Session Roundup #21

Sleepy Rabbit is sleepy. But I want to talk about the various games I've played over the past couple weeks before I run my game tomorrow. So, without further fuckery:

Dust to Dust-- yep, it's started; just out, and just wonderful. Some of the things I've complained about in other LARPs came home to roost, and that was enlightening-- specifically about time management. Which I should have known, having NPCd as much as I have, but that's all right. Got a lot of good mysteries out in play, and that's what matters. Looking forward to the next one.

I was also thinking of... so, there's games which are PVP, and games which are co-op. I am a big fan of games where the world is so Out to Murder You, that while you have as many personal and social conflicts as you like, you'd better get on with the people you live near when the shit goes down. The Arkaham Horror kind of game. And I sort of feel like that's where we are. I mean... we even have a Curiosity Shop! :D

Technoir-- I shall refer you to System Sans Setting's posts on the subject, but stop here to mention that I had a blast with this system. I got to play a completely riced out cyborg with an attack drone, who picked exactly the right stuff-- relative to a cyberware supplier, filled with odd and experemental cybernetics-- to be roped into one of the main and creepy plots, about my cousin's sister who was so borged out she was no longer even a little human. It felt deep, rich, and completely organic. Would play again. Can I play again now?

Mage: The Awakening-- Another classic session, mostly dealing with winding up the previous plotline, and getting us dealing with the consequences of having, um... disappeared off the effing map for a couple weeks. The main achievement of the session was getting the gems filled with Native American sprits into a museum's collection, thanks to the smoovness of Sequelah, and then talking to various mages about the Orders what exist, and which ones we should join. In addition to telling people more stuff about the horrible alternate reality of the Red Word. Volchik? Seriously leaning Mysterium. Mostly because while his natural inclination is Silver Ladder, everyone he's met of them, in his opinion, are obnoxious dickbags.

Nevermind what people think of him, of course.

Arcana Evolved-- There was an Arcana Evolved session run during D*Con, which has become pretty much a tradition at this point. It involved a battle against a Harrid (magic eating bastard) and his burrowing hounds and his bandit buddies, which meant that, once again, the most damage I did was giving Ghost Weapon to my friends. Though I did get off a particularly effective Gaze of Terror. But yeah... critters that _heal_ when I hit them with magic? Thumbs down. Not that shutting down the magister is a bad idea, really, and I've got enough spells that I've got a lot of indirect tricks (I mean, the Witch's best bet? Ice under the feet of the bad guys. Till the bad guy absorbs the magical ice and heals. ><) to use to be not entirely lame. This, by the way, is the fault of 3.x, which has straight up magical resistance as a thing. And I can't blame them-- energy type resist is way to easy to get around. But this is part of why I think no-fail damage, as spells are, mostly, is a not-so-great idea.

Also! Feeder Lady redeemed herself somewhat by letting us know that we could all take the ECL template: Runechild if we wanted. So I bought Child of Magic, which gave me, for free, a couple of spells that I'd totally be using all the time anyway, plus innate Magical Resistance, in addition to moar save bonuses. Suck it, monkeys!

Still gotta pick what my Rune actually says. Hm.

Legion-- system created by a couple of buddies that we playtested at D*Con. Good stuff, though the numbers run high. I was playing ehat amounted to a second level character, and felt like I couldn't fail near anything-- I just wasn't going to always critically succeed. That said, the penalties for some of the more stupid stuff I was doing-- using telekenisis to stop the spin of a plane with no engines-- were not crappy, and I could have conceivably killed myself. Also, fitting in all the characters and their stuff is not always simple. But Mr. M is a really good GM, and I had a blast. I mean, I'm a sucker for anything with a psionic skill.

Anyway, the game itself is good, old fashioned space marine sci-fi, set up for battle mechs (though we didn't get to play those), and psychic inquisitors, and awesome. Like I said, needs some numbers tweaking, but Recommended.

Gears of War, the Board Game-- yet another Fantasy Flight deal, this one takes the best things from Battlestar Galactica and makes them fit a shooter, namely the action cards. In GoW, these also represent health, and can be sacrificed based on card symbols to perform between turn actions, like following a moving teammate, guarding (attacking before the Locusts do), raising your defense by +2 dice, and something else that I never used because my character, Agustus Cole, could use every card to guard, and could guard on the same turn as other people. Which is the BEST THING EVER, and leads to awesome moments like, "OHSHIT this thing is going to eat my face!" BLAMMO! "Ah, nevermind, bitches."

The ammo mechanics are pretty cool, and chainsaws win. Would like to play a non-beginner game in future, but glad we did that board first. Anyway, I really love Fantasy Flight's full co-op board games. A solid win.

