What was the je ne sais quoi that really grabbed you?

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Nobby-W

Nobby-W

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Take your favourite game, movie setting, novel, TV series or comic - or even just something within that medium. What was so cool about it? What resonated with you? What was the je ne sais quoi that really made it?

Put a bit differently, What made it stand out? What was the lightning that the author captured in the bottle?

I see a lot of role playing game material that's just flat and sterile. Compare Palladium's Beyond The Supernatural with Call of Cthulhu, for example, or Runequest's Glorantha with the zillion other fantasy 'verses that just fall flat. Glorantha was an interesting setting that had its own atmosphere and way of doing things. It worked where a legion of heartbreakers failed.

Take a setting or some other property that spoke to you - what was it that did it for you, why do you think it caught on?
 
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The two "lightning in a bottle" game books for me are 1st edition Star Wars D6 and fist edition ICONS. And although they are 30 year apart, I think they share certain features. Neither are perfect or do anything in particular with the setting. What they both do is a focus on just getting you playing and not worrying too much about the detail. They provide just enough structure, inspiration and resources to get you going, but not so much that you stress over getting everything just right. And there is something just very approachable in how these games's presentation. Later editions of these games may be more complete and fix the odd issue, but the kind of lose that "just pick and play" quality in the process.

From my perspective, one of great traps of roleplaying games is the "eyes bigger than you stomach" syndrome. You get these gorgeous books with intricate settings and detailed rules that are great to read but then in actual play it is just too much work. You notice the GM slowing down, cutting corners with the rules or just burning out under the weight of it all.

Some GMs can pull this off. I can't. So I only really get excited by a game which I know I can pull off - and pull under less than ideal circunstances, like when I am tired and unprepared and they players aren't at 100% either.
 
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From a role playing perspective, my two are OD&D and Amber Diceless. OD&D because it was my first and it was so different from anything I had played on the sand table or in a wargame. I think folks now have a hard time remembering what it was like before RPGs and what an amazing experience it was to be able to run my own character in his own story. Other than writing short stories, there was no comparable experience, but RPGs let several of us "write" together. Amber diceless blew me away because the mechanics were so simple and elegant, and it was amazing getting to play in a campaign with Erick Wujcik. Others have tried diceless designs, but nothing has hit me like the original ADRP. And it helped that Zelazny's Amber series are so fun to read.

From a literary perspective it's a little harder because my mood swings around a lot. I was tempted to say Tolkien, but honestly when I first read LotR I'm sure I really didn't appreciate what I was reading. I think my top here would be REH's Conan, Burroughs' Barsoom, and Butcher's Dresden Files. The Conan I got in the 70's was the Ace paperback series, so I didn't get to experience true Howard back then, but there was something about getting to plunder ruins, fight picts, battle evil sorcerers, and Conan really spoke to me. Action adventure for me prior to that was mostly science fiction and they didn't have combat like that. I found Barsoom shortly after Conan and there was something about the "save the princess" storyline that really speaks to me, maybe because I sort-of fancy myself as a John Carter wannabe. JC is pretty oblivious to obvious plot twists waiting to pounce on him, he has this chivalry towards women that I aspire to maintain, and he is a real swashbuckler hero as I would like to be. JC was Luke Skywalker long before Star Wars. As to the Dresden Files, I've enjoyed pulp detective stores like Chandler for years, but when Butcher combined the noir detective with supernatural beasties it really hit a spot in my heart. The Dresden Files is up to something like 16 books and I re-read them all often.
 
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These days I'm rather more jaded and cynical, but at the tender young age of 7 I saw Star Wars for the first time. The things that grabbed me were the swashbuckling and the cool spaceships. X-wings were cool, the Millenium Falcon was cool. Gigantic Imperial star destroyers were cool. The cantina scene was cool, with all the mysterious aliens.

