What hidden RPG gems have you come across?

[fdw3773]

Every once in a while I come across what could best be described as a hidden RPG gem that is well-written and a solid game but got overlooked for one reason or another. My most recent hidden gem is Chaosium's Prince Valiant Storytelling Game, an RPG based off of the long-running (and still going) comic strip inspired by the legend of King Arthur. In many ways, it's like a rules-light version of Pendragon that was also written by Greg Stafford, whose love the Arthurian mythology and storytelling came through in this game book that was enhanced even more with some great art designs by Hal Foster.

 

How about you? What hidden RPG gems have you come across?

[Duke Bushido]

The original Starships and Spacemen.

 

To this day, I have no idea how they got away with it. 

 

Expendables was way better than it should have been; there was one idea from it that I still use to this day in my most-commonly-used Traveller universe.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-- okay, not a fan of the soource material.  I enjiyes Eastman and Laird's original concept in the short-lived independant comics, but  after the Archie comics group reinvented it as teenage nerf suit surfer turtles....  A bit too kiddie for me.  Anyway, the RPG was built on quite possibly the best reinvention od the Palladium system.

 

The Street Fighter RPG was better than it should have been.  I received it as a gag gift, but found it to be totally playable.

 

True gems, though-  that game that makes you say this is more fun thanbit has any right to be!  A game that you never heard if until it was in front of you and you couldn't play it enough?  A game that you wait thirty years to meet someone from a different group who also played it?

 

I can come up with the trilogy of game,booklets that xombine to be Macho Women with Guns-  ignore all the sexism, all the cheesecake, all the black leather- that game,was a hoot!

 

Bushido fits that mould.  It was a _great_ game, and I think Scott Rugles on this boaed isbthe first person I have encountered outside of my old group who has also played it.

 

Magical Kitties Save the Day.

 

Yeah- forget everything you are thinking, because that is not what it is.  (Except Scott; Scott is probably right).  This game more than any other I have pkayed emphasises role-playing above all else: the way stats are assigned, and the facr that your odds can only,be improved by chits that can only,be earned through role-playing....

 

Dependinf on your play style, you can play severalnsessions and never enter anythinf resembling combat-- all of which makes this a great family game, even with really young kids...

 

 

And I am sure that wveryone is foinf to choke,on this, but 1st edition Vampire: the Masquerade was enchanting- the dice pool system,I had only encountered once before, and this game did it better.  The production values were at that time three steps above everything else on the market, the world was fresh, original, and tantalizing.  White Wolf killed my joy simply with over-exposure; every game that made was VTM reskinned, and they coylsnt be both we ed to create a new feel, either.  Way, way, -way- too much of a good thing turns it sour in a hurry.

 

 

[Cygnia]

2nding Magical Kitties Save the Day!  Demo'ed it at Origins this year.  The two kids at our table were the most bloodthirsty of the bunch.  And illusion powers are fun if you know how to target outside the visual senses.

 

My suggestion: Killer Ratings.

 

You are playing as the cast & crew of a paranormal hunting show and you're all terrible people trying to survive when the crap finally hits the fan.  Ergo, you are more than willing (and it's encouraged!) to throw each other under the bus in order for your PC to live.  Zero-prep game, high on improv.  I ran it for 8 people this summer.

[Duke Bushido]

I cant believe I forgot this one!

 

Bureau 13.

 

Just delightful!

[Old Man]

I too have the Macho Women with Guns trilogy*.  Never played it but it's a hoot to even read.

 

My hidden RPG gem is SLA Industries: ultimate grimdark cyberpunk with aliens, mutants, and psykers.  The system is a disaster but the setting is incredible (if you're into ultimate grimdark).  Never did get around to statting it out in Hero.

 

The inverse of that is The Riddle of Steel RPG, which had some really inventive mechanics for character motivation and did an excellent job of conveying the sword & sorcery feel of a background that we're all too familiar with.

 

 

* With Renegade Nuns on Wheels and Batwinged Bimbos from Hell.

[Sketchpad]

Not sure if it qualifies, but I really enjoyed Alternity back in the '90s and would've loved to see where it could've gone. The Dark*Matter setting especially shines out so much that they made it for d20 Modern. The original creators tried to bring it back a few years back, but it just wasn't the same.

