Welcome to the start what is going to be an ongoing column here at EN World. I am going to talk about a lot of different things over time, but mostly I am going to talk about the things that grab my attention, and grab my interest, in tabletop gaming. There will be reviews and commentary about role-playing games, as well as digressions into card and board games, and the communities around them. There will be news at times as well.
A little background… I started gaming in 1979, at the tender age of eleven. It was an AD&D game that a group of friends had. I had recently moved to the area, and one day during recess a friend came up to me and asked “Have you ever heard of this game called D&D?” It went downhill from there.
Over the years I played a lot of games. In high school I picked up TSR’s Marvel Super-Heroes and Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu. These two games have always been the baselines for my gaming, much more than D&D ever was. In college I started playing R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk and GURPS from Steve Jackson Games. Some of these games I still play, and others have fallen to the wayside, but they all still influence me. I am, by my nature, more of a GM than a player, although I will happily derail the games of friends who want to be the GM instead.
These days, most of my gaming is done online. I have been playing with a group via Google Hangouts for the last couple of years. We’ve had games of Swords & Wizardry, Traveller, Fate Core, Fudge, Savage Worlds and other games. I’ve also recently gotten involved in my first face to face game in a while, an ongoing Fate Accelerated campaign. I’ve found, as an older gamer, I prefer to engage in shorter games that have more of a beginning, middle and end.
I’m sure that there will be more to come, but let’s move along to the good stuff. By the way, the format of “rundown” columns like this is shamelessly stolen from Marvel Comics Bullpen columns of the past.
Item! Let’s talk briefly about the Mindjammer Kickstarter that Sarah Newton has, which is now in its final days. Mindjammer is a transhumanist Science Fiction role-playing game, and the creator, Sarah Newton, is a phenomenal designer, and I have been a fan of her games since her work on Legends of Angelerre for Cubicle 7. With Mindjammer Newton has created the single best third party Fate Core build. It is probably one of the bigger Fate Core games, but that is because of extensive sections that cover spacecraft, cybernetics and bioenhancements, among so many other things. Even if you aren’t a fan of transhuman Science Fiction, you can use this game for any number of Science Fiction genres from cyberpunk to space opera to all sorts of weird things.
And! If you aren’t a fan of Fate Core, one of the funded stretch goals is a Traveller-based Mindjammer game. As much as I like Fate, I am very excited that we may get a Traveller game that addresses more modern Science Fiction tropes. I like Traveller (our groups is just getting out of a short Classic Traveller campaign), but I would love to see a build of the rules with a more modern science sensibility to it.
Item! As you know, the classic Runequest 2nd Edition is coming back as Runequest Classic via Kickstarter. I didn’t come into Runequest until 3rd edition, so I missed a lot of the things that came with the 2nd edition. One thing that I have always felt was missing from the ongoing “old school” gaming conversation online was Runequest. It did spawn its own “clone” in the form of Newt Newport’s excellent OpenQuest 2 rules, but Runequest never seemed to get as much traction, considering the importance of Runequest back in the day, I always felt that was a glaring omission. Glorantha holds a unique place in the ranks of gaming. Not even the original gaming worlds of Greyhawk and Blackmoor are as well-developed as Glorantha is. Hopefully, with this Kickstarter that will be fixed and we will see Runequest and Glorantha take a larger part in the old school conversations.
For me, the Runequest rules have an appeal because they suppose a world where magic and religion are a part of everything. They draw heavily on the influences of mythology, as well as fantasy writers like Michael Moorcock. In Runequest your characters have a sense of community and belonging that you don’t see in enough fantasy role-playing games. January should see the release of the new PDFs to backers. I have been re-reading the Gloranthan Classics reprints of some of the old Runequest setting material, and I will be talking about them in future columns.
Item! The Bundle of Holding has reopened with a new bundle, this time the Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +3. There are so many new games and supplements coming out that keeping up is difficult and costly. With the various bundles that this site offers it makes getting PDFs of a wide variety of games a lot less costly than it might be normally. The Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +3 is the third bundle that has been offered that go into tips for GMs and worldbuilding help, and contains award-winning books like Never Unprepared, Unframed and Gamemastering Secrets.
