My Appendix N

D&D had an appendix N, even Runequest had one. They are both excellent lists and I have read many of the books listed on both. Most of them seem to be aimed at people a bit older than myself.

I thought I would do my bit and make my own Appendix N: The Doug List.

Hopefully this will point some people towards forgotten classics, leading to prices going through the roof on eBay, giving me the opportunity to make a killing with my old copies.

Appendix N: The Doug List

Fake Factual

Steven Cadlwell, The Terran Trade Authority books

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terran_Trade_Authority

http://www.khantazi.org/Rec/TTABooks/TTABooks.html

http://www.digitalwaterfalls.co.uk/ttabooks.html

 

RPG Breakout: Mutant Chronicles

Everybody loves mutants. Mutants and guns. Here is a brief summary of the influence a not quite forgotten Scandinavian RPG has had.

Mutant Chronicles RPG

[caption id="attachment_880" align="aligncenter" width="417" caption="Mutant Chronicles RPG (1st Edition)"][/caption]

 Roleplaying Game:

RPG Geek Link: http://rpggeek.com/rpg/513/mutant-chronicles-1st-2nd-editions

Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_Chronicles

"Mutant" is one of the three first seminal Swedish role playing games, together with Drakar och Demoner and Chock.

The original Mutant was based on Basic Roleplaying System and was released in 1984. It was set in a post-apocalyptic future where most of the human race had been eliminated by a disease. The survivors hid away in subterranean enclaves and genetically experimented on humans and animals and sent them up above ground to see if they could survive. A following nuclear war between the enclaves eradicated humanity more thoroughly, technology was forgotten, and the only survivors were these humanoid mutants and humans in cryo-sleep. The country has now broken down into smaller societies, technology has been forgotten and is now on pre-industrial revolution level. But there are still the "forbidden zones", where lost technology still lies untouched but where the radiation levels are lethal.

"Mutant 2" was released as an expansion in 1986, and changed the die rolling rules to reflect those of Drakar och Demoner Expert, where the designers left Basic Roleplay and changed into a system based on icosahedric dice.

In 1989, "Mutant 2089", or "Nya Mutant" was released. Not only were there several rules changes, inspired by the cyberpunk wave, the setting was changed from a pre-industrial revolution technology society to large mega-cities, controlled by huge corporations. Designers suggested that the old Mutant setting existed in between these cities.

Mutant R.Y.M.D. in 1992 took another step from the basic setting and was more a space-travel science fiction roleplaying game. The ruleset was very similar to Mutant 2089 and the settings were officially compatible. This version was short-lived, though, as it soon was transformed into Mutant Chronicles.

Mutant Chronicles further enhanced the setting of Mutant RYMD, but added creatures and other ideas from the successful horror RPG "Kult".

In 2002, when Target Games has ceased to exist, another publisher called Järnringen published "Mutant - Undergångens arvtagare" (The Inheritors of the Apocalypse). With this, they reverted back into the first setting with a pre-industrial revolution setting populated by mutants and mutated animals. "Järnringen" (Iron Ring) was also the title of one of the very first scenario modules for the first "Mutant".

Järnringen ceased publication of "Mutant - undergångens arvtagare" in 2008, while continuing with their space travel RPG "Coriolis". (from RPG Geek)

The Other Appendix N (Runequest)

[POST STILL IN PRODUCTION]

I know this has been done already. AD&D had an appendix N that listed sources of inspiration for Gary Gygax. Runequest (at least my second edition) had the same. I thought fabulous I will post a copy of that and it will be an easy post.

[caption id="attachment_823" align="aligncenter" width="180" caption="The Other Appendix N"][/caption]

Only to find it had been done.

I am going to do it anyway and add links. Woo! I have just copied and pasted the text from the above blog post. I will check to make sure it tallies with mine. Any errors are mine alone.

RPG: Retro Clones, Interpretations

While I was writing my Return to RPGs series of posts I kept thinking about my old D&D gaming sessions through rose tinted memory filters. I have been looking for something to fill in the D&D shaped hole in my mind.

The D&D I originally played was the Basic game 1983 Revision red Box edition and it's following rule books (expert, companion etc). These books I now know tend to be referred to as Dungeons and Dragons BECMI as edited by Frank Mentzer. This was evidently a follow up to the Dungeon and Dragons B/X rule books by Tom Moldvay and David Cook.

Way back then I did have a look at 2 Edtion AD&D but felt there were too many tables and too much fluff :) Trying 4th Edtion AD&D was a bit of a shock. It is a fun game but I have missed far too many generations of the game to work out quite what has happened. I still spend time trying to work out my THAC0#. I saw mention of the huge change between 4th Edtion and 3.5 so had a look at Pathfinder.

Pathfinder is really nice. I like it a lot. But it still has far too many bells and whistles.

For me the best and purest system was the Mentzer D&D with the rules system from the Gazetteers.

Turned out on the wonderful world of the internet I was not the only person to have this itch to scratch. There was a whole world of stuff!

