shigeyasu

I couldn’t agree more … just reading RPGs set my imagination afire with ideas and possibilities! The fact that I never got to realize most of those possibilities was a bit sad, sure, but it was kind of secondary. When you read a book, the author is telling you “Here’s what happened.” Read an RPG and it’s like “Here’s a hundred things that COULD happen.”

Do you find a problem arises when a setting is just so alien that you don’t quite know what to do with it? I’m thinking specifically of Skyrealms of Jorune - such a great setting, but I had a very hard time getting a campaign going and eventually gave up. (In contrast, the most fun I ever had was with a TMNT campaign that ended up with the players spending a lot of time in a fictional version of our hometown.)

The authors of Skyrealms of Jorune attempted to give GMs (sorry, Sholari) a hand with the in-game mechanic of having beginning players needing to go on a quest to fulfill several “good deeds” as a rite of passage into adulthood / citizenhood (Tauther, if I recall correctly?) Interesting, but what do you do after that? Follow up on any leads encountered during the Tauther process, I suppose. And this shows how much vocabulary you need to GM a Jorune campaign! One paragraph in, and already two alien words. A GM would need to assign a weekly vocab quiz to the players.

Do any combat systems stand out in your mind as especially good, or exceptionally bad? I have heard that both Harnmaster and GURPS Martial Arts have the most detailed systems, but whether that’s good or bad might be up to the tastes of the GM and players.

Fantasy Games Unlimited, hmm … is Bushido on that list too? I see it’s back in print and was thinking about checking it out.

Your comments make a lot of sense, thank you for this great AMA.