I'm probably forgetting stuff, but that's all on the top of my list right now. My DS is fixed (huzzah!), so I've been playing some oldies like Platinum Sudoku, Meteos, and Metroid Prime Pinball. Am I going to get the Phoenix Wright/Professor Layton crossover game when it comes out?

Oh yes, yes I am.

Session Roundup #17

So, I effed up two weeks of Roundup, but there wasn't really all that much till last night: Mansions of Madness, Angry Birds, Fallout: New Vegas, and last night's Mage: The Awakening.

Mansions of Madness: Shieldhaven already did a thorough analysis here, but yeah, it's awesome. I played the Nun, which is pretty much the best choice in Arkham Asylum. And a good one here too, though it kind of hoses your buddies-- since shenanigans are more expensive to play on you, the Storyteller hoses them more often. I'm curious to try with some of the other characters, now that I know something about the game.

The oddest thing is that how our lives would have been SO MUCH HARDER if we'd gone for all of the clues. Although everyone lost, it would have been more climactic, if harder, if we had remembered to go for the next proper target. Ah well. Booze and Lovecraft...

...is just fine, actually.

Angry Birds: Effing addictive iphone games. I have nothing to say about this, but it's fun. Yes. Fun. Shut up.

Fallout: New Vegas: So, Made it to the Strip. So far, aligning with Mr. House, though that may change. You know what I love? How I'm Neutral (coz of stealing), but there's so many Good Guy options which involve coming to a peaceful solution, where no one dies. This makes me so happy. I like. Anyway, I'm probably going to go do a bunch of side-quests before I do any more of the main quest, except that I don't want to blow my free pass with the Caesar's Legion guys, while I have it.

Mage: The Awakening: Super fun session last night, involving a forest of Forgotten Ghosts and Spirits, where we went to rescue some Sentinels that had gotten... ah, lured from the path. However, our Moros and our Thyrsus clued us into the beings trying to do the same to us, and we went to the Guardians of the Forest, who challenged one of our warriors to a fisticuffs battle, with the rest of us offering support. We could cast spells on our guy, or the terrain (including the ghost critters in the area), but not on the other warrior or _his_ support. So, if it's a bareknucklething, we threw Tommy (Stands in Fire) under the bus. And then...

Well, Ghost Bees.

Ghost Bees and Ghost Wolves from me, unlucky ground from our Fate Guy, and Tommy turned plants into a Tiger.

So that was awesome.

Tomorrow night we've got an Over The Edge session, so I am looking forward to that most assiduously, and later this month, there should be the Return of My D&D game.

Session Roundup #9

No formal games this week, but Shieldhaven, Stands-in-Fire, and a couple of other friends and I went to MACE West: Cudgelcon last weekend, instead of going to the Eclipse campover. It was a lot of fun, as Haven describes here, and in addition to renewing my fondness for Magic: The Gathering, I picked up a few rulebooks.

Fiasco: looking forward to this one! The game is a rules light, GMless game played with D6es. It is intended to recreate the experience of a Cohen Brothers film. Check it out here, and I'll provide a more thorough update once we've had a chance to play it.

Savage Worlds, and Savage Worlds: Suzerain: Haven't had a chance to read these yet, but it does give me a chance to pimp the awesome Aaron Acevedo, whose art decorates the Suzerain book, and many other Savage Mojo games. Savage Worlds, incidentally, is apparently hot shit in Western NC! I was impressed.

We also played some Core 11/Besieged of Magic: The Gathering. I'm iffy on the Besieged set, mostly because I was very spoiled by the Alara block. I mean really-- thorough multi-color support, super fast deployment of creatures... omg, merfolk. It's just happy. That said, I made a pretty decent Infect deck, having played a bunch of Wither in Alara. In case you were curious Infect does the following:

Creatures with Infect deal damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters, and to players in the form of poison counters.

So Poison Counters are also a new mechanic. If a player gets 10 of them, they lose the game. Awful, right? Yeah, play a white deck with Prot. from Black and Green creatures in it, and tell me that again.

We managed to not play any Battlestar Galactica or Mansions of Madness, though they're both games I hope to pick up soon.

In the meantime, been playing all the Shadow Hearts. I love that game-- so very hilarious, and far less railroady than I remember. But doing what sidequests you can before the second disc helps with that. Speaking of which, I am very nearly to the second disc-- at 40 hours of play. Fairly straightforward play too. Huh!

The very first World Event of Dust to Dust is this weekend! After work for me!

Yes, my work is in North Carolina, and the game is in Georgia. The game starts at noon, and my work, on Sat, ends at 10 am.

Whee!