It’s such a shame that transitioning this niche into a full-blown adult RPG community has been such a challenge (one that I might add I’m working on diligently with projects like RolePlayGateway (RPG)) or even disregarded at all.

“Story Games” are likely the single greatest form of true roleplaying there is, as there is less chance for “roll” playing and more incentive to play the role of the designated character. In essence, we play to have fun, and there are a great many varying flavors of RPG, but we’ve already got the time-honed methods provided to us through theatre and fiction-writing, and I think those are great methods to build on.

In the mid-70s when wargames were king, the likes of Gygax and Arneson envisioned a group of systems that defined individual play and, most importantly, adventure. Some of these early games (which came long before my time, being born at the meager date of 1987) were often the most intriguing pieces of work that generated the greatest amount of enjoyment.

It’s this mystique that a lot of the main stream games are missing, particularly from D&D 3.0 forward. It’s a shame that storyline-driven gaming has been reduced to secondary gaming groups and what we call “Indie” RPGs (wonderful in their own way, of course), where even the most modest of perspectives views them as the “fringe” of the gaming industry.

Myself and countless others of the most youthful generation have filled this gap with text-based freeform roleplaying games. Most of these kids haven’t even heard of “tabletop”, let alone the introduction of dice to any degree–and I honestly think that’s one of the greatest benefits of our ignorance. However, what we’re looking for is more traditional gamers willing to bridge the gap between our Internet-enabled systems and the wargame-derived tabletop games that you oldies enjoy so much (we’re getting there, with things like DungeonMastering Tools, but not quite yet…) — the right attitude and awareness would go a long way to enabling a future for tabletop games by engaging younger players at a far greater rate.
.-= Eric Martindale´s last blog ..THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!! =-.

I ran a campaign using Spirit of the Century. I really like Don’t Rest Your Head. I own several (Sorcerer, Kill Puppies for Satan, Puppetland, and a few others) that I haven’t played, though. Some I definitely want to try.
.-= Stuart´s last blog ..Rules Hacking: Combat, Reach, Facing, and Areas of Control =-.

We’ve played one session of Shock (which turned out to be a complete comedy game).

Primetime Adventures has yet to be cracked by anyone other than the guy who bought it.

We keep wanting to play other games, but our primary game, D&D has always held center stage. With 4e’s structure (the ddi, ease of prep and play, etc..) it’s become even less likely we’ll play something else. I don’t see this as a bad thing; I’ve played my share of other RPGs and have found 4e to suit my tastes perfectly.