The Role Playnig Game I'd Most Like to See Published is... #RPGaDay2017 Day 2

Thanks to great services like Mythoard, I've been able to read a ton of old Judges Guild Journals and issues of Pegasus where there is a lot of early work by RPG Industry legends like Jennell Jaquays. I've also seen some wonderful advertisements for products of the early RPG era. Some of those products were published, but others faded into the ether never to be seen again. I would like to see most of those games published again in some form, and I'd love for most of the fanzine of that era to be scanned and sold by their original publishers on RPGNow, but the one I'd most like to see publication some day is Judges Guild's super hero role playing game. It was to be called Supra-Sentinels.

I wrote about this and a couple of other games back in 2014. At that time, one of the game's original authors said that they were looking into revising and releasing this game. I'd love to see it happen and would be among the first to buy it when it is released.

Over at The Acaeum, one of the original authors gives some clues to what the game would be like and it makes me all the more intrigued to see it:

1.  I'd like to think our game was pretty sophisticated for its time, yet less complicated than what we saw as our main (would have been) competitor CHAMPIONS.   It was a point-building system with dice for determining actions (ie. attacks, defense, etc.)   We'd studied the three or so systems out there around the early '80s and came up with what we thought was a pretty darn good game.   We were starting to worry that CHAMPIONS would eclipse us because it was taking so long for JG to get to the point of being able to afford to publish it.

2.   We were, indeed, very close to being in print.   The game would have been out probably 9 months sooner, had I not moved out of town for a job and my co-authors sort of...didn't do much with it to put the finishing touches on it while I was gone.   By the time I moved back into town and got to work on it again, JG was already getting shaky, financially.   The advertisement got us pretty excited.   Then, they went under just as it was about to go to press.   Took a while to get the manuscript back from them, as it had gotten buried under stuff at their location in Illinois.   (This was about 1982 or 83?)  To get that close to being a published author was one of the single most disappointing moments of my life.    It taught me a good lesson about how we all have them from time to time, though.

What Published RPG I Wish I Was Playing Right Now -- #RPGaDAY 2017 Day 1

For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of Super Hero role playing games. My entry into this particular gaming milieu was Hero Games' excellent Champions 2nd edition role playing game. I happened upon a copy and was amazed that game designers had even attempted to capture super heroes using game mechanics. At the time, I was only familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, Star Frontiers, Tunnels & Trolls, and Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I had played all three of those games and their mechanical foundations did not prepare me for what Champions offered.

Unlike the other games with which I was familiar, Champions did not have randomly created characters and instead allowed players to build whatever they could imagine. The only limit to the character you could design was the number of points available at creation (100 points with 150 more possible if you took Disadvantages). Other than that, it was all good. During my initial Champions experience, I didn't have anyone to play the game with and spent all of my time making characters and doing some solo battles. My character builds were heavily influenced by the sample characters in the rule book and thus were typically of 200 total character points (100 and 100 from Disadvantages). This included my personal write ups for the X-Men. I was content with my view of the game, but this view was to be shattered in short order.

A couple of months after I discovered Champions my family moved to a new city, I finally encountered a group of gamers who played the game every weekend. Given that this was the Bay Area, and the game company was a Bay Area company, I soon discovered a rich and vibrant Champions community. I also discovered that how I interpreted character adaptations to the game was very different from others. Some of that difference, I maintain to this day. I personally believe that too many gamers inflate the stats of their favorite characters out of love for the character, rather than an examination of benchmarks and mechanics of the game. But these are things that can only be understood through play, and that was something I had not yet done with Champions. In playing the game, I learned how some combinations worked better than others and I learned that other players were much more likely than I had been to "grab" the "Obvious and Accessible" items some characters used in combat. Not that I designed a lot of those kinds of characters, I didn't, just that I had expected gamers to behave more like the characters in comics than like "tactical gamers" and that the rules treated gamers as tactical gamers while allowing them to behave like characters in comics.

Long story short, I learned that you can only truly judge the quality of a game by playing it. I still love Champions and think it is one of the top 3 or 4 super hero games out there, but my view is now grounded in experience of how the game works and how when some character building norms take over the game can slow down significantly and lose some of its charm.

Eventually, my love of super heroes and super hero games led me to purchase Villains & Vigilantes, Marvel Super Heroes, and DC Heroes, all of which have there charms. At one point in time, not that long ago by some standards, I could claim to own a copy of every super hero rpg published (at least in one of its editions). With the explosion of pdf based publishing, that is no longer the case and I'm sure I'm missing out on some great games, but I also have a HUGE backlog of games I'd like to play...see how I'm pulling this back to the question of the day?

