The Gaming Den

Everyone has something they like despite it being bad or dumb. For me it's the Forgotten Realms. I know it's really stupid. But I don't care, I love it anyway. Hell, the stupidness just adds to the fun.

Except for 4e FR and anything involving Elminster though. Fuck that shit.

Well, I had Shadowrun. That's turned into the thing where you see an ex-girlfriend on the street, and she's with somebody, and then she turns and you see she's got a black eye that the make-up doesn't quite hide and is missing a tooth.

So.

I maintain a certain fondness for Call of Cthulhu, in its variations and differen incarnations. As silly as it is. As terrible as the books are. As much of a complete fucking mess it is. As horrible as Chaosium is and always with. It's the Mythos. And there's nothing else that quite scratches that itch.

Feng Shui. The older I get the more I realise that what I enjoyed about it was the MTP aspects, not it being a good game. I adore Robin Laws but that game really shows its age and also reminds me of my own.

And I have exactly the same response to Legend of the Five Rings that Ancient History has to Shadowrun. I adored it back in the old days, but since then it's gone its way and I've gone mine. I might do a comparative OSSR of the various editions since I own them all, but that will have to wait until I have time and energy.

Exalted.
The system is a horrible piece of shit that breaks if you look at it funny, and the setting is a patchwork of strange stuff with elder problem on steroids. But I'm still in an Exalted campaign, and the powers it gives to certain splats are interesting.

Playing a drow necromancer repeatedly. I don't even like D&D drow/their culture/Drizzt that much, I just think the drow aesthetic looks cool.

Longes wrote:Exalted.
The system is a horrible piece of shit that breaks if you look at it funny, and the setting is a patchwork of strange stuff with elder problem on steroids. But I'm still in an Exalted campaign, and the powers it gives to certain splats are interesting.

Agreed. Some of my best gaming experiences as a player and a GM have been with Exalted, moreso than any other game. But somehow, after a while I felt like an abused spouse that keeps going back home to get beat up again.

The feel of the game when you're not hitting hte parts of the system that don't work is AWESOME. The setting, the powers, the plot the story, it's alive in a very neat way that I've not had with other settings and games. Yet... eventually it just kind of broke.

Before the 4E D&D devs completely pissed me off with their errata policy and Essentials conversion, I unironically enjoyed playing and running 4E D&D. It felt a lot like playing an 8/16-bit RPG on tabletop. I'm sufficiently over my RAGE by now that I could consider cracking open the books again, but no one gives a shit about that edition anymore outside of certain boards.

I always loved the Dark Sun aesthetic. It was so much more evocative and appealing to me than the Ye Olde Fantasye Europe that I started gaming with.

Also, Cyberpunk 2020.

I spend way too much time reading retroclones.

Ravenloft. The original modules and the 2E setting.

Game On,
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I'll go with Villains & Vigilantes and Toon. I had lots of fun playing those games back in the day, but the rules were pretty bad.

I have a soft spot for Call of Cthulhu too, but my experiences with it were more mixed.

Spelljammer.

Planescape. I know a lot of it is shitty and poorly thought out, but even now, I'm running a Planescape campaign.

I would say that playing goblins that use dark magic and have some sort of spider theme is a guilty pleasure after realising the other day that I've done it enough that other people confuse my characters (a spider-warlock goblin and a goblin were-spider), but I totally don't feel guilty about it in the slightest.

That's lame, Prak -- no one is going to feel embarrassed about that.

Dragonmech.

RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS RIFTS, Kevin Long's designs are like a library of 70's-80's anime mecha lineart and Eric Wujcik was a scholar of design.

Cyborgs, Juicers, Crazies, Mystic Knights, Ley Line Walkers, Dragons, Glitterboys are all cool archtypes with distinct looks. All of my "I'm gonna write a tabletalk RPG" projects end up as "I'm gonna make RIFTS playable!", then I fill up a notebook with little sketches.

Well, that's why I didn't actually say it was a guilty pleasure.

For an actual guilty pleasure- World of Darkness. It was the game that was my first long term gaming experience, playing it for several years in a steady group. Sure things broke up once or twice, but the group came back together to play again. Characters would change, but it was one world for a very, very long time. We specifically played Werewolf, but we would do occasional crossover one shots that were the source of some great memories (Lucifer walks into a church and says "right, I own you fuckers now.")

Yeah, definitely Rifts. I feel more guilty and ashamed about liking Rifts than I do about liking '90s wrestling. Kevin Siembieda is such a fucking tool and it projects through the books as you read them. The system is not so much a system as a big series of numbers vomited onto paper with excessive use of exclamation marks in "rules text". The setting is actually a bit of a mess.

But then again, you get juicers, and tattoo'd warriors, and mind bleeders. And because of "fuck balance", you can just play the thing you want at level one - a demon summoner, mecha pilot or dragon. Also, the enthusiasm of the writer tends to show through. They will go on rants (particularly Kevin S. in this case) about how awesome they think something is in a really unprofessional-looking way, but it's kind of nice to see that.

Hackmaster with all its tables and unnecessarily complex glory.

Spelljammer, playing as a fighter/mage/thief, and anything to do with dark magic (any kind of dark magic... just tell me it's dark and forbidden and I'm in).

RIFTS.

Black Crusade makes me forget about how much I hate percentile systems for a while with its elaborate mutation system. Until I remember its all railroad plots, and Mother May I / MTP if you leave the rails.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Before the 4E D&D devs completely pissed me off with their errata policy and Essentials conversion, I unironically enjoyed playing and running 4E D&D. It felt a lot like playing an 8/16-bit RPG on tabletop. I'm sufficiently over my RAGE by now that I could consider cracking open the books again, but no one gives a shit about that edition anymore outside of certain boards.

Roll20 is full of people playing 4th edition

Maxus wrote:Dragonmech.

I really like it and I really wish it was better. Also Eberron, though I'm not particularly embarrassed about it but I know enough people who don't like it (primarily warforged) that I have never gotten to "play" it. Just ran it a bunch o times.