Armies getting lost, caught spies escaping! How will my groups of 10-11 year old kids deal with what the dice had in store for them next?
The end of a season.
Currently running two Cortex Prime games on alternating Mondays: Marvel’s eXiles and Sagas of the Cosmic Rangers. The former needs no introduction, and the latter is a triangulation of Phantasy Star, Star Wars, and Spelljammer that I’m developing as a proper standalone game, relevant to this forum’s interests.
I’ve got seats open, especially in Cosmic Rangers; reach out to me if you might be interested.
I’m still planning my doomed Terminator RPG game, Scoundrels in Paradise. Player characters are Human Resistance fighters in late 1990s Los Angeles, orphans of other Resistance cells whose other members have been killed or captured. They meet in a bar, and I am inordinately pleased with myself.
How does this differ from Troika! – Which is basically Fighting Fantasy engine as well. Are you familiar with both?
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Currently I’m playing Weepose, who’s a Woodgrue in a Dolmenwood game. Currently he’s dancing on the ceiling with some slimy skeletons.
I’m familiar with both. And you can be too! They’re both freely available:
Troika is definitely a direct descendant of Fighting Fantasy (which I’ve never played). I assume the mechanics are the same or similar. Its main thing is its 36 backgrounds.
Q&F is more inspired by I’d say. It has the familiar STAMINA, SKILL, and LUCK attributes. But that’s about it. Its core mechanic is a 2d6 >= 9 “Test your mettle” roll, which I think conceptually is from Traveler, and which makes risky actions difficult/deadly. It also has a novel magic system, and free form “special skills” instead of backgrounds comprising advanced skills and specials. Its rules fit neatly on a “postcard edition” and is much more “quickstart” than even Troika, which I already consider pretty streamlined and quickstart itself.
In practice, Q&F is a little bit easier to roll dice for. In Troika there’s the issue of always trying to remember you’re trying to roll over or under your skill. In Q&F it’s always test your mettle. (Except in combat, when your target number becomes your foe’s SKILL instead of 9; but it’s still always roll equal to or over.) The trade off is those delicious zany backgrounds, advanced skills, and spells.
Both are great! Try them both!
My absolute game, Leverage, is Cortex Plus. I love the simplicity and the character customization.
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Into the Odd
I’m running a play-by-post game of Into the Odd for a couple friends. I’m starting them out with the Iron Coral and Fallen Marsh stuff in the back of the book. They’re still getting into trouble in the little starting town, but have found a clue that should lead them to the coral. As a GM I’m really liking the play-by-post format, not limited to what has been prepared or skill with improving, I can take 20 minutes to consider something before responding. One of my players wanted to do some arcane research in the town library, great let me go dig through my hard drive for The Stygian Library! Speaking in character has never been important to me, but since we’re writing and not put on the spot everyone is naturally speaking in the first person and having fun with folksy dialects; suddenly NPC interaction, which has always been one of the aspects I was least interested in, has become one of my favorite parts. So far my only complaint is that everyone is checking in a different intervals so progress is a bit herky-jerky, I’ve brought this up and we’ll hopefully decide on a suggested schedule so that everyone is on the same page.
Troika!
I have finally gotten a chance to run Troika! I ran it for one of my Into the Odd players and a couple of his other friends. It was a real good group, unfortunately I live a couple hours away from them so I don’t know how frequently we’ll get to play. I had an idea for a space opera campaign set in a solar nursery towards the beginning of the universe, and Troika was a perfect fit. They were in a city inside a hollowed out asteroid, escaped from the city’s royal guard, found the egg of a living spaceship, explored a weird garden, discovered some catacombs, and had a final fight before a dying NPC dumped some exposition. I was ripping off Book of the New Sun/Long Sun, The Expanse, and Blood Machines as flagrantly as possible.
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I recently finished playing in an 8 month Vampire: the Masquerade - Chicago by Night ™️ campaign.
I had no interest in playing it back in the day but it was a lot of fun to explore the gothic punk milieu from the safe vantage point of 2023.
Before that I played in an 8 month Revolution Comes to the Kingdom campaign. A really excellent and different game, that incorporates elements of some nsr systems.
On Saturday I’ll be running Rakehell: the Battlefield using Kriegsmesser, for a not-warhammer type game.
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I found a gaming group (more like a club with I think 100+ members and two games organized every two weeks, with signups through their discord) in a nearby-ish city. For my first time I facilitated “Fall of Magic”, and Magic wasn’t falling, but rather it erupted 
These people were used to GM-less games based on prompts (they play FIASCO a lot) and were a group of people that was open, considerate and safe. We worked well together, and even though we played with more than the rules allow, we were never bored.
