Apr 17, 2012

"Is There a Version Of This With Guns?"

Something a player said in a short MRQII game from last year. At the time, only Clockwork and Chivalry had guns for MRQII, though I think this is an obvious oversight I intend to correct in due time. In the mean time, I bought Rik Kershaw Moore's The Company on lulu.com. I've been looking for a good realisation of Openquest with guns to take over as my modern / near future game of choice, since Shadowrun 4e and the new World of Darkness systems have both exhausted my patience. I'd also just like to see a new instantiation of the Openquest system. I'm extremely curious to see how they've altered and changed it to run shoot 'em ups. I know that theoretically it's possible to use Call of Cthulhu to run a modern game that was a shoot 'em up, but I find Openquest's division of skills and the calculation of their base percentages more amenable than the skills in CoC, which leads to faster character creation, and even less confusion about what skills do than in stock BRP / CoC.

I also picked up a copy of Dark Dungeons, finally, which was the competition for Swords and Wizardry Complete for use in my Emern game. Dark Dungeons is a retroclone of the Rules Cyclopedia, which was the first type of D&D I ever played (though not the first roleplaying game I ever played - I came in through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness after my eight-year old self confused it with a TMNT comic and convinced my parents to buy it for me). There are many parts of it I like, but I'll save a more comprehensive review and comparison for when it's actually in my hands. I have read the free pdf previously, but I want the physical copy to evaluate and read through, as 345 pages of pdf is a bit much, even for me.

2 comments:

  1. Looking forward to your take on The Company. Modern-day "men's adventure" type action thrillers are a criminally underserved genre in RPGdom, and Openquest is a great engine.

    Regarding Dark Dungeons, I am a huge D&D RC fanboy, but right now I'm getting my RC fix from Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS). It clarifies, streamlines and expands "name-level" play, caps personal power and introduces all sorts of interesting complications. I've even entertained the idea of an Emern-inspired "New World" game with PCs staking out domains in unclaimed wilderness, and/or growing fat on the brand-new (if very Travelleresque) Mercantile Ventures subsystem.

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    1. Yeah, you mentioned it to me once before, and I'd love to pick it up eventually. I tend to buy games pretty slowly, and I've wanted Dark Dungeons since it came out and I read the pdf. I'll probably get ACKS later this year, since it's getting such positive reviews.

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