After 40 years of roleplaying, I keep coming back to a particular set of games that feel true to me. Versions of D&D come and go,; you get high-concept licensed games based on movies or classic games that come on strong and have zero support, and classics that never change but desperately need updates and streamlining.
Some games I love because they are classics, like Star Frontiers or Tunnels and Trolls, but I don't consider them my "home games" since I don't play them as much these days. If you forced me to keep only a few games out of my library, less than five, they would not be on the list.
I put games in boxes all the time and store them. A few I am forced to pull out again, and they make their way back to my main shelves. They just do everything better, and I often have characters in solo games for these who call to me for adventures. These are those games that I just can't live without.
Old School Essentials
You got to have a copy of B/X on any list like this, and mine is the two-volume set of Old School Essentials Advanced. This is a game I could play and rely on to stay the same for 40 more years and then see D&D go through another four major revisions of the game (and likely a few corporate ownership changes). And I do not have to learn anything to play this, I started with B/X, grew up with B/X, and part of my DNA follows B/X rules.
That said, I still pull in monsters and adventures from Labyrinth Lord; the once and the former king still has a lot of great classics to offer. But this is B/X, a world of fun where everything mainly works seamlessly together. Also, a nod needs to be given to the excellent Index Card RPG for changing how I referee games like this, and I would easily include that book in my OSE collection.
I do have quite a few AD&D-style games, but none of them really feel as strong, complete, and as simple as this. If I had to keep one game out of them all, this would be the one. Castles & Crusades is an excellent game in the AD&D mold, as is Adventures Dark and Deep. I like the refinements AD&D introduced to limit caster power, but the characters also started collecting dozens of strange minor modifiers from various tables that felt like game design lint.
OSE is high quality and has the best-in-the-world organization and presentation. For me, I prefer this over D&D 5. There are fewer books, better organized, old-school, great additions to the B/X core, and all the best classic experiences in two beautiful books.
Great things last the test of time.
GURPS
One of my biggest regrets was my brother and me never GURPS the respect the game deserved. We played Aftermath and held that game in higher regard than GURPS, which is a true classic, and this will always be a classic and great game. We grew up playing Car Wars and enjoyed our simpler Traveller version of that game to GURPS, and then our "advanced" game was Aftermath until that game fell apart on us, and we were switching games again and again.
And again through the 1990s, when we ended up back with D&D 2nd edition, and that fell apart when Wizards came in. The third edition came, and we went out own way, tried Pathfinder 1e (which I liked more than my brother), and we settled on D&D 4 for a while until that game fell apart spectacularly. It was hard to watch the designers of D&D 4 long for games like B/X, and begin to design back in B/X class features into D&D 4 Essentials, and then throw away the entire edition for 5E.
I come back to GURPS and see a modular design that scales in complexity as much as you want it to. This is what GURPS haters hold up as a flaw when it is actually the best feature of the game. That complexity dial starts at 0 and goes to 11. If someone complains about GURPS being too hard, I feel they don't understand the game's design philosophy, and they played with too many features and optional combat rules.
I can do so much with this game easily; it is my new instant favorite. And it gives me detail and depth other games lack. I would not use this for pulp-cinematic games, but for games where I want to carefully sculpt a character into a masterpiece of vision and design, GURPS has no equal. And I say sculpting because that is what you are doing in GURPS; you aren't designing, generating, or building a character - this is an art as character design, and every point matters.
I find myself asking, "do I need that skill?" What happens when I increase my primary weapon skill by a level and make some trade-offs elsewhere? Could I offset this with a disadvantage? Would it fit the character? Can I make a few better choices to get that advantage I really want? Like Pathfinder 1e, 2e, and Starfinder, character creation is highly recommended to use electronic tools.
And the beautiful thing is that every choice you make during character sculpting matters when you play the game. You will see the outcomes of your options in every combat. There will be things you wish you had and saving up points to buy. You will need to work with others to fill the gaps.
Gear and load-outs matter.
Sure, you can create the best swordsman on paper ever. But when he dies of exposure walking to the dungeon in a sudden cold rainstorm, you realize your next character will be better balanced and fit a background and theme. For every horrible thing a referee can do to you in B/X on a saving throw, there is a skill that lets you deal with it quickly in GURPS. Or do it to others and force them to make the save. GURPS gives you the skills to avoid pain and deal it out to others.
The Dungeon Fantasy game also deserves special mention, though I am at times torn if this game is even needed. It is still GURPS and 99% compatible, and everything in here, from monsters to magic items, can be used with GURPS, but I use GURPS for more than just fantasy, so my tastes run all over the genres the main game supports. For those wanting a focused fantasy game, this is perfect. This game and Savage Pathfinder share a lot in common; they are 99% the original game, just with options moved around and a few things changed to support the genre better.
These days I see the genius in the system. I really love it. I put this system away in the closet, pulled it out, and re-shelved everything twice. It does gritty, realistic fantasy that beats Aftermath in realism and fun and does so cleanly, simply, and elegantly. It does anything and everything. You can - and should - scale complexity to meet your group's tastes. The sourcebooks are amazing.
This isn't B/X, but nothing beats it for character design and how deeply you can customize, mod, reskin, and scale this game. It is the Skyrim of roleplaying games, a game that is also a platform for hacking and creativity.
If we had given GURPS the respect it deserved, we could have skipped D&D three through five and saved a few thousand dollars on books - and had a better-feeling game that would have lasted for 20+ years. These were the rules and the game we were looking for, and we never knew we had it.
