What dead game would you resurrect?

[Tonguez]

You declare your Monthly actions, have an adventure spawned by one or more player's actions, then resolve the month's actions, modified for the adventure. Rinse and repeat. Very similar to Traveller 4th: Pocket Empires, Burning Wheel: Jihad and to Burning Empires.

Maybe, maybe not. It's not like Birthright was the only set of Landholding rules in older D&D... Mentzer's D&D Companion Set and Alston's D&D Rules Cyclopedia both have a set of landholding rules. (almost identical... almost.)

Yeah I’d rather have the rules from the Companion set than what Bastions set up.

For me it's the difficulty of fitting in the dungeon delving part. My character is running a kingdom, principality, or some other physical territory. When do I have time to take a break from ruling to go adventure? Are the other player characters also running their own territory? Do we all have time to take a break and go adventuring?

Bringing the adventures to the Kingdom is great advice, especially if you can create some interesting factions and NPC rivalries and relationships to weigh heavy on the PCs shoulders as well as old ruins to explore and random monsters deciding to establish new lairs.

The easiest way is the “New Settlement on the Frontier” campaign used in PFs ‘Kingmaker‘, Birthrights ‘King of the Giantdowns’ and Companion Modules ‘Test of the Warlords’

The other useful way is to use the Random Domain Events as the base of adventures, Birthrights’ ‘Legend of Hero Kings‘ is an anthology that specifically does this and has some good scenarios, CM Sabre River explicitly says that its a Domain Random event too (and takes place over a year - and it advises using a PC dominion for the first act) .

Unfortunately most of the Birthright Modules were all a bit crap, CMs were a bit better.

I always thought doing a domain-based game in Karameikos would be fun too (Keep on the Borderlnd already sets it up)

 

[aramis erak]

For me it's the difficulty of fitting in the dungeon delving part. My character is running a kingdom, principality, or some other physical territory. When do I have time to take a break from ruling to go adventure? Are the other player characters also running their own territory? Do we all have time to take a break and go adventuring?

You don't do dungeon delves. One of the things about 3 particular D&D settings is that they're not intended for dungeons: Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Birthright. Sure, you can do them if you must, but they're not the ideal fit for those settings.

You do various spec-ops and/or superspy type stuff. Plant evidence against foes, steal secrets from foes, get the plotnium artefact the wizard needs to make your gewgah of command... steal seeds from the hostile neighbor...

And often, A goes to B to make deal C... Essentially, Birthright is intended to bring 9th-15th level settled down rulership & politics to 1st through 9th level play.

 

[MGibster]

You don't do dungeon delves. One of the things about 3 particular D&D settings is that they're not intended for dungeons: Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Birthright. Sure, you can do them if you must, but they're not the ideal fit for those settings.

I thought about mentioning this to avoid confusion, but I have a very, very broad definition of dungeon as it applies to D&D. Are we boarding a pirate ship? That's a dungeon. Are we delving into a village that's been taken over by bandits? That's a dungeon. Even then, Ravenloft, at least Curse of Strahd, have several dungeons you went through.

 

[RareBreed]

Oh gosh, what wouldn't I want brought back?

• Lost classics from TSR:
  • Gamma World, but more specifically, 3e
  • Top Secret SI
  • Gangbusters
  • Indiana Jones
• Skyrealms of Jorune (forgot who made this)
• Updated versions of R. Talsorian games:
  • Mekton
  • Teenagers from Outer Space
• Victory Games James Bond
• Leading Edge Games:
  • Living Steel
  • Aliens
• West End's Ghostbusters
• Gold Rush Game's Sengoku but using full on Hero System instead of Fuzion
• Cleaned up versions and more support for Fantasy Games Unlimited:
  • Bushido
  • Aftermath (technically not dead)
  • Daredevil
• A tweaked and cleaned up Twilight 2000 2nd edition from GDW (not Free League's 4th ed)
• Because I never got to play it before:
  • Albedo
  • Dragonquest
  • Elfquest
  • Blue Planet (there is one in the works!)

 

[aramis erak]

I thought about mentioning this to avoid confusion, but I have a very, very broad definition of dungeon as it applies to D&D. Are we boarding a pirate ship? That's a dungeon. Are we delving into a village that's been taken over by bandits? That's a dungeon. Even then, Ravenloft, at least Curse of Strahd, have several dungeons you went through.

