What we played this week, and what we enjoyed about it.

[thenovalord]

last tuesday Pathfinder:Kingmaker. its my bag baby

thursday, anceint empire boardgame thingy

friday utterly pwned JohnyGrey Hellfrost and use the glory rules for the first time

more superdy Pathfinder:kingmaker tonight

[Evilgaz]

Yo Novalord this threads supposed to include what you enjoyed about it too, not just a list of games what you played you work shy fop! Don't be shy about it, tell us what rocked...!

[thenovalord]

last tuesday Pathfinder:Kingmaker. its my bag baby

thursday, anceint empire boardgame thingy

friday utterly pwned JohnyGrey Hellfrost and use the glory rules for the first time

more superdy Pathfinder:kingmaker tonight

PF:KM is the kinda sandboxy trad ness missing in my life for many a year

Hellfrost:
GM JohhnyG...."tonight i am minded to kill you all"
Party...one completed adventure later , no wounds to a single PC due to our awesomeness and much glory and fun filled frolics all round

i like my boardgames to be either non-fighty; or fighty from turn one. the ancient boardgamey goodness was much fighty from turn one!! groovey....came 2nd too, which always a winner!!!

would add more but am Gming in 15 minutes!!!

[jonnygray]

And because you can't spell my name right, 'I am minded to kill you all next time'

[w00hoo]

UA Firefly last Sunday, the party are on the cusp of escaping their 'hill billy hell' and it finished on a nice cliff hanger. Some good interaction between character & long term NPC moving personal plots along and some pretty tense in character RP made for a good session from where I was sitting.

Candlewick Manor last night, turned a couple of Echoes in to Relationships and added some more intrigue in to the characters lives, think there will be one more 'set-up' session where the characters are directed to give them the chance to discover a few more plot strands and then move to 'phase 2' where they can take a much more sandbox approach picking which of the strands they want to explore more and actively creating plot. The game definitely feels like it needs this 'set-up' phase where the PC's get a chance to taste bits of the village.

[w00hoo]

Candlewick Manor last Friday. All the characters now have fledgeling relationships forming with various NPCs (a big thrust of the game) which will draw them in to more plot and cement them in the village. Their 'first day at school' included only two fires, some actual bodily harm using the medium of hornets to the school bully and a slightly singed tramp. All good fun.

UA Serenity. Faced with a secure defensible location in the form of their crashed ship, two characters got seriously wounded running around outside in the open. By the end of the session there were many dead bodies, none of them PC's, and they were blasting off for pastures new in a stolen ship following some tense negotiations and engineering chicken. Surprisingly given the option of killing all the bad guys they actually came to terms and have recruited a new pilot to help them out. The session felt like it had plenty of action and, as much as they ever do, the characters were working together so it looks like the crash served its purpose of gelling the party. I also had far too much fun as the ranting NPC engineer when she finally snapped at the Captain after one too many varied 'why can't it be done now' requests in a row...

[thenovalord]

more kingmaker goodness, including cracks beginning to appear in the 'coaltion' of NG (or LibDems) and LE (Tories) factions!! Getting close to the 'build a kingdom' bit

started Solomon Kane Savage Worlds. Quite like the premise...and the unpredicatbility of the 17th century grenade!! Good gothic vibe, 1st time GM had done so in years, think we need to be more 'serious' next time and very much looking forward to it. Alan Akbhar!

[w00hoo]

Monthly game of Exalted, we met a fairly obnoxious Storm Mother thing who wasn't actually called Syphilis but as with a lot of fantasy the names are all so bizarre that they just get corrupted to something we can remember (imagine how our patron Fucaroo is getting on!) who regularly mutilated her court because they were prettier than her. Luckily as Exalted has charisma and appearance as stats we'd all dumped on appearance and the party is ugly as sin already.

We fought a duel, found a traitor, got a map and clandestinely freed some enslaved Sirens before sailing off unrestricted. Ended up at our archipelago destination and are now deciding if we should get involved with the monks on the Island of Blasphemous Prayers or not before continuing to track down the Siren black mailers and kidnappers that Fucaroo has sent us after, Cheam, Tasheme and Ukelele... (at least one of those is probably wrong...)

[Halfbat]

4e, last night, Crag Mountain campaign ("home" framework: a group of dwarves discover that a long-imprisoned race of evil wraiths has been let loose into the world and are tasked, along with other teams from an alliance of races, with capturing, destroying or re-imprisoning them. Along the way, they've discovered that the "evil" opposition and the "friendly" alliance has far more complexities than they thought.)

