September Games

As alluded to in August Games, Amanda and I were on vacation at the end of August... well... *I* was on vacation... SHE had a conference to go to for half of the trip. The trip extended into September... 

Saturday, 2 September 2023

On the final Saturday of our trip I was thrilled to be able to meet up with my old friend Christian. We have known each other since...1988...? 35 years!? Yeah. He is currently posted to CFB Borden and was able to hope on a GO train in the wee hours at Barrie and rolled into Toronto just after 9am. Amanda and I walked to meet him at Union Station, then we made a meandering journey to Snakes and Lattes on College (with a brief stop at Meeplemart!) 

I DID NOT BUY ANYTHING AT MEEPLEMART!!! (I wainted until I got home and just mail-ordered it to save having to haul it back in luggage! Quite the little store!)

At Snakes and Lattes, we ordered some food and thought wed blast through a quick game of Splendor while we waited...

Alas, the food arrived before we finished... 

I had a veggie murger that was... Okay... Christian really enjoyed his burger and Amanda said the salad she has was AMAZING!? 

After eating we played Terraforming Mars. It was weird playing it without Prelude! Didn't end up with as much greenery on the board as when it's just Amanda and me playing.  

My playing area at the end of the game. I had the Mining Guild and did very well with it. Amanda played Tharsis Republic and Christian played Phoblog... It was a VERY close game, I think there was a 4 point difference between first and last place!

Amanda ditched us to go meet with a friend of hers that had also come into town for the weekend, so Christian and I played a few more LIGHTER games (as Terraforming Mars had tired my brain out!). We started with Azul. 

After that we played Carcassonne. Again, just playing with the base game, which I am not really used to. The tiles were VERY worn from use! 

Afterwards we wandered about, checked out the Beguiling (I bought too many books). Met up with Amanda and got some supper. Then made our way back to Union Station for Christian to catch his train back to Barrie. 

Wow... Such a great day of gaming and catching up with one of my absolute favourite human beings that I don't get to see nearly enough! I hope we can get another online role-playing game going again in the fall!!

Saturday, 16 September 2023

Met up with Chris, Christian and Woody online to make characters for the new Blade Runner Roleplaying game. 

Chris and Chrisitian are both playing human Blade Runners who have been partners for some time. Woody is playing one of the new Nexus-9 Replicant Blade Runners and has been assigned to work with the two veterans. The original two are not entirely certain they like the idea of a replicant working with them.

Unfortunately, because... LIFE... we won't get to play until sometime in October!?

And... that was it... 

I'd really hoped we'd get in a game of Crows with Keiran... Alass... 

I do hope we'll get back to playing more games once the renovation is DONE and everything is moved back into place (or into it's NEW place)... More on that in Game Plan 2023 - Q4, which I'll probably be posting tomorrow...? 

RPG-a-Day 2023 - Week Three

 Here we go with WEEK THREE!!!

15) Favourite Convention MODULE/ONE-SHOT

I don't think I've never played a role-playing game at a convention...?

Finnegan has run a few one-shots that were fun - especially Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics funnel adventures.

I think the funnest I remember in recent history that I ran was a FATE one shot I called "Dude, Where's My Warhorse" wherein the very hung over retinue and attendants of the knight that won the king's tournament the previous day scramble to locate their masters prized warhorse that is discovered to be missing upon awaking after a night of drunken debauchery.... I've run it twice with different groups and WILDLY different outcomes.

I guess I have run miniature games at conventions... and the ones that went the best were ones where all the players were on one side and played against a common enemy run by ME... which is very similar to a role-playing game....? 

The favourite one...? probably the last one I ran - Necromunda where each player controlled a group from a different gang. They each got a character and a small handful of regular gangers. They had all sort of banded together to stop Karloth Valois and his band of zombies and scavvies from getting to a populated area of the underhive and infecting large numbers of (relatively) innocent people and growing his power. Collectively, they had to stop him, If he got through - ALL THE PLAYERS LOSE... Players gained points for taking out Scavvies and Zombies and a bunch for taking out Valois (so a "winner" could be determined), but each were handed a card with a secret agenda on it - something only they got points for and only they knew about. Most of them were "take out the leader of X gang"... which gave them points... but the leaders were very powerful and if they did that too soon, it could affect their collective strength and ability to stop Valois. People REALLY got into it!

