By Crom!

[thebitterguy]

I got approachd by a former Strat club member (motto: Matriculation is a dirty word!) on RPG.net (motto: We have good days and we have bad days) who wanted to say hi. We kibbitzed a bit and eventually discussed what we were up to. He mentioned he was working on a project entitled ZeFRS.

So I took a look at it and, well, wowzers. Apparently they've taken the colour chart that was used for resolution in Conan, MSH & Gamma World (Motto: The game that someone you knew played once upon a time) and put it into a sort of OGL setting.

Something after my own heart, because I kind of want to to do the same thing with Top Secret: SI.

It looks pretty neat. I'll definitely have to take a closer look.

Comments

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

ZeFRS is pretty cool. It even has Zeb Cook's blessing. I always liked the old TSR Conan game, but I seemed to be the only one back then.

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

Not the only one, but its fan were fewer than I would have liked. It was a very good game and a brilliant example of design in its day. I had a lot of fun with it.

[thebitterguy]

I completely missed it when it came out, although I was playing MSH a bit at that time.

Maybe everyone was feeling burned from Indiana Jones RPG.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

I always find movie tie-in RPGs tricky. Not only because the players often tend to try to recreate the characters from the movie, but also because the storyteller/dungeonmaster/whatever tends to try to recreate the story. To me, the whole point of these is to tell other stories from the same universe, rather than retelling what you saw on a 70-foot silver screen. Just my $0.02.

[thebitterguy]

Indiana Jones was particularly bad, because they had modules that A) were complete recreations of the films and B) were for Indy + 1 pc. If you had more than two players, they'd end up trading Indy in different scenes.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds... fun? No, that's not it. What's the word I'm looking for? Retarded? Sure, that works.

If they're going to make something so slavish to the movies, why not just make a board game? Or even a poorly-constructed card game? It just seems that, from what you described, the authors of this "RPG" had never even seen an RPG before, much less actually played one. But, thanks to your warning, I'll steer well clear of that one.

At least the Aliens RPG had some options for stories besides "Go to LV-426 and find out why the colonists aren't transmitting any more"

[thebitterguy]

Yes, it has something of a reputation for being an... interesting approach to RPGs.

They had awesome paper minis and props in the modules, though.

Plus they trademarked "Nazi".

I found a wiki!

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

The Indy RPG was like the Conan RPG's evil twin. They had similar systems and production values but Conan was a fun, wide open game that really nicely evoked Howard, whereas Indy felt like everyone's worst memories of childhood "roleplaying" given boxed set form ("I'm Indy!" "No, I'm Indy!"). What a waste.

Mind, the first incarnation of the WEG Indy game was no better and had even worse rules. Whoever thought the misbegotten MasterBook rules were a perfect fit for pulp adventure should be shot.

[thebitterguy]

I dunno. Masterbook was essentially Torg, right? And Torg always did a good job in the NE.

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

MasterBook was Torg on steroids.

But you're right, Torg worked well enough for the Nile Empire, so maybe it's not the worst choice ever. I just found it far clunkier than I wanted for 30's pulp action game.