It turns out game rules can not be copyrighted:

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

At least in the U.S. I believe it is similar in Europe. This means  some enterprising people with far too much wonderful time on their hands have recreated or reinterpreted old gaming systems. They are known by the collective title of retro clones. All seem to be very careful about avoiding naming the system they are inspired by and only concentrating on no longer commercially exploited versions. A few minutes of Googling will find much more complete lists than the one that follows. Most of the retro clones have made slight or significant tweaks to the core rules, often these are the more popular house rules that people used or additions from published supplements. Sometimes ideas from later versions are backported.

Best of all most of these games are free to download with print versions on offer from Print on Demand stores.

Here is my rough list of what I found and liked the look of..

Metacreator: How To Create A New Savage World

I am not a rules lawyer :) Nor am I an expert with the Metacreator software (link), something I primarily got to help me make characters quickly and easily. Something it excels at. My experience is limited to using it with Savage Worlds (link).

Eventually I got to the stage where I needed to expand what was available. In the old days I would have just used endless reams of paper stolen from school. Today W.H. Smiths take a dim view of grown adults, probably kids too, nicking endless pads of paper. I need to create a new world. The help system is excellent:



But it did take me some time to get my head round it. Here is my attempt to help others as slow as myself. For the purposes of this example the world I create will be based on my unused campaign idea "The Hollow Apocalypse" when the entities lurking in the Hollow Earth invade the surface in the early twentieth century.

Return to RPGs V: Optimistically Seeking Nerdvana

Real life I took over.

Despite my journeys up and down the country I never met anyone who said to me:

"Yes Doug I would like to hear more exciting tales about when you used to play roleplaying games. D&D sounds like so much fun."

Playing About On The Internet

For some reason I never really used the Internet for RPGs. Most searches were limited to searching for solutions for Jap RPGs. By this time I had given up all hope of finding a gaming group in the backwoods of Scotland. Also many of the gaming clubs with presences on the internet seemed to be connected to Universities. Students in marge numbers did not appeal.

Return to RPGs IV: My Love For Sheena Easton's Tail.

Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

Well not really. What do we know about Sheena? Wikipediarrrr!

Sheena Easton (born Sheena Shirley Orr; 27 April 1959) is a Scottish recording artist. Easton became famous for being the focus of an episode in the British television programme The Big Time, which recorded her attempts to gain a record contract and her eventual signing with EMI Records. Easton rose to fame in the early 1980s with the pop hits "9 to 5" — known as "Morning Train" in the United States — and "For Your Eyes Only", "Strut", "Sugar Walls", "U Got the Look" with Prince, and "The Lover in Me". She went on to become successful in the United States and Japan, working with prominent vocalists and producers, such as Prince, Christopher Neil, Kenny Rogers, Luis Miguel, L.A. Reid and Babyface, and Nile Rodgers.

No. That is not what she is famous for.

This is what she is famous for;

Return To RPGs I: Back To Mystara

Currently I am hurtling toward 40 years old with all the grace of an enraged warthog. Time for a mid-life crisis I thought, get a fancy red car and a younger wife. The problem being I am unable to drive, due to not knowing how,  and already have a younger wife.

Then I realised I was already having my crisis and it started over a year ago. I was returning to my youth by rediscovering the joy of roleplaying games. Something I had been thinking about for years.  I thought back to my first RPG and came up with this:

[caption id="attachment_544" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="D&D Basic Set (Source The Acaeum http://www.acaeum.com/)"][/caption]

Then I thought. No. That's not right it goes back further. Join me if you like. Or not.

Zombiaki 2: Attack On Moscow Review [BGG]

Zombiaki 2: Attack On Moscow Review

This is my first review for BGG and is based on about four plays of the game with my better half.

Introduction

Zombiaki II Attack On Moscow is a two player strategic card game between zombies and humans. One player plays the defending humans the other the attacking zombies. The human player wins by stopping the zombies from overcoming their defences. The zombie player wins by overcoming the human defences before dawn.

Metacreator and Savage Worlds

I purchased Savage Worlds recently and quite like the look of it. More information can be found here.

The Savage Worlds Game System

Essentially it a a universal rules system for RPGs. Looks pretty good and I intend to test it with a bunch of total newbies in a week or two.

The problem is that I have been out of the way of running RPGs for almost fifteen odd years. I am pretty rusty and the Savage Worlds system while fairly simple is new to me.

I have a few plot ideas but thought it would be handy if I could find something to make my life a bit easier, especially with making up some pre-generated  characters. Using the power of Google™ I discovered Metacreator.

Metacreator

Put the spark of life into your characters with Metacreator, the customizable application for creating roleplaying game characters. The website was pretty stark and not very welcoming but as I had seen the software recommended in a forum somewhere and had some credit in my Paypal account I thought I would try it. The download link came through in seconds and the software seems to be working fine on my Windows 7 box. Running under Wine on Linux did not seem to be so successful. Also seems to work well on my Windows XP netbook.

Here is my brief introduction to Metacreator. Which will also serve as my learning experience for using Windows Live Writer.