#RPGaDay2023 Best SECONDHAND RPG purchase

 This one I had to think about this one for a bit. I have found so many great deals over the years that it was hard to choose just one really.  But in the end I think I figured it out. 

The Dark Eye

I have known about this game for a while, both The Dark Eye and the original German Das Schwarze Auge. I always wanted to own the original German, having taken German in both high school and college, but not using a language for, well, longer than I care to admit, you lose it. Das tut mir leid.

The Dark Eye always attracted me as a sort of darker fantasy RPG.  A game where Mirkwood is replaced by the Black Forest.  

I picked the 2nd Printing of the English edition at my local game auction.  I grabbed the core rules and a bunch of add-ons that I suspect came from Kickstarter. There is a lot, and it all looks so good. There is even a basic QuickStart.

I played around with it for a bit, did some characters, and did a review. I enjoyed it so much I picked the special edition leather cover as well.

But it is a really great game, and I really enjoy it. I also wish I could play more of it than I do.

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite LICENSED RPG

 Licensed RPGs can either be really great or less so. 

One of my favorites might sound self-serving, but it is my favorite.

Ghosts of Albion

I have to admit it is my favorite because everything I wanted is there somewhere. A system I love, in a time period I love and I got to work with some really great people too.

#RPGaDay2023 Will still play in TWENTY years time

 I would like to say yes to this. I'm in my 50s now. But my dad is going strong at 93 and his dad lives to his 90s. So in my 70s? Yeah. Let's do this!

By the way, my wife hates this picture.

I kinda have a Larry Elmore thing going there! Besides that is about how long this will take me to get through all my games.

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite PUBLISHED adventure

 I have a few, to be honest. Sometimes I run them as is, other times I alter them. But one of my all-time favorites has to be the original I6 Ravenloft.

I grew up on a steady stream of Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, and Dark Shadows. That's my Appendix N. So an adventure set in pretty much the Hammer Hamlet where I get strange locals and have to fight a vampire? Yeah, that is what D&D was to me.

Ravenloft was TSR's great experiment.  Take the central monster and make him a fully realized character.  Seems odd to ask to do this now, but back then, that was crazy talk.  Gothic Horror in Heroic Fantasy?  Crazy! But it worked.   Sure, Strahd can be thought of as a poor man's Dracula, but he has since become his own monster.

I know some old gamers bemoan "The Hickman Revolution," as it it called, but I loved it. Ravenloft was a literal game-changer for me. Finally, an adversary worth fighting and a REAL vampire too, not the D&D one. 

Original, 25th Anniversary Edition, Print on Demand

I even got my original module from 1983 signed by Tracy Hickman.

I have run this one a lot and even in other game systems. It is a lot of fun.

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite game SYSTEM

 Favorite game system? Well, I have two, but they are related.

NIGHT SHIFT with O.G.R.E.S. and WitchCraft with Unisystem are not just my two favorite games but also my favorite game systems to use.

Both let me play my favorite sort of game; a modern urban supernatural horror one, but they are both systems I like and have written for professionally.

NIGHT SHIFT is largely a love letter to both Old-school D&D and to WitchCraft. 

I love them both.

#RPGaDay2023 FUNNIEST game you've played

 Part two of Favourite Con MODULE / ONE-SHOT is also my FUNNIEST game you've played.

This one I was at Gen Con a few years back. The adventure was a Buffy/Charmed/Supernatural crossover using the Buffy RPG rules. So naturally, I had to play. Sam and Dean were grabbed quickly, and there was no way in hell I was playing Xander. But that was all fine, the character I really wanted was Piper from Charmed.

I had an absolute blast. Piper was, at the time, the snarkiest of all the sisters. So playing her was great. Ended up with the most Drama Points at the end of the game.  In the course of the game, I burned through about 5 drama points, but I also had earned 6 for role-playing. Of course, having seen every Charmed episode gave me an advantage.  I wish I had remembered the GMs/Director's name because I would have easily gone to one of her other games.

I still have my Piper character sheet here somewhere, and it was really fun. The GM even had taken out the Buffy logo and put the Charmed one in its place.

We all spent our whole time laughing.

#RPGaDay2023 Game you WISH you owned

I have been pretty lucky, I lived in an area where my access to RPGs was rather fantastic. Even when I moved my access really only got better. So there are not a lot of RPGs I actually need anymore. Sure some I want, others I might like to have, but for the most part I am good.  But there is one I would really love to have.

The UK printing of the Holmes Edition of D&D Basic. 

I was such an Anglophile that I always felt that anything British made it better. Sure I since matured a bit in my thoughts, but I still love a British print. 

Of course, I am not the only one here. This set has been discussed at Zenopus Archives, the Acaeum, and Dragonsfoot. I know I'll have to get in line behind a lot of people for one of these. 

Still. It would be a nice piece for my collection.

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite Con MODULE / ONE-SHOT

 My favorite Con Module or One Shot? Well, there are two, but that one I'll save for later this week.

The first one was when I ran Ghosts of Albion: Blight at ENWorld's Chicago Game Day at Games Plus a few years ago. I had a player who was WAY into his role-playing the ghost of Lord Byron. He really made the adventure come alive for everyone.

I am a lot grayer but also a LOT thinner now.

We all really had a great time, and I loved how well the adventure came together and how much fun everyone seemed to have had. 

Thinking about this makes me realize how much I miss playing Ghosts of Albion and Victorian Era games. 

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite CONVENTION purchase

 There have been a few to be honest. But my most memorable was the purchase of the Mage Knight Apocalypse Dragon back at Gen Con 2011.

