Well now. It’s been a minute.
Sorry about that, but November and December have been hellacious in terms of my finding time to work on this blog. I gamed more than I usually do, work amped up at the end of September and has stayed at a fever pitch since then, and family stuff has also been bonzo with lots of medical issues to deal with, a senior in high school trying to pick a college while caught up in the swirl of mean girl social media, an older kid trying to make his way in the world on his own for the first time — it’s been nutty.
So, before all of 2024 slips away and I don’t get another issue posted, I figured I’d take the low road and simply muse, gaming-wise, about the year that is almost behind us. I’m taking some solid time off over the holidays to spend quality time with friends and family, I’m launching a brand new PbP game, and I’m prepping for running something new for my Thursday night gang in January. Really, I’m generally recharging my batteries in advance of the work firestorm that awaits in 2025. And with all that said, let’s cut right to it.
Editor’s Note: This seems a bit self-indulgent, I realize, but I thought that this kind of breakdown might provide a bit of insight into who I am as a gamer. Which could be helpful if you’re going to read more issues of Harrigan’s Hearth — you know, to understand my biases and failings, my influences and preferences. Basically, this kind of thing should signal what powers and colors my gaming opinions and instincts.
REGULAR GAMING GROUPS (VIRTUAL)
Every Other Thursday Night Gaming Crew
This is my ‘regular’ crew — the closest thing I have to a ‘home’ group. We’ve met fortnightly over Discord or Zoom pretty damned steadily ever since the pandemic hit, when Wayne, Kevin, Phil and I signed up to play in Sean P. Kelley’s Forbidden Lands game. We greatly enjoyed three straight campaigns of that damned game — I ran the last one a few years ago, which Sean has up on his YouTube channel as The Next Hex1 if you’re keen to increase your holiday suffering or perhaps just enjoy half-baked actual-plays.
Anyway — that group carries on playing together, and despite a whole lot of adversity2, we managed to get quite a few games to the table in 2024:
Wayne ran his own Vaesen adventure, The Invading Wood. It was loads of fun, doubly so since Wayne is aces as a GM. I have a couple of quibbles with the way Conditions are handled in Vaesen generally, but I remain a huge fan.
Phil ran several Mothership games, including This Ship is a Tomb. Phil’s a pro too, and we all always love grisly space horror.
I then ran one session of Dragonbane, before schedules blew it up and before I came to the conclusion, erm, I don’t want to run Dragonbane. It’s a fine game, but there are other fantasy games to run that better align with both my GM instincts, and usual desire for a more grounded, human-centric setting.
I should note that I tried to run CROWN and SKULL to prove to myself that I really didn’t care for it, but Phil would have none of that. To whit:
Phil saw right through me.
He also didn’t really want to play Dragonbane. And so after working to convince him to play, we gave it up after one session. It was a long year, 2024.
But now back to the good stuff!
I then ran multiple sessions of Mothership: The Green Tomb, which I think came off pretty well. We do love that game.
We closed the year with Phil stepping back into the breach to run the Free League version of The One Ring (TOR). I’d had a couple of non-positive experiences with that game, including with the dreadful Hobbit adventure in the box set, and I have to say — what a pleasant surprise. We have 1-2 sessions left before we finish the arc in January, and this game has been an absolute pleasure. A lot of that has to do with the quality of the GM3 and the other players, but still — some of the mechanics that bothered me on first blush are fine, and others, like choosing your position in combat, are downright grand. It’s like deciding to sit behind the glass in a hockey game with other rabid fans, choosing to settle in halfway up with other rational folks, or moving to the top row because, you know. You don’t want anyone near you.
In short, we played tons of great games. But… we didn’t play any one game or set of characters for an appreciable amount of time. I don’t think any game lasted more than five sessions, and I think we’re all in agreement as we head into 2025 that we want meatier, longer experiences.
I’m up first, after we finish with TOR. We went round and round a bit on what to play, but it ended up coming down to The Walking Dead or Outcast Silver Raiders.