We ended in the Stormguard Mountains where an apocalyptic event happened. One of the two suns broke in the sky. My character, a Knight from Stormguard called Justice said ha was trained for this since childhood since there was a prophecy in their family. (We joked that they were doompreppers that turned out to be right)
The group saw this as a result of the fall of magic in the world, and we tried to figure out (as players) why it would be. There were two different theories. One was that the Magus was the cause. He acted suspiciously and treated everyone differently, like he was playing favorites.
The other one was that it was one of the PC’s fault, because they had broke into a tower as a kid and stolen an alchemical jar with unending candy, which he dropped as he was confronted with a creepy ghost in the tower and having no lid to seal it or contain it, the jar is now just spitting out candy after candy, in such a way that it is now a visible candy mountain growing out of the Mistwood Forest. (Cue “Rock Candy Mountain” song)
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In terms of running I’m currently doing Old School Essentials we just had the first session of The Lost City which went pretty well, also doing DnD 5e with Tomb of Annihilation, as well as an FFG Star Wars game that happens like once a month lol, as for playing I’m playing in a Pathfinder 2nd Edition game and a DnD 5e game (I have way too many games I want to run but I don’t have the time as the old problem goes lol)
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Currently running a group through A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity but set in and using Hyperborea. It has made for some fun and interesting changes.
Also play in a group that rotates GMs and systems. Currently running through The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 as a player. It is my first time playing Mothership and I’m mostly enjoying it. We’re struggling to get into the immersive mindset that horror needs and seem to whiff every roll, so it’s been a little tough. But we’ll keep at it.
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I’m currently running a weekly Dungeon World campaign for two friends (via Discord). I’m flirting with the idea of porting across to using Troika instead though (lightly house-ruled).
Every couple of weeks (on average) I play face-to-face with three friends. We’re aiming to rotate game and GM every four sessions - so far we have played Zweihander and Alien.
I’m (meant to be) prepping for a local con, where I am going to run a DW adventure of my own design as well as My Life With Master.
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Strictly speaking I’m between games now, but recently we have played:
GDW’s En Garde. A strategy game with RPG elements where you play duelists in Paris in the 17th century. The game is from the 70’s and a bit strange to our modern eyes, but I had fun enough.
Cosmic Patrol from Catalyst Game Labs. Space cadets saving the world. GM less game, but that group doesn’t do well without the guiding hand of a GM. We played one adventure and that was enough, I doubt I’d go back to it even with another group.
Solar System based game about an alternative WWI where there are diesel mecha around already at the outbreak of the war. We played for a while and decided that it was good enough to continue, but also that we could do better, so we’ll start another game once we decide what we want to play instead.
My Gnostic modern day horror RPG Kuf has been a staple here since before the pandemic. It went so far that we decided to NOT play it again until we had played something else for a bit to not burn out.
It seems at least one of my groups will give the new Dragonbane game a go if only the books are shipped. I have my doubts that it will be a great fit for that group, but I’ll try any game once.
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Right now I’m running a group through B1: The Keep on the Borderlands (heavily edited using my own personal ideas and ideas from the youtuber Dungeon Craft, adapted to run using Shadowdark RPG.
I’ve been LOVING Shadowdark since I got my hands on it – hits all of my B/X needs while remaining recognizable enough to 5e players that I haven’t had any issues with teaching it to people who have only ever played 5e.
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I was a player yesterday in a DCC funnel where we explored a floating organic … house (?) with 12 zero-level PC’s. Only two PC’s of the twelve died and we were able to crack the vault before I had to leave for home. We decided we brought the treasure’s down instead of exploring the third floor. There was only one fight and the rest was mainly dangerous traps, which we were able to work around mostly.
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I’m running my group through N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God using The Black Hack. It’s been a blast so far!
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I running a (weekly?) West Marches using Cairn 2e. It’s going really great!
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I’m running a Lorn Song Of The Bachelor game run with Mangayaw. Planning to open the game up to an ATTI sandbox when we’re done with Lorn Song.
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Running a game of The Sword, the Crown and the Unspeakable Power. We’ve played it for a while, and people are starting to have several characters. I’m kind of struggling with it, actually, because unlike Apocalypse World it really feels like the game should cover a more vast area, and it is difficult to keept it in one place.
I’m also playing in an Against the Darkmaster campaign. We were just confronted with how evil the darkmaster actually is, and it is pretty metal.
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