RPG bargains or sales

I’ve punted £1 at this to take a look at the core book

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This RPG bundle as posted in the news by Ava (https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/games-news-18-05-20/)

I get promotional information about the Bundle of Holding. Currently running:

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It’s mildly tempting, but I have the print version of the rulebook (same edition, too!), and the base price is too much for just the universe book.

To clarify, the offers include rather more than that:

  1. CHAMPIONS 4E ESSENTIALS
    [Retail value listed in each slot is the total for all titles in that
    slot.]

    CORE COLLECTION ($14.95 - total retail $97.50)
    Champions 4E (BBB) / Hero System Rulesbook /
    GM Screen ($32.50)
    Classic Enemies / Organizations / Corporations ($20)
    PRIMUS / VIPER 4E ($15)
    Normals Unbound / Allies / Mutant File ($15)
    Hero Bestiary / Creatures of the Night - Horror Enemies ($15)
    BONUS COLLECTION (threshold starts at $29.95 - total retail $105)
    Dark Champions 4E ($10)
    Golden Age Champions ($7.50)
    Ultimate Martial Artist 4E / Ultimate Mentalist 4E ($17.50)
    Ultimate Super Mage / Super Mage Bestiary / Mystic Masters ($20)
    Hero System Almanacs 1-2 ($10)
    Challenges for Champions / Champions Presents 1-2 ($20)
    New Millennium / Bay City / Alliances ($20)

      28 titles, 12 slots, total retail $202.50
    
  2. CHAMPIONS 4E UNIVERSE

    STARTER COLLECTION ($17.95 - total retail $98.50)
    Alien Enemies / Enemies Assemble /
    Enemies for Hire / High Tech Enemies / European Enemies ($25)
    [plus “European Enemies Debugged” by Michael Surbrook]
    Invasions: Target Earth / Invaders From Below /
    Pyramid in the Sky ($17.50)
    Day of the Destroyer / Road Kill / Blood Fury / Demons Rule ($20)
    Zodiac Conspiracy / Atlantis / Olympians ($15)
    San Angelo / Denizens of SA / Enemies of SA / Dragon’s Gate ($21)
    BONUS COLLECTION (threshold starts at $34.95 - total retail $110)
    Champions in 3D ($7.50)
    Champions Universe 4E / Kingdom of C. /
    C. of the North 4E ($22.50)
    Shadows of the City / Eye for an Eye / New Bedlam Asylum ($17.50)
    Justice, Not Law / Hudson City Blues / Murderers’ Row ($17.50)
    Underworld Enemies / Widows & Orphans / Dystopia ($15)
    Mind Games / Watchers of the Dragon ($12.50)
    Foxbat Unhinged / Heroic Adventures V1 / V2 ($17.50)

          37 titles, 10 slots, total retail $208.50
    

(The bonus material is “beat the average price to date”, i.e. the earlier you buy the cheaper it is.)

I see. Thanks. Unfortunately, a lot of the books are of types I don’t really have a use for; the two I’d definitely be interested in, Golden Age Champions and Kingdom of Champions, add up to about the total price of the combined package, which would be nice if a couple of others sounded like something I wanted to look at . . .

There’s a widely-used thread about RPG sales on EnWorld.

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There are currently three massive charity bundles running at DriveThruRPG which are well worth having a look at. Link here:

Covid-19 Bundles

All three are priced $19.99, and each bundle is in support of a different organisation - Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), No Kid Hungry and World Food Programme (WFP). And when I say massive I mean massive, the MSF one has over 80 items while the WFP has over 90!

For me the WFP one is especially attractive as it contains both The Witcher Pen & Paper RPG and RuneQuest 2nd Edition from 1980!

From this bundle, I cannot recommend Lovecraftesque enough. I’ve never played anything helping players to create good stories so reliably with such simple directions. If you like story game and cosmic horror, do look into it.

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Everything I’ve heard about Lovecraftesque excites me except the cosmic horror.

I’d be really tempted by the Champions Bundle of Holding except, even though it’s probably the best incarnation of a certain approach to supers RP that I’ve encountered…it’s like 50 tons heavier than I want to play anymore. Even though I like the crunch of character design, for actually playing supers now I’d probably do something like Masks. Or maybe the Sentinel Comics roleplaying game once I have time to give that a read - certainly it had an interesting pitch.

I said so in the SU&SD news comments, but I can confirm Pigsmoke and Rhapsody of Blood being pretty great. Pigsmoke especially is frigging hilarious and apparently very authentic to the grad school experience.

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I’ve played Champions in the past, and I’ve run two campaigns in it. But neither was supers as usually conceived. One was teenage children of world-famous scientists; the other was masked adventurers in the 1920s, along the lines of the Shadow or Doc Savage or the Green Hornet—but without superpowers as shown in the comics. I like a lot of things about Champions—its combat mechanics, as I recall it, was quite elegant—but I never felt that the characters that it created were much like superheroes, or that the narratives that emerged from it were much like superhero adventures. In particular, the fact that you had to define every single effect of your powers in advance, in quantitative detail, meant that it was really hard to attain the improvised applications of powers that the comics featured, and that it was lacking in sensawunda. And I really hate the fiddly calculations that go into squeezing every last milliwatt of power out of your character points.

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I first met the system in an RPG club where they’d worked out all the tricks like DEX 23. That probably biased me unfairly against it.

6th edition changed all that. No derived stats so no need to buy high DEX even if it doesn’t fit your character.

The Hero System mechanic I truly detest, at nuke from orbit levels, is the idea that if you have organic wings growing out of your back, you can take Flight with Obvious Accessible Focus. Right, and if I have Telescopic Vision can I take it with my eyes as an OAF? Or enhanced movement with my legs as an OAF?

As I remember it, “Obvious” means “it’s clearly what lets you use this particular power” and “Accessible” means “it can be grabbed off you in combat”. So for Telescopic Vision, binoculars; for Flight, not so much organic wings as a magic feather than everyone can see and try to take away from you.

I would have had no problem with that, but I’m pretty sure the character writeups included some characters with wings growing from their backs that were defined as Accessible because they could be grappled and rendered useless.

Posting this one here, even if it includes a load of videogames

Among the rest, I spotted Blades in the Dark, Troika!, VISIGOTHS vs MALL GOTHS, Dead Friend, In the Light of a Ghost Star, along side with a lot of adventure modules, solo RPGs, and some very cool video games. A nice extra push, if you wanted to make a donation.

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Yeah, just saw this and couldn’t believe some of the names on it! Also a load of interesting indie solo RPGs, and PC games I’d seen on steam including Oxenfree and Super Hexagon. Donates 50/50 to NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Community Bail Fund.

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