I present to you a stack of various RPGs from my shelves!
I tried to grab a mixed bag, pulling from various places.
So, we have:
Hillfolk – sadly unplayed but backed immediately in Kickstarter. I loved the idea, and especially the ideas for the alternate settings presented at the end of the book.
It’s very pretty, even if it isn’t the artsiest book I own.
Savage Worlds (latest edition linked) – also sadly unplayed, but I constantly hear good things. I actually won this, along with a couple of other Savage Worlds books, from Troll in the Corner. I wrote an article for them once too. I don’t know what happened to the website, seems it’s gone.
Anyway, the system. I’ve liked the idea of Bennies for ages, using something like them in d20 games through Force and Destiny points (Star Wars) and action points (d20 Modern), and Fate points in FATE. I guess I just like pool economies?
Feng Shui 1e – ran this a few times, but never got to play for myself. Another book I picked up because I loved the idea of the setting and I’d heard good things. I actually found this second hand for less than £2.
I’ve been debating trying to pull it together as a setting for FATE at some point. I own the Feng Shui 2e rules through the kickstarter, but I only have a digital copy.
Mage: the Ascension – Tradition Book: Hollow Ones – so I’ve gotten to play mage exactly once, and I played as a Verbena based on Technoviking. At the time, I hadn’t really explored the Hollow Ones, but now they’re by far my favourite flavour of Mages.
I had a warm place in my heart for Caitiff in Vampire as well, but I always thought of Hollow Ones differently – whilst basically a hard lean on a goth aesthetic, the fact that they’re Mages centred around the idea of using coincidental magic instead of more vulgar forms always felt fun to me.
Farewell to Fear – another book I picked up immediately through the kickstarter and haven’t had a chance to play, I really love how this was written and what it represented in a way to move away from a typical fantasy setting via revolution(s).
Sadly my copy came through a European printer that wasn’t quite up to standard – the cover art is skewed slightly, the images inside are too dark (there’s a black page at one point, but my digital copy shows a lovely piece of art has been obscured by some bad printing).
Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor for 4e D&D – I played a little 4e and ran some, but I never really got much into it before D&D Next / 5e showed up. That said, I would have loved to have run this.
The classic setting revived for new use was great, and was a great way for someone like me to get into the setting without having to hunt down the old books.
Svilland for 5e D&D (link for demo booklet only) – picked this up pretty recently, after being on a Viking and D&D kick. I’ll probably be looking more at it if I ever run my Frostpunk setting or for certain bits of a Planescape setting if that happened.
From what I’ve read of it so far, it’s very well put together, but I’d need to play it to get a better feel for some of it.
jot jot ïota 