I’m
a gamer. Not a gambler, which most
people in this word associate the term “gamer” to, but a gamer as a role player
playing RPGs and other games that would be associated to such. My bookshelf is riddled with gamer text
books, my closet is full of magic cards and other collectable card games and I
still find dice in the strangest of places.
I still have my PSP, we have kept the PS2 and upgraded to the PS4 and my
son and I sometimes do battle with our 3DS, so, yeah, this house is a gamer
house.
So
now it take you down a little history:
Like
many I started with board and card games with my family, however, I was
introduced to computers at home at a very young age for my generation;
five. I’m forty-two now so you can
understand having a computer in the house at that age for the times, the
seventies, was a huge deal.
The TRS-80 Model I took the entire dining room table with
it’s main cpu unit, monitor, and all it’s wires and accessories. These days, a piece of plastic the size of
my pinky fingernail holds zounds more information than that monstrosity did
back in 1977. It didn’t even belong to
us. Mom brought it home from work
because she had extra work to do on it she couldn’t accomplish during normal
hours. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt
to teach her son a thing or two about something that’ll be commonplace when he
becomes her age. Eventually she bought
a Model III when I was eight, upgraded to an Apple IIe when I was 14 then she
finally relented to a IBM compatible 1megwhen I was a junior in high
school. This on top of having an Atari
2600 with 26 games to play up to a Turbo Grafix 16 by the time high school game
around then going to the Sega Genesis for college. I played RP computer games and went “online” when I was 14, before
anyone coined the terms “internet” and “world wide web.” So gaming was firmly established for me.
On the other end of the spectrum is tabletop. Like most, I started with Dungeons and
Dragons, more specifically Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition
then had to move on to 2nd Edition.
Ah yes I remember thac0 very well.
After college I graduated to playing both the Palladium universe White Wolf and finally by 1997 I discovered
LARP and with the exception of Magic, something I picked up two years prior,
the actor in me picked up live action role playing and never looked back… for a
while.
The reason for this blog is two fold. One, because my previous posting was drama
filled and I felt I needed to get things off my chest and there are a few games
out there I feel are really fun and need mentioning even if they have been
discontinued.
Dream Park
Published by R. Talsorian Games, this one shot is the
holodeck RPG. Or maybe it’s Total
Recall since your PCs tend to not have any memory as to why you are in this
weird universe. The premise is you and
your friends are at this virtual theme park where you enter pods to go to this
strange world with it’s own rules. Of
course you have an ordeal to endure as you might have a specific goal to
complete but half the fun is trying to figure out this domain’s rules.
What got me hooked was the GM decided to send us into a
world that was always a rock opera and we had to save Iron Maiden’s mascot,
Eddie, from Hotel California before the residents’ steely knives devoured him.
If you find this book it’s well worth picking up and
playing.
HoL: A Game
AKA Human Occupied Landfill and its only supplement,
“Buttery wHoLsomeness.” This one I
picked up while waiting for a magic game to pick up and I could not put it down. Now to warn you it’s chock full of crude
adult humor and quite possibly many people couldn’t make sense of it. I did, and even went so far as to run an
event at GenCon with it using South Park as a theme. It was independent then later picked up by White Wolf for their
Black Dog line that didn’t last long.
Still if you want a game for a good riot of a time that goes with the
lines of Cards Against Humanity, find this game.
Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game
Because of the rise to prominence of Game of Thrones, the
Amber books, written by Roger Zelazny, has started to slip into obscurity. The DRPG was based off the books and because
it’s diceless can be done pretty much anywhere. With my circle of friends it was always started with the
question, “Where are you and what are you doing?” Easily can take the time away on long car rides or waiting at the
doctor’s office. It’s hard to find
copies of this one because Palladium bought the rights to Phage Press’s books
but haven’t done jack squat about it but it’s a game that you can easily run a
campaign for years on end. That is if
you’re into that sort of thing. And
being a god doesn’t hurt either.
Well, that’s my contribution for now. Lets hope later days won’t include such
drama like today did.
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