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May 19, 2005
Ghosts of Games Past
Tim Hall has a lovely nostalgic post about a game he loved. The game I'm having severe nostalgia fits about right now is Greg Morrow's old Voyagers Champions game. It wasn't perfect--no game is--but it was the most successful game I played with a group of people I really like: Greg, Rick, Michael, Pete, and the occasional Angelo guest shot, among others. And it must have hit a sweet spot because Rick uses the cast every time he thinks about writing a supers prospectus, and Greg is reviving the campaign world for another group in Houston.
I think we all loved our characters: the White Lioness, Cybermancer, Microtech, and the late, lamented Agent Zero. The style of the game was a lot of fun, too. It was early Fantastic Four, with the PCs as the first major supergroup in the new supers era. Greg was very good about letting us add things to the game (Shambala, the 60s generation of spy heroes, KWR), so we all had a big stake in the world and the game. In some ways it worked better as an exploration exercise than it did when dice hit the table. But it was magic, even when it was frustrating.
Now the players are scattered to the winds or have other responsibilities that keep us all from gaming together again. But if I were still in town and the others could make it, and Greg were willing, I'd be at the table with my big bag of d6s in a heartbeat. And thinking about what worked and didn't in the Voyagers has been a big influence on my own GMing.
Everybody should have a game they love like I love the Voyagers. What's yours?
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Comments
I don't have quite as much experience as a lot of people, but mine was a 2E D&D trip through the Keep on the Borderlands module (the original version). It was a small group (4-6 players) a DM who didn't take shit and didn't fudge anything to help the players. I played a elf thief/mage (spellfilcher kit from Complete Elves) that never made it past level 2, but was one of the few characters to survive until the entire party got wiped out.
I remember one encounter quite vividly: we ran into a group of orcs - a few of which had barrels strapped to their backs. We found out shortly afterwards that the barrels were explosive. Our front line practically disenigrated and our party was quickly reduced to one man - me. Luckily there was only one orc left, un-luckily he was their leader. I danced around him until I managed to blind him with a color spray. I darted over to our fallen paladin and dropped a heal potion down his throat. The paladin went over to our unconcious fighter and healed him, then the three of us finished off the orc.
That encounter, and the entire game, was all the more dramatic because the DM told us he was going end the game the moment the entire party got wiped out.
Posted by: Adam at May 19, 2005 4:02:46 PM
Funny; for me it's superheroes too. Carl Rigney's UN PEACE game, with the original character set. Good PCs, I'd gotten the hang of Hero by the second session or so, and a fascinating world. It was great, uncovering it piece by piece.
Part of what made it good was probably part of what killed it: the realism. ("Dude. Superheroes? Realism?") The PCs grew and changed quickly enough so that after a year or so, they weren't really able to be the UN's teen superhero team anymore. We brought in some other PCs, but it wasn't the same.
Posted by: Bryant at May 20, 2005 5:00:37 PM
I'll always have a soft spot for Colossal Cave Adventure. It goes so far back there's not even any graphics, but I can't help it...I love that game!
Posted by: QC at May 23, 2005 3:35:35 PM
I probably remember Rick Jones' Shadowrun campaign (which I think had a title, possibly "Lone Stars", which we didn't use much) best of all the rpgs I've played. I put a lot more work into my characters for that game than I ever did as a player anywhere else (especially my second character, who was necessary after the rest of the party gassed my first character, extracted his eyes, and gave them to his nemesis for use as material links ... you bastards) and had a grand old time. I believe Ginger was in that game for about a session.
Posted by: Jason Modisette at May 23, 2005 6:32:04 PM
Our game was the SPI RPG DragonQuest. There are lots and lots of stories (which I won't try to recount here).
But as a result, for a number of years I've been an organizer for various online groups and projects for keeping the game alive and developing connections between people who still play the game.
We've even recently been joined in the DQN-list by Chris Klug, the designer who was leading the DragonQuest team at SPI until they folded.
Posted by: Rodger Thorm at May 24, 2005 11:16:06 AM
I also count a Shadowrun game as one of my favorite rpg experiences. It was a high school group and we had played nothing but D&D up to that point, but we all loved the setting, so we made up characters. My friends all took million-dollar cyborgs, physical adept ninjas, or magicians. My character was a detective that was based on equal parts Blade Runner and Chinatown, focused on contacts and intel skills.
None of us (except our GM... bastard!) were really prepared for how easily a character could get killed. In our first run, an executive snatch, we went in hard. Surprised and wasted a dozen guards. Then we tried to get back out. Only my character survived, probably because I didn't play him like a fighter.
The next run, only about half the team died. By the third, we didn't lose anyone... but my character was they only one who was there for all three. As he kept surviving, I started to play him more like a grizzled war veteran, somewhat puzzled by all this new technology and magic and exasperated at the lack of "the basics." (Like cover.) The rest of the team started to refer to him as "Grandpa" and "the Ol' Man." Running jokes abounded.
That was the first character that I really thought "came to life" on me. He just sort of developed naturally in response to the game setting and mechanics. I’ve had a soft spot for Shadowrun setting ever since, even though I haven’t found a group to play it since that campaign ended.
Posted by: Sica at Jun 18, 2005 4:20:13 AM
