It doesn't have to cost a thing

I once gathered a selected list of free roleplaying games for a wiki that me and some friends used for various gaming purposes. Because that was in Finnish, I thought I might as well repost the best bits here. What else is there to do while waiting for midnight and Christmas Eve? So, with a full belly, laptop in my lap, and classic rock on the earphones, here we go.

Wushu Open Reloaded has earned the minuscule honor of first mention here. I myself have bought the various Wushu PDFs which have lots of genre-related information, but all you really need to play is in that free wiki. Wushu is my first choice for a truly rules-light system when one is required. It has proven itself in games for both complete novices and experienced roleplayers. Its one driving idea, the principle of narrative truth, takes some getting used to, but when you do it just sings.

Forgotten Futures bills itself as the scientific romance roleplaying game. The system is very traditional and fairly light. What really shines is the supporting material: each game collection includes a lot of reading from luminaries such as Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and William Hope Hodgson.

Fudge is a rules-light, do-it-yourself game that has been around for a long time. The Nags Society Worldbook is a free example of a Fudge campaign world. Fate is based on Fudge. Its newest variant is used in Spirit of the Century, which happens to have a free SRD available for your perusal.

Risus is by default a comedy game, but it's also worth looking at for more serious purposes if you're looking for an ultralight system.

Powergame is a superhero RPG I designed myself. Some people still claim to like it. It is available in English, Hebrew, French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Moving on to more commercial stuff, Eden Studios's has made WitchCraft free. The game uses their proprietary Unisystem, which also powers Armageddon, Conspiracy X, and, in a lighter form, Buffy, Angel, and Army of Darkness. The latter is called Cinematic Unisystem and it is my favorite of the two variants. Happily, you can get a free look at it by checking out the Buffy roleplaying page of the BBC - yes, that BBC.

Ars Magica 4th edition and Tri-Stat dX are also available for zero bucks, as long as you register to the store.

There are many others, of course. But this should get a person started. Now, it's past midnight, the Christmas Eve has arrived, and that Meat Loaf song (Paradise by the Dashboard Light) is finally winding down, so I might finish up as well.

Teen drama goes to eleven

We had a character creation meeting for that upcoming Buffy game this Saturday. If it was any indication, the campaign is going to be a hoot and then some. It was so nice to focus on things that usually get a short shrift in the games I play or run, such as:

• What's my social status in high school?
• Am I seeing anyone and how serious it is?
• Are my parents and siblings cool or not?

I ended up with a 16-year-old son of black Haitian immigrants called Wilbert "Will" Price-Mars. He's a nerd, meaning he's smart and good at most school subjects but hasn't got that many friends. He's also a slightly paranoid conspiracy nut and a pretty good hacker. His dead grandmother was a famous Haitian Vodou Mambo from whom Will inherited "the sight" - the ability to see magic and supernatural things. He's got a big brother, Vincent (another PC), who is not so good with the bookish stuff, but who is the captain of the basketball team and who's done all kinds of juvenile crimes without getting caught yet. Will helps him to pass the grades and Vincent kicks the ass of any bully who messes with his brother. Naturally, Vincent is a handsome and popular guy.

Will has also got a girlfriend, a fellow good pupil who is an ambitious blond cheerleader and one of the more popular kids in school (also a PC). He's kind of baffled how they have ended up together, but he likes Elianor and vice versa and they are both interested in the occult. What Will does not know is that she is a beginner witch. Finally, we have a latina slayer PC, of whom I don't know much yet. But you can basically multiply Will's history by four to have an idea of how much social and emotional baggage the characters are packing before we run into a single monster. Sounds like Buffy to me!

This character creation session would not have been remotely as fun if we had all done our PCs separately. It would have been more difficult to come up with the connections between characters, and they are very important for a game like this. It also helped that the TV show was familiar to all, so we were on the same wavelength even though people have differing amounts of roleplaying experience (I think the guy playing my brother has only played computer RPGs previously, for example). Cinematic Unisystem is mercifully free of obscure terminology and number-crunching. Almost everything on the character sheet was immediately obvious to everyone.

We'll go live in January. I can only hope that the great atmosphere from the first meeting is carried over. I want to play something where it's more important to worry about calling my girlfriend than about whether it's best to load JHP or FMJ in the trusty old MP5, or about agonizing over the absolute best spell selection for the day (both of which can be fun, too).

Eyes Only

The long-awaited reprint of the Delta Green: Eyes Only chapbooks hit my mailbox this week. A pretty thing it is, too. They've made it a hardcover book which not only contains all three Eyes Only booklets of old, but also brand new material in the form of two scenarios and some supplemental writing. Daniel Solis worked on the layout, so it is the best looking of the three main Delta Green books. Not that the previous two were shabby in any way.

I only owned the Project Rainbow chapbook previously, so most of the old text is new to me, too. I haven't had a chance to properly read any chapter yet, but initial glances promise much. I did manage to read the short Tradecraft section, and it was very useful information for players and Keepers.

My Delta Green campaign is only beginning: the second session of Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, which we are starting with, was supposed to take place this week. Sadly I had to cancel it because a bout of cold took away most of my voice. It might be good for the mood of a horror game if the Keeper sounded like the Cryptkeeper of Tales from the Crypt, but it would not help me get better, I think. So we will return to San Carlos in January. I am not planning an indefinitely long campaign in any case; if we get through 5-6 scenarios I'll be happy. If we can get to the end with, say, half of the original investigators (we have four players) it would be a nice surprise.

Now, if only Detwiller, Glancy et al would find the time to write a proper update of the Delta Green world for the post-9/11, Iraq war era... At least this book is selling well: the thousand-copy print run is almost sold out now, which is very respectable for a small-press RPG product available only via mail order. I would even settle for a PDF supplement. Fingers crossed!

Old dog, new tricks, and so forth

This is my first actual blog entry if one doesn't count some journal entries on Last.fm. So bear with me while I learn.

It recently occurred to me that I haven't done this much roleplaying since the glory days of high school when all the players lived very close to each other and were usually available whenever somebody wanted to GM. I am currently running Delta Green and playing in a 1920s Call of Cthulhu game and a D&D Ptolus campaign. Moreover, I'll be a player in a Buffy game slated to start some time after the New Year and I have a hankering to run another game myself. Too much of a good thing will possibly be a bad thing, but we shall see. Maybe it will be an extraordinarily good thing. :)

About the title: no big story there. I just thought that this, more so than ever before, is a time of gaming in my life. My groups include some old players, some new, and some in-between, which I guess is an ideal mix. And the same applies to the games we play. Call of Cthulhu is an old hat. 3rd edition D&D is quite familiar by now, but CoC has it beaten by more than a decade. Finally, Buffy I have yet to play, even though I have owned the books for several years. Again, the selection couldn't be much better.

Enough rambling for now; time to hit Publish Post and get this show on the road! A small step for me, and even smaller for mankind.