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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9621442" data-attributes="member: 86653">I’ve more often heard the term speculative fiction to bring together the various threads of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. I’m also a sensawunda junky. For me that feeling has almost always been limited to sci-fi novels. Particularly Golden Age through the New Wave and a bit into cyberpunk. But mostly the big famous sci-fi writers (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Herbert, Niven, Pohl, etc) and a handful of New Wave writers (Philip K Dick, Ellison, etc). I think it’s harder to find as you age simply because you’re exposed to more and more. The first time you encounter some big idea it’s way more impactful than the 73rd. Likewise, the more of those you come across the less there are. I do think they are limited in quantity. There’s only so many things that can make your eyes go wide and your brain spin with ideas. That same sense of wonder has only been evoked a few times for me with RPGs. Spelljammer. The setting is from top to bottom a kick in the head. It’s the kitchen sink to end all kitchen sinks. I loved pirates and Star Wars as a kid, so once I saw spelljammer my heart sang. You can go anywhere and do anything? It’s all connected. An endless open-world sandbox. I intellectually appreciated Planescape when it came out, but it never grabbed my imagination like Spelljammer, until…Nentir Vale. Not for the setting itself, though I absolutely do love it, but rather the way 4E reworked the cosmology to make it all actually playable instead of endless realms of unusable and unplayable instant death. For some reason once I saw that change my brain backfilled Planescape and then it all clicked. Changeling: The Dreaming. Nothing quite grabbed my imagination like Changeling. It was the perfect metaphor for the secret cabal of nerdy gamer kids who spoke in code no one else understood, saw the worlds in ways and with colors no one else could see, and the dangers of both diving too deep into the escapism and growing up. This was all reinforced even more by how unpopular the game was among the rest of the WoD line. A niche within a niche within a niche within a niche. HeroQuest 2E. The abstract nature of the rules, the fact that anything could be a valuable trait, and by the gods…character creation in 100 words or less. Finally a game that fulfilled the promise of the supposedly open-ended nature of RPGs. Finally a game that delivered on the notion that you could make anything. Shock: Social Science Fiction. Finally a game that could produce the kinds of New Wave sci-fi stories I loved so much. A toolbox for building your own setting and priming the world with tension points and axes of conflict. Over the Edge 3E. The sheer lightness of the mechanics and how refined they are. The actual rules could fit on one side of a sheet of paper. But the setting. Holy crap. That setting. It’s like every kind of funhouse mirror jammed into one tiny setting. Like Sigil but for urban supernatural stories. Honorable Mentions. Clocks. In the form of 4E’s skill challenges, fronts from various PbtA games (especially Monster of the Week and Spirit of 77), and progress clocks from BitD. It took awhile to percolate and settle into a great usable subsystem, but holy hell is the idea of clocks a thunderbolt from the sky. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. So many great ideas in such a small space. The Game Master’s Book of Proactive Roleplaying. Excellent book that’s a revelation to some. The last two are honorable mentions rather than full sensawunda books because I’d already come to many of the same conclusions as the authors from years of play. They both still had absolutely great stuff that was absolutely new to me. But it makes a bit of a difference when the whole books is amazing and new and sparks your imagination instead of 1/2 the book, or whatever.</blockquote>

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