Not a zoomer, but I am on the youngest edge of millennial – the first computer I remember using was running Windows 95, and our first home computer was a Pentium era HP. My love for the older stuff didn’t start until I was much older.

I’ve never understood the “these people hate Star Trek!” take I’ve seen around the new shows. It’s clear that nobody working on these sets out to intentionally make a bad show. Some of the Easter eggs and references are deep cuts, so it seemed obvious to me that the people working on these are big fans.

To give credit where it’s due, RotS and many of the Disney-era Star Wars products have gone a long way to fitting the glamorous, shiny prequel aesthetic into the gritty, used, “lived in” aesthetic of the OT. I’m not the biggest fan of The Last Jedi, but I actually think the implicication of the shiny galaxy just being a property of the rich inner rim planets was a great move in unifying everything.

I’m going to be honest, Klingons in the TNG era always felt too goofy to me. They weren’t a proud warrior culture so much as borderline clownish space vikings who spent more time getting drunk than actually conquering anything. A redesign and change in how their culture(s) present on screen was welcome for me, and I think Discovery did a great job. I even liked the way they recontextualized the Klingon language, to make it sound more alien and more threataning than the staccato, oft-mispronounced mess that we got in the TNG era.

That said, I also think there was a missed opportunity with them. For a long time, I’ve had a head canon of the different looks of Klingons throughout all of the eras could be chalked up to these all being distinct peoples from within the Klingon Empire. It stands to reason that over a long enough time scale, an empier spanning multiple stars would start to consider people not originally from their homeworld “Klingon,” even if they might be genetically different. I always thought it would be cool if the TOS smooth forehead Klingons were actually just one species that were culturally Klingon, where the Worf-type were another, and the General Chang type was yet another. It would provide a way to smooth over the aeshetic differences with an in-universe explanation that doesn’t require any retconning except for a handful of episodes from ENT that die-hards didn’t like anyway.

But oh, well. One can dream.

I’ve bound a few PDFs, but I typically leave the cover looking very simple.

For zines, I print them on nicer paper and sew them together instead of stapling. For things I intend to be more durable, I make stiffened paper bindings with actual front and back cover boards (usually covered in construction paper).

I love doing this with PDFs, it’s much nicer and more personal than putting them on an iPad or something.

I’m still reading through both of the resources you linked, but I think the OD&D setting in particular is going to help me a ton. I also think I can pull some structure from the unofficial Dark Souls ruleset – Age Creation in particular.

Thanks! These are perfect!

I probably should’ve been more clear, but I’m not looking for systems. I don’t think trying to replicate the mechanics of Souls leads to the best experience. In fact, I think most mechanical aspects of the games would make for an actively bad experience when transferred to ttrpgs, because player skill (the ultimate Soulsborne level up mechanic) doesn’t really come into play in the same way, and fighting a boss half a dozen times isn’t all that fun in tabletop games.

The parts I think ttrpgs can replicate are setting and level design, and that’s what it seems is in short supply whenever people talk about Souls in tabletop form. That’s why I gave the example of Vermis I which seems perfect, I just want more things like that.

Checking out Vaults of Vaarn, though, it might be a good fit. It’s hitting some of the notes I’m looking for in its setting. Comes with lots of random tables too!

Wait, what happened to Hasbro??

Similarly, in 2020 a game called Nox Archaist came out for the Apple ][. If you liked Ultima, you should check it out – it even has a book sized manual to go with it.

The Forest?

War crimes and human leather.

It’s funny, your description of Souls games echoes how I feel about 3rd person action games that aren’t made by FromSoft. To me, Dark Souls 1 felt like the crisp combat I had been wanting but never getting from stuff like God of War or the older Monster Hunter games. Bloodborne refined it somewhat, and to this day, that style of 3rd person combat is my favorite.

Crazy how perceptions of a game’s controls are so individual. Our difference really illustrates to me how hard it is to nail a game’s “feel.”

I use my Steam Deck as a portable console too. My laptop is a super ultra light thing (XPS 13) that can’t run games very well to begin with, but that’s fine since I have it for work anyway. In the end, the two of those together still cost less than a competent (and new) gaming laptop. And I don’t even have to put up with Nvidia’s terrible Linux drivers!

I’m surprised to not see Flare RPG mentioned. It’s nothing groundbreaking on its own, but it’s actually got two nicely fleshed out campaigns, and tooling for people to make new ones. It’s a nice, fun, FOSS single-player RPG, and it’s great if you want that old fashioned Diablo feel.

Another vote for Endless Sky here as well, it’s just excellent, and surprisingly expansive.