IDIC Files: Introduction (or Is Romeo Tanghal Filipino?)

I'm going to start posting about little mentions of the Philippines and Filipinos (and Filipinas) in gaming and geek culture. But for some reason, I feel the need to explain why.

And that's why I'm going to talk a bit about The New Teen Titans and Romeo Tanghal.

In the days before the world wide web, you couldn't just Google things that you were curious about. And in the infancy of my fandom, there were many things I wanted to find out -- and tried to, the old-fashioned way:

library searches
fandom magazines
letter columns of comic books
and so on..

One of the things I wanted to know -- something that many of my comic-book reading grade school classmates wanted to know -- was this: is Romeo Tanghal, inker on The New Teen Titans and other comics from DC, Filipino?

In the days of Google, a quick visit to a suggested link reveals that, yes, Romeo Tanghal was and is Filipino.

But back then, going only on his name, we guessed he was. (We originally though Perez might be too, but we also knew that Perez was a name that was more Spanish-derived in origin, and we quickly found out via the letters pages and fan publications that he was Puerto Rican.)

Why was this of interest to us?

The thrill of identification

I suppose it's very similar to the feeling of knowing that someone from your family, from your neighborhood, from your hometown, from whatever you consider your "tribe" or "group" is doing well or doing something cool.

Perhaps because we all liked comics, and a fair number of us had given some thought about getting into the industry, it was like hoping that someone from the Philippines had already made it into the industry. (Of course, we didn't know about the Filipinos that HAD already made it into the industry, because they hadn't really been the focus of the sources of info available to us; but that's another story).

It's not (necessarily) about being a minority

Before this threatens to become a talk about being a minority looking for more equitable representation in media (which is a worthy goal, though I'm not necessarily agreeing with all the ways that have been suggested online and offline), let me just make a few statements as to why it isn't exactly that.

At the time, I was living and studying in the Philippines. I was surrounded by Filipinos, and the mestizos and folks who could pass themselves off as American or European were few and far between. I guess what I'm saying is, we didn't necessarily need to see more Filipinos represented in media -- because we got that every day by virtue of where we lived.

So why did we look for it? Why did I look for it? I mean, it's not like it was this big thing that I spent nights wondering about -- but it pleased me when I found out.

It's a big world, and I'm just one guy

Well, I can only speak for myself, and introspection isn't always my strongest suit.

I do believe that it's not just one reason, but a multitude of reasons of varying intensitives. Here are a few:

• I can be president after all -- one of the major exports of the U.S. to the Philippines is the American Dream, the one that says anyone born anywhere (in the U.S.) can become whatever they want to become, even president, so seeing someone from the Philippines doing something you want to do yourself, seems to re-affirm that possibility and chip away at barriers (like the fact that I'm NOT someone born in the U.S.)
• I'm not alone -- you get made fun of for having strange, unpopular hobbies, and perhaps not-so-practical plans for your future; and it's nice to see someone you can identify with doing the very thing you want
• That person's like me -- I believe it also has something to do with looking for something that resonates with you in media -- whether it's in a profession, or on the news, or in fictional exploits. For example, I tend to react less strongly to, say, a Filipino in the news who is an ultra-athlete than a Filipino who had a very nerdy childhood

Source Files: The Legion of Superheroes

I began comic book collecting in earnest slightly before the start of that classic Legion of Superheroes storyline known as The Great Darkness Saga.

Since my current interests run along Science Fiction and Super-heroic lines, reviewing the source material around this era should make for some good inspiration and ruminations about gaming in the genres where the two intersect.

I'd like to point out that, while the Legion did take on the occasional 'cosmic' opponent, they also handled quite a number of other challenges, criminal gangs, political maneuverings, alien races, new discoveries, and so on. It wasn't quite in the 'cosmic' adventuring space; it really was an intersection of the super-heroic genre with traditional Science Fiction tropes.

And, perhaps along the way, I can point out some of the existing gaming material out there that can be tweaked or mined (and perhaps were inspired by) this sadly absent team in the modern DC Universe.

