The all-purpose pen-and-paper RPG megathread

[Perry Holley]

I can keep an eye our for a deadtree copy, if you'd like.

[DarkBlade]

It's cool. :) I purchased the PDF, though it took using Explorer to download it and Stuffit to get it to open without going "corrupt file AAHHH" and printed the relevant part at work today. Thanks though!

[jemurr]

Hello all. I have two questions. I'm only somewhat familiar with the roleplaying scene/culture, and I was wondering about a few things. I know with comics, sites like this list the top selling comics via Diamond. Does anyone know if sales of Role Playing books are released anywhere? Also, anyone know if said sales have gone up or down in recent years?

Also, (I guess this will be three questions) comics have the San Diego show as their biggest show. I know of Gen Con, and Dragon Con, what are the biggest role playing conventions? Is there like a top 3 or something. Just curious.

[Perry Holley]

Hello all. I have two questions. I'm only somewhat familiar with the roleplaying scene/culture, and I was wondering about a few things. I know with comics, sites like this list the top selling comics via Diamond. Does anyone know if sales of Role Playing books are released anywhere? Also, anyone know if said sales have gone up or down in recent years?Assuming you're talking about tabletop RPGs, I don't think there are any hard-and-fast numbers available. Unlike comics (which have the majority of their output through a single source, Diamond), RPG sales can usually be made through a wider source of options (ordering through a distributor, direct mail-order, PDF sales, etc) There's no obligation for any of the publishers to relaese their sales numbers, and many are hesitant to do so for whatever reason.

I think that occassionally Kenneth Hite tries to track the sort of numbers you're looking for; I'll see if I can dig through his past colums for the sort of info relevant to your question.

[Perry Holley]

Here you go. (http://www.gamingreport.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=186)

[BcAugust]

Hmm, that doesn't seem right to me, not least of all because well over 90% of my game book buying wasn't from game stores.(I've only been in a dedicated one recently) And given that most of the areas I've lived in that didn't have them still did have a very large gaming population, I'd estimate that the numbers are at least double that. The internet helping with that at the game company side, as well. But, unless the companies release their numbers, it's still all a guessing game.

[AllisterH]

Also, (I guess this will be three questions) comics have the San Diego show as their biggest show. I know of Gen Con, and Dragon Con, what are the biggest role playing conventions? Is there like a top 3 or something. Just curious.

The biggest would still be the original, namely Gen Con

[jemurr]

Thanks, would the con rankings by size be Gencon, Origins, and Dragon Con?

[Perry Holley]

Thanks, would the con rankings by size be Gencon, Origins, and Dragon Con?The thing to remember about DragonCon is that it isn't a gaming-con per se, but rather a multi-media con that just happens to have a lot of gaming going on.

[Beacon]

Saw this posted on another board and figured I’d pass it on …

http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/750_things_Mr._Welch_can_no_longer_do_in_a_RPG

[Thnikkaman]

I don't get it.

[Perry Holley]

"1313. Believing my character to be sexy does not entitle me to hit on the GM. That’s just creepy."

Now they tell me!

[wingsofdamnation]

Uhh whos mr. welch?

[Beacon]

Thnikkaman: Some of them are game-specific and I don’t get them either but a lot of it is self-explanatory; “Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.”, “The Goddess of Marriage's chosen weapon is not the whip.”, “My character names are not allowed to be double entendres”, ect

Perry Holley: Keep it in your pants. Seriously, it IS creepy.

Wingsofdamnation: “Welch” is a hypothetical “difficult gamer”. The name (which is a brand of jelly) seems to be a nod to Skippy’s List (www.skippyslist.com) (which is a brand of peanut butter) of things you can’t do in the army.

[Perry Holley]

Perry Holley: Keep it in your pants. Seriously, it IS creepy.Hey, I was just trying to earn extra Experience Points! ;)

[Michael P]

I've never played a tabletop RPG in my life, and I found most of them hilarious.

[Joe Grendel]

End of an era:

Today, Wizards of the Coast and Paizo Publishing announced the conclusion of Paizo's license to publish Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The magazines will cease publication following the release of the September issues, which ship to subscribers and newsstands in August. The final issues will be Dragon #359 and Dungeon #150.