Shown here after I got it home with the Aspect of Tiamat and Orcus.  AoT takes up 3x3 squares, Orcus 4x4. The Apocalypse Dragon takes up 7x7.

This beast was originally going to be Tiamat in my games.  But later on WotC would release their own monstrous Tiamat. 

Tiâmat and Leviathan

What about that Apocalypse Dragon?  I still want to get my money's worth out of him.  So he has been redubbed as Leviathan.  Fitting, given the history my games have had with him.  I will need to revisit my stats for him, though. 

This gives me a chance to use both dragons.

Gen Con 2011 was also the same year I picked up all of the Mayfair Demons sets for AD&D 2nd Edition. I might need to go back to those and see if they had a Leviathan write-up. Might be fun.

I also should adopt as much as possible from the Mage Knight rules.

#RPGaDay2023 Most memorable character DEMISE

I tell this story a lot, but it is a great story.

I have played exactly 1 ninja my entire gaming life.  His name was (horrible I know) Oko-nishi.  My lame attempts at a Japanese-sounding name.  In my defense at what I knew was bad I made him a half-orc.  It must have been around this time I made him using the AD&D 1st Ed Oriental Adventure rules.  

My then DM and I had worked up a D&D combat simulator (we called it BARD), and we plugged him in with 9 other characters.  He was attacked by a Black Dragon (or Red, I can't recall) and killed. The dragon kept attacking him and only him.  We had not worked out all the errors. In the end, he had been reduced to something like -70 hp.  My DM offered to let him be ok or keep him dead. 

We enjoyed watching it so much and getting the mental image of this stupid dragon jumping up and down on my dead ninja that I felt it was a waste to say it never happened.

I never played a ninja or a half-orc again.

#RPGaDay2023 Old game you STILL play

 Many of my games are old. Most of them really.  But the one I keep going back to time and time again is the B/X version of Dungeons & Dragons.

Both the Basic Set and the Expert Set were my literal Gateways to Adventure.

I also have a few different copies of remixes I have done. Various combinations and redits.

It is still one of my favorite games.

#RPGaDay2023 WEIRDEST game you've played

The weirdest wasn't due to the rules, but rather the add-ons.

It was a Gen Con and we were playing in an AD&D 1st Ed game. That year I want to take my family on a tour of all the editions of D&D prior to 5e coming out.  The DM though, had a copy of the old Lion Rampant Whimsy Cards, and he LOVED them.  

The game though was so damn weird and not at all AD&D 1st ed. Felt pretty disappointed, to be honest.

I liked the idea of the cards, but not this guy's execution of them.

When the modern editions came out, the Path of Horror Cards in particular, I picked them up. So not a complete loss really.

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite tie-in FICTION

 Normally I avoid tie-in fiction for RPGs. 90% of the time, you can what I call, "hear the dice being rolled in the background." Most of it tries to cleave too close to the rules and less interested in telling a good story. 

But that is not always the case.

Back when I was gearing up to run the GDQ series for my family, I wanted to read what others had done, to immerse myself in the world and the adventures again.  That is when I discovered the writing of Pauli Kidd.

Pauli took the familiar locations and then gave me characters I really enjoyed. The Justicar, Escalla, even Cinders. They were a very rare treat. She did a fantastic job here, and I never heard the dice once.

Set in the World of Greyhawk, these books are less about these fabled locations and more about the characters. I had so much fun with them that I included Evelyn, the Princess Escalla as the daughter of the Justicar and Escalla (half-human/half-pixie, looks like an elf) in my own running of these adventures. Through interaction with the party, she became the lead freedom fighter to free the surface elves from their enslavement by the Drow across multiple planes. 

Another set are the Brimstone Angels series for the Forgotten Realms by Erin M. Evans. While the books focus on the twin tieflings Farideh and Havilar, the books cover some of the biggest events in Faerûn and even deftly cover things like the changes in world history from 3rd Edition to 4th Edition to 5th Edition.

Her books were so well received that it even added details to the rules, such as Mahen, Farideh, and Havilar to the list of Dragonborn names. 

There are few others, but these are the best in my mind.

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite DICE

 Favorite dice??? How do you choose that? I have different sets for different needs.

This is the set I use when playing Ravenloft of any other Horror themed D&D-like game. Made up my black and red dice with some Castles & Crusades dice thrown in.

These are my main D&D dice right now.

My Ghosts of Albion Dice.

I got a bunch of Drow Dice at Gen Con and have used at Gen Con when running the GDQ series.

Some of my oldest dice. Used these throughout highschool.

Various witch-themed dice.

Halloween-themed dice!

More old dice to add to my collections.

Some "Holmes-themed" dice, including some Gary Con ones.

A box of character-themed dice with their minis.

Various dice bags from my years of playing.

These though are my best sets. Original TSR-era Dragon Dice from the Basic and Expert sets. These are my "showcase" ones. These are the rules and dice that don't get played. I have plenty of other copies for the table. 

So you see...how can I choose?

#RPGaDay2023 Favourite CHARACTER

 I do have a few. There is the whole Werper family with Johan I as the first character I ever created and played for longer than one session. Every version of *D&D gets a new version of Johan as either a Paladin or Cleric. A (mostly) unbroken line of father and son dedicated to fighting evil, particularly the undead.

But I have to say my favorite character has to be my little witch Larina Nix/Larina Nichols.  Johan gets a new version (a son of the previous) in every version of D&D. Larina gets a version for every game I ever play.  I don't play her in every game, but I at least give her a try in the character creation rules.

I also like to get custom art of her and support artists.

I might be a little obsessed.