 

I also really dig Mutant Year Zero from Free League. While not quite Gamma World, I dig some of the ideas, and love the cards for it. 

[Scott Ruggels]

On 10/31/2022 at 9:14 PM, Duke Bushido said:

The original Starships and Spacemen.

 

To this day, I have no idea how they got away with it. 

 

Expendables was way better than it should have been; there was one idea from it that I still use to this day in my most-commonly-used Traveller universe.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-- okay, not a fan of the soource material.  I enjiyes Eastman and Laird's original concept in the short-lived independant comics, but  after the Archie comics group reinvented it as teenage nerf suit surfer turtles....  A bit too kiddie for me.  Anyway, the RPG was built on quite possibly the best reinvention od the Palladium system.

 

Eastman came back recently and wrote “Ronin”, a dark revenge story about the last surviving turtle, Mikey, going up against The Foot Clan and a Cyborged Shredder in  Cyberpunk future, and it’s Eastman’s best writing. Worth looking up, or getting it online if you have a good sized iPad. 

 

On 10/31/2022 at 9:14 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

The Street Fighter RPG was better than it should have been.  I received it as a gag gift, but found it to be totally playable.

 

True gems, though-  that game that makes you say this is more fun thanbit has any right to be!  A game that you never heard if until it was in front of you and you couldn't play it enough?  A game that you wait thirty years to meet someone from a different group who also played it?

 

I can come up with the trilogy of game,booklets that xombine to be Macho Women with Guns-  ignore all the sexism, all the cheesecake, all the black leather- that game,was a hoot!

 

Bushido fits that mould.  It was a _great_ game, and I think Scott Ruggels  on this boaed isbthe first person I have encountered outside of my old group who has also played it.

 

Bushido is what we played, and played concurrently with “In The Labyrinth”, before Champions came out. Bushido needs an interest in feudal Japan to work, and some knowledge.
 

In the San Francisco Bay Area, in the 70s and 80s we had a few repertory movie theaters, and our local one was The New Varsity, and it showed a lot of Art films, Animation Festivals, and Samurai films from various famous directors (as well as Rocky Horror Picture Show, and The Song Remains The Same, at midnight every weekend). The Samurai films, and TV26, which would flip over to Japanese programming, and show Samurai dramas (Edo period cops), and Anime (Ikyu-Chan), had the area steeped in Japanese culture if you knew where to look. The Samurai films were probably where the “popcorn nooks” came from that we all used in our campaigns. 
 

We played a lot of Bushido, with each person taking a turn as GM every few months, just so we all could get a chance to play. Each GM would set up an arc, and would hand the reins over to the next guy. Made for wildly different styles. Was fun though. I would still recommend it. 

 

On 10/31/2022 at 9:14 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

Magical Kitties Save the Day.

 

Yeah- forget everything you are thinking, because that is not what it is.  (Except Scott; Scott is probably right). 
 

Haven’t run across it yet in the wild. Maybe next February at our first totally post COVID con. I’ve heard of it though, and know a couple of the artists that worked on it. 

On 10/31/2022 at 9:14 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

This game more than any other I have pkayed emphasises role-playing above all else: the way stats are assigned, and the facr that your odds can only,be improved by chits that can only,be earned through role-playing....

 

Dependinf on your play style, you can play severalnsessions and never enter anythinf resembling combat-- all of which makes this a great family game, even with really young kids...

Sounds like a good intro to the hobby for kids. 
 

My gem would be Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller. It uses the same stats and the mechanics are similar enough that you can use most, if not all the Classic supplements, and adventures. The main GM sprung it on us when he ran out of steam running his home brew 5e campaign. For me, it was like putting on a comfortable pair of boots. Mechanically it is similar, but the character generation owes a bit to R. Talsorian’s life path, as characters do not die in character generation, but the twist from both is that characters are assumed to know each other, and players negotiate on how each other met, and work out the details. This made for a very tight knit starship crew, with kind of a family feel. It prevents “A$$hole Loaner”, and secret villain characters, or makes them super hard to create. This was for an Online game on Roll20, organized on Discord where no one had webcams, and it helped greatly. With all of the Traveller information online, such as Travellermap.com, it made for a very rich game. 
 

