The Most Played RPG System

I'm a backer of Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms setting for DnD 5th Edition. I've loved the setting since it was released for DnD 3.0 back in the day and am looking forward to running it under 5E.

Matt Wilson of Privateer Press made this statement in response to a question about why they stopped supporting the Iron Kingdoms RPG with its own unique system, "5e is the most played RPG system in the history of RPGs, and so if we're going to keep exploring and expanding on the Iron Kingdoms."

Do you think that statement is true?

I know 5E is huge, I mean H-U-G-E, but B/X DnD and ADnD 1E were pretty successful too and they've had the benefit of being played since the 70s and been reinvigorated with the OSR in the last decade.

Let me be clear here, I'm not taking Mr. Wilson to task for his statement it simply made me think about the life cycle of various versions of DnD and the inventory numbers. His statement could be completely spot on and I'm sure he has a better chance of having insight from WotC than I do.

I'd love to hear what you think on the subject.

My Quest

My first RPG was Champions which allowed a neophyte like me to build anything I could imagine once I learned the language of the HERO System. However, I still had a wandering eye that led me to Heroes Unlimited, to TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, and on and on. I don't know if I realized it at first, but part of my Gaming ADD was looking for that perfect system. For a long, long time I thought that was what made a long-term campaign work, clear, concise, and unified rules. The OSR would eventually teach me otherwise and I now know that what makes a long-term campaign work is a DM who can stay focused and roll with the punches and a group who buys into the game. That is it, in my opinion.

But I still own a ton of RPGs and I still have a yearning for that "perfect system". I've been a big fan of Pinnacle Entertainment Group since Deadlands was published and when they launched Savage Worlds I thought it would be my answer for all further campaigns. It was, however, not the answer and that is mainly because I prefer Hit Points and it lacks them. It's also not quite as fast for my tastes as it advertises. I love PEG and I adore the idea of SW, but not the execution.

However, when I took SW for a spin about two years ago I picked up Chaosium's Down Darker Trails and I realized how much I love the Basic Role-Playing System that powers Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and the forthcoming Rivers of London RPG. I've been thinking about running a BRP game for the last six months or so, but BRP wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

Meanwhile, I've fallen in love with The Design Mechanisms' Mythras RPG (it was RuneQuest 6th Edition for a while) and I really appreciate how many settings and sourcebooks they publish. As a Chaosium fan the release schedule often leaves a lot to be desired. However, Mythras is more fiddly than I like in my D100 games as I don't care for Strike Ranks or Hit Locations.

On top of all of this is a game engine I've been tinkering with for years and is inspired by Mike Pondsmith's Castle Falkenstein. In that game, there are Ability scores just skills and you default to Average in any Skill you have not assigned otherwise.

What I'm getting too is I took Castle Falkenstein's basic Skill premise, plus a D100 resolution system, and pyramid style Skill allocation system that borrows from the World of Darkness, Hero Wars/HeroQuest/QuestWorlds, Chaosium's Magic World, FATE/FUDGE, and the Mythras Companion.

HEre is the set up. 

Your Hit Points equal 12+2d6.

You assign the following values to your Skills: 80, 70%, two at 60%, two at 50%, four at 45%, and two at 40%. Any Skill you don't have defaults to a 33% chance of success.

I borrow weapons and equipment from BRP, Mythras, or Delta Green.

I started using this to run another Star Wars game. This time the Imperial Navy, now led by Grand Moff Kaine, wants to remove Darth Vader for his failure at Battle of Yavin. The Grand Moff has an elite unit of the Navy comprised of Force-Sensitive operatives and he has been given the blessing to train them and deploy them to hunt down any surviving Jedi or bring in any Force-Sensitives that they become aware.

The Players are that squad and their first assignment was to retrieve Talon Karrde from the prison planet Eisen alive if at all possible.

We've played two sessions and I'm having a blast. For me, the percentile resolution system is darn easy for online play and I truly appreciate it.

I plan on developing and previewing the system further on here.

Stay warm and stay well.

Anxiety & Dragons

If you've been around here long enough you've seen me write about my mental illness--I have General Anxiety Disorder--which means, essentially, my fight or flight goes off a fair bit more than usual and doesn't always need a reason. I've been taking medicine for over 20 years and it makes things a lot better and I'm one of the lucky ones.

