RPGaDay2024 Day 31 - Game or Gamer You Miss

This is a fitting question for the end of "1 month" of themed RPG game blogging, which only took me 63 days to complete. There are games I've played that I really miss, and I'm going to provide a few examples from different categories.

Game from A Large Company

Large companies have resources, but they also have expectations from shareholders, and the ability to make a lot more money by investing in the right games. In 2005, Fantasy Flight Games published a unique game called Fireborn.

The basic concept was that you were the reincarnation or spiritual successor of ancient dragons, and had some of their attributes in modern age. Characters were quite powerful, probably 5th level in D&D terms, at first level. The combat and magic systems were interesting, and there was a lot of variation between different characters. What made it really unique, though, was that while most of the game was played in modern times, you would also "flash back" to when you were earlier incarnations and much closer to the source of your power, so much more powerful. And you could learn things, or set things up for your future selves. In our GenCon game, we knew where the secret treasure was, because when we went back to the mythic age, we were the ones who hid it.

The game was fascinating to read the rules, though had quite a learning curve, the layout didn't make it easy to find things, and there were obvious rule gaps and exploitable holes. I'd have loved a 1.5 version or something, but it didn't do well, and FFG decided to let the product go. Fortunately, you can still get the game, cheaply, on Drive Thru RPG. The Player's Handbook, GM Guide and an adventure are all available for $5 each...but nobody is playing it, and I'd really want to play in a game by somebody who could hide all its warts and just have fun with the story.

Game from a Small Company

I always play 2 or 3 indie games at GenCon. Some of them come back and become popular products. Some end up at indie publisher booths, and some vanish. I really miss a few of the ones that have vanished.

One of those is Alpha Omega, a post-apocalyptic game. The setting is really well defined, and the books are some of the prettiest I've ever seen. They were action-oriented, and between the natural play and the GM, things got comic-book graphic in terms of violence. For all that, the stories were deep enough to make us want to succeed and not just blow things up. Like Fireborn, the publisher has stopped selling the game, but in writing this, I found that the PDFs are available on DriveThruRPG. Excuse me, I need to go shopping!

I also enjoyed a game called Ink, which is different than the current indie game called ink. You went into a dungeon to collect "ink" and used that as both currency and a power-up. It was in development, and sadly didn't make it out of development, from what I could see. Still, my group had a lot of fun playing it.

Game I enjoy Playing

During a short break from my 7-year game, one of my friends ran a session of Call of Cthulhu. It was frankly one of the best sessions I'd played of it. I've played before, and since, but having his personal style brought to the game, and realizing that he was *really* good at creating a CoC adventure has made me wish he'd do it again. Unfortunately, life.

I have the game myself, and while I could put something together, there's a difference between copying the art of others, and seeing an artist at work.

Game I enjoy Running

I have two Invisible Sun games that I was running up to and into Covid, but between life and feeling a bit overwhelmed, both of those games went on a long hiatus. I want to start both of them, again, because they both had wonderful player-centric plots going, and the players were exceptionally engaged in their characters and the story.

Invisible Sun is both highly magical and very surreal, so it is not uncommon to have quests to "find the lost, tenth note in the treble scale" or "the cold heart of fire" or anything else they can come up with. Each character has their own goal, shares the goals of others, and then weird things happen that nobody (including the GM) expected. Also, the NPCs tend to be really memorable, because they are inherently memorable, and are an instantiation of whatever the players were looking for: If a player is looking for that lost 10th note, they might go visit "Allegro", who turns out to be a crafter with a viola for a head."

The funny thing is that we didn't get near the surreal content of other planes of existence--including the primary planes from the other suns. All the weirdness happened in the character's neighborhood or the city surrounding it.

Summary

This brings me to the end of my "month" of RPGaDay2024 essay writing. As always, it was a lot of work and some of the most fun I have during the year. Thank you if you were around for some or all of it; I hope you enjoyed.

That said, I have two more articles queued up, which are in process. Both are product evaluations: One is for a Pixels d20 that I received last night. The other is for a fantastic deity reference that I received over the weekend. Both are really solid, and I look forward to talking about why they are so much fun.