Games on the Brain: Intro & Monsterparts = Awesomeness

I’m fairly sure that somewhere on this blog (maybe it was in the About section) I threatened implied that I might write about those games that I like to play with friends where we pretend to be other people, doing things that we normally can’t or wouldn’t do, and rolling funny-shaped dice to determine the outcomes of various shenanigans. Lately I haven’t had time to play role-playing games, but that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about them. Sometimes to the point where I have the burning need to do something game-related before I can concentrate on writing actual stories. Games on the Brain will be my little ongoing series here where I re-fill my creative gas tank with RPG goodness and maybe tell some of you some of you a thing or two about RPGs that you didn’t already know.

Dungeons and Dragons, the first such formalized and commercial RPG, is by far the most popular (Pathfinder absolutely counts as D&D), but there are literally dozens of commercial and homebrewed variations out there. (D&D has also had an impact on our culture that goes far beyond the tabletop. There’s even a forthcoming documentary about its influences. But that’s a whole ‘nother monster of a post.) For an intro, I thought I’d tell the world about the latest cool variant that I found. It figures that on the same day I post about Neil Gaiman, I learn of this brilliant little D&D homebrew that’s meant for playing out scenarios in the same vein as The Ocean at the End of the Lane or Coraline.

Check out Monsterparts on the blog Games with Others.

Besides Neil Gaiman’s work, the setting and feel of these rules also bring to mind the artwork of Edward Gorey, and the Clive Barker novel, The Thief of Always. I haven’t yet read any of Lemony Snickett’s stuff, but I’d bet it probably resembles A Series of Unfortunate Events too. Kudos are due Pearce Shea, author of Games with Others, for capturing the feel of this kind of setting with such simple rules.

Art by Jonn Kenn: http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

I should also probably mention that I was turned on to this piece of awesomeness at the blog Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque.  Jack Shear, the author of Tales, has got his own awesome stuff going on, but I’ll probably get to that in a future post.