Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
The smiling, whimsical face of a clockwork god.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
A game with intriguing mechanics and a fantastic setting that could have re-written the history of RPGs.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
First published in 1990 by West End Games, Torg was a game so conceptually dense and full of innovation that it was actually quite difficult to play the game as intended.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
Animonde was first published in 1988 and was the second RPG to be created by the legendary French game designer Croc. Animonde was originally self-published in the form of an 88-page booklet, which was soon followed by a supplement describing the game world and a collection of pre-written adventures. An attempt was made in the mid-to-late 2000s to produce a second edition but this soon fell by the way-side.
While Croc’s first RPG (Bitume) was an enormously cynical and violent post-apocalyptic game that is best described as what if Fallout and Mad Max hooked up and had a really sarcastic Gitanes-smoking French kid, his second game demonstrated an aesthetic reversal so radical that its basic ideas have yet to be fully understood or processed. Even in an age where itch.io is bursting at the seams with soft, smol bean, queer-friendly indie games about finding love and found family, Animonde still has the power to surprise and delight.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
Published in January 1994 by INS/MV publisher Siroz (who later changed their name to Asmodee Editions) and written by the legendary designer Croc, Scales is an urban fantasy game with a contemporary setting that feels very much like it was inspired by Nephilim, the World of Darkness, and older French initiatic games like Hurlements.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
More than just the French Call of Cthulhu.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
In Nomine Satanis – Magna Veritas (usually referred to as INS/MV) is unquestionably the most famous French RPG of all time. This is largely due to the fact that Steve Jackson Games decided to produce an English-language adaptation in 1997. While the SJG version would turn out to be a bit of a disappointment, it was released not only within living memory of the anti-D&D moral panics of the 1980s but also at a time when White Wolf were making a lot of money selling urban fantasy-inspired games. The hype-game was strong, the game-game and setting design considerably less so but in order to understand the failure of In Nomine, you really have to understand what made INS/MV so memorable in the first place.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
A game decades ahead of its time.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
Decades before The Wire, TSR was putting out games that tried to model the political realities of American policing.
Continue reading →Games Half Remembered is an occasional series about old games. Some of these games I have played, others I have merely admired, but all of them have stuck in my memory for one reason or another. The rest of the series can be found here.
Marxist Steampunks in Post-Apocalyptic 19th Century Paris.
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Taskerland 