Gaming

I finished HL: Alyx

2020-06-23

I finished Half-life: Alyx, a VR game, over the weekend. My mind was blown, it was an amazing experience (steam says I played 11 hours, but I think it was closer to 15). I regret not playing through Episodes 1 and 2 before playing this, I had replayed the original Half-life and Half-life 2. I feel like I would have enjoyed having the knuckles controllers, the game was definitely designed for them.…

Alyx

2020-03-23

I’m pretty excited for post-work VR today. Half-life Alyx is released today. While I haven’t sprung for the latest VR tech (yet) I’m pretty sure this is going to be a hell of an experience. I’m a little sad I don’t have the knuckles controllers as I’m sure that will add another level of excitement. Maybe I’ll sneak in a peek over lunchtime.

Game Over

2020-03-22

Most board games don’t take three years to finish, but I knew I was signing up for a long haul with Kingdom Death: Monster game when I agreed to start a campaign with my friends in Chicago. …

When does an evil GM become truly evil?

2017-03-16

As a GM, its basically my job to be evil. Not in the traditional sense, but one of the tasks assigned to me is to throw some peril and hardship at my players. Step on their characters hopes and dreams at least a little. Make their stories fraught with bad guys and challenges. It’s my job to make sure that victory doesn’t come free and that at the end of the game they feel like they accomplished something.…

Intrigue vs Annoyingly Vague GM

2017-03-06

I’m a fan of intrigue in my games. It’s been a while since I’ve run any kind of standard adventure romp where there are clear cut villains and goals. Hopefully this is not to my players detriment. What I’d like to spend a little bit if time considering is where the line is when mystery stops being fun and is just an annoying lack of information. I’m currently running the first case of my Dresden Files game, The Day of Bad Dreams .…

Losing Players

2017-03-01

When you have a group that’s been playing for a long time, it’s hard to lose a player. I’ve mostly been running our Friday nights over the last 6 years and during that time we’ve had a minimum of player loss. After our first major campaign we ended up losing one of our players. There was some real life issues and I think there might have been some lingering hard feelings between two of the players.…

Kingdom Death: Monster

2016-12-02

I heard about Kingdom Death: Monster (KD:M) back during the original Kickstarter. It was notable for it’s ambition of creating a long form and very high quality game. It was far too pricy to invest in, especially given the lofty goals. Since it’s successful original Kickstarter it has gotten good reviews and has been spoken of as a fantastic experience, providing organic storytelling in the way the game plays. The core game campaign covers thirty lantern years, and each year takes around one to three hours to complete, meaning that a KD:M campaign is a big undertaking requiring many play sessions.…

Writing for different types of games

2016-12-01

After a year of running a Dungeon World D&D themed game, I find myself with the exciting opportunity of running two completely different games. I’m running both a Shadowrun (SR) game and a Dresden Files game (DFRGP). These systems are incredibly different, and prepping for them seems to require a completely different set of skills. I love that cyberware addiction is a thing in 5e SR is a formulaic game, contacts call shadowrunners, shadowrunners meet Johnson, shadowrunners go into the mission with need-to-know only, shadowrunners get into trouble because of what they didn’t know, shadowrunners get out alive (barely) and yell at Johnson for not telling them everything, Johnson tries to not pay up.…

It's a Kind of Street Magic

2016-10-14

Shadowrun (SR) has always been a terribly dark and sexy setting for me. It’s also been incredibly intimidating, so I’m glad to be in a place where I’m trying to tackle that particular demon. My Friday night is taking a break from our Twelve Signs campaign. I’ve been running Twelve Signs for nearly 5 years now, so it’s a nice time for a break. We plan to come back to it next year sometime.…

The Day of Bad Dreams

2016-10-07

FATE! I get to play FATE! I get to run a Dresden Files game! I’m so exciting! FATE character creation is so much fun for me, and Dresden Files has a whole City Creation section. We’re going to set this in New Orleans, which I’ve been itching to set a game in. This will be a replacement for our Sunday game. We were playing Numenera previously, I’m a fan. I’ll be hoping to get back to it before long.…