The winner, which should get out of the gate in January…
Stay tuned to the blog if you’re interested in this game, as I’m sure I’ll be writing about it in 2025. Oh, and there’s a chance Sean will put it out as an actual play video / podcast as well.
The Every Other Tuesday Night Against the Darkmaster / 2d20 Darkmaster / Dune Group
Early in 2024, a fine collection of players were gathered from the BS Landia Discord and beyond by Gabe Dybing, cohost of the Analytic Dice podcast and Rolemaster apologist.
This biweekly crew (myself, HOOS, Mirko aka DigitalHobbit, and Chad aka Gunderman) were drawn together to play Against the Darkmaster (VsD), Open Ended Games’ modern day take on Iron Crown Enterprise’s Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP) from the 1980s.
As I think I’ve mentioned on the blog before, Gabe was feeling a little guilty. He was raving about VsD and a number of us procured the then hard-to-find book based on his trusted advice. What did we find therein? Great layout, incredible black and white art, and… well, MERP. Which is two stone skips across the pond from Rolemaster4. And brothers and sisters, those systems are about as far from what I enjoy in an RPG these days as can be. And it turned out I wasn’t the only one feeling that way — so, being the stand-up guy that he is, Gabe summoned us forth to play under his tutelage. He’d wrap his protective and complex 80s RPG wings around we delicate barn swallows and Show us the Way. We dove in!
We loved character generation.
Erm, hang on.
We loved character generation.
We suffered through character generation and loved what came out the other side. Multi-page spreadsheets and all.
There. Better.
We adored the world and Darkmaster building in the book. It’s a thing of beauty — creating key locations and artifacts, minions and motivations for the Darkmaster, and providing all kinds of tie-ins for our PCs. Despite our doubts about the system, we were all aboard and ready to roll.
Now, this issue isn’t meant to be a blow-by-blow breakdown of this game, so suffice to say we played a good number of sessions and were struggling a bit with the system but starting to learn it… when Gabe pulled the plug.
He was the one who wasn’t feeling it. That was actually the case from the get-go, I think, but he was dutifully trying to get us there, trying to get the game firing on all cylinders. Speaking with him about it later, interestingly, he was running for another group at the same time and they were all having a ball. The difference appeared to be that they all knew the system well, some had just as much nostalgia for it as Gabe, and all were fully vested in plumbing every inch of its table-heavy, ridiculous depths for roleplaying game gold. In the end, I think the difference between the two games was a simple one: they were into it; we weren’t.
Maybe we would have gotten there, but then…
Gear Change #1: 2d20 + Against the Darkmaster!
Gabe’s other favorite game is Modiphius’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. It’s an early 2d20 game, and a complex one. Those who know me or have chatted with me about 2d20 know my take: “Love the Fate DNA. Great core mechanic, kitchen sink of other stuff crammed in from four other games. Needs another editing pass from a game designer, and more playtesting.”
Well, with Conan, they probably needed two more passes, but either way Modi has been advancing the ball lately on their 2d20 games, at least in my opinion. They are getting a little more streamlined, a little easier to parse when you read them… and so with some of that in mind, Gabe set about brewing up a 2d20 version of VsD for us! It was ambitious, fun to see take shape, and ultimately doomed as the poor guy couldn’t bear to leave some of his favorite crusty old bits of 80s RPG cruft behind. Those gummed up the 2d20 mechanics and the wheels flew off.
So.
Gear Change #2: Dune!
Yeah, the answer was for this all-star cast of players5 and top-shelf GM to just play something we’re all into. Enter Modi’s Dune: Adventures in the Imperium.
Chad and HOOS know the books, movies, and lore deeply. Gabe luuuuurves 2d20 and knows the setting pretty damned well. I think the recent movies are mostly swell and super-dig both this kind of highly political space opera, and long scarfs and robes combined with wind machines. DigitalHobbit? Well… he’s being a good sport.6
More to come on this game, as it’s just getting started, but it’s been an interesting turn with VsD!