One last item! In case you didn’t know, Jeff Dee (formerly of TSR) and Jack Herman, the creators of Villains & Vigilantes are embroiled in a legal battle over the rights to the game. From the GoFundMe page:
We created the classic 1979 superhero tabletop role-playing game, Villains and Vigilantes. We re-released V&V in 2010 when we learned that the original publisher, FGU Inc., ceased to exist in 1991 and that the publishing rights to V&V reverted to us at that time. Unfortunately the old publisher's former president is not willing to let go, and so we have become embroiled in a lawsuit. Our claim that the publishing rights reverted to us has been upheld in court, but our opponent still claims to own the trademark to our game's name and he's suing us for using it. If he wins on that count, he'll be able to seize our creation and financially ruin us. We've been fighting for our rights for several years, and frankly we need money in order to carry this battle to a final victory. We just want to get back to making our games! If you've enjoyed our game, or simply support our rights as creators, then we need your help. Thank you!
Monkey House Games has a GoFundMe page to raise money to help with their legal battles. If you have any interest in creators rights, this is a fight to support. Dee has said that they have been working on a third edition for Villains & Vigilantes, and the holdup is their ongoing legal battle. The other thing to remember is that the publishing rights for Villains & Vigilantes has reverted to Dee and Herman. That means that anyone else publishing material for the game, without their permission, is doing so illegally. In the case of Fantasy Games Unlimited, those illegal sales are going to directly fund the purposeful delays of the legal battle.
Gaming has changed dramatically since those days in 1979, when I started gaming. Not only has the bar of entry never been lower for publishers and designers, but the curtain has been drawn away from the behind the scenes dealings of publishers like never before. Yes, there are still a lot of things that the general public doesn’t know about, but it is much harder to hide away shenanigans than it used to be. With this column I am going to supply critical analysis, years of experience in gaming, and a broad view of the hobby to bring a voice to a broad spectrum of topics. I hope that you will join me on that journey.
A little background… I started gaming in 1979, at the tender age of eleven. It was an AD&D game that a group of friends had. I had recently moved to the area, and one day during recess a friend came up to me and asked “Have you ever heard of this game called D&D?” It went downhill from there.
Over the years I played a lot of games. In high school I picked up TSR’s Marvel Super-Heroes and Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu. These two games have always been the baselines for my gaming, much more than D&D ever was. In college I started playing R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk and GURPS from Steve Jackson Games. Some of these games I still play, and others have fallen to the wayside, but they all still influence me. I am, by my nature, more of a GM than a player, although I will happily derail the games of friends who want to be the GM instead.
These days, most of my gaming is done online. I have been playing with a group via Google Hangouts for the last couple of years. We’ve had games of Swords & Wizardry, Traveller, Fate Core, Fudge, Savage Worlds and other games. I’ve also recently gotten involved in my first face to face game in a while, an ongoing Fate Accelerated campaign. I’ve found, as an older gamer, I prefer to engage in shorter games that have more of a beginning, middle and end.
I’m sure that there will be more to come, but let’s move along to the good stuff. By the way, the format of “rundown” columns like this is shamelessly stolen from Marvel Comics Bullpen columns of the past.
Item! Let’s talk briefly about the Mindjammer Kickstarter that Sarah Newton has, which is now in its final days. Mindjammer is a transhumanist Science Fiction role-playing game, and the creator, Sarah Newton, is a phenomenal designer, and I have been a fan of her games since her work on Legends of Angelerre for Cubicle 7. With Mindjammer Newton has created the single best third party Fate Core build. It is probably one of the bigger Fate Core games, but that is because of extensive sections that cover spacecraft, cybernetics and bioenhancements, among so many other things. Even if you aren’t a fan of transhuman Science Fiction, you can use this game for any number of Science Fiction genres from cyberpunk to space opera to all sorts of weird things.
