Games You've Always Wanted to Play In, But Never Got the Chance

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There are several games that I love but want to get the opportunity to play in not run. Blades in the Dark is probably at the top of that list.

But no one I know ever seems to want to run anything that isn't D&D or a D&D derivative other than me.
 
I would love to play in a Savage Worlds game. Don't even care about the setting, I just want to play in the system. I'm my group's forever-GM.
 
I'd love to play a strange, creepy navigator in a rogue trader campaign. I can't stand the system but I love the lore.
 
I usually end up GMing, so pretty much all of them.

Games I'd love to play:

Alma Mater

Albedo 1st or 2nd edition.

Never been able to find players for either one, and not sure I'd want to play with them if I did lol.

A couple more I'd like to try but have NO interest in trying to run:

Continuum

Immortal: The Invisible War
 
The list is a lot shorter than it used to be. Right now, the games I've always wanted to take for a spin (either running or playing) would be:

Unknown Armies
Over the Edge
A few of the newer folk horror RPGs.
 
I can't say I've never gotten the chance to play Paranoia, because I do play one-shots of it at a con I attend in February. But I would like to play it more than once a year!
 
A Transformers role-playing game. It still baffles me that Hasbro hasn't whipped WotC into writing one after all these years.

A 'before all the bullshit' Forgotten Realms campaign, using just the early 1st Edition stuff.

Beyond the Supernatural. I own it (three. damn. times.) and I have been the referee, but never had the chance to play it. The same goes for Palladium Books' other horror games, but I've wanted to play Beyond the Supernatural for a lot longer than Dead Reign or Nightbane.

A golden age superhero game. Ideally on Marvel SAGA or Heroes Unlimited, but any system would do.
 
A Transformers role-playing game. It still baffles me that Hasbro hasn't whipped WotC into writing one after all these years.

A 'before all the bullshit' Forgotten Realms campaign, using just the early 1st Edition stuff.

Beyond the Supernatural. I own it (three. damn. times.) and I have been the referee, but never had the chance to play it. The same goes for Palladium Books' other horror games, but I've wanted to play Beyond the Supernatural for a lot longer than Dead Reign or Nightbane.

A golden age superhero game. Ideally on Marvel SAGA or Heroes Unlimited, but any system would do.

A list after my own heart!

Not a Transformers RPG, but the White Star Companion has a Transformer character class (“Novomachina”). Optimus Prime teaming up with Luke Skywalker? Don’t mind if I do.

“Before the bullshit” FR is the only FR I’d even consider running.

BtS is a not quite my jam — I think the magic system strikes me as remarkably flashy and consequence-free, for a modern-day game, and by Jove did the screw up the 2nd edition — but I too have a favorite “orphan” Palladium RPG: Ninjas & Superspies. (Incidentally, the two would probably work great together. Doesn’t Boxed Nightmares has a sorcerer antagonist who’s also a drug lord?)

And I’ve always been Heroes Unlimited-curious, and if I could get my players to play supers, I‘d chase this ambitious idea for a “generational” supers game, starting in the Golden Age.
 
A list after my own heart!

Not a Transformers RPG, but the White Star Companion has a Transformer character class (“Novomachina”). Optimus Prime teaming up with Luke Skywalker? Don’t mind if I do.

“Before the bullshit” FR is the only FR I’d even consider running.

BtS is a not quite my jam — I think the magic system strikes me as remarkably flashy and consequence-free, for a modern-day game, and by Jove did the screw up the 2nd edition — but I too have a favorite “orphan” Palladium RPG: Ninjas & Superspies. (Incidentally, the two would probably work great together. Doesn’t Boxed Nightmares has a sorcerer antagonist who’s also a drug lord?)

And I’ve always been Heroes Unlimited-curious, and if I could get my players to play supers, I‘d chase this ambitious idea for a “generational” supers game, starting in the Golden Age.

Yes, I have White Star, and the Transformers fanboy in my group did indeed pick a Novomachina, but it isn't quite the same thing.

BtS 2nd Edition's proximity equals power rules are a pretty good way to prevent psychics from going nuts with their abilities, but the lack of support for mages has always hurt the game. I haven't looked at Boxed Nightmares in years, I couldn't say about the drug lord magician.

Is N&SS an orphan game? It got Mystic China from Wujcek after all. I have a love for N&SS too, but I did get to play it, so couldn't put it in this list.

Heroes Unlimited gets a lot of flak, but I like most of it. There are a few silly rules, but if you snag any of the Powers Unlimited supplements it really does open up into being nearly 'unlimited'. When my entire group fell in love with the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, it was all the excuse I needed to break out Aliens Unlimited and the Galaxy Guide, which are both fantastic books.
 
Here are my top 5:
  • Symbaroum
  • Warbirds
  • Star Trek (any version but in TOS)
  • ANY superhero game (I've only run them)
  • Boot Hill
Edit: Crap, I forgot Space 1889 or John Carter.
 
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Would be interested in Aquelarre
I read a review of the 1st edition in the Dragon back in the day. The reviewer had been tasked with reading it (in Spanish) to decide if was worthy of translation and publication in English. He said it was "too dark" or something and so it never happened. Then Vampire the Masquerade came out like a year or two later and, well, we know how that worked out.

