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Thing about listing vampire the masquerade is that the various areas of the world of darkness are different enough that only looking at the vampires is rather limited. Some glaring absences are star frontiers. They have traveler for space but man star frontiers is a lot like looking at old school dnd. Then both the marvel and dc games each had a take that is so influenced by the way the world stories read. Marvel with its levels of success and DC using a logrithmic type scale to deal with the massive power differences of superman and robin. Then what pathfinder has done with its second edition should not be missed especially since it can be looked over for no cost at archives of nethys and pathfinder society play itself is interesting to see how its organized.
Never heard the term “Organization-Based Play” before, and since I’ve never played Blades in the Dark I have no frame of reference for what it’s talking about. What is it?
I would assume the fact that the group of player characters, the crew, has mechanics like a character. Interaction with other crews becomes the faction game.
champions was amazing. only need stadard dice and the one hardcover book could cover any genre although some took a lot of work by the dm. had a guy in college run a fantasy game with it and used the variable power pool for spellcasters (limitation of having to use found or figured out spells). he would allow people to make custom races as long as the points added up. basically he met with each person and asked them what they would like to do with the only limits being points and he would help them figure out the build for the race and the class and etc. it was pretty cool. gurps was great but the books were unending. hero system had a lot of books but the champions hardcover could handle everything, again if you put in the work.
First I’ll double up on this one:
Amber Diceless Roleplay
Pair it with Theatrix so you can see two completely different approaches to diceless, non-stochastic games. Amber and Theatrix make a fascinating “compare and contrast” study.
To your list I’m going to add (or at points replace with):
- Chivalry & Sorcery (1st edition)
The first game designed from the ground up as a social simulation where your character’s place in society is far more important than grubbing through dungeons, killing things, and looting their bodies. (Indeed for some characters that would negatively impact their experience and growth!) I might put it alongside Traveller to show the difference between a game having a setting and a game being the setting. Also the grandfather of later “mega-mechanics” game systems.
- Bunnies & Burrows
To my knowledge the first attempt at making a game (and a pretty CRUNCHY game at that!) that is 100% based on non-human protagonists.
- Runequest (1st or 2nd edition)
First non-class-and-level game. Second game that came with a detailed, very non-European fantasy setting. Maybe put it alongside 1974 D&D to show how early people started breaking off from the D&D style.
- Maelstrom Storytelling
I’d actually replace Apocalypse World with this because it is the very first game, to my knowledge, that broke completely free of even the vestigial wargames roots of RPGs, complete with traditional story structuring being part of the game mechanisms, no fixed attributes (and no numerical ones), scene-level resolution (you roll once for an entire scene, not turn by turn). It’s innovative enough that it’s of interest. It’s good enough that it’s worth studying. And it has enough mis-steps and flaws that it’s worth discussing. Pretty much any “storygame” owes a debt to this game.
I played amber at a con and it was incredibly fun. I was first in strength and another guy decided to take a chance as he was second in strength and grab me and I got to you a classic. You dare challenge my power!