My gaming group from 1991 to about 2006 was fairly stable and had up to 11 players at any given time. We were all fairly young and there was a lot of drama--almost constant drama--all of the time. If I'm honest with myself I created the majority of the drama because my mental illness was not being treated nor had it been diagnosed. For various reasons my self-esteem was intertwined with being the group's Game Master and also its "leader"--more like a "group mom" really. As my Anxiety increased my decisions became worse and the drama got worse as well. It was a dark time in my life as I took something I loved and was supposed to be fun and twisted it up.

Things got better after 2006, for a variety of reasons, but much of it has to do with the medicine I was on as it was very, very effective. Not all meds are created equal and everyone is very different in how they interact. 

I have always had Gamer ADD but after starting this medicine it mostly disappeared which allowed me to start this blog and eventually run several long-term campaigns including at levels 1 to 20 DnD 5E one.

Almost two years ago that medicine stopped working--the truth is it worked for about 12 years which is a remarkable amount of time--and while the new medicine is pretty good it doesn't handle the Gamer ADD as well and some of the old feelings have bubbled up.

At my worst, I was both obsessive and paranoid and my fight response was far more dominant than my flight response so I was a raging bitch sometimes. Thankfully, a combination of coping mechanisms and experience let me see the behavior as it starts to bubble up again but it doesn't remove the emotions.

The emotions are recurring because we've just finished an excellent 5E campaign after almost 2 years and I just assumed that I would run next. However, I didn't share my assumption with anyone and another DM did communicate their desire to run. This DM is a great friend and a great DM but a part of me feels hurt because I wasn't asked to run. Obviously, this is an immature response fueled by my mental illness and there is absolutely no real issue here. My group is filled with wonderful and kind people and we have a great time together.

This situation is compounded by the fact that I'm starting a Roll20 5E game and some of the players don't know if they can commit yet but sadly my anxiety tells me that I'm not a good DM and they just don't want to play in my game because they don't like me. Again, these are wonderful and good people involved and there isn't anything sinister about any of their situations.

I'm writing about this because I try to be very open with my mental illness and I'm just letting people know it's okay to talk about it and realize that you can beat it. I've felt fragile and been really low before, to the point that I considered suicide and I just want everyone to know that you are important, you are stronger than your illness, and the world is a better place with you in it. Don't kill yourself, there are good people out there for you, you can be diagnosed, you can be treated, and you are not the exception to recovery. 

My situation probably isn't unique and the best thing I think I can do is to enjoy the new campaign as a player and just be flexible with people's schedules for my Roll20 game.

The Riftbound Keep: Races

Palladium Books' Rifts is always on my mind to one degree or another. I began thinking about a DnD 5E game where the players have to the Keep which is surrounded by the Borderlands--an area where leylines run wild and rifts open and close constantly. It is controlled by the mysterious being known as the Castellan, who offers relative freedom and a path to riches undreamt of as long as you live by the Code: No violence and no thieving within the walls, and to break the code means being petrified and placed within the Forest of Fools that visitors must pass through in order to enter the Keep.

I try, quite often, to convince myself to run Rifts with its own system (I'm not a fan of Savage Worlds because I like Hit Points), but I like 5E and so does my group.

One of the things I would do in this campaign would be to limit the races available.

Humans, Dragonborn, Tortles, Aarakokra, Minotaurs, Shifters, Leonin, Lizardfolk, Tabaxi, Yuan-Ti Pureblood, Kalashtar, Simic Hybrids, Warforged, and Loxodons would be the races I'd greenlight. I'm not saying that other races couldn't be considered this is just that I'd like some unusual choices and I'm a fan of Palladium's TMNT and Other Strangeness and After the Bomb games. For me, Kalashtar are good to represent Mind Melters and Dragonborn are a good option for Dragon Hatchlings and I'd allow the Dragon Wings feat from this Unearthed Arcana.

In terms of other changes to character creation, I'd give every character an extra Feat at 1st level.

The Plague Year

For me, it's become harder to focus on RPG material with so many terrible things occurring within the world, and obviously, the COVID-19 global pandemic was front and center for last year. I've always tried (and failed sometimes) to keep world events, especially politics from this space and I've become so disillusioned this year that I didn't know if I could do that so I took some time away.

As I've written before I have General Anxiety Disorder but I have a good support circle including my GP so I weathered that storm better than I expected.

Our group is still playing and we are starting our final adventure in our Saltmarsh campaign. I'm enjoying being a player and honestly can't wait to get together each week. My monk died and I'm now playing a 16 the level Human Fighter Battle Master. I like the Battle Master but unless you are taking short rests fairly regularly it's a bit underpowered.

I haven't worked on any new products even though I have a couple of ideas, mostly because my wife's parents retired this year and we are in the process of buying their comic and game stores from them. I'm busier than ever and we are always brainstorming new ways to connect with customers.

