Marc Miller (of Traveller fame) is posting his top five great RPGs on FB and I thought it would be good to post and discuss here:
Five Greats: Role-Playing Games (1 of 5)
I gave some thought to "important" role-playing games and came up with a list of five.
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Original Dungeons & Dragons
Gary Gygax's very first edition of Dungeons & Dragons shows clearly the roots of his revolutionary concept: he wanted his players (and they wanted) to be able to wander through a fantasy universe, unfettered by the pre-determined plot or structure. There's an argument that he intended his game to be universal, applicable to any fantasy universe, but those who first played it understood it for what it was: a way to be play within Tolkien's Middle Earth, spiced with dashes of L. Sprague de Camp, Jack Vance, and others. There were hobbits and ents and orcs, elves, balrogs, the mines of Moria (becoming the dungeons of the game title) and, or course, dragons.
At the time (1974, Dungeons & Dragons appeared in January, 1974), role-playing was an unstructured psychological group therapy technique, or an educational exercise with some ulterior pedagogical motive. Gygax made role-playing an end unto itself: players truly assumed their new roles--their characters--subject only to the game rules in front of them, and to the rulings of their Game Master.
Gygax's co-author (Dave Arneson) had a master stroke in the game, a concept that has influenced all of the role-playing games that have followed: he made characters digital rather than analog. A character had an attribute called Strength with a numerical value, and another called Intelligence with a different value. Suddenly, a smart player could be forced to play a dumb character; or a relatively dull player could have a genius character. It turned traditional role-playing on its head, divorcing the player from the role and opening up grand new possibilities that players were quick to seize.
The game literally changed the face of recreational gaming: adding a personal element to what had previously been divided on boardgames and miniature figure wargaming.
Watch for my next selection tomorrow. And by the way, my criterial is Great, not Best.
Five Best: Role-Playing Games (2 of 5)
I gave some thought to "important" role-playing games and came up with a list of five. Not best. Not necessarily even favorite. But great. Here is number 2.
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En Garde
Wargame designer Frank Chadwick was one of those early pioneers who saw the grand entertainment potential in role-playing games. When his friend Darryl Hany showed him a rudimentary sword-fighting game, Chadwick collaborated with him in 1975 to produce En Garde! a Three Musketeers-style role-playing situation. Where other designers basically rewrote the D&D rules for other genres (space, pirates, cowboys), Chadwick tried for a different gaming result. He structured En Garde as a single evening's session with each player creating (with dice) the values for a variety of characteristics, the most significant being Social Standing. The players then spent the evening role-playing the social interaction of swashbuckling 17th century adventurers, toadying up to companions with higher social status (because it rubs off on their friends), inventing slights as an excuse to fight duels (because that also brings higher status), carousing in taverns and clubs, and occasionally going off to fight in a war for a while. Chadwick's genius insight created a situation where less socially-dominant players could have their moment in the spotlight while the group's social leaders were reduced to entourage. Everyone loved it.
(I have carefully not chosen my own titles for inclusion in this list).
Five (Other) Great Role-Playing Games (3 of 5).
I gave some thought to "important" role-playing games and came up with a list of five. Not best. Not necessarily even favorite. But great. And Andy Baker says I needed to add "Other" to my header because I am not listing my own titles. Here is number 3.
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Call of Cthulhu
Sandy Petersen's vision of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos demonstrated how even a small adjustment to game rules can achieve great results. Taking a set of generic and simple role-playing rules (Basic Role-Playing from Chaosium), Petersen added a new characteristic: sanity, and thereby dramatically changed to focus of the game. In other genres, players concentrate on building wealth or power or reputation. Here, players in search of the secrets of the Cthulhu mythos face the very real danger of going mad as the truth unravels before them. Role-playing games, by their nature, do not lend themselves to the cinematic techniques of horror, but Petersen's sanity gambit achieved comparable and equally satisfying results. The player watches helplessly as his character encounters new clues leading to new knowledge and ultimately new horrible truths, each of which chips away at his sanity. The player knows his character's sanity is slowing declining, and finds himself in a race to discover that one last secret before he descends into madness. Yet he has to continue, because his only other choice is to not play the game.
Fun! And I'm delighted to see En Garde! getting a call-out. It has an absolutely inspired approach to campaign play and DM-free play (i.e., players only and solo).
He is being too modest in his exclusion of
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but it's still interesting to see what he chooses.
Quote from: Dumarest;987652He is being too modest in his exclusion of
Standard reviewer courtesy. If people were allowed to include their own work, then they would almost have to, in which case all top fives by people in said industry would just be top fours, etc.
But yes, Traveller has a place in any positive RPG list.
Well, he's managed three....
Wonder if he'll mention an SJGames game.
Quote from: TrippyHippy;987842Well, he's managed three....
Today was his birthday so he's probably out enjoying himself.
I just thought he couldn't think of any others!
Harn, and something else.
Whoa! Is the Osprey En Garde a re-print or new edition of the GDW one? Or just a similar new game with the same title?
AFIK the Osprey rule are miniatures skirmish completely unrelated to the RPG.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;988077Whoa! Is the Osprey En Garde a re-print or new edition of the GDW one? Or just a similar new game with the same title?
It's not the same; it's one of a series of miniature skirmish games they make. However, there is a new version of
En Garde available; I forget who makes it but I saw it on Amazon a while back.
Quote from: Dumarest;988089It's not the same; it's one of a series of miniature skirmish games they make. However, there is a new version of En Garde available; I forget who makes it but I saw it on Amazon a while back.
Latest edition of the game (2005) is here (http://www.engarde.co.uk/useful.html).
