Day 26: "What RPG Provides the Most Resources?"
Let's be honest here, I have seen some new games come out that are 300+ pages, yet there are no resources inside for players or gamemasters.
And then you look at Rockerboys and Vending Machines. It lays out how to create a character, how the mechanics work, and how you generate an adventure. It's so comprehensive on two little pages that I think I could probably pull off a freaking Shadowrun campaign with nothing else.
I've had so many books full of crunch for my olden days of gaming, but very few of them provided any advice or ideas on how to use that crunch.
For me the greatest game resource would be the AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide.
The first edition DMG does not have great writing. High Gygaxian is an acquired taste, but it simply requests high adventure and drama generated through the mechanics, not "the story."
The DMG is chock full of great resources, but the average player doesn't know how to take advantage of them. The Appendices in the back of the book is everything you need. You need a dungeon that doesn't need to be ecologically sound? The random dungeon generator is perfect. Need a random wilderness map? Hell, my entire World of Georic setting from 1989 to 2001 was created using the random terrain table.
Of course, a novice DM very early on is going to make a simple determination that not every dungeon dressing on the random chart is necessary (especially when medieval items fall within an Egyptian-style tomb) but you can run an all-out fantasy crawl using randomization. It's going to to gonzo fun, but you should figure out by session two or three that constant factors that get randomly rolled should have some campaign significance.
Players have gone on months' long wild goose chases for much less.
Let's be honest here, I have seen some new games come out that are 300+ pages, yet there are no resources inside for players or gamemasters.
And then you look at Rockerboys and Vending Machines. It lays out how to create a character, how the mechanics work, and how you generate an adventure. It's so comprehensive on two little pages that I think I could probably pull off a freaking Shadowrun campaign with nothing else.
I've had so many books full of crunch for my olden days of gaming, but very few of them provided any advice or ideas on how to use that crunch.
For me the greatest game resource would be the AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide.
The DMG is chock full of great resources, but the average player doesn't know how to take advantage of them. The Appendices in the back of the book is everything you need. You need a dungeon that doesn't need to be ecologically sound? The random dungeon generator is perfect. Need a random wilderness map? Hell, my entire World of Georic setting from 1989 to 2001 was created using the random terrain table.
Of course, a novice DM very early on is going to make a simple determination that not every dungeon dressing on the random chart is necessary (especially when medieval items fall within an Egyptian-style tomb) but you can run an all-out fantasy crawl using randomization. It's going to to gonzo fun, but you should figure out by session two or three that constant factors that get randomly rolled should have some campaign significance.
Players have gone on months' long wild goose chases for much less.
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