To try and pick out the things that grabbed me:
  • The high adventure storyline and swashbuckling. It was cheesy but I was 7 at the time. Having seen the cut scenes with Biggs (and his cheesy wing commander moustache) I think the film was definitely better without them.
  • I think Lucas did a good job of hinting at a much larger universe (something I also like in Hayao Miyazaki's work). You could see hints of context such as the various alien species and offhand references to things like the Kessel Run.
  • The tech looked the dog's bollocks. Some bits didn't do a lot for me (the speeder, for example) but the spaceships were just the business. I also liked the high tech look of the sets for the interior of the Tantive IV and Death Star.
  • I can take or leave lightsabers. Even at 7 I knew enough about physics for the handwavium to veer into the jarring. It wasn't enough to put me off, though - but not by much.
  • I liked the storm trooper armour, even though it was gleaming toilet-bowl white.
  • The space battles were perhaps the kicker for me. Especially the first person scene diving into the trench on the death star. The illusion was enough to make one feel the motion. Again, even though I knew enough about physics (having been a space nerd since age 3 or 4) to pick up on the handwavium about aerodynamic effects in space I made conscious decision to just ignore it.
In summary, I think it was the aesthetic of the spaceships, the space battles, the swashbuckling aesthetic and the hints of a wider universe that grabbed me. It was definitely a visual spectacular, and like nothing I had ever seen previously, and I think I remained in Star Wars fanboy mode for another couple of years before branching out into my own Lego-'verses. Empire didn't grab me anywhere near as much. Star Wars grabbed me far more than Star Trek did, although when I first saw Star Trek around age 4 it was probably still a bit adult for me.
 
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Original Runequest definitely captured two kinds of lightning in a bottle in a way no other D+D imitators managed till at least several years later: 1) incredible sense of place in the setting; weirdly, this was strongest it is most pared down forms, in the core book and first boxed sets (as opposed to longer format narrative descriptions that appeared later). I think the special sauce here is that the author responsible for the setting had conceived of and developed it separate from the rpg for years, so it has a very 'lived in' feel. And 2) skill based rules and quasi-realistic combat. This is nominally a reaction to the class paradigm and unrealism of D+D, which puts it in the same category as many, many (many!) failed fantasy heartbreakers, but I think the reason why it worked is that it avoids the 'fussiness' trap that captures most designers of supposedly realistic games.

That said, my personal favorite inexplicably inspirational game designs are:
1) Melee, which perfected the idea of table-top gaming fantasy combat as a game within a game — simple, clear design; tactical movement and decision making; intrinsic competitive balance. It is very chess like. I really appreciate that it is a game you understand by playing, not by reading. It grew into something bigger and more developed (wizard/TFT/GURPS) but the heart of the thing is all contained in Melee.
2) The original products for 1E AD&D. The 1st versions of the hard backs, pastel modules and Greyhawk folio feel to me like the wellspring of both the graphic design and creative content (monsters, character tropes, magic, etc.) of all of fantasy gaming. No matter how forcefully people argue that their hacks on the mechanics of table top roleplaying get them outside the D&D box, I feel like the whole hobby just stays centered in orbit around these books.
 
Marvel Super Heroes by TSR. I love superheroes but the reason this game stands out for me is the chart. I love the implementation, the levels of success: green, yellow and red.

DC Heroes by Mayfair. The reason I love this game is the exponential system that it uses for everything in the game. I still consider it one of the five best innovations in RPG history; Greg Gorden’s on my GOAT designers list.

Star Wars by West End. Everyone knows how much I love Star Wars and this system makes It so simple to play in your favorite distant galaxy a long time ago. Add up the six-siders and go. I like that it only uses that one die too.
 
1st edition AD&D GM's guide.

What a beautiful mess. The random ordering meant you practically had to read it cover to cover to find hidden gems. The adultness of it when I was a child. The interspersed serious and silly artwork. The mix of polished (I guess) to rough artwork that made the whole game seem accessible. The fact that so much of what we would now call core rules were out in a manual only for the GM and that it came out years after the monster manual and players handbook. Gygaxian Prose.
 
Dark Sun

It was the first set of RPG books I ever got. My mom got the original boxset as a surprise present for me when it just came out. I was a bad student and she was excited about the idea that I was finally reading something when I got into RPGs, but she didn’t know anything about RPGs so she bought it for me at random cuz it was new and “D&D”, and told me that we could return it if I didn’t like it as long as I didn’t open the box.

I was a bit hesitant at first, but Brom’s art in the cover just got to me. It was so alien and strange, yet beautiful and compelling. Its images told tales of a brutal alien landscape in a world on the brink, yet humanity still holding on using crude tools to survive. It was unlike any other fantasy setting I ever saw before or since. Metal was scarce and magic was brutal and devastating to the world around it, and every day was a struggle for survival under the scorching sun. Traditional fantasy races had been drastically altered to adapt to their unforgiving landscape and new races unique to this world had sprung up as well specially adapted to its environment. Even character classes had been adapted to fit the world’s themes with unique quirks specific to the setting.