And! If you aren’t a fan of Fate Core, one of the funded stretch goals is a Traveller-based Mindjammer game. As much as I like Fate, I am very excited that we may get a Traveller game that addresses more modern Science Fiction tropes. I like Traveller (our groups is just getting out of a short Classic Traveller campaign), but I would love to see a build of the rules with a more modern science sensibility to it.
Item! As you know, the classic Runequest 2nd Edition is coming back as Runequest Classic via Kickstarter. I didn’t come into Runequest until 3rd edition, so I missed a lot of the things that came with the 2nd edition. One thing that I have always felt was missing from the ongoing “old school” gaming conversation online was Runequest. It did spawn its own “clone” in the form of Newt Newport’s excellent OpenQuest 2 rules, but Runequest never seemed to get as much traction, considering the importance of Runequest back in the day, I always felt that was a glaring omission. Glorantha holds a unique place in the ranks of gaming. Not even the original gaming worlds of Greyhawk and Blackmoor are as well-developed as Glorantha is. Hopefully, with this Kickstarter that will be fixed and we will see Runequest and Glorantha take a larger part in the old school conversations.
For me, the Runequest rules have an appeal because they suppose a world where magic and religion are a part of everything. They draw heavily on the influences of mythology, as well as fantasy writers like Michael Moorcock. In Runequest your characters have a sense of community and belonging that you don’t see in enough fantasy role-playing games. January should see the release of the new PDFs to backers. I have been re-reading the Gloranthan Classics reprints of some of the old Runequest setting material, and I will be talking about them in future columns.
Item! The Bundle of Holding has reopened with a new bundle, this time the Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +3. There are so many new games and supplements coming out that keeping up is difficult and costly. With the various bundles that this site offers it makes getting PDFs of a wide variety of games a lot less costly than it might be normally. The Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +3 is the third bundle that has been offered that go into tips for GMs and worldbuilding help, and contains award-winning books like Never Unprepared, Unframed and Gamemastering Secrets.
One last item! In case you didn’t know, Jeff Dee (formerly of TSR) and Jack Herman, the creators of Villains & Vigilantes are embroiled in a legal battle over the rights to the game. From the GoFundMe page:
We created the classic 1979 superhero tabletop role-playing game, Villains and Vigilantes. We re-released V&V in 2010 when we learned that the original publisher, FGU Inc., ceased to exist in 1991 and that the publishing rights to V&V reverted to us at that time. Unfortunately the old publisher's former president is not willing to let go, and so we have become embroiled in a lawsuit. Our claim that the publishing rights reverted to us has been upheld in court, but our opponent still claims to own the trademark to our game's name and he's suing us for using it. If he wins on that count, he'll be able to seize our creation and financially ruin us. We've been fighting for our rights for several years, and frankly we need money in order to carry this battle to a final victory. We just want to get back to making our games! If you've enjoyed our game, or simply support our rights as creators, then we need your help. Thank you!
Monkey House Games has a GoFundMe page to raise money to help with their legal battles. If you have any interest in creators rights, this is a fight to support. Dee has said that they have been working on a third edition for Villains & Vigilantes, and the holdup is their ongoing legal battle. The other thing to remember is that the publishing rights for Villains & Vigilantes has reverted to Dee and Herman. That means that anyone else publishing material for the game, without their permission, is doing so illegally. In the case of Fantasy Games Unlimited, those illegal sales are going to directly fund the purposeful delays of the legal battle.
Gaming has changed dramatically since those days in 1979, when I started gaming. Not only has the bar of entry never been lower for publishers and designers, but the curtain has been drawn away from the behind the scenes dealings of publishers like never before. Yes, there are still a lot of things that the general public doesn’t know about, but it is much harder to hide away shenanigans than it used to be. With this column I am going to supply critical analysis, years of experience in gaming, and a broad view of the hobby to bring a voice to a broad spectrum of topics. I hope that you will join me on that journey.