As for Bureau 13, having it run by the creator, Richard Tucholka, at Gencon (in the Milwaukee days), was a treat, so I went to work for him.  
 

Anything modern probably won’t work for me, as I have a distaste for narrative focused, minimalism, which seems to be the modern trend, and find that 5e is about as rules lite as I can enjoy. 

[Chris Goodwin]

On 10/31/2022 at 9:14 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Bushido fits that mould.  It was a _great_ game, and I think Scott Rugles on this boaed isbthe first person I have encountered outside of my old group who has also played it.

 

8 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Bushido is what we played, and played concurrently with “In The Labyrinth”, before Champions came out. Bushido needs an interest in feudal Japan to work, and some knowledge.
 

In the San Francisco Bay Area, in the 70s and 80s we had a few repertory movie theaters, and our local one was The New Varsity, and it showed a lot of Art films, Animation Festivals, and Samurai films from various famous directors (as well as Rocky Horror Picture Show, and The Song Remains The Same, at midnight every weekend). The Samurai films, and TV26, which would flip over to Japanese programming, and show Samurai dramas (Edo period cops), and Anime (Ikyu-Chan), had the area steeped in Japanese culture if you knew where to look. The Samurai films were probably where the “popcorn nooks” came from that we all used in our campaigns. 
 

We played a lot of Bushido, with each person taking a turn as GM every few months, just so we all could get a chance to play. Each GM would set up an arc, and would hand the reins over to the next guy. Made for wildly different styles. Was fun though. I would still recommend it. 

 

I never played Bushido proper, but I did play a Hero-ization of it Back In The Day.  One of the longer running campaigns during my time at the Game Alliance of Salem.  I played a "budoka" (wink, wink), a ronin, and a shugenja at different times.  The GM was pretty well versed in feudal Japan, and tried to discourage me from playing a ninja.  (It was the 80's, what can I say?)  So my cover story was that I was a budoka assigned as bodyguard to a shugenja (one of the other PCs).  

 

The GM ported over a number of rules (including rolling starting social class on a d100 table), and a number of skills and spells were remarkably easy to port over to Fantasy Hero just from description.  

 

I did later buy a copy, though I can't remember if it was while I was still with that group or after I'd joined the military.  Still haven't ever played a proper game of it.  

[Lawnmower Boy]

So this was a bit of a (recent) surprise for me.

 

In the long ago, the first RPG I ever bought wasn't D&D or even Traveller, but rather the original boxed-set of Gamma World (complete with a badly cast set of polyhedra die. Good quality control, there, Gary). I was blown away by the wild imagination behind the product, and, when I compared the ruleset with AD&D when I bought it a year or so later, I could see that the game design actually had its virtues. 

 

Of course, like every other science fiction RPG, Gamma World was doomed to limp on in the shadows of the more successful traditional fantasy RPG. We can talk about what gives the default D&D setting its secret sauce, but it's kinda beside the point. There've been as many editions of Gamma World as of D&D at this point, and if it were ever going to approach the parent game in popularity, it would have happened by now.

 

One way that Gamma World imitated D&D games without really coming out of the shadow, as it were, was in giving us a progressive table of weapon and armour improvement, highlighting one of the problems that all SF settings suffer from compared with fantasy settings. +5 Ethereal Plate Armour is good stuff, but you still have to walk into the dungeon and whack the dragon with your sharpened metal stick. In an SF setting, this makes no sense. The good weapons are guns, and the good armour stops bullets. Combat may still have the resource management/attritional feel that makes for a good RPG combat system, but well-armed high end parties to turn into fire teams, and if the phat loot keeps dropping, eventually the boss battle turns into a time-on-target artillery salvo. The talking, ambulatory rosebush PC who had so much fun lashing out with thorny vines in the early game is a spectator in the end game, which admittedly is a problem in D&D, too, but to a much more significant extent. I mean, this is just one complaint against SF and Science Fantasy (since Gamma World is the ideal rules set for a licensed Witches of Karres RPG setting), but it is one that leads into the next paragraph, so I thought I'd highlight it. 

