Game systems

So Monte Cook wrote a tweet about how great it was that you can play D&D one week, Pathfinder the next and another game the third week. Choice isn't necessary, and "The only people who like to argue about which to choose are those people you don't want to game with anyway".

It got me thinking. The only game system choices I've ever made were based on TSR's, later Wizards' publishing schedules. When Monte - whom I'd noticed with Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil - created  Arcana Unearthed, I was hooked, and I began paying more attention to him than to Wizards. The pinnacle of my "Monte is not just a caffeine-powered robot - he's a caffeine-powered robot god of gaming"-phase was my Ptolus campaign, which I ran using Arcana Evolved. What a great campaign. I miss Ptolus...

Then Monte took a hiatus from making games - well, publishing 'em, at least - and 4th Edition came along. That wasn't for me, so Paizo became the recipient of my hard-earned cash, and now I run three Pathfinder campaigns. 

While most of my make-believe time has been spent with a d20 in my hands, I've also tried Hârn, Traveler, and Dragon Warriors, and to this day, I'm still in a GURPS campaign, so I'm not anti-other games or an exclusivist. 

Is that a word? Looks like one. Yup, letters. It's a word.

But what am I then? I guess I'm a bit of a traditionalist and I am lazy. No, I'm strapped for time. And I worry I can't keep my imagination spinning at enough RPMs to make something fun every third week. So I need systems that back me up with oodles of adventure. I have all Dungeon magazines from #8 onwards and I subscribe to Paizo's Adventure Paths, so I have a good collection of adventures to choose from. And in order to use them the easiest, I run them using the most compatible system.

This leads me to the conclusion that if a gaming company wants me as a customer, they'd better put out adventures (and rulebooks, and sourcebooks, and GM screens and minis - prepainted). This will show me how the game is played, AND it will make it easier for me to run the game.

Bottom line: I like all games. Or rather, I haven't played that many games, but I liked the ones I did try. I've previously been guilty of valuing some games higher than others, but now - hey, if you're a role-player I don't care too much about the shape of your dice. But I will still make a clear choice in favour of the game that provides the best support.

About Numenera

+Monte Cook asked me and a few other former members of the Council of Magisters to chip in with promoting Numenera. The time difference and, uhm, life made it impossible for me to do much, but I did offer to run some games at +Søren Staun Biangslev and +Christina Staun Biangslev 's amazing Ba-Con.

So +Shanna Germain helped out tremendously by sending me preliminary chapters - including some real-life updates during the rehearsal game, thanks, Shanna!

Afterwards, I made a short video with some impressions. Note the champagne glasses - we celebrated being the first people outside the US to play the game.

These are my own remarks, 7 weeks later.

Even from the simple, printed reams of paper I used instead of the real rulebook, and even from the sparse descriptions of the characters, this game is all about allowing GMs to say yes. Not in a over-powered way, but the system is so loose yet coherent that it is one huge enabler for the GM. 

Case in point: The adventure I ran includes a beast with a natural attack of a certain, non-damaging nature. By looking at similar items, it is extremely easy to allow the right character to harvest some of the beast's attack and let him jury-rig a single-use item that replicates the beast's attack.

When I ran Arcana Evolved adventures some years ago, I enjoyed the tokens and detonations (single-use magic items on par with potions) because they let me describe physical manifestations of spells. This does the same, but within the reality of Numenera.

Also, underlying the whole gameplay, there is a vague sense of loss because, well, this is the NINTH world. You sense that so much is gone, and it creates a resonating depth to every encounter that I have never experienced in my 29 years of gaming. It's a really, really good game.