#RPGaDAY2017 26th, 27th and 28th

26th Which RPG provides the most useful resources.

Having read other people answers to this already it is funny how they all cancel out. Some say Pathfinder has the best resources and then others that Pathfinder is a victim of its own bloat. Some say the new D&D 5e online service is amazing but then admit that none of their players have even made an account so paying more to be able to share resources was money down the drain.

I am a less is more sort of person and for me most of the companions I junked anyway even when playing RM2. When I started afresh with RMC not having the companions was a blessed relief.

I am going back to my old time favourite of Car Wars again. There were loads of expansions for it but none of them made the game more complicated. There was an expansion for trucks but that just added a new vehicle type. The game remained the same but players got to face new challenges. Half of those little plastic boxes were filled with battle maps such as Truck Stop that were big enough to cover your dining room table. There was a periodical, Autoduel Quarterly, that released regular new material. I think everyone eagerly awaited any new equipment! There were also adventures, there were two that I remember buying Turbo fire and Hell on Wheels. Hell on Wheels ended up becoming the launch point of an entire campaign as the starting character had a really cool Lamborghini Countach which has to be the best starting equipment for a new character ever!
So that is my answer, Car Wars again.

27th What are your essential tools for good gaming?

Post-it notes! I love them and with the best prep in the world you are still going to have to make and record changes on the fly and that is where Post-it notes come in. I also use them for recording NPC turns of phrase when talking, key strategies when in combat and important magic items so I don’t realise AFTER they are dead that they had a staff of teleport and would have bugged out long ago!

A post-its and pencils are the things I cannot do without, even dice are optional but those are my essentials.

28th What film/series is the biggest source of quotes in your group?

I think the answer is probably anything by Monty Python, absolutely anything and everything they have ever done is likely to come up at some point.

#RPGaDAY 8th, 9th, 10th and11th

So this is my third instalment of #RPGaDAY. Most of the questions this week seem to be about different systems so it will be hard to relate them Rolemaster.

8th What is a good RPG to play for sessions of 2hrs or less?

This depends on how you read the question. I think RM is a good candidate for this. One of the cool things about RM character sheets (booklets?) is that they hold just about everything you need to play. This is especially true if you include combat tables and spell lists in the character sheets. Bolt on things like Combat Minion and you get a game that you can get into and start playing very quickly. If you need to create characters in that 2hrs then having the first session exclusively dedicated to character creation will get all the characters made with time to spare. So my answer is RMC.

9th What is a good RPG to play for about 10 sessions?

This time I don’t think RM fits the bill. As a rule of thumb is seems that most GMs are levelling characters up every 3 sessions or so. In a mini campaign of 10 sessions that would advance the characters three or 4 levels. There is not really that much difference between a 1st and a 4th level character. At those lowest levels fighters are king and even the pure spell users have little more than shock bolt. Looking at the time, some players take forever to level up their characters so levelling up 3 times in 10 sessions takes a fairly big chunk out of your available playing time. So RM is not a good option for this particular format.

What does work well (shameless plug!) is my own game 3Deep. The game is set up for emulate TV series and episodes. With that in mine you can easily turn a 10 session mini campaign into 10 related one shot adventures and the whole into a ‘season’. Character creation is fast (roll five stats, pick a culture, spend 7 skill points and then flesh out the backstory) and there are no levels, experience is handled by improving stats and/or skills. While I am blowing my own trumpet the latest version of 3Deep will be available to buy from RPGnow and Drivethru from next week!

 

10th Where do you go for RPG reviews?

For me, my favourite RPG blog is http://www.stargazersworld.com/ which gives me a mix of reviews, news and opinion. they have a small team of bloggers and interestingly they like to experiment. Right now the blog is experimenting with being sponsored by Patreon.

11th Which ‘dead’ game would you like to see reborn?

Do games die? If that were true then there would be no RM2 players. The game is going on for 40 years old and has not had a new book published in decades and yet it is still probably the most popular version of RM there has ever been with many actives groups. Even in my previous answers I harked back to Car Wars with is a game from my youth. I honestly do not believe games die as long as people want to play them.