 

A few years later, I was witness to the explosion of a game product that showed how you could make a science fiction RPG a marketing juggernaut. Battletech, launched in 1984, took a combat system more-or-less appropriate to an RPG, ripped out the actual roleplaying elements, tore them into confetti, and sprinkled them on top of a tabletop combat system based on tailorable units (giant mecha, mostly), in a format familiar from everything from historical naval miniatures to Star Fleet Battles, to the, in retrospect obvious, precursors like Car Wars and Sky Galleons of Mars, to, significantly enough, the minor SPI/TSR marketing success, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan. In Battletech, as with most of these games, artillery isn't actually that effective (because that would be boring), but fire and movement is unapologetically and realistically the crux of the combat system. No-one cares about fighting monsters in locked rooms in Battletech, and the rules assume that fire combat across a tactical map is normal. 

 

A few years after seeing my club go crazy for Battletech, there was a brief craze for a tabletop kaiju fighting game, a late-era TSR product somewhat loosely tied to the Gamma World setting, Gammarauders. Gammarauders are big and strong and resistant, but fire combat is important to the system, no apologies.

 

My attention to gaming stuff lapsed after that for a few years, but I am back to recreational gaming now, and one day a few months ago I was ribbing a real-estate-retiree acquaintance of mine about the vast amount of gaming and collecting with which he fills up his time and his house in West Point Grey. (KACHING!) I pointed out that there was no end to miniatures collecting, because there was no end to miniatures rules sets. Reaching for something ridiculous but plausible, I settled on Gamma World. (It's in the description!) "Why, there's even a Gamma World miniatures rules set," I said, knowing nothing of the sort. So then i had to look around to see if there actually was one.

 

And there was: 1992's Gamma Knights. The one review at Boardgame Geek compares it to Star Fleet Battles in terms of mechanical elegance hampered by a certain inconsistency in rules. Which sounds great to me, because frankly one of the joys of the SFB set is those broken rules interactions that allows that one race from the other side of the galaxy that is (supposedly) balanced against its neighbours, to curbstomp the races on this side. It's fun for everyone who doesn't get curbstomped! Which is to say, the person who devotes the most obsessive attention to the complexities of a sprawling game setting.

So here's Gamma Knights. Those power-armour characters from the old RPG have been turned into the mecha-knights of Battletech, sparring across a post-apocalyptic world, sometimes interacting with and fighting the giant kaiju of Gammarauders. Various mechanics involving sensor sweeps and lock-ons and maybe line of sights even give squishy, naked infantry some kind of role.  A sentient, ambulatory rosebush could grow a tendril over the crest of the hill, and soak up a mortar round like nobody's business.

 

And there you go: the raw foundations for a wargaming ecosystem to match Battletech, if not D&D. It has a built-in kaiju fighting game, which is something I don't think the market really offers even today, and plenty of room for lots of source books detailing more and more Ancient heavy metal and post-apocalyptic useful mutations. It didn't happen, of course. TSR fumbled the ball, as it so often did in those days, even in some respects in the most obviously toxic way. One of the key points in introducing power armour in the original Gamma World setting was to give "Pure Strain Humans" a balancing factor against "mutants" and "mutates" such as sentient, ambulatory rosebushes. As usual, balancing classes/races with end-game content didn't work, so instead the Gygax clan picked up their copy of The Iron Dream and turned "PSHs" into Aryan supermen.

 

Pardon me, I've got to go yell at 1978. "Just put the freaking power armour in the basic game, guys! Balance it like you balance magic users! 'At first level, you have access to your ancestral power armour, but only one scrounged up D-cell to power it. You can fly and shoot lasers, but not only for a couple of rounds, so make it count.' You'll have  a game that's a cross of D&D, Traveller, Car Wars, and The Creature That Ate Sheboygan. It'll be a license to print money!"

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

I was a big fan of the third edition of Gamma World, the one with the color-coded action table. It may sound odd for a Herophile to say, but I loved the elegant simplicity of that table to resolve a host of actions. The world itself has a strong streak of bizarre satirical humor, reminding me of Planet of the Apes and Thundarr the Barbarian. I also liked the series of adventure modules published for 3E, which implied a different origin for the Gamma World than radioactive post-apocalypse. Sadly, that story line was never completed.

