The #RPGaDAY event has begun once more! Daily writing prompts about our gaming hobby to spur creativity and share the joy of gaming with friends, family, and complete strangers at conventions and game days! I’ll also be revisiting past questions, but first today’s topic: “What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now?”
Wait, you mean right now, now, on the evening before this goes live while a gentle breeze is sending a light sun shower along the way while I hear our neighbor mowing his back yard and the family is all busy winding down after an emotionally draining day?
That right now?
Okay, well. Let’s assume I’m to play a game that will get the family together. That’s the wife, the niece, and the daughter. I’m tempted to say Masks, which is a superhero game about teenage heroes trying to identify their place in the world, but we’ve got one of our players right in that age range, one that’s below that range, and there’s the old people who are looking back at that era. Would I be able to deliver a game with those participants, wondering if I can deliver a good gaming experience? It would be a touch like that Tales from the Loop game I was recently in with younger gamers who seemed to check in with me, the only person at the table that existed in the 1980s, if they were doing it right.
No. Maybe something lighter in the supers range. ICONS is a fun beast. (Same with Marvel Heroic, although in my experience, superhero/villain fights are over a bit too quickly in that system.) If we’re creating our own characters, I’d love to go with the alternative ICONS rule where we make our own, avoiding the random tables, because I’m certain that the players interested would want to bring their own creations in, rather than some… Well, let’s just create a character randomly and see who this person is.
Ah, this hero’s powers come from some sort of device. Four powers, eh? Well, there’s a movement power, a control power, and two offensive powers. Ah. Magic control. With super-speed. And an Affliction and Binding offensive powers. Specialties: aerial combat, business, and… stealth?
Okay, that’s a bit silly.
Maybe Marvel Heroic, because the players have an idea what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is like and we can ground our game there. Character creation in that game is fun as well, and it’s more focused on what you want to do. The last time I played a home game, we had a hero that was close to Cosmic-level powers and abilities and a hero that was more Street-level — both played nicely together with the system.
Previously on #RPGaDAY…
Last year, I wasn’t wild about many of the prompts, so I substituted about twenty of them. Last year I answered the question “Why do this thing?” My answer hasn’t changed — to write more, to develop my writing skill. However this year I’ve taken that answer and created a Patreon project to motivate me to write. This post, and many of the #RPGaDAY posts aren’t part of the patron-paid project. The project is looking at design and layout, like yesterday’s post about the spines of physical books. The 23rd’s topic “Which RPG has the most jaw-dropping layout?” will be in there. But the majority of the prompts have nothing to do with design issues in games.
In 2015, the prompt was “What is the forthcoming game you’re most looking forward to?” Oddly, it may still be the Sentinel Comics RPG. While still not ready for Gen Con in a few weeks, there should be demos. There still isn’t much in the immediate future that’s got me excited — I have a lot of games here that I haven’t had time to play and I want to play them.
In 2014, the first ever prompt was about the first RPG ever played. That remains the Holmes Dungeons & Dragons boxed set. I got it on a court-mandated parental visit in a place where I knew nobody, so I read the hell out of that thing. Since that summer when I first played the game, I’ve pretty much been on the GM side of the gaming table.