So I'm feeling the need to do some musing about stuff...
So I had the good fortune to grow up during a time when pen and paper role playing games were just becoming popular, and what I consider the heydey of RPGs. I fondly remember GMing for my friends at the time, and occasionally playing in other people's RPG campaigns. I preferred game mastering over just playing, and GMed such games as Star Ace, Star Frontiers, Traveller, the Wizards RPG (based on the Ralph Bakshi film), Star Trek the RPG (FASA), MEKTON, The Fantasy Trip and a couple of others I'm sure. Of course I played in a few D&D campaigns, it's pretty much a rite of passage or whatever. Palladium's Robotech should get an honorable mention here, I never GMed it but did play in a couple of Robotech campaigns. Also Champions (Hero Games), I've designed and played few Champions characters. I played/dabbled with a few other RPGs as well 'back in the day'.
We had more than a few ladies in our RPG gaming groups back then along with the usual plethora of dudes. More and more ladies have embraced gaming since the 'old days', which I certainly welcome, it's just more fun!
I also played a number of wargames, such as Star Fleet Battles, Star Fleet Battle Manual, Battletech, Renegade Legion: Interceptor, the Star Trek Starship Combat Simulator (FASA), Silent Death, Bladestorm, Fantasy Warriors, Ogre/GEV/Ogre Miniatures, the AH Dune boardgame, Diplomacy, Time Agent, Outpost (the boardgame that predates the computer game, not the same game), AH's Civilization/Advanced Civilization, Star Force Terra: Contact!, Modern Naval Battles (the card game), Valkenburg Castle, Dawn of the Dead (SPI), Starfire (various iterations), Federation Space/Federation & Empire, Space Hulk, Car Wars, Monster Derby, Total War, Axis & Allies/Shogun/Fortress America, various Microgames, a number of others...
I never got into the whole collectable card game craze, it just looked like a blatant cash grab to me. Some people really enjoy those, not my bag.
Anyways, my point is that yeah, I'm a bit of a game nerd, and games have been a significant part of my free time since my teen years. So about the image above...
The game featured in the image above is of course Rolemaster, by Iron Crown enterprises. Iron Crown had a couple of other notable games at the time: the aforementioned Silent Death and Bladestorm, and of course Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) and Space Master. MERP and Space Master never really grabbed me personally, but yeah, Rolemaster...
I've ran a few different Rolemaster campaigns over the years, a game that is often referred to as Chartmaster due to all of the weapons and damage charts and such.
What attracted me to this particular game was how it handled character classes. Each level you earned development points based on your stats, and the cost to raise various skills was tied to your class. Weapons skills were much cheaper for fighters than spell users, etc.. Plus you could play a variety of races (not just the usual dwarves/elves/halflings/humans/maybe orcs and goblins), and at the time of Rolemaster's initial releases yeah D&D player class selection was, dare I say, a tiny bit lacking compared to Rolemaster.
Leveling up was a bit of a chore, but at least for myself and the players, it was worth the effort. And we had a lot of fun in those campaigns that I ran.
I still remember attending a national convention, and played a Mentalist in a Rolemaster tournament, but didn't advance because I had a better understanding of the rules than the people running the game so I didn't advance because I disputed their interpretation of the rules... but I digress.
Campaign Law very nicely layed out how you could build your own world, cultures and such by outlining various things for you to help you 'fill in the blanks', and can be a rather handy aid for developing such things in any game, not just the Rolemaster settings.
Of course, once computers eventually advanced to the point where we had a massive explosion of really good computer games, yeah I kind of moved on from boardgames and pen and paper and miniatures, as people in my various gaming groups had went their separate ways, and yeah I didn't have a regular gaming group any more. Games like Planescape: Torment, the Interceptor computer game, Civilization/Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civilizations, Political Machine, Triple A, Neverwinter Nights, etc. filled that void.
So of course when I discovered adult gaming a few years back, and Daz Studio not too long afterwords, yeah it was a natural transiton for me to take a stab at adult gaming. I'm not really a decent artist outside of Daz Studio, although I am quite proficient in Photoshop for a number of reasons, and enjoy telling stories.
When
RustyV and I agreed to collaborate on FmF, our love for role playing games, as well as a number of classic movies, has been of course front and center in our storytelling, particularly in FmF Stories: BFF Tales Book One.
So yeah, I put a bit of time and effort to track down the various pieces of cover art for some of the classic Rolemaster books/supplements, and set up the textures accordingly for the box of goodies that Chloe is showing off.
I've been waiting for others that have played BFF Tales Book One to call out the reference here, but alas no joy...
Anyways, yeah just wanted to talk about the nods I made here here. Carry on!
Archiving more pics:
