#RPGaday Topic 14: Best Convention Purchase - Page 2

Agemegos · 08-13-2014, 06:04 PM

I'm doing RPG-a-day in August, as promoted by Dave Chapman (Autocratik). This is Day 14 of 31.

Best Convention Purchase

I've never bought a convention. I don't even recollect ever buying a game or such at a convention. Australian cons aren't like (what I understand of) cons in the US; we have almost no RPG industry here, so they have almost no trade-show component (though I did once play in a promo game of Hunter Planet run by the designer, and I GMed in a lot of Tonio Loewald's promo games for ForeSight).

So I'm going to write about something completely different. None of the topics lined up for this exercise relates to setting. So I'm going to take advantage of this here lacuna by addressing the topic : "Favourite setting for RPGs".

Favourite Setting for RPGs

Now, I have designed a few detailed and robust settings in my time. One I can no longer GM since reading Nine Parts of Desire. The other I tend to gush about, quite a lot. Having been designed by me to suit my tastes, it suits my tastes pretty nicely. But (in what I hope is a surprise) it isn't actually my favourite RPG setting.

No, my favourite setting is the real world, with or without the addition of a conspiracy here and a wainscot fantasy there, a couple of horror elements, or a dash of technothriller sci-fi. This is because, as Ken Hite puts it, "If you're creating a setting for RPGs, start with Earth. It's by far the most interesting and best-researched of all RPG settings, under continuous playtest for thousands of years, and the maps alone put other game worlds to shame."

Even the madly various Vancian colonial societies of my SF setting FLAT BLACK are scarcely more exotic than some of the real or real-ish places I have set RPGs: Rome under Vespasian, mediaeval Japan, Southern France in 1123, the Rwandan headwaters of the Amazon, yeti-infested Tibet, Cyprus a month after the fall of Acre in 1291, St Louis in Prohibition, western Massachusetts in the Depression, the Wild West, on ranches on the Uruguayan pampas (with NAZI clone armies!), and so on at greater length than I can recall.

08-13-2014, 06:04 PM	#1
Agemegos Join Date: May 2005 Location: Oz	#RPGaday Topic 14: Best Convention Purchase I'm doing RPG-a-day in August, as promoted by Dave Chapman (Autocratik). This is Day 14 of 31. Best Convention Purchase I've never bought a convention. I don't even recollect ever buying a game or such at a convention. Australian cons aren't like (what I understand of) cons in the US; we have almost no RPG industry here, so they have almost no trade-show component (though I did once play in a promo game of Hunter Planet run by the designer, and I GMed in a lot of Tonio Loewald's promo games for ForeSight). So I'm going to write about something completely different. None of the topics lined up for this exercise relates to setting. So I'm going to take advantage of this here lacuna by addressing the topic : "Favourite setting for RPGs". Favourite Setting for RPGs Now, I have designed a few detailed and robust settings in my time. One I can no longer GM since reading Nine Parts of Desire. The other I tend to gush about, quite a lot. Having been designed by me to suit my tastes, it suits my tastes pretty nicely. But (in what I hope is a surprise) it isn't actually my favourite RPG setting. No, my favourite setting is the real world, with or without the addition of a conspiracy here and a wainscot fantasy there, a couple of horror elements, or a dash of technothriller sci-fi. This is because, as Ken Hite puts it, "If you're creating a setting for RPGs, start with Earth. It's by far the most interesting and best-researched of all RPG settings, under continuous playtest for thousands of years, and the maps alone put other game worlds to shame." Even the madly various Vancian colonial societies of my SF setting FLAT BLACK are scarcely more exotic than some of the real or real-ish places I have set RPGs: Rome under Vespasian, mediaeval Japan, Southern France in 1123, the Rwandan headwaters of the Amazon, yeti-infested Tibet, Cyprus a month after the fall of Acre in 1291, St Louis in Prohibition, western Massachusetts in the Depression, the Wild West, on ranches on the Uruguayan pampas (with NAZI clone armies!), and so on at greater length than I can recall. __________________ Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 08-13-2014 at 10:50 PM.