Take inspired how you like, inspired you to write your own, inspired you to sit down and play, inspired you to start a new kickass campaign, whatever.

And no one word answers, let's have some explanations here of why it inspired you.

I'm going to think about my answer, I'm not quite sure what it would be yet. I may start another thread about which game inspired you most ever, just so I can talk about Call of Cthulhu some...

Honestly, probably Clash's FTL/Coldspace. Yeah, two games but very related. ColdSpace more from a setting point of view. The details of the alternate history and the underlying things said and unsaid make me want to revisit Nebuleon. FTL makes me yearn to write a human diaspora setting. Not that clash's is bad, but I would take some different routes on it. It also made me think a lot about FutureSkein (on the drawing board only) and the method for incorporating the "Show not Tell" aspects of FTL. That one is difficult to explain unless you have read something similar. It is the style of writing I strive for but do not always achieve.

For fantasy, I still think it was Palladium Fantasy, though that was initially more than 5 years past, it still inspires. The game really did a good job opening itself to valid humanoid characters, from kobolds to goblins to ogres. Along with its divergent magic system, it spoke of an openness and variety of option that I found missing in some other games. It really had an impact on my worldbuilding and approach to my fantasy campaigns.

Two games are in the running for the last 5 years.

Coming in first is HeroQuest. It's the first -- and for me, the only -- "story" game that put solid mechanics behind a narrative gaming style. Its scalability and ability to interpret any character description in game terms were breakthroughs for a style of game I'd wanted to run for years without resorting to total freeform.

The runner-up is Dungeons & Dragons 3.x, which reminded me that cumulative reward schedules can be really, really fun. Mechanically, it was very workmanlike, and sometimes fussier than I prefer, but the meta-game aspect of XP accumulation and leveling up have a lot of appeal.

!i!

Ian,
Can you tell us more of HeroQuest. I have heard a lot but really know very little about it.

Thanks.

Let me see if I can sum up HQ succinctly.

In its purest form character attributes in HQ are determined from a simple 100-word narrative -- you write a 100-word description of your character's background, underline certain keywords and special abilities, then assign starting values to those keywords and abilities. You can, quite literally, take a page out of a novel and stat out a character from an intro narrative once you have the hang of the system.

Abilities scale from 1-20, but once you exceed 20 you gain a Mastery and start the 1-20 scale over again. This system of Masteries is key to scaling, because you can scale the super-powerful against the meek with consistent gameability.

Mechanically, at its most basic, you roll under your ability score on a d20; a 1 is a critical success, a 20 is a fumble. Compare your result against the GMs (or another opponent's) roll against a resistance value on a chart that compares relative success-and-failure. Remember those Masteries from above? For each Mastery, you can bump up your level of relative success against your opponent; so even if you rolled poorly, if you're an order of magnitude or two higher than your opponent you're still much likelier to prevail in a contest.

There's a lot more to it, like augmenting (an indirectly related ability may give you a bonus to your primary ability if you can make a reasonable case for it) and extended contests (a sort of meta-gaming bidding contest for conflicts that are supposed to heighten tension), rules for community support, and much other goodness. Any silly damned thing can potentially be interpreted as an ability, but the limits of effective applicability will keep most players from focusing too much on abilities like "Violently Embarrassed by His Toenail Fungus".

!i!

There are so many games that have inspired me. But I'll take the most recent:

Wayfarers



I checked the demo, read what the designers had to say. The game is not really for me. I get my old school fix right now. But it seems well done. That cover rocks too

I guess when I started browsing the internet around 1998, the big thing among "roleplaying connoisseurs" was to say new games needed to bring something new. There needed to be a purpose behind everything and a designer supposedly needed to be well-versed in roleplaying history and have a large library. And then it got worse and worse when you had to ask yourself all those hard questions. What does your game do? How is it different?

More and more, I'm thinking: if you have it in you, just design the damn game and play it! And Wayfarers really inspires me that way. I think it's cool that they went all the way with it.

PS: I have stumbled on a new RPG called Wordplay. I've just started reading but it looks really interesting and fun. Lots of descriptors that you use to build up your dice. Probably going to inspire me. You can find it here: http://www.wordplaygames.co.uk/

Has to be WFRP v2. I had been a fan for a long time, but it was the re-vamp that really enthused me, not only as a gamer, but as a writer. It got my creative juices flowing and sent me on the path of RPG writing, first as a freelancer and now as a fledgling game designer.

I had always been a great fan of the career system in WFRP (i like lifepaths in general) and this inspired me to make character generation in Stone Horizons that is based on the feature of the castle where you live and work, rather than a vocation based one (although many of the features of the castle equate to a vocational building).

I've had 3 inspiring game discoveries in the last 5 years.

The first was Spirit of the Century. I had been looking for a Pulp-dedicated game for years (Justice Inc., which I still haven't found was my holy grail). SotC really hit the genre button for me, so I was ready for it. But what truly inspired me was first the structured--both thematically and mechanically--character generation. It was the Alexander Pope like structure that really allowed my creativity to flow. I had so much fun making characters for that game! The second inspiration was the way Aspects and the Fate Point mechanic really opened up player choice. I'd come to SotC from a very rules-oriented and rigid GURPS group (who definitely had their strengths, nonetheless) and I felt like a monkey finally freed from his cage. It was awesome fun. The bloom wore off after a while, but that's another story. I learned a lot from that game and had a ton of fun in the process.

The next game that really got me excited was Mutant Future. Gamma World was a huge part of my gaming past and PA scenarios long my favorite genre. The random mutation tables in particular and the insanity that you could generate (or rather could be generated for you; it was up to you to justify it make it all make "sense") re-opened my eyes to the power of random tables and the beauty of not worrying about "realism". Furthermore, Mutant Future introduced me to the complex and shifting, but interesting and important value of the new old school. I ended up interviewing James Maliewsezki for a podcast, realized I still didn't really understand where they were coming from and really looked into it. That opened up my eyes a lot and I am a much better gamer for it.

Finally, my current love is Barbarians of Lemuria. Such a beautiful combination of simplicity and genre emulation. It's really rules light but not wide open. I love the base mechanic. I love that it's a truly small press effort, with a free, earlier version that is really all you need. I love how it completely wiped out my 3.x-based ennui with fantasy and made me excited about adventure again.

In Harms Way. For the first time since I began gaming with my current crew, subjects such as theme, charaterization, tone ect has become part of our pre game discussions. IHW played a major role in this. It's Honor & Practicality rule esp, seemed to fire up my players. They refer to IHW as Nautical Opera

Regards,
David R