Why didn't they do a D6 System Indiana Jones game?

Imagine this with
'The World of Indiana Jones -
The Roleplaying Game'
splashed across the front cover

It’s annoying, but the more I think about it the more I realise that the D6 system would have been great for a fully supported Indiana Jones roleplaying game in the same vein as the original Star Wars D6 books.

What made the original Star Wars books so amazing is that they expanded on the Star Wars universe and opened up so much more for fans to absorb beyond the events of the original trilogy. Their sourcebooks and guides told us so much about the galaxy at large, how organisations worked, the whole thing. As you may know, it was the groundwork for what eventually became the Star Wars ‘Expanded Universe’, the creations and adventures that existed outside of the movies and the playground of so many novels. There was so much to learn, use and do in the Star Wars RPG it was no wonder it was so successful.

So why not an Indiana Jones version? Lucasfilm’s second hottest property with so much potential in the same pulp adventure style, and they didn’t take advantage of it when they got the license? The TSR game wasn’t great – but, to be fair, it didn’t fully deserve the stick it got – so here was WEG’s chance to capitalise on it. And what happens? They give it to the Masterbook System.

There was so much they could have done, over so many eras in so many parts of the world. They could have had sourcebooks for the eras, the 1910s, 20s, 30s and even into the 40s. They could have taken a leaf out of Call of Cthulhu’s book and created sourcebooks for the different locations all over the world, as well as globe-trotting campaigns that could have taken the players all over. Books about the artefacts the players could have been chasing after. The enemies and dangers of the different decades, from bandits to Nazis to treasure hunters could have got their own books. Imagine a 64-page softback book detailing the Thugees or any of the other countless cults or organisations, both in the official Indiana Jones stories or anything created for the game itself, all over the world. Real and imagined artefacts and locations and characters… if Call of Cthulhu can continually produce quality material for 30 years, I’m more than sure that the world of Indiana Jones could have. A glorious hardback initial book, presented the same vein as the original Star Wars book with the same energy and excitement I felt from the author… it could have been great. You could have had the high adventure mixed in with dark, Cthulhuesque nightmares.

Where is the D6 system at now? Who owns it? Who owns the Indiana Jones license? Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. It would have been amazing but maybe it would have worked best back in the day, when roleplaying games were still a huge hobby with a dedicated industry. It could have been the successor to, or run alongside with, the Star Wars RPG.

'If adventure has a game, it must be... The World of Indiana Jones!'

I’m actually a little depressed by this blog entry.

An Indiana Jones D6 game?

This is the first I've heard of it! All I was aware of the was the TSR game from the 1980s and the dicey West End Games Masterbook System game from the mid 1990s. Being a huge Star Wars D6 fan I'd have pulled my own teeth out to own a copy of this game. What the hell was West End Games thinking? As a D6 and a WEG fan that must have been some pretty shitty advertising for it.

When this came out, WEG were already showing signs of cracking. The Star Wars line was starting to get a bit stale, and the Masterbook system hadn't been very well recieved along with the D6 System release not being as good as they would have wanted, what with being a bit of a mess of rules and very little clear instruction for none-D6 players or details on campaign worlds.  They had the Star wars and Indiana Jones licences, and instead of using the D6 system for both they used the established system for Star wars and the cumbersome (and most definitely not pulp adventure-friendly) Masterbook system for Indiana Jones.

Then they bought this out, to introduce D6 players to the Indiana Jones way of doing things, and also including a conversion system to swap your Masterbook stats over to D6. I never played in the WEG world of Indiana Jones because of my dislike of the Masterbook system - I used to use Call of Cthulhu for my Indy-inspired adventures - but if I'd known this baby had been around I'd have played the living shit out of it.

As a huge Star Wars D6 fan I'd have snapped this up faster than you could snatch a golden idol, and I'd have flooded WEG with money to get hold of the books as they came out. Star Wars was waning, and what else does the average Lucasfilm fan love? Indiana bloody Jones, you idiots! You could have kickstarted an entire new Expanded Universe for Indiana Jones, the same way you did for Star Wars back in the late eighties!

But what license did they support?

Men in Black.

Men in sodding Black.

God almighty, a missed opportunity or what?!?

If anyone has it, I'll quite gladly swap either my copy of Mongoose Traveller or Cthulhu Dark Ages for it. Send me a message.

Looking for a new sci-fi RPG campaign setting? 'Orbital' is my recommendation...

