RPGaDay 2023, Day 27
New Day, New Kit Syndrome?
I guess this is the point in every RPGaDay month where the people who set the questions are running out of original material, so they start dredging the barrel.
I’m happy with the games I’ve got. With a few notable, retchworthy, exceptions. There’s a system from an indie publisher called Jeansenvaars, designed for solo play. They release three products - Plot Unfolding Machine (PLUM), Scene Unfolding Machine (SCUM), and Game Unfolding Machine (GUM).
Good job they stopped at Character Unfolding Machine.
Point being, every day after the release of these delightful documents, there’d be another update. And another. And another. It became a bit of a running gag, as the author kept refreshing and updating their products.
The end products, by the way, are as smooth running as any solo oracles ever released by Ken Wickham or Word Mill’s Mythic titles.
What I would like to see are new settings. Not new core rulebooks.
But I’d like to see new takes on those settings, too.
A fantasy which feels more like Daphne duMaurier than Tolkien.
A silkpunk setting, rather than a cyberpunk one.
Horror which comes from sources other than Lovecraft, Barker, or their imitators - no slashers or cosmic kalamari any more, please, thank you.
A superhero setting where the themes are more investigative and psychological than whiz-bang, bish-bash, BIFF BANG POW, and - oh, wait, I might as well write this one and wrap the setting around my hypnotic superhero Spiral.
I’d also like to see a less conservative attitude towards life in these settings. I’d be happy to create a science fiction setting where characters can explore relationships, attraction, attachment, rather than just be bloodthirsty homicidal maniacs obsessed about maximising the damage they can do with their fists and weapons.
Maybe a game where the encounters are not (i) random, (ii) nothing but combat, (iii) nothing but combat to the death. Sorry, D&D, but that’s just chicken fucking - something you know exists, but it’s nothing to ever discuss in real life.
I’d like to set up, in fact, a roleplaying game of my own, which is modular enough that I can create a series of settings for the basic, bare bones, game engine, to allow you to run characters in those worlds - worlds where combat is something to be avoided, rather than the core or sole activity within the game.
If I create such a game, engine and setting modules, I’d have to make everything easy to revise, so you would be able to enjoy running the older editions with the new game engine, thus avoiding “new kit syndrome.”
Okay, let’s see if I can do that.