I never bothered with post 3E Ravenloft... but original Ravenloft wasn't really about fighting anyone but Strahd and the progeny - it's a module, adventure, castle, but I'd not call it a dungeon - in no small part because the definitions in D&D OE and in Moldvay - my foundational text in D&D - strongly imply the labyrinth, a push-your-luck expedition into a maze or non-human dwelling system of caves... but Moldvay is explicit about the dungeon being underground.

In Castle Ravenloft, the best solution is to avoid and evade encounters. If you fight them all, Strahd's going to eat you.

Then again, WotC's rework of FR isn't really that faithful to former, but at least feels like they tried.
Spelljammer is totally new. It's got only the name and high concept in common.
It's not surprising to me at all that the Ravenloft modules were introducing non-ravenloft themes... the two I Ravenloft AL modules I played felt nothing at all like the Ravenloft of the 80's.

I've never considered G1-2-3 to be dungeons; they are modules, adventures, scanarios, and leave a lot of room for non-combat interactions. Something I noted as a novice GM in 1981. The dungeon term has implications of plot railroad, and that's pretty clearly intentional in OE... and in many of the modules, both proper dungeons and non, are very much plot railroads.

 

[MGibster]

I never bothered with post 3E Ravenloft... but original Ravenloft wasn't really about fighting anyone but Strahd and the progeny - it's a module, adventure, castle, but I'd not call it a dungeon - in no small part because the definitions in D&D OE and in Moldvay - my foundational text in D&D - strongly imply the labyrinth, a push-your-luck expedition into a maze or non-human dwelling system of caves... but Moldvay is explicit about the dungeon being underground.

I'll be honest with you, the idea that the original Ravenloft isn't a dungeon is such a radical departure from what I understand a dungeon to be that I simply can't relate.

 

[RareBreed]

Who the heck are you backing? I have backed an OMG number of campaigns and I don't think I've ever gotten zero back and, outside of the pandemic, most of mine fulfill very close to the time expected. The new @SlyFlourish book is going to be here on Thursday, five months early.

Free League has had some timeliness issues getting orders to customers. Technically, it's more the fault of the distributor they use (Funagain IIRC for North America), but the fact that they keep using them means I blame them as well. I didn't get the 2nd ed The One Ring until many months after the majority of users got it, and never did get Strider mode. I didn't have to wait quite as long for Twilight 2000 4th ed, but I know a lot of folks did, and so that soured me on Fria Ligan as a company. It didn't help that I just wasn't impressed with the game engine used for T2K4e (I think it's a variant of the Mutant Year Zero engine and I even pointed out some probability quirks with their dice mechanics).

Also, there are a number of folks who still haven't gotten their rewards from Magpie for The Avatar game. I haven't followed that thread as much, so I don't know how many were affected, but given how absolutely ginormous that project was (#1 TTRPG on Kickstarter), I'm willing to cut them some slack. I recall that the number of backers was so huge, that the limited edition dice sets had to be back ordered, so that might have been one hang up.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

• Leading Edge Games:
  • Aliens

Wait, over the Free League Alien?

 

[RareBreed]

Wait, over the Free League Alien?

Yes

I am an oddball who actually loved the infamous Phoenix Command Combat System. AFAIK, it was the first system to introduce an action count phase system with the Advanced Rules. Other than the first round, there was no initiative roll, and what mattered wasn't who started an action first, but who completed an action first. The damage system was also very deadly. One shot and being rendered out of combat was very common. I think many players today would balk at that, but if you ever played ARMA or early Ghost Recon/Rainbow Six PC games, it leads to an entirely different play experience when you can't take wounds lightly.

 

[RareBreed]

I've mentioned this several times before, but if you look at the list I compiled above, a good chunk of them are where you play regular humans. No magic, no uber technology, and even in some sci-fi settings, it's not much more advanced than what we have today (eg Aliens...not counting androids, who don't get a lot of air time, and FTL star ships).

I really miss the days of games where characters were mundane, though the setting could account for high stakes action and drama (eg, espionage thrillers, post apocalyptic settings, roaring 20's/30s, the warring Sengoku Jidai period, etc etc). What happened to this kind of gaming? And can anyone think of other games that fit this kind of play style?

I actually forgot to list Boot Hill. I think I played one game, but the genre is something I've always loved. Not just OK Corral or Tombstone gun fights, but the expansion West. For example, Wounded Knee or the flight (and plight) of the Nez Perce Indians. I realize that for some, a Western in this day and age would be a controversial game setting, precisely for the above historical accounts I mentioned...but the day we are afraid to teach (or play in) history, is the day we are lost.