If you check out this comic you'll see the roleplaying potential straight away. 'Orbital' is an amazing galaxy-spanning science fiction setting perfect for gaming in. Details below:

Authors: Sylvain Runberg & Serge Pellé
Age: 12 years and up
Size: 21.7 x 28.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages
Publication: May 2009

In the 23rd century, humans and Sandjarrs are allowed to join an intergalactic multiracial organisation set up 8,000 years before. The humans are seen as a belligerent, underdeveloped race by the other members of the organisation and have been kept out of it until now. The Sandjarrs had stayed out of interplanetary politics until a war between themselves and the humans broke out. Now Caleb, a human, and Mezoke, a Sandjarr, are paired up and trained as special agents to keep the intergalactic peace. This is a controversial and historic alliance, and a lot of people are watching them. Their first mission is to keep war from breaking out between humans and Javlodes on the planet Senestam.

You can buy it direct from Cinebook here.

Or pick it up from Amazon here.

And tonight's Cthulhu game...

... was a massive success! Hooray!

I was so nervousd it'd fall on it's face and feel really flat but I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The players really got into character and played their parts well, and the gaming table was in a dark room with a single table lamp plonked in the middle. The music was Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to the movie 'The Thing' which suited the game down to the ground, and the atmosphere and mood was palpable.

The highlights were the police interrogation, the search of the student's room, and most of all the conflict with the bad guys on the river, in which the academic of the group - with no skill in firearms - panic fired with his eyes closed at the cultist with the pistol and got him through the heart... and then had to roll against his sanity for seeing a violently killed corpse for the first time. Crazy stuff. Literally.

I was really pleased with the session. The players were well into it and were not only pursuing the clues but justifying why they would get involved and press on, and looking for reasons why their characters would continue investigating even though it was obviously dangerous and life threatening. They did a cracking job.

I'm more than relieved that it all went well. Looking forward to next Thursday, now!

Cthulhu rises! On Thursdays, apparently.

This Thursday I begin my new Call of Cthulhu campaign.

I’ve run Cthulhu games before but with a more adventurous slant, more along the lines of Indiana Jones than anything else. In fact, one of the players in an old CoC game had a character called ‘Idaho Smith’. You can draw your own conclusions from that, but they were fantastic games.

I only ran a couple of truly scary games, one on a train across Europe with werewolves on board, and another had players searching for an almost-dead Hunting Horror in an abandoned village on the moors. They were intense investigation-driven games, even though they did have the adventure element involved. Coming from a background of very long and involved Star Wars and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaigns I can’t help but stick some adventure and conflict in there.

So how to approach this new campaign? Well, I still want my adventure elements, more the dark threat of Spielberg’s ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ than the over-the-top adventure of Sommer’s ‘The Mummy’. I’ll have my investigations and searches, but the arrival of some low hit point cultists can’t hurt. I’ll only have the players pause for thought when they come up against mythos creatures.

I’ll be a stickler for the sanity rules – that’s the core of a CoC game, after all – and I’ll make sure the players are aware that anything horrific, or even just a bit scary, is cause for a check.

I used to be a GM screen overlord so that I could keep rolls secret and have more control over the game, but I’ve realised over the last few years that rolling in the open is so much more satisfying. I have been accused of arbitrarily killing player characters with rolls behind the screen (which is actually true in one instance, but that was more a case of a mercy killing than anything else) so I avoid that with open rolls. As long as the challenges are surmountable and I don’t throw unfair threats at the players then any outcome is acceptable. Maybe not so much with the mythos creatures, but they know what to expect in this game.

As far as music is concerned, I’ve found some great themes of a very dark and mysterious quality on the movie soundtracks of ‘The Mummy’ and ‘Master and Commander: The far Side of the World’. I really wanted to use my friend James Semple’s music he composed for the ‘Trail of Cthulhu’ roleplaying game, but with a house move coming up its sadly packed away somewhere – for the record, I can highly recommend this soundtrack. My obvious choice, of course, was the Indiana Jones movies, but the themes are so recognisable that it would no doubt pull the players out of the game and encourage ‘trust me’ quotes and fist fights. I wouldn’t mind if there were Nazis involved, because there’s all levels of right in punching Nazis in the face, but sadly there’s none in my game. Maybe next time.

All that really remains is to see how my players react; I can make all kinds of attempts at atmosphere and mood but it really depends on the involvement of my players, if they get into the darkness of it all or if they approach it more light-hearted. That remains to be seen. To give them a sense of time it’s set in 1933, two months after King Kong has hit the picture house and people are all excited for the wonder, adventure and monsters of the far-off places of the world.

I’m really looking forward to this game.

Call of Cthulhu - my new mini campaign

It's been more than ten years since I last ran a Call of Cthulhu campaign using fifth edition, and as my gaming group is going through a few games at the moment and trying to settle into a new schedule - what with pesky real life and other commitments interfering with our beloved hobby - I thought it might be fun to run a speedy CoC game to fill in a couple of weeks.