I ran it twice, actually, once as a play-test on my birthday and once at ToonCon:

The Return of Karloth Valois - Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash

ToonCon 2020 - Part 3 - Sunday - Necromunda (and Power Grid!)

16) Game You WISH You Owned

I feel like at some point there probably were games I wished I owned or wished I'd never gotten rid of... but I've either tracked them all down or lost interest...? 

Now, there are so many games that I OWN that I'd LOVE to play, but just never get around to it... there really aren't any others that I really long for. Not many that I wish I still had... (board games, miniature games, specific miniatures.... maybe... but not so much role-playing games I really, really wish I had...). 

I guess I wouldn't mind checking out the NEW version of Twilight: 2000. I've really enjoyed reading through Blade Runner, and the new Twilight: 2000 seems to use the same system, and I have SO MUCH STUFF for the original... I have just about all the first edition adventures and sourcebooks in print - as well as pdfs... so... Also have PILES of painted modern troopers and civilians and vehicles and terrain I could use... 

(edit/update... between typing this and posting it... 

...so... not really ANY games I wish I had...)

17) FUNNIEST Game You've Played

Again, Teenagers From Outter Space or the "Dude, Where's My Warhorse" adventure I ran with FATE. 

18) Favourite Game SYSTEM

Ehhhh... I don't know... 

There are things I like about a LOT of different systems. None of them really stand out as better than all the others. My favourite system at any given moment is usually the one I'm currently planning to play. Which changes all the time. 

Right now... FATE seems really elegant, but I just don't feel like I have enough experience with it. Blade Runner and Wrath & Glory seem like they have the right balance of crunchy and streamlined simplicity. 

I really, REALLY liked Savage Worlds and ran that EXCLUSIVELY for YEARS....

I guess, in general, I like anything that's fairly simple and generic and the rules get out of the way of ROLE-PLAYING. Character CONCEPTS are more important to me than number crunching and optimizing within a complex system of rules and chaff. 

I guess I could also say my favourite game system is the ONE I'M PLAYING RIGHT NOW! (which really isn't any, at the moment, so.... maybe in the fall... or winter... when the game room is accessible again...) 

19) Favourite PUBLISHED Adventure

I have a really hard time with published adventures... I like the idea of published adventures... because I feel like it should give a sense of how the game should be run - especially if you're just starting out.. But I always find holes in the plots that I just can't seem to fill. 

Or, if *I* don't find them... my PLAYERS WILL!!! 

The first Wrath & Glory adventure I ran from Dark Tides - the first anthology of adventures. There's a murder of a high-ranking nobility of a hive world, way up in their private spires, players have to investigate. The first thing one of them asks is "well, what's on the security camera footage"... There is ZERO MENTION of security systems or cameras, which, OF COURSE they'd HAVE....!? but if there WERE, that would make it INSANELY EASY to figure out who it was... Oh, they were taken out (how did they access that)... ugh... ground the adventure to a halt when I had to suddenly come up with reasons why there was no security camera footage. 

First game in the Dragonlance series of games. They find the Disks of Mishakal... the GOAL of the adventure... a set of 160 platinum disks, each one-sixteenth of an inch thick and eighteen inches in diameter, held together with a big rivet that runs through one side so they can be shifted out and examined... One of the players asks,  how HEAVY is that... nevermind, they'll figure it out, gets out phone calculates volume of this pile cylender of disks... looks up the density of platinum... Yeah... it's only a few tons... HOW THE FUCK ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO GET THESE OUT OF THE COLLAPSING CAVERN!? I tell them if someone of good alignment carries them, it is as if they are weightless... (making shit up on the spot, at this point) because... MAAAaaaaaGIiiiiic! but wait, what if that person gets in a cart (or a gully-dwarf-powered elevator, is the person carrying them weightless... can a person of good alignment even USE a gully-dwarf-powered elevator - knowing using it will send those gully dwarves to their CERTAIN DOOM!!?? 

I guess I liked the Free City of Krakow for the old Twilight: 2000 - it was less of an adventure, per se, than a detailed location with lots of potential... 

There's a nostalgic little hit of dopamine when I think back to Keep On The Borderlands (and maybe Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh)... the excitement of those first adventures all back in the day, when everything was NEW! But I haven't looked at it in 30 years.... and... I'm a little afraid to in case they SUCK in the light of modern reexamination. I mean... Dragonlance didn't hold up... 

20) Will Still Play in TWENTY Years Time...

