What's going on with you?

[Zerlina]

Just wondering what everyone's doing... like... what do you do now? Married? Kids? Working a cool job? Still making games? I dunno, I miss you guys. Fill us in!

[Archem]

I got into D&D (5e, specifically) about a year-and-a-half ago, and it's kind of dominating my life. Found a nice, stable group of friends (seven of us total) that play once a week, and it's been a good time. I'm planning to DM our next campaign, but we just recently started a long game (goes from level 1 all the way to 18-20), so I have a lot of time (like, a year minimum) to prepare a custom module. I still feel like I won't have enough time to get the whole thing done before then, but I can always reel in the scope if it's getting too close to the wire.

Other than that, not much has changed. I'm still constantly here, but I've kind of slipped into lurk mode. Don't think for a second that I'm not still omnipresent.

[Prpl_Mage]

Got a kid and doing alright with life. Not much game making anymore but recently took up a Warhammer 40k obsession. We still have some chain games going on but that's about it. Check 'em out here! https://charas-project.itch.io/

[Fisherson]

Zerl! There's a name I haven't seen in ages!  Totally against Marriage and kids. Can't afford the latter and the earlier just seems like a scam to me. I mean I get it works for some but it just...doesn't for me. Currently I'm in a D/s relationship with a gal and happy with my dating life for the first time in ages though! ^_^ Also taking care of my family as best I can. Gone from being the youngest hadicapped one everyone worries about to the one who does most of the worrying and such. Gaming wise I mostly do stuff in MV but I still love to use 2003 and am currently working the 3rd chapter of the chain game. XD What about you? Are you still making movies?

[Momeka]

Same old, I guess. Still running a game company together with a friends. I'm amazed we somehow managed to make a living of it for 7 - 8 years now. We received a grant to port our vr game Puppet Fever to the new Oculus quest. In fact it was released last week. So now we're back to do doing small commission work over the summer :/

Oh yeah, and as Archem I'm also in a pretty stable rpg group. It's way fun and we somehow managed to stick together for a couple of years of weekly plays. Been going back forth between game systems though. Mostly playing Swedish ones but now we're playing through Curse of Strahd (Dnd 5e) and after that we're jumping into the new Baldurs Gate one.

In between all that I sometimes make games on my spare time: https://goblin-grotto.itch.io/

[Moosetroop11]

Hey Zerlina : )

I'm still in the same job I've been in for years doing software testing, I'm in a band called The Interesting Times Gang (we're on spotify) so I spend some of my time gigging (last gig was last saturday at ipswich pride), I'm in a great relationship at the moment with a girl named Jess, I'm also in an RP group but we're running TORG and we're hoping to end it soon so we can devote some time to warhammer, maybe that age of sigmar version of necromunda.

[Fisherson]

Hey Zerlina : )

I'm still in the same job I've been in for years doing software testing, I'm in a band called The Interesting Times Gang (we're on spotify) so I spend some of my time gigging (last gig was last saturday at ipswich pride),

So that's why you're so good with music now! =D

[Prpl_Mage]

Oh yeah, and as Archem I'm also in a pretty stable rpg group. It's way fun and we somehow managed to stick together for a couple of years of weekly plays. Been going back forth between game systems though. Mostly playing Swedish ones but now we're playing through Curse of Strahd (Dnd 5e) and after that we're jumping into the new Baldurs Gate one.

Can you guys recommend any RPG games? Me and some friends have thought about it but it's a surprisingly large market for these things. We had our eyes on Anima Shadow of Omega some years back but it seems to be canceled. And also Varselklotet which is a Swedish creation as well (At least I think so).

so we can devote some time to warhammer, maybe that age of sigmar version of necromunda.

Warhammer Underworld? Isn't that more like AoS Kill Team? Not an expert on AoS stuff, all caught up in 40k.

So that's why you're so good with music now! =D

I kinda remember him always being good at it, gonna do some digging...

[Archem]

The only tabletop RPG I play is D&D, and outside of one occasion where I played Pathfinder, it's all been 5th edition. I wouldn't consider myself well-versed in tabletop gaming. That said, I really enjoy my time with this game, and I'm interested in possibly trying out Call of Cthulhu.

