Wings Over the Pyre - Indie Gaming Carry-List

05:22 pm - Indie Gaming Carry-List

bluelang posted a request for the indie games his friendly local game store should carry. I’m a geek so I wrote a fairly lengthy response, and now I share it with you:

If it were up to me …

• Sadly, you can’t put Bliss Stage on the pile, yet, but if you could, I’d be forced to demand it with great sincerity. Seriously, ultimate stuff. It successfully manages to marry shoujo sensibilities and focus on the pure relationships between characters with giant robot action. That’s cool, no matter who you are.

• Grey Ranks is top contender for Most Depressing Set-Up of All RPGs, but it rules the roost for generating gritty, emotional connections to characters in what might be legitimately one of the worst situations in world history. It’d be hard for me to find a group to play with just because it’s such serious stuff, but I want to.

• Capes is a must-have, not just for superheroes roleplaying, but as a core system when you want to see a setup that is GM-less and focuses directly on the conflict between aspects of the dynamically generated setting.

• With Great Power sticks next to Capes above. It’s far more “traditional” in it’s mechanisms (GM-full, etc), but the structures it uses are more narratively driven than the old standards like Champions, the calculous of gaming.

• Panty Explosion and it’s follow-up Homeroom Deathmatch absolutely have to be in that order, not the least reason being just the titles, man! But more wholly, because they take stripped down mechanics and spin in some of the most intimate anime tropes in unstinting ways. PE starts by simply defining that all PCs are Japanese schoolgirls. Period. HD starts with the assumption that you’re in Battle Royalle so … don’t get too attached to that character, K? Awesome stuff.

• Polaris was the game the guy who assembled Bliss Stage did first, and of all the things I’m recommending here, is the only one I don’t own. Reviews and actual play reports are fantastic and across the board, I think I feel pretty safe in suggesting that it should be in here. Besides, anything that John Sneed says utterly repels him is worth stocking in my book!

• Primetime Adventures is something you can’t talk about Indie without covering. If it eliminated the GM/Director position altogether, I’d like it somewhat better, but as it stands it’s fantastic and is one of the grounding texts for moving away from thinking about task-based resolution and into conflict-based resolution. Plus, c’mon, damn fun game, hello!

• InSpectres isn’t new, but it’s still one of the best indie game designs ever put together and every single indie-stocking game store should carry it. A rollicking weekly game of InSpectres in the back of a store should do more to sell indies than any amount of studied pontificating, and will.

Why don’t I have Polaris, you might ask? The answer will surprise you, “I have no idea.” But if you want to get it for me, or some other piece of indie gamery, Indie Press Revolution (IPR) is the place to go.

Current Mood: contemplative