaosium of the 1980s. I’d probably extend that into the early 90s, but for me, the heyday was the 80s. Not only the seminal CALL OF CTHULHU (obviously), but other games that I devoured at the time: SUPERWORLD. THIEVES’ WORLD, STORMBRINGER (whose cover I chose to illustrate this entry, rather than going for the obvious Cthulhu boxed set), HAWKMOON, RUNEQUEST, RINGWORLD, DIFFERENT WORLDS magazine. My fudging of the timeline to allow for the early 90s is entirely due to the launching of the Chaosium fiction line in 1993, whose collections of Mythos stories still grace my shelves, 20+ years later.

So why do I say “sort of?” Well, because the news broke, right around GenCon, that Greg Stafford, founder of Chaosium, and Sandy Petersen, designer of CALL OF CTHULHU, have taken back control of the company, and are looking to bring it back to prominence, aided by an ownership group which includes the fine folks from Moon Publications, the most recent publishers of Stafford’s Glorantha setting. So, yes — My favorite publisher is Chaosium of the 80s/early 90s… but I’m holding out hope that the NEW/old Chaosium will return to that glory.

 
 

Today’s topic is a repeat question from last year: Favorite Media You Wish Was An RPG, or, to put it another way, your dream license. To make the question a bit more interesting, I decided that I would disqualify any media property that has had an RPG at one point, even if there is no current game — which removes my two biggest dream licenses: Star Trek and James Bond, both of which have been done in the past, and hopefully will be done again at some point in the future. Disqualifying any property with a previous RPG would also remove Mobile Suit Gundam from contention, as there was a Japanese release, Gundam Senki, apparently using R. Talsorian’s Mekton rules system, released 15 years ago (which I’ve never seen, but would love to find).

Let’s check in with Dave Chapman, for his (obvious to anyone who knows him, or reads his blog) video entry:

…I agree that Harry Potter is an excellent choice, but it is not my choice. As long as we’re talking personal preference, rather than any realistic chance at a successful license, I’m free to be as obscure as I wish.

So my choice would be: Alien Legion.

Alien Legion was a science fiction comic created by Carl Potts for Marvel’s Epic Comics line in the 80s, and has several editions which appeared through the 90s and most recently a limited series published by Dark Horse in 2014. Basically, the concept of the book is “The French Foreign Legion in Outer Space” — criminals, fugitives, refugees and people just looking to disappear, joining a special military force to get a new start. I’ve been a huge fan of this series since the beginning — the promo poster, pictured at right, hangs framed in my office as I write this. I’ve talked with other fans of the series in the game industry about how we’d do it, and at one point about a decade ago, I even talked briefly with Carl Potts about licensing it.

For me, the key to doing an Alien Legion RPG would be that each character would be of a unique species (you’d basically roll up your species as you create your character), and each character would have some Dark Secret (the backstory element that resulted in them ending up in the Legion). Your playing group (the squad) would create a relationship tree during character creation — so each character would have some hook motivating their relationship with every other character (rivalry, hatred, friendship, etc.). Equipment would be identical (you’re all Legionnaires — same armor, same weapons). The system would be perfect for running any sort of military drama you’ve ever seen, but with a sci-fi twist, from straightforward action missions to “Apocalypse Now”-style psychological drama.

So, given the restrictions that I placed on my answer, that’s the media property I’d most love to see as an RPG.

Or, wait. Maybe I’d prefer Planet of the Apes.

Or The Expanse novels.

Or classic Battlestar Galactica.

Or…

Well, you get the idea. What’s yours?