RPGaDay2023 rounding out the month

 We all knew I wouldn't keep up with this. So, here's the missing entries and the final entries!

Day 19, Favorite Published Adventure: the aforementioned Dead Ops

Day 20, Game I will still play in 20 years: if I’m still shambling, All Flesh Must Be Eaten

Day 21, Favorite Licensed RPG: I don’t have one. I guess I could say Alien, as it is the current hotness. GURPS Horseclans is a great example of how to screw up a licensed gameline. Buffy helped get me where I am in the industry after starting with AFMBE. Ghosts of Albion is my favorite, published version of the cinematic Unisystem game lines. Army of Darkness was fun to playtest. Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo is a beautiful series using the old newspaper artwork. Nocturnals is great.

There are simply too many for me to pick a favorite. Very few stand out as great. I find licensed IPs to be a distraction at the table.

Day 22, Best Secondhand RPG: Kult, 1^st edition

 Day 23, Coolest Looking RPG product / book: Mork Borg

Day 24, Simple / Complex RPG you own: anything created by TSR or WotC is more complicated than it needs to be and any game claiming to be simple, isn’t

Day 25, Unplayed RPG you own: too many, the various XX_Borgs, ACK, Unknown Armies, and more (though I’ve stolen ideas from all of them)

Day 26, Favorite Character Sheet: Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age. It’s simple though elegant

Day 27, Game you’d like a new edition of: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, because I want to write and produce it!

Day 28, Scariest game I’ve played: the scariest games have all been due to gameplay and not due to rules. The scariest was one of the first “creature feature” games I ran using cWoD rules as the players tried to hunt down Sam Haight through mirrors and umbral realms from Hell.

Day 29, Most Memorable Encounter: I was running a one-shot of AFMBE (ostensibly, but really, it also had elements of CJ Carella’s Armageddon and CJ Carella’s WitchCraft in it) that I wrote with Derek Guder that contained a flashback scene (pro-tip: don’t). At one point during the flashback, one character shot the other character in the face. I had to react quick to save the game. I saved the game and secured a whole bunch of friendship out of that session!

Day 30, Obscure RPG you’ve played: Obsidian: The Age of Judgement

Day 31, Favorite RPG of all time: All Flesh Must Be Eaten. I can’t help myself.

Escape from Manhattan

Escape from Manhattan
Copyright 2023 Derek Stoelting

Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Daddy brings us to the parade every year. We ride the subway in from Brooklyn and wait in front of the Warwick. It was our spot. This year was no different. There we were, a family amongst thousands of other families and millions of people. . . all to welcome Santa to town.

We didn’t so much hear, as we did feel, the explosion. The ground rumbled beneath our feet. It was slight, enough to notice, but not enough to worry about it. It wasn’t until everyone noticed the smoke in the sky far to the south that people started to worry. Within an hour, people were trying to get out of Manhattan as quick as they could.

Not us. Daddy took us to a diner and set us down for lunch. He said he wanted to let all of the crazy people do their running about and that we would leave later. The food was okay. We all had cheeseburgers and fries. Regina had a strawberry shake and I had a chocolate shake. By the time we finished eating, everyone else had left the diner. We waited for the streets to start clearing out, before we left.

The rest of that day and week were a blur. We couldn’t get off the island. The police and the National Guard shut them down and were shooting at people who tried to cross them! We found an apartment building where we could hide. Some nice people let us in. They didn’t have very good food. When the power to the apartment went out, we all left. We ended up in a place called Yorkville. Daddy says we will be safe here.

We have been in Yorkville for a month, now. Daddy leaves every other day with other people. He said that the boxes falling from the sky have supplies in them and whomever gets to them first gets to keep what’s in them. Last week, he started taking a gun with him. Everyone that goes with him also has a gun. I’ve heard them talking about zombies, but I know they aren’t real.

Last night, I snuck out and listened in on a meeting. Daddy met with Kaipo. They were discussing some lady named Lola Loca. Apparently, she and her teen friends are causing problems outside of Yorkville. However, they quickly changed the topic to discussing the zombies, again. I don’t understand why they are talking about zombies. I think they knew I was there and listening in, so they were trying to scare me off.

The next day, Daddy took us to a building at the back of the neighborhood and taught us how to shoot Uzis.

#RPGaDay2023 Day 3: 1st purchase this year

 My buddy Dave Chapman is a comedian. For today's #RPGaDay2023 entry, he wants to know what the first game I purchased this year was. Dave doesn't realize that I spend a lot of money on games. Yes, my wife knows. No, I don't need to go to meetings (unless those meetings involve more playing more RPGs!). 

The first corebook I ever bought was probably the Rules Cyclopedia or 1st Edition AD&D. It's been so long, I don't remember. My first GM, Aaron, had the Basic D&D core book. 

My big purchases have been the following. First up, Alien. 

Then, there's Korg and Korg Slayer. It's a solo-ttrpg game.

For Bronze Age love that isn't Runequest, I picked up Jackals.

And I purchased my first dice tower from Fyre & Ashe. It's a hollow, wooden book with tentacles on the cover. The tower is inside looks like it is a castle wall.

The big deal this year is Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age (still available for pre-order). It's the new game from Elf Lair. The setting post-apocalyptic fantasy where the characters have a spark of something different to them. I wrote the quick start for it (free, $0).

So, there you go.