We recently had a cool mini-tournament with six people in Paul’s garage. It was a fun day of gaming. We took lots of pictures– enjoy!
Lots and lots of pictures, so it goes below the fold.
We recently had a cool mini-tournament with six people in Paul’s garage. It was a fun day of gaming. We took lots of pictures– enjoy!
Lots and lots of pictures, so it goes below the fold.
What is everyone’s current status? I know that Kev has added another work-like time suck to his schedule, and that Ben would like to spend time with his love. Do we need to look at moving the game to a different day, or officially cut back to every other week or more infrequently?
Does your schedule get better at the end of summer, or some later time– or is everyone’s schedule so erratic that it would be better not to plan on people showing up consistently?
Should we switch to board gaming for a while if roleplaying meetings just aren’t working? Or do we just need to try a different roleplaying game– the games we currently have don’t include everyone or scratch the right itches?
Lots of questions. Everyone, please write back or comment– let’s talk about what we can do and what we want to do.
Jennifer is away practicing her Italian for the month– I’ll join her for a couple of weekends in the middle. Meanwhile, what do you want to do on Friday nights, if anything? Board gaming on Friday was a lot of fun– does that appeal to you. Let everyone know what you’re thinking and we’ll arrange for more fun. (Heck, this upcoming week we may press Mike into bringing the new Axis and Allies. It’d be interesting to see where it has changed.)
It looks like Dad should be back in town this upcoming Friday, which is also Jennifer’s last weekend in country until August. Can you make it? Please let us know if you’ll have any problems.
Kev, this weekend should be a Christian weekend– Ben had Emily last weekend. (Though if you’d confirm, I’d appreciate it Ben.)
Would everyone prefer to handle game updates via Facebook or Email? Please let me know what service you check regularly, if any.
Quick overview: Three of us played the Attack! scenario from Cry Havock 2. Mark played 3000 points of Therians against me and Bryan, who each fielded 1500 points. My army was UNA, while Bryan played Red Blok. The struggle was mighty, but in the end the Therians were victorious.
A note on setup: We ran each side with two commanders, so the Red Blok and UNA each had a commander and the Therians had two separate platoons, each with a commander. Initiative was strictly alternating; for example, a Therian authority test victory might lead to Therian A – Red Blok – Therian B – UNA. Having two separate commanders for each force led to a lot of LP floating around.
Warning: I took notes along the way and took a lot of pictures. The post is below the fold because of its length.
Dad, Jen, and I are traveling for a birthday/graduation party this upcoming weekend (though Dad may leave for it much earlier), so we’re looking forward to Serenity’s next session on Friday, June 19th.
Otherwise, I’m looking forward to continuing the Aviary’s saga on the 19th!
Update: Kev will be out of town celebrating his father’s birthday and Father’s Day. We’re planning on continuing the session… it sounds like he’ll be busy in the hold of the ship keeping everything together.
Rob Rendell explains the breakthrough that made stunts “click” for him, in response to a general question on the mailing list about Stunts and Aspects.
Since you mention stunts, I assume you’re playing Spirit of the Century?
Aspects are explained extensively in the SotC rules in their own chapter (starting on page 33). I’m pretty sure I can’t do a better job of explaining them than the text of that chapter.
Stunts took me a while to come around to really understanding. Superficially, they grant all sorts of random “always-on” abilities that your character enjoys, and are detailed in their own chapter in the SotC rules starting on page 115.
When I first read SotC, stunts felt at odds to the Fate 2.0 way of doing things to me. Since then, however, various things I’ve read[1] have finally gotten the idea through my thick skull of what Stunts are: they’re cool things that anyone with appropriate aspects could reasonably do by spending a Fate Point, locked down to allow whoever has that stunt to do that cool thing over and over as a shtick *without* having to spend a Fate Point. You’re sacrificing versatility for repeatability.
The example that really drove the point home for me was the racial aspects in Spirit of Swords and Sorcery: the only mechanical effect of being a Dragon is a single racial aspect, “Dragon”. To do dragon-like things, you can spend a Fate Point to invoke the aspect to fly, or breath fire, or shape-shift into human form, or various other dragon-y things. This worked for me as a racial aspect: it was *possible* for you to do these cool things that a regular human character couldn’t, but the requirement to spend a Fate Point each time you wanted to do one of those things meant that it was limited in its frequency.
And then I got to the stunts for Dragons, and there was a stunt that mean that you could fly without spending a FP, one which allowed you to breathe fire without spending a FP, one for shape-shifting with the FP. Suddenly, I grokked what all the stunts in SotC were about: as I said above, cool things that your character probably *could* do by spending a FP, but because you want it to be one of the defining shticks of your character, you spend one of your stunts to be able to do it over and over without the FP.
Hope that helped.
[1] Things that I read which helped me come to my understanding of stunts: discussions on this list, reading Rob Donoghue’s “Going Stuntless” article and the conversion “Spirit of Swords and Sorcery” (both of which are in the Files section of the yahoo group) and discussions of how buying Stunts reduces your refresh (the number of Fate Points you start the session with) in the Dresden Files RPG.
Jennifer and I are getting away for the weekend to celebrate her birthday. Kev’s also busy on Friday the 29th. It looks like the next session will be Friday, June 5th. Let’s make it Serenity, since it’s just getting off the ground and we’ve had trouble with the last few sessions.
Can everyone make it on Friday the 5th?
Saga Character Sheet (pdf), Random dungeon maker review
4e:
Free 4e character manager, 4e power organization tip, Good GMing advice for beginning players and GMs
Free 4e trial reviewed and direct link.
4 commonly missed 4e rules
4e Skill challenges revisited, More card substitutions
Candids as 3.5 race
RMap web builder
Game to try: Passage
Random Average Wiki home
PTA: Have games, will travel talks about their season of PTA
Doyce tries PTA again… Home, Pitch Session, and Pilot Episode.
Mouseguard: Doyce, MJ Harnish and Martin
Burning Wheel Resources
Larping with kids
Character background development with: Cards and online
http://culturesofplay.com/
http://tsuyoshikentsu.wordpress.com/
Minis:
AT-43:
Operation Damocles Errata–
Phase 1:
• Mission 1: The asterisk (*) on the secondary objectives means that the defender cannot access these benefits.
• Mission 4: The area shaded in blue is the defender’s deployment zone. The defender also has an access zone on the lower edge of the map.
Phase 2:
• Mission 4: The node must be controlled to be able to influence the nanodisturbance.
AT-43 cards
Haywire’s Hobbies: Modding AT-43 figures
Star Ranger’s Full Thrust page
Other Games:
Board Game Quick Reference Sheets (Awesome!)
Zombie Cinema sounds like a very interesting game.
Roll through the Ages: The Bronze Age (2009) Playtest Review by Shannon Appelcline (5/5): A well-designed and fun dice game that gives you all the enjoyment of building a Civilization to last the ages in 45 minutes or less.
Fun little (free) dueling game
Small World (5/5 by Shannon).A terrific fantasy war game that tracks the rise and fall of civilizations and plays in just 90 minutes.
Food:
An easy polenta meal
Cooking w/ dried beans
Work/Misc:
ASCE journal RSS feeds
James Tyner’s poetry
Free SF (claimed as scientifically accurate)
An interesting traffic phenomenon & A tale of two exurbs
Credit crisis explained (11 min video)
Hilzoy’s video
Easy wine guide (for Dad)
Poor non-gnomes
Comic to Investigate
Honest and mostly my questions too
Kiva/Microloans