Some Quick RPG Notes

Starblazer Adventures
I finally managed to run a game of Starblazer Adventures this past weekend, and I was very pleased at how things went. It uses the FATE gaming engine, and really incorporates some interesting and genre appropriate mods (like rules for building starhips, star empires, and space monsters just as you would for a normal character). The only issue I had during play was keeping track of my player characters' Aspects. Aspects are neat little traits the players make up for their characters that help flesh out who they are.

An Aspect can be anything, really. One example is "Girl in every starport"; a player could use this to invoke a contact not fleshed out ahead of time by the GM. The GM could also use it to create a complication for the player. Each player has 10 of these Aspects, and there is no set list. As the GM, I have to keep track of all of these and remember to compel them, or bring them into play, once in a while. Of course, the players can remind me, and I think they will as we play more sessions. We all just need to get more comfortable with the process of playing the game.

BASH: Ultimate Edition
As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am a superhero nut. I collect supers games. I never got the first edition of BASH (Basic Action Super Heroes), but I purchased the print version of this revised edition (not yet released) and got the PDF for free along with it. I am really enjoying it so far. It looks like a supers RPG that successfully walks the middle road between highly detailed power and action systems (HERO, M&M) and very free-form (Truth & Justice, Super Crew). It is also miniature friendly right out of the gate, so I am excited about that as well.

Anyway, I may try to throw together a game over the holidays and see how it plays.

Both of these RPGs get my thumbs up!

--Scott