Apparently I have a problem.
You see, recently, perhaps for the last year or so, I have been binge-buying various tabletop roleplaying games. Not different supplements for “Dungeons & Dragons” or other such big games, but just different games. Many have been Kickstarter projects, others have been existing games. I have had intentions to play all of them, and perhaps eventually I will, but at the rate I’ve been buying games…
That’s really not likely, at least not anytime soon.
Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post today. You see, things have gotten much worse over the last few weeks. You see, several months ago I discovered the excellent horror TTRPG, “Monster of the Week”. This is a narrative-driven tabletop roleplaying game, using an engine based on the “Apocalypse World” ruleset (i.e., it is a “Powered by the Apocalypse” game). Basically, MotW is a great game for emulating episodic horror-based television series like “Buffy”, “Angel”, “Supernatural”, and so on. But what it really comes down to, is that MotW is just a damn fine game, and the PbtA-based rules are extremely fun and easy to use.
In short, I fell in love with “Powered by the Apocalypse”.
Well, I guess you can see where this is going. Being that I’m a fan of High Fantasy games, first and foremost, I went out and bought “Dungeon World” next. Which is fine, as it is a PbtA game that emulates old-school D&D, but that just wasn’t enough.
I pre-ordered “Voidheart Symphony” (Dystopian Psychic Cyberpunk?). I bought “Uncharted Worlds” (sci-fi), “Mythos World” (Lovecraftian Horror), “Ironsworn” (Low-Fantasy Viking adventure), and”Fellowship” (High-Fantasy Heroes vs Evil Overlord), all print-on-demand.
I had to stop at that point, because if I didn’t, I’d have bought another five or ten games by the end of the week! Although I’m really tempted to try to buy… nope, scratch that… Just went and bought myself a copy of “Urban Shadows” (Political Urban Fantasy/Horror, ala “World of Darkness”).
The point being, I really need to get a grip on myself, when it comes to buying roleplaying games! I used to buy dice like there was no tomorrow, but that was fine, because dice aren’t all that expensive. But now I’m doing that with PbtA games, and while there’s no real problem with that, either… digital copies tend to be very inexpensive… I can’t be happy with just digital games. Nope, I have to buy the physical books, and if at all possible, I buy hardbound copies.
I’m not a savage, after all!
You know what the really sad thing is here? I don’t even have a gaming group to play with at the moment! Oh, I intend to join or form one soon enough, especially as I’m getting healthy enough to maybe run or play in games again. But I have been buying games literally left and right, many of which won’t be here for weeks, and many others won’t likely be played for months, if ever.
I just need to go back to buying all of the dice.