[Christopher R Taylor]

MERP by Iron Crown was a terrific book, tons of great ideas and concepts packed into a very small book.  That was the genesis for me for all the herbs, metals, and other resources in the world of my campaign setting, so many good ideas.

 

And yeah I also played a shugenja in the Bushido Hero campaign Chris Goodwin mentioned.  The GM had a really interesting psychic combat system he used when two sorcerers met, or you could attempt with some monsters.  It kind of broke up the game, but basically you made magic skill rolls modified by the ideas and images you came up with (I turn into a dragon and try to eat him).  I don't know whether that was part of the Bushido rules originally or was something he came up with after watching Disney's Sword in the Stone movie.

 

I experimented with that in my fantasy games, but it was so disruptive (because it took place one turn psychic combat per segment real world combat) that I eventually dropped it.

[Cygnia]

Anyone here ever play Theatrix?  Again, a more improv-based style of play...

 

And if you want sheer silliness -- It Came From the Late Late Late Show

[tkdguy]

I discovered Castle Falkenstein in the 1990s, which was produced by R. Talsorian Games at the time. A new edition was produced by Fat Goblin Games a few years back. I like the system, although everyone needs to get into the Victorian mindset to some degree. One of my friends said the system is easy to game, but that may be a feature, since it encourages swashbuckling derring-do.

 

MERP deserves a lot more love than it gets. It can be chart-heavy, and bookkeeping can be a chore, but it's a fun system, and you get to adventure in Middle-earth.

10 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Anyone here ever play Theatrix?  Again, a more improv-based style of play...

 

And if you want sheer silliness -- It Came From the Late Late Late Show

 

I would run either game in a heartbeat, but nobody I know would be interested in these games. I saw a copy of Theatrix in my game store a long time ago, but I wasn't gaming at the time, so I passed on it.

[IndianaJoe3]

10 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Anyone here ever play Theatrix?  Again, a more improv-based style of play...

 

Yes, very cool system. I wouldn't be surprised if it had a strong influence on FATE.

[Duke Bushido]

On 11/2/2022 at 8:41 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Eastman came back recently and wrote “Ronin”, a dark revenge story about the last surviving turtle, Mikey, going up against The Foot Clan and a Cyborged Shredder in  Cyberpunk future, and it’s Eastman’s best writing. Worth looking up, or getting it online if you have a good sized iPad. 

 

 

 

Thanks!.. I will give that a look-see during the holiday shutdown at work.

 

 

On 11/2/2022 at 8:41 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

 Bushido needs an interest in feudal Japan to work, and some knowledge.
 

 

No doubt.  Fortunately, or GM,was a huge Japaonphile.  I don't say "ween" becauae he was more interested on the history, culture, mythology, etc than he was interested in catgirls or how to spell uwu, and I cant remember him calling anyone -Chan or -San or -sama or anything like that.  

 

He did not have a below-the-chin beard, he knew the difference between a fedora and a trilby, and owned neither.  

 

He was just into historical Japan the wat that most of is were into Greek mythology at that time.

 

At any rate, he kept us up to speed with "things we needed to know" by running a constant non-sequitur banter and working it into descriptive passages, conversations, or random details, but never in a way that was intrusive or CHiPs--  for you younger folks, that was a cop show that opened with the two main characters engaing in some new hobby for three minutes, and you knew that in the last ten minutes, someone was going to have the bright idea that doing fwhatever it was they were doing qs the onky way they could catch this week's bad guys.  It was, politely, absolute crap story telling, and got old fast.

 

 

 

On 11/2/2022 at 8:41 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Haven’t run across it yet in the wild. Maybe next February at our first totally post COVID con. I’ve heard of it though, and know a couple of the artists that worked on it. 

 

 

 

Three things:  the artwork is delightful, and really helps set the tone of the game.

 

You are quite right that it is a perdect family game or a youngster's introduction to RPGs.

 

You will hate it,  I say that not because I don't think you can find appreciation for a simple dice pool system or because I think you won t enjoy the stress on role-playing.  I say it because it is ridiculously rules-light.  There really isn't even a system for movement or determining accurate ranges.