Among that backlog is Jay Harlove and Aimee Karklyn/(Hartlove)'s early Supergame. It wasn't the first super hero rpg published, that was Superhero 44/Superhero 2044, but it was one of the first and predates Champions. Both the first edition and revised edition came out in 1980. I discovered the game as a "real" thing and not just something mentioned in old gaming magazines, when I moved to Los Angeles after graduating from college in 2000. I was looking for gaming stores and found a long standing game store in Long Beach that had a copy of the 1st edition. Later searches on the internet have shown me that I got a significant bargain on it, as I did with copies of Warlock and a couple of other games originally designed by the Southern California gaming community.

Supergame, like Superhero 2044 which predates it and Champions which comes after it, has a point based character creation system. It also has an interesting skill and combat system that I think has a lot of potential. Some of the stats are odd in how they are presented. For example, if a character has an Agony score (similar to Stun for Champions fans) of 10 or more they suffer no penalties to how they move or act. Given that scores start at 0, and that some sample characters have 0s in other stats implying that a score of 0 is sometimes the "average" score, it seems odd that a person has to spend points just to be a normal person in some areas and not others. Why not just have stats start at "average" and let people buy them down later? Or why not have Agony start at 0 with no penalties and allow negative scores to cause impairment? It's a small complaint, and there are a number of neat features like different defenses against different types of attack (pre-Champions remember). A thorough reading of the rules, both editions, and the supplements has convinced me that I need to play this game to evaluate whether the designed characters are effective at all in a way that would be fun. There are far more characters who have an Agony of 10, or a Physical (like Hit Points but with those with less than 10 being hurt), which means that if they suffer just 1 point of damage they will be impaired.

 I think there is a very good game buried in the Supergame rule books, but I think it is a game that needs a lot of play testing and rules tweaks to bring out that game. I applaud Jay an Aimee for their hard work on the game and their ability to get a game like this published in 1980, and this is definitely a game I wish I was playing right now. I have so many questions I'd like answered and I'd love to house rule this game into a more complete system.

The Black Company is Excellent Military Fantasy

The Black Company by Glen Cook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Glen Cook's first entry in the Black Company series is an interesting combination of originality and trope that bridges the gap between epic fantasy and sword and sorcery. This volume tells the tale of the Black Company from the point of view of Croaker, the Company's surgeon/medic, as they begin their employment under a mysterious figure known as The Lady. While high magic abounds in the world of The Black Company, and happens in the vicinity of the Company, it is not the focus of the story. The main narrative focuses on the skirmishes, battles, and scouting and assassination missions that the Company engages in during a revolution against The Lady.

Descriptions of events are sparse and most character names are nicknames like The Lady, Croaker, One-Eye, Raven, The Captain, The Limper, Darling, Soulcatcher, etc. It is rare that an actual name is used, even in the case of locations in the book. This gives the reader a feeling that they are reading a translation of a text written in another language where the author has translated names into the new language, or a feeling of narrative distance that one gets when reading a history rather than a story.

Cook borrows strongly from existing fantasy literature, both high and low. The Lady can manifest "The Eye" in a manner that echoes Sauron in Tolkien. The grim and gritty battles echo the writings of Robert Howard and the first assassination mission echoes a Fritz Leiber tale of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. While the narrative tapestry borrows from a myriad of earlier literature, with Dark Lords and Prophesied Saviors and all, the end result is highly original. It's a fun read, and Croaker's voice comes through as experienced but not jaded. Some of the best details are focused on the "hurry up and wait" culture of the military, details that add greatly to the realism of the book.

View all my reviews

Back in the d20 era, Green Ronin published an excellent sourcebook for the series. I'd love to see an updated version for the AGE system...which I think might fit the setting better than d20 did. 

From a Gaming Perspective the MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE Adds a Lot of Material

The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic franchise is moving from the small screen to the big screen on October 6th and as a gamer dad I could not be more excited. A quick glimpse at the new film poster the production released for #SDCC gives one hint why. The Mane Six and Spike don't have aquatic features just because it's cute, they have them because the new movie is adding new mythological creatures to the Pony-verse. A look at the film's trailer gives even more context to the additions. Give it a quick view.

Earlier this year, River Horse publishing published an excellent role playing game based on the My Little Pony IP. In that game, players can make characters based on the three types of ponies that are featured in the series: Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns. The Alicorn, a combination of Pegasus and Unicorn, is mentioned in the role playing game, but is not allowable in play. Just based on the trailer of the film, I see two things that I want to bring into my roleplaying games. The first is a new kind of pony, called "Sea Ponies," are featured in the book Under the Sparkling Sea. The second is the existence of a Unicorn with a broken horn, which inspires the question of "what happens when a Unicorn breaks its horn?"