Wizards of the Coast will be moving the kind of content currently found in Dragon and Dungeon to an online model. Both companies remain on good terms and continue to discuss future opportunities for publishing partnerships.
http://paizo.com/

[Chiasm]

:(

Granted its been at least 20 years since I picked up a Dragon magazine and I had utterly forgotten about it. But its still sad because now that I think about those were good times.

[Perry Holley]

It's been a few years since I've picked up either magazine, but I have a huge run of Dragons from the 80's and early 90's.

I remember when I was first getting into D&D, back in the summer of '81, and my older brother picked up issues #47-49 for me.

[Subotai]

Bummer. And what with Dungeon failing its save, a lot of people are going to be scrambling to find modules. Hopefully its replacement does well.

[Inkthinker]

Wow... I wonder if that's going to make Knights of the Dinner Table the lead in gaming-content-focused magazines now.

'Cause while KODT is a far, far cry from Dragon, I can't think of any other periodicals that print the same sort of content. Don't get me wrong, I love KODT, read ever issue cover-to-cover and I don't even game anymore, but what else is there?

Online content is nice, sure, but it's not the same at all.

[Perry Holley]

Wow... I wonder if that's going to make Knights of the Dinner Table the lead in gaming-content-focused magazines now.Pretty much, yeah. Games Quarterly Magazine announced that they were ceasing publication earlier this month. I honestly can't think of any other deadtree publishings concerning tabletop RPGs (White Dwarf ceased to be concerned with RPGs a loooong time ago).

[Perry Holley]

As you may have noticed, many of the individual threads regarding tabletop RPG's have now been merged together into one thread.

This thread is for the discussion of pen-and-paper RPG's in general. Want to talk about the campaign you're playing in or running? Got a rules question? Have a link to some neat RPG's that happen to be available online (legally) free? Is there some interesting RPG-related news you want to pass on? Want to get some feedback on a particular game before spending money on it? This is the thread for all that, and anything else related to tabletop RPG's.

[Perry Holley]

Oh, and the current thread regarding the announcement of 4th ed D&D will for the moment stay seperate (I didn't want to merge it while it's still active and has some legs to it), but it will eventually be merged with this thread, as well.

[Perry Holley]

The return of Classic Traveller (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/news/news_item.php?pkid_news=166)

I'm of mixed feelings about this. It's based on the original ("Classic") Traveller rules, which to my mind is a good thing. And they're going to release it under an OGL, which could lead to all sorts of interesting possibilities.

But... it's Mongoose. They screwed up their release of Runequest pretty badly, something I had been looking forward to quite a bit. Will they learn from their past mistakes, or merely repeat them?

[Shellhead]

I got the old Traveler black box set for Christmas way back in the day. A friend and I tried to roll up characters, but were surprised to find that our characters both died during the process. Finally, we made a couple of characters who survived the generation process and then had them fight, just to learn the combat system. It was dry. Matter of fact, the whole setting was very dry, given that this was back around the time when Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Outland, Black Hole and Alien all hit the big screen.

So we dropped Traveller and moved on to other games, like Call of Cthulhu, Villains & Vigilantes, and Paranoia. Finally, in 1995, I traded my Traveler box for about 30 rare and uncommon Jyhad cards. No regrets.

However, I still have the Snapshot boxed set, which was basically a big ship map and several combat scenarios using the Traveler combat system. I vaguely recall having some fun with that.

[Astonishing X-Fan]

I was wondering, are there any good superhero RPGs out there? All I really play is D&D, and I'd like to branch out a little...and I like the idea of a comic book RPG.

[Jmacq1]

I was wondering, are there any good superhero RPGs out there? All I really play is D&D, and I'd like to branch out a little...and I like the idea of a comic book RPG.

If you're playing current (3.5) D&D, I've heard good things about the "Mutants and Masterminds" system. It's loosely based on the same rule system (heavily modified of course).

Of course there's the old "Champions" standby too.

[Shellhead]

I was wondering, are there any good superhero RPGs out there? All I really play is D&D, and I'd like to branch out a little...and I like the idea of a comic book RPG.

