After yesterdays near slip up and just about posting within the days deadline (by the UK time zone that is). I’m writing todays hash tag entry before I’ve even had my first coffee of the day!

So let’s get on with this so I can have my coffee.

“Suggestion Sunday: Roll 1d8+1, and tag that many friends and suggest a new RPG to try.”

I’m not going to follow this to the letter today. Instead I’m going to suggest to who ever reads this blog a couple of new RPGs to try and why.

These won’t be RPGs I’ve played. But they will be ones I own. The reasons I give to try them are basically what attracted me to the RPGs and why I want to eventually get them to the table.

My first recommendation is the FFG series of RPGs, The End of the World.

There are four books in this series, Zombie Apocalypse, Wrath of the Gods, Alien Invasion, and Rise of the Machines.

I own two of them, Zombie Apocalypse and Alien Invasion.

So why should you play them?

Firstly the players play as themselves usually in whatever town/city you live in. Their starting equipment is whatever they have in their pockets and in the room the game is played in. You also if you are the GM get to kill yourself off in some gruesome way right at the start of the game. There has to be a reason you aren’t taking part in the adventure after all.

I find this first reason so, so cool. It also makes the whole game so personal. All of a sudden it’s not some npc villager dying and coming back to life as a zombie, it’s John Satt who you went to school with. Wait that’s my best friends house those aliens just blew up.

The second reason is the d6 system used by the game. It’s very narrative based. Very similar mechanics wise to the FFG custom narrative dice used in the Genesys system. So no special dice needed. Very quick and light to use.

The third and final reason is the variety of choice of apocalypse you want to experience. Each book has at least three variants based around that books theme. These books theme and variants inside can be said to be inspired by one or two movies. Which I love.

Ok on to the next recommendation.

I think you should try either the Labyrinth RPG or the Dark Crystal RPG.

Most definitely if you are a fan of either or both the movies. But I think you might enjoy these even if you are not.

Each book is the complete adventure, you only need add pen and paper, plus d6 dice in the case of the Dark Crystal.

These are rules light systems. Very accessible.

They look fun.

I love both movies. So I was sold on the theme.

Let me know if you’ve played these and what you thought about them.

Wow nearly missed todays entry.

It’s going to be close.

Right todays theme is…

“How would you change the way you started RPGing?”

I don’t think I would change anything about it really.

Sure it would have been fun to have started playing with my friends that I grew up with, and went to school with.

I’m not sure if that had happened I would have actively searched for an RPG society at Brighton Polytechnic. But instead been happy to play D&D with my friends whenever I returned home (which I did often).

I made some good friends playing MERP. Unbeknownst to them they were helping me through a very difficult part of my life. They played games with me, treated me normally. Something I needed at the time.

And I wouldn’t want to change that.

We are fastly approaching the mid point of this thing. The time is flying by. I think this years focus definitely so far seems so much more personal. I must catch up on some of the other content creators and see what they are doing.

Let’s see what todays soul searching question is.

“Why did you start RPGing?”

I think it’s been established my teenage years were the 80’s and the UK home computer boom. Living in a fenland market town.

Over in the states they had the whole satanic panic stuff going on. Which never really was a thing over here. So we weren’t really aware of it.

What I was aware of was the “moral majority” in the US and their campaign against heavy metal. After all I was into KISS and other metal groups, reading the then monthly Kerrang! and driving my parents and neighbours crazy with loud rock. So this sort of thing got reported in Kerrang!

In the UK we didn’t escape the moral crusade of others. Here we had Mary Whitehouse and her campaign to censor tv and video. We had the whole video nasty thing. Plus a wanna be Mary Whitehouse called Victoria Gillick who was trying to impose her catholic beliefs on the country and control girls bodies. Fun fact about Victoria Gillick she lives in Wisbech. So we often saw her round town. I went to college with one of her daughters. Plus a few years ago her husband was a UKIP town councillor.

The nearest I got to hearing about the religious fundamentalist campaign against D&D was seeing the Tom Hanks movie Monsters and Mazes (rented and watched on video).

There is a certain picture being painted over these types of posts. I certainly think comparisons could be made between Wisbech and say a mid west American town. It was (and still is) Hicksville.

It certainly feels looking back that it was in its own little bubble. Although it still has the whole “are you local?” thing going on.

I’ve already said previously the home computer boom expanded my world.

Despite owning a copy of the Basic D&D Starter set. I hadn’t actually played it. None of my friends were interested.

I think I could be best described at the time as D&D or RPG curious!

Playing an RPG seemed the natural progression from adventure and RPGs on the home computer.

They were something I wanted to try. I thought I would enjoy them. Although to be truthful, I wasn’t entirely sure what they were, and how you played them.

I think I’d owned the Starter set for a couple of years before going off to Brighton Polytechnic.

I joined the role playing society at Brighton Poly so I could try an RPG for the reasons mentioned above.

