RPG A Day: Days 1 through 5

For those of you who may be unaware of +Dave Chapman's call to the #RPGaDay challenge, check out this post on his blog: Autocratik.

Me? I'm a bit late, so I gotta get caught up.

1st Day: First RPG Played

The first RPG that I ever played, believe it or not, wasn't D&D. This is because, growing up as a kid in the Philippines, I was usually trying to get people to play the game -- meaning that I'd be trying to run it, but with a very tenuous grasp of the rules.

Therefore, my first RPG game as a player was another well-known TSR property: Star Frontiers! It was run by a classmate of mine who picked up that boxed set and ran it for us at a class retreat in a beautiful seminary overlooking some of the lovely Baguio scenery.

2nd Day: First RPG Gamemastered

This, without a doubt, would be D&D Basic. This is the Moldvay edition with the Erol Otus cover. I've recounted elsewhere on this blog that I actually first purchased an AD&D module, then was given the basic rules as a gift, and tried to run the game. I remember trying at least twice -- once with my classmates and once with my cousins -- but never managing to really make it stick.

I never stopped cracking it open, despite the fact that I eventually realized that AD&D held the majority of the rules for the modules I'd been collecting from the bookstore, and therefore shifted away from the Basic and Expert Sets to devour the trinity of rules (PHB, DMG, and MM) for 1st edition AD&D back in the misty pasts of my youth.

3rd Day: First RPG Purchased

With my own allowance money? This would be Top Secret. Yeah, TSR was the only real RPG brand we could get in the Philippines (that I knew of). Reconnecting with others when I got back here, I found out that some determined souls had gotten ahold of Champions.

But I digress. Where was I? Top Secret! I remember stumbling through these rules, but having an easier time figuring out what might happen. I had a steadier diet of espionage flicks on TV and in the movie theaters, and my cousins were into them too. We all created characters and tried out a couple of games, but I -- ultimately -- couldn't quite figure out Sprechenhaltestelle.

We did eventually return to the espionage genre with Top Secret/S.I. But that's another story.

4th Day: Most Recent RPG Purchase

All my RPG collecting is in the electronic world these days, as space is costly at home. So my latest purchase comes from RPGnow / DriveThruRPG: a supplement for Sine Nomine's spectacular Stars Without Number -- Relics of the Lost.

Kevin Crawford is a lean, mean RPG writing machine. And he does some interesting work in creating tools for sandbox-style games in the Science Fiction genre. Actually, for multiple genres -- there are supplements for the cyberpunk, post-holocaust, and post-human subgenres as well.

Of course, Mr. Crawford does the same for Fantasy RPGs, and you should just give Sine Nomine a look online to see the full breadth of his work. Then check out how long he's been doing it; you'll be amazed.

5th Day: Most Old School RPG owned

I thought it would be a toss-up between two RPGs: the Moldvay Basic D&D set, and the 1st edition of Champions. I never actually played Champions 1st Edition, as I began playing it with the 3rd Edition. However, I've since traded for a copy of the original rules set, out of a collector's mentality.

However, looking at the release years it turns out that my Oldest Old School RPG owned turns out to be: Traveller. Yes, the classic Traveller rules in those black books by Marc Miller.

It was also the first RPG that I got to play when I was in the U.S. I was a beginning character, playing alongside ridiculously powerful characters, but I was finally playing an RPG with seasoned roleplayers, and I couldn't have been happier (at the time) gaming-wise.

Star Frontiers - Core Races

Where's your gun, man?

I was re-reading my relatively new copies of the Star Frontiers - Alpha Dawn boxed set, and I was struck by the care put into creating very interesting non-human PC races. The aliens are alien enough, and interesting enough to make them intriguing to play, but they're also given nice 'hooks' to allow the human players to play them plausibly.

My race of choice was the Yazirian race, but now the Vrusk appeal to me more. Which would probably drive me to the Dralasite as, stat-wise, they are apparently a tougher, stronger race than the others.

I also am interested in the original plans for the Sathar as a player race, and then their plans for the Sathar when it became a villain race.

You should probably check out the interview in the latest Star Frontiersman to see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I may steal quite a bit of this for both Fading Suns and Stars Without Number campaigns.

Cool Stuff about Star Frontiers

Needler Pistols

The needler pistols were frickin' awesome. The Jim Holloway illustration of the two adventurers firing needlers at an agent running away. I wanted my character to have one.

In my mind, I wanted the awesome coolness of firing needle darts at evil science fiction villains.

Yazirians

I don't know why, but I found these goggle-wearing, gliding, monkey-like hotheads an interesting race to play. I found the race honor thing intriguing at the time. I didn't quite consider them wookie-replacements. They weren't Kzinti or anything.

I dunno, maybe Elmore and Jim Holloway just drew 'em really well. They felt like adventurers supreme. The Vrusk and the Dralasites were interesting races as well, but I didn't feel like playing one in a game.

Neat SF Maps

The cool fold-up maps -- despite the two dimensional nature -- fired my imagination. Futuristic roads and public transport, futuristic buildings, cool vehicles.

It created this staggering backdrop (no matter how Legion of Super-Heroes + 1970s science fiction shows the end result might have been in my mind). Awesomeness!

What did you find interesting or attractive about the game?

RPG Nostalgia (Part II): I was a TSR Zombie

The TSR Monopoly on RPGs

Because TSR was responsible for D&D (Basic, Expert, Advanced), I was fairly certain they were the only company putting this stuff out. But thank goodness they were covering various genres (a word that I didn't even comprehend at that age). Shopping at such magical -- and difficult to get to places (again: Grade School, Kid, Philippines, 1970s) -- like Nova Fontana, Gold Crest, Lil's Hobby Shop, and Squadron Shoppe, and National Book Store (okay, there were many of these, but not all of them carried D&D) I eventually discovered two other RPGs: Top Secret and Star Frontiers.

Top Secret was my first non-D&D purchase, as a classmate had already purchased Star Frontiers. Why waste the money? Eventually, after exhausting the limited genre fiction understandable and available to a grade school student growing up in Martial Law Philippines, I began expanding the boundaries of an ongoing hobby: reading RPGs. I picked up Alpha Dawn, and began collecting whatever available modules there were for my three RPG rulesets.

The obsession never left me. Even when I failed to run those rare game sessions properly. Even when I was waylaid by various gamebook series (Choose Your Own Adventure, Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks back when only Warlock of Firetop Mountain was out, and Be An Interplanetary Spy!).

When I got to high school, I heard rumors about a non-TSR RPG about superheroes. Champions, it was called. I was intrigued, but never actually got to see it (except as an ad in someone's oh-so-rare Dragon magazine) until I got to the U.S.

Of course by then it was Champions 3rd Edition, since I fell in with other gaming groups with other preferences. I often wonder what my reaction would have been if I'd been able to experience a 1st Edition Champions game in the Philippines in  my formative gaming years.

But that's okay. I learned about gods from various pantheons, practiced pronouncing words like Yazirian, Vrusk, and Dralasite, and became familiar with the game superiority of a 9mm Browning High-Powered Self-Load pistol.