Ok, I'll acknowledge a downside as combat was a bit slow. A DM who's running his first 4e scenario and knows he is not yet up to speed slowed down further by a group that includes several new players. The DM was concerned it was his "fault" but I liked the support he got from another DM who just ran a scenario in the same framework as combat can be slow in this group, atm, even with very experienced DMs.

And, a newcomer came back for his second game and has expressed a wish to make it permanent. Which is great, which is continuing the gradual expansion in size.

And... the DM, under pressure with unexpected questions from awkward players (us), started adding to the background and hence to the campaign as a whole. This is several times that this sort of addition has rolled on to a potential plot expansion or scenario seeding. It's great to see something come to life and be extended.

[Pete]

We played WFRP 3rd Edition.

I liked shuffling the many action cards with titles as varied as "Honeyed Words" to "Riposte", before setting the cards to one side and opting just to say "I hit it with my axe". (Rapier actually, but same difference.) The artwork on the many career cards is pleasing to my ignorant-about-art eye too. Rolling great handfuls of dice is always good tactile fun, as is seeing a player rolling a Chaos Star result just when his character is manhandling some warpstone. Sadly, the character is an elf, and evidently the elder races cannot mutate - a bit of canon that is rather disappointing, because I was hoping for some tentacle penetrating Slaanesh hentai action - but choosing the "Plagued By Nightmares" card as a result isn't too bad story-wise.

Fiasco tonight. Let's hope there will be some tentacle action there. Probably not.

Cheers
Pete

[mr toad]

Fiasco tonight.

Cor blimey that looks right up my street.....keep the masses posted please my old chum.

Toad

[Lusus Naturae]

Fiasco does indeed look like good fun.

[dr_mitch]

Tuesday was character generation for a Pathfinder game, along with the very start of desert-based scenario. Character generation is more detailed than I'm used to these days, but nothing too much (and I chose to play a wizard). Looks like it's going to be fun. Even as a level 1 wizard my guy can do a fair bit of stuff.

Wednesday was the final session of my Diaspora game. Things wrapped up nicely, and no PCs died despite the stuff I threw at them as GM. Alien spacecraft are fun. Still not entirely sure about Diaspora social combat, but it works for me if I run it in a "light" way. Overall, a good fun series. Now for a break before I seriously pitch Hellas.

[Rich Stokes]

Another thread I've ignored too long...

I've also been running WFRP 3, and have been having a lot of fun with it. The system seems to genuinely support a lot of play options really well: as opposed to just "not getting in the way", it actively helps the game along. I still think the books are really badly organised, but the game itself is sound.

A highlight was a battlecry of "LEEROY JENKINS!!!" from a Trollslayer charging some Beastmen, a massive argument over splitting the spoils of a fight, the Zealot's insistence that Solkan is the only nice god, ever and the merchant expecting help was very swiftly beheaded by the aforementioned Trollslayer for calling him "funny little man".

Plus, the D&D Paragon game, which is awesome for all the reasons I've mentioned earlier in this thread plus the fact that we're not getting to the point where the plot is taking us towards our Epic Destinies. This has a great sense of, er, epic-ness and perhaps destiny I guess.

Also the D&D Heroic game. Where Claire and I have a contest each session to see who can do the most damage in a single attack. Hint: it's her.

And I started my Eberron campaign, which was fun. Getting a party of characters together and seeing them start to form the relationships these kind of characters tend to have is always a lot of fun with the kind of players I have. Also, seeing the various new classes working together and seeing how they interact is interesting.

[Newt]

Our infrequent game of Gloranthan Knights and Wizards hit session four last Sunday. I'm really liking playing in the Gloranthan West. Since all the characters are Sorcery using Atheists - ok so they follow the Inviisable God but every one knows its a sum expression of logical laws of magical reality in Glornatha - there's no 'God/Goddess of the week' syndrome. In short its a break from the Gloranthan norm of "101 Gods whose names/mythology I can't remember".

The HeroQuest 2nd edition rules are really groking with our group, and we are begining to squeeze the most out of the game engine. Lingering benefits/penalties, were if you win/lose a contest the effects carry over until you lose/win your next contest, got the spot light this sesssion. Oh and we had many occasions where the players failed their contests. Sure hero points bail you out,flatening out fumbles to simple fails, but the 'I win, I Win and I WIN AGAIN' syndrome of HQ1 is truely gone.

Plus we've got some new players in the group which is making us rock harder and upping the fun quotent