History of the game here (http://www.engarde.co.uk/history.html#Top).
Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;988099Latest edition of the game (2005) is here (http://www.engarde.co.uk/useful.html).
History of the game here (http://www.engarde.co.uk/history.html#Top).
Yes, that's the one I have. Flashing Blades has an interesting relationship to En Garde from what I've read, though I prefer Flashing Blades.
Quote from: Dumarest;988101Yes, that's the one I have. Flashing Blades has an interesting relationship to En Garde from what I've read, though I prefer Flashing Blades.
The influence on Flashing Blades is clear. I can see why you might prefer FB. One can play Flashing Blades without having a large number of unrelated PCs. En Garde plays best if you have enough PCs to make who gets promoted in any given regiment and who gains which offices competitive and to sustain several rivalries between several regiments.
On a somewhat different note, I presume one reason Marc Miller listed En Garde was because the army combat subsystem from En Garde appears to have influenced Traveller's system for rolling previous experience.
Quote from: Bren;988301The influence on Flashing Blades is clear. I can see why you might prefer FB. One can play Flashing Blades without having a large number of unrelated PCs. En Garde plays best if you have enough PCs to make who gets promoted in any given regiment and who gains which offices competitive and to sustain several rivalries between several regiments.
At best I've been able to get four players for Flashing Blades. They don't tend to be worried about promotions and such as few of them have pursued military careers.
Quote from: Bren;988301On a somewhat different note, I presume one reason Marc Miller listed En Garde was because the army combat subsystem from En Garde appears to have influenced Traveller's system for rolling previous experience.
That's interesting; I never thought of that before you mentioned it. I've always assumed FASA Trek borrowed heavily from Traveller's character generation system as you got similarly experienced characters at the end of the career path.
Quote from: Dumarest;988302At best I've been able to get four players for Flashing Blades.
Exactly. While four players seems ideal to play any of the published Flashing Blades adventures or for running many types of FB campaigns, 4 people is really too few for the pursuit of status and office in En Garde to shine.
QuoteThat's interesting; I never thought of that before you mentioned it. I've always assumed FASA Trek borrowed heavily from Traveller's character generation system as you got similarly experienced characters at the end of the career path.
The FASA Star Trek RPG probably did get inspiration from Traveller.
On the other hand, the battle resolution process in En Garde and previous experience rolling for Traveller had some striking similarities. Both can be "played" as a sort of solo minigame. Since En Garde was published in 1976 while Traveller was published in 1977, I infer that the former influenced the latter. The FASA Star Trek RPG was published in 1982 so I assume it was probably influenced by Traveller. (I assume anyone from our dimension who was designing a Star Trek RPG in the early 1980s would already be familiar with Traveller.)
Since games are often in development for some time before they are published, it's possible that Traveller was developed at the same time as or even before En Garde. However since both games were published within one year of each other by the same company and since game companies at that time were small shops I would be greatly surprised if one game didn't influence the design of the other. There are other reasons to conclude that En Garde influenced Traveller (rather than the reverse). When I read En Garde it seems to be a less polished effort than does FB. EG reads to me like a proto RPG tacked onto a dueling system that is completely diceless. (Uncertainty in dueling arises from a rock-paper-scissors type matrix for how dueling maneuvers oppose each other. En Garde dueling probably owes more systematically to the Jousting mini-game in the old Chainmail rules than to any dice-based RPG combat system.)
To me En Garde reads like a very early effort in creating something RPG-like. Whereas Flashing Blades is clearly intended bo be an RPG that uses dice to generate most of the uncertainty in combat (like the vast majority of RPGs) and it has a much more unified system in which uncertainty is predominantly generated by rolling dice and much of play is intended to clearly follow the
go on adventures mode of play inspired by D&D and used by the vast majority of RPGs developed since with the promotion part of FB being somewhat equivalent to the domain level of play in D&D where adventurers after they reach high level build their own castle, temple, or tower and focus on the development of their domain or demesne.
Well, don't forget that FASA produced a good amount of material for Traveller well before they published their Star Trek game, so I presume the good people at FASA were well familiar with Traveller. And if you're going to borrow ideas, the Traveller character generation system is a humdinger to choose.
Well, FASA did start out as a producer of Traveller supplements before branching out.
En Garde! is really intended to be a long-running campaign game, possibly resolved through PBM, with a dozen or more players in the same campaign. Joining a full-sized EG campaign should be more or less like joining an internet forum or something.
Quote from: jeff37923;988356Well, FASA did start out as a producer of Traveller supplements before branching out.
I keep hoping, vainly I know, that Harebrained Schemes (which is Jordan Weisman's computer company) will make a computer RPG like their Shadowrun games. But I would like to see a computer version of Traveller that doesn't suck
So, isn't this thread still two games short?
Maybe he was overambitious and couldn't come up with two more.
Looks like Voros took Labor Day off. I suspect Marc Miller probably did finish his list.
We'll never know?
I did go away for most the weekend but Mr. Miller has yet to post his final two picks on FB.
Quote from: Voros;989903I did go away for most the weekend but Mr. Miller has yet to post his final two picks on FB.
Lazy shit!
Quote from: Dumarest;989110Maybe he was overambitious and couldn't come up with two more.
Like I said...
So did we ever get numbers 4 and 5?
Nope. Unfortunately.
They haven't been Kickstarted yet.
Quote from: DavetheLost;996139They haven't been Kickstarted yet.
Ha! Riot.
Quote from: Dumarest;996130So did we ever get numbers 4 and 5?
He just did: FATE and Ron Edwards' Sorcerer.
Later I copy his full descriptions.
Spoiler
:D :D :D
Dumbass.