A Taste for Nostalgia: Frustrated Fandom

I've posted before about how pursuing aspects of geek fandom could be a difficult chore growing up in the Philippines during the 70s. Although, having read the anthology of anecdotes by Rob Kelly (Hey Kids, Comics!) and listening to gaming and comic book podcasts, I realize that my experience was far from rare -- even to residents in the U.S.

For me, frustrated fandom took many forms: comic books that I only encountered sporadically, science fiction / fantasy novels, RPGs and related books and gear, TV shows and movies from different countries, mostly from the U.S. and the U.K., etc. Fandom in these areas was frustrated due to numerous reasons:

• economic issues (not enough money, or statospherically priced objects of desire)
• accessibility (no stock -- often a lack of awareness that such things existed, distance to store, being allowed to travel t, store closing down, selection)
• constant travel or moving (comic book collections take up storage and luggage space)
• family resistance (fortunately, I didn't get this much)

Effect:

I can only speak for myself, of course. Though I've seen the same thing with others -- not being able to go after what I want as a kid somehow comes back as a mad collector fever. I would try to be compleatist and pick up copies of anything remotely related to my current obsession.

This is, of course, different from the actual collection obsession tied to something new. Like the 3rd Edition of D&D or the Fading Suns books when they first came out.

Some objects of my deferred collection obsessions were:

• D&D Gazetteers
• the complete run of The New Teen Titans
• all the Babylon 5 DVDs
• the complete run of Grimjack
• all MechaPress issues
• Mayfair's DC Heroes Sourcebooks
• the complete run of Nexus
• all the episodes of I-Spy
• all the episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• every Sapphire & Steel episode
• Fading Suns sourcebooks and war games

Ah, but it takes up too much space (and eats up too much money)!

Nostalgia: DC Heroes GM Screen

I once had this:

Because it came with this boxed set:

Ahhhhh, the memories. Thanks, DC RPG: THE HERO POINTS PODCAST, Episode 1 !

D&D 30day Challenge: Day06 - Favorite Deity

I've been posting about a lot of deities (mostly from the Roman / Greek tradition), and if the question were really just about them, I'd name Minerva / Athena and probably Apollo and Zeus. But really, almost any of the ones I've covered in this blog are of interest to me.

But this is a D&D challenge question, so I 'd assume it's somehow related to D&D gaming or reading experiences, and I really don't have any that jump to mind.

If Immortals count as deities (in Mystara, they're not gods, y'know), then I'd actually cite Rad (a.k.a. Etienne d'Amberville) who, despite being cast as something of a villain in Wrath of the Immortals, benefits from some familiarity in D&D modules as the person 'released' by adventurers in the X2 module Castle Amber (Chateau d'Ambreville). He comes across as a young Immortal eager to shake up the ways things are done and acts as a sort of controversial POV character who could be counted as a 'contemporary' of adventurers, despite his rather high ranking amongst his kind.

Other gods that have caught my interest in the past were:

• Seker from the Egyptian pantheon, primarily for his anti-undead abilities according to the AD&D Deities and Demigods book;
• St. Cuthbert from Greyhawk, who made me wonder at a very young age how saints figured into the D&D game, as I didn't know he wasn't a real saint;
• Waukeen from Forgotten Realms, due to his ties with commerce, triggering the creation of an overt and covert set of societies in my derailed campaign that would have worked to counter bad trade practices round the Realms.

D&D 30day Challenge: Day05 - Favorite Dice Set / Die Type

It's the d6, and my special set of d6 dice. I carry all of them in this metal Lucky Strike tin.

The Big Blue dice are for damage in Hero System, or Die Pools in games like Shadowrun or the Star Wars / Ghostbusters D6 system. I like to think they roll high.

The White dice are for half dice in Hero System, or Wild Dice in games like the Star Wars / Ghostbusters D6 System. I also like to think they roll high.

The smaller multi-colored dice replaced my lost (sob) black dice with red pips for rolling low in Hero System, for all the attack rolls and skill rolls.

I pack a pair of unusual D10s for percentile rolls and the odd need for a D20 or D10 in any given game.