Given my daughters' love of the Percy Jackson books, I'm particularly excited about Sea Ponies. Of all the characters and creatures of the Percy Jackson-verse, the hippocampus Rainbow was their absolute favorite. Now hippocampoi are cemented as a type of pony. If River Horse, who given the company's name should, doesn't publish guidelines and traits for hippocampoi in the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting some here, but I'll have to read Under the Sparkling Sea first in order to see what traits need to be created. The great thing about the My Little Pony RPG is that the the system is very adaptable while also being easy to learn and run.

In fact, I'm going to commit to it. I'm also going to stat up some Savage Worlds versions of the Mane Six based on the way they are defined in the River Horse game. Given the similarities between the systems, it will not only be easy but fun as well.

Los Angeles Gamer Gallery: David Nett

In this first entry in the Los Angeles Gamer Gallery series, we'll be taking a quick look at David Nett. He is a gamer, actor, webseries producer/writer/director, one of the founders of Nerdstrong Gym, and a tremendous advocate for the role playing game hobby. David came to Los Angeles after attending the University of Minnesota at Duluth in order to pursue a career in acting.

I first became aware of David Nett when he and his production company put together an interesting webseries entitled GOLD. The series was about a professional role playing gamer who suffered an injury during a championship match that left him emotionally scarred and unable to effectively lead the U.S. team in international competition. His story takes place at a time when viewers are abandoning watching live games in favor of computer based competitions surrounding MMORPGs. At the time, I thought the story seemed far fetched. Who would watch live role playing game sessions? Other than me that is. In the years since, David seems to have been on to something. While online Game Streams aren't competitive in nature, they can be quite sophisticated and very entertaining.

GOLD: Episode 1 (HD) from David Nett on Vimeo.

Where the first season/series of GOLD displays all of the rough edges one expects from an early project, and a significant amount of what I call pilotitis, the second season is a very entertaining and far more personal tale. That series, entitled Night of the Zombie King, doesn't appear to be available for streaming right now, but it is well worth tracking down a copy. Where the first season of GOLD tried to simulate a world with professional gaming on a large scale, this season brings it down to the individual level and tells the tale of a gamer coming home to finish a campaign left unfinished when he moved away from his small town to a larger community. It's a tale of returning to old friends and reliving fond memories while overcoming past wrongs. It's very good and deserves to be expanded into something more.

David recently stopped by Geek & Sundry's GM TIPS show with Satine Phoenix where they discuss what to do when your stories get derailed.

From his acting and directing career, to his work at Nerdstrong Gym, David has found a way to incorporate his gaming experiences into his work and creative endeavors. This is a common theme in the Southern California gaming community, and one of the things I love about it. The gamers I've met down here are about expanding the hobby and using what they've learned in the hobby to make them better at everything else they do. When my friends and I were working on the pre-production of our failed documentary about the "gamers hidden among us" called Dice Chuckers, David was one of the people we wanted to have as our principle interviewees.

Los Angeles Gamer Gallery: A New Series at Advanced Dungeons and Parenting

Los Angeles Gamer Gallery is a series of posts discussing the Los Angeles gaming community and some of the wonderful people who play and promote games in Tinseltown and abroad.

Why the Los Angeles Area?


Though the Los Angeles area has long been a vibrant part of the role playing game community, it is often overlooked in histories of the hobby. In my experience the Midwest and Bay Area tend to dominate histories and discussions of the people involved in the promotion of the hobby, because TSR and Chaosium. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I took a few days to drive around the area to seek out game stores and gaming groups. I had expected to find some, but not too many. After all, Los Angeles is a big city with a lot of distractions, beautiful weather, and all sorts of entertainments. Such a place didn't seem to me to be a good growth environment for people who gather around a table to tell collaborative stories. Okay that should read, "to gather around a table to tell collaborative stories without money being involved," as a large part of Los Angeles' economy is based on sitting around tables and coming up with stories collaboratively. I expected hard core gaming to develop in small towns with long winters, where people are looking for constructive things to do with their time that have to take place indoors.

Yes, those were my assumptions. Yes, they are overly reductive and bad assumptions. But I came from a small town with cold winters, and those were my assumptions. What I quickly discovered was that the Los Angeles area had a rich gaming community, one that has been central to several developments in the gaming hobby.

Shortly after the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game was created, members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society began playing the game and writing about it in their long running fanzine APA-L. In 1975, authors of APA-L branched out to create Alarums & Excursions under the editorship of Lee Gold. Alarums & Excursions is one of the most influential, if not THE most influential, fanzine in gaming.