Maybe in a future post we will get to explore the Brighton years in more depth. Until then catch you in the next post!

“If you could live in a game setting, where would it be?”

I’d like to say the Forgotten Realms, but let’s face it it’s basically a fancy Middle Ages setting. No flushing toilets, no running water, diseases, working the land, feudal system. Need I go on to why I wouldn’t want to live there?

Middle Earth?

Ixalan?

No for me it’d have to be one of the cyberpunk dystopian futures such as that depicted in FFGs Android setting.

The moment I first played Android Netrunner I fell in love with the theme.

The runners taking on the mega corporations.

Yes it’s still a world of haves and have nots. A world of corruption, run by mega corporations. Mega corporations that are not openly at war with each other, but fight against each other in the shadows.

To be fair apart from the level of technology, no space travel, or space elevator, are we really that far off what is being depicted in these type of settings?

Mega companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple more or less tell Governments how much tax they will pay. They are almost a law unto themselves. Our politicians no matter their political leaning act in the best interests of the big companies and the rich.

But still in this bladerunneresq future I’d see myself more as one of the runners than say a Street samurai. It’d just love the tech. As I do now, and have done ever since the home computer boom of the 80’s.

Which setting would you choose?

It’s a blistering hot day, I’ve managed to get some gaming in on my day off. Apart from the heat it’s been a pretty good day off. But I’ll cover all this in another post.

You’re here to read todays entry in the 2022 RPGaDAY thingy.

So what is our thunk for the day?

It’s “When did/will you start Gamemastering?”

I started gamemastering way back (and this makes it sound like a long time) in 2019. I want to say April/May time. I’d go back on here and check but in this heat that’s too much effort.

In reality we are talking less than twenty sessions. It’d be more if there hadn’t been a global pandemic.

So I’m a fairly inexperienced DM/GM.

But I do enjoy it. Especially after discovering the way of the lazy DM. Which has made preparing for sessions a delight.

Let’s see what’s behind the round window.

Todays deep dive question is “What is the 2nd RPG you bought?”

To answer this one we need to once more jump in to that Delorean and go back to the life shaping year 1988.

It, (to paraphrase a famous quote) was the best of times and the worst times.

In 1988 I was living down in Brighton, studying at the Polytechnic.

It was the first time in my life that I was living away from home. I was adjusting to living in a hilly place. Brighton with its hills is the complete opposite to the Fenland town I had spent my whole life in. Which is flat as a pancake.

The previous year we had “survived” the great hurricane that had hit the UK. With all the fallen tries around Brighton it seemed to an active imagination like mine at the time like Saruman had been at work here recreating Isengard.

The start of 1988 saw my Grandad passing away. I remember being told he’d gone into hospital, and I was planning to travel back to see him. However my aunt (living in Horseham at the time) asked me to call in on the way back. Which I did. It was then she told me he had died.

Later in the year I got to meet Ace Frehley and get his autograph at a record signing in Kingston Upon Thames. Followed a couple days later seeing his first ever UK solo gig. I was buzzing those few days.

During the Summer my brother and I were at the Castle Donnington Monsters of Rock gig. Where we saw KISS. But acts like Guns and Roses were also playing.

We saw one or two other groups that year. But I can’t remember who.

Then in September Dad decided to take his own life. I was at home when this happened. I tried to resuscitate him. I’ll never forget the taste of his breathe. As you can imagine this hit me pretty hard. The new academic year started weeks later. We had barely said good bye before I was back down in Brighton.

My final year (I was doing a two year HND) was more me trying to deal with Dad’s death than studying. It was a very rough time. But I some how passed.

So there you have some context around my purchase of my second RPG. Some of this will be very new information to some of my friends.

From previous posts in this years #RPGaDAY we know that D&D was my first purchased RPG, and that MERP was the first one that I had played.

However my second RPG purchase was not the rules for MERP but the core rulebook for the Elfquest RPG.

At the time I was developing a serious comic book habit, with the Brighton Forbidden Planet being my main dealer of choice.

I had already bought a complete set of the Howard the Duck comic book in the search of the first ever KISS comic book appearance. I really got into Howard the Duck through this search. A love of the character I still have to this day, despite the movie.

I was buying Batman and Punisher comics, Nausiccaa plus some other manga. But more importantly I had stumbled upon the Pini Elfquest comic.

There was something about these wolf riding elves and their search for a new home and other elves that just grabbed me.

So when I found out that there was an RPG (basically by seeing the rule book on the shelves at the Brighton FP) I had to buy it.

Sadly I’ve never gotten to play the RPG. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and read the rules completely. Only ever skimming through them.

I know there are some criticism of the rules and the bonding of elves with there being little or no control over who bonds to who. In these more enlightened times I’m sure that if this was to be updated that that problematic bit would be dropped or handled more sensitively. Let alone the mechanics simplified and made more accessible.

Maybe one day I’ll get to play it, or use it with a system like Genesys.

What was the second RPG you bought?