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The Top-5 Most Pretentious Role-Playing Games

You can always tell when your friendly neighborhood Geek gets all kinds of busy, the postings slow down a bit and the ones that do make it to Al Gore's internets are cop out Top-5 lists. As such I present to you the, as the title suggests, the top-5 most pretentious games in RPG history. Oh, and to all you Steve Jackson Games fans, I can totally and completely promise that GURPS will not make this list. GURPS is many things, but pretentious is most definitely not one of those things.

Honorable Mention - The Call of Cthulhu - Chaosium

While the game itself is not pretentious, it is the majority of the players that warrant its inclusion on this list. Never have I played a game where the point of combating tentacled gods from the nether realms could attract such haughty gamers. LARPers may be a little strange but at least they are open to new players, unlike the bulk of CoC players who are strangely cliquish. In fact, every time I have been in a Call of Cthulhu game it has been in a homegrown campaign with my friends. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it sure would have been nice to meet new delvers into the unknown.

5 - The SAGA System – TSR

One of TSR's last original gaming systems before Wizards bought them out. The SAGA rules system was, in my opinion, TSR's attempt to tap into the flavor of the collectable card game market. Their belief being, if the kids are into card games then maybe we can breathe some life into our games by turning the dice into cards. It goes without saying that the game fell on its face, although TSR did try really hard to push the game that favored character and story interaction over hack and slash. It didn't help that TSR tried launching the game with the ever-popular Dragonlance setting, forgetting that Dragonlance hadn't had a major book release in years. So just what made the SAGA system so pretentious? It wasn't the game itself or even the few people who played it. SAGA's pretentiousness came from TSR itself. They tried to follow White Wolf's example of creating this epic myth behind role-playing games. It just didn’t work and it caused many gamers who were already sick of the oh-so deep World of Darkness to turn a blind eye to the game.

4 - Wraith: The Oblivion - White Wolf Game Studio

I know that many gamers were expecting this entire list to be nothing but White Wolf games and I can understand why. The folks from Atlanta take their games very seriously, maybe a little too seriously, but a list entry is a cop-out enough and making the list nothing but WW games would be too much. However, I simply can't write this list without writing about White Wolf's king of pretentious tabletop games: Wraith: The Oblivion. The premise: You start off dead. From there is only gets worse. The character must face his or her own personal demon (called The Shadow) generated by your karma in life, this Shadow knows every single aspect of your (after)life. To add even more emotional depth to the game your fellow gamers get to play the part of your Shadow and you theirs. Together you may explore the intricacies of the human condition and therefore make you a more socially concisions member of the human race. AHHHH! Once you defeat your personal demon and then survive all the crap of the afterlife you (maybe) get to ascend to something good or something. I can't remember what since most of my characters became "soul-ergon" for the Ghost Machines that ran the hell-conditioning protoplasma thingys for the evil afterlife overlords. Good times huh?

3 – Amber: Diceless Role-Playing Game - Phage Press

To be honest, I don't know a whole lot about this game. Based on a serious of books by Roger Zelany and from what I am told the premise of the game is that fans didn’t want the series to end and so a few created this game. I only knew one person back in the day that actually played the game. The strange thing is, for all his complaining about the lack of players, he never wanted to explain the game. He treated Amber like a Harley Davidson, if you had to ask then you wouldn't get it. Well guess what? I didn’t get it then and I still don't get it now.

2 - Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth - Last Unicorn Games

The game was pegged as the Joseph Campbell of the role-playing world and if that doesn't make your eyes roll then nothing will. Released a year before TSR's similar Birthright game setting, Aria was a major step forward in RPGs. You didn't create just a character, you set out to create entire family lines and if the GM was feeling very ambitious the player created an entire civilization and/or a continent. My friends and I used to joke that like the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth read like stereo instructions. The rulebook alone clocked in at close to 400 pages long and, ironically, did not include rules for creating the actual world you were intended to game in. That was a wholly separate book for use by the GM. It never made a whole lot of sense and my friend and I never actually played the game. However, the book is still in use by my good friend Ersogoth, because for all its faults and pretentiousness', Aria is a great reference book for the GM that wants to generate an original gaming world.

1 – Vampire: The Masquerade: The Camarilla: The LARP – White Wolf Games Studio

Whew, this game could have made number one just by the amount of subtitles it has. Although I guess now the game should be called Vampire: The Requiem: The Camarilla: The LARP as the game setting went through a major overhaul. (To White Wolf's credit, they did say the day would come and they stuck to their guns). Just what makes the game the most pretentious of all time shouldn't need to be explained. This LARP allowed players to live in the world of Anne Rice, pure and simple. Come on, it doesn't get much more pretentious than that! Players would dress in long flowing capes, or pin stripped suits, or edgy leather jackets and then involved themselves in Machiavellian plots against ancient vampiric princes and lords. All. In. Person. Vampire: The LARP is like a teenage angst filled improv performance played by dudes clad in black trench coats or animal skins wearing Thor and/or Green Man medallions; trying their best to impress that ebony clad hot Goth vampire chick that came with her "friend". Look, I know I get some grief for picking on the LARP crowd, but I do it from love. See, I was that crowd, for a good long time. Hell I still talk about my epic Susanville spanning campaign. (Yes, feel free to laugh, I won't take offense). The saddest part? I would totally LARP again, but only in a Live Action Call of Cthulhu game, and so this list comes full circle.

Until next time, may you never lose a Rock-Paper-Scissors challenge. (Ask a LARPer).