Forgotten RPGs

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Wow, that's just about the worst thing one can say about a game system as far as I'm concerned.
It is a kinda vicious thing to say, yes. But it's true if my memory serves me. I recall it being really, really, really coarse and granular at character definition (making it hard to distinguish between characters over time) while being super-fiddly in some of the game mechanics.
 
It wasn’t fiddly. A bit slapped together, with no consistent core mechanic, but par for the era.

comparison to Powers &Perils is way off if you’re saying they were similar levels of complexity.
 
Brett: I'll race you to a review of XID Creative's Providence game! It's not entirely dissimilar to Neverwhere except that the XID peeps were really nice guys who poured a lot of heart and soul into this game that's bizarrely fringe.
 
It wasn’t fiddly. A bit slapped together, with no consistent core mechanic, but par for the era.
I just remember the procedures were too fiddly given how coarse the scales were.
comparison to Powers &Perils is way off if you’re saying they were similar levels of complexity.
Oh HELL no! P&P was a ludicrous game. I only mentioned it in passing as one of AH's three RPGs, along with Runequest 3 and Lords of Creation (not including the VG division as genuine AH).

If someone kidnapped my SO and told me the condition of healthy return was to play a session of Powers & Perils, I'd start arranging the funeral. (And he would understand why!) If they told me to play Lords of Creation instead, I'd still have an SO.
 
Brett: I'll race you to a review of XID Creative's Providence game! It's not entirely dissimilar to Neverwhere except that the XID peeps were really nice guys who poured a lot of heart and soul into this game that's bizarrely fringe.
I've got it somewhere. I don't remember much about it. You're on.
 
Brett: I'll race you to a review of XID Creative's Providence game! It's not entirely dissimilar to Neverwhere except that the XID peeps were really nice guys who poured a lot of heart and soul into this game that's bizarrely fringe.
......
Not sure if that's a dig since I ADORE Providence's setting and would kill to use a better ruleset to utilize the setting again, but I've no idea where/who has the rights currently. Last I heard they were in a creator's hands under license (Pharos Press I think, Dave Bolack?) I don't remember. I'd love to get it though, if I had any money. Good luck on the reviews!
 
......
Not sure if that's a dig since I ADORE Providence's setting and would kill to use a better ruleset to utilize the setting again, but I've no idea where/who has the rights currently. Last I heard they were in a creator's hands under license (Pharos Press I think, Dave Bolack?) I don't remember. I'd love to get it though, if I had any money. Good luck on the reviews!
It's a half-dig. The setting is splendid (albeit very fringe in appeal), but the game system is ... HERO-level fiddly and time consuming. I'd love to see a Providence 2e with a more streamlined game at its core (perhaps one of Brett's house systems?) because that setting is worth keeping going.
 
Never played Lords of Creation, but that sounds a bit like how I'd described the much beloved Jorune, which was published within a year of LoC. Anyone remember that?
I owned it briefly, but never got to play. IIRC, I thought that was a good bit fiddlier than LoC.

Love the cover art though. Man, that one really did feel special just from the art alone. Weirdly reminded me a tiny bit of Tekumel, in the sense that both were sci-fi but on an "apocalypsed" outpost, that then becomes Sci-Fantasy with leftover SF tech as the big treasures instead of magic stuff.

Seemed a much less terrible place than Tekumel.
 
If someone kidnapped my SO and told me the condition of healthy return was to play a session of Powers & Perils, I'd start arranging the funeral. (And he would understand why!) If they told me to play Lords of Creation instead, I'd still have an SO.
Now, how many of us have wished for a world where something like this could occur?
 
It's a half-dig. The setting is splendid (albeit very fringe in appeal), but the game system is ... HERO-level fiddly and time consuming. I'd love to see a Providence 2e with a more streamlined game at its core (perhaps one of Brett's house systems?) because that setting is worth keeping going.
Agreed, and crunchy/fiddly in ways it didn't need to be. I'd probably use Hearts & Souls, since the conceit is a superhero setting--but with the fantasy elements the system used in High Valor might give a lot more details, and flexibility (a friend has named it the FEAT system.)
 
Never played Lords of Creation, but that sounds a bit like how I'd described the much beloved Jorune, which was published within a year of LoC. Anyone remember that?
I remember Jorune for sure. Great setting. Needed to be redone in a better core game. (That's my opinion of a lot of games it turns out.)
 
Agreed, and crunchy/fiddly in ways it didn't need to be. I'd probably use Hearts & Souls, since the conceit is a superhero setting--but with the fantasy elements the system used in High Valor might give a lot more details, and flexibility (a friend has named it the FEAT system.)
I'd lean in the direction of Universal Heroes (the core behind Brett's Supergame 3e) with borrowings maybe from his Bloodshadows for the magics.
 
Never played Lords of Creation, but that sounds a bit like how I'd described the much beloved Jorune, which was published within a year of LoC. Anyone remember that?
I owned Jorune for a while. I disposed of it in my great reduction as a setting that seemed even weirder than Tekumel or Talislant without the depth of support (fan or official). Sometimes I regret getting rid of it (it was just a single boxed set after all), but what the heck would I ever do with it?
 
I was sold as soon as I saw the artwork. Is there a pdf or is this lost forever?
I'm afraid that it pre-dates PDFs. The only soft versions were the source files, which I think were in MacWrite, MacPaint, and PageMaker. In any case, they were on floppy disks and are now lost.

I had one of my copies of ForeSight and one of my copies of HindSight sliced out of their bindings* and fed through a scanner, so I have image files. But OCR didn't work very well on ForeSight. And I only have permission to make copies for the players in my games.


