Small Press Games

laughingfuzzball

I like buying games made ny the really tiny companys. I ussually wind up with something great and original. In the cases where I don't check up on the game first, it's either great and original, or hilariously bad and a good lesson in bad game design. The mediocrity and repetitiveness common in the bigger companies is rare.

Right now I'd like to get something together for Don't Rest Your Head (evilhat.com), Sorceror (adept-press.com), or Dogs in the Vineyard (lumpley.com). I also like Burning Wheel (burningwheel.com/) just because it managed to make an integrated background and character generation work, but It's really better for long games and I don't want to run one of those right now.

Anyone else into these sorts of games?

INeedNoSalt

I was at GenCon and I talked to a guy about a game called Run Robot Red about communist robots. It sounded nifty. It sounded a lot like Paranoia, too.

Also, I bought the Fantasy Imperium book, because it was half price for GenCon.

Even at 50% off I lost money.

laughingfuzzball

I looked up Fantasy Imperium, and it sounds more like a CoC: Dark Ages source book than it's own game. I should track down a copy of CoC: Dark Ages.

Run Robot Red seems like a good enough game. The simularities to Paranoia looks to me to have more to do with them drawing off the same fiction (1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, that sort of thing) than anything. The author isn't asking for much on Lulu, so I'll probably get it some time. I should get Paranoia, too, know that I think about it.

I'm lacking too many books.

INeedNoSalt

Oh, no doubt on account of RRR. I definitely would've picked it up, but it was the fourth day and I was all but broke.

The Fantasy Imperium core book is about four hundred pages, and more than half of that is equipment lists.

laughingfuzzball

The only purpose a monstrous equipment list serves is to make a book look bigger than it is. Any author or designer more concerned with a heavy book than readability and the reader's time has serious priority issues.

If FI looks good to you, just pick up CoC:DA- they're pretty much he same thing, only CoC is awesome whereas it sounds like FI sucks.