 

 

On 11/2/2022 at 8:41 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

My gem would be Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller. It uses the same stats and the mechanics are similar enough that you can use most, if not all the Classic supplements, and adventures. The main GM sprung it on us when he ran out of steam running his home brew 5e campaign. For me, it was like putting on a comfortable pair of boots. Mechanically it is similar, but the character generation owes a bit to R. Talsorian’s life path, as characters do not die in character generation

 

Just started reading it, actually, and I was struck by how aimikar the mechanics were to later esitions of Classuc Traveller- enough that I wiahed I had heard of it while it was still a going thing. 

 

However, I would have to reinstate the death in character generation, at least for my Players (all but the youth group have a lot of CT experience), and for the very reasosn that Williams claims he put in there: to help prevent party after party of skills-heavy octogenarians heading out to the stars looking for adventure.  Williams sis nit believe in a rules-light game, but he believed in both a skills-light game ans very broad dedinitions of skills.  Thw one con where I got to watch him run a couple of games, I was struck by how often, instead of asking do you have X skill, he would ask "think about your character and his background; does that seem like something he would now how to do?"

 

I read an interview  once where he claimed the ever-increasing skills lists were the rwsukt of pressure from the fans, who apperently weret xomfortable with players who could do things beyond why was on their sheet.  The expanded generation rules were created to allow characters to gain more skills each term- again, a response to fan pressure, according to him.

 

still, from what I have read so far, mongoose Traveller was an act of love dor Classic Traveller.

 

 

Here is somethinf That might amuse you: Loren Wiseman, fellow founder of GDW, also disliked the death in character generation thing.  When he wrote GURPS Traveller, in the xharacter generation guidelines section, he included a paragraph stating that owing to GURPS character generation and a general distaste for it, that it was consciously not a part of character generation for GURPS Traveller.  He went on to state that anyone who wished to retain this feature should, upon completing their character, should roll 2d6.  If the result is 12, ceumplebup the sheet and start over.  🤣  

 

 

 

On 11/2/2022 at 8:41 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

but the twist from both is that characters are assumed to know each other, and players negotiate on how each other met, and work out the details. This made for a very tight knit starship crew, with kind of a family feel. It prevents “A$$hole Loaner”, and secret villain characters, or makes them super hard to create.

 

I found I rather liked that feature, and the carrot: when you agree on how you know another character, you can get an additional,skill related to that history.  Very tempting dor skill-craving characters.

 

 

 

12 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Anyone here ever play Theatrix?  Again, a more improv-based style of play..

 

Cqnt say that I have even heard od it, though Chris Goodwin was teliling me about playing a game recently (name forgotten) that was like playing a television show.  Similar, perhaps?

 

12 hours ago, Cygnia said:

And if you want sheer silliness -- It Came From the Late Late Late Show

 

 

Seconded!  Not as over-the-top as Macho Women With Guns, but still pretty lots of fun.

 

 

[DentArthurDent]

Seconds for Bushido and MERPs.

 

Adding Twilight2000, Wild West, and Star Trek:Klingons as timeless gems.

 

I’ve never heard of Bureau 13. But I’m about to go look it up.

 

[Joe Walsh]

On 11/6/2022 at 8:22 AM, Cygnia said:

And if you want sheer silliness -- It Came From the Late Late Late Show

 

That's what I was coming here to say.

 

I also agree with the OP about Prince Valiant. It's a solid, ground-breaking game.

 

TWERPS and Toon are also gems, but I wouldn't necessarily call them hidden.

 

I should also mention Zorro, developed by Gallant Knight Games (the folks who publish the TinyD6 games) and published by the current owners of the West End Games IP. It's uses a new version of the D6 System that works pretty well. If you're a fan of Zorro (especially the classic TV show), I highly recommend it.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 11/17/2022 at 7:08 PM, DentArthurDent said:

 

I’ve never heard of Bureau 13. But I’m about to go look it up.

 

Be cautious about which version you pick up. The Velo bound version has the first iteration of Tri-Tac’s system, which is crunchy and difficult. The system evolved over time. The supplements are a hoot to read.