Mooning over Universalis.

Well, thanks to zamiel, I got interested in a game called Universalis. So I ordered it.

After having read through it, and read everything I could find on its website and web forum, I am totally enthralled with the game. Which makes it so painful that I can't seem to get any of my friends interested in playing it.

It's not like an ordinary "roleplaying" game at all. It's more of a storytelling game, where everyone has an equal stake in deciding the direction of events. All the players are given a certain amount of "coins," and they can use these coins to buy facts in the game and influence the direction in which the plot goes. There are ways of getting more coins—including through the conflict resolution system, called "Complications," which are not so much a contest between two or more characters as they are a contest between two or more authors to see who gets to decide the outcome of the event.

The first chapter of the revised version of the book, which is an overview of the system and its play, is online here (word document), and a number of other helpful resources are on the publisher's Resources page. And those are all you really need to play if at least one member of your gaming group has the rules. And the rules are so intuitive that once you've played a few sessions, you may never need to refer to the book again.

I just wish I could find some people to play it with. I think it would be an utter blast.

( Some RPG.net review links. )

DM of the Rings

I can't remember where I found this—one of my LJ friends, I think—but DM of the Rings is absolutely hilarious. It asks the question, "What if the Lord of the Rings movies were played out as a D&D campaign?" and often uses the hilarious strips to highlight some absurd element of the D&D rules or gameplay style.

Read it. Love it. My only annoyance is that it doesn't seem to have a single root URL I can check for each new update; I just have to read the latest from the list.