This is so easy. No question, no doubt. What published RPG do I wish I was playing right now? Nights Black Agents, and more specifically, The Dracula Dossier, the amazing improvised campaign from Ken Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.
I must make an admission here, for years I ignored Nights Black Agents, spurned and despised it in fact. I remember it being proffered to me on DriveThru and reading the description "… it turned out you were working for vampires." I yawned, vampires again? The nineties called and they want their game back.
I moved on.
It came back to my attention when I was researching the Fate Core campaign I'm now close to finishing. My players and I had run a "create the game session" and ended up with "damaged first world war vets vs. an alien conspiracy." I had though it might develop into an "early days of military intelligence" type story, so I was researching that, and something drew my attention to the (then) upcoming Kickstarter for the Dracula Dossier. The idea that Bram Stoker had not written a novel but rather, edited the after-action report of a British intelligence agency's attempt to first recruit, and then destroy, Count Dracula, was interesting to say the least.
I kicked in at a digital level that included a PDF of the core rules too, and that was my first experience of the GUMSHOE system. I fell in love with the system and the setting. My initial scorn at the vampire theme was misplaced – these vampires were definitely the bad guys. I really REALLY wanted to run this. I upgraded my pledge to physical editions, and splashed out for the facsimile edition of Dracula Unredacted too. I ran a campaign for my mid-week group. The improvised structure of the campaign means I won't be spoiling anything by saying that that story ended with meeting Dracula on Eyjafjallajökull, to be told that their destruction of a vampirised Quincy Morris was all part of his plan. I've since run a couple of scenarios out of the Edom Files. And I've got to play it once to.
But its not been enough. I don't care if I'm running or playing. If I could be doing anything right now, it would be Nights Black Agents.
fictionsuit.org 