All this Rifts talk is giving me the sudden (irrational) urge to dig my Palladium books out of storage.

-paws

Now I know what to blame...

Yep.

-paws
PS Kingboy: I'll take that as a not interested, then?

Everyone's already mentioned the other games I played from that era, so I'll only list two that I remember, but never got to play:

Marvel Super Heroes (The FASERIP version)

and

Bunnies and Burrows.

...

(What?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

I have that sitting on my bookshelf, actually.

A buddy of mine and I had a huge blast with that back in middle school. There was a book they out for it called Ultimate Book of of Powers (something like that) that took the whole random roll character thing to a new level of silliness. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)



Okay, now there's a game I've never player or owned.

-paws

I got a copy of B&B from Ken at a con (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Carl

I may have missed this but has anyone ever here ever played Spycraft 1st Ed.? Is it any good? Recommend or no?

We had a lot of fun with Robotech and Marvel Superhero's over the years.
Rifts was ok, but putting a character together took forever( that and I like to play low key characters likeO.C.C. scouts and the rest of the crew was into full cyborgs and glitterboy armor.)
I really liked twilight 2000. if I remember right it had a good combat system and very realistic.( to the point where we spent half the game brewing fuel for the vehicles.)
I played one game of Runequest.( Fell through a ceiling, broke my legs, crawled to a ballista to shoot some monkey thing, missed, died. ) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Old Shadowrun, specifically Shadowrun II and all of the adventure modules they published. Dragonlance "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" D&D 2nd edition, Legend of the Five Rings 1st Edition, and Vampire the Masquerade and their well written City Sourcebooks line which includes "DC by Night" "Chicago by Night", "New Orleans by Night."

Back in 7th grade - 9th grade a large group of kids and I ran paper and pencil Vampire the Masquerade and we split the GM duties amongst three people, each one running their own city utilizing the city sourcebooks. Good times good times.

Funny you should mention it like that... hehe, PLAYED it... yeah, like a few others, I bought a bunch of it thinking, "Hey, d20, can't be hard to get players for this..." so I've never played it. =) I liked reading it, it was fun, but it suffers from the usual d20 stuff... class, levels, prestige classes, etc. Not bad, really, if you like that style of play. I think it would have been fun, but the group I was in at the time wasn't good for it, and the group that is would rather play Hero. =)

I'm surprised no one as mentioned 7th Sea, back before the d20 version came out.

Rifts, and I was actually looking back at 3rd edition rather nostalgically. I miss cyberdecks, and the days when a wireless relay was fancy.

Funny you should mention that one. I was just exposed to 7th Sea two or three weeks ago (I'd never player or picked up a copy of the books, even) and now I'm rabidly trying to find more material for it - I've been busy reading everything I can find.

The game system is quirky... it seems like its trying to be "rules lite," but doesn't, IMO, have a sufficiently unified game mechanic to pull it off. Still, its pretty simple compared to some other systems. I just had to dig into it more than I would have expected to pick it up.

-paws

The old D&D wasnot to be taken serious, also it have no DM manual so the DM was able to change rules freely and add rules freely. Star Ace and Time Master roleplaying games where greast games. Traveler,Space Master and Space Opera where great science fiction game. Star Trek from FASA was also good. Common sence needed to be use in gamering. Let say in Traveler than 20 megraton H-bomb goes off 3 feet from you there is no need to have than rule system say you are dead. I believe the newer generation are ruin by video game.

I have once the GameScience version of the Empire of the Petral Thones but some christian threw it away. It have spell which most game back then or today have like one Goddress of Sexual Lust have afew spell that make than man too old to get it up get it up againt, spell to help than woman get organize. It have spells to to potect books,scolls and other way of writeing from harm and ageing.
I have C&S which is than great fansy game.

DnD 3E and 3.5E: They could have used a LOT of improvements, but they were actually pretty good. You could end up pulling campaigns you'd never dream of with some systems.

Call of Cthulhu: The Chaosium original is still the horror game.

Call of Cthulhu d20: It wasn't bad, but the fan-made Resident Evil game for its rules was actually excellent. The attempt to convert that system to the Chaosium one failed badly to capture the same feel.

heh, maybe if one could claim that video games foster a drive to abuse quirks in the logic of things.

to me it seems to be just a echo of everyday life, where people can get millions payed out by claiming they where not warned that coffee could be hot...