You might like Mutants & Masterminds. I can't tell you much about except what I've read in reviews, because I haven't played it. But it sounds like it's similar to d20, though not using all of the awkward D&D stuff like alignments or classes. One particularly thematic idea is, instead of taking points of damage, M&M characters make a saving throw against damage, with failure resulting in being stunned, KO'd or worse, depending on the roll. Otherwise, the system appears to do a fine job of covering all the weird possibilities with superheroes, including a wide range of powers, and plenty of ways to customize your character.

I can warn you away from several older superhero RPGs.

Villains & Vigilantes was an easy game to play, but it fell pretty short in terms of the basic system. Guns and other weapons were fairly useless, even against normal innocent bystanders. Falling damage was completely out of whack with the rest of the system, and there were similar peculiarities with the throwing rules. There were a lot of adventures published, but the best was actually a two-parter written by Bill Willingham back in the early 80s: Death Duel with the Destroyers/The Island of Dr. Aprocalypse.

Champions was a more popular system, but I personally thought it was a dull exercise in bookkeeping and rules discussion. Mechanically, it worked well, but the game did some serious damage by teaching gamers how to min/max their characters, a mindset that they brought with them to every other RPG. Lots of adventures, but they suffered from a combat system that made it easy to stun and hard to knock out the opposition.

As far as I know, Superhero 2044 was the very first superhero RPG, and it was truly awful. The rules were minimal, the setting was a drab futuristic society on a small island, and there were only a few sample characters. Even by RPG standards in 1977, Superhero 2044 was weak. No product support, ever.

GURPS Supers had the advantage of a decent combat system and lots of support material that could be imported to cover characters with magic, cybernetics, high-tech armor, etc. But that combat system worked best with medieval melee and not so good with modern weaponry or superhuman powers. Aside from a Wild Cards sourcebook, there was little product support designed specifically for GURPS Supers.

Marvel Super Heroes was licensed to work with Marvel's whole product line, but it was kind of a flat system, with named stats and fixed damage amounts. There were all kinds of colorful charts, but everything came down to a percent die role on a fairly flat combat chart that minimized the differences between different characters. There were many adventures published, but they were generally thin and over-priced.

I never played Superworld, but I am quite familiar with the Basic RolePlaying system they used. It's a decent system, but combats between highly-skilled opponents tend to bog down into a dicefest, and there is a reasonable chance of that happening with superhuman opponents.

I also never played the DC Role-playing game, but I heard that it was a decent system unless you were playing street-level heroes. The problem a one-point difference in an attribute is huge, because it represents a doubling in power level. If you have Strength of 10 and I have a Strength of 11, I am twice as strong as you. That makes it tough to simulate the more subtle differences between streetlevel opponents. To be specific, either Batman and Joker are exactly the same strength, or one of them is twice as strong as the other.

[Jmacq1]

The later version of DC Superheroes from West End Games wasn't too bad, but suffered from the same problem as the Star Wars game from West End (ie the "mountains o' dice" syndrome). Plus the game is out of print.

Heroes Unlimited is (no pun intended) often considered too limited. It's got fairly set "classes" that do cover a wide variety of possibilities, but tends to be lower-powered than many superhero settings.

So yeah, I still think Mutants and Masterminds is your best bet. I've also heard good things about Silver Age Sentinels, but haven't played it myself.

[Shellhead]

So yeah, I still think Mutants and Masterminds is your best bet. I've also heard good things about Silver Age Sentinels, but haven't played it myself.

I don't know much about Silver Age Sentinels either, but I hear that it jumped directly on the d20/OGL bandwagon, so it might be an easy game for a modern D&D player to get into.

[G. Wayne]

I was wondering, are there any good superhero RPGs out there? All I really play is D&D, and I'd like to branch out a little...and I like the idea of a comic book RPG.

Mutants & Masterminds seems to be the way to go. It's been a while since I played, so going by memory here. Character creation is relatively simple, with a points-to-stats system. (Standard campaigns are recommended to start at like Power Level 10, where you get 150pts. Skills, feats, powers, stats and the like all cost certain point levels, and you can take drawbacks to increase points.) Characters like Superman would be power and stat heavy. Someone like Batman would have a ton of feats.

The backstory to the game's setting is pretty good too, with homages a plenty to the JSA, JLA, Batman, Dr. Strange, the X-Men, and various creators (the X-Men-ish team stayed at the Claremont Academy, for example) mixed in with original material.