Savage Worlds
This is another one I keep putting away on my "less-used game" shelves, and it keeps moving back onto my most-played shelves. If you want a generic game that uses toys like playing cards, polyhedral dice, and excellent mechanics - this is your game. I blame the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game for bringing me home to this one; I love the idea in the card game of the dice-based ability scores, and a 100% no-steampunk fantasy 3.5 feeling world, and the Savage Pathfinder sister game to this completely fills the niche for me, and it like the Dungeon Fantasy type game for the primary set of rules.
It has abstract systems for wounding and many parts of the rules that take some head-space to wrap around, but once you do, you begin to realize the means to the end. Cinematic pulp adventure is the game's name here, and the game is built like a well-oiled machine to deliver the experience. The initiative system is genius and makes me feel traditional d20 + modifier-based systems are dinosaur relics.
This has the character design thing I love from GURPS but in a streamlined format. You have fewer options in terms of skills, powers, and fine details, but being able to design a character instantly in a few minutes to your liking is a massive win for usability. Like B/X, you don't need electronic tools to build characters, so any good list will have a mix of games with complex and simple generations.
You are not getting the save-or-die simplicity of B/X or the epic realism and character-crafting of GURPS. Still, you are getting a finely-tuned abstract pulp-adventure cinematic universal system that handles anything and everything you throw at it with zero prep and character creation that takes a few minutes. Fantasy, sci-fi, horror, movies, TV shows, modern-day, historical, wild west, novels, streaming shows, cartoons, superheroes, anything in your head is an instant Savage Worlds game.
Any game, genre, instant-on, fast character creation, and universal rules? Savage Worlds is like my X-Box, Gamepass, and the SSD drive inside.
Do you want fun now? You got it.
Pathfinder 1e
If I ever want a full-bore 3.5 experience, nothing beats this game. I have it on my back shelves for now since I am learning the steampunk sequel to this game, Pathfinder 2. And I do get the Paizo going all-in on steampunk is part of why the sequel isn't as popular as the original. With Pathfinder 1e, the technology is easily ignored, and it felt like D&D 3.5 Extreme Edition. It looks fantastic, it still has a fantasy feel, and it doesn't go overboard with the technology.
With Pathfinder 2, there is no way in hell you are avoiding the steampunk cosplay crowd, especially in Lost Omens. It feels strange because steampunk has always been a niche interest, while the fantasy genre is king, and they push the steampunk elements so hard that Pathfinder 2 feels like a steampunk game. My answer is to go all-in on that game and make it a fight between magic and technology, like a cyberpunk style theme but set in a steampunk world.
I hope magic wins because I miss that generic fantasy game we had with Pathfinder 1e. Honestly, it does feel like Pathfinder 2 lost some of its product vision and seems all over the place in terms of genre, judging, and theme. It feels like medieval Starfinder when I want it to feel more like B/X or AD&D. The gameplay in 2E is said to be better, and I want to put that to the test.
I do have Starfinder on my most-played shelves, and that is sort of a 3.5-style game. I could put Starfinder and Pathfinder 1e in the same collection bucket and say they are the same game since the play mechanics are nearly identical.
The first edition has a lot of flaws, but the run of books made for this game and the third-party support borders on the incredible. I have two shelves of Pathfinder 1e books, but I feel I have a collection of infinite worlds and fantasy settings in that space. It is quite a library, but a library of endless adventures.
The Fifth Game?
This is one I keep looking for. One of the things I look for in a game is a robust support system, GURPS has a fantastic selection of PDFs at Warehouse 23, and DriveThruRPG is amazing for B/X, Savage Worlds, and Pathfinder 1e. These are not dead games, except Pathfinder 1e, but the volume of books made for that system blows me away and will keep me interested for years. Being an open game where the community can produce things is a plus, and while GURPS does not have that, I really have everything I need with the books I have.
If I had to pick a fifth today, it would be Dungeon Crawl Classics and its sister game Mutant Crawl Classics. This is the true expression of Appendix N and the most AD&D game I have. I love this game because it breaks the B/X mold and does something new and extraordinary. Many B/X games exist as retro-edition emulators, this takes the entire genre and does something cool and fresh with the rules, and it is one I feel challenges the industry to do better and start doing new things. I can also depend on them to keep releasing fun adventures for these games, which is always a plus.
There are times when I feel simulating AD&D is a worthy goal, but also, there are times when I think at a certain point, you are chasing nostalgia, and it is better to do your own thing - something new. This does something utterly new while keeping that AD&D feeling of "wow," and no other game does that.
If I played a game like Traveller or Battletech, this would also be a good spot for the game. I feel these are games a lot like D&D 4E. You play more for mechanics than the world, and the central concept is strong enough to carry the game. Since I am currently exploring Starfinder, a sci-fi game may go good here, like a Cyberpunk style game, but both GURPS and Savage worlds do cyberpunk nicely. For that matter, GURPS does a pretty nice RPG for either Battletech or Traveller.
My Current Playlist
This is my current list, and it will likely change. One of the things about playing solo and alone is the tendency to float between games where the grass is always greener. I am happier if I stick to a few games and enjoy those. Some of these games are pretty deep and involved, GURPS can take quite a bit of time in character design, but the advantage of that is you get excited to play, you have an investment in the character (not a throwaway), and you start that "design" thing in your head as you play and take on challenges. Same with Pathfinder 1e, and I hope 2e lives up to the hype and does not simplify away too much.
Some of my games are quick-play classics, like OSE or Savage Worlds. You can probably put Dungeon Crawl Classics on my quick playlist too.
I have a few games stored away on my less-played shelves, and I put them there (and boxed up) to keep myself from getting overwhelmed. If I focus on a few games I enjoy them much more.
No comments:
Post a Comment