RPGADay 2023, Day 2

 Poached from my Substack blog:- https://open.substack.com/pub/passingforhuman/p/rpgaday-2023-day-2

And so we come to Day 2 of the RPG A Day challenge, and this time it’s the first RPG I gamemastered.

That could mean “the RPG I prefer to GM” or “the first time I GM’ed.”

I think I’ll go with the first option, and I’ll list the second option some time down the lane.

If I do GM a game, chances are it would be either a Lightspress Media game such as DoubleZero / Fantasy Manifesto / System Neutral, or Frostbyte Books’ Comae Space.

I love Mythras, M-Space, Traveller, and Onyx Path’s World of Darkness, among many other game systems - but they do tend to lean heavily towards crunchy numbers-based combat, rather than stories where the characters lead with their, well, character.

I want a game where I let the players’ decisions lead the story, where they get caught up in the drama and care about the characters, and the crunchy game mechanics don’t get in the way all the time. Game rules only establish an approximation of life. I like to GM a system which allows the narrative to beat the rules and crunch every day.