'allo!
Just wondering what games/books you think would fit into the following categories:
Best Game (in terms of playability and fun):
Best Writing:
Best Adventure:
Best Artwork:
Worst Game (in terms of playability and fun):
Worst Writing:
Worst Adventure:
Worst Artwork:
My picks:
Best Game (in terms of playability and fun): Marvel Superheroes. The game so loosely defined everything, and everything used the same method of resolving every action ever, it was so easy just to jump in and start gaming. Character creation sucked and it was impossible to create a roughly same-powered group of characters under the system, but ah well. AD&D first edition scores high for this because it was so universally known that role players could meet by chance and start playing without a rulebook being within a mile of them.
Best Writing: Warhammer RPG. The Enemy Within campaign is some stellar writing, supplements for places like Middenheim and Marienburg set the stage perfectly and the atmosphere incredibly. The Doomstones series certainly created a sense of history for the characters to stumble into. And the characterizations are so good that reading Warhammer RPG game materials is like reading a novel, a story pops into your head immediately and you're imagining full dialogues that could happen once the characters get in the middle of things.
Best Adventure: Shadowrun's Universal Brotherhood. Halfway because the idea is damned cool, and halfway because they include a 'handout' (communications logs) that's a full novella on its own that does more to flesh out the world of Shadowrun than the rules and location sourcebooks ever did. The first cyberspace sourcebook (it was called something else) had the same effect because of the short story of the child who was only ever conscious online, he had no awareness of the 'real world', it did wonders for visualizing and explaining 'decking' to a world that was not aware of an internet at the time (this was 89-90). It would probably be pretty funny to revisit that sourcebook and all of the REALLY COOL computer images that were included that were representing the online experience of the future.
Best Artwork: Anything Denis Loubet did.
Worst Game (in terms of playability and fun): Champions had the fatal flaw of needing to roll sometimes 10 to 20 dice that had to be counted two separate ways, but a computer program got around that easily. Tri-Tac's system was pretty ugly (roll to hit... OK, now roll for damage... OK, see if you broke any bones... OK, see if you hit any arteries... OK, roll to see if you stubbed your toe or have an itch in your nose...)
Worst Writing: Star Frontiers. Does anyone to this day have any idea what that universe was like, or who decided that giant 10 legged bugs who shoot needles out of an enema nozzle would make for a good character? Same problem with the old Justifiers game. With no explanation you're a half man half animal creature in debt half a billion dollars to some mysterious authority who sends you on missions to hostile worlds to get eaten by the local flora and fauna, with no explanation of who, how, why, or when. I mean wtf. Hopefully the new version fixes that.
Worst Adventure: Against the Giants/Vault of the Drow/Queen of the Spiderwebs AD&D superdupermoduleseries. There was lots of good to it. It introduced and defined the Underdark concept. It showed (superficially) the cultures of a good half dozen non-human races. But it was one of the first adventure series' published, and the idea is that a small (3-10) group of characters is going to attack three different giant armies, march underground and challenge a Drow city, and travel to an evil, vile dimension and kill a god. Yeah, great precedents in gaming. The last adventure in the AD&D Bloodstone Pass series was pretty offensive as well, where the idea was you're 99th level hopping around the Abyss challenging demon gods on their home ground, tied by a weak thread to the plotline of the previous three modules on setting up a dominion in a dangerous yet lucrative mountain pass. Or how about that friggin Earthshaker adventure for D&D basic rules where a 500 foot tall Tin Man knockoff was stomping over the countryside?
Worst Artwork: GURPS, right around the time they released the first editions GURPS Supers and GURPS Magic. Oh god. I think we all know middle school kids who doodle with higher quality and more realism.
Just wondering what games/books you think would fit into the following categories:
Best Game (in terms of playability and fun):
Best Writing:
Best Adventure:
Best Artwork:
Worst Game (in terms of playability and fun):
Worst Writing:
Worst Adventure:
Worst Artwork:
My picks:
Best Game (in terms of playability and fun): Marvel Superheroes. The game so loosely defined everything, and everything used the same method of resolving every action ever, it was so easy just to jump in and start gaming. Character creation sucked and it was impossible to create a roughly same-powered group of characters under the system, but ah well. AD&D first edition scores high for this because it was so universally known that role players could meet by chance and start playing without a rulebook being within a mile of them.
Best Writing: Warhammer RPG. The Enemy Within campaign is some stellar writing, supplements for places like Middenheim and Marienburg set the stage perfectly and the atmosphere incredibly. The Doomstones series certainly created a sense of history for the characters to stumble into. And the characterizations are so good that reading Warhammer RPG game materials is like reading a novel, a story pops into your head immediately and you're imagining full dialogues that could happen once the characters get in the middle of things.
Best Adventure: Shadowrun's Universal Brotherhood. Halfway because the idea is damned cool, and halfway because they include a 'handout' (communications logs) that's a full novella on its own that does more to flesh out the world of Shadowrun than the rules and location sourcebooks ever did. The first cyberspace sourcebook (it was called something else) had the same effect because of the short story of the child who was only ever conscious online, he had no awareness of the 'real world', it did wonders for visualizing and explaining 'decking' to a world that was not aware of an internet at the time (this was 89-90). It would probably be pretty funny to revisit that sourcebook and all of the REALLY COOL computer images that were included that were representing the online experience of the future.
Best Artwork: Anything Denis Loubet did.
Worst Game (in terms of playability and fun): Champions had the fatal flaw of needing to roll sometimes 10 to 20 dice that had to be counted two separate ways, but a computer program got around that easily. Tri-Tac's system was pretty ugly (roll to hit... OK, now roll for damage... OK, see if you broke any bones... OK, see if you hit any arteries... OK, roll to see if you stubbed your toe or have an itch in your nose...)
Worst Writing: Star Frontiers. Does anyone to this day have any idea what that universe was like, or who decided that giant 10 legged bugs who shoot needles out of an enema nozzle would make for a good character? Same problem with the old Justifiers game. With no explanation you're a half man half animal creature in debt half a billion dollars to some mysterious authority who sends you on missions to hostile worlds to get eaten by the local flora and fauna, with no explanation of who, how, why, or when. I mean wtf. Hopefully the new version fixes that.
Worst Adventure: Against the Giants/Vault of the Drow/Queen of the Spiderwebs AD&D superdupermoduleseries. There was lots of good to it. It introduced and defined the Underdark concept. It showed (superficially) the cultures of a good half dozen non-human races. But it was one of the first adventure series' published, and the idea is that a small (3-10) group of characters is going to attack three different giant armies, march underground and challenge a Drow city, and travel to an evil, vile dimension and kill a god. Yeah, great precedents in gaming. The last adventure in the AD&D Bloodstone Pass series was pretty offensive as well, where the idea was you're 99th level hopping around the Abyss challenging demon gods on their home ground, tied by a weak thread to the plotline of the previous three modules on setting up a dominion in a dangerous yet lucrative mountain pass. Or how about that friggin Earthshaker adventure for D&D basic rules where a 500 foot tall Tin Man knockoff was stomping over the countryside?
Worst Artwork: GURPS, right around the time they released the first editions GURPS Supers and GURPS Magic. Oh god. I think we all know middle school kids who doodle with higher quality and more realism.