1. It was gamers at Aero Hobbies who created the Thief class for D&D in 1974. 
2. Students at CalTech played a version of the game called Warlock that was published by Balboa Game Company. 
3. John Eric Holmes, a professor at USC, wrote the first Basic Set of D&D and in his book Fantasy Roleplaying Games can be seen playing D&D at Long Beach's War House game store.
4. While Superhero 2044 is the first published superhero role playing game Jay and Aimee Hartlove's Supergame was the first point build superhero rpg that was fully playable out of the book. Like Champions, the Hartlove's work is clearly inspired by Superhero 2044 in how its combat system works.

Southern California influenced the early days of the hobby and remains the home to a vibrant and innovative gaming community to this day. I'll leave discussion of Southern California's place in the history of games to those who already make it their career to document gaming history, what I want to do with the Los Angeles Gamer Gallery is to write short posts that highlight members of the community who inspire or intrigue me.

My first post, which will be posted shortly after this one, will be David Nett. I chose David because he exemplifies the way a lot of Southern California gamers incorporate their gaming experience into their lives in interesting ways.

Madelyn Kidd's Academy for Inquisitive Children: Saturday Morning Investigations in the Deadlands

My recent enjoyment of Saving Throw's recently added Wildcards streaming role playing game show, and the announcement of a Scooby Doo/Supernatural crossover episode on the CW, I was inspired with a small campaign kernel. So join me as I introduce you to...

Madelyn Kidd's Academy for Inquisitive Children

On "real" Independence Day (July 3rd) 1863 the United States and the world experienced "The Reckoning." The border between Earth and the Happy Hunting Grounds was sundered, if only for a moment, and all kinds of terrors leaked into our world. On that day, the field of Gettysburg was littered with corpses...and some of those corpses rose from the grave to spread horror. In the years that followed, the sinister Reckoners selected four champions who would transform the world into a literal Hell on Earth. All of this is well documented in the Deadlands Role Playing Game. What is less well known is that on that day, the forces of Good selected some champions of their own. Four children who were born on the day of The Reckoning who might just have a chance at stopping the world's transformation, but only if they could meet up and gain sufficient knowledge and power to thwart the Servitors who served the Reckoners.

These young children would never have met if it hadn't been for Madelyn Kidd. A simple school teacher from Serendipity, Pennsylvania, Madelyn had been on a picnic with her beau Aleister McKenzie overlooking the Battle of Gettysburg when the events of the Reckoning took place. Her beau was killed by a stray bullet and as Madelyn reached over to comfort her dying lover, she experienced a vision of a terrible future. She saw the world as it would be if the Reckoners had their way. She also saw a vision of hope where she was the founder of a new kind of school, a school dedicated to teaching children the skills necessary to fight back evil and to bring joy to lands that are dominated by fear.

While her vision was grand, the results so far have been very meager. Madelyn Kidd's Academy for Inquisitive Children was successfully established in 1865 in the town of Serendipity, Pennsylvania. The first graduating class of two students matriculated in 1869 and both of these students have gone on to jobs with the Union Government. Since that time, Madelyn has trained a number of gifted young students and currently has 45 students enrolled in her school. For all that success, not one of her students has gone on to achieve any great success against the evils the world is facing. All of her students are struggling against the darkness, but no great hero has emerged. Madelyn is on the verge of giving up hope as her four oldest currently enrolled students seem more concerned with solving local mysteries than they are with confronting greater threats.

Madelyn had high hopes for these four students. All four were born on the same day, July 3rd 1863, and all four exhibited high levels of potential. They were quick learners too, but they lack focus. They constantly take day trips in their Stagecoach, which they have named the Ratiocination Roller, to neighboring cities to unravel mysteries that the locals think are supernatural. Initially, Madelyn encouraged the behavior because she knew how important it was to fight real supernatural dangers, but as it became clear that every "supernatural" foe the students fought was revealed to be a fraud she began to lose hope. How would these students fare against the real horrors of the Weird West, let alone the Servitors, if they never had to face down supernatural horrors? It's a worry that has begun to affect her sleep. She recently sent them on a trip to disputed territory to do a field study of flora and fauna in the hopes that the students would begin their training in earnest. Time is so short and 17 year old kids have to grow up quickly in the Weird West.

What Madelyn doesn't know is that her students really are fighting supernatural foes, they only make it appear that the creatures they defeat are humans in disguise of swamp gas. This is because "Em" Vilnius noticed that when she made towns think that the evil that haunted them was a mere trick being performed by greedy individuals, those towns became happier and more successful places. It didn't take "Em" long to catch on to the fact that the best way to undermine the Reckoners was to take away the power that fueled them...fear. The kids, who call themselves Ratiocination Incorporation, are looking forward to their trip into the Weird West with the knowledge that if they get into too much trouble, they might be able to call on Madelyn Kidd and her other students to help them fight the good fight.

