RPGaDay 2024 (Day 15 and 16)

Day 15 - Great Character Gear

By my first method of doing these posts, I love the old Chromebooks for Cyberpunk 2020. the gear in them tells a story... the books work as diegetic/in-game artifacts of the setting. The cyberware and other items found in these supplements really help to flesh out the setting rather than just being modifiers to the various skills and abilities of the characters.

By my second method of doing these posts, I've been struggling with the idea of what makes great character gear in my Walkabout project. I think that what I'm aiming for is very much the kind of thing that I've just mentioned about the Chromebooks (here and here). I think great character gear is stuff that helps to tell the story, it reveals things about the world and the characters, it makes sense in the setting and fills in gaps. In games like D&D, much of the equipment does the exact opposite of this, it creates loopholes in physics, it disrupts and circumvents story factors, and often it just doesn't make sense.     

Day 16 - Quick to Learn

Lady Blackbird by John Harper is the one I'll go with because I've already mentioned Freeform Universal. Lady Blackbird is designed for one-shots and has a simple system that is easy to grok. 

As for my own work, FUBAR has proven very quick to learn every time I've run it at a convention. Keeping things consistent through the game mechanisms and trying to avoid too many complications or exceptions allows players to focus on the story, rather than getting bogged down in elements of the rules that often feel like they're actively working against the intentions of the group playing the game.

xx