I loved bringing this around as a compact dice set for conventions and games at friends' houses. Gone were the days when I used to bring around huge stacks of dice; I always knew exactly which dice I had to have with me when I went home.

D&D 30day Challenge: Day04 - Fave Setting

Seriously, it's Mystara. I post about it often enough on this blog for Pandius's sake. It's partially nostalgia, but it hits that sweet spot of familiarity, being filled in just enough, but not too much, etc.

So here's an excerpt from a recent post about it for a recent RPG Blog Carnival:

Key Posts: I've made a number of Mystara-oriented posts over the years; these are the ones relevant to this particular campaign.

• A Mad God in the Machine - how to have a campaign premise that allows for multiple PCs coming and going, but still retaining continuity, and allowing PCs to rub elbows with gods and kings early on in their careers; just have to be careful that they don't get overshadowed by the mad god who runs into them once in a while. 
• Dark Corners of Mystara: Strange Waters - when they're being sent on missions by the Mad God, they may not be traveling overland exclusively. This is, of course, inspired by the river-based campaign from WFRP's Enemy Within campaign. Speaking of WFRP...
• Stealing From WFRP: Roadwardens - and yet another campaign premise for the PCs when they've finished their river adventures.
• Some Geography is in order - taking from my Enigmundia posts, I underscore the key elements that I'd like to emphasize for the setting.
• Enigmundia: A List of Ingredients 1 - some talk about getting the essence of Karameikos experience right
• Enigmundia: A List of Ingredients 2 - the major nations of the world that I'd like to focus on, with some substitutions from other sources. Ierendi, in particular, might make a nice place to stick the new Razor Coast material.
• Enigmundia: A List of Ingredients 3 - similar to part 2, but with emphasis on the big leagues of nations.
• Fate, Fortune, and the Adventurer - my own rationale for things like hit points and levels and the movers and shakers of the world being so powerful compared to the normals of the world.
• Gods, Magic, and the World - a series of posts that deal with my take on the cosmology of Mystara's universe
• Spheres, Magical Fields, and Outsiders - the gods and the magical field they created and maintain protects reality from things outside it.
• Dark Corners of Mystara: Dwarves & the Hounds of Tindalos - highlights my preference for a slightly stranger feel for the campaign, preferably lurking just beneath the surface of a normal (albeit tumultuous) campaign world. I like the idea of Old Ones and Ancient Things being something that the Immortals keep at bay while they pursue their own twisted schemes of power.
• Pagan Magic-Users: Pythagorean Mathemagicians - how the magic of the world is skinned, based on a given pantheon. Yes, it assumes that magicians invoke the names of gods in their spells, and 'pagan' ones at that.
• Pagan Spells of Mercury - A sample listing and rationale of several 1st level magic spells attributed to Mercury.
• Pagan Spells of Apollo - A sample listing and rationale of several 1st level magic spells attributed to Apollo.
• Pflarr and Hermanubis - an attempt to merge the Pflarr of Mystara with an actual Jackal-headed Roman god (with a picture of the statue in a museum).
• Cults of Orcus - an attempt to merge the Orcus of myth with his portrayal in D&D's pantheon.
• Sleep, Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare - the gods of the underworld, where many an adventure spends time, are stranger and more powerful than you think
• Additions and Expansions
• Add: Ravenloft - adding to the mystery of the powers of the Outsiders and the corruption of the Sphere of Entropy, I wanted to mix little of the Demi-plane of Dread
• Add: Spartacus - to really push the decadence and the skill of the Thyatian gladiator class, some liberal lifting from this show.

D&D 30day Challenge: Day03 - Favorite Playable Class

My answer: the multi-classed character!

No, it's not quite dodging the question. In AD&D, where the class is separate from the race, I always wanted to multi-class. My choice, was not the ever popular Elven Fighter / Magic-User; it was a Half-Elven Fighter / Thief.

There was a particular type of fighter -- the lightly armored, sneaky, finesse-oriented fighter -- that I wanted to emulate.

