Tag Archives: game

WWII RPG Kickstarter

I don’t usually pass on Kickstarter news but I ran across this one from this Limithron blog post and while this company, Firelock Games, does lots of pirate-era mini games they have a Year Zero engine WWII RPG called War Stories, there’s a kickstarter for the Pacific books right now, and here’s an actual play and a RPG.net review.

WWII RPGs are oddly rare, I have copies of old ones like Behind Enemy Lines, and of course GURPS has everything, and then you get your weird combos like Weird Wars, Achting! Cthulhu, or Godlike – but except for very focused indie games like Night Witches and Grey Ranks you don’t see it much any more, so it’s cool to see a squad focused modern RPG system in the genre!

So if you obsessively watch Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Saving Private Ryan, etc., here’s a great way to roleplay in that setting!

Aside

If you haven’t played the super sweet coop superhero card game Sentinels of the Multiverse, you should!  It’s our gaming group’s favorite non-RPG currently.

The OGL: It’s Not Just d20

Hey, so I keep seeing people confused about the Open Game License. My Open Gaming for Dummies article helps dispel some of that but let’s come out and get one thing clear – it’s not “just for D&D” or just d20-derived games. Open gaming is strong and diverse.

The OGL is just a license.  It’s like the open source Apache, GPL, or MIT licenses in that it can be applied by anyone – though it was written by WotC originally, it’s not owned by them and has no relation to what games can be released under it.

Guess what all game systems are open under the OGL license?

  • The Action! system (from Gold Rush Games)
  • Traveller (Mongoose’s version)
  • Runequest (Mongoose’s version)
  • The d6 system (from West End Games’ Star Wars and Ghostbusters)
  • Fudge and its newer more popular variant FATE and derivatives thereof, like ICONS

And many more, including many many d20 variants from Anime d20 to Mutants & Masterminds.  I’m not sure there’s a comprehensive list – here’s a couple that are old and out of date. But that’s like, a big share of the systems people have played over the decades.

And of course this doesn’t mention other open games published under other licenses, like Eclipse Phase is published under Creative Commons.

Really, publishers, is there a reason NOT to open license your system?  Because face it, your system kinda sucks.  They all do. Your best bet is to get it in the hands of as many people as possible so they’ll get interested and buy your products. If GURPS got open licensed, for example, maybe someone under 30 would play it.