I need to thank Wizards of the Coast for its Magic: the Gathering products that helped keep us afloat this year, especially some free products that made a huge difference for us. Sadly, I'm not sure they are on the right course for M:tG and I hope I'm proven wrong about that this year.

I got to play DnD 5E, Tiny D6, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Vampire: the Masquerade 5E, and playtested the Fallout 2d20 RPG from Modiphius.

I'm contemplating a couple of games to run online but we'll see what happens.

My intention is to give the blog more attention and I hope I am able to do that.

Guardians: White Out

I've recently gotten into 3.75" action figures and my seven-year-old and I have, in her own words, "epic battles" with them. I'm also slowly adding in a bit of rules and dice rolling here in there to introduce her to my other hobby.

Yes, this is a Kenner Star Wars Imperial Snowtrooper Action Figure

Whiteout for Guardians

Human Power (Amor) Wielder, 3rd level

Str 10 (0) Dex 14 (+1) Int 19 (+3)
Wis 13 (+1) Con 11 (0) Cha 15 (+1)

Powers: Cold Blast, Armor, Ice Slide (Flight), Ice Storm,

   Form Wall, Projectile Fire

Gifts: Rich 
Issues: Thrillseeker
AC 17. HP 29. EP 6. Armor grants AC 17 and DR 8.

Costume: White power armor.

Rex Lassiter was born as the heir to the Lassiter Logistics Corporation and was set to inherit 10 billion upon his parents death. Rex was brilliant and went to  M.I.T. at 14 and graduated at 19. It was at this point he moved to Silicon Valley and started Lassiter Cryonics and informed his parents they could leave their fortune to charity, he wanted to earn his own fortune. By 26, Rex was worth 10 billion and Lassiter Systems was a leader in computer manufacturing and cloud-based computing but he was bored and depressed. It was during a battle in downtown Denver that he knew what he wanted to do next when the Human Cyclone was trying to apprehend the Utahraptor who had attacked a Brinks truck full of cash from a prominent marijuana seller a few blocks away.

Rex used his intellect and fortune to create the power suit that allowed him to become Blast Freeze. Within a few months, he had become a popular and respected hero in Denver and its surroundings but he wasn't fulfilled and he was getting bored again. As he pondered his situation he came up with a reckless idea, he'd become a supervillain.

Lassiter moved to L.A. where he created an alternate identity, Tommy Harper, and created a new suit. Within six weeks Whiteout made his debut by actually attacking Flash Mob at a charity event where he would have killed the young superhero if his sometimes partner, Smartgun, intervened and made Whiteout retreat.

Rex knew he should have been horrified and guilty over his actions but he knew this is who he was meant to be. 

These days he splits his time between Denver and L.A. but he is slowly neglecting the Rex persona for the Whiteout persona.

Guardians: The Killdet

I've recently gotten into 3.75" action figures and my six-year old and I have, in her own words, "epic battles" with them. I'm also slowly adding in a bit of rules and dice rolling here in there to introduce her to my other hobby.

Finally, I also really like Thomas Denmark's Guardians OSR RPG and it's on sale for $6.

Yes, this is a Kenner Star Wars Imperial Commander Action Figure

The Killdet

Mutant Power Wielder, 1st level

Str 12 (0) Dex 12 (0) Int 16 (+2)
Wis 18 (+3) Con 12 (0) Cha 13 (+1)

Powers: Telekinesis, Flight, Force Field, Form Wall, Projectile Fire

Gifts: Military Contacts 
Issues: Young, Wanted 
AC 12. HP 19. EP 9. Force Field grants AC 16 and DR 10.

Costume: Black with medals from his service to WARSTAR

Kalvin Koenig IV started reading when he was two, had mastered physics at age five, and entered West Point at age eleven. He was 18 months into his time at the military academy when his telekinesis expressed itself while he was being bullied by two 19-year-olds. When the encounter ended he had crushed Henry Steward's skull, hurled Jasper Wayne's body through a plate glass window, and crippled Colonel Tara Horton as she tried to calm him down. 

The U.S. Army managed to alter the incident report to keep Kalvin from being arrested in exchange for his induction into Project Carnifex where he was trained as a super-soldier. Unbeknownst, to the Army one of his handlers was a double-agent for WARSTAR and he managed to turn Kalvin to their cause just before his 13th birthday.

Kalvin is a very confused teenager who has been let down by nearly everyone in his life and his powers and intellect make him very, very dangerous.