I have NO IDEA. I have no idea what I might be playing in a year, let along TWENTY!? 

I just hope I'm playing SOMETHING. 

(I have to admit, I have a difficult time with future predicting. I have a hard time imagining I'll even be alive in five years, let alone ten or TWENTY!? I've been this way since my teens. It's honestly led to some not great life choices... and you can well imagine my shock and disconcert at realizing I'd made it to fifty and had an adult child - all in the same year - last year!? So, at this point, I have to acknowledge it's a possibility... but it's still hard to imagine) 

21) Favourite LICENSED RPG

Right now I'm really loving Blade Runner... Maybe once I try to RUN it I'll be less enthralled. 

Wrath & Glory is, technically, a licensed product... but a licensed RPG based on a miniature skirmish game that I've played like a role-playing game... so it feels more like an extension of a game I've already played and less like something someone else made up... Regardless, it is a licensed product, I do like it... so...

One of those two, I guess. 

I really liked the CONCEPTS in Tales from the Loop... but it just didn't work out for me running it... 

Who else has a favourite one-shot or a game you wished you owned, a favourite system or tell me the funniest game you've played? What's your favourite published adventure? 

WHAT GAME DO YOU HOPE YOU'LL STILL BE PLAYING IN TWENTY YEARS?!!

Do you have a favourite licensed game?

Please let me know in the comments!

RPG-a-Day 2023 - Week One

 It's that time of year again... and I forgot about it until a friend posted it on the second. I won't be doing daily updates on the blog... maybe weekly...? We shall see...

1) FIRST RPG played (this year) 

That would be the Back of Beyond Campaign I ran earlier this year. I wasn't using any system in particular... I guess it was similar to Diplomacy, in a way. I had six players, each representing a warlord in control of a faction in the Far East starting in 1919. There were Tsarists and Bolsheviks and Warlord Chinese and Western Interventionists. They sent messages to the other warlords to negotiate or threaten or bully each other, as they saw fit, and at the end of the week, submitted a movement order for their army in the field. I played out any battles using One-Hour Wargames and reported the results on this very blog... and the negotiating began again. Some REALLY GOT INTO THEIR ROLES - writing verbose communiques and proclamations in the "voice" of their "character". 

2) First RPG GAMEMASTER 

Like, ever...? That would be my dad, I think. I somehow convinced him to buy the red box Dungeons & Dragons around 1982 or 1983 and he tried to run it for me... but very quickly I took over and ran it for him for a time, until I found other kids my age to play with.

3) First RPG BOUGHT (This Year)

I can't remember if I bought the Hellboy RPG at the beginning of this year or the end of last year...? 

If the latter, then it would be the Blade Runner RPG I bought last week.

4) Most RECENT Game Bought

That would be either the Blade Runner RPG or Tiny Epic Galaxies...? 

If we're talking RPGs... Blade Runner. 

Speaking of recent purchases, though, Finnegan bought the My Little Pony RPG and a game called Thirsty Sword Lesbians the other day! They sound fun and I hope I'll be able to convince him to run a game or two for me and some friends. 

5) OLDEST Game You've Played

The oldest Role-Playing Game I've played would be D&D... though it was relatively NEW at the time!

If we were talking about a game that was OLD when I played it - like the game that had the largest amount of time between when the edition I played was published and when I played it... That would probably be quite a bit different! 

Oldest GAME... like the physical copy I played...? Or the old game invented...? Probably Monopoly or Crokinole or Snakes and Ladders...? 

6) Favourite Game You NEVER Get To Play

Honestly, when I've been playing as little as I have the last little bit, EVERY game seems like a game I never get to play and wish I could play more.

Also, I don't think I lament not being able to play any particular game as much as I miss getting to play with certain PEOPLE...

I guess Wrath & Glory is the one I've thought about most over the last year and just never seem to get a game going...

Or FATE...

7) SMARTEST RPG You've Played. 

I don't know... There have been some with new things, clever mechanics and such... 

I really like the simplicity of FATE. It seems very elegant. I'd like to try it more. (though I just went out and bought Blade Runner...!?) 

How about the rest of you? 

July Games

 Welp... another month has gone by. Here's what I've been up to... 

Saturday, 1 July 2023

Canada Day!