No D&D setting has been so tailored to the specifics of the world, or as original or unique. And attempts to expand on it after its initial string of supplements or adapt it to later editions never did it justice. If anything it robbed of its mystery and brought elements that never quite fit in and lacked the magic of the original without Brom’s art or Troy Denning’s input on later supplements.
 
MSH/FaseRip, the thing that sold me was that our randomly rolled supers, felt like superheroes. We made an impact, I used my character's intellect and powers creatively to resolve problems of a time controller. (Always make your time controlled bubble 720 degrees around, not just on top of the floor.) We fought other things and being rewarded for doing GOOD, and not killing anyone just hit me right. The adjective laden stats, the solid powers, and the utter simplicity of the chart made it really grab me.
 
For me, Apocalypse World does it like no other Powered by the Apocalypse. Granted, each PbtA does a different thing, and many have different little mechanics to focus on a specific thing that each wants to do, but AW has that je ne sais quoi: a perfect distillation of Story Now ethos from the Forge through which the players / characters have total agency to act upon the world, and change it in meaningful ways.

Each session is a real mess of relations, action scenes, and post-apocalyptic goodness, and I say this in a good way. There's a sense that the game is "a day in the life" of these characters. They aren't there to do quests or missions but to face their own issues and problems, almost like a R-Rated soap opera. Top that with a characters creation that really demands little from the players in terms of learning the mechanics and it's over in under 30 minutes.

For me, it's the little engine that keeps on giving.
 
I've been balls deep in Mork Borg since I got it. The art and design are mindblowing, which is why i bought the physical copy. I can't with any accuracy describe why I like the game as much as a do, other than to point at the art. It defies description.
 
Fenris-77 said:
I've been balls deep in Mork Borg since I got it. The art and design are mindblowing, which is why i bought the physical copy. I can't with any accuracy describe why I like the game as much as a do, other than to point at the art. It defies description.
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So you are saying there is a certain je ne sais quoi, but you don't know what it is?

;)
 
David Millward's first edition of Heroes, a hex-crawling Dark Ages proto-rpg with a condensed European setting that just worked for my group after years in more exotic (but ultimately more mundane) settings and dungeons. Battles, naval campaigns, trade missions, social intrigue, we lapped it up. Totally burnt out on it now.
 
With gaming it was SLA Industries. It was the early 90's, I was in the Marine Corps Reserve, going to school, clubbing almost every weekend, and supporting myself by working at a game store (The Game Castle in Fullerton). There was something about working at a game store, surrounded by gamers, that quickly made the employees jaded to just about everything coming out in those days. Then I came across an obscure game from Scotland called SLA Industries and it was unlike anything I had ever seen. I turned many of the other employees on to it and a few of the cooler customers as well. It captured the dystopian zeigeist of the 90's with a distinctly UK twist, supernatural horror, and great artwork. Unfortunately, even though there is a long-awaited reboot in the works, I can't get into SLA Industries like I used to. To badly paraphrase William Gibson when asked if he will ever return to the Sprawl series, I can't get into that headspace any more and summon the enthusiasm for the setting that I once had.

Many books have been influential over the course of my life but when it comes to gaming, I can narrow it down to two books: Gibson's Neuromancer and an old Ace paperback simply titled Conan. The latter would be the longer lasting influence. While there are many things that I once liked that have aged badly over the years, my appreciation for the work of Robert E Howard has increased as I grow older. Damn, that man could write! He was only 30 when he died, imagine what he could have written had he lived into his 60s or 70s.
 
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Brock Savage said:
Many books have been influential over the course of my life but when it comes to gaming, I can narrow it down to two books: Gibson's Neuromancer and an old Ace paperback simply titled Conan. The latter would be the longer lasting influence. While there are many things that I once liked that have aged badly over the years, my appreciation for the work of Robert E Howard has increased as I grow older. Damn, that man could write! He was only 30 when he died, imagine what he could have written had he lived into his 60s or 70s.
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A couple of thoughts here:

(1) "Conan" was the first paperback of the 12-book series that I mentioned in my post above, so we share that. :grin:

(2) Have you checked out the Del Ray trade paperback series of REH fiction? Turns out that a lot of the Ace series had been edited but the Del Ray books have the original un-edited REH works. Even better than the Ace series. There are three volumes of just Conan (Coming of Conan, Bloody Crown of Conan, Conquering Sword of Conan) plus others on different characters (Solomon Kane, Kull, El Borak) and some of general stories. There are, I think, 11 total books of REH awesomeness. ;)
 
finarvyn said:
A couple of thoughts here:

(1) "Conan" was the first paperback of the 12-book series that I mentioned in my post above, so we share that. :grin:

(2) Have you checked out the Del Ray trade paperback series of REH fiction? Turns out that a lot of the Ace series had been edited but the Del Ray books have the original un-edited REH works. Even better than the Ace series. There are three volumes of just Conan (Coming of Conan, Bloody Crown of Conan, Conquering Sword of Conan) plus others on different characters (Solomon Kane, Kull, El Borak) and some of general stories. There are, I think, 11 total books of REH awesomeness. ;)
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Those Ace paperbacks were my first exposure to Conan as well. I didn't know all the posthumous editing done to REH's work until 2003 or so. That said, I got not only the Del Rey Conan volumes but the Solomon Kane and Kull ones as well! I own the rest of his work in digital form. I guess you could say I'm a big fan. :grin:
 
As much as I love the covers of those Ace paperbacks, the Del Rey collection is the best way to read REH. I've got the three Conans, Kane, and the two "Best Of" collections. Still need to pick up Kull, El Borak, Bran Mak Morn, the Horror collection, and Sword Woman. For a life sadly cut short, he was pretty prolific in his career.
 
Doctor Guilty said:
Heavy Gear.
It was just the right combination of great artwork, excellent worldbuilding and rules that clicked in my head that made me say “I want to go to there.”
I‘m still doing things with it twenty-five years later. :smile:
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Welcome to the Pub, oh fellow Silhouette-lover:thumbsup:!


OK, that sounded dirtier than I intended, but then what's a pub without dirty jokes:grin:?
 
Marvel Superheroes - The wonderful chart that is colourful and friendly while likewise neatly bypassing the inherent limitationsof percentile systems, the named attribute levels, and the Karma resource allocation all work in concert to make this my favourite RPG of all time.

DC Heroes - The aforementioned exponential value system combined with the Attributes grid that neatly encompasses 6 different Axis of character definition

WEG Star Wars - for someone whose flame of Star Wars fandom has all but been extinguished over the last 30 years, this game still encompases all the love I felt as a child for those original films and I cannot help but swell with Nostalgia everytime I look through it. The system itself is a wonder, but to identify one specific aspect that earns my continued appreciation, I suppose it's the modifiable template-based character creation.

Tribe 8 - I could (and have) wax on for posts on end about my adoration for the game's background, setting, and presetation, but the streamlned system that makes use of a roll and keep dice pool combined with zero-level attributes that makes creating characters on the fly a snap is the custard-filling of this post-apcoalypse-by-way-of-The Dark Crystal cupcake.

WFRP 1st edition - to this day possibly my favourite combat system in any RPG. Roll D100 under attribute, flip the numbers to determine the location of attack, subtract opponent's Toughness and any armour from the strength of attack, and if you exceeed the threshold then those fantastically brutal, devestatingly devillish, and lovingly goreiffic Critical charts.

007: James Bond - The chase rules. So often left out of RPGs altogether, but such an essential aspect of adventure fiction, Victory Games' system is simple, evocative, and tense. I've adapted it to numerous other games over the years, and cheekily stole it for my own Phaserip games.

Star Frontiers - First, I have to give a shout out to Dralisites, as perhaps my favourite nonhuman race ever presented in any RPG, just love thse little blobs. But what Star Frontiers did with alliens in general is a just brilliant masterstroke of design - each xenospecies' extrahuman ability is tied to their weakest attribute, the implications of which I could probabby write an essay about. Moreover, the Knight Hawks supplement is hands down the greatest starship battle rules ever concieved of for any RPG or boardgame or wargame.

Fate 2d edition - Aspects, as originally concieved, before becoming the mess of metacurrency and metagaing they devolved into in Fate 3rd edition, were a genius streamlined and intuitive method of character definition.

Outlaws of the Water Margin - The Motivation rules, which I wax on poetically about here

Pendragon - Passions. Staffords' emotions-as-attributes tug-of-war innovation is easily one of the best genre emulation tools presented in the hobby, taking what could have been a run of the mill game about Knights and ascending it to an extension of the idea of "big feelings = big actions" that perfectly captures the source material.
 
TristramEvans said:
Marvel Superheroes - The wonderful chart that is colourful and friendly while likewise neatly bypassing the inherent limitationsof percentile systems, the named attribute levels, and the Karma resource allocation all work in concert to make this my favourite RPG of all time.

