Last night my new Sunday group met together for the first time to create sessions for a brand new Sunday campaign. Due to fluctuations in the player roster, the previous campaign fell through*, and this new one has taken its place.

I’ve already posted the campaign backstory here, but in summation, it’s a game of adventure, exploration, and intrigue in a New World across the ocean. The characters are part of a small colony, the very first on this newly-discovered continent across the western ocean. Two nations have joined together to build this colony, those being the “Enlightened Norsemen” N’Parthan Commonwealth and the Turkish-inspired nation of Khaaza-Ji, whose people are respectfully referred to as Northwardik and Ahzali, respectively. Three ships were sent out, two arrived, and the third was lost at sea. The third ship had most of the military folk on it who were supposed to guard the colony, so the last two weeks since arrival have been rough, as all in the colony have had to learn to handle themselves, should martial forces be needed.

Currently there are four players, and each of their characters in the game has a specialty at which they are considered the best. Evan (the new guy) is playing Milly Borghild, Northwardik, the “Mean” character. Alex, also in the Saturday game, is playing Ulrik Tolak, Northwardik, the “Battle” character. Scott, another player in the Saturday game, is playing Rassmas Thorgier, Northwardik, the “Scout” character. Finally, Drake (returning Sunday gamer) is playing Atallah Sevda, Ahzali, the “Risky” character.

There’s not much else to say about it at this point. We meet again in two weeks for the first full-on gaming session, and I’m pretty excited. I think we’ve got an awesome group.

* I still intend to try the Bloodstone campaign sometime in the future, possibly soon after I get over my upcoming Year of Nostalgia kick. As much as I’d like to, I doubt it will use the Burning Wheel rules, because it’s next to impossible to get my players interested in something so incredibly meaty.

UPDATE: I’ve decided to start a Story Hour thread over on the Savage Worlds forums. As the next sessions roll by, I’ll get creative and write up some stories of the games.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

Yesterday’s playtest session of the new working BMF LARP rules was quite satisfactory. Beer, Pizza, Highlander Jokes, and more, the game was pretty damn fun, and John even took some good pictures of those who could make it. Sadly, several of the originally-listed players were missing-in-action, but there were a few extras who showed up to fill most of the roles, with me taking the reigns of one of the “wild card” faction characters.

The People

Thanks to Robin, John, Alex, Jason, and Tammy for coming over, eating pizza, drinking beer, and having a damn good time roleplaying, playtesting, and dorking out. You guys are my heroes of the week.

Two Saturdays ago was the second session in our Undiscovered Countries campaign, using the Verses RPG rules system. In my last post on this game, I gave some details into the setup, the system, and the campaign premise, so I’ll skip all that and get right to the meat.

The Cast

• Alex, playing the part of Captain Daylen Forgrun.
• Gaston, playing the part of Calvo Sotelovich.
• Nathanael (me), Arbiter, playing the part of Mihoaela Tatiana Kojimirin.
• Nievita, playing the part of Aeroica Mindal Tsvetkov.
• Scott, playing the part of Khazimir ibn Zalikahn.

Last night was the first official gathering for my Sunday group’s new Iron Kingdoms game. This campaign is entitled “Bloodstone: An Iron Kingdoms Western,” and is set on the edge of the Bloodstone Marches in a shady little prospector’s town called Ternon Crag. This game is very heavily influenced by the television show Deadwood.

This game also uses the Verses RPG rules currently in development by yours truly. I had originally intended on using The Burning Wheel as the system for this game, but after a bit of minor GM burnout on my part, I made the switch to Verses, for two main reasons. First, I just don’t have the time to dedicate towards mastering the Burning Wheel rules while simultaneously teaching them to others. Second, I want to give Verses a more versatile (pun intended) playtest. Currently it is being used in my other bi-weekly campaign, and I hope that by applying it to an already-established setting I can test its functionality with several new perspectives.

This past Saturday, July 21st, saw the first actual game-play session of our new campaign. Aside from the goal to have a buttload of fun, the purposes for this campaign are two: to give the Verses RPG rules a working progression towards completion through extended playtest, and to work as a unit to create a new campaign setting in which all involved can be personally invested. So far, after a character and setting jam session and one actual play session, the results are better than satisfactory. With this post, I’ll kick off a series of post-session Actual Play reports. Interested? Keep reading.

This weekend involved a lot of gaming, at least one game (or semblance thereof) per evening. Friday night featured a revisit of our ever-exciting D&D&D game (Dungeons and Dragons and Drunkards). In this game, we take shots as we do various game things, and we kill stuff. Sometimes, the stuff kills us. In this particular session, present were myself, Chris, Alex, Drake, and a brand new gamer Forrest, who has now been successfully converted. This one specific of the night pretty much made the weekend awesome; it’s not every day you get to see (and influence!) the seed of the hobby take root in another’s imagination. She really got into the back-story development of her character, so much that I have decided I will introduce her to better games very soon, before D&D gets in and takes too strong of a hold. I ran them all through a quick homemade scenario, and stuck with a theme of Monster Hunting, which will be revisited each time we return to the hopefully continuous game.

I ended up running three demos at the Free RPG Day events this past Saturday at Guardian Games. Here’s a run-down of the demos, what went down, and my afterthoughts.

The first and third demos were of the same game, a quick-start swamp boat adventure for the Tunnels and Trolls edition 5.5 RPG. The first session was a bit shaky at first, but after a bit we (all 8 of us!) all got into the flow of things and had a lot of totally ridiculous fun. In the second run, there were only two players, but both of them instantly got into the groove of things and commented frequently on how the absolute simplicity of the system made the game all the more fun. I posted about this game previously, and I’m glad to say my initial forecasts were mostly correct. So simple a five-year-old can learn it, and more fun than the cracker-jack-box prize-toy.

The second game I demoed, however, was unfortunately quite awful.

(Update 6/17/2007: This post actually refers to a rpg system now called “Verses”.)

This past Saturday’s first test-run of the new draft of QUAD was a lot more successful than I could have hoped for. The players took to the system quickly and easily, and for this very first layout of the core concepts I was very glad to have two close friends at hand to help out. I’ll spare the technical notes for now, as the game is still in early development and a lot of them would be confusing. However, I am glad to say that while QUAD may be a prototype, it is a functional prototype.