Saturday, March 29, 2014

This one's a no-brainer (March Madness Day 29)

29 What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain why.

Flying Swordsmen RPG.

What, I can't use this month long blog-a-rama to promote my own game? Well, I'm gonna, because creating FSRPG was a ton of fun for me. Playing it, on the few instances where I have played it, was also really fun. I just wish I had more time to run games, or better yet, someone else actually wanted to run Flying Swordsmen and I could be a player!

That's right, I, like many other DIY designers, created the game I want to play. One of the reasons I enjoyed creating it so much.

Back when I started working on it, I had a lot of notes left over from my run at a d20 Oriental Adventures game campaign world. That work became the foundation of the Zhongyang Dalu setting (the map is different, the non-human races have been removed, Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese/Indian/Thai cultural elements have been removed or marginalized, but a lot of the provinces are more or less as they were.

Lots of folks were working on retro-clones. Basic Fantasy and OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord were all popular. Dragon Fist had a small but dedicated fan base clustered on the Green Ronin message boards, for the most part, yet none of them were talking about doing a retro-clone of this quirky little wuxia freebie.

So I decided to do it myself. Glad I did, and hopefully Chanbara will get just as much praise as Flying Swordsmen has.

2 comments:

  1. Your game is truly impressive. I believe you mentioned that you were going to bring it in line with the other standard OSR games?

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  2. Thanks, Hoplite. I appreciate it!

    Unfortunately, grad school is kicking me in the hind end right now, so even just completing Chanbara is looking to be far off at the moment.

    Some day, after I've earned a Ph.D. or given up in disgust and frustration, I'll think about that product that bridges Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara classes with Labyrinth Lord/Swords & Wizardry/Basic Fantasy RPG/OSRIC style games.

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