I was actually overjoyed by ease of multi-classing in D&D 3E, until the sheer weight of Feats (with all their Pre-requisites) in all the sourcebooks and class expansion rules killed the fun of character creation for me. And as a HERO System gamer that's saying something. The shift to 3.5, followed by 4E killed my interest in the entire D&D line. Ah, but that's another story.

I still toy with the idea of running a very lean, bare minimum 3E rulebook-based campaign some time in the future. But it's not a likely future.

D&D 30day Challenge: Day02 - Favorite Playable Race

Halflings.

I never really got to play them, as my original gaming group in the U.S. was very anti-halfling and anti-elf (though they tolerated half-elves). But as I mentioned in my old post, "Halflings are hard-core!", the Jeff Dee halfling was my inspiration for a fun playable race -- certainly not the singing and dancing hobbits of LOTR (though I enjoyed their stories, mind you). I wanted the lean, tough, dangerous halflings that I saw on the early modules.

I even tried to rebuild the halflings of old in 3E, though it ran counter to the 'iconic' Halfling Thief there. Perhaps I shall do a tour of halflings in all the OSR books that I own (plus 3E, not 3.5) to review how they've changed over the years.

Perhaps we should encourage shifting away from the old naming conventions, to reflect a different kind of nature to this race -- names that evoke awe and fear!

Kill that orc, Godzilla Tyson! For the glory of the Shire!

D&D 30day Challenge: Day01 - How I Got Started

Here's my first post for the D&D 30 day challenge. Interestingly enough, I've already written about this before, in this post about my early gaming years.

I'll just post some of the highlights:

I bought a module first, because I didn't know any better

I was a young boy studying Karate at a friend's house and encountered them playing a game that I would later discover was AD&D (after much wheedling and whining). Since this was the Philippines during the 70s, I faced three obstacles: availability of the source material, occasional "news stories" on the 700 Club telling me and my family how demonic it was, and a lack of understanding about the actual concept of RPGs!

I didn't read it closely enough, and probably wouldn't have understood why you needed to buy another rules set to use this so-called module anyway. All I saw was the "introductory module" bought, and the cool Jeff Dee art, and I was hooked.

Yes, that was T1 -- The Village of Hommlet.

You mean Advanced doesn't come after Basic and Expert?

My first attempt at gaming was therefore stymied by a lack of a ruleset, but I set about rectifying that by trying to find the Dungeons & Dragons rules that I could use to play this module -- 

-- But I bought these (Basic & Expert D&D boxed sets with the Erol Otus covers) instead. Bummer.

Don't get me wrong, I loved this ruleset. Even today, I'm impressed by the organization, the layout and the art (though I may be biased by nostalgia) and how it all pulled together to draw me into this other fantasy realm and communicated very clearly how that could be done. And the list of books in the back sent me on a hunting frenzy at the local bookstores.

Unfortunately, I was of the mind that you needed the AD&D ruleset to use an AD&D module, so I was a bit perturbed. Thank goodness for the Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread modules that came in these boxed sets.

A couple of years later, I did eventually pick up the AD&D ruleset and while I was relieved to finally lay my hands on the proper set of rules to use my modules with, I must say that this rulebook did a better job in communicating the 'otherworldliness' and sense of wonder in a more consistent manner. AD&D had too many in-jokes and 'break the fourth wall' humor to sustain that epic feel -- though it did exceed the D&D B/X rulesets in key areas (the "Paladin in Hell" image comes to mind). This was my go-to ruleset for that "sense of wonder" fix.

And that's how I got started. I never actually got to play in a game of D&D until I was in the U.S. of A, however, with regular AD&D group at the Beresford Rec Center in San Mateo. But that's another story.

D&D 30 Day Challenge - Intriguing

I saw this on Tim Brannan's blog, and I decided to take it on. Primarily because the questions themselves triggered many memories of joy playing this oldest of games in my repertoire.

What say you, blogosphere? Does it trigger the same things with you? If so, you may wish to share with the rest of us.

Solo Play: Memories of Game Books -- Part I

When someone mentions solo play -- not RPG play where there's a GM and one player, but an RPG played by one player and some module or book only -- I immediately think of three things: the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Lone Wolf, and some old D&D modules by TSR.

