Games That Bring The Awesome

[Lee Torres]

The Game Guy's two threads on games we're looking forward to and games that we were disappointed in have inspired me to pose the question - what games did you pick up within the past year or two that really just knocked your socks clean off?

For me, Abstract Nova Games "Aletheia" is my candidate. Although it's never gotten a lot of coverage, and many are focusing on the newer "Exquisite Replicas" from the same publisher, I think it's an amazing convergence of excellent rules and memorable (and game-worthy) setting. Had Septimus been released, it might have held the top spot, and there were some others this year that came very close, but "Aletheia" hit the home run for me.

What's your pick?

[skeloric]

I guess I am still weighing in with "blah!" and "Meh!", when it comes to games of the last few (and maybe more than a few) years.

Way back when GURPS first came out it brought the "awesome" in that it gave you every piece you needed to do what you really wanted.

When TORG arrived in went in a different direction by hewing to a particular framework setting but offering a potentially unlimited amount of Cosms which brought the "awesome".

White Wolf and there OWoD brought the awesome by offering an insane variety of playable sub-games within the larger OWoD reality -- such as the Sons of Ether in Mage the Ascension: "Mega-awesome"
(Sadly, now that every book is "independent" and thus truly no longer beholden to any form of canon, they have abandoned any attempt to offer any sort of "awesome" -- beginning with the absence of the Sons of Ether and "Weird Science")

AFMBE seemed to embrace the idea of offering any genre they or anyone else could think of within the larger framework of the premise of zombie rise survival horror.
Probably the last best chance for the "awesome".

These days?
I no longer expect to see any awesome.
I no longer have a game shop and thus only what appears on Barnes and Noble shelves will ever reach me -- guaranteed to lack even the remotest sort of "awesome" if it reaches Barnes and Noble shelves in their RPG section.

[pathfinderap]

Easy, QIN, the game is a piece of art,

[The Game Guy]

Easy, QIN, the game is a piece of art,

I know nothing about QIN, can you tell me something about it.

[pathfinderap]

I know nothing about QIN, can you tell me something about it.

See here
http://www.cubicle-7.com/qin.htm

And then
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12371.phtml

And then
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12349.phtml

And then and then and then
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12433.phtml

[hellsreach]

I haven't bought any lately that made my jaw drop, but in the last couple years, I've been happy with Reign and SotC.

[pathfinderap]

Yeah SotC is good