Seven Games

There’s a #7RPGs thing going on Google+, and I posted this regarding the seven RPGs I’ve played the most since back in the 80s. I’ve added bits and pieces, plus a comment on games not mentioned.

1. Call of Cthulhu (4th Ed)
Also the RPG I’ve played the most of all, in terms of sessions and hours played. I grew tired of its repetitive nature some time in the early 90s.

2. Via Prudentia
Danish rolemaster/GURPS inspired modern roleplaying game with crunch on top. As with most things back in the day, we mostly hand-waved the rules and GM fiated the shit out of it.

A scene from Jyllands Mørke Hjerte (The Dark Heart of Jutland), illustrated by Palle Schmidt, one of Fusion’s authors. The scenario was included in the source book Som Landet Ligget (The Lay of the Land).

3. Fusion
Danish near future private detective game – set in 2012. Rules-wise it’s a complete mess based on a D6 version of another rules mess: Storyteller. I still love it, despite its flaws, and I’ve been meaning to create functional rules for it more than once. One of the best looking games EVER.

4. Sorcerer
My desert island game of choice. The most intense game of all, and hence not everyone’s cup of tea. Infinitely adaptable to your own needs. Probably the game I’ve had the most bad sessions in, partly due to my own limitations, partly due to the players’ unwillingness to engage.

5. Dogs in the Vineyard
A masterpiece of focused game design, built on some of the ideas in Sorcerer, but written as a very usable manual. I’ve never had a bad session of Dogs.

6. Fiasco
Freeform, delightful, fun and super quick to set up and play. Often slides over the gonzo cliff, but if you can keep it on a leash, it’s very very good.

7. Primetime Adventures
This is the game you want to play with your writer friends (if they are not prepared to buy into Sorcerer, that is!. It delivers. In spades. And in other suits as well. A very easy game tool to get away from your standard geeky RPG trappings. We played pensioners at a care home in one of my favorite and most touching campaigns ever.

I haven’t mentioned two other games we played quite a lot in the early days: StarWars D6 and the original Shadowrun.

Six month recap

Hopla, and then six months passed. What happened? Well, a lot, actually.

First, we went to France in July, spending a week in the village Guibeau, in the Puisseguin region of St. Emilion. It involved very long drives from Amsterdam to the Bordeaux area and back, but it was worth it.

Then we sold our house in Edinburgh and moved to New Town, closer to the city centre, which again meant we could sell the old, trusted Saab, that had just done a 3,000 miles roundtrip to France without even breaking a sweat.

I haven’t done any story gaming whatsoever over the whole period, and I’m wondering if I ever will again. One thing, I don’t really have anyone at hand that share my gaming preference, an life’s too short to play something that doesn’t really rock your boat. On the other hand I have upped my boardgaming activities quite a bit, and game of the year for me is GMT Games’ Andean Abyss. It’s simply an astounding piece of game design.

Perhaps this also means that I can expand the remit of this blog a bit away from gaming, and do more general ranting all over the place. My crime novel, working title Dead Frozen, is coming along nicely. All the hard work plotting it out in detail happened all the way back in January and February, and we even went to a research trip back to Denmark to take pictures of locations, and look through newspaper archives on microfilm. The story is set during winter in Odense 1986, and is inspired by an old, unsolved, murder case. The picture shows the house near Bellinge where a couple were killed in their bed in 1971, while their young son was sleeping in a room next to the victims’ bedroom. The house still stands, as you see.