The first part of his (RPG Elite's) recent video on the Best Starting RPG is a philosophy I share.
It isn't for everyone, I understand, but for as long as I have been gaming, it has been my goal to have the players lose themselves in their characters at least as much as when one looses track of time while reading an enjoyable novel, or perhaps a good show/movie. Not create a staged line-by-line recreation of a scene, nor check of a list of tropes, or XP-hunt...
No, I've wanted, and with some really great players I have had (who, incidentally have been really great Games Masters as well), had amazing next-level, 'mask' games.
One such was an early proto-Urutsk (it was, but the name hadn't yet shone in my mind), in which characters moved through a landscape which seems reasonable at first blush, but became increasingly responsive to the will of the Player Characters, and then, the more self-aware Non-PCs (NPCs).
Penultimate reality was demonstrated to be that the PCs and NPCs were in a psychic-organic AI lab, using special-powered, and mentally-ill individuals to cause the AI to waken to personhood, with imprinted powers from the test-subjects/patients/prisoners. One player, decided he was, instead, playing a guard, and when the big reveal was made, he took it to the next, next-level, and merged his 'Psi-berspace' persona with his in-world character, to battle and defeat the mad AI through self-sacrifice.
Afterward, two of the walk-on/walk-off players joined us to hear that it had run it s course and what had been the case, etc. They were upset that I had no plans to continue, and that it had been a two-day one-shot.
I was reminded of that by watching RPG Elite, who, again, seems to want much the same level of immersion. I don't care for any of the three systems he suggested, but understand and respect his reasons for them. I'm much more of a BRP/GURPS/HERO System kind of gal.
Anyway, here is a LINK to the episode.
In other 'news':
I've finished an audiobook 36 lecture series on Shakespeare's Comedies/Histories/Tragedies.
I'm almost finished listening to Andre Norton's Witch World.
I listened to Gibson's Agency, or, Verity Asks a F-ton of Questions
Just started SLAN by A.E. van Vogt
Primed to continue listening to MZB's Mists of Avalon, but I may first listen to Hawkmistress!
OK
L8R