Delta Green: Dead Letter
I played in a nine session Delta Green7 game this past year, the Lovecraftian horror RPG from Arc Dream Publishing. Sean P. Kelley ran Dead Letter for Dwayne (aka mrwhite20), Victor, Jim, Roger and me. Solid cast and GM, but we struggled in this game — even more than a different crew did in Impossible Landscapes when Sean ran that… where the mindfuckery was frankly out of control in terms of knowing what’s real and what isn’t.
It was still a good time but I sensed frustrations on both sides of the GM screen as the PCs failed to make significant headway until I purposefully pressed a few switches that couldn’t be unpressed. I do have some ideas for what could have smoothed the choppy waters, but I’ll save that for beers with Sean when next I see him. Hopefully at Gamehole Con in October.
ONE-SHOTS (VIRTUAL)
I played in more of these than usual in 2024; my regular groups and the conventions I attend tend to eat up most of my free ‘me time’ capital, so I was a little surprised at the number of other games I squeezed in.
Analytic Dice
Kevin Borrup and Gabe Dybing run the fantastic Analytic Dice podcast, where once a month they play a new RPG and then break down the experience. I was lucky enough in 2024 to play in two of those games (Jackals and CROWN and SKULL) while running a third (The Electrum Archive).
Jackals surprised me. Kevin ran it and as usual did a great job… but after reading the game I arrived at the table fully expecting to bounce off the rather intricate combat system. I did not. Instead, I quite enjoyed it, and would like to play more. This game tweaked something in my head. In fact, here, let’s have a side bar.
It’s perhaps clear by now that I tend to prefer lighter, leaner, more unified designs for RPGs. Mechanics and rules you can hold in your head and make rulings from. It’s why I like both modern / neo OSR and minimalist RPG systems. But playing Jackals plucked a string that was not unlike one strummed by GURPS. I adored and ran GURPS through a big chunk of the 90s, but I “grew out of” simulationist systems and never really looked back.
Maybe until now. Hmmm.
CROWN and SKULL, on the other hand, did not surprise me. I found it played pretty much as it reads, which is 1/4 good ideas and 3/4s hot mess. I still love most of Runehammer’s other RPG designs, but this one feels so underbaked that I can’t be bothered spending another minute on it.8
I suspect I’ll have more to say about The Electrum Archive in 2025 considering how much I like the zine-based game, but for now I’ll just say wow. Love the little OSR system, the brief but uber-effective world-building, the art, the writing — science fantasy is a genre is don’t always like, but I love this.
Beaslandia West Marches
So in addition to his various Delta Green and Deathmatch Island projects, SPK9 decided to run a very ambitious Shadowdark game this year — a full-on west marches sandbox based out of the BSLandia Discord Server. I’d say it was pretty damned successful, as he must have run a dozen or more sessions.
Alas, I was only able to make two of them… but good fun was had and I dig the two characters I made for exploring the map and delving the dungeons.
BS Landia On-Demand Games
Mothership aficionado and all-round incredible GM NubiS ran a couple of games of Mothership late in the year for folks on the BS Landia Discord. Windyridge10, DigitalHobbit and Farty McButterpants played in the game I was in, and it was a complete blast. NubiS goes next-level with his GMing, adding in custom play aides, sound effects, music and all sorts of other cool bits and pieces. I’m not normally a fan of playing with a bunch of that multi-media stuff, but he really does it well. Bloom was a great adventure, and if you ever get a chance to play with NubiS at the helm — take it.
Editor’s correction: NubiS wrote in the comments that the adventure we played was actually Plant-Based Paranoia, not Bloom. Thanks, NubiS!
I should note that this news upsets me for two reasons:
A) I got it wrong!
B) I bought the wrong module afterwards!
CONVENTIONS
From 1995 to 2019, a variety of factors11 caused me to focus on playing RPGs in a non-traditional, non-live-tabletop way. I started off with play-by-email (PBeM) games in the 90s, then shifted to forum-powered play-by-post (PbP) play in the 2000s. It’s a common thing when some gamers hit their 20s or 30s: gaming groups evaporate as people move, have kids, take new jobs, find new hobbies, etc. Many drift away from RPGs entirely, and some never come back.
