Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Top 10 RPGs That Influenced Me



1. Shadow of the Demon Lord. Its setting is perfect: DnD + Warhammer Fantasy's Old World. Its rules are perfect: lean and mean, yet built to last. The supplements are perfect: they come out every other Monday and they are inexpensive and well done.

2a. Champions 4th Edition. This is where I started and for years and years I mostly ran Super Hero games. Champions philosophy of building anything ruined me for decades on other games.

2b. Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. This is how I would have built DnD. But after years of playing it, I'm not sure that hasn't changed. I find myself looking for even leaner rules.

3. Feng Shui. I grew up on action movies and comics, not Tolkien. This showed me how to channel that pacing to my games.

4. Labyrinth Lord. This showed me how important those early decisions and what it meant to play with more DM empowerment and less rules.

5. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. It's where I started in DnD.

6. Rifts. It is everything I want in a game, but a system. It still haunts me.

7. Castle Falkenstein. It showed me that the layout and the genre you were emulating could take center stage in the design of a game.

8. CyberPunk 2020. It showed me how well a class-based and unified system could be done.

9. Vampire: the Masquerade. It captured the moment in time perfectly and using dots for abilities is useful AND fun.

10. RuneQuest 3rd Edition. Its where I started with RQ. It did so many things first, its amazing.

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