An apology game for my players

Hello everyone,

As some of you know, I'm recently dealing with a "I'm an idiot and accidentally deleted a bunch of files on my external HD including my campaigns notes" situation, so I just had the idea of starting an apology game of sort so that my players would have something from me to play while waiting for me to recover my files (which might take some time as I first need to scan a 4tb HD...).

So yeah, I want to start a game. Priority to my former players.

Now, what should we play? I do own a vast variety of RPGs (less than I used to now thanks to my data erasure, but still a lot).

Feel free to propose a genre and/or system, and I'll see if I do still own it (even if I have to check my old back up DVDs for it), and then I'll see what I can whip up.

Lol, Well, I specifically joined your Ravenloft game because it was horror/fantasy so that would be my vote. Pathfinder Horror/Fantasy.

Pathfinder game involving Dragon(s)...

I'm a big fan of vampire the masquerade.

@ Cep & Gene: Could definitely be done, and merged into a single game of fantasy horror involving dragons.

@ Kaos: I do own VtM thanks to those few HIBs. Haven't read any of the books yet, but having played the GURPS version in the 90s, I have a good idea of how it works. I might also have an interesting potential alternative in Urban Shadows which a political urban fantasy game powered by the apocalypse... that and I'd also really like to have a US game last for once... XD

I'm not one of your players, but I know if you did either VtM or US, you'd have a few more players banging on your door!

Hmm... I still have my old bilingual (US) Montreal Dark game up, well sort of... It's dead, but I have not deleted it yet. I could always contact my players from this game and start a do over...

What's US?

Urban Shadows. It's the abbreviation I use. Sorry about the confusion.

I thought US might be a new system for running dystopian games.

No one needs that much realism.

What's the dice system for Urban shadows?

Typical PbtA mechanics: GM never rolls, only players do, and they do it for narrative control. Roll 2d6+ bonus.
- On 6-, it's a miss, the GM gets to narrate what happens.
- A 7-9 is a weak hit, the player manages to perform his action, but at a cost or with a slight difficulty as per the move used, and the player gets to narrate how that looks like.
- A 10+ is a hard hit, the player manages to succeed at what he was doing with no cost or complications, or perhaps achieve a higher degree of success, and gets to narrate how that looks like.

Sounds a lot like Monster of the Week.

IIRC Monster of the Week is also PbtA.

Lol, well that makes sense then.

Well, in case there is indeed interest in US, here is the game's link and description. And since I have made my game public before it ended, here are the game's posts.

Urban Shadows is a great setting! Just commenting here first in case you do intend to get it restarted, to take a queue number behind your former players.

If you are interested, I decided to make a separate interest check thread here.

Given all the negative developments in my data recovery saga, it looks like it might take quite a while before I get my data back, so I'll go ahead and bump this up to see if there are renewed interest from my players.

So I was thinking of maybe listing the games that I do have (i.e. those I haven't deleted along the rest of my data, or at the very least printed before deleting them), so maybe that way my players might have a better idea of what i can run...

Vagabonds of Dyfed: Marrying PBtA with OSR style games.

Pathfinder 1st ed.: Well, it's pathfinder... (I guess, to this, I could also add D&D 3.5...)

D&D 5th: Again, it's D&D 5th... but since I boycott WotC, I own mostly 3rd party stuff, so beware... :P

Asteroids & Aliens: A sci-fi game inspired by X-COM and Starship Troopers, with a little bit of cosmic horror...

Uncharted Worlds: another PBtA game, but this one to run space opera style games.

Swords and Six-Siders: basically an OSR game but converting the old classics with a simple d6 system.

Jaws of the Six Serpents: a sword & sorcery type of game using the PDQ engine.

Dungeonslayers 4th. ed.: Another old school med-fan game, rules-lite, this one inspired more by TDE. Absolutely free.

Warrior, Rogue, Mage: A simple med-fan game. Also available for free.

Shotguns n' Saddles: A western game using a simplified version of the D20 system.

Devil's Crossroad: another western game, using a different system, also available for free.