But I must admit that the first one that comes to mind is the Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone -- the version before it become #1 in the Fantasy Fighting Gamebook series.

Just remove the "25th
Anniversary Edition" tag
and this is pretty much the
cover of the book that my
late grandmother bought
for me many, many years ago

I think the reason that this really worked for me and hooked me is the cover. It was very different from nearly all the covers beside it, and when I looked closer, it said somewhere on the cover or in the book or on the back cover: "Part story, part game, this is a book in which YOU become the hero!"

Because I'd been unable, at that point in my young life, to actually play D&D with anyone other than my sister (and I didn't quite get the rules either), this was a fascinating opportunity for me.

I remember that the combination of the simple rules, the occasional illustrations, and the encouragement to map the place really helped reinforce that feel of playing in a dungeon game by myself. Puzzles, traps, and strange monsters and room were all part of the wonder.

The fact that I died quite a lot before finishing also helped with the re-play value.

I clearly remember getting my classmates hooked on this same series of books back in high school, and we all compared maps and strategies until people started solving them on their own -- and they all returned to Apple computer games.

When more gamebooks in this series started to appear, I was overjoyed and picked them up right away. Though a bit disappointed that I didn't get to bring my gear and character over from the prior books, I was happy to remain in that space for a time.

Until Lone Wolf and the Magnamund-set series came about, but that's another story.

Nostalgia: The Fuzion Years

There was a time that I was a Fuzion fanatic. Did I have issues with the system? Like many people, yes. But I liked it because: (a) it was the child of two favorite systems -- HERO and Interlock; (b) it had some okay settings for it like Champions: The New Millenium and great anime properties like Armored Trooper: Votoms, Bubblegum Crisis, and Dragon Ball Z; (c) it taught me a bit about how the systems I was into at the time (HERO, Interlock, D20) were actually very closely related, resolution mechanic-wise.

I snapped up almost every Fuzion book I could get my hands on in Asia.

Also, there was the online community that came up with their own Fuzion powered material, like the Atomik Fuzion series of PDFs, and the fan-made Record of Lodoss Wars RPG, and of course the Lightspeed RPG that I've posted about as a kitchen sink setting in prior posts.

I'd hoped that Fuzion would catch on, and that the bits that annoyed me about the system (like the weird costing problems when dealing with Mekton-style gear creation vs. Hero-style suit creation) would be overshadowed by other strengths (collapsible stats and skills, a smaller statblock foot print for NPCs, an open-ended power scale, etc.) but it was not to be.

Nostalgia: Skyrealms of Jorune

My earliest encounters of Skyrealms of Jorune were ads in Dragon Magazine. The art was interesting -- it had a depth and a weight and was rendered in what I could only refer to as a classical manner.

The alien and human races were interesting to me, primarily because they seemed to somehow interact well enough with one another in the same world, but felt different enough visually to be different species.

I finally picked up a copy (3rd edition, as shown to the right) at a convention. Dundracon, if I recall correctly.

I really liked the art, the world, and the various races and the cultures presented. There was a sense of flailing for me, however, as though I were trying to figure out what common adventures might be like in that world.

These days, I'd put together a campaign that would mix storyline with random encounters (and random plotlines) to mess with the party of PCs seeking citizenship.

I don't remember much about the system, except that I did like the roll of the location of the opening for your attack -- but I did remember sort of flipping frantically through the book to find weapon stats, then the combat progression, and how the muadras worked.

Maybe it's time to read through it again.

Irradiated Roadways: Gears, Gas, and Guns

That there's a sweet ride, Max.

When Car Wars came to my attention (the little plastic boxed set of Car Wars), I immediately latched onto it as a game. It not only called to mind the Mad Max movies I'd seen back in the Philippines and in the U.S., it also reminded me of trucking TV shows and movies like B.J. and the Bear and Convoy.

I suppose it also fed that a need that was also satisfied later by Champions and other Hero System games -- the game within a game of building and optimizing your character (or car, as it were). But at the time, it felt like you were stepping into a bad, but not Mad Max horrible, setting where highway car battles and arena autoduels were a regular occurrence.