When faced with this yawning gulf, this lack of opportunities to run12 RPGs… I found I just couldn’t bear the idea of just shutting off what had been my life’s main creative outlet. I knew I couldn’t give the hobby up… but I had no one to play with. So instead I focused on finding other ways to scratch the itch — and scratch it I did, with the text-based games I described above.
I ran multi-year long campaigns with people who were complete strangers to me, some of whom eventually became my friends.13 I ran and played in dozens if not hundreds of different games over that time; I was able to get niche systems and weird-ass ideas to the ‘table’ because I was playing with communities comprised of people from all over the world. I deeply love PbP RPGs to this day (and will eventually write more about that), but 2019 saw some significant changes in my work life that would allow me more time with my family… and with games.14
In the end, I hadn’t run more than a handful of one-off live games over that 25 year period. So as I realized I had the time and the desire to get back to the tabletop on a regular basis, it also dawned on me that I might be a little out of practice. I’d kept up with parts of the gaming scene (the evolution of Fate, PbtA, etc.), but somehow completely missed things like The Forge and Google+. So I needed to brush up, to get in tune with current practice and the state of art of the industry. I listened to RPG podcasts, I read blogs — and I started attending RPG conventions.
Which brings us (in a roundabout way, sorry) to the topic at hand here. Since 2019, I’ve attended a few cons each year and 2024 was no exception. They’re important to me — I’ve long maintained that one of the best ways to become a better gamemaster, and a better player, is to play in lots of games run by others. Pay attention to what the GM and other players are doing that you like; take away lessons from the things that bug you to see if you can improve your own craft.
BSer Con 3 (Virtual)
For the third January running, SPK ran BSer Con — an online-only con for the extended “BSLandia” community I’m part of. It’s full of fantastic people, games, players, and GMs. Sean’s mantra is Be a Positive Force in Tabletop Gaming, and it shows deeply in this community and all that they do.
It’s a smallish con run over a weekend — usually somewhere in the range of 30-50 games. I ran my adventure “The Dread Tower of Zogariach Fing” using The Black Hack, then played in great games of Reaver (expertly run by the creator Joe Salvador), The Walking Dead, Shadowdark, and Cairn 2e. One of the amazing things about BSer Con is the variety of games on offer. There are rarely more than a handful of systems duplicated!
Genghis Con 2024 (In-Person)
I’ve attended Genghis Con in Aurora, Colorado more often than any other con since 2019, only missing the COVID years when it didn’t happen. I don’t love the hotel / venue where it’s currently hosted, but c’est la vie — that’s certainly not reason enough to stay away. It was an interesting collection of games in February of ‘24: Pirate Borg, The Walking Dead, Outgunned, and Salvage Union. The latter game was rough as the GM wasn’t feeling well, but it really opened my eyes to that system — which I will run in 2015.
Oh, and if memory serves, DigitalHobbit and I played some Deep Sea Adventure from Oink Games. Not an RPG, but a really fun little game when you have a bit of time to kill between RPGs.
Tacticon 2024 (In-Person)
Kind of a sister convention to Genghis Con, it’s a little smaller and more focused on board and war games than G-Con is, but it’s still usually a good time. This year I have to say it felt… small. A bit lifeless — the vendor hall was pretty sparse, and it felt like a lot of companies generally selected to do one Colorado convention in 2024. And it wasn’t this one.
Regardless, solid games were played. I covered this con on my blog in detail, but in short I got into games of Mothership, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, Savage Worlds, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, and Delta Green. Four months removed from this con, I have pretty fond memories of these games — especially DCC and Dune.
It’s up in the air whether I’ll return to this con in 2025; the games were solid, but the energy level was really low for my liking. A few of us local Coloradans who often play together have talked about just getting a cabin that weekend in the mountains so we can game our asses off that way. I think we should seriously consider it.
