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From http://www.guardiansorder.com/ "Yes ... effective more-or-less immediately, Guardians Of Order has ceased operations." and "This was a very sad decision that I had to make, but it wasn't really a difficult one when I took a long, hard look at the facts. The company simply accumulated too much debt, with little hope of paying it off within the next decade, and my recent plans to get the company back in shape didn't materialise." "Posted by Mark on 2006-08-01" Now is it officially filled for bankrupcy or not I don't know, but they are not more operating. You can read full message from their website. Does anyone know which company is taking over BESM?

As a small publisher of RPGs myself, I feel compelled to point out that there's much more out there than WOTC and White Wolf. There are a slew of small publishers putting out great, critically acclaimed material, both in PDF and print format. I draw your attention to the ENnie awards (complete list of 2006 winners can be found right here, which this past year rewarded not only big guys like Paizo Publishing and White Wolf, but smaller pubishers like Green Ronin and Guardians of Order, as well as really little guys like Atomic Sock Monkey Press (for the excellent super-hero game Truth & Justice and Dog Soul Publishing (for their Baba Yaga book, which I penned. Check us out. We may not be as well known as the other guys but we're just as good.

I think you really hit on another problem that the tabletop RPG industry has, with that statement. People learn a system and they like the system. After playing it for many years, eventually the publisher releases a new edition... and some people love it and update, others hate it for changing their precious ruleset/world and stop buying new content.

Speaking from experience, I played a lot of World of Darkness games when I was younger, back in the glorious days of 2nd Ed. White Wolf released their 3rd edition and we all (my roleplaying group) decided that it was mostly crap. We didn't like how they "advanced" the world or took a lot of the creative freedom that we had grown used to away from us. We didn't like their clunky additional rules, like tacking a *third* damage type onto their system. So, we all kept our 2nd Edition libraries and never bought another new White Wolf book again. I believe that they're on their 4th edition now, and have completely bastardized the WoD that I knew and loved.

Now adays, we've all moved away from the "setting heavy" White Wolf series into a more light-weight system (Guardians of Order's BESM Tri-Stat system), where we just have fun making up the stories that we want to tell. We use a total of 1 book (although, to be fair, there are 3 copies of that 1 book, amongst the 6 players) in our games, and I see no need to get another any time in the near future... despite their immanent 3e release.

Big Eyes Small Mouth. TriStat DX system. Reminiscent of old-school Traveller with its minimalist rules. More role-playing, less roll-playing. I love it. AD&D D20 is still too complex for my tastes, and the AD&D system out in the 1980s was totally nuts with requiring bags full of polyhedra and a roll for almost every move.

http://www.guardiansorder.com/games/tristat/

Must be time for Cyberpunk roleplaying to come back on the scene. After playing the first Cyberpunk, CP2020, and GURPS Cyberpunk, fairly voraciously I dropped the genre around the time I left college.

Anyone else notice that after cyberpunk, most genres got a "punk" suffix? I mean Gothic, Steam, Diesel, Splatter, Cthulhu, and probably others have all be *punked. Anyhow, after spending plenty of time running other *punk games, I went back to FRPGs. And now, after years since running a cyberpunk game, I just got interested in http://www.iguardians.net/games/tristat/ and asked for it for my upcoming birthday.

It presents four separate cyberpunk backgrounds, each taking into account what we've learned since Neuromancer was published.

And Guardians could use your support right now. Yes, this is a blatant plug. No, I do not work for them. I'm just an ex-indie publisher with a soft spot of quality that gets ignored in the face of highly marketed crap from the gigantic competition.

I like Pondsmith's stuff, (Castle Falkenstein, especially. I think I own every RTG supplement for that plus 2 core books, one in hardcover plus GURPS Castle Falk.) and will probably check out CP203X if and when it is released (Castle Falkenstein taught me to take RTG release dates with a rather large grain of salt. Think livestock salt lick sized.), so don't be angry with me for changing the subject to Ex Machina.

To those who say their marriage and children prevent them from playing RPGs, I say, "My eight year old son represents years of training in gaming geekdom!"

PS- If you're a fan of A Game of Thrones check out the pdf preview of the d20/Tri-Stat Limited Edition book that'll be out in March.

For all I know, PowerPuff Girls or Samurai Jack or any of the other distinctly American style animated series are great.

Ahem- both of those have a heavily anime-derived style.

PowerPuff Girls especially was based on the anime maxim "Big Eyes, Small Mouth" and taking it beyond all sensibility.

Of course, if you really want to be pretentious and cool (like me), then you need to play Nobilis, a diceless resource-management game where you take on the roles of what are basically gods. It's even written by a woman, and looks great sitting on your coffee table.

Guardians of Order is releasing a new edition of "Empire of the Petal Throne" in July with the full support of Barker, the game's creator. With Tekumel, Amber, and Nobilis under their belt, GoO is becoming a clearinghouse for underappreciated and brilliant games.

Or just play rules-lite systems like BESM or any number of other rpgs that aren't tactical simulations.

A lot of RPGs nowadays have free versions of the rules.

If anyone is interested in GURPS, you can check out GURPS Lite, a simple subset of the GURPS rules. Some people prefer it to the full GURPS rules.

Microtactix gives away Simply Roleplaying!, and they also make cool printable cardstock stuff.

Guardians of Order will be releasing their Tri-Stat dX system for free tomorrow.

Atlas Games has released Ars Magica for free.

Grey Ghost Press gives away Fudge.

It's a good time to be a gamer.

Yes... no

I mean, yes, the GM is pretty damn important, but a good group is what makes the game. A good GM with a bunch of bad players won't have a good time, although the players might. A bunch of good players with a bad GM might have a reasonably good time interacting with each other but as a whole won't have much enjoyment. And a single bad player can make hell for everyone.

The best is to have players and GM that fit together, with about the same level of experience/expertise, and the same tastes. Monty Haul campaigns are fine, as long as everybody loves Monty Haul campaigns. Same goes for munchkins.

And, well, sincerly, the only reason to play D&D 3rd is because it's the best hack'n'slash munchkining game ever. If I want to roleplay, I'll pick Tribe 8, RoleMaster, Shadowrun, or an Anime-level Sengoku campaign with BESM rules, any day of the week.

Okay, I'm done whoring :P