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Author Topic: Forgotten RPGs  (Read 30133 times)

badpoet

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #150 on: October 24, 2021, 09:39:57 PM »
Anyone ever play The Whispering Vault? Early to kid 90s horror type game. I own the books and read them ages ago but never found a group to run it with. Players are stalkers who were once human and are now hunters of the evil supernatural creatures.

Simon W

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #151 on: October 25, 2021, 05:39:55 AM »
Anyone ever play The Whispering Vault? Early to kid 90s horror type game. I own the books and read them ages ago but never found a group to run it with. Players are stalkers who were once human and are now hunters of the evil supernatural creatures.

I've got it, always intended to play it but so far never have. I think I'd need to tinker with the rules a bit first if I do ever get to run it.

Simon W

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #152 on: October 25, 2021, 05:48:39 AM »

spon

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #153 on: October 25, 2021, 05:56:50 AM »
I have the Arcanum, love it. Even ran it for a couple of sessions in the late 80s, but we returned to D&D in the end. I still run through it occasionally for ideas though - absolutely crammed with stuff. 

palaeomerus

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #154 on: October 25, 2021, 07:26:11 AM »
Not sure if it counts as "forgotten" but I noticed Albedo is now available again on drivethru. I only know it vaguely by reputation as a weird mix of military hard scifi and furry.

We called that anthropomorphics back then. It wasn't Furry until Hepcats comics happened. Before anthropomorphics it was funny animals.

I can't say it was 100% sex free because of Fritz the Cat and Omaha the Cat Dancer but it wasn't sex focused like the Furry iteration seems to be.
Emery

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #155 on: October 25, 2021, 01:50:42 PM »
Anyone ever play The Whispering Vault? Early to kid 90s horror type game. I own the books and read them ages ago but never found a group to run it with. Players are stalkers who were once human and are now hunters of the evil supernatural creatures.
Never heard of it, but it sounds like Nightbane. Neat.

Speaking of, there were a bunch of "play as the monsters" type games in the 90s. WitchCraft, Everlasting, Nephilim, War of Ages, Invisible War... World of Darkness outcompeted them all, though not for any special strength of the rules or setting. What I never liked about WoD was/is that it focuses more on advancing its comic book-style GMPC-ridden canon setting rather than giving groups tools to build their own settings and tell their own stories. At least Nephilim allowed the PCs to directly engage with the lore by allowing you to play as historical figures using the past life mechanic, and its use of magic-hunting human secret societies as the main antagonists (rather than vampire illuminati or whathaveyou) was quite refreshing when other games treated humans as cattle at best.

Night's Black Agents is an amazing example of how you can design a toolkit that provides extensive guidelines for building your own vampire hunting agency and vampire conspiracies from the ground up. It doesn't unhelpfully tell you that "you can build your own setting," it actually shows you how with huge lists of features, flowcharts, and practical examples. If you're building any kind of toolkit, then it's a great example of how.

badpoet

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #156 on: October 25, 2021, 08:02:45 PM »
I was in a number of WOD games (Vampire, Wraith, Mage, and Changeling with several refs and they all used their own settings and all were cities that felt alive. If you went by their sourcebooks and used premade stuff I could see it devolving into which awesome NPC is doing what but none of the games I was in used WOD source mats for settings. We were probably all just too poor. 

But Nights Black Agents is fantastic.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2021, 08:04:28 PM by badpoet »

Thornhammer

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #157 on: October 25, 2021, 10:24:16 PM »
Night of the Ninja.

I remember outbidding Jeff Rients for a copy of that fifteen or twenty years back, way the hell back when eBay showed you the winner. He didn’t live all that far from me at the time.

Also, this series is excellent.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #158 on: October 26, 2021, 01:01:29 PM »
I was in a number of WOD games (Vampire, Wraith, Mage, and Changeling with several refs and they all used their own settings and all were cities that felt alive. If you went by their sourcebooks and used premade stuff I could see it devolving into which awesome NPC is doing what but none of the games I was in used WOD source mats for settings. We were probably all just too poor. 

But Nights Black Agents is fantastic.
Hence my preference for toolkits. Actual toolkits.

