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#RPGaDay2015, Day 9

rpg-a-day-2015Today’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.

vol 1 promo smallAlien 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?

 
 

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#RPGaDay2015 Day 8

rpg-a-day-2015For those of you who are bothering to read blog posts on a Saturday, here’s Day 8 of #RPGaDay2015 – Favorite Appearance of RPGs In The Media.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to indulge in a bit of an old-man “back in MY DAY” moment. Y’see, the damn kids these days don’t know how good they have it. RPGs appear all over the place — featured in major network sitcoms (The Big Bang Theory, The IT Crowd, Community), major stars willing to come right out and say they are gamers (Vin Diesel, Stephen Colbert, the late Robin Williams) — hell, there’s even popular webseries which are entirely devoted to playing games, including RPGs. (Hello, Titansgrave: Ashes of Valkana). Well, this was not always the case.

Back when I was a new gamer, gaming was something weird and suspect. This was the height of the “satanic panic”, remember. What little awareness there was of RPGs was religious-loonie-stoked hysteria. Hell, my own Dad — hardly a religious nut — called me from a business trip to ask if “I was OK”, after he’d watched the TV-movie “MAZES AND MONSTERS,” and became concerned that I was engaged in a hobby where I’d go crazy.

So, for me, my favorite appearance of an RPG in the media was this: A short sequence in the early moments of the 1982 Summer blockbuster, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, where the kids play something close to resembling D&D at the kitchen table:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH7pABfm1HQ

Nobody was in costume, nobody was believing that their character was really them, nobody was trying to summon Satan. Just a table full of kids, who looked like me and my friends, doing what we did on a weekly basis. Refreshingly NORMAL. A Spielberg family film, where I could point to that scene and say “that’s what we do. That’s all it is.”

It may not seem like much now, but at the time, it was very important.

So that’s mine. What’s yours?

Here’s Dave Chapman’s video entry for the day, where he discusses his fave:

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#RPGaDay2015: Day 7

rpg-a-day-2015Welcome to Day 7 of #RPGaDay2015! Today’s subject under discussion: Favorite Free RPG. There are a TON to choose from these days, ranging from System Resource Documents of Open systems (D&D Basic, Pathfinder, FATE, etc.) to DIY Indie projects, to less-than-official PDFs of long-out-of-print games from defunct companies, etc.

D6coverFor my choice, I’m going to go with a commercial game that is now available for free in it’s complete form — so not a beta playtest version, or an SRD, but a game that used to be for sale, and is now available at no cost. It’s hard to find one out there that is better than the complete D6 System from West End Games. The game system that powered the phenomenal Star Wars Role-playing Game is freely available in it’s most recent form — the entire line! Three different core genre books: D6 Adventure, D6 Fantasy and D6 Space, as well as every supplemental release that West End did for it. All for free, at the link I just provided. Go grab it NOW. What’s even better — the entire system has been declared an Open system, which means that you can design and publish your own D6 products.

So that’s my choice. Let’s check in with Dave Chapman, and his special guest Anita Murray, for today’s video entry!

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