I’ve long said that my main reason for not ‘upgrading’ to the latest version of a system as soon as it is published is money. I horde my old books and still use them for running games. It’s not just that I like them but it’s because I have them as well. So with that in mind I was wondering what everyone’s favourite books were. The kind you bought to either add something new to a game or a new campaign setting and just can’t put down.

As a group we never owned AD&D 1e as we’d been playing Rolemaster beforehand so we hit 2e just as it was new to the shelves. The problem with that though is that as a young kid our pocket money only went so far and so we were forced to improvise. In a pre-edwardian shopping gallery called the Virginia Galleries off one of the major shopping streets in Glasgow there was a gaming store that did a vast amount of second hand books. With everyone changing over to 2e there were literally thousands of 1e books available for pennies. I think we picked up Dragonlance Adventures for something like £1.50. Now obviously we were using 2e so things had to be fudged and this was probably around the time we first started creating our own house rules to match the setting with the 2e game books. If you look in the margins of my copy you can just about make out the house rules in pencil from 18 years ago.

I was amazed that within it’s 128 pages there was everything you needed to get started on playing in the setting. My amazement was probably misplaced but I think it stemmed from all the new settings coming in boxed sets with multiple booklets, handouts and maps. The tone of the setting fitted exactly with the novels that had been released for obvious reasons and the novels themselves were written in such a way that it felt like every gaming session we ran. The characters all returning home and meeting up in the tavern to start a new adventure. In fact I seem to recall somewhere saying that the first few books were really just cleaned up transcripts from the initial games they ran.

So as I asked earlier. What source book do you keep going back to for inspiration or to actually play in this day and age of old and new school gaming?

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I love reading rule books and I love reading campaign settings even more. I’ve went on before about how I write campaign settings just for myself even if no one else will ever actually play them so it comes as no surprise that I’ve got a little fed up rereading the D&D 4e books and that I’m looking for something ‘new’.

Coming home from my dyslexia testing on Monday I stopped by one of the larger book store chains in Glasgow to see if there was anything worth picking up. Usually I head in there just to see if they have a specific book but this day I decided just to have a look around the fiction areas as well. They have a small section for RPG books these days and it’s never really been stocked that well. They have the usual D&D books as well as the occasional TV related system such as the Firefly or Battlestar Galactica books but apart from the occasion WoD or Cthulu book thats it.

What they did have though was a few of the Scion books. I’d heard a little about them before and to be honest what I had heard didn’t tickle my fancy but after a quick flick through it is very similar to a setting I tried to write about 10 years ago using the old WoD system. I stood for a good 20 minutes reading the fluff that goes along with the Hero book. Why can’t games be released with a backstory this rich all the time? Needless to say I’ll be picking up the books on my next trip to the gaming store even if it is only to read them and never actually get my players into a game.

What other systems are there out there that go into the backstory in this much detail in the main rulebooks?

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Everyone has them whether they realise it or not. Whether it’s a specific order a player will use his dice or where everyone sits around the gaming table. What I’m curious about is what traditions you guys have for your game days.

Mine have always depended on location but the basic core traditions still follow through.

1. Drinks.

It has to be a glass bottle of one of Barr’s many flavours of juice. Preference will always be for Irn Bru or American Cream Soda but I can live with the occasional bottle of Limeade or Cola. Aside from the taste the bottle was always just the right size for the 3-4 hour weeknight gaming sessions we have so if we have an all day/night session multiple bottles are bought. I’ll never bump up the size to a 2 litre bottle though as it wouldn’t be right. It has to be the glass bottles.

2. Cadbury’s Animal Cookies.

This started off as a joke one day when one of the group started bringing them along for their own munchings but once we realised the GM accepted them as bribes we all started bringing out own boxes. Despite GM’s rotating and the bribes no longer working it has become a staple of the gaming session. The only problem is they are becoming increasingly hard to find without traveling great distances but gaming sessions aren’t the same without them so we still sacrifice in order to bring them along.

3. Dice.

I’m not at all superstitious about my dice. I’m not. Honest. But I have a set of green/black speckled dice with red numbering that only I will ever use. I also have a blue gem set of D6 that have the same restrictions on them. Why do I not let anyone else use them? Well it certainly isn’t because I think people will waste teh good rolls in them or that it will make them unlucky. It’s because they feel great in my hands and I’d rather folk borrow my crappy dice.

4. Table.

Given the choice I’ll never use one. I much prefer the casual nature of lounging on the sofa or the floor and using books etc as rolling surfaces for the dice. Sitting around the table has always been a very confrontational thing for me with your GM hiding behind a screen and the players sitting together at the other side of the table. Spread the players about and get comfy is my motto.

5. Post game takeaway.

We’ve never been one for bringing/ordering/cooking a pizza for our session as for several years we were not actually allowed food into the room we had hired for the gaming club. What that meant though was that a trip to the chip shop was always on the cards during the journey home. The smell of a greasy chip shop after a game always signaled the end to a good night and the one we chose smelled like no other. The Village Takeaway was the cheapest looking chip shop I’ve been to in almost all my years but my god the chips were great. There were nights where we had just finished banishing the undead from the swamps and headed there for an ashet pie supper only to find Ally McCoist and Paul Gascoigne had been out for a night on the tiles in the pub next door and had taken the last of the food. They would always cook us up a batch of fresh chips if that was the case but not getting your pie or sausage to go with them would put a downer on the night.

So what are your game day traditions?

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