[Momeka]

Here's the two I enjoyed the most:

Mutant: År Noll
This is a Post Apocalypse one. The world have ended and you're part of a group of survivors all mutated humans who have established a small settlement. This one has a small story to playthrough and uncover as you go but it's mostly about the settlement and the emergent stories that comes up around it while playing.
At the start of the game the players and game master sit down and designs the settlement. Is it in a system caves, an old train station, or the wreck of an old cruise ship etc. Then they design the factions and who their leaders are. After that the players makes their characters and their connection to the various factions.
The Game Master will from time to time pull "Threat Cards" that describes a threat the settlement is currently facing, they could be like "Food Shortage", "A giant robot is roaming the hunting grounds", or "A cult has emerged within the settlement" etc. And the players will have to figure out how to deal with it.
At the start of the game session the players have to decide what current project to start in the settlement. This is usually in the form of construction a new building but could also be like establishing a hunting party or reverting to cannibalism. Then depending on the project it increases various score on the settlement. Think it's like defensive, people, and food or something like that. Then in game the players can go and help out setting up the project by making skill check and justify how that skill could help the project etc.

There's also expansions to play as Robots, Mutated Animals, and regular Humans. They also come with bigger campaign adventures as well. But I haven't tried them. I would recommend just starting out vanilla as the expansion adds new mechanics for races and stuff so less things to keep track of in the beginning.

It's one of my favorite games I played. Might not be the best system for a fist time Game Master as there is a lot of improvising about the going ons in the settlement and threat cards compared to following a pre-written adventure.

There's also an English edition just called Mutant: Year zero. (Also a computer game, it's kinda fun)


Symbaroum
This is a pretty standard fantasy one. One of the games we played the longest. It got some pretty interesting systems for building and leveling up your character. It doesn't really have classes but you instead build your character by picking skills. Each skill got three levels to them: novice, journeyman, master. Each step adding more and more things you can do.

Like the Leader skill:
Novice - Cast spell with your charisma instead of willpower
Journeyman - Give one friend +1d4 to hit a specific monster for a turn
Master - Give an inspiring speech allowing your friends to make checks with your charisma instead.

So by combining a bunch of skills you end up building your own class instead of just picking a preset and getting predetermined abilities.

On flaw though is the we ended up way overpowered. Not sure if the Game Master f'ed up and just gave us experience points too often or if the game is just really unbalanced. We ended up killing the "final boss" of the adventure in half a round. But other than that aspect I really enjoyed the game. The group played through two adventure books in it, but I joined the group during the second one. There is also plenty of content to play, I think a 4th adventure was just released with more planned.


Some stuff we played that I didn't like that much:

Eon
Another fantasy one. They go out of their way to try to feel "realistic". But I think it results in a clunky and over complicated system, specially battles. But the thing I hate the most is the character creation system. It's like designed to not have any predetermined characters in mind. You roll a bunch on random tables to get backgrounds and events for your character and then you have to design out from that. The result can be completely messed up.
My character ended up as a complete mental nutcase. He had lost his eye, was a member in a cult, had been in a cheating scandal, was the laughing stock of the city, and for some reason had an aura that repels undead. The game got three stats to see how much trauma your character has suffered and I maxed out two of them in the creation step, had I suffered anymore in the game in one of those two my character would more or less just die.
Overall I just felt it was slow and kinda frustrating. But the group was kinda split on it, half of them liked it and the other half not so much.

Coriolis
Scifi one. The thing I disliked most about this one is the world. It's based on middle eastern culture, which is kinda cool. But it resulted on we having to stop in middle of the game to look up what stuff was. Cause in the book was really bad at explaining what stuff actually was. It's just a middle eastern name of the thing with no real explanation of what it was so we ended up having to google a bunch of stuff. Another big disjointed was that we were running a homebrewed adventure and the Game Master had a hard time to make the game feel middle eastern.
The systems for the characters felt kinda lackluster as well, there is no like abilities or magic (with a few rare exceptions). It's just increment small numbers, like I want to be a tiny bit better at shooting this level, or I want to be a tiny bit better at persuasion.
What I did like about it is that the game is basically Firefly. At the start the group pick a group concept. Like we want to be soldiers, traders, smugglers, or a traveling space circus, etc. Each concept has several roles (pretty much classes) that the players picks. Then you get a spaceship you get to design and choose you roles in the ship (captain, engineer, gunner, etc.). Each role gives you some specific things you can do during a space battle.
Then the base game is basically about taking a bunch of jobs and paying of a debt on your ship.