Gamehole Con 2024 (In-Person)
As it has been the previous two years I attended, Madison Wisconsin-based Gamehole Con was the highlight of my gaming year. It’s a bigger convention than Genghis Con (several thousand vs. one thousand-ish) and is incredibly well-run. They could improve the food sitch and do a better job categorizing RPGs on their game registration site, but overall it’s a fantastic experience that is taken way over the top by the fact that a whole load of people from that community I keep mentioning (BSLandia) attend. So by now, it’s like seeing a bunch old friends, and often getting to game with them. There are lots of hotels nearby, one of which has a decent bar, there’s good food15 to be had in Madison if you have a car or take an Uber, and the con organizers actively work every year to improve the experience. Thumbs way up.
I kind of blew registration this year so I didn’t get into a lot of games that I was hoping for; I instead focused on quality off-book games — and got those in spades.
Regular readers will remember that I covered Gamehole Con 2024 in detail, across issues 11 and 12 of this blog. So without regurgitating all the details, just know that I got into ICRPG: Altered State, World Without Numbers: Temple of 1000 Swords, and Deathmatch Island games. Off-book, with the hooligans I try to regularly meet up with, I played Swords & Wizardry Complete, Outcast Silver Raiders, and Outgunned — all of which were outstanding. Late one night I ran an off-book game as well, the session of Into the Odd I described last issue.
If the stars align I’ll be going back next year. I’m sure I could find ways to enjoy larger conventions like Gen Con or Origins, but Gamehole Con is the one convention I plan to travel for in 2025. I’ve previously eyeballed Garycon and North Texas Con as well, but I only have so much time and budget for this stuff…
PLAY-BY-POST GAMING
Everything above covers the in-person and virtual gaming I’ve done this year… but in 2019 it wasn’t like I stopped playing PbP RPGs. In fact, around that time (2021?) I found the community at gamersplane.com and got, if anything, more serious about my PbP games. In Issue 10 I talked a bit about the PbP games I’m currently in; this is sort of a wider update to that, as I’ll include games that finished in early 2024 that didn’t make that October list.
Games that Wrapped in Early 2024
Games that I played in:
Twilight 2000. I’ve played this game a few times now, and it never quite lives up to my expectations. Not giving up. I think there are great stories inside this system.
Cortex Prime. This was a short-lived but quite fun modern take on a supers game. I feel about Cortex kind of like I do about 2d20 (which in fact borrows from Cortex): strip it down and I like it. There’s just “too much” in most builds. And Prime doesn’t make making smart design decisions easier!
Pigeon's Eleven. I’m not exactly a fan of the Polymorph System, but jumped at the chance to play a dirty bird doing crimes in Chicago with good gaming pals under the wing of a longtime PbP chum. Fun while it lasted.
The One Ring. I know from having now played this game live with my Thursday crew that I quite like it. But boy — the box set adventure is a stinker and is littered with poor GM advice and design choices. A weakness of Free League generally is adventure design, and there’s a hot turd on display here if you need proof.
Games that I ran:
Knave. I stirred up a hornets nest over on the BS Landia Discord, talking up how fun PbP games can be, then offered to run Knave for a few people briefly to see if they dug the format. I think in the end over ten people signed up and I ended up running several separate groups at the same time! Was a lot of work, but very fun. It sort of died on the vine in the end, but I’m hoping people enjoyed what they played. (This was just before the physicals of Knave 2e dropped, but I had the PDFs… so ran a kind of 1.5e blend that worked decently.)
Mothership. Ran Dead Planet for my usual OSR group over on gamersplane.com. Was a pretty good time: one survivor. =)
Games that Never Got Off the Ground
It happens more in PbP than it should. Just like with games at the table!
Delta Green: PX Poker Night. I promptly got a group of players spun up about DG after reading the PX Poker Night adventure… then I got busy with work and never managed to get the game launched. Sorry folks!
Epoch Hero Aegis. Great PbP gaming friend Alfred pitched this Mecha Hack-powered “combiner” mech idea at me and a couple of other peeps… but it just never materialized and came together. Shame, but we then moved on to Mythic Bastionland, which happily did get going.