* and then I got them re-bound in hard covers.
 
I'm afraid that it pre-dates PDFs. The only soft versions were the source files, which I think were in MacWrite, MacPaint, and PageMaker. In any case, they were on floppy disks and are now lost.

I had one of my copies of ForeSight and one of my copies of HindSight sliced out of their bindings* and fed through a scanner, so I have image files. But OCR didn't work very well on ForeSight. And I only have permission to make copies for the players in my games.


* and then I got them re-bound in hard covers.
This is floating around.
1656230497219.png
 
Yes, but it's not much good. Tonio Loewald set out to completely re-design ForeSight, having developed very different ideas about RPG. There's not much left of what I liked. Flick through that file and then compare what you see with my review of ForeSight first edition.
Ugh. So a "jack up the paint job, insert new game, lower the paint job" kind of deal. Pity.

I've also seen something called the "'95 Extended Edition" (or something similar) that was distributed as "shareware" (whatever that means). Is that closer to the one you like?
 
Ugh. So a "jack up the paint job, insert new game, lower the paint job" kind of deal. Pity.

I've also seen something called the "'95 Extended Edition" (or something similar) that was distributed as "shareware" (whatever that means). Is that closer to the one you like?
There was a staple-bound thing called ForeSight Enhanced that Tonio published in 1990, which had some improvements, some changes that I didn't care for, and a lot of stuff left out on the grounds that he didn't use them in his games. But I used a lot of them in mine. So from '90 onwards I used basically first edition with most of the rules out of Enhanced (and a house-ruled version of Enhanced's sequence of actions in combat). ForeSight 95 is about the point where he started to "fix" all the things I originally liked.
 
I owned Jorune for a while. I disposed of it in my great reduction as a setting that seemed even weirder than Tekumel or Talislant without the depth of support (fan or official). Sometimes I regret getting rid of it (it was just a single boxed set after all), but what the heck would I ever do with it?
I suspect Jorune (despite a few of the supplements/modules for it) was a setting that just wasn't really action-adventure oriented enough for its time period.

It felt a bit like toned-down, YA fiction setting more than anything else. Like, it might have been great for a kind of 'travelogue" sci-fantasy where just exploring and meeting weird folks in the setting (and an occasional run in with/avoidance of semi-threatening baddies) were the best uses of it, but big, active, deadly conflict really wasn't.

Really, it probably would have been better written with something like the spirit of (if not mechanics of) something like Beyond the Wall.
 
I remember Jorune for sure. Great setting. Needed to be redone in a better core game. (That's my opinion of a lot of games it turns out.)
I agree both on Jorune and on the urge to tinker with...pretty much everything really. :grin:
 
I agree both on Jorune and on the urge to tinker with...pretty much everything really. :grin:
I think a simpler core system would be awesome, and the game's got a very good YA kind of 'hero's quest' aspect that to earn citizenship you have to do things for others, and that can lead to adventure.
 
Okay I don’t think this one has been mentioned yet. Sorta my white-whale/holy grail game that I’ve been forever been on the hunt to locate.

Cutthroat: The Shadow Wars

View attachment 26265View attachment 26266

Cuthroat have also been a white whale of mine, together with Chevalier. I believe it had two or three published versions?
 
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Another classic RPG of the late 70s, and in a lot of ways ahead of its time was Bushido:

1656454585108.png

This was the 70s, and if I'm reading my pedigree right, this is what inspired TSR to add "nonweapon proficiencies" (aka skills) to the game in Oriental Adventures and the Survival Guides. Even though, the complexity and nuance that Bushido had going on was way past any of that, having a very early take on tasks that let you accumulate incremental progress toward success. I also still adore its take on mass combat... it was from a PC viewpoint. What was important in the battle was what your characters went through and how it contributed to the mass battle.
 
I'm playing in two Bushido play by post games. It's turning out rather interesting though I would not care to repeat the mass battle experience. There really isn't much choice for the PCs, just make a bunch of rolls and see how you do. Fortunately I came out OK with a good dose of On because I managed to escape capture when we lost the battle.
 
I'm playing in two Bushido play by post games. It's turning out rather interesting though I would not care to repeat the mass battle experience. There really isn't much choice for the PCs, just make a bunch of rolls and see how you do. Fortunately I came out OK with a good dose of On because I managed to escape capture when we lost the battle.
Let me rephrase. I adored the ideas behind how they depicted mass combat. Lots of cool ideas in game design going around in those heady days, though often, the execution needed some refinement.
 
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It is a kinda vicious thing to say, yes. But it's true if my memory serves me. I recall it being really, really, really coarse and granular at character definition (making it hard to distinguish between characters over time) while being super-fiddly in some of the game mechanics.

I wasn't so much super-fiddly in mechanics as really, really prone to every damn power in every one of the power sets being a one-off. It was like every character being a D&D sorcerer, probably with every one having entirely different spells. And the weapons ran in the same direction, as did the opponents.
 
It wasn’t fiddly. A bit slapped together, with no consistent core mechanic, but par for the era.

comparison to Powers &Perils is way off if you’re saying they were similar levels of complexity.

Yeah, those two only have the same tendency toward special-casing-you-to-death.
 
There was always Space Quest.

An early space-opera RPG by Paul Hume and George Nyhen, while heavily D&D inspired (classes, levels, level elevating hit points) it had some clever ideas and was kind of colorful; it was also one of the first games I ever saw with an honest-to-gods skill system.Space_Quest,_role-playing_game.jpg
 
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