Welcome to the Non-D&D ‘March Madness’
Blogging Challenge!
If you want to see all the questions, they
are HERE.
If you want to see the first kick ass participant
who finished ALL in one fell sweep, his or her blog is HERE.
Other participants are as follows (contact me if you want your blog listed):
The
RPG Corner
Crit This
Timnits & Trolls (The one who has gone ahead and finished the challenge already! BRAVO!)
Aieee! Run From Kelvin's Brainsplurge
RPGames.be
Back to the Keep
Cross Planes
Crit This
Timnits & Trolls (The one who has gone ahead and finished the challenge already! BRAVO!)
Aieee! Run From Kelvin's Brainsplurge
RPGames.be
Back to the Keep
Cross Planes
I myself will be knocking off a question a
day, starting with this one:
1 What was the first roleplaying game other
than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?
A: It was GURPS, probably 3rd edition
if not 2nd (early 1990s). We started a GURPS Fantasy campaign, and
later played some Space after years of D&D.
After the straightjacket nature of D&D’s
class system, the open skill lists of GURPS and its open character generation
were almost too much. We spent hours or even days making a character, so the GM
(DM no longer!) could not kill with impunity. Even though the GM had lured us
with the promise of having the ability to make ANY character we wanted, we soon
realized with a 100 point limit our characters were just as weak as any
OD&D newb.
Sad trumpet sound.
I suppose the greatest thing we took away
was that one game system could indeed be used to run any type of game, from
Conan to Star Trek. BRP has since expanded in this direction while GURPS has
contracted to a mostly online PDF version. The OSR has also clued in, with
retroclones based on the D&D engine for sci fi (Terminal Space, X-plorers),
superheroes (Hideouts & Hoodlums, Mystery Men!), oriental adventure (Flying
Swordsmen, Ruins & Ronin), and even westerns (Blood & Bullets, Go For
Your Gun).
Although the concept of a generic or
universal system may be old hat (see Unisystem, FATE, FUDGE, Cortex, etc ad
nauseum), it was GURPS that did it first and, as many blogs contend, the best.
And GURPS sourcebooks were always the
highest quality, regardless of what system you preferred.