Games that Ran Most of the Year but Finished Recently
Advanced OSE: Keep on the Borderlands. This was a game that took a bit to get going, hit its stride for a while, then slowed to a crawl in the depths of a dungeon. It was too bad, as I loved my stable of two PCs (an illusionist and a fighter) despite not really enjoying straight Old School Essentials all that much. The GM eventually just mercifully closed up shop.
Dragonbane: Riddermound. I’ve come to the conclusion that while I love the art in Dragonbane and that system-wise it’s fine… it’s not really my bag. I’ll play it if friends really want to, but I’ve no desire to run it. The setting doesn’t grab me and the races are a bit kitchen-sinky for my liking.16 This specific PbP game might be still limping along — but there haven’t been updates for months so I’ve just backed out.
Primal Quest: Mother’s Vale. A swing and a miss on my part. I want to like the game — I like sword & stone / stone-age RPGs, I generally love most of Diogo Nogueira’s designs… but this one just seemed to get off on the wrong foot. The back-and-forth, “transaction-heavy” system seems ill-suited for PbP play, and the intro adventure, The Cave of Our People, needs a little TLC to make it more interesting, IMHO. I haven’t given up on this game, but I think it would be better live, with a bunch of people who really jived on the genre.
Savage Worlds Deadlands: Night Train. I love western RPGs, but will admit that I prefer the weird in my west, if there’s to be any, to be a little more hidden and mysterious than it is in the Deadlands setting. Still, I had a blast playing a young, first time marshal fighting against trainloads of nasty undead — until she died horribly! Thanks for nothin’, Qralloq! (He ran the game, and is an awesome PbP GM over on gamersplane. He’s a pillar in the community and is highly recommended if you play over there.)
Cairn 2e: Khazuul. This game was a blast, a unique jungle hex crawl / exploration experience where it felt like almost every decision could be life or death. It was fun to put the newer version of Cairn through its paces, and the GM (excellent chap by the name of Len that I’ve been playing with a lot recently) and other players were all absolutely top-notch. A wonderful experience we were all sad to see come to an end.
Mausritter: The Estate. I. Love. Mausritter. Full stop. In 2024 my good online friend (and pro-PbP GM) KCC ran his second game of Mausritter on gamersplane. I was lucky to be a player, and just wish KCC hadn’t done one of his gaming Irish Goodbyes where you blink and he’s shut things down because he sniffs that interest might be mildly flagging in the game.17
Shadowdark. Speaking of KCC, he ran Shadowdark this year as well! Sadly, this one never found its legs and the man pole-axed it before it was a couple of months old! The brute!
Pirate Borg. Ah, a brilliant KCC game based, I think, on Buried in the Bahamas. This one ran most of the year, survived a couple of players dropping (common in PbP), and resulted in a whole bunch of excellent scenes, absurd dialog, and an overall fabulously over-the-top story. I also got to play another favorite PC of mine, a complete fucking nutter buccaneer named Eliza Swinesfarth.
This was pretty much Eliza’s usual expression. Resting psycho face. She was craaaaazy and I loved her for it. I bet KCC didn’t.
Still Trucking
Lost of PbP games I’m in, or that I run, are going strong into 2025. I’ll hold off on getting into much detail about them, but for ease of reference next year when I look back, here’s the catalog at the moment:
Running:
Prowlers & Paragons
Eldritch Hack: Deep Roots
Barbarians of Lemuria: Night of the Star-Spawn
Dungeon Crawl Classics: Doom of the Savage Kings
Playing:
Deathmatch Island
Swords & Wizardry Complete: The Northlands Saga
The Walking Dead: What We Become
D&D 5e: When Giants Fall
ICRPG: Warp Shell
Mythic Bastionland
Star Borg: The Legion’s Fall
Black Sword Hack: The Doom that Befell Miklagard
I expect I’ll cover more on each of these in the months ahead. I’ve got thoughts on them all, but 2024 is rapidly drawing to a close and I need to get this bad boy out the door! Look for commentary on why I’m perhaps not loving P&P like I thought I would (my superhero RPG eye is wandering), how and why my DCC game is one of the best PbP RPGs I’ve ever been part of, why I think The Walking Dead is perhaps Free League’s best YZE design, and more.
