My gaming shelf happens to be located on the path through my house that I take to get to the bathroom (read: right outside the bathroom door), and I often grab a random book to read while doing the business. Over the past few weeks, this has sparked an idea that I’ve finally decided to make efforts towards fulfilling. My shelves are full of old games that I’m pretty sure are only kept around for purposes of nostalgia, and frankly, I’m getting tired of the feeling of sadness I feel every time I look at them and realize I’ll most likely never play them again.

So next year, starting in January of 2008, I’m gonna embark upon a personal crusade to give each and every one of those games a “Last Hurrah” before packing them away in a closet somewhere, or - heaven forbid! - giving them away to someone else who will find them more useful to their own games. I hate to part with them, as they led to some real good memories, but the thing is, I just don’t ever see any good new campaigns from them in the future, especially with the ways in which my gaming tastes have so drastically changed over the last few years.

Currently on the list:

• Alternity - specifically, Star*Drive and DarkMatter, although if there’s actually an interest I’d love to run the StarCraft setting too.
• Earthdawn - I am determined to run at least one of the modules I have.
• Midnight - I sadly don’t foresee any good campaigns growing out of this with my gaming groups.
• Nightbane - More mutation charts than you can shake a gazebo at
• Palladium Fantasy - 1st Edition, yo!
• Rifts (shudder)
• Shadowrun - 4th Edition. Mind you, I love this game, but I’m kinda tired of rules systems like this. I might keep this one around, though.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (although I might just end up giving this away at Dragoncon)

I’m not sure which one I’ll start with, but I do foresee a series of mini-campaigns, one with each game. I think I’ll start with Alternity, doing a Star*Drive game and then a DarkMatter game, and who knows where I’ll go from there.

Also, I’ve got another set of AP reports coming for both last weekend’s Undiscovered Countries game and last night’s Warhammer FRP demo. I need to finish listening to the recording before I finalize the first one, and finish recovering from whatever freak sickness has overtaken me today to do either. The UC report is mostly finished, I’m just unclear on a few of the details.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

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.

I’ve started a discussion on the Livejournal Roleplayers community on the subject of Traits within the Verses RPG, and their implementation as an answer to the “Perks and Flaws” of other systems. Head on over and check it out.

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.

My buddies and I have this weird tradition wherein we get together and randomly play a game we affectionately call D&D&D, or “Dungeons and Dragons and Drunkards.” This weekend, we’re doing it again, and we figured it would be a good idea to turn it into an actual drinking game. The goal of this game is to start playing sober, and then as the module progresses you get more and more wasted. This of course means that the module becomes more and more entertaining, and D&D becomes actually somewhat playable and (dare I say it) fun.

After discussing with some gamers on another forum, here are the rules that I’ve got worked out so far:

• If you roll a 1, you become the Gobber Chugmeister.
• Every time someone rolls a 20, the Gobber Chugmeister takes a drink
• If the Gobber Chugmeister rolls a 1, he takes 1d6 drinks.
• If the Gobber Chugmeister rolls a 20, he gives the title of Gobber Chugmeister to another player/GM of his choice.

• You explode a die*, you have to take a drink
• Every Save you miss, take a drink
• Every Skill you fail, take a drink
• Every time you confirm a critical, your opponent drinks a number of times = the weapon’s crit multiplier.
• Every time you take damage, take a drink according to the die type: d4 = 1 drink, d6 = 2 drinks, d8 = 3 drinks, d10 = 4 drinks, d12 = 5 drinks; multiply the number of drinks times the number of dice rolled. Magic Missiles can be a cheap way to get your opponent drunk.

• If your character drinks, you drink
• When someone quotes Monty Python, Dead Alewives, internet memes, or other such hilarity, ALL take a drink
• If you talk about an old character, take a drink
• If you measure a spell radius, take a drink
• If you purposefully malign another PC, take a drink

• When you gain an experience level, take a shot.

Any other suggestions?

* We started using Exploding Dice in D&D games. This means that every time you roll a die that rolls its max, you reroll it and add it again.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

I’ll be running a second playtest of the Verses RPG on July 14th at Go Play! Portland. I’m pretty excited about this, as it will help get some more input before launching it into an extended campaign with my new group of Saturday gamers. I’ll update this blog with more info on the event as I get it, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: This didn’t actually happen, as personal matter prevented me from attending. Maybe next time?

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.