Over the years, I've had an outlet for my "I never get to play" games: OwlCon. I've run a lot of systems that my regular group isn't interested in at OwlCon, and it scratches the itch pretty well.
Still, I've held on to a few sets of RPG books that I don't think I'll ever be able to really use, but I don't want to let go of them either.
- Aeon/Trinity (White Wolf): White Wolf's Space Opera game. My group gave it a try but it didn't click for them. I'm a huge fan of the setting and I'm looking forward to the upcoming Onyx Path iteration. Confession: my first freelance assignment Trinity Field Report: Media, so that's probably coloring my opinion of it. But I honestly think I'd still love the game even I hadn't worked on it.
- Castle Falkenstein (R. Talsorian Games): I love this game with a fiery passion. However, there's two things that keep me from trying to twist my group into trying it. First off, it's old and massively out of print. Secondly, it's one of those settings that I simultaneously love and am totally stymied as to what to run in it. It's choice paralysis. {For the record, the other setting I feel that way about is Day After Ragnarok. I had one adventure and then my brain locked up and I couldn't come up with anything else.} I have played it at GenCon once. And I ran a dimension hopping game where the PC's had an adventure in that setting, though I wasn't using the rules. But I don't know if I'll ever do more than enjoy the read. And, to be fair, the books are written as if a modern day RPG designer got sucked into a dimensional vortex and ended up saving the world. After doing so, he wrote the game for his friends (including Mad King Ludwig and Oberon of Faerie) so they'd understand what he did back in his world. And, theoretically speaking, Oberon and Ludwig's wizard sent copies back to Mike Pondsmith (the creator of the game) and he published the game for us. I got a chance to sit in on a Falkenstein panel at GenCon many many years ago, and Mike Pondsmith is an awesome guy and I wish I could back a dumptruck of money to his place and say "gimmie more Falkenstein!"
- Deadlands Noir (Pinnacle): This was a game that I backed on Kickstarter to unhealthy levels. It's a simple premise - take the Weird West timeline of Deadlands and roll it forward to the 1920s, and the signature city is New Orleans. So it's pulp era, urban horror and set in the town I was born in. Yeah, I backed the crap out of it. I posted to facebook that "Deadlands Noir is so targeted at me that it may as well have split the arrow previously sitting on the bull's eye." I've got the books, the GM screen, the adventures, the cardboard standees, the battle-maps, the dice, the poker chips, the poker decks and the figures. Don't know if I'll ever get more than the enjoyment of reading out of it, but I've got it and I ain't letting go.
- Star Wars Saga Edition (Wizards of the Coast): A d20 Star Wars game that, by all accounts, fixes the "if you're not a Jedi, you're lame" problem that the WEG iteration had. I've got all but two of the books and I think it's a great system. I've got four or five campaigns I could run, but once again, I'm up against the Out of Print problem and a good chunk of the group isn't interested in playing Star Wars. I think we'd also run into the problem of the game being another flavor of d20, and we regularly hit the wall in our Pathfinder game when two folks think the rules work differently (because of edition changes) and we have to stop and look up the answer. The game hit me during one of my love periods in my ongoing love/disinterest with Star Wars.
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