If I could keep only 10 RPG products

This question has been going around the web lately. This is my list. I am sure, I could do it with less than 10. Probably 3 would be enough. So I will probably end up with 3 rule systems and 7 settings. I also have to add that I know The Dark Eye 1 by heart, so I do not need to add it. But let's do it anyways, because I have too much space. :)

Savage Worlds Deluxe
Primetime Adventures
World of Synnibarr

The Dark Eye 1 - Basis Box
Carcossa
Vornheim
50 Fathoms
Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP)
Mythic Role Playing (Word Mill Games)
Savage Worlds Adventure Deck (The nice card deck for player story intervention)

Savage Warhammer: Taal Priest: Durnhelm

We decided to play the Enemy Within campaign from Warhammer FRPG, 1st edition, with the Savage Worlds rule set. This is one of the 4 player character so far.

Durnhelm - Taal Priest

Strength   D4
Agility      D6
Smarts     D6
Spirit       D8
Vigor      D8

Pace: 6; Parry: 7 (without equipment 5); Charisma: 0; Toughness: 6

Edges: Arcane Background (Miracles), Holy Warrior;
Hinrances: Hero, Loyal, Minor Pacifist

Skills: Fighting: D6; Guts: D8; Healing: D6; Notice: D4; Survival: D4; Swimming: D4; Tracking: D4; Faith: D8.
Buckler and a Rapier.

The development of genre tropes

The transition from historical war games to war games based on fiction (fantasy in this case), also openend a can of worms, because suddenly we are not any longer operating on axioms of realism, but on genre tropes. It took around 10 years (at least that's how I understand it), for this difference to become explicitly noticed. As far as I know CoC and Marvel FASERIP were the first games to hardwire the tropes in the rules.

This is not about having magic in the world, but about having bigger than life heroes, plot immunity, etc. The whole 90ies (AD&D2, WoD) seemed to be a time of struggle, in which people tried to enforce this via best practices ("How to run a good game") instead of just focusing of designing rules according to what they wanted to achieve - at least in the mainstream. Only in the 00ies the rules were fully understood as having another potential: providing an exciting game as well enforcing a genre. Latter not really in D&D 3.X though.

Overview over my RPG collection

RPG.net provided this really nice service, but save your collection:

The pen and paper RPG collection of tartex

Just follow the link! The only problem is that German books are not included.

I also did not include PDFs that I purchased.

Using random hit location die to create NPCs

I often want to define a non player character within seconds.

While there are many tables for random names and motivations, I also wanted to know their 1 or 2 outstanding traits.

For that I am going to use my six sided hit location dice in the future: on it's different sides you find body parts. I just roll and connect each symbol with a stat and/or skill category.

Head - 1 - Smarts
Body - 2 - Vigor
Left Arm - 3 - Charisma
Right Arm - 4 - Strength
Left Leg - 5 - Speed or Double Outstanding
Right Leg - 6 - Agility

Gamma World One Shot

The characters are living on a backwood farm, where a radioactive roach Bryant and 4 hillbilly farmhands (3 big guys Steven, Todd and Nate: 1 with 3 arms, 1 with 3 legs, 1 with 3 eyes (Monster Vault P.170 Common Bandit) + 1 pretty girl: Annabella, farmhand), are harvesting Melons and Blood Oranges. Take care of the Grab Grass though (P. 99) and the Porcubine Bushes.

The PCs arrived some weeks ago and everything seemed fine.

Down the river is the Church of the Minute and Bryant send the characters down to bring up a priest to bless the coming harvest.

Areas:

Cornfields,

Badder Town Defense (Roadblock) P. 142G

Giant Hedgehog from The Dark Eye

From 1987, from the adventure "Kommando Olachtai". This critter nearly killed my character, because he fell on top of it, while fighting it.

Random tables for RPGs

I am quite interested in running a pure sandbox campaign at the moment - especially after buying Carcosa.

Obviously I will need a lot of random tables. So I will collect them in this post.

I recently found the very useful random-generator.com where people can create their own RPG content.

