Reflections on my Pen & Paper RPGs in 2019


This posting is inspired by The Dungeon Musing’s retrospective. I asked Kev for his outline and will walk through moreorless the same points here.
 

What I did

As GM I have had regular sessions with in order of decreasing number of sessions Torg Eternity (24), Mutants & Masterminds, Starfinder: Dead Suns, DCC Lankhmar, Cepheus Light: Uranium Fever, Amazing Adventures: Rise of the Red God, Pathfinder 2: Age of Ashes (4), Cybersprawl Classics (3)
As a player: I have played Starfinder: Against the Aion Throne & Fistful of Shobhads, Lex Occultum: Great Mysterties of Übel Staal, Infinity: Operation: Honeywasp, DCC: Doom of the Savage Kings & The People of the Pit

What worked?

In general most stuff works ok-ish. We can maintain a campaign for six month to a year, if we all really want. I wanted to run a complete Adventure Path for Starfinder, which we almost did. It worked well, but book six of the Dead Suns campaign did not fit into the way my players solved their stuff before, so we skipped that part and did things a bit differently, but that is what rpgs are for.
Playing in English also seems to work, as I do this in my Starfinder campaign and Infinity as well. I have played Castles & Crusades in English before, but that was only two sessions, so it doesn’t count. I still need to find out, whether I can run a game in English as well.

What didn't work?

 I’m not sure if “didn’t work” is the right category. I see room for improvement in my understanding of the rules of most games. Most of the time I have a solid understand of the basics, but there is always this complicated extra stuff going on, like people using a certain type of grenade or obscure combinations of powers. My usual approach is: each player needs to know how her or his character works, but we lost two players for Pathfinder 2, who never figured their stuff out.
The other thing is: I need to get a little more robust in my way with certain players who tend to drag the game. I tend to let them do their stuff a bit too much and that sometimes frustrates other players. But as always balance is a delicate business.

One-Shots

There have been a couple of one shots as well. Some worked tremendously well, like Shadowrun 6 Quickstart Set, Dragon Heresy, Cyberpunk RED Quickstart Set, Die Schwarze Katze (German RPG where you play antropomorphic cats hiding from humans, elves, orcs and the like in a traditional fantasy world), or  Cortex Prime. Others failed like Ghost Planets (FATE) or Splittermond (also a German language game due to different expectations see above). Sometimes the results where viewed as a mixed bag: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition in different settings.

What was not run?

The only thing I still want to do is run a longer Perry Rhodan (German pulp SciFi series) campaign, but I am still unsure what system I should use for that.

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