Kicked off the month with a game of 1754: Conquest - The French and Indian War. This is part of a series of games from Academy Games. I have two of the others in the series (1775: Rebellion and 1812: The Invasion of Canada) but have not played them in... eight years...!? I played 878: Vikings: Invasions of England (also using the same general game mechanics), but that was six years ago. 

I was playing the British Regulars and John was playing the Provincials (he had never played any of the games in the series). Brent was the French Regulars, and Kurtis was the Habitants. They've both played these games more recently and had both actually read the rules this week... so they kind of won... also, Brent could not NOT hit when he rolled his dice and I couldn't hit anything... so... 

Setting up for the Halifax Hammer... no, wait... that's a different game... 

This was where I set up my extra guys at the beginning of the game. On the first turn four more cubes were deployed to the port and I tried a two pronged invasion of Louisburg. I succeeded in capturing the port, but the fort remained in French hands the entire game. I did briefly capture Quebec as well - and even moved up to Trois Rivieres where one of the Habitant spawn tokens was... but that was short-lived. The game only lasted three rounds. 

Boom! Played as many games on the first day of July as I did in all of June! 

Wednesday, 12 July 2023

With Jasper back from his month-long sojourn to teh family cabin in the woods, we met up with Brent to play Wingspan! 

We played at Jaspers - to break in Jaspers brand new copy of the game (which he received as a going away gift from the high school he'd been teaching at, as he's been transferred to a different one for the fall!) 

Brent just destroyed both of us in the first game, scoring 113 - and we weren't even playing with nectar!? I think he said it was the first time he'd scored over 100 points when not playing with the Oceana Expansion! 

We played a second game... and points-wise I did so much worse... but I got a lot more birds out there... and, like 17 points from Bonus Cards! 

We ALL did worse in the second game, for some reason!? Brent still won. Jasper swore he would play one hundred solo games befroe we were allowed to come over again - so he could get better at it... I don't know... This is over fifty games I've played, and I don't feel like I'm doing much better than when I first started!? 

...and... that was it for gaming.... 

On the plus side, I did a fair bit more cycling. Every week I did a bit more than than I did the previous week. It's not nearly as much as I would have been riding in previous years... all while still playing games... but... it's something. 

I also got together with friends on discord for an online "paint and chat" the last two Sundays... though I wasn't painting. I DID assemble all of the miniatures from the Ashes of Faith box set, which I picked up back in May. 

Earlier in the month I'd been assembling and prepping other things - The Beastmen from Kill Team: Gallowfall and rebasing some other stuff... and Skaven... and spaceship terrain... back to the old bouncing around between too many projects to actually COMPLETE any!? 

I... um... also bought a few new games!?

The first was Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. It was an impulse buy. I was looking on Amazon for something I actually needed... and this popped up and was DEEPLY discounted. Like normally $50CAD on for $20... It had miniatures (but, like, only SIX!)... Co-op or solo... (though It turns out the miniatures are HUGE - closer to 40mm!? Or more!?) 

Also... I'd been thinking about picking up the Alien role-playing game and thought these miniatures could be used (as if I didn't already HAVE enough generic sci-fi crew...). At one point I was even thinking about picking up Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps (I wonder if the miniatures are a similar HUGE scale or if they're closer to the more traditional 28 or 32mm? they are made by a different company...?)

In the end I DIDN'T pick up the Alien role-playing game... instead I picked up the Blade Runner role-playing game. (it seemed like there was less stuff for it and I would be less inclined to go ALL IN and buy EVERYTHING!?). I've had a brief look at it and it seems interesting. I might try and run a few adventures in the fall when the game room is operational again... 

Finally, I happened to be at McNally-Robinson - one of the only books stores left in Saskatoon - certainly the BIGGEST - I don't go there often as it's on the other side of town. But I happened to be out that way with Keiran and I though they might enjoy going into the two book stores out there (there's also an Indigo Books) (They were indeed THRILLED - and a little overwhelmed - but showed great restraint and only came home with three books!). 

Tiny Epic Galaxies was on a table with a few other board games and puzzles in the Bargains section and was marked down 50%, so I got it for less than $19 including taxes... I remember them selling for $50-60 just after the Tabletop episode came out featuring Tiny Epic Galaxies (as EVERYONE suddenly wanted one!). I don't recall much about it... but I remember thinking we should pick it up... but then coudn't find one... and then couldn't find one for any sort of reasonable price and gave up. 

It's small, so hopefully we can set it up on the kitchen table and play it sometime this summer while waiting upon renovations to finish up.