Casting Shadows

Ten Years ago, when David F. Chapman launched this event for the first time, I came across it on Facebook as some of my favorite writers and designers in RPGs shared their responses. I started my own responses later in the month. Over the years since I joined David in running it, we have drawn on some of these questions to help form a familiar core of prompts for RPGaDay. As a result, they all look familiar to me, of course, but some – like this first week – are technically being answered for the first time. That is nice~

Quick Rules Tip!
You can make your response in answer to the question, the parenthetical addendum, or the single word in bold. Any social media platform or format counts, just tag it with #RPGaDay2023 and be positive about RPGs~

Day 1: First Game Played (this year)

I had to check my notes to see what was the first game we played this year. There are a few firsts. The first game we put on YouTube was Alien. Our short Colonial Marines campaign, What Comes Home to Roost, wrapped up in the first part of the year and then we started playing Blade Runner to compare the iterations of the Year Zero system. The first game that I started running this year, rather than carry on from last year, was Corporia – Knights in Shining Armani. It ran via Discord for a few months, completing one mission and laying the groundwork for a live run at some point. The first game that I played in this year was an ongoing campaign for Leagues of Gothic Horror where we play agents of the Ministry of Unusual Affairs.

This got me thinking about the first game that I got into in detail on this blog after launching it in 2010. That turns out to be A Time of War (The Battletech Roleplaying Game or Mechwarrior 4th Edition). I looked for what games we were playing in 2014, but as there were a few in rotation it is too hard to sort out which was technically first. We were playing a lot of Ubiquity games at that time, like now, and in heavy rotation were Desolation and All for One. As a fun note, though, 2014 was the year of the first BrigadeCon online convention in support of Child’s Play, and for that event I ran my first of many adaptations of Hollow Earth Expedition to different settings and genres. This one was probably my favorite, due in no small part to the amazing players who made it happen with speed, panache, and hilarity. The game combined elements of Big Trouble in Little China with flavor from Fire Walker – two incredible films everyone has the right to see. The session itself was called The Pork Chop Express and the Convoy of Liberty. Four of Jack Burton’s friends seek him out after he disappears, and calamity ensues~

To round this out, not that it is necessary to cover anything more than a single first, the first RPG that I ever played was Basic Dungeons and Dragons (Moldvay) and that turns out to have been in the spring of ’83 which makes this year my 40th anniversary as a gamer.

As usual, RPGaDay will help me remember~