#rpgaday2024

The RPG a Day of this year is here. 1 prompt per day.

Day 1 : First RPG bought this year

And already i can't say one name cause i was a full cart...

#RPGaDay2024

RPG with Great Art

I did a whole series of posts looking at some of my favorite rpg covers: lovely, evocative, or just eye-catching. I love cover art and more than once I’ve bought games solely on that basis. Some have been hits (Cryptomancer), some misses (Children of the Sun). Considering interior and exterior art together is a little tricky…

Like…we live in a gaming world with Spire, DIE, and #iHunt. These offer amazing and consistent graphic design and illustration. So I want to talk about a different kind of great art: games with art that keep me from throwing the game away. These are games which I am fairly certain I will never get to the table. The system doesn’t click for me, it’s too complicated for my group, or even the genre isn’t a good fit. I’ve got several of these games: the old Heavy Gear ttrpg, Warmachine, Planescape.

But the grand-daddy of them is Weapons of the Gods. I love/hate this game. It has brilliant ideas, rich cultural material, and wild concepts. But it’s a mess system-wise. Definitively not what I want from a game. Even after playing a couple of sessions I can say I have no idea how it works. 

But the interior art’s so good. Mind you it comes from a license, the Weapons of the Gods series apparently from Jademan comics. It is Hong Kong manhua of wild xianxia action. But it doesn’t feel like an adapted work because there’s so little context given. Like the book doesn’t really do anything to actually help you gain an understanding beyond a massive, continually info-dump. 

And that’s OK because it's brilliant to look through. The interior art’s full color– something we’ve seen more and more in the last couple of decades. But it is bright, vibrant, and full range in that color. Too often we get rpg, full-color core books which have interesting art but it's muddied, washed out, and grimdark. Imperium Maledictum and a bunch of the 5e books have this problem. It reminds me of the failure of the Final Fantasy: Spirits Within movie. They had the FF franchise to work from and no costume or set budget limitations, so they went with the most greyscale and boring approach possible. 

Good heavens the time has passed since last update ops

15. Great character gear!

This ones not abt a specific game, but I have always had a weakness for pointed wizard hats with wide brims! In ttrpgs you're more allowed to imagine what wizard gear looks like, but its important to me that the pointed hat is explicit... In video games, wizards will oftentimes have hoods or circlets, or more subdued hats... Stop that! Embrace the big hat!

16. Quick to learn

An RPG thats quick to learn... I wanna say Mausritter, which I found quick to learn both how to play and how to run! The rules are easy to understand, the vibe of the game is articulated v well and sets expectations wonderfully :)

17. An Engaging RPG community

Gotta go with the GOATs over at @anim-ttrpgs and their ttrpg book club! Very friendly folks, lots of fun discussions both on the topics of ttrpgs and on the topics of eating people!

18. Memorable moment of play

Hmmm... I'll give this to my time with Drakar och Demonar Expert, where my character had *limited* proficiency in the... grey tongue? ogres, orcs, trolls and such spoke it. My character and his companion were met by an ogre, who pointed at my character (elf) and asked my companion (dwarf? mistaken for orc) "is he food"

My character responded by saying "I am a slave, not food, don't eat me" and rolled bad on the language check (very low on the language skill) and the words came out as "You're my slave"

The ogre slammed his club down at my character in an instant, barely whiffing and causing a thunderous slamming sound that alerted the rest of our companions to our location

19. Sensational session

There's a lot of sessions I've really enjoyed, I remember the second dnd game I was in having lots of fun adventures, but I might give it to the first campaign I was in!

Not necessarily the best session, our characters found a lone house far from civilization smelling of freshly baked pies, my character was chosen to investigate while the others stood watch nearby

After knocking on the door of the house , he was greeted by an old lady and welcomed inside for food and drink, and shortly after sitting down... the house grew legs and started walking away, which went completely unbeknownst to my character, and much to the worry of his companions who now had to chase down a house

20. Amazing Adventure

Houm.... There are few games Ive been in that I wouldnt call amazing adventures, but this might go to the Drakar och Demonar game I was in! Escaping an orc infested forest, wandering a town market and buying a huge horse, exploring an ancient dungeon, freeing a lich, replacing an eye with a gorgon's eye, being sent to the past and rewriting history, accidentaly gaining the ire of a daemon, coming back to the future... A lot happened in six months

21. Classic Campaign

First dnd campaign I was in, it was all homebrew and reciting it all would be hard, but Im very fond of it and the memories I made there

22. Notable non-player character

4. RPG with Great Art

Oh geez oh no there's too many to count!

I have an entire folder just called "for looking at" (which i also often play, but you know)

DEATHGRIND!! MEGASTRUCTURE by @ostrichmonkey is a favorite to look at. great use of monochrome.

Inevitable by Soulmuppet Publishing has just a wonderful, wistful style that very well marries the arthurian with the western.

Extreme Meatpunks Forever by Heather Flowers is choc-full of amazing, vibrat art.

.dungeon by snow really understands its position as an old forum with lo-fi graphics.

Necronautilus by World Champ Game Co. is one of Adam Vass's best, in my opinion. His art is always chaotic and the singular nature of every spread in this one really sings.

RPG a day thread! I will probably forget to do this after a week like I did last year but what the hell! First RPG bought this year is almost impossible to say. I bought Odd Gobs by Madness Heart Games as a gift for my friend and I think that was for their birthday, and if so, that would have been it. I actually am pretty reserved with my game purchases, especially since I already have so many games I haven't played, so I think I've only bought a handful of games this year, most of them from bundles.

Most recently played: Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast by Possum Creek Games! I played a chapter with Mike a couple of weeks ago when my physical copy arrived. We played the chapter The Longest Night of the Year and had so much fun. I'm hoping to play it more soon! Normally I would have played a few other things more recently but I have been recovering from covid so I canceled a few games.

It's almost midnight so what the hell, I'll do day three right now, too. An RPG with great art: Justicar from @dinoberrypress! I love how varied and expressive the character art is in the book. It does a good job of showing the variety of characters you can play in the courtroom setting, and also pays homage to the character designs from Phoenix Wright, which is clearly a big influence on the book. I love this lady and her dog. The art is heightened by the great layout and use of fonts for the game. It's a lot of fun to flip through (and a lot of fun to play).

Day 1: - First RPG Bought this Year