The only thing I hate about the game is the step damage system it uses. Damage was split into certain types, and you had to make numerous saves against the type. How badly you failed the save determined how it affected you. Gimme hit points any day.

Then theres the no longer supported dice-less Marvel Roleplaying game that came out a few years ago. You had counter pools that you shuffled between your actions. It was incredibly easy to break the creation system to make an overpowered character, and when they got to making the stats for guys like Thor or Doctor Strange it broke the system.

There's Aberrant, but I couldn't tell you if it's still supported or not. Nice backstory, relatively decent character creation as far as I can remember, but high level stats abused the combat system.

[Astonishing X-Fan]

Looks like MnM is the way to go.

Thanks for the responses, all.

[Perry Holley]

Green Ronin to publish Wild Cards RPG based on Mutants & Masterminds (http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/mutants_masterminds_news_archives/000486.php)

[Shellhead]

Green Ronin to publish Wild Cards RPG based on Mutants & Masterminds (http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/mutants_masterminds_news_archives/000486.php)

Wild Cards allegedly started out as an rpg campaign that somebody was running in New Mexico with Chaosium's old Superworld rules. There were at least a couple of writers in that campaign, and they thought that it would be cool to turn their game into a shared world series.

There was a GURPS Wild Cards supplement for Gurps 3rd edition. Some of the stats seemed way out of line, but the biggest problem was that GURPS didn't work well for superheroes, even using the GURPS Supers rules.

[Perry Holley]

Stupid D&D monsters (http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm)

Stupid D&D monsters, take 2 (http://www.bookofratings.com/dndmonsters.html)

[Perry Holley]

Worldwide D&D Game Day is November 3rd (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/gameday)

[Jared_Humpherys]

A fun little 3.5 D&D trick I heard about:

1. Take one sandwich.
2. Hire a wizard to cast Polymorph Any Object, turning the sandwich into a rabbit.
3. Manifest Astral Seed.
4. Kill yourself.
5. Use Mind Switch to possess the rabbit.
6. Use Metamorphosis/Astral Construct to smash the Astral Seed.
7. Wait out the Polymorph Any Object.
You are now a sandwich.

[GozertheGozarian]

A fun little 3.5 D&D trick I heard about:

1. Take one sandwich.
2. Hire a wizard to cast Polymorph Any Object, turning the sandwich into a rabbit.
3. Manifest Astral Seed.
4. Kill yourself.
5. Use Mind Switch to possess the rabbit.
6. Use Metamorphosis/Astral Construct to smash the Astral Seed.
7. Wait out the Polymorph Any Object.
You are now a sandwich.
The Broodwich in 7 easy steps.

[Perry Holley]

Fantasy Flight Games is having a holiday sale for most of their RPG stuff:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/5dsale2007.html

(also some of their board and card games, as well)

[Perry Holley]

Eden Studios (https://edenstudios.safeserver.com/Merchant2/
) is blowing out some of their backstock for $5 a pop until December 2:

Abduction Card Game
Angel Corebook
Angel Director's Screen
Buffy Director's Screen
Buffy Slayers Handbook
Buffy Monster Smackdown
Eden Studios Presents Vol 1
Eden Studios Presents Vol 2
AFMBE Screen
AFMBE Pulp Zombies
AFMBE Fistful o' Zombies
Book of Archetypes Vol 2
WitchCraft Chroniclers Screen
WitchCraft The Book of Hod
WitchCraft Power and Privilege, The Rosicrucian Covenant Book
d20 Akrasia, Thief of Time
d20 Wonders Out of Time
d20 Secret of the Ancients
d20 Liber Bestarius

[Perry Holley]

Cubicle 7 to publish Dr Who RPG

Angus Abranson, head of Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd, announced today that Cubicle Seven have been awarded the license to produce an official Doctor Who role-playing game based on the new series. The announcement was made at Dragonmeet, London's premier role-playing convention. Full confirmation, and further details will be made available, though a press release, which is to be issued at the beginning of next week.

http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.php

[Perry Holley]

Black Industruies is an imprint of Games Workshop... they had been doing stuff for GW like handling the Talisman and Warhammer 40K RPG lines, and had licensed to do a RPG based on the DC comics universe. Their latest release, Dark Heresy, pretty much sold out in record time. But apparently that wasn't profitable enough for GW, and BI is being shut down in favor of putting more emphasis on publishing novels.

http://www.blackindustries.com/default.asp?template=BI&content=newslist&newsitem=350

While I understand that novels have a much higher profit margin than RPG games, it strikes me as odd that a company whose stock has taken a nosedive in the last year (http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GAW.L&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=) would want to hold on to whatever is making a profit.

