September 29

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 16: Longest Game Session

When I first started gaming and I had an almost unquenchable thirst for gaming I would think nothing of gaming for seven nights a week but even that wasn’t long enough for me as occasionally we’d game Saturday and into Sunday or Sunday into a bank holiday Monday.  One time we even played right into the new year so we could all wish ourselves a happy new year!

Looking back on it now, I realise it may have been a mistake to try and play longer and longer without much rest,  I recall arguments over trivial things when we were all sleep deprived. Stupid things like can someone with super-leaping drop down a height they can leap?

I know, daft things that seemed really important at the time.

These days I tend to game responsibly and try to not game for too long as I don’t appear to have the endurance for it these days.  Call of Cthulhu isn’t much fun when you’re unable to process the clues but tend to connect you to the great green giant itself 🙂

 

 

 

Category: FATE, horror, Modern, RPG, supers | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 28

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 15: Longest Campaign Played

In all my years of gaming I have only really participated in one long campaign; Games Workshop’s The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

With the exception of the final chapter I was using the Hogshead reprints of the classic adventure and with the additions of the Doomstones campaign which also got inserted into the mix as well as The Dying of the Light, the campaign ran for three years of real-time play.

It was such an epic campaign that I think of it a lot and wonder what I could do to try to recreate the mammoth scale of adventuring;  I did add in my own touches to the scenarios keep the players guessing as to what was coming next.  From barge burning, to unexpected pied piper style shenanigans within the great city of Middenheim I had fun throwing encounters and random things to the players and they stood up to the challenge and rose above the adversity.

I think what I really liked was seeing the characters improve and grow from lowly street filth to movers and shakers with The Old World.

I still have the books, maps, notes and character sheets from the old game.  I don’t think I could run it again with the same players as I don’t think I could do it justice again and it would tarnish the memory of the whole shared experience.

Perhaps I’ll dig my notes out and scan them for posterity.

Category: fantasy, horror, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 27

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 14: Favourite RPG Accessory

Over the years I’ve bought lots of gaming accessories to try out, be they; dice trays, dice, dice towers, dice cups and all sorts of dice to boot.

I remember the first accessory I wanted to get hold of  was in the pages of Dragon magazine; Dragonbone Electronic Dice .  To have something like this in your hand and be able to roll as many dice as you needed without having to lose them seemed like a marvel of the electronic age.  The problem was that by the time I got the issue of Dragon some five years had passed and I wasn’t sure if the company was still in business so I gave it a miss.

The second item I lusted after was an all purpose GM screen, something where I could determine what charts and tables were facing me and something I could use for a variety of games that lacked an official screen.

I did manage to get two or three that fulfilled the criteria for a universal screen.  The first one I bought was made by the now defunct Citizen Games, it was a quad panel affair and really did the trick, the downside was that it was a portrait orientation which means you have to stare up and over it to look at the players.  The next one I bought was the Savage Worlds screen which is only three panels but is in my preferred landscape orientation but only has three panels.   The number of panels may be seen as irrelevant but having an extra sheet of useful charts does stop me from reaching for a book to reference.  There is one more screen to consider though and that is the self proclaimed The World’s Greatest Screen from  Hammerdog Games, a four panel screen in either portrait or landscape orientation.

Category: RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 14

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day Twelve: Favourite RPG Illustration

I make no bones about the fact that I’m very much a second generation or so gamer; I got into the hobby in 1989 but had been showing an interest when the old AD&D cartoon was playing on the television.  I even stayed up late to watch an episode of a show called “South of Watford” hosted by Ben Elton in which he played AD&D with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston, this is what finally got me hooked.

Game books of that era were sparsely illustrated and mainly consisted of line art or in the case of the 1st edition AD&D books used cartoons to fill space.  Is it a surprise then that I tend to prefer the B&W white art of that era as opposed to the full colour that can be found in today’s books?

My favourite illustration is the double page B&W white illustration of the runes that Ralph Horsley did for the Warhammer Fantasy Role-play source book Dwarfs.  The way he made them look like they were carved into stone was spectacular and it truly is awesome to look at.

I have a soft spot for all of the Warhammer art, I find it visually appealing and an idea of roughly what something looks like as it tries to inflict critical wounds upon the characters.

Category: fantasy, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT