RPGaDay 2024 (Day 11 and 12)

Day 11 - RPG with well supported one-shots

I really don't want to say D&D for either of the questions on today's post. However, honestly D&D has such a massive fan base and a huge range of players, dungeon masters, homebrewers, and modders that it's pretty ludicrous to completely ignore what's happening in that part of gaming.

I'm generally a bigger fan of indie games, and in a lot of cases games like that are the passion project of a single designer or a small group, and there often isn't enough energy to keep supporting games like that after they've been released.

If I pick a mid level game, I love some of the stuff that has been produced for Call of Cthulhu over the years. Again, it's the kind of game that has a massive heritage with decades of play behind it, so it's an easy pick to say there are good support systems for it's play.  I've done a few one-shots with it over the years, but have never managed to get a campaign going with it. 

Day 12 - RPG with well supported campaigns

I really can't go past the old World of Darkness stuff here. The meta-narrative was so rich and complex that any number of campaigns could have been woven from the assorted products associated with them. I've already mentioned Vampire and Mage in this sequence, so this time I'll go with Werewolf: the Apocalypse.

One of the things I like here was the idea that most of the supplements were basically sandbox settings. They gave you heaps of information to add into your stories, as long as you set them within a certain context, or you could mix and match a couple of books, to get specific stories from the overlap, and wider context from the other elements of the books. Of course, the problem with well supported campaigns is players who read the books, then use metagame knowledge in the narrative. So, with this in mind I actually like the changes made in the latest World of Darkness game lines where characters gain access to "Loresheets" that give them in-game knowledge and a range of matching abilities that reflect the effects that knowledge might have on the character.