#RPGaday2015 – Day 21: Favorite RPG Setting
Day 21 of RPGaDay 2015 asks us to identify our favorite RPG setting. I imagined it would be tough to pick this one. I mean the games I most want to play are All for One: Regime Diabolique, and Leagues of Gothic Horror. The game I most want to run (today) is Aces & Eights. Yesterday and the day before it was Blue Planet. For the last few weeks it has been a Luther Arkwright game. The games I play most often are A Time of War or something I made using RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu. Settings are something there are many of in my head and on my shelves. Is there now, or has there ever been a point in time when I had a favorite setting?
I have been thinking about this question for a while.
A setting which hits all of my interests all at the same time, is Shadowrun. Although it is paired with a particularly healthy page count for system, the Shadowrun setting is clever and complicated. It offers as much depth as you like, or can be as simple and action-oriented as you need. Its primary themes are ones you debate your whole life, and its vehicle of expressing itself is as nuanced as it is expansive. I think there is a little bit of something cool in Shadowrun for everybody.
I am attracted to the attitude of the expected protagonists in a Shadowrun game. I like the tech. I like the challenges. I like the magic and I like the risks which abound in this world and the next. I like the hint of the future bound in the sneering dismissiveness of the present. I like the warnings and the chance to play through their reasoning from whichever side you like. I like the sudden and inevitable betrayals, and I like that payback is hard-earned but satisfying. I like that you need a team if you want to survive, and I like that the team you have today may not be the team you need tomorrow. I like the slang, and I like the slide of society into huddled tribes seeking comfort around the glowing light of their information campfires.
Oddly enough, although I rarely mention it, and haven’t played it in years, Shadowrun turns out to be my favorite setting.
How about you, chummer?
#rgaday2015
Casting Shadows 