Oh, but before I go:
Just Getting Off the Ground
Lastly on the play-by-post front, a couple of games are really just taking shape and should launch in early 2025.
Longshot City: Super Scrubs
Delta Green: Knowledge is Death
The first I’m running, and very curious about. A Troika!-powered superhero game? What the… okay. Let’s give it a whirl and see how it pans out. I love some of what I see, and have serious doubts about the tuning of it all. So I figured let’s play and find out!
The Delta Green game is essentially a new chapter in a game that ran originally over on tavern-keeper.com. Dirigible, who also runs that 5e game I’m in above, is a long-time collaborator of mine in the PbP space. He’s one of the best writers and GMs I’ve ever played with, and I’m excited to see him get the DG game back up on its feet.
FAREWELL 2024
Right! I think that’s everything — it’s been quite a year, RPG-wise, especially if I include getting this blog mostly off the ground. It’s difficult for me to get issues out regularly, but frankly I didn’t expect to produce 13 of them before the end of the year considering I launched at the very end of March.
In closing, Happy New Year and best wishes for the year ahead! Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to all the people I’ve played this year, in all these different formats. You’re why I’m in the hobby, so let’s keep making great stories together!
See you in ‘25!
The Next Hex is also available as a podcast by Litter Box Studio if you prefer to not see our ugly mugs. I’ll also warn you that the first episode contains an hour or perhaps two of session zero character and campaign building — maybe not the most exciting watching or listening. It does eventually get going, and while there are a bunch of things I’d do differently today were I to run it again, I think it provides a decent glimpse into the system and setting.
Dudes. And dudettes. So much adversity. My work schedule was crazy and I missed a number of sessions just from working late or travel. (I also played from the road a lot.) Kevin’s kids had so many sporting things on Thursdays. There were power outages. Hurricanes. Ridiculous world events. Conventions that interrupted our flow. Trips to Halifax to see my ailing parents. Sean even dropped out of the group for many moons, though he’s back now. I have to say, it’s nice to move through those sorts of rough waters more or less unscathed: we’re all determined to keep playing together. We’re not just a gaming group at this stage: we’re good friends.
Phil has run a lot of The One Ring for his home group. The man knows what he’s doing.
Yeah. Shoot me. Shoot me now.
Me aside, that is. Poor Gabe has discovered that he has to deal with my “Look, I’m an elf and I have emotions!” scenery-chewing regardless of system.
He does not love Dune, so… thanks for suffering, DigitalHobbit!
One of my very favorite RPGs despite it’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP) roots. Love love love Delta Green.
I reviewed CROWN and SKULL in Issue 2. Check it out!
I can only type “Sean P. Kelley” so many times.
In like her second live game ever! She has lots of experience in the PbP world, but is just now exploring live TTRPGs.
Those factors: main group all moved away from one another after college / grad school, marriage, kids, career, loads of domestic and international travel for work, etc. Live play just wasn’t in the cards for me for many years.
I was essentially a forever GM back then, running about 98% of the games I participated in. Thankfully, that’s changed.
In fact, one of those folks is now among my closest friends in the world. Go figure!
Basically, I switched jobs / careers. After working as an archaeologist for a number of years in Canada, I dove into technology and management consulting — and didn’t come up for air for almost two decades. I ended up running a practice and traveling all over the US and Canada, as well as to the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Panama, and the Middle East. I played my PbP games like mad during that time, but in 2019 I took an internal leadership position with an engineering consultancy and cut my travel by about 80%. Free time unlocked!
If you’re there and like Indian food, try Swad! Also highly recommend Waypoint Public House.
Also, I’m still a little bent out of shape over the designers adding in a bunch of extra skills to the final game. I preferred the leaner and meaner Alpha / Preview!
I’m poking at KCC here, but he does run a fine game and he does kill his games quickly if he deems that they are underperforming!
A fun-filled 2024 for sure. Do you think you'll do the same, more, or less in 2025?
You are an animal, man. So much gaming. Keep it up!