There is a toolkit game for playing vampires from 2013 called Feed. It's not as detailed as NBA and the mechanics it uses are very unconventional, but you might find the design interesting. It includes four sample settings with distinctly different takes on vampirism, including emphasized addiction metaphor, deal with the devil, Mexican b-movie antics, and cycle of violence metaphor.

Persimmon

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #159 on: October 26, 2021, 09:45:10 PM »
I remember a game called "Legacy: War of the Ages," that was a ripoff of the "Highlander" franchise and premise.  Saw it at a game store once but didn't buy it.  I recall it having classic rock song lyrics sprinkled throughout the core book as inspirational text.

brettmb

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #160 on: October 26, 2021, 09:51:15 PM »
I remember a game called "Legacy: War of the Ages," that was a ripoff of the "Highlander" franchise and premise.  Saw it at a game store once but didn't buy it.  I recall it having classic rock song lyrics sprinkled throughout the core book as inspirational text.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/64385/Legacy-Basic-Edition

Mistwell

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #161 on: October 26, 2021, 10:45:57 PM »
This thread reminds me: Does anyone know anything about the Dreamtime game Iron Crown was advertising in Dragon in 1991? I'm quite sure it never saw the light of day, at least from ICE.

Did it become this? That's a Wikipedia entry for Dreamtime (CORPS), an aboriginal setting in which the player characters are hunter gatherers.

Armchair Gamer

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #162 on: October 27, 2021, 08:27:19 AM »
This thread reminds me: Does anyone know anything about the Dreamtime game Iron Crown was advertising in Dragon in 1991? I'm quite sure it never saw the light of day, at least from ICE.

Did it become this? That's a Wikipedia entry for Dreamtime (CORPS), an aboriginal setting in which the player characters are hunter gatherers.

   It very well might have, given that ICE and BTRC were located in the same region.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #163 on: October 27, 2021, 11:12:57 AM »
I remember a game called "Legacy: War of the Ages," that was a ripoff of the "Highlander" franchise and premise.  Saw it at a game store once but didn't buy it.  I recall it having classic rock song lyrics sprinkled throughout the core book as inspirational text.
It also had a web supplement for “warlocks” using a syntactic magic system. https://web.archive.org/web/20000816151130/http://www.blackgate.net/warlock/index.htm

Jaeger

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Re: Forgotten RPGs
« Reply #164 on: October 27, 2021, 05:06:18 PM »
On game I have always been on the lookout for:

CUTTHROAT: The Shadow Wars RPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutthroat:_The_Shadow_Wars


Came out in 1988 and was one of the first d20 systems to be a Roll high: Skill + d20 vs. TN.

A revised edition that got two supplements came out in 1999.

Pulled from old forum posts on another site:
"A quick breakdown of how Cutthroat's sudden death system worked worked:
When a character hits his opponent (successful skill check with weapon used vs opponent's evasion rating), the target needs to make a damage resistance check (armor+resilience) check vs damage rating of weapon (affected by level of success of attack). If the check failed the target is killed (or incapacitated) outright. If the check succeeds, they are simply wounded (receives a "wound"). The more wounds accumulated the more likely death/incapacitation will occur (each wound applies a penalty to damage resistance checks as well as other checks). But since there always a chance of success or failure on any given check, the was no limit to how many wounds a character could get before they fell (theoretically). There's more variables, but that's the gist of it. Luck only play a part in that a target can spend luck points to succeed checks if the want to avoid death."

"Magic Engine :
Underdeveloped, but promising. I like the system for it's freedom, but there's something that annoys me about it. Can't place my finger on it yet. I think I simply have the traditional AD&D spell system permanently etched into my noggin. The game does not use pre-made skills or spell lists. The players are given "Spellcrafting" rules on how to design custom spells based on a list of various spell effects."


If anyone has a copy - I'll buy it. If you see one for sale somewhere - PM me. So I can buy it.

In many ways the premise of the game strikes me very much like Blades in the Dark.

It is rather interesting that the revised edition came out in 1999, and promptly went completely out of print in late 2000...
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