Casting Shadows

Week 4: Which         Prompt 24: Which game deserves more recognition?

Today’s prompt for #RPGaDay2018 is another potential source of lists and comparison, which is great for searching and shopping, but hard on brevity. It might be a day to throw brevity out the window and under the bus, but I will endeavor to keep things short nonetheless.

There are a lot of cool games out there without much name recognition outside certain circles or age groups. Games like TORG, Pendragon, Maelstrom, Continuum, Feed, and Cabal to name a mere handful offer a lot to a group looking to explore. New ways to play, new ways to think about playing, and new vistas to travel.

I feel like giving more than one answer, so I will divide my response into a setting that deserves more notice, and a system that similarly needs attention.

Setting

A game I have mentioned often I intend to mention again, but this time to focus on the setting. Blue Planet, an SF RPG from Red Brick and licensed many times to different publishers over the years including FFG and FASA is one of those jewels of setting development that simply does not get enough praise or attention. Rooted in enough real-world science and politics to be believable, and seasoned with enough science fiction, mystery, and frontier action to be fun, Blue Planet’s watery world of Poseidon around its far-flung star is a sad victim of neglect by gamers. Overlooked, passed over, or never even heard of, Blue Planet is that good thing that once you discover it you wish you had discovered it earlier.

System

For system I had to wrestle some suggestions into submission. Of course, I feel like I should remind people about Ubiquity and Mythras but hopefully my other posts on those great ways to play will carry their respective torches. For this post for this year of #RPGaDay, I think it would be better to talk about Circle of Hands by Ron Edwards’ Adept Press.

Circle of Hands manages to present itself with distinct clarity, set you up to get into play quickly and with a good measure of confidence, and then conspire with you to explore a brutal iron-age world of magic, humanity, and violence that leaves no uncertainty about what has been done and why. In combat in particular the system innovates and digs in with ruthless efficiency to the meat of the thing. Initiative is handled in a surprising new way, injury and commitment are given great attention, tempo and keeping the upper hand get their due, and so do the grim twists of circumstance.

It is something to behold.

Tomorrow

We start the fourth weekend, and look at games that matter. Saturday looks back at the impact our play has had, and Sunday looks ahead to our ambitions.

YouTube

As has been my habit since the second year of #RPGaDay, I am also keeping pace with the prompts on video. The content of the videos and the blog overlaps, but is not exactly the same, and where the greater emphasis on detail resides varies from day to day.

#RPGADAY 2018

This is the fourth week of the fifth iteration of the monthly roleplaying gaming celebration launched by Autocratik for all forms of social media. Share your responses however you prefer to share. If you want to get involved, grab and share the infographic with the prompts and jump right in!