When we played there was no adventure for it but I think there is one released now.

Svavelvinter
Another fantasy one. Based on some campaign for old school dnd. Too be honest I don't remember much about it, we played it for a real short 3 season adventure. I didn't mind the game systems they we're pretty decent, but we played with simplified rules. But man, the adventure we played was pretty boring. It was a mystery one but we sucked so bad at figuring out and just ended up roaming around completely lost on what to do. We all had kinda built combat oriented characters as well, but turned out there was hardly any combat in the adventure. All of this could have been avoided by having a set up talk with the GM though and going through the important parts of the adventure. Like build social characters. I have no clue why we didn't do that.
Think it could be a fun system with a better adventure to play though.



But yeah, if I was to recommend one system it would be Dnd 5e. It's kinda cookie cutter and bunch of people dislike it just because of that. But the rules and system is solid. It's easy to modify and house rule if you want to change stuff or to give a character some unique skill to set them apart. There's plenty of online resources and large community for it if you need to look something up. A lot of ready made adventures to play be it official, homebrews, long, or short.
It's also way fun.


Also some general tips when starting a new adventure. Have a "meeting zero", go through what everyone wants to play, decide on a group concept. Like we want to play a bunch of escaped prisoners, or we want to be a band of monster hunters. And work out some backstory and talk about what characters everyone wants to play. There is nothing worse then trying to force all the player characters together at the first meeting and figure out why they should work together. This just bypass all that and gives everyone a reason to be there together.

Another thing we do on meeting zero is writing mini-stories about the group. Like everyone take a piece of paper and start writing a story for 5 min. When the time is up everyone pass their paper to the right and continue on the story they got. Once everyone is done we read the stories a loud. It's a nice way to give the group some nice little backstories and adventures they've been on before the game started. And everyone got a shared experience they can reference back to when the game started. Like "We are the Fearsome Five the slayer of Gnib-Gnobb the gnoll king" or "Remember that time you stole a magic gem from a merchant" etc. It gives the group and characters some personalities to work with from the get go.

[Archem]

Another thing we do on meeting zero is writing mini-stories about the group. Like everyone take a piece of paper and start writing a story for 5 min. When the time is up everyone pass their paper to the right and continue on the story they got. Once everyone is done we read the stories a loud. It's a nice way to give the group some nice little backstories and adventures they've been on before the game started. And everyone got a shared experience they can reference back to when the game started. Like "We are the Fearsome Five the slayer of Gnib-Gnobb the gnoll king" or "Remember that time you stole a magic gem from a merchant" etc. It gives the group and characters some personalities to work with from the get go.

That sounds like a really cool idea. Our Game Zeros have largely been people showing up with characters and figuring out how to tweak them to work together, but ultimately it's just a collection of weirdos who happen to share a similar goal. I did have a game where everyone was summoned by a shadow organization because they had some skills needed to complete a set task, but I deviated by being a rogue who accidentally killed the paladin who had originally been summoned, and went in his place. Being an in-over-their-head character was a lot of fun, and it got really tense whenever the organization's leader saw me and immediately dragged me into a private room to start threatening me and questioning how I found out about this whole thing. The fun part is that the whole party thought I was special or that I knew the guy, but in reality, I was effectively a slave with death hanging over my head the whole time. Really fun, and it was a surprisingly emotional moment when I opened up to one of the other PCs. It was a fairly short campaign, and I would love the guy who DMed to continue with that story and party.

[Prpl_Mage]

So I tried to pitch DnD with my group but they all started talking about playing Gloomhaven instead. Which is not even the same thing to begin with...
Anyway, I found some Mutant År Noll stuff second hand and decided to get it. Not giving up yet, hopefully it won't prove too difficult to get them together and get into this and try it out.'

Or maybe I just need to find a new group.

[Archem]

I'm sorry to hear that your group isn't going for a game you want to try out. Keep at it, though! If the group is willing to go for it with a little persistence, then you may all have a good time. And if it's a recurring issue, then finding a new group may be an option. I, too, am looking into Mutant (Red made it sound really fun).

[Benema]

I'm in rehab for drugs. Lol

[Fisherson]

I'm in rehab for drugs. Lol

=D You aren't dying of cancer are you Gemini? When I last heard from you that was the last post you made.