Play a New RPG Quarter

The guys at Dice of Doom  have been promoting October as Play a New RPG Month. A whole month where you put aside your regular game and not only try a new RPG, but also have someone else be the GM for that month. The idea is that you don't just play a game for one session but you stick with it for the month.

This came at a convenient time for me. My D&D game came to a satisfying conclusion a few weeks ago and we're just about to finish the season of Traveller to switch to Pathfinder in my other group. Now is a good time for PANRPG month. In fact my D&D player and I were intending on trying a few one shots of different games over the next few months as he is often too busy to play recently (he's expecting a new baby, yay). However, seeing that I've been getting excited over lots of different systems and settings recently we're not going to do it as intended. For one, we are not going to just play one new RPG, and two, we are going to spread it over three months.

At least for the remote group we're going to do it over three months, the Traveller group is ready to start the new Pathfinder game at the beginning of November, with Corporal Punishment at the helm. So we're going to do a few one shots in October with them.

So what games do I want to try? Well, lots of them, and a lot more than we can actually play. We have decided on a few definites but I'm going to leave a few others around that we might be able to fit in. Mainly I want to try games with different settings, but different mechanics are also important. Both of my current games are dice plus modifier type games. They play out very differently with the d20 plus modifier having a much higher variance to 2d6 plus much smaller modifier. I'm interested in dice pool games as well as different skill systems and other mechanics that feed into the role playing.

Here are the games that we will probably actually get to.

• World of Darkness. This will be the Free RPG Day offering that White Wolf kindly allowed to be downloaded for free (from RPGNow) after this years Free RPG Day. I don't know what it is about because I haven't read it and I've passed it to one of our player to read and run.
• Pathfinder. While this is the game that we are starting a campaign for in November one of our players is keen on learning to run it and wants to do a one shot, maybe mostly combats with 6-7 level characters.
• Savage Worlds. This is going to be a game set in the world that I created for our D&D game, but it will be focused on more normal people (probably apprentice mages, so maybe not that normal) rather than heroes and I'm looking forward to seeing the world from a different perspective. What I'm missing here though is a proper rulebook for Savage Worlds. I bought a PDF of the explorers edition off of RPGNow but PDF isn't my first choice to run RPGs from, I'm going to have to get an actual book soon.
• Mouse Guard. I love the comics and I only got the RPG book recently but I love the system and it lives up to the hype from the likes of ChattyDM(http://critical-hits.com/2011/02/18/mouseburning-it-hacking-a-rpgs-skill-system-small-press-style/). I will likely play this with my remote group, but I dearly want to GM this one.

And here are the games that I would like to play but will only get to if we have time and can get some player interest in.

• Leverage. This looks great and I want to give something a try that uses the Cortex system. Serenity was one of the choices when we decided to play Traveller but, from what I've seen, the system has changed since then. It's also the system that is going to be used for the new Marvel RPG and I've heard good things about that.
• Dragon Age. I've said it before, but I love this game. I've been able to play it with some people from work and I have a copy of the first box set next to my bed for bed time reading. This is probably a bit close to our D&D or Pathfinder games in genre though for it to be near the top of the list so I don't think we'll get to it.
• Old World of Darkness. I still have my old Mage and Vampire books. It would be good to get them out again.
• Battletech. I have the free A Time of War quick start rules that would be good to play, but also we might be able to have a good old miniatures battle with this.
• AD&D 2nd Edition. In particular the old Dragonlance modules. I miss Dragonlance, and as it only take a few minutes to create a 2e character this should be a good, light RPG to play.
• Lady Blackbird. Lots of people talk about it, I would like to see what all the fuss is about.
• Star Wars d6. I left my books back in the UK for these with my D&D player. Hopefully he's still got them and is ready to GM a game.

Now there are some notable games missing from that list. In particular there are no Fate based games. I nearly bought the Spirit of the Century a few weeks ago and went back to the shop yesterday to get it but it had been sold, otherwise it might have been on the list. I'm staying away from the Dresden Files game until I've read a few more of the Dresden novels after getting a spoiler when flipping through the Our World book in my LGS. I would very much like to play a Fate game soon, but maybe this isn't the time. There are no western games and no post apocalyptic games. That's just because I came up with a list of games I would like to play and it started getting long before those games came up. I have been intrigued by games such as Deadlands and Eclipse Phase. There is also a free, fan made Mass Effect rpg based on the Star Wars d6 game but none of my players have played Mass Effect.

This list isn't definitive though. If any of my groups bring out a game they want to play then I'm willing to give it a try.

If anyone else has any games to add that they feel I should be interested in or are intending to play soon please leave a comment below.