19th Level

“The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.” - HP Lovecraft Ghostbusters continues to be a fun campaign for us - it works especially well given we've had a number of sessions where just 2 players plus me have been able to make it of late, with real world issues often causing us to be missing 3 players (our group is currently 5 plus me). Icons was a reasonably fun game, working better than most superhero games I've done but I don't think I've found my "one true superhero game" as yet. Earlier I reflected on BRP being a system that works rather well for me so I might at some point repurpose the campaign material I developed for Superworld from Chaosium (which apparently was the game that George RR Martin was playing that led to the creation of the Wild Cards series). I've been thinking about a setting that I can call my o...

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him. I'll chase him round the Moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition's flames before I give him up!  - Star Trek II Channeling Moby Dick I've been gaming since the early 1980's so I've run and played in a lot of games. But there's a few games I've never really gotten the chance to run or play in much more than a few standalone games here and there. I've mentioned Traveller  a few times in this blog. I remember seeing those little black books at my gaming store in the 1980's but never got into it. Over the years I've picked up a number of the books for it and have a pretty complete digital collection of the original game. It does have a few challenges. The first of which is having a bit of trouble selling it - it does have a reputation of being "the game where you can die in character creation". There's also the challenge of the Imperium, a massive sett...

Yes... Yes... This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land and we will call it... This Land. - Wash, Firefly Episode 1: "Serenity" With a new Firefly RPG out this month I've been rewatching some episodes of the sadly short-lived television show. There's a decent chance I'll at the very least be taking it for a spin - I have some pretty good memories of the the older Serenity RPG, the basis for which Margaret Weis Productions (MWP) created the Cortex System. Cortex System had a decent amount of similarity with the Savage Worlds RPG. With the Smallville RPG, the Cortex System evolved into Cortex Plus. Though the character sheets might look rather similar, the engine changed quite a bit to be a far more "narrative-based" RPG. For example, one of the most important aspects of a character in Smallville is his or her relationships with other characters. For example Clark Kent could use his rating in his relationship with ...