First of all, for the uninitiated out there (ok, so maybe you just stumbled on this page while surfing - you're welcome anyway!), Role Playing Games - or RPGs for short - are a form of popular entertainment best described as the old "Let's pretend..." games with a few rules and sophistication added: each player in a RPG creates and plays a character within a story narrated and directed by a Game Keeper/Referee/Master/Whatever (definitions vary).
We plan to add a few things about gaming in general for your information, so please check back for updates.
Also, please note that these pages have nothing to do with Computer Based RPGs. While we like them a lot (some of them, at least), we do not have much to say on the subject at the moment. If it's the electronic version of RPGs you're interested in, just take a walk through Fortunecity's Underground and you'll probably find what you're looking for.
An infinity of game systems and game worlds have been published through the years, while the hobby evolved and differentiated; some disappeared without a trace, others thrived and expanded.
As a result, there's an awful lot of Role Playing Games out there, but here we'll cover only the games we play (and like) the most.
Firts
and
foremost, Chaosium Inc.'s The Call of
Cthulhu,
a Supernatural Horror Role Playing game based on the works of American writer
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1895-1937) and his many followers and
imitators (but player ignorance of the works of the Master can generally
be regarded as a plus).
Whe have been playing it more or less continuously for the last 14 years
and rate it as
one of the best overall games ever published in our personal hit
list.
Our pages feature a collection of gaming
material and resources
put together over the last few years of gaming, and include a few adventure
ideas, some home-grown rules, off-site resources, some fiction, assorted
sillyness etc. Currently, the
largest sections are devoted to our home town of Turin (Italy) as a setting
for classic Call of Cthulhu 1920s games and to the niteside dreams
alternate setting we developed with a little help from our friends of Strange
Aeons. The Order of the Sword of St. Jerome also gets a look in.
You
are probably not cleared to access our Delta Green pages that should
be around here somewhere. On the
other hand, should you accidentally find them, what could we do? Shoot you?
Talking
of which,
for
a
nice change of pace, we have Daedalus Games's
Feng Shui, a fast
cinematic RPG based on Hong Kong
action movies. Our FS pages feature all the printable stuff about our ongoing
campaign, plus a few home-grown general add-ons, resources and data.
We
follow
up
with Steampunk games:
Castle Falkenstein, first, a nicely detailed victorian fantasy setting by R. Talsorian Games that, among other peculiarities, uses standard playing cards instead of dice (check it out). The setting allows for any kind of game theme and flavour, from swashbuckling adventure to horror, to romance, and is high in the unofficial Mana Bros RPGs hit list.Next up is Space 1889, the oldest Steampunk game around (by the late lamented GDW) and still carrying the vestigial elements of its wargaming origins. Going for a hard-science fiction feel, it offers a pleasant alternative to the more frivolous Castle Falkenstein. A more modern game engine has been placed under the old steed's bonnet, with pleasant results.
And
as we are at it.... the
D6 System is not a Role Playing Game, but a game
engine
around which keepers and players can build their own gaming universe. We
have been using it to practice some drastic Total System Transplants
(C),
using the flexibility of the System to adapt some already existing games.
The
same weird mix of technology and fantasy that fuels the victorian universe
of Falkenstein is found also in Shadowrun,
one of
the oldest and most respected RPGs in the field, and one of the latest additions
to our gaming evenings. Our page features our campaign notes (incorporating
some of our old Dark Conspiracy stuff) and a very disrespectful - but
well meant - adaptation of the setting to a leaner game engine.
Short
decriptions and selected links for the many other
games we play are currently collected on a single, separate page.
Some, maybe, will be expanded in the future.
Or some of the above will be deleted.
Who knows....
Have fun!
The Mana Brothers
|
This site is a part of the
Great RPG Archive Links up RPG related home pages Click here for more info |
Webrings are a powerful tool to link-up siteswith a common subject.
RPG Rings abound and we are proud and grateful members of quite a few.
Following the above link you'll find the generic gaming rings, while specific
Ring fragments are placed on the specific pages. Enjoy!!
Last Updated May 1999