Well, I found old 2300AD manuals for sale through Amazon retailers, dumped a little over $100, and I now have every piece published for that game system. I went through the rules this weekend and I was surprised at how easy they were to grasp. The game is chart driven, especially in char gen and combat, but it's also not a game that fixates on combat and min/maxing. Yes, there's a system for man-to-man, vehicle and starship combat (including a separate hex-based table top game which I'll probably buy later) but it's obviously not the focus, unlike D&D or Shadowrun. 2300AD pulls its pages from movies like 2001 or books like CJ Cherryh's Merchanter-Alliance Universe. Hard science-fiction, unlike space fantasy or space opera, places equal importance on exploration, diplomacy and general problem solving as it does trigger pulling. In one of the side bars it even states "this is a 'role-playing game' not a 'roll-playing game.'" So if a player says, "I walk up to the guard and shoot him in the head" and if there are no extenuating circumstances, he accomplishes it. I like that. I also like that it's expansive enough that a player could be a farmer on a backwater colony, a corporate troubleshooter, or a starship captain (or one of a fleet of captains!).

And, like its predecessor Traveller, it's one of those games where you can die during character generation. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) God, I'm excited to play this.

Interesting. I've bought all the Spycraft 2.0 materials and PDFs as well as some of version 1 adventures and there's a distinct vibe of interest in playing the World on Fire setting in my game group. One guy already rolled up a character and we haven't started yet! I can understand how a class based system would turn people off as it limits freedom of choice. But I think, sometimes, it's good to impose artificial limitations, especially if you play in a group where the players want to do a little of everything and you end up with a very "mayonnaise" team, rather than a group of specialists. One of my quirks as a player is that I simply MUST play the opposite role of the majority of the team. I can't stand being yet another hired gun/sword.

In my case, that's because I'm still playing 7th Sea. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

We never have the mayo problem... the thing about freedom is that people tend to do all sorts of things when they don't feel like they have to do something conventional. I get tired of stuff like, "oh, dang, we need a cleric or we'll suck" because all these roles are built in. Most of the time, with a more open system, people tend to specialize and choose certain areas they're good in, and they're not limited by some odd rule that says if they can fight, they can't be smart or know anything else. So instead of the typical Hired Gun, Name X, you get Maximillian, the Firepower Guru that's a gunsmith that is constantly making new and interesting equipment, with an odd penchant for using the Tarot to try and foresee his future that is also quite the scholar on the mythical, etc. And he has the basic essential skills like first aid and other basics that make sense. He's not the medic, but he'll do in a pinch.

I'm not against class systems. Like you say, the artificial limitation is sometimes entertaining... but as a whole, I like more open systems because it lets people play what they want to play rather than HAVE to play what you're told is needed.

*shrug* Just my 2 cents, no more... not particularly articulate tonight.

I mostly agree. The one thing I'd like to add is that, using your example, if an adventure requires a cleric and no one wants to play one the DM shouldn't be running that adventure. Same with magic-based Shadowrun missions where every player wants to play a street samurai. The DM/GM needs to be flexible enough to provide an appropriate challenge to his players, not ram-rod the players into the game he wants to play.

I agree with you as well... but some of that depends on the game. Some require more of that "required classes/skills" than others just from the perspective of how the game is built to work. I have a SR game right now that has no magic users, so I don't impede them with a lot of magic stuff or shaft them on a regular basis because they don't have one. Then again, we're not exactly playing the usual Mr. Johnson hands out your missions game, either. Then again, as I hear it, they're just all happy to be able to play Shadowrun instead of the usual d20 stuff. =)

...the first RPG I played was not D&D. It was a sort of homegrown small press system titled Beasts Men and Gods. One of the games creators was a college buddy of mine. This game had lots ofnice features like armour components, a spell point system which allowed mages and priests to recharge their mana by resting rather than casting that one magic missile spell and being useless the rest of the day. Mages could even wear armour as it just affected their casting success and there were no limits on what weapons one could or could not use as long as you had the strength and agility to wield them. Spell failure could be quite interesting as well and all mages were subject to it.

There was also more parity in hit points between the different classes (pretty much every character started with the same at first level). There was also a stun rating which is where one first took "damage" before going into avtual hits so again characters at low levels had more survivability which made the game more interesting. The chargen system was well thought out in that related attributes used a "control die" and then you rolled 2D6 adding the total to the control die number.

Of course there was no marketing machine like TSR had so the game only had a local appeal where I lived. I still have a copy of my rulebook.

All sounds like things that have been incorporated over the years but must have been quite the "wow" at the time, I bet. Always cool to hear stuff like that. Too bad it didn't go anywhere, it sounds like it could have been quite the game for the era.