Games I Want to Play - David Plank
Ok, my list of woe and lost opportunities mostly encompasses the misty and lore-wreathed lands of role-playing games.
I have to say that, generally speaking, my gaming group are an easy-going lot who will play most games I fling at them. The only problem is that the time and effort that needs to be put into role-playing games often mean that these paragons of creative gaming are left by the wayside.
Let me regale you, dear reader, with the list of games that, given the time and resources (i.e. a bunch of players as passionate about the genres below as I am), I would love to play ad infinitum…
There are two main problems with running role-playing games that I have encountered during the time that I have been working. The first is time; there is never enough of it. Orpheus, for example, is a game that takes up loads of time, to prepare a session, engage the characters, and keep the background and support fresh and interesting. And if you only play once a month at best, your players tend to forget all the little nuances and details that are so important to a game like this, and you find yourself back at square one each time you play. The game deals with a company that hires out ghosts and projecting humans on various missions to, for example, exorcise a house, or frighten a rival, or ensure that a particular ghost is sent to his or her Final Reward. The problem with Orpheus is that there is a storyline to it, and events that happen during the storyline to significantly alter the setting in very unsubtle ways. However, if your players are in the dark about the little stuff – such as the enigmatic Radio Free Death who pops up every now and then to give some advice, and completely fail to grab the little plot bait you dangle in front of them, because they have completely forgotten all about it since the last session – then they may very well miss out on very important things that will help them a great deal in the future. I love the game, and the whole idea of a story with a beginning, middle and end, but fear that without regular play – at least once a fortnight – it is an impossible dream.
Earthdawn is another game that I would love to play, but has been soured by past experiences. Mainly people leaving our gaming group halfway through an adventure, making the continuity troublesome at best, and totally unrealistic at worst. Earthdawn also has a very rich and involving setting, making it very easy to bring it to life for your players, but a complete bitch to read up on every time we get around to actually playing it. I have stopped recommending this one to my players, as the work involved in getting the game up and running for the possibility of getting through an entire scenario is too much for me to take on.
SLA Industries typifies another problem with my role-playing preferences; my players don’t like the setting. Or at least not as much as me. SLA industries is about as dark as setting get, and I like dark… The company (SLA Industries, in case you hadn’t guessed) owns pretty much everything, and the players are all SLA Operatives; trouble-shooters sent on various missions from sewer patrol to the vaunted Black Ops – suicide missions with a big payoff. There is precious little hope or levity in the setting, with depressing backdrops, difficult moral decisions, very evil overlords, and hardly any chance for survival for our heroic characters. There is not even an Earth, as such, in the setting, with humans being a minority, and other races taking the fore. I love it, and wish we could play. But alas, every time I suggest it, it gets glanced at with slight interest, and pushed aside in favour of other games…
Another one that really bugs me is that my players (half of them at least) don’t like super-hero games. And I want to play Aberrant – White Wolf’s foray into the genre. It is another dark and gritty game that really describes what the world might be like if super-heroes really existed (more X-Men than DC). And even the pedigree of White Wolf on the cover has not swayed my group. Ah well, maybe I’ll wear them down one day…
I have a penchant for diceless ‘narrative’ games, and have had many years of pleasure from the Amber role-playing game. Recently I have acquired the Nobilis game, similar in many respects to Amber, with the players taking the reins of hyper-powerful beings and altering the very fabric of reality with the merest gesture. The main problem with this one is the amount of sheer effort required to run it. The time that is needed to maintain the storylines, and commitment from referee (not-at-all pretentiously called the ‘Hollyhock God’ in Nobilis) and players probably means that this one will need to wait until I am independently wealthy and no longer need to work before I will have enough free time to prepare for each session.
Now my role-playing gripes are over, some more mundane games…
Tabletop skirmish games have been a pleasure of mine for years now, and I have enjoyed small-scale fights using the Necromunda rules from Games Workshop. I am also interested by the Gangs of Mega-City One game – almost identical in every respect other than setting. But finding other players willing to invest in a miniatures game is always a problem, and one that I find insurmountable. And I am not spending my Saturday afternoons hanging around Games Workshop to play games! I have a modicum of dignity left!
The only other hardly-played game in my collection is A Game of Thrones. It is a brilliant game, and is always a blast to play, but the problem is that it is, really, a five-player game. You can play it with other numbers, but five is the optimum (barring the expansion pack, which is apparently very good but I have never seen). And it takes a whole evening to play. So having a ‘guest’ player at our table and heaping this complex strategy and diplomacy game on them (with no room for a light ‘filler’ or other relaxing diversion) seems somewhat unfair, to say the least.
As for CCGs, my own lost baby is the Middle Earth CCG – the pre-movie one way before LOTR and Peter Jackson became synonymous. I have lots of cards from all the expansions and scenarios that you can find. But no-one to play it against *sniff*.