Subsequent helpings of post-holocaust fare, like The Road Warrior and Damnation Alley and even comics like Tim Truman's Dragon Chiang further expanded this image of a desolate American landscape (yeah, I know Mad Max is supposed to be in Australia) with wandering heroes and villains that had showdowns in truckstops and gas stations and on the road against bandits, mutants, and raiders.

Chi-Comm trucker Dragon
Chiang gets ready for
the dangers of the Road.

I never played in a campaign, though. All that was the backstory in my mind, but the actual games involved car vs. car combat. I know about the Hero + Car Wars and the GURPS + Car Wars RPGs that were created, but it was never a thing for me. The experiences I had were exclusively arena battles and highway autoduels.

Now that I'm older, is there an appeal for that kind of thing to me? The post-holocaust landscape now seems to want mutants and zombies and survivalists, and most certainly a mixing in of bands of survivors and communities struggling  to carve out civilization once more. Convoys, carrying precious supplies of food, weapons, medicine and technology to isolated, but key locations would certainly be part of that campaign. And arena combats and highway autoduels, of course.

I know that an RPG called Atomic Highway by Colin Chapman is freely available on RPGNow, so maybe I'll pick it up and see if it sparks something.

Nostalgia: Dice, Character Binders, and Rulebooks

Back in my early gaming days, there was a default gaming kit that I always brought with me in my backpack. They consisted of the following:


The Dice Bag

Still a gaming staple -- that seems to be eroding in importance given the various digital options available for random number generation -- of the gaming culture, I used to have a dice bag. Or a dice tupperware. Or a dice cigarette tin.

It was important to bring your own set of dice, and important to keep track of your dice (because of dice thieves in the meta-group at the recreation center I used to frequent, and at conventions).

I used to have favorites among my dice. A small set of three black & red d6s for all my attack and skill rolls. A large set of blue & white d6s for all my damage rolls. A red & blue flecked D20 for any D&D combat rolls. And so on.

The Character Binders

I remember having two character binders. One was a 3-ring binder with blank paper and plastic sleeves. Every single character I'd built was kept in these things: one-shot convention characters, long-running characters, just-in-case characters for RPGs that I really like but I've never had a chance to play.

The Rulebooks

This really depends on the games I plan on playing that night or that convention. Most nights it was HERO, so that meant the relevant rulebooks and sourcebooks. Other times, it would be Call of Cthulhu, or Rifts, or even the Rules Cyclopedia + the Gazetteers during that brief stint that I ran my Karameikos-based campaign.

Earlier on, it was the WEG Star Wars RPG set of books, or the Paranoia boxed set, or the set of little Traveller rulebooks -- or the AD&D triad (PHB, DMG, MM).


These days, I don't bring most of these things anymore. Most games are so rules light, someone else's dice will do, and the character sheets are online, along with the PDFs of the rules.

Flashback: F.R.E.E.Lancers as a Campaign Frame

One of my favorite 'setting' books / sourcebooks was one that I never used in its native ruleset.

It was the FREELancers sourcebook for the RPG Top Secret / S.I. While I wasn't that taken with all the characters' abilities, I was fascinated by the dynamics of the team -- it reminded me of the X-men and the New Teen Titans with all its potential for drama and camaraderie.

In particular, I liked the corporate structure of the F.R.E.E.Lancers as a security / special operations / paramilitary organization with specialized talents and skills. I particularly liked the rules on compensation, and the character of operations. I took it almost verbatim and stuck it into one of my local Champions campaigns as a local franchise of the global organization.

There's something nice about having ready NPCs that are interesting to bounce the characters off, and having a ready corporate structure (and Titan Teams to help rescue players when they occasionally get really close to dying) that tries to straddle the line between helping people and paying the rent.

I also patterned my campaign after a little known DC comic series known as The Power Company -- another corporation that was essentially metahumans for hire, with the various members treated like 'partners' or associates in a law firm.