Barebones Fantasy: A med-fan game using a simple d100 system.

Barbarren!: A very tongue-in-cheek beer and pretzel game with obvious sword & sorcery and Conan influences. You are an overly masculine barbarian who kills people and lay women and... well... you get the picture...

Earthdawn 2nd. ed.: Yes, I am aware this is considered the heretical edition of ED, but it is the one I own, so...

GURPS 3rd. ed.: If you don't know what GURPS is, it is a universal and generic roleplaying system, so we could make pretty much whatever we want with this. Relatively easy and intuitive to learn, unless you're starting to make vehicles where it gets really complicated for some odd reason...

L5R 1st to 3rd ed.: a game of samurai drama. You don't go on adventure to get magic item, gold and get powerful, instead you go on adventure for glory, favors, and possibly have an awesome death... or because your lord ordered you to...

Dominion Rules 3rd. ed.: A game to run low-magic med-fan or historical fan. System is d12-based. also available for free.

D6 Pool: A system made more for modern-type games. Also free.

The Dead: A zombie apocalypse game. Also available for free.

Open Legend: Another generic and universal game that can be used to do pretty much anything. also available for free...

Open D6 System: the old WEG system they made available for free when the company went under... Generic and universal as well.

Atomic Highway: A post-apocalyptic game. Simple V6 system and also available for free.

Undiscovered: an old discontinued Canadian game using a d100 system. Feels like a more complex version of BBF with definite old school influences...

a few French games... The old French version of TDE and Courant Fractal, a made in Québec RPG. In case you want to learn or perfect your French...

I have a few more, but I think this is enough choice for the moment being. If my players insist on seeing what else I have, I'll list them in another post...

(Note: My Urban Shadows game is going pretty well, so no need for me to suggest a US game again.)

Pathfinder is a good all around system and much superior to 5th IMO, anyways. But if you want a particular suggestion from me, run Warhammer Fantasy as the campaign setting in a Pathfinder game.

I do have to keep in mind that this is a game we'll most likely drop once I've recovered my campaign notes and sorted them out. This might take a while because everything that can go wrong with my data recovery seems to go wrong, but it will still be a temporary game. So perhaps I should not embark on something as ambitions and which might require a lot of work such as reading up on the whole Warhammer setting and lore, and then converting all that to PF only to drop it in a couple of months...

Gotcha, that makes more sense. In that case I'll just recommend it as a long term thing for you to do if you get bored.

Curious about this. I'm sure you have your reasons. (Not intending to start any heated debates here)

[rant]
It's all about the 3.5/4th debacle.

Back in 2004, when the 3rd edition revised came out, it was called 3.5, and it got a lot of people angry because they thought WotC was trying to subtly tell people that there would be a 4th edition in 2008.

Of course, WotC came out, denying this, saying there would not be a 4th edition in 2008 and that 3rd edition would go on to continue for many, many years to come...

Then came 2008 and the announcements of the 4th edition, and during the announcement video on youtube, they even admitted that it was in development since 2004.

Then, during the run of 4th edition, WotC pleaded with its fan base to drop 3.5 as it was broken, unbalanced, and unplayable... an odd way to treat one of your former IPs...

Let's not forget that during the last year or so of 3.5, products came out that were barely playtested (as they had gotten rid of a lot of their development team), had horrible power creep, as well as some really odd and questionable changes to the rules... (I'm looking at you new rule on how to price magic items form the Magic Item Compendium!) In hindsight I am seriously wondering if WotC was not already starting to sabotage 3.5 back then in order to get people to adopt 4th more easily...

Basically, this convinced me that WotC could not care less about it's client base and well, I've decided to vote with my wallet...
[/rant]

That seems like a fair enough objection. The profit vs artistic value conundrum permeates every part of our culture...

Engineered obsolescence is a horrible feature that should never be rewarded. I bought a first gen iPad and the way they sabotaged it only a few years after its release (not supported, no iOS updates, so as Apps updated, they ceased to be useable) convinced me to avoid Apple devices for a long time. The Invisible Hand in action.