But then again, it's GW, so it really doesn't have to make any sense.

[Endless Flight]

If anyone is interested in Mutants & Masterminds and enjoys play-by-post gaming, I own a forum where Freedom City is used as the setting. It is located here: Freedom City Play-By-Post (http://www.endlessflight.net/freedom).

[moebius]

I was wondering, are there any good superhero RPGs out there? All I really play is D&D, and I'd like to branch out a little...and I like the idea of a comic book RPG.

Setting-wise, I haven't seen anything that can beat Aberrant. It starts from the premise that superheroes suddenly appear in an otherwise normal world in 1998 and completely change society (for the worse?). The range of character origins is pretty limited, but I liked the Dice and Combat systems. Now available in D20, though I haven't looked through to see how successful the port was.

Mechanics-wise, I haven't seen anything that beats Mutants and Masterminds. Character generation is entirely modular and the "levels" are a good way of making street-level, X-Men level or JLA-level characters.

[moebius]

I'm now in the 8th month of playing in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the rest of the group is somewhere between 18-24 months in. It is a hell of a slog.

Monday night we are finally goiing up against at least one of the Triad and finishing the Black Spike, after finally killing Hedrack a few sessions earlier (on the 5th try).

Something tells me we will be taking casualties.

[moebius]

We crushed an evil temple last night, and my 14th level Psion is now sitting on a Deck of Many Things.

Yikes.

Anyone else have experience with this beneficial (and baneful) magic item?

I have a week until the next session and my inclination is to draw, and draw multiple cards. But I'm wavering.

[Jmacq1]

A Deck of Many Things? Oh you just -have- to draw. Even if the utterly horrible things come up...it's just so much dang FUN!

Have you seen the actual "prop" that someone produced a while back? It's oodles of fun, too.

[GozertheGozarian]

We created an improved Deck years ago that used all 54 cards. Very, very bad things were possible.

[Shellhead]

I'm now in the 8th month of playing in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the rest of the group is somewhere between 18-24 months in. It is a hell of a slog.

Monday night we are finally goiing up against at least one of the Triad and finishing the Black Spike, after finally killing Hedrack a few sessions earlier (on the 5th try).

Something tells me we will be taking casualties.

Have you played the PC game? It was surprisingly faithful to the original ToEE in many respects, and even better in other ways. I ran the original ToEE for my college gaming buddies way back in the day, so it was kick to finally get to play it.

[Gezora]

We crushed an evil temple last night, and my 14th level Psion is now sitting on a Deck of Many Things.

Yikes.

Anyone else have experience with this beneficial (and baneful) magic item?

I have a week until the next session and my inclination is to draw, and draw multiple cards. But I'm wavering.

One experience I've had with the deck of many things:

Our party's halfling rogue drew three cards, all at once - Gain the help of a 4th level Fighter, have a henchman/underling betray you, Fight Death.

So a wandering Fighter shows up out of nowhere in our camp and pledges his loyalty to our rogue, then immediately changes his mind and attacks him, then a CR 20-ish wraith weilding a scythe pops up, slaughters them both, then pops back out.

Much laughter ensues

My advice: Unless your not particularly attached to the character your currently playing, draw only one card, if any.

[moebius]

Have you played the PC game? It was surprisingly faithful to the original ToEE in many respects, and even better in other ways. I ran the original ToEE for my college gaming buddies way back in the day, so it was kick to finally get to play it.

Never played it. The P and P RTtToEE has been going on for close to two years, and the same group (sans me) played the original before that, also for 1.5-2 years.


My inclination on the Deck is to draw, and to draw three cards:

-There are only four cards in there that I fear (lose all magic items; lose 1d4+1 Int; be Imprisoned and the Void, since the party won't/won't be able to come after me). I can deal with the Dread Wraith if it comes to it.
-The expected value of drawing a "terrible" card is .22, so anything more than four cards assures disaster.
-Some of the cards in there (the Fates; the Wishes) let you potentially undo the effects of the others. For example, if you get something really bad on your third draw: "I Wish I had only drawn two cards". Drawing one card, the chances of having something bad happen are significant; draw multiple and one of the others might undo it.