DC Heroes - The aforementioned exponential value system combined with the Attributes grid that neatly encompasses 6 different Axis of character definition

WEG Star Wars - for someone whose fame of Star Wars fandom has all but been extinguished over the last 30 years, this game still encompases all the love I felt as a child for those original films and I cannot help but swell with Nostalgia everytime I look through it. The system itself is a wonder, but to identify one specific aspect that earns my continued appreciation, I suppose it's the modifiable template-based character creation.

Tribe 8 - I could (and have) wax on for posts on end about my adoration for the game's background, setting, and presetation, but the streamlned system that makes use of a roll and keep dice pool combined with zero-level attributes that makes creating characters on the fly a snap is the custard-filling of this post-apoalypse-by-way-of-The Dark Crystal cupcake.

WFRP 1st edition - to this day possibly my favourite combat system in any RPG. Roll D100 under attribute, flip the numbers to determine the location of attack, subtract opponent's Toughness and any armour from the strength of attack, and if you exceeed the threshold then those fantastically brutal, devestatingly devillish, and lovingly goreiffic Critical charts.

007: James Bond - The chase rules. So often left out of RPGs altogether, but such an essential aspect of adventure fiction, Victory Games' system is simple, evocative, and tense. I've adapted it to numerous other games over the years, and cheekily stole it for my own Phaserip games.

Star Frontiers - First, I have to give a shout out to Dralisites, as perhaps my favourite nonhuman race ever presented in any RPG, just love thse little blobs. But what Star Frontiers did with alliens in general is a just brilliant masterstroke of design - each xenospecies' extrahuman ability is tied to their weakest attribute, the implications of which I could probabby write an essay about. Moreover, the Knight Hawks supplement is hands down the greatest starship battle rules ever concieved of for any RPG or boardgame or wargame.

Fate 2d edition - Aspects, as originally concieved, before becoming the mess of metacurrency and metagaing they devolved into in Fate 3rd edition, were a genius streamlined and intuitive method of character definition.

Outlaws of the Water Margin - The Motivation rules, which I wax on poetically about here

Pendragon - Passions. Staffords' emotions-as-attributes tug-of-war innovation is easily one of the best genre emulation tools presented in the hobby, taking what could have been a run of the mill game about Knights ad ascending it to an extension of the idea of big feelings, big actions that perfectly captures the source material.
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Now you're making me want to play Tribe 8, dammit:grin:!
 
Thought of a few others...

Unknown Armies - the sanity system. After a decade of Call of Cthulhu style "Sanity as Hit Points" approaches to mental deterioration, UA's Madness Meter was a revelation, hitting that perfect balance of playability and believability.

Dungeonworld - though not a fan of the game overall, the "Experience gained from Failure" mechanism is a masterstroke, a concept that I've unapolagetically stolen for my own games.

Ryuutama - the travel rules, that make exploration more of an adventure than combat, really pushed my buttons.
 
I love the experience from failure mechanic. Very stealable too, for sure.
 
I'm going to go with a TV show rather than an RPG, specifically Wynonna Earp:

Troubled, foul-mouthed, alcoholic small town girl has to re-kill the resurrected forms of all the people her great-great granddaddy, Wyatt Earp, killed? And she would do anything to protect her siblings? With clever dialogue and a kick-ass soundtrack? Sold!
 
TristramEvans said:
everyone should play Tribe 8!
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I’d have played it if I knew what to do with it. :sad:
Heavy Gear clicked in my head immediately, as did Jovian Chronicles (even though I ended up doing very little with it).
Then Tribe 8 comes out and I think, “... So what do I do with this?”
I ended up buying most if not all of the line, waiting for that one book that I thought would make the setting click in my head (Word of the Keepers) - which was never released.
Ah, well.
 
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I'll echo Glorantha, and add Shadowrun to the fold.

Shadowrun original setting was such an intoxicating blend of fantasy, cyberpunk and earthly cultures that it blew my young mind away. I mean, you got this hi-tech Aztec pyramid with big neon letters in the night like Blade Runner, in mid of a futuristic Seattle, inhabited by executives in multicolored suits in mexica glyphs- decorated corridors guarded by elite, shorn headed "Jaguar warriors" (painted like actual jaguars) with SMGs and bulletproof vests and implants... aaaand a FEATHERED SERPENT flying above the building patrolling the skies. With the irony that the rich executives are all of hispanic origin while the lowly workers and guards (and the masses) are the true mexica/aztec descendents (so there is this immediate social and political tension waiting to be explored).

