Comments on: Free RPG Day – Geist

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:01 +0000

Fair enough!

I’ll give it a read and try to report back on my thoughts.

By: Adam Drew

Adam Drew — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:44:55 +0000

My concern with trying to run it pickup is that the gamemaster needs to be WAY prepared. To use your analogy, in order to play pickup basketball, you need a court to play on. SotC is written in such a way as to make it less-than-ideal to try and just find a court/pull a game out of a hat. It really rewards prep, which doesn’t scream “pickup” to me.

A pickup RPG, in my eyes, needs to be something where you can have 3 or 4 people sitting around a table and someone can say “hey, who wants to play this game?” and you can be up and running in 5.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:53:19 +0000

I’m totally with you on Geist. I didn’t get a chance to run it last night, but that’s all right. I’ll try to do it the next time my friend comes from out of town.

As for SotC, I’ll have to flip through it. I was skeptical about it being a pick-up game, too, but it occurs to me that in order to play a pick-up game of such as basketball, you need to know the rules. So as long as everybody knows the rules, I can’t imagine it’d be that hard to design a pick-up RPG. Of course, proof, pudding, eating, etc.

By: Adam Drew

Adam Drew — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:42:37 +0000

I picked up Geist and Khyber’s Harvest, too. I really dig the surface-level read of Geist. I like the bits of Mummy and Demon and Wraith and Orpheus all stirred together, and that cover is breathtaking.

As far as KH goes, I like that it comes with a custom dungeon tile, even though a printed map would’ve been better. I guess the idea is that the tile is more reusable.

SotC is awesome, but the trick with it is that they bill it as a “pickup” game and I can’t imagine trying to run it pickup.