In the build up to Go Play NW, I braced myself to facilitate pickup games every waking moment. As organizers we embraced the idea that there were going to be a lot more pickup games than scheduled games, but that’s also risky: you never know until the slot begins just how many people will be […]

“I start a campaign… a totally _fascist_ campaign.” –brand new gamer, solving the problems of Mars I love Mars Colony. It’s hands-down the best game I picked up at GenCon 2009. That’s not even considering that it’s technically only an ash can release, not the final version, which is coming out at GenCon this year. […]

With San Holo in mind, I’ve decided to offer The Chargen Circle in the last gaming slot of Go Play NW 2010. The plan is to grab a bunch of random chargen systems, random being the salient part, and roll up characters. I’m thinking of systems like Classic Traveller, V&V, Reign, FASA Star Trek. I suspect people will make […]

Great moments in Mouse Guard. The patrol is welcomed to Darkwater after an arduous journey. Tired mice are tired, and hungry mice are hungry. Hearty meals are arranged by the happy hosts. player: mimes picking up food with his paws and nibbling on it city-mouse: “We have forks.” player: “I have a high Nature.” This […]

Playing Shock with (nearly) total strangers. We’re doing it old-school, so we secretly pick issues and then brainstorm a Shock that fits, instead of the wussy Shock-first approach. We choose overpopulation, cultural extinction and plagiarism, and decide on a dystopian future where ideological groups struggle for dominance in society. The Shock we come up with […]

Panning for gold in the used bin at Gary’s Games, we found a tattered copy of Traveller Book 1 1977 for $2. I had always been curious about “classic” Traveller, especially since I had heard characters can die during creation. So, we whipped up a bunch characters and here are the final results: 5 of […]

We just played the second session of our “Doom of the Gods” Microscope game. It’s an age of myth stretching from the creation of the World of Men to the very death of the Gods. Very Ragnarok, very Norse. We probably would have played it again sooner, but we couldn’t get the right four players […]

Game two of our excellent StarCraft-analog Microscope game. In the first game we established that along with the humans and the Swarm, the third race were the mysterious Wan, sometimes called the Voi. In keeping with StarCraft tradition, while the Swarm are a horde of monsters, the Wan are a highly advanced species, technology far […]

We’re trying out the new Drama rules with a shiny new history. The overview is humanity locked in a three-way war with two alien races (yep, it’s intentionally a StarCraft analog). Early in the game we establish that one of the races is the Swarm, small parasites that attach themselves to unintelligent native species and […]

Sometimes characters surprise you. One minute they’re complete strangers, and the next you are knee-deep into the most important moment of their lives. Haskell, Kevin and I sat down to play a game of Microscope. The one-line summary we came up with for the history is that a massive colony ship crashes on a planet […]

We’re rolling up characters in Flashing Blades (yep, from 1984). It’s a rapiers & musketeers system, but instead of historic France we’re playing in a supressed tech sci fi setting that we created in one of our Microscope games (the “stellar empires” history), a baroque and decadent period when the alien “gas whales” are the […]

I have to admit, there were times when I thought, “hmm, will the histories people come up with really be different, or will they all follow the same basic ideas and patterns? Won’t all stellar empires start to look alike?” Yeah, I was totally wrong. There are some fantastic actual play reports coming from the […]

The first story game we ever played was Capes. We were playing a very extensive Mutants & Masterminds superhero campaign so this GM-less superhero game peaked Ben’s interest. Jem, Ben and I cracked it open, and as it turns out, it started us on the path to story games. Character Creation: Click and Lock Oh […]

We took a break from all the playtest launch mayhem and started another Microscope game. The concept? Settling the American frontier. Go West young man! It’s a real world alternate history setting. We’re only one session in, but we’ve already had the hanging of an innocent man, gold in them thar hills, war with Mexico, […]

“You are members of a shadowy government conspiracy to assassinate the President and derail the proceedings to have the US join the League of Allied Nations. To do this you have tracked down and taken control of an experimental weapon created by a secret government project.” “Due to a glitch this device believes it is […]

Two more sessions of microscope under our belts: one continuing our first game, and another starting a new game with a new group. If anything, the game gets more interesting when you’re coming back to continue because you already have this material you want to explore. It definitely draws you back. In the new game, […]

We played our first microscope session and I have to say Ping is absolutely right: it was a ton of fun. A lot more fun than I expected. I thought we’d just try it for a while and then talk about what needed changing but instead we dived in and played for 8 hours straight. […]

We playtested the alpha draft of Microscope this weekend, and it was a resounding success! Ben no doubt has tweaks to make, things to clarify, and we playtesters need to give more feedback and of course it needs a lot more playtesting, but this version was a great start. Did I mention it was a […]

The DAUNTLESS flies again! This was literally a “just finishing breakfast, sitting around in our pajamas, saying hey we could play a quick game of InSpace” kind of deal. As usual in less than two hours we had crafted an entire gripping story arc out of nothing and then sat back and admired the game’s […]

(continued from part 1, of course) We’re told that the premise of the scenario is that our two teams have boarded an abandoned freighter and are vying to gain control. The goal is simple: wipe out the other team and you win. Theoretically this is only the first scenario and we may play through others […]

I’ve said it before: bad games are often more educational than successful games, and if that’s the case it stands to reason that catastrophic failures can be downright enlightening. Games like the Battle of Chuck E. Cheese. I wasn’t the GM this time just a player, and not even a regular player, just a one-time […]

Spoiler alert: Like the other DAUNTLESS games, mission three was a lot of fun. Unlike the other missions the story didn’t really wrap up in one neat package. Why not? We accidentally skipped the mid-game pow-wow. Seriously: do not underestimate the power of the pow-wow. Once again Jem takes the GM helm and Ping and […]

This was the second InSpectres tale from the gentlemen of the Royale Arms. The first being The Case of the Peripatetic Pharaoh. It was also the first InSpectres game I had ever GMed since so far I’ve been a happy player in the InSpectres in Spaaaace! games. In addition to the game summary, I discuss […]

Our first InSpectres in Spaaaace! game turned out to be a great way to do cerebral “mysteries of the universe” adventures. But is InSpectres really a winner for this kind of game or did we just luck out? Science demands more data points! Recognizing that GMing is easy street, Jem steps up to the plate […]