This website has a few as a starting point:

Random Fantasy Tables called "Tables for Fables"

More Random Random Tables

Names

Random authentic US names

Random name generator

Random Star Wars name generator

Random Letter Sequence generator

Characters

Seventh Sanctum Random Character Tables (they offer a lot more as well)

Completely random Warhammer FRPG 2nd edition character creation, including background

Random Labyrinth Lord / Old School Character

Random Gamma World characters

Random Synnibarr NPCs (no stats, all background!)

Superfast 1 outstanding stat NPCs from my blog (needs dice)

Encounters and Plots

Detailed plot generator recommended!!

Basic Plots in literature (needs dice and some serious thought)

Random City Encounters

Random Daily Mail headlines generator (Daily Mail is a right wing UK tabloid)

WotC's  Random Adventure Hook Generator

Crazy Random Plot generator (can produce multiple layers)

Random Science fiction adventures (needs dice) This is part of a whole series of articles including random tables.

You should also not forget that just opening a random article on wikipedia can provide more inspiration than you will ever need.

Also fun: Random Crossover generator (originally for fanfiction, but also great for adventures)

Maps

On the following site you will find a lot of very sophisticated tools, like random map generators (and much more).

Random cities for contemporary gonzo in my blog (needs dice)

Adventures

Check out this post in my blog: Random adventures


Other Stuff

Faction Connection Diagram (for 4 factions; needs dice) from Vornheim

Meta Tables

Best Random Tables for Gaming has not only tables, but also links to sites with lists of tables


If you want to point to any helpful resources, please, leave a comment!

I will add them to the list.

All those "clever plans" - a rant

One big point of disagreement between Old School and New School is the question whether it makes more sense to play the rules or to play the world as imagined in the GM's/DM's head, that is the game engine - a game engine run by common sense and "realistic" behaviour. I am quite New School (not only in regards to this), and here is my train of thought:

I think that most people that are happy with the DM decision engine, are not just able very well to assess the DM as human being with psychological hang ups. Maybe you have just amazing GMs, but I hated for example my group that spent hours planing each session, when I had figured out very fast, that our first plan would always fail, because the GM wanted to fill the session and was full over adversarial energy in the beginning. For me this planning was completely pointless. Towards the end of the session, in 90% of cases, whatever stupid plan we would come up, would have success, because the GM wanted to push things forward.

Not to talk about the DM back in my teens that ridiculed plans by younger players - after all the DM can come up with countermeasures to even the best plan easily - and let them fail most of the time, while he would stare in awe at the plans of our grown up gaming buddies, and let them succeed. He was never aware of that, but after a few sessions it became very obvious to me and I was able to prove my (secret) thesis time after time from that moment on.

Or the DM that loved grimdark plans, because they were "realistic", but would rarely accept plans that involved compromise or bright colors.

With the DM as decision engine, I most of the time end up playing/gaming the DM's psychological structure after a few sessions and not the world simulation. You could argue that these hang ups and the world are the same - the DM after all provides the genre conventions of his game -, but for me it just kills any suspension of disbelieve in the long run.

You can read the whole discussion here on RPG.net.

My RPG Calendar 2012

January
19th The Dark Eye 1: Drei Schwüre: Into the Schwarzen Lande (Hel; Jor, Jen, Ail, Pat)

February
2nd The Dark Eye 2: Drei Schwüre: The Frogs in the Mountain Lake (Hel; Jor, Jen, Ail, Pat, And)
15th The Dark Eye 3: Drei Schwüre: The Witch Tower (Hel; Jor, Jen, Ail, Pat, And)

March
1st Ratten!: Pontifex und Dreher (Jen; Jor, Ste)
8th The Dark Eye 4: Blutige See 1: Valussa (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat)
22nd The Dark Eye 5: Blutige See 2: Search for the Black Sword (And; Hel, Jen, Pat)

April
5th The Dark Eye 6: Blutige See 3: Attack of the Gezeitenspinne (And; Hel, Jor, Jen)
12th The Dark Eye 7: Blutige See 4: Taking over the Gezeitenspinne (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Ail)
14th The Dark Eye 8: Blutige See 5: The Elemental Ritual (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat, Ail)
21st The Dark Eye 9: Blutige See 6: The Stadt aus der Tiefe (And; Hel, Jor, Jen)
26th The Dark Eye 10: Blutige See 7: Demonwave Summoner  (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat)

