Yes I'm back with new and important questions. (Not that I ever left, or stopped writing. Just you know, more questions..)


So what game most shaped your playstyle?

The reason for asking this is two fold. While I've played more AD&D/D&D than most other games, I realized in the "Best Selling TSR.." thread that TSR itself shaped me towards NON D&D play early on. It did so with such wonders as Gamma World (Classless), Star Frontiers (Skill Based), an Marvel Superheroes (Player driven) aspects. Now I tend to prefer games which have the features mentioned, or something relatively similar.

 Don't mistake me in saying those features are "better", I just like them quite a bit. In fact I still enjoy class based games a bit. (True20, my own Derelict Delvers, Mazes and Minotaurs)


I can look and say that MSH is still one of the games I'd love to play and do so regularly. It shaped my play a bit more flexible and laid back, and willing to see the rules as guidelines to shape play outcomes, not just "Do this, Don't Do that" but something aimed at allowing you to recreate experiences (in this case comic books, as seen circa 1980 Marvel Universe)

Arduin shaped how I think about games generally. There's an earnestness to the gonzo in Arduin that makes it work for me. I've played a ton of full-gonzo games since, but none as sincere. That's what I try to foster in any game I play, regardless of the genre or the style.

Games? I guess D&D and Shadowrun, but what really shaped how I see games is television shows like Buffy and the Wire. How they tell stories is amazing to me. Add in years fo comic books, and cheap fiction and you have I how I see games.

I'm pretty unaware of a lot of stuff, as I don't keep up on the industry or releases-hell until long after people apparently stopped playing it I had no idea games like Gamma World, or Traveler existed. Much of my exposure comes from meeting people who actually play stuff, or randomly coming across things in stores.

Now with the internet I am discovering that there is more out there.

For me it was West End Game's Star Wars, and not so much because I am a massive Star Wars fan but because of the system. D6 was the first system I encountered that felt like it wasn't just a random collection of rules the author considered to be rather neat, it had a design. It was simple, elegant but remarkably complete, able to do things with ease that other chunkier systems struggled with.

It was also the game that introduced to me (and I guess others) the notion of "cinematic" gameplay, which of has come to mean all sorts of different things, but I take it to mean emulation how things work in the movies rather than how things work in reality or in a wargame.

I'd say it shaped my playstyle becasue in the end the things that WEG's Star Wars did well are still the things I consider important in a system while the things it did not do well (chracter progression, detailed equipment and tactical battles) remain the things I really don't care about.

I started on Chaosium's RuneQuest II back in 1981.

The whole story first idea of Glorantha as a setting and dealing with NPCs as characters really appealed to me.
I stayed with that ruleset, Stormbringer, RingWorld, ElfQuest, Call of Cthulhu, though mainly RuneQuest for nearly twenty years.

What I liked was that each player character could be developed a bit at a time and shaped to not only how you wanted them to come out as but also shaped from their experience in play.
Also the big influence was which cult you entered, but all the PCs could be in the same cult yet very different to each other.

D&D, of course, but then as a reaction against elements of D&D, Runequest would be next. I only played RQ per se a little bit, but the ideas in it were pretty important to me. (It's possible that I actually encountered these ideas first in Ysgarth and The Fantasy Trip, but RQ, especially RQ 3, was the most robust presentation.) Skill-based development of abilities seemed to make it a lot easier to view characters as individuals first and professions second, which then invited thinking about characters in relation to society and the world. In RQ 3 character generation was culture- and background-based which offered a naturalistic approach to character definition. Even when I was playing class & level-based games in the 80's, my friends and I brought this back by, basically, designing character classes on the fly to match character concepts. Or in another case, distinguishing a character's class from "who he is".

Either way, D&D or RQ, I'm a fan of fantasy gaming and classic escapist stuff. I doubt I'd have gotten into gaming if Vampire had been the public face of RPGing at the time. The fantasy/myth/ancient/medieval elements interacted with interests outside of gaming to be sure: I was an avid SF & fantasy (particularly Tolkien) fan before getting into RPGs, and I studied history, archeology, and classics in college.

Quote from: Serious Paul;277909Games? I guess D&D and Shadowrun, but what really shaped how I see games is television shows like Buffy and the Wire. How they tell stories is amazing to me. Add in years fo comic books, and cheap fiction and you have I how I see games.

I can relate to this.

Besides other kinds of media, I would say that what has shaped my playstyle have been the people I have gamed with over the years.

Regards,
David R

Hmm, I started with Fighting Fantasy RPG based on the gamebook rules, and looking back those games I ran at 11 & 12 years old were still amongst my coolest; the simple rules allowed for easy homebrewing.  I guess I was shaped more by 1e AD&D, then and since I've mostly run modules and focused on good vs evil epic struggles, but I'd like to get back to the freedom & openness of those first days.

Moldvay's D&D for me; my older brothers were stuck babysitting me all the time and let me play with them.  I was six or seven and they were six and seven years older than me.  Dungeon crawls made a huge impression on my tender young mind then.

Heavy Gear taught me that playing a character exploring and existing in a world radically different than our own was one of the most fun and interesting parts of roleplaying. My D&D worlds until that time (roughly age 13-14) had merely been pastiches, and it was reading things like Life on Terra Nova that showed me there was a different way.

Traveller (Classic and Mega). More recently, Spycraft and Spirit of the Century.

One thing I can't really relate to in many modern discussion is how stymied some people seem to get by running games with skill systems and having tasks at the center of the resolution. Traveller taught me to run and play in the style of "finding a path to the goal using the skills you have."

It's part of the reason I considered D&D 3e such a stride forward (and 4e such a step back) was that 3e had a real skill system.


My more recent experiences with Spycraft and SotC got me more comfortable using FATE point/action dice sorts of things. To the point, after I played Mongoose Traveller, I considered strapping on SotC's aspects.

Choose-Your-Own-Adventures and Fighting Fantasy were the biggest influence in my play-style.  It really defined my approach to D&D and other RPGs.  D&D was pitched to me as "like a CYOA -- but you don't just get 2 or 3 choices".

OD&D (along with early variants Arduin and Warlock) probably had the biggest influence. Classic Traveller would probably come in second.

Definitively Shadowrun, which has been my second game after TDE.
With it's rules for connections, the acquiration of connectionsand it's concept of downtime, favours for connections etc., it introduced me to what I call the snowball campaign (start with a vaguely defined set-up and see as it grows as it rolls down the hill, all with player input rather than GM imposement from above), and it introduced me to intelligent dungeon-crawls where problem-solving and out-thinking play a major role (rather than just rushing from door to door and clobbering random orcs who don't wander around at all at the sound of combat - and yeah, I'm well aware that a fantasy dungeon hasn't to be like this, and that especially a _good_ fatasy dungeon doesn't work that way, but until then, we didn't get it, as TDE didn't teach this).

I had some other enlightening experiences later, like the lifepath and random table goodness of CP2020, or the fluidity and think-out-of-the-box aspect of the Traveller UTP, but Shadowrun has been the major step for me from clueless dabbler in the dark to a passable GM who knows what he's doing.

Quote from: Silverlion;277902Yes I'm back with new and important questions. (Not that I ever left, or stopped writing. Just you know, more questions..)


So what game most shaped your playstyle?

Two words: Classic TRAVELLER



- Ed C.