The review that got me into RPGs

Back in 1997 I was a year into high school and obsessed with Magic: The Gathering. Who wasn't? The game was on fire, and I was making lots of friends at drop-in Magic events.

As far as RPGs went, I had purchased and played just one: Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, by West End Games. I loved it, but I didn't run in RPG social circles, so I really had no awareness of the hobby as a whole...it was just me with my SWRPG book, tinkering around with stats and dreaming of ways to sucker my friends into a campaign.

I had just subscribed to InQuest magazine, Wizard Entertainment's zine dedicated to the CCG industry; coincidentally, they expanded to cover RPGs about this same time. That's where I ran across this review of Blue Planet, the hard sci-fi RPG by Biohazard Games (and now published by RedBrick) set on a waterworld brewing with action and intrigue.

I still remember reading this review: It made my head spin. Suddenly I "got" what made RPGs so immersive. I understood why players returned to the same characters time after time, eventually creating a shared narrative that unfolded over months and years. My experience with SWRPG mostly consisted of finding the fastest way to kill three dozen stormtroopers. With Blue Planet, I finally had the sense of an entire hobby built around these innovative games of the imagination.

It wasn't until 2000 that I got any closer to finding out about Blue Planet. As fate would have it, I attended the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO...the home of Blue Planet creator Jeffrey Barber. To make a long story short, I eventually met Jeff and had my "geek moment" where I gushed about how cool Blue Planet was, how I'd always wanted to play it, etc. We did end up gaming together, but it wasn't Blue Planet; it was Midnight, a D&D setting Jeff was writing for Fantasy Flight Games.

I still remember when Jeff got his dream job, a gig teaching biology at a school in Hawaii. I mean hell, it doesn't get more Blue Planet than that! Before he left to go live on an island and swim with stingrays, though, Jeff gave me (I was 22 at this point) one copy of each published book from the Blue Planet line from his personal stock, thus equipping me for the subsequent Blue Planet campaigns I would run over the next few years.

I was going through a box of my old InQuests last weekend and came across this review...you can't imagine how it fired my 15-year-old imagination.

Blue Planet, Midnight For Cheap at FFG Holiday Sale

Thanks to the good folks at the Blue Planet RPG mailing list, I found out that Fantasy Flight Games is having their annual holiday sale. I missed this blowout last year, but my buddy snagged all the books for the Midnight line for $5-10 each. Quite the discount, especially for a very well-supported 3.5 setting like Midnight.

The real treat, though, is the Blue Planet portfolio. As near as I can tell (FFG’s site is blocked at work, bleh) each BP book is $5. That means you can get the whole line for under $50. As longtime RPG Diehard readers will know, Blue Planet is one of my all-time favorite game lines; it’s also the richest, most detailed sci-fi setting I’ve ever encountered. When I lived in Missouri, I had the chance to meet (and game with) Jeff Barber, Blue Planet’s creator, who later went on to write the original Midnight core rulebook.

So do your part, drop a Hamilton or two, and get some great books!

There's no room in my schedule for D&D

Unlike most of the gaming bloggers I follow, I don’t actually play much D&D. It wasn’t the game I started with, and over the years I’ve been lucky enough to find players willing to try out a myriad of different (and better) fantasy RPGs. So while I’m eager to share my own list of games enjoyed (piling onto the ongoing meme that’s swept the RPG blogosphere over the last couple weeks), this list isn’t so much an aberration as it is a simple illustration of my gaming tastes. I’ve probably played 10 sessions of D&D, all told, in my life so far.

Star Wars d6 – My first RPG experience; hugely fun if only because of the insane scaling rolls required to model the differences between the Death Star and, say, an X-Wing. The Death Star rolls 30d6 to kill the X-Wing...nice... Alas, it's out of print.

Blue Planet – Easily one of the most detailed, immersive sci-fi settings ever published. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Jeff Barber (the game’s creator) over the years, and his pure, unadulterated enthusiasm for the game proved absolutely infectious. Jeff is a gamer’s gamer, and Blue Planet exudes quality from every page. In the last couple months, it was announced that RedBrick Limited (an Australian game publisher) had acquired the rights to re-publish the line and, possibly, put out entirely new products.

Savage Worlds – It is what it says on the cover: “Fast! Furious! Fun!” With all the attention that OD&D retro-clones have received lately, it’s important to remember that newer games can pull of the same stripped-down style as well. Savage Worlds is a generic ruleset that I’ve used for Star Wars, post-apocalyptic and superhero games.

Everway – Want a rules-lite game? Try Everway — it uses a funky Tarot-inspired deck of cards to resolve encounters. This, in turn, puts a lot of responsibility on the players and GM to avoid abusing the system, but it’s a great game for a relaxed, mature crowd. I’ve used variations of the Everway system for dark fantasy, Star Wars, superheroes, Little Fears and my friend’s DIY steampunk setting.

Dark Heresy – The much anticipated game set in the grim, dark Warhammer 40,000 universe has the highest production value of any game I’ve ever played. The main rulebook (400+ pages of full-color gothic goodness) is pricey, but a reprint was just released by Fantasy Flight Games, which as plans to continue publishing the game line.

Fading Suns – It’s sort of like Dark Heresy, but with more of a Dune-inspired slant. The future is still dark, the spaceships are still ancient and cumbersome, but the overall setting is a tad brighter and (more importantly) populated with alien races that aren’t automatically classified as enemies. Ironically, the game line is currently supported by RedBrick, the same group of Aussies keeping Blue Planet alive.

These are just a few standouts from the many RPGs I’ve known over the years.