I hope the reviewer gave himself a nice kick for being a short-sighted dipshit. I really wanted to play that game. Did it ever get an English translation?
 
I read a review of the 1st edition in the Dragon back in the day. The reviewer had been tasked with reading it (in Spanish) to decide if was worthy of translation and publication in English. He said it was "too dark" or something and so it never happened. Then Vampire the Masquerade came out like a year or two later and, well, we know how that worked out.

I hope the reviewer gave himself a nice kick for being a short-sighted dipshit. I really wanted to play that game. Did it ever get an English translation?
The physical books for the Kickstarter were shipping in October, after that the digital stuff would be uploaded to Backerkit. Hopefully this means available retail soon.
 
I read a review of the 1st edition in the Dragon back in the day. The reviewer had been tasked with reading it (in Spanish) to decide if was worthy of translation and publication in English. He said it was "too dark" or something and so it never happened. Then Vampire the Masquerade came out like a year or two later and, well, we know how that worked out.

I hope the reviewer gave himself a nice kick for being a short-sighted dipshit. I really wanted to play that game. Did it ever get an English translation?
As a backer, I only just recieved my English copy of Aquelarre just under a month ago after a very loooong wait. It may take a while to get to non-backers. It is gorgeous and atmospheric, with a percentile based system that is entirely workable. It is reminiscent of what White Wolf were trying to do with 3rd edition Ars Magica, being a very authentic and dark take on a medieval, magical society. It's more localised (Spanish Peninsular), but it's also better focussed because it's magic (there is actually a chapter called "Ars Magica") is fundamentally based on alchemy-as-believed, rather than trying to shoehorn it into game conventions like the verb and noun magic system or the Houses of Hermes.

I love Ars Magica, but I ultimately believe it works best as a system for original fantasy settings, as it was in it's 1st edition, rather than the complex, real historical world one that it developed into. Aquelarre is just pure a medieval history paradigm, with folklore and judeo/christian-based demonology added. Aquelarre's innovation is it's mechanic for Rationality/Irrationality which shows how much a player can resist magic vs how much the believe in and can use magic.It works well, and is stronger conceptually than Call of Cthulhu's Power/Sanity mechanic because it manages to divorce the two concepts while still maintain a link. I find this problematic in Call of Cthulhu, because both highly rational people and powerful sorcerers are considered to start with high Sanity, because Sanity is based on the POW stat rather than being independent. Aquelarre fixes that.

The bestiary is awesome too.
 
I would love to play in a GURPS game with a GM who knows the system really well. Don't really care about the setting, just want to learn the system. Although, I suppose if we're playing GURPS, we may as well capitalize on it and use a setting that's not easily done in other systems.
 
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There are other games that I've played, but I still feel like I haven't really gotten the full experience... like Traveller. The games I've been in have always felt very constrained... anti-sandbox.
It goes with the culture to some degree. Back in the Jurassic, Marc M wrote something about adventure design breaking down concepts: Hook, Push, Pull, Gimmick, Twist with an implication that you always need something to push the party into the adventure. This, combined with a quasi hard-science aesthetic and embedding law level as an explicit mechanic has fostered a rather railroady approach to adventure design that seems to be quite common amongst Traveller gamers.

Plus, doing sandboxes in a setting where the party can just jump to the next system can be challenging. The world design mechanics provided by the game are fairly quick but don't go much beyond a handful of physical attributes. There's a strong impetus to railroad characters to the worlds and adventures you've actually designed.

Having tackled this issue on a few occasions, doing sandboxes on an interstellar scale isn't a trivial undertaking - at least not sandboxes that can actually be used as such. There's a bit more to it than just filling out hexes with encounter tables and scattering a few dungeons about.

It's not strictly necessary to run Traveller in this way but the mechanics - and culture to some extent - seem to encourage it. At one point I was a major Traveller fanboy but the near-impossibility of finding Traveller DMs who understand this is one of many aspects of my love-hate relationship with the game.
 
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Since I was a kid, I thought the old Inspector Gadget cartoon would make a great RPG setting. I still think that. Lately, I've been thinking that the WEG Ghostbusters rules would be a perfect fit for it.
 
Oooo Metabarons!!! AND D6! Yeah I need some of that action.

I'd do a conversion of it to Marvel Super Heroes too...
 
For me it's more a matter of "Why does everyone always offer up games I have no interest in playing?"* :dead: :tongue:

* Usually this means someone will start with a decent premise or setting and then say "plus magic!" or "and dragons!"**

** You guys all know I'm apparently the one gamer who has pretty much zero interest in fantasy settings or magic added to historical settings.
 
For me it's more a matter of "Why does everyone always offer up games I have no interest in playing?"* :dead: :tongue:

* Usually this means someone will start with a decent premise or setting and then say "plus magic!" or "and dragons!"**

** You guys all know I'm apparently the one gamer who has pretty much zero interest in fantasy settings or magic added to historical settings.
You're not the only one. I've just learned to live with it...in some cases:grin:!
 
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