Category: Cool Stuff

Fell a bit behind on the #RPGaDAY2015 thing, but we just had our wedding anniversary over the weekend ((Eighteen. We could send our marriage off to college.)) and I’m going to use that as an excuse when, in fact, I was just lazy. ((Busy too, and not just playing Shadowrun Hong Kong. Actual work stuff.)) So. What topics have I missed?

Day 22: Perfect Gaming Environment.

I like a game environment where I have the opportunity to stand up and move. If we’re at a table, I just have to stand at times, sit at others. I think I get away with this because I’m usually running games, so when I’m standing, I’m physically elevating myself over the players and it introduces a little psychological trickery, but really I’m just antsy. When I’m playing online, I’m at my standing desk, but there’s a high stool that I use to rest on sometimes — I change stance and camera angle a few times during the game session.

So a place where I can change stances.

Other than that, I don’t have much of a preference. I’ve run games in public at game days and conventions — my favorite game, Primetime Adventures, is fantastic for that. In PTA, there’s a rule called “Audience Participation”, a rule that I don’t know if anyone else but I have ever used, where people watching the game being played can contribute to the story. You know, I might be saving that up for the 25th, which is “Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic”, but you can read more about it in my PTA: Play in Public guide that I should update for the third edition.

My friend Jason loves playing at a table, but his group always spreads out in the living room. That would drive me nuts.

Best Second-Hand RPG Purchase. 

Which used gamething was my best purchase? You know, I can’t think of a damn thing. Maybe some Shadowrun sourcebook or adventure, like… Yeah. Universal Brotherhood/Missing Blood, maybe. Did I pick that up on eBay or at a Half Price Books? I can’t remember. Most everything I currently have that’s recent is new; the older stuff, who knows where I got it from? The only items I own that I can truly recall as getting second-hand are some (but not all) of the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer books, my copy of Twilight: 2000 (second edition, I have a first edition still in the box), and all of my Chill (Mayfair edition) sourcebooks. Some of those Shadowrun, 2nd Edition books had to have come from HPB. The adventures, at least.

You know, I think I’ll go with a copy of West End Games’ Air Cav, which is a stack of counters wargame I picked up two weeks ago from our local recycling center’s “free stuff” barn. Inside the box was about thirty random dice, including several non-d6s. I can always use more dice.

Did you get anything cooler in the past year, Thomas?

You know, I still haven’t played Air Cav and the dice are, you know.

Okay. 

Um, yeah.

Second-hand. Huh.

I still got nothin’.

A note about this one from last year. When I listed the entry for Most Complicated RPG Owned, it included the image below. I instantly started getting texts from my mom asking what the hell I was thinking publishing a government ID card online and what a security risk that was. Seriously. It’s a fake ID for The Morrow Project. It’s also dated 1981.

Parents.

Anyway, Most Complicated RPG Owned.

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Did I mention I still have a copy of Twilight: 2000?

If you’ve filed your own taxes, you’re good to go to make a T2k character.

But if we’re going to include PDF versions of games, I’ll go with the third edition of The Morrow Project, which is the Schedule A to Twilight: 2000’s 1040EZ.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I can hear you say. There is no PDF of the 3rd Edition!

Yeah, well, that’s where it’s storytime, gang.

Way back in the beforetimes, the guy who currently owns (or has the license to) TMP, contacted me about laying out 4th edition. This was years before the Kickstarter, which I just now discovered actually happened and PDFs were created for the book. I started working on the project, but there were some issues and the project stalled out. I’m not certain what exactly happened, but it seemed like The Morrow Project wasn’t going to be. Years later, he went ahead and did the KS, but I didn’t hear from him at that point (and only now have discovered that the KS actually happened). ((Although I do recall hearing about it, but assumed it was cancelled. I remember something about the guy running the project not wanting to do PDFs, but that was about it. The KS page has PDFs as a backer reward.  ))

Anyway, I think I still have those files as reference.

I’ve never played TMP, but I have played Aftermath, which I always confuse with it. Similar post-apocalyptic fare, similar 80s style of “realism” with acronyms and math and more math and even more math. Aftermath has come up recently in different twitter conversations; each time I mention how in that game you’re doing a lot of math, so it should really be called Currentmath.