There are a LOT of new and classic RPGs out there. More pop up all the time. this is where we will keep track of the games that sound interesting to us. With luck we'll get an opportunity to try some of these games out in the days and months ahead. Then we'll see where things go from there.
Games We're Currently Considering...
Ambition & Avarice
Created by
Chubby Funster, the game designer responsible for
Cascade Failure and several other games, supplements and resources, all of which are of the highest quality. This game is currently available as a softcover & PDF bundle for $12.42.
From the Description text at DriveThruRPG:
"The entire package is designed to allow quick character generation and presented in a format that is clear and easy to read. The text is packed with explanations of not just the rules, but the reasons behind the rules. It is an ideal choice to hand to a new player who is looking to get into the great game, but turned away by thick rulebooks with byzantine organization. The adventuring mechanics are also OSR compatible and allow easy integration with a variety of old school campaign material. You can pick up this game, grab an old module, and get playing in a very short amount of time."
Beyond the Wall
This is another OSR-compatible, rules-lite rules-set, but this time the game focuses more on the coming-of-age type tales of Lloyd Alexander & Ursula K. LeGuin. That alone makes it interesting to us, but the added feature of the Playbook approach to character creation is simply brilliant. The game itself is $7.99 for the PDF via
DriveThruRPG, no word when/if it'll be available in soft/hard cover. They also offer a few supplements, playbooks, adventures--there's plenty of free stuff to get you started. We're thinking about how to do up a few Playbooks for creating characters in Wermspittle...
Blood & Treasure
Another OSR-compatible rules-set, this time from M. John Stater of
The Land of Nod. The Complete Game comes in three flavors:
E-Book $11.99,
Softcover $22.99,
Hard cover $35.99. You can also get the rules broken-out into a Player's guide and a Game Master's guide, both available in all three formats. There is an official adventure, errata, supplemental materials and a growing community backing this game. This game combines the features of BECMI and 1st Ed. AD&D with a healthy infusion of newfangled stuff like Feats taken from the 3.x SRD and various Open Gaming Content. It sounds like a total rewrite and revision of 1st Ed. AD&D, but modernized to an extent, and that makes it sound potentially quite cool. We'll see...
Cthulhu Dark
All the rules you need for sanity-blasting Lovecraftian Malpractice and Misbehavior on one page of paper. Genius. Sheer insane genius. We have to do something with this one of these days...
DCC RPG
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games. One of most impressive RPGs to hit the shelves and invade the table-tops in recent memory. They were kind enough to mention our old blog in the appendix, for which we're very thankful. The system is full of tons of crunch, especially in terms of the spells & magic. We own a copy, but we haven't had the opportunity to test-drive this game just yet. The icosohedral mapping they use is a very cool alternative to the more top-down approach most of us use. This game has gotten a lot of folks to reconsider some cherished notions and try some new, weird stuff out and that's awesome. It might be fun to convert some of our critters over to DCC RPG...
Diaspora
A wonderfully light, yet thoroughly engaging approach to
Traveller-style Hard SF gaming using FATE as the foundation. this game comes in a deceptively small seeming booklet, but it really packs a wallop. There are some amazingly cool sub-systems in this book, like Social Combat, for example. That section alone could become an intriguing and unique game unto itself. The approach that this game uses, having the group develop the setting as part of the game itself, is also very cool. There's a lot of great resources, ideas and tools packed into this book. We're looking at adapting some of the Diaspora Toolset for fleshing out one of our settings in particular.
FATE
We backed the Kickstarter. We have the PDFs. Our hardcopy books are on the way. This is an interesting system. We're still reading through the system and trying things out. Our friend John over at
FATE SF has been very helpful in getting us up to speed with this newfangled system. It's a very different approach, another way to think about things we've taken for granted for years now, so this is all fairly new and shiny to us still. Hopefully, we'll get an opportunity to play this game at Con of the North, if not sooner. We'll probably start monkeying around with some FATE stuff on the blog sooner rather than later, possibly converting monsters over to FATE and things like that...
Heroes & Other Worlds
This is Fenway's "Love Note to
The Fantasy Trip," and it looks great. We have been looking over our copy of
H&OW here at the Hereticlair and hopefully we'll get to run this game one of these weekends. we're still putting together some Metagaming-style Counters
(Sword-wielding Octopi!) and some new Paper Minis just for this game. One of our S&W Appreciation Day Mini-Adventures was adapted to
H&OW but we haven't seen it yet. It's in an issue of
The Cauldron, the official fanzine supporting
H&OW.
Monsterparts
Attribute-less D&D where your characters are no younger than 7 and no older than 14...this seems like it might be a perfect fit for Wermspittle-style adventures, especially around Spring, when the children are sent off to the dubious protection of the fortified town up on its bluff overlooking the cursed and tainted Low Lands. The game itself is extremely simple, yet feels very atmospheric. We may just get a chance to try it out before Halloween...
Monsters & Magic
A modern, narrative-meets-OSR hybrid rules-set that promises to let you unlock all your old modules in completely new ways. The License for this system hasn't been made available yet, so we've held off getting too involved. The system sounds interesting, but we already have FATE and numerous other systems that are already out in the Open Gaming ecology. We'll see...
Renaissance
This is a bit of a departure for us--a D100 system--but in this case the rules-set is very well written and ripe for all sorts of development and tinkering, which we find very appealing. This grew out of
Runequest and
Clockwork & Cthulhu, so it has an impressive lineage. It also features a wide-open magic system that could be fleshed-out with all sorts of weird grimoires and strange rites just like in Wermspittle. We're tempted...
Renegade
Another Rosetta-Stone-type OSR revision of the World's Oldest & Most Popular RPG. It's wide-open, nicely done and it's available as a '
Pay What You Want' product via DriveThruRPG. The entire rules-set has been rewritten from the ground-up to make it as suitable and accessible to new gamers, especially young kids, as is humanly possible. This might be a good game to use for running games for a younger crowd, like at Conventions, possibly...but we're still very happy with
Labyrinth Lord and
Swords & Wizardry...so this remains a very tentative, very tenuous 'maybe,' someday...
Savage Worlds
Savage Worlds is a fairly robust game engine, with tons of possibilities, especially for Pulp-Style role playing. It also seems to have more life in it than say
True 20. Just sayin'. Now that we're actively looking into FATE, this game might have to wait some more...
Tunnels & Trolls
A new edition is on the way and the old ones still work just fine. T&T is extremely well-suited to solo-play. We still have a small stack of old Solitaire Dungeons here, and we've always wanted to draft-up a few of our own...so maybe, what with the new edition and all, we'll take a swing at doing a T&T Solo-thingy. Maybe.
WaRP
Wanton RPG, the engine behind
Over The Edge, which always looked cool, but we never got to try-out. This stripped-down system is built for full-contact surrealism and subversive violence at the table-top. It's an Open Game License system, and Trey has been pretty enthusiastic about it, so we're seriously considering it for a very special project...
X-Plorers
Old School D&D In Space. This is a great, light-weight RPG for ray-guns and reprobates. Very Pulp-esque, and wide open for development and tinkering, this game is just begging to be played. Jay over at
Exonauts is quite an inspiration for adapting this game and making it even cooler than it was to begin with. We really need to finish our Space Dungeon...