And this is true for every corner of the setting - fantasy and tech filtered through (and amplifying) earthly cultures, with dark, real world issues very present or amplified. There's a intro stoy in 2nd edition called "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more things change, the more things stay the same) and it describes the world of Shadowrun beautifully. Magic arrived, hi-tech arrived, but Man is still Man.

Unfotunately each new edition toned down the cultural aspects and so that magic is lost, the game looking like a generic sci-fantasy by the day. Or so it was, I didn't read the newest edition.
 
HalexB said:
For me, Apocalypse World does it like no other Powered by the Apocalypse. Granted, each PbtA does a different thing, and many have different little mechanics to focus on a specific thing that each wants to do, but AW has that je ne sais quoi: a perfect distillation of Story Now ethos from the Forge through which the players / characters have total agency to act upon the world, and change it in meaningful ways.

Each session is a real mess of relations, action scenes, and post-apocalyptic goodness, and I say this in a good way. There's a sense that the game is "a day in the life" of these characters. They aren't there to do quests or missions but to face their own issues and problems, almost like a R-Rated soap opera. Top that with a characters creation that really demands little from the players in terms of learning the mechanics and it's over in under 30 minutes.

For me, it's the little engine that keeps on giving.
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Very nice description. I really like what AW does but always find it difficult to put it into words. Thanks for this. :thumbsup:
 
The revelation game for me, I guess, was Ars Magica some 30-odd years ago. It was basically because the game had ambition to go beyond accepted norms in gaming (eg standard adventuring party set up; 'balanced' characters; generic fantasy tropes etc) and aimed for excellence in a specific type of narrative - complete with structures and rules that emphasised story, authentic medieval concepts and open creativity in magic. For those people who are interested in the whole 'Indie/Narrative' shebang, I think there is a strong argument to suggest that this game, released some time about 1987/88 was its seminal epicenter, notwithstanding other antecedent games.
 
Yup, I'd agree. Ars Magica was brilliantly different. A good template for games that were aimed at genre specific success rather than general rules coverage. Still one of my favorite magic systems too.
 
AsenRG said:
Now you're making me want to play Tribe 8, dammit:grin:!
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The problem with Tribe 8 as a line is that its whole campaign chain is one colossal railroad. And the story is not even good, and when you read it start-to-end in the 2nd edition player's handbook (the only Tribe 8 2nd edition book ever published, which moves the campaign T0 to a point in time after the whole 1st edition metaplot) this becomes pretty obvious.

But if you limit yourself to the 1st edition core book and a couple of the generic metaplot-free expansions, it certainly gives you a world filled with possibilities and lots and lots of "white space" for the GM to fill.
 
TristramEvans said:
Dungeonworld - though not a fan of the game overall, the "Experience gained from Failure" mechanism is a masterstroke, a concept that I've unapolagetically stolen for my own games.

Ryuutama - the travel rules, that make exploration more of an adventure than combat, really pushed my buttons.
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I have never run nor played either of these games but both of them helped improve my craft as a GM. Dungeon World in particular had a lot to offer when it first came out and the idea of making failure interesting was new to most of us.
 
For me, there's three that really won me over.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 - This was my first role-playing game and the sheer amount of freedom and my Dad being a great DM won me over right out the gate

Vampire: The Requiem 1E/World of Darkness - A modern game where you could play as the monster as opposed to medieval fantasy. Of course, I unironically prefer the "trenchcoats & katanas" playstyle to pretentious wangst "personal horror"

Big Eyes Small Mouth 1E - It's multi-genre, fairly rules-lite, and came with 90's anime artwork. Of course I was won over
 
Doc Sammy said:
For me, there's three that really won me over.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 - This was my first role-playing game and the sheer amount of freedom and my Dad being a great DM won me over right out the gate

Vampire: The Requiem 1E/World of Darkness - A modern game where you could play as the monster as opposed to medieval fantasy. Of course, I unironically prefer the "trenchcoats & katanas" playstyle to pretentious wangst "personal horror"

Big Eyes Small Mouth 1E - It's multi-genre, fairly rules-lite, and came with 90's anime artwork. Of course I was won over
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Maybe I need to stop frigging about with space opera and just go write Hentai: The roleplaying game - crossed eyes, panting mouth.
It's not like you're going to have trouble finiding stock art...
 
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Nobby-W said:
Maybe I need to stop frigging about with space opera and just go write Hentai: The roleplaying game - crossed eyes, panting mouth.
It's not like it's going to be hard to find stock art for it...
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Would that just be a blank book with five holes in it?
 
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