[Jmacq1]

Never played it. The P and P RTtToEE has been going on for close to two years, and the same group (sans me) played the original before that, also for 1.5-2 years.


My inclination on the Deck is to draw, and to draw three cards:

-There are only four cards in there that I fear (lose all magic items; lose 1d4+1 Int; be Imprisoned and the Void, since the party won't/won't be able to come after me). I can deal with the Dread Wraith if it comes to it.
-The expected value of drawing a "terrible" card is .22, so anything more than four cards assures disaster.
-Some of the cards in there (the Fates; the Wishes) let you potentially undo the effects of the others. For example, if you get something really bad on your third draw: "I Wish I had only drawn two cards". Drawing one card, the chances of having something bad happen are significant; draw multiple and one of the others might undo it.

Careful with those wishes.

My DM, after hearing that wish ("I wish I had only drawn two cards") would promptly declare that I only drew two cards...the two worst ones. Or conversely that it's a "paradox" because if only two cards were drawn then potentially the wish card wouldn't have been drawn in the first place.

But yeah, my DM's a jerk like that. ;)

[GozertheGozarian]

1st ed rocked when it came to wishes. DMs were encouraged to make the worst thing happen.

[Perry Holley]

Lucas sues GenCon. (http://reporter.blogs.com/thresq/2008/01/lucasfilm-sues.html)

[moebius]

Careful with those wishes.

My DM, after hearing that wish ("I wish I had only drawn two cards") would promptly declare that I only drew two cards...the two worst ones. Or conversely that it's a "paradox" because if only two cards were drawn then potentially the wish card wouldn't have been drawn in the first place.

But yeah, my DM's a jerk like that. ;)

I agree that you have to watch for paradoxes with the wishes...which makes it tricky....the wishes are only useful if they come before the bad card, and are then used as the bad card is drawn.

[Sabrina_Fried]

Lucas sues GenCon. (http://reporter.blogs.com/thresq/2008/01/lucasfilm-sues.html)

Ok, this may be wierd, but I think this is the first time in a very long time that I have AGREED with a Lucas Lawsuit. Failing to uphold a contract to donate money to charity.....yeah, that's pretty low.

Sabrina

[moebius]

So I decided pulling from the Deck of Many Things was out of character, and also probably a terrible idea.

The party will still keep it around (everyone else refused to draw as well) and maybe someday when we're facing a TPK one of us will pull it out and take a chance.

[Perry Holley]

Ok, this may be wierd, but I think this is the first time in a very long time that I have AGREED with a Lucas Lawsuit. Failing to uphold a contract to donate money to charity.....yeah, that's pretty low.A slightly more detail take on the matter can be found here (http://www.adamjury.com/2008/gen-con-sued-by-lucasfilm-llc/).

[Perry Holley]

You can 'graduate' from D&D 3.5 to Exalted (http://secure1.white-wolf.com/graduateyourgame/)

[Jmacq1]

You can 'graduate' from D&D 3.5 to Exalted (http://secure1.white-wolf.com/graduateyourgame/)

Heh, I think I have a spare 3.5 PHB......

[lalalei2001]

Okay guys. I know this is is way out of left field, but....I'm trying to find a story of an RPG player's bad luck. It was on a website some time a ago and evidently I forgot to favorite it.

He was trying to pull free a spear from a statue (or suit of armor, I can't remember that well) but kept falling short of his dice roll. I think eventually he was killed while trying to pull it out. It was like a log of the events. And that's all I remember.

Oh! The website had a white backround, too.

[Perry Holley]

Erick Wujcik (author of the Amber Diceless RPG and several Palladium RPG books) had been diagnosed with cancer some time back, and it's recently been announced that he's taken a turn for the worse due to liver problems:

http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=90336

[Perry Holley]

It seems that Dave Arneson, who along with Gary Gygax co-created the original Dungeons & Dragons rules, is apparently in ill health (http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19750&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=f22b628ae8721f4f1e5d12c3da9cff8b).