It was an interesting mix of personalities as well: an authentic superheroic-leaning field leader who joined primarily so she could pay for the upkeep of her powered armor suit (not everyone is Tony Stark), a very mercenary independent-minded Paul Kirk clone, a really strong guy, a spell-casting celebrity, a stuntman, and a mysterious blue-skinned member, plus Josiah Power -- their boss and owner of the company.

I like how their motivations and priorities rubbed off on one another, and -- in true superteam fashion -- how their backstories and life choices end up affecting everyone else in the team. It's too bad it didn't prosper in the Image era, even with Busiek writing and Grummett / Grawbadger on art duties.

Flashback: The Demi-plane of Dread in Mystara

In the 90s, I got a strange hankering to run D&D using the D&D Cyclopedia and setting all my adventures in the Mystara setting. In fact, this was really where my love and awareness of Mystara as a setting really began.

Strangely enough, my campaign -- based in Karameikos -- began to incorporate elements of Ravenloft into it. Or perhaps not so strange. The native Traladarans of Karaemeikos had a culture that echoed Transylvania and nearby lands -- perhaps having the Vistani (a gypsy equivalent in Ravenloft) as a known but feared sight in Karameikos wasn't that far-fetched?

In any case, while still early on in my campaign, I began incorporating modules like RQ1 - Night of the Walking Dead to my players. I remember this being a watershed event for me, because it was one of the times that I was able to, as a GM, lie in character to my players. The secondary villain was able to bluster like an idiot and a fool well enough to misdirect the two biggest fighters away from the party (they had horses) before his ruse was revealed by a sharp-eyed and sharp-witted player. It was a tough battle, but the non-fighters were able to prevail over him, and rejoin the muscle of the party for a showdown with the big bad.

It was also here that I began cultivating a taste for horror in my D&D adventures, and began plundering from Ravenloft and Cthulhu and Chill for horror elements to inject into my own adventures.

I'm not necessarily talking about slavering, red-eyed monsters. I'm talking about the gothic horror feel, about shadowy fields, and mist-choked forests. I'm talking about doors that suddenly nudge open with a creak, or shapes in windows that suggest lurking malevolence. I'm talking about the loss of light in a dark dungeon, as something large takes measured, metal-tinged steps ever closer to your hiding spot.

And when the fight breaks out, players are relieved to be able to finally face something and do something to end that building horror.

Time Shock: Music, TV Shows, RPGs

I'm not a grognard. I haven't been around gaming since the beginning, even if part of my gaming pedigree touched on the Moldvay D&D Basic & Expert Sets and the 1st Edition AD&D modules.

But I am getting a little whiff of that generational gap that creeps in when talking to younger folks. You know, the ones who think that a remake of a song is the original version, or that a movie that they saw on HBO only came out a few years back instead of a couple of decades back.

New gamers that I meet -- excited about RPGs and settings -- begin talking about something I think I know, like Forgotten Realms, and then veer away from it by mentioning D&D 4E.

D&D 4E is a game I only skimmed and then avoided. It wasn't what I was looking for in D&D. I did like the initial work in D&D 3E -- I liked a manageable list of Feats, I liked the options for multiclassing, the rationalization for saving throws, and so on. I was a bit perturbed by things like attacks of opportunity, but I rode along for a while. But then it started to get larger and larger in terms of rules.

This was different from what I was used to -- most of the books that came out for D&D were settings and adventures and that kind of thing. Now the rules expanded to eclipse even HERO at the time, and the streamlining in certain areas was now overwhelmed. I mean, I might as well just go back to HERO because, while there is a fair amount of ruleweight to learn, it's pretty much the same core rules all throughout, just different applications here and there -- a steady block of rules instead of a constantly growing one.

And then they shifted to 3.5, which totally pissed me off and alienated me. I stuck to 3E, but then drifted off to other games.

But for the new generation, 4E is it. It's the new thing, its the current thing, it's the gateway into the hobby and I don't want to kill their enthusiasm -- but I can't share there exact same passion for RPGs because our preferences and landmarks and experiences are vastly different. I end up being this aloof 'game veteran' who tries to change the topic because he doesn't want to be rude and belittle someone's current passion, but risks doing that very thing by changing the topic.

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?