{"id":286,"date":"2009-08-06T19:27:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T02:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/?p=286"},"modified":"2009-08-06T19:27:32","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T02:27:32","slug":"an-a-to-z-list-of-lesser-known-roleplaying-games-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/06\/an-a-to-z-list-of-lesser-known-roleplaying-games-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"An A-to-Z List of Lesser-Known Roleplaying Games: Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here we are at the end of the list &#8212; almost. What do I mean by &#8220;almost&#8221;? Check the end of this post and you&#8217;ll find out \ud83d\ude09 . Meanwhile, here&#8217;s our final five:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Villains_and_Vigilantes\">Villians and Vigilantes<\/a>:<\/strong> Like several of the games in this list, this is probably well-known to you if you were gaming in the early &#8217;80&#8217;s and not if you joined the hobby later. It&#8217;s a super-hero game system which never got as popular as <em>Champions<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Whispering_Vault\">Whispering Vault, The<\/a>:<\/strong> Ever want to hunt gods? Then this is the game for you. Published in 1993, it experienced a surge of popularity in the mid-90&#8217;s when occult horror games were at their peak of popularity. Players play Stalkers &#8212; people who were once mortal humans but have been granted supernatural abilities &#8212; whose job is to hunt down renegade gods who&#8217;ve escaped into the mortal realm.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodman-games.com\/xcrawl.html\">X-Crawl<\/a>: <\/strong>I&#8217;ll admit &#8212; I haven&#8217;t yet met anyone who&#8217;s even read through this game, much less actually played it, including myself. So I&#8217;m going by the information on the publisher&#8217;s website. X-Crawl is a game based on shows like American Gladiator. In this, players play contestants on a pay-per-view reality show who face the dangers created by the &#8220;Dungeon Judge&#8221;. The game is artificially created &#8212; the character deaths aren&#8217;t.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ysgarth\">Ysgarth<\/a>:<\/strong> A fantasy RPG originally published in 1979 by Ragnarok Games. The focus in this game is on skills, not character classes and the whole system is extremely &#8220;crunchy&#8221; &#8212; meaning you have to crunch a lot of die rolls. Granted, it&#8217;s not <em>quite <\/em>as bad a <em>Rolemaster<\/em>&#8230;. You can try out a &#8216;lite&#8217; version of the game for free at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ragnarokpress.com\/ysgarth\/ysgarth.html\">Ysgarth: 20th Anniversary Edition<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pen-paper.net\/rpgdb.php?op=showbook&amp;bookid=3207\">Zombi<\/a>:<\/strong> Subtitled &#8220;The Earth Won&#8217;t Hold the Dead&#8221;, this game is just what you&#8217;d expect. Zombies are taking over the earth and have to survive. <a href=\"http:\/\/jrients.blogspot.com\/\">Jeff&#8217;s Gameblog<\/a> has a nice writeup about it in his &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/jrients.blogspot.com\/2006\/11\/five-overlooked-rpgs.html\">Five Overlooked RPGs<\/a>&#8221; post.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There it is: A to Z. At least one game for each letter of the alphabet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So what with this &#8216;almost&#8217;?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Right. The &#8216;almost&#8217;. Well, several of you have posted comments or Tweeted me about games you felt should&#8217;ve been on the list. So tomorrow (Friday, 07 Aug 2009) I&#8217;m going to post a &#8220;reader&#8217;s choice&#8221; list of lesser-known games. So if there&#8217;s anything that&#8217;s not here but you felt should be, please leave me a comment on any of these &#8220;A-to-Z&#8221; posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here we are at the end of the list &#8212; almost. What do I mean by &#8220;almost&#8221;? Check the end of this post and you&#8217;ll find out \ud83d\ude09 . Meanwhile, here&#8217;s our final five: Villians and Vigilantes: Like several of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/06\/an-a-to-z-list-of-lesser-known-roleplaying-games-part-5\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,4],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-game-systems","tag-old-editions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}