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.

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Cepheus Light - A Short Review

Bild
Cepheus Light - a short review My #RPGaMonth for November is again something old and something new, namely Classical Traveller and Cepheus Light, which is a rule reduced version of Mongoose’s OGL Traveller 1. I have read both [1] and am going to compare it to. Traveller is a game which exist in many different variant, but Cepheus Light still uses the old 2d6 skill rolls. That is to succeed you need to get 8+ on two d6, but your skill level is subtracted from number, you have to roll. Pilot-2 will get the value to 6+. As always there a situational modifiers and so forth. Attribute modifiers like in Moongoose’s version have no effect on skill rolls. The game uses six attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing, so there is not charisma attribute for a sparkling personality or general attractiveness. There aren’t any advantages or disadvantages or perks or something similar. A character is complete by her/his attributes, skill levels and...
Mehr anzeigen

Sword of Cepheus

Bild
What is old school ? Imagine, you would like to play a fantasy game where the characters are the heroes, but not that kind of heroes who win in hand-to-hand combat against hordes of ogres and trolls. But the kind of heroes that use their cleverness and cunning. Heroes that might have a home and a job, in a fantasy world that has a bit of magic but also has more mundane traits. Imagine that rpg has very simple rules. Just roll 2d6 and check the result for any task. The character sheet is not more than a few lines of simple text.   Not four sheets of paper, but something that you could take with you on a credit card size piece of paper. Imagine, that you would not start adventuring as a young adolescent, but as someone who has live a life for 30 or 40 years and is on that epic quest of his life now. Sword of Cepheus That game for me is Sword of Cepheus. It is built on the established Cepheus Light rules engine that itself emulates a more streamlined version of the ...
Mehr anzeigen

My Review of Justifiers - Das Abenteuerspiel for #RPGaMonth

My Review of Justifiers - Das Abenteuerspiel for #RPGaMonth This month, February, I am reading an older game from 2010 called Justifiers - Das Abenteuerspiel. Some may remember that there was a Science Fiction game called Justifiers released at the end of the eighties. Part 1 Markus Heitz whose name is very prominent on the cover is a successful German fantasy novelist who was an avid player of said game. When the opportunity presented itself he bought the rights to the setting and wrote two great novels in the Justifiers universe. Moreover, he was the editor of a series of about 10 book from other authors in the same cosm. So in 2010 a new German edition of the Justifiers game was released by Ulisses Spiele (which may be more known for the new Torg - Eternity nowadays) and that is what I am reading right now. It is a 300 something page hardcover in DinA5 format, i.e. about half US letter format. It starts with a 20 pages short story by Heitz which puts you right into the ...
Mehr anzeigen