Walker in the Wastes - Pagan Publishing

I've been reading up on my history recently as I've been working on non-RPG projects, and I've been interested in explorers and adventurers of old who really put it all on the line to acheive their goals and dreams. One such adventure was the Franklin Expedition, doomed to failure under mysterious circumstances. Although the clues have been found and the fate of the crews of the HMS Erebus and Terror have been all but answered, I thought it would be a great jumping off point for a 1930s CoC game.

Browsing the Wikipedia entry for any inspiration (I know Wiki is not the most reliable of sources, but considering the fact that I'm fictionalising the entire expedition it's not a problem for me) I noticed the line:

'The expedition has also been the subject of a horror role-playing game supplement...'

Nuts, I thought. I bet that's for Call of Cthulhu.

And it was. It was Walker in the Wastes from Pagan Publishing.

Well, my game is all designed now. It's not fully concentrating so much on the expedition itself, although the doomed voyage will be a pointer to the larger picture, but I just thought it strange how I had considered the historical event perfect material for a Call of Cthulhu campaign, only to find that someone had beaten me to it. Hopefully my players will assume that this is what I'm running and try to get hold of a synopsis of the adventure, or even a copy of it, to try and second guess me in the hope that this will increase their chances of success.

If that happens, then the whole game is going to get very interesting.

What is happening with Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG?

Other than the 'wish list' threads of the FFG forums there's very little coming out about it. What do people want from the game? What are you hoping for, and what are you dreading?

Me, I'm hoping for a rules system as flexible as the WEG D6 system, with the cinematic adventure feel it has, and source material other than the already established OT/Prequel stuff. What I'm hoping they don't do is a game like Warhamer 3rd Edition, with special dice and tokens at a high price. That's just not my thing and I'm a veteran of the original D6 system way of doing things (so I'm automatically bias, anyway!).

What's the story, FFG? Watcha doin'?

MMO Strategy Guides - a good template for a tabletop campaign book?

I was browsing through a copy of the World of Warcraft Strategy Guide for the Cataclysm expansion and looking at the book and the details it presented, I figured it would be a great way to lay out a campaign book for a gaming world.

The WoW Cataclysm book is four hundred pages of quests, stats and strategies. This could easily be translated into a campaign book. Yes, plenty of quests in the game are seriously dull 'go here and kill 'x' number of beasties' but even these could be fleshed out slightly. Let's say that you use 100 pages of the book for background information and the rest for adventures in the world at large. Let's say one page of description for a town or area, maybe a small map, and the next ten pages for quests and adventures, one adventure per page. The print in these books is quite small so you'd get quite a lot of detail in there, mayvbe even tiny stat blocks for the simpler systems.

So that's 400 pages including covers, so drop the actual usable pages to 390 for intros and other non-game info. 90 pages of world background, that's plenty, and then the last 300 pages for adventures and quests. 10 pages per location, so that's 30 locations with 9 adventures per location if we're looking at one adventure per page. That's 270 potential adventures, some of which can be linked to make longer campaigns. Let's say that the average gaming group game once per week and each adventure is designed for 1 session. That's 270 weeks of games, or roughly 5.2 years of adventuring.

Of course, somebody would have to write the damn thing. Yeesh.

Adventure Games Guild - a new gamebook/RPG game

I was introduced to the RPG hobby by Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and Dungeons and Dragons, so to find out that there's a book coming out later in the year that crosses the two games? How could I say no to that? I'm sincerely looking forward to seeing what they have, and with enough Facebook 'Likes' and Twitter followers, they'll release a preview of the character sheet.

Here's the official press release from Adventure Games Guild:

'ANNOUNCING 'ADVENTURER: THE SOLO ROLE PLAYING GAME'
June 7, 2012:

Adventure Games Guild, a new publishing company, today announced their first game, 'Adventurer: The Solo Role Playing Game.' Due for release in late 2012, this product will be designed by Shane Garvey (QUERP, Fabled Lands RPG) and Stuart Lloyd (Lloyd of Gamebooks). The game promises to blend the appeal of solo, gamebook style adventures with a fully detailed role playing system.

Mr. Garvey, president of Adventure Games Guild, said, "I am honoured to be working with Stuart Lloyd on this project. Our mission is to update the old style gamebook system, which always had a set of simplistic rules, into a fully realised, well detailed role playing game. Sort of Fighting Fantasy meets Dungeons and Dragons."

The company promises to offer a set of rules reminiscent of many popular role playing games but to adapt them into the solo format. They plan to include rules for low and high levels of play, rules for running your own keep and much more besides.

'Adventurer: The Solo Role Playing Game' is due late 2012.'

Dragon Warriors from Serpent King Games

As regular readers of this blog might know, I'm a massive fan of the Dragon Warriors RPG. It's now being produced and released through Serpent King Games, and you can get a lot of the product line from drivethrurpg.com.


My original review on RPG.net will tell you all you need to know regarding why I love this game so much.