May:
3rd The Dark Eye 11: Blutige See 8: Planning (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat)
5th The Dark Eye 12: Blutige See 9: Battle against the Knochen-Otta (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat)
10th The Dark Eye 13: Blutige See 10: Traveling months (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat)
12th The Dark Eye 14: Blutige See 11: The Charyptoroth Splinter Ritual (And; Hel, Jor, Jen, Pat)
26th Earthdawn 1: Terror in the Skies 1: Fire in the City (Pat; Jor, Dan, Hel)
31st Savage Worlds: Buch der Abenteuer / Silvanas Befreiung (Aventuria) (Jor; Dan, Hel, And)

June:
2nd Earthdawn 2: Terror in the Skies 2: Sky Patrol  (Hel; Jor, Dan)
14th Earthdawn 3: Terror in the Skies 3: The Windling Kaer  (Hel; Jor, And)

July:
7th Earthdawn 4: Terror in the Skies 4: The Lake in the Kaer  (Hel; Jor, And, Adam, Mur)
12th Earthdawn 5: Terror in the Skies 5: The Sanctum and Tyranisius (Hel; Jor, And, Adam, Mur)
18th Savage Worlds: Warhammer 0: Bear and Goblins (Jor; Hel, And)
26th Savage Warhammer 1: Vines (Jor; Hel, And, Mur, Jea)

August:
2nd Savage Warhammer 2: Mercenaries & Ewald  (Jor; Hel, Mur, Jea)

September:
8th Labyrinth Lord: Flailsnail: Overgrown Temple (Google Hangout)
13th Savage Synnibarr 1: Missing Alchemists (Jor; Hel, Jea, And, Vin)
20th The Dark Eye 1984 (Flegelschnecke): Buch der Abenteuer, Graubarts Haus (Jor; Google Hangout)
24th Savage Synnibarr 2: The Sasquatch Connection (Jor; Hel, Jea, Vin)

October:
4th Savage Synnibarr 3: A Drake on the Night Trail (Jor; Hel, Jea, Ale)
8th Savage Synnibarr 4: Fame & Gangbangers (Jor; Hel, Jea, Ale)
13th Savage Worlds Fantasy: Der Händler (Google Hangout)
15th Savage Synnibarr 5: The Drake Slayers (Jor; Jea, Ale, Vin)
25th Savage Synnibarr 6: Plague Town (Jor; Hel, Ale, Vin)

November:
1st Savage Synnibarr 7: The Battle against Durana (Jor; Hel, Vin, Jea)
26th Savage Synnibarr 8: The Sunken Spaceship  (Jor; Hel, Vin, Ale, Mig, Agn)

December
3rd Savage Synnibarr 9: Tongues of the Tenjohussan (Jor; Hel, Vin, Ale, Mig, Agn)
13th Savage Synnibarr 10: Templetown of the Drake Cult (Jorg, Vin, Mig, Agn, Max)

My RPG Calendar 2013
My RPG Calendar 2011
My RPG Calendar 2010
My RPG Calendar 2009
My RPG Calendar 2008

Gamma World Vehicle Rules

Wizards of the Coast finally released the rules for vehicles for the new edition of Gamma World. They are available as free pdf. I was waiting for this a long time!

Finally porkers can ride motor bikes in battle. :)

Follow this link to find the Gamma World vehicle rules. 8 pages of fun! :)

There are stats for motorcycles, cars, pick up trucks, RVs, dump trucks and helicopters included. You will also find vehicle augmentations like sidecars and hover kits as well as turrets and mounted weapons. Not to forget stunts, as well as stunt catastrophes.

Everyone should print these 8 pages and put it in their Gamma World box!

And if you still need paper miniatures for the vehicles how about this? Flat paper miniature vehicles. Those are not for free though, you can also check my articles on free paper minis for other options...