I have to say that, generally speaking, my gaming group are an easy-going lot who will play most games I fling at them. The only problem is that the time and effort that needs to be put into role-playing games often mean that these paragons of creative gaming are left by the wayside.
Let me regale you, dear reader, with the list of games that, given the time and resources (i.e. a bunch of players as passionate about the genres below as I am), I would love to play ad infinitum…
There are two main problems with running role-playing games that I have encountered during the time that I have been working. The first is time; there is never enough of it. Orpheus, for example, is a game that takes up loads of time, to prepare a session, engage the characters, and keep the background and support fresh and interesting. And if you only play once a month at best, your players tend to forget all the little nuances and details that are so important to a game like this, and you find yourself back at square one each time you play. The game deals with a company that hires out ghosts and projecting humans on various missions to, for example, exorcise a house, or frighten a rival, or ensure that a particular ghost is sent to his or her Final Reward. The problem with Orpheus is that there is a storyline to it, and events that happen during the storyline to significantly alter the setting in very unsubtle ways. However, if your players are in the dark about the little stuff – such as the enigmatic Radio Free Death who pops up every now and then to give some advice, and completely fail to grab the little plot bait you dangle in front of them, because they have completely forgotten all about it since the last session – then they may very well miss out on very important things that will help them a great deal in the future. I love the game, and the whole idea of a story with a beginning, middle and end, but fear that without regular play – at least once a fortnight – it is an impossible dream.Earthdawn is another game that I would love to play, but has been soured by past experiences. Mainly people leaving our gaming group halfway through an adventure, making the continuity troublesome at best, and totally unrealistic at worst. Earthdawn also has a very rich and involving setting, making it very easy to bring it to life for your players, but a complete bitch to read up on every time we get around to actually playing it. I have stopped recommending this one to my players, as the work involved in getting the game up and running for the possibility of getting through an entire scenario is too much for me to take on.SLA Industries typifies another problem with my role-playing preferences; my players don’t like the setting. Or at least not as much as me. SLA industries is about as dark as setting get, and I like dark… The company (SLA Industries, in case you hadn’t guessed) owns pretty much everything, and the players are all SLA Operatives; trouble-shooters sent on various missions from sewer patrol to the vaunted Black Ops – suicide missions with a big payoff. There is precious little hope or levity in the setting, with depressing backdrops, difficult moral decisions, very evil overlords, and hardly any chance for survival for our heroic characters. There is not even an Earth, as such, in the setting, with humans being a minority, and other races taking the fore. I love it, and wish we could play. But alas, every time I suggest it, it gets glanced at with slight interest, and pushed aside in favour of other games…
Another one that really bugs me is that my players (half of them at least) don’t like super-hero games. And I want to play Aberrant – White Wolf’s foray into the genre. It is another dark and gritty game that really describes what the world might be like if super-heroes really existed (more X-Men than DC). And even the pedigree of White Wolf on the cover has not swayed my group. Ah well, maybe I’ll wear them down one day…I have a penchant for diceless ‘narrative’ games, and have had many years of pleasure from the Amber role-playing game. Recently I have acquired the Nobilis game, similar in many respects to Amber, with the players taking the reins of hyper-powerful beings and altering the very fabric of reality with the merest gesture. The main problem with this one is the amount of sheer effort required to run it. The time that is needed to maintain the storylines, and commitment from referee (not-at-all pretentiously called the ‘Hollyhock God’ in Nobilis) and players probably means that this one will need to wait until I am independently wealthy and no longer need to work before I will have enough free time to prepare for each session.
Now my role-playing gripes are over, some more mundane games…
Tabletop skirmish games have been a pleasure of mine for years now, and I have enjoyed small-scale fights using the Necromunda rules from Games Workshop. I am also interested by the Gangs of Mega-City One game – almost identical in every respect other than setting. But finding other players willing to invest in a miniatures game is always a problem, and one that I find insurmountable. And I am not spending my Saturday afternoons hanging around Games Workshop to play games! I have a modicum of dignity left!
The only other hardly-played game in my collection is A Game of Thrones. It is a brilliant game, and is always a blast to play, but the problem is that it is, really, a five-player game. You can play it with other numbers, but five is the optimum (barring the expansion pack, which is apparently very good but I have never seen). And it takes a whole evening to play. So having a ‘guest’ player at our table and heaping this complex strategy and diplomacy game on them (with no room for a light ‘filler’ or other relaxing diversion) seems somewhat unfair, to say the least.As for CCGs, my own lost baby is the Middle Earth CCG – the pre-movie one way before LOTR and Peter Jackson became synonymous. I have lots of cards from all the expansions and scenarios that you can find. But no-one to play it against *sniff*.
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