What every the case, Madelyn hopes to create a world where the Reckoners might have succeeded if not for those Madelyn Kidds kids.

Madelyn Kidd 

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d10, Spirit d6, Strength d4, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Gambling d6, Guts d6, Intimidation d6, Investigation d8, Persuasion d6, Riding d6, Spellcasting d10, Stealth d4, Streetwise d8
Charisma: 2; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5; Grit: 3
Hindrances: Enemy (Major), Heavy Sleeper, Loyal
Edges: Arcane Background (Magic), Attractive, Brave, Connections, Investigator, Linguist, New Power, Power Points
Powers: Armor, bolt (burning cards), hunch, mind rider; Power Points: 15
Gear: Hatchet, Knife (Str+d4) x3, Playing cards x8, Shirt/blouse, dress, Spectacles, $247 

Jedediah Heiter

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d6, Strength d4, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d4, Guts d6, Investigation d6, Notice d4, Persuasion d4, Repair d8, Shooting d6, Weird Science d8
Charisma: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 5; Grit: 1
Hindrances: Big Mouth, Doubting Thomas, Overconfident
Edges: Arcane Background (Weird Science), Knack (Bastard), New Power
Powers: Deflection (Jedediah's Ocular Disruptor), stun (Jedidiah's Auditory Imbalancer); Power Points: 20
Gear: Backpack, Bed roll, Boots, Canteen, Derby, Drill, Duster, File, Gun belt, Hammer, Lantern, Lantern oil (per gallon) x2, Lockpicks, Mule, Rifle (.38-.52) x5, Shirt/blouse, work, Trousers/skirt, Watch, gold, Winchester ‘76 (.45) (Range 24/48/96, 2d8, Shots 15, AP 2), $62.65

Petra Quartz

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d4, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Guts d6, Intimidation d6, Notice d4, Riding d6, Shooting d8, Streetwise d4, Throwing d6
Charisma: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5; Grit: 1
Hindrances: Arrogant, Stubborn, Vengeful (Minor)
Edges: Quick Draw, Two-Fisted
Gear: Backpack, Bed roll, Boots, Chaps, Colt Peacemaker (.45, Double-Action) (Range 12/24/48, 2d6+1, Shots 6, AP 1) x2, Duster, Gun belt, Knife (Str+d4), Pistol (.40-.50) x10, Quick-draw holster, Rifle (.38-.52) x5, Shirt/blouse, work, Trousers/skirt, Winchester ‘76 (.45) (Range 24/48/96, 2d8, Shots 15, AP 2), $133 

Eliza "Em" Vilnius (Hellstromme)

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigor d6
Skills: Faith d8, Fighting d6, Guts d6, Investigation d4, Persuasion d8, Riding d6, Shooting d6
Charisma: 2; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5; Grit: 1
Hindrances: Bad Dreams, Heavy Sleeper, Loyal
Edges: Arcane Background (Miracles), Brave, Charismatic
Powers: Aim, armor, barrier, beast friend, blind, boost/lower trait, confusion, deflection, dispel, elemental manipulation, environmental protection, exorcism, gambler, greater healing, healing, inspiration, light/obscure, protection, pummel, quickness, sanctify, smite, speak language, stun, succor, warrior’s gift, windstorm
Gear: Boots, Horse, Knife, Bowie (Str+d4+1, AP 1), Saddle, Saddlebags, Shirt/blouse, dress, Shoes, Shotgun shells x2, Suit/fancy dress, Trousers/skirt, Winchester LeverAction (Range 12/24/48, 1–3d6, Shots 4, +2 Shooting rolls), 80¢

Mockingjay 

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d4, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d8, Guts d6, Intimidation d6, Riding d6, Throwing d6, Tracking d4, Tribal Medicine d6
Charisma: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 7; Toughness: 6; Grit: 1
Hindrances: All Thumbs, Curious, Loyal
Edges: Arcane Background (Shamanism), Beast Master, Brawny
Powers: Beast Friend, healing; Power Points: 10
Gear: Arrow x5, Bolas (Range 4/8/16, Str+1, Shots 1, see notes), Boots, Bow (Range 12/24/48, 2d6, Shots 1), Horse, Knife, Bowie (Str+d4+1, AP 1) x2, Shirt/blouse, work, Spear (Str+d6, Parry +1; Reach 1; requires 2 hands), Tomahawk (Str+d6), Trousers/skirt, $68.50