Chimerical Realm

  New Year, New Character   Day 26  Cyberpunk 2020  Cyberpunk 2020  (CP2020) is the "roleplaying game of the grim future." It paints a bleak vision of the far off year of 2020. A future filled with ecological collapse, near constant wars, overwhelming corporate power, and a divide between the small number of elites who control the wealth of the world, and the vast majority of humanity ground beneath their greed. As the masses are fed a constant diet of fake food and faker entertainment, the true power and decisions are happening in corporate towers and backroom alleys. An incredible imaginary world, indeed. Ok, so, they got some things right. Others they got wrong--did anyone besides hipsters still listen to tapes  in 2020? Is "protest rock" even remotely a "thing," let alone the voice of mass movements? Any "near future" work is going to be eclipsed sooner rather than later, and CP2020 was always on the tail end of the literary movement anyway. ...

 New Year, New Character   Day 25    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  (TMNT), one is not required to play a teenager, a ninja, or even a turtle. You do, however, end up playing a mutant. An animal who, through some manner, has been altered and changed and turned into something resembling a human. Resembling, but not quite.  Though there is a bias towards learning ninjitsu, because this was the published in the '80's and ninjas were just the shit back then. The game is, obviously, a licensed property. But one based on the Eastman & Laird comic books, rather than the animated show that really made the Turtles a "thing." As such, the game is much more brutal and violent than one might expect from the title alone. In fact, the "kiddiefication" is allegedly why Palladium end up dropping the game back in 2000, and so this is not only an old game, but a long out of print on...

  New Year, New Character   Day 24    Wolves of God  Wolves of God is a stripped down, OSR-influences game of adventure and survival in Anglo-Saxon England. While placed in an historical time and place, much like Ars Magica this is a "fantasy" version of the real world, with ancient magic buried in Roman ruins, and the potential of supernatural monsters lurking amongst the bogs and fens of the wild.  Despite the fantastic elements, Wolves of God  is hyper focused in creating the society and world of the time. The most obvious comparison, for me, is with Pendragon, another game that sets the characters firmly in the historical world of post-Roman Britain. But despite using the real world to fill in the gaps of the sagas, Pendragon was always more focused on recreating the characters of the legendarium. Wolves of God  attempts the opposite, to include the legends, but also to tell adventures of something like a real person of the time and pla...

  New Year, New Character  Day 23   Aberrant  Aberrant was White Wolf's take on the comic book/super-hero genre. It was the 2nd game in their "Aeonverse" trilogy, which reimaged a new "pulp" history for our world. In this world, a disaster on a research space station led to a dousing of the world with radiation, and the people began to change , and to exhibit strange, superhuman powers. While still relatively rare, the presence of these "Novas" fundamentally altered the world.  Unlike traditional comic books, or those games that seek to emulate the like Mutants & Masterminds or Heroes Unlimited ,  Aberrant  is an attempt to explore "what would really happen." There are few, to almost no, "supervillains." Sure, there are super criminals, but they don't dress up in gaudy outfits and rob banks--they control or are top-enforcers for crime syndicates and cartels. Those that do dress up in gaudy outfits are more likely to be hire...

  New Year, New Character   Day 21    Shadowrun  Of all the games from my initial list, Shadowrun was the one I was most dreading. I've never actually made a proper character for the game. The only GM I've ever played it under is an expert in the game and world, not only running it for decades, but he even wrote a few source books as a freelancer. For my first character, he worked closely with me, and we used an auto-calculating spread sheet. Subsequent characters were "pre-generated" by the GM, using Hero Lab.  So, this will be my first attempt to make a real character, by the book, with no help. It's rather intimidating. Even separate from Character Creation, Shadowrun is an intimidating game. Its a mix of cyberpunk and fantasy, melding together over the top action, cyborg super soldiers, magic of various type, netrunning...there are just so many sub-rules covering all of these "types." And the world is just as complex, being gripped in decades chaos...

  New Year, New Character   Day 20   Legend  Legend is a semi-generic fantasy RPG from Mongoose, based on the classic game Runequest II. Now, I've never played Runequest II. Heck, I haven't played Runequest I, or III or...you know, I know nothing about Runequest, except that it had some really awesome looking books back in the day. But it was never a game that had a presence in my gaming circles, so it just sort of lurked at the edge of my awareness. I didn't buy Legend  due to its legacy, but rather what it promised. About a decade ago, I was getting rather burned out by Dungeons & Dragons . 3rd Ed, Pathfinder, 4th Ed--none of them were all that much fun anymore. Still enjoying the tropes of fantasy gaming, I sought out something else. Of the games I checked out around that time, Legend  stood out the most.  I'm not sure I "get" Legend , as to this day I haven't had a chance to run or even play it. It seems mainly driven by percentile s...

  New Year, New Character   Day 19   Traveler: The New Era  I'm not sure, but I think I got conned when I purchased Traveler: The New Era (TNE). As a young gamer, I had heard of Traveler , of course. It was famous for its rock hard Sci-Fi setting, it's long history, and its notorious "you can die in character creation." Despite the hushed whispers and gossip, though, none of my friends actually had a copy of it, nor had ever actually played it.  I was at my very first convention, and talking to one of the vendors when, somehow, the topic of Traveler  came up. He immediately pressed into my hands a copy TNE. Maybe he was a fan of the New Era, maybe it was just the "new" one at the time, but I had no idea I was getting something...different from the Traveler  I had heard about.  TNE was a "reboot" of the setting, taking place centuries later than the "classic" era of the game, after the iconic Empire of the setting had fallen into chaos. ...