This has been a rough year for many of the old guard of p&p RPG's. Besides Gygax passing away earlier this year, Erick Wujick (author of the Amber diceless RPG and several Palladium RPG books) and Bob Bledsaw (president of Judges' Guild, the first third-party publisher of D&D and other RPG's) both lost battles with cancer earlier this year, and N. Robin Crosby, creator of the Harn series, is also fighting a losing battle against cancer.

:frown:

[Perry Holley]

This has been a rough year for many of the old guard of p&p RPG's. Besides Gygax passing away earlier this year, Erick Wujick (author of the Amber diceless RPG and several Palladium RPG books) and Bob Bledsaw (president of Judges' Guild, the first third-party publisher of D&D and other RPG's) both lost battles with cancer earlier this year, and N. Robin Crosby, creator of the Harn series, is also fighting a losing battle against cancer.Dammit, now Crosby has passed away.

http://www.kelestia.com/?q=node/285

This is turning out to be a really crappy year for those of us who play PnP RPGs.




I think I need a drink. Several, in fact...

[Shellhead]

I met Dave Arneson last year at an event at the local game shop. The store manager introduced me to him as a professional game designer, even though I have just one published game and no future aspirations in that direction. We had a nice chat for about 20 minutes. He did look old and not at all physically fit, but otherwise seemed okay.

[Perry Holley]

Ran across an interesting article regarding what was probably the first tabletop miniatures/role-playing sessions, which would eventually lead to the creation of D&D... hopefully of interest to anyone who might want to know more about the hobby's history:

Braunstein: the Roots of Roleplaying Games (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/104/braunstein-the-roots-of-roleplaying-games/)

[Grazzt]

That's a great article. Thanks Perry.

[Lorendiac]

Just the other day I ran across a reference to a 1990s roleplaying game called "Superbabes," which was explicitly based on the "Femforce" comic book series from AC. I don't think I had ever heard of "Superbabes" until this week -- or if I ever heard anything about it ten or fifteen years ago, then it must have gone in one ear and out the other without creating any lasting impression. I vaguely remember buying some Femforce issues, very cheaply, at a comic book sale sometime in the 1990s, just so I could see what the distinguishing characteristics of the series were -- which seemed to be "lots of statuesque women making endless references to the details of old continuity in stories I know nothing about," if my memory is halfway accurate after so long -- but I didn't get interested enough to start trying to collect a full run.

Using Google, I've found a couple of online reviews of Superbabes that are pretty favorable. But I'd like to hear from some real honest-to-goodness comic book fans, if you've ever played the game yourselves:

1. Are the mechanics fairly easy to learn and apply, when rolling your way through slugfests and so forth?

2. Is it generally more "fun" than some of the other roleplaying games you've tried? Particularly superhero-themed gaming systems?

(The reviews I saw suggested the rules strongly encourage a rather light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek approach to playing in the superhero genre. But I'm going on hearsay at the moment and I don't know how easy a fan of the genre would find it to really enjoy this particular game.)

[Perry Holley]

I never owned a copy (one of the few Superhero RPGs I've never owned), but the impression I got from some other people who have played it was 1) it was a decent system, if not overly innovative for the most part, 2) it was good for 4-color games, and 3) that 'Bimbo Points' were actually a nice game mechanic, if somewhat poorly named.

[Lorendiac]

I never owned a copy (one of the few Superhero RPGs I've never owned), but the impression I got from some other people who have played it was 1) it was a decent system, if not overly innovative for the most part, 2) it was good for 4-color games, and 3) that 'Bimbo Points' were actually a nice game mechanic, if somewhat poorly named.

Yeah, two online reviews I read right before I posted this inquiry both mentioned "Bimbo Points." My reaction was similar to yours -- the basic concept had humorous possibilities, near as I could tell from the review summaries, but using such a loaded term as "Bimbo" was probably going to unnecessarily irritate a fair number of people. (Not just women, either.)

[moebius]

Hey, does anyone know of a high-level 3.X planar adventure that's not "Bastion of Broken Souls" or "Lord of the Iron Fortress"? I'm looking for something to finish off our campaign's career at 20th/21st.

That's a damn shame about Wujick...the TMNT RPG got me into role-playing.

[macul]

Not offhand. You can download many of the old Dungeon magazines, though. Might be something in there you can run with a bit of adapting to 3.x.