Monday, December 29, 2014

2015 Needs More Cow Bell...er, Cthulhu

As one of my new year's resolutions I plan to spend a lot more time playing the other non-D&D games I neglect too much. Part of the reason is because I really want to play them (durh) and the other is because I am finally admitting that I am pretty burned out on D&D in general...and if it weren't for 5th edition I might be moving away from it all together. Not even poor 13th Age can fully stave off my sense of ennui toward the D&D-genre right now; I just need a break....or just a change of pace periodically. Yes, it is possible to get sick of chocolate if you eat too much of it for too long!

Luckily, I have the following staggeringly awesome games to focus on for 2015, and I plan to run campaigns and one-shots for each this year:


Goal: to run at least 1 BRP and/or CoC game each month between D&D sessions. 

Goal: to run a short 1-3 session mini campaign for both Void Core and Astounding Adventures; I may waffle and use Cthulhu Rising/Jovian Nightmares instead of Void, though....we'll see.


Goal: to revisit my world of Pergerron with Magic World and to run at least one session of Blood Tide to see if the group has enough interest.


Goal: to run another 4-8 session Savage Worlds Sci Fi campaign in the Savage Space universe and to run at least one of the four published modules for Interface Zero 2. 0 that I picked up (and do more if my players like it) 




Mutant Year Zero is freaking me out with how cool it is. My local group isn't as gung-ho about post-apocalypse as I am, but if I have my way we'll run at least one full length campaign in this system sometime in 2015.


Goal: see if I can actually get this thing read and find inspiration to run it.



For 2014 I managed to run Dungeons & Dragons 5E weekly from its date of release, as well as wrap up ongoing Pathfinder campaigns. I got a lot of 13th Age in with three distinct campaigns, and I also managed to get a good Magic World campaign in, as well as a lengthy Savage World Sci-Fi campaign. So all told not too shabby. Will I be able to run  as many--or more!--than I did last year? Well.....that's the goal.... and there's at least one or two not on the list I'd like to hit too, but don't want to over-commit to (i.e. Fantasy Hero Sixth Edition, the mythical Deluxe T&T if it comes out in 2015, and The Strange RPG).

As always, any of the product of this gaming addiction shall be liberally sprinkled throughout this blog!

7 comments:

  1. While I understand your feelings towards everything D&D-ish (I love the OSR movement and its wacky themes), and while I deem the BRP system much superior to the D&D rules system, I have found satisfaction with the Monsters & Magic system: on the surface it looks D&D-ish but it's actually more like a narrative rpg in actual play. You should give it a try.

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    1. I actually have Monsters & Magic, but haven't really done anything with it....I'll dig it out and take a look again. As I recall it looked interesting but served as a sort of "rules system overlay" for OSR games.

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    2. It's a fully-fledged game, it's not an overlay. You should try and create a party of characters and run them through an old D&D adventure. You'll realise how different the game is in actual 'gameplay' even though it shares the same vocabulary with the D&D-esque games.

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    3. I am intrigued! I'm dragging my PDF around to read up on M&M now.

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    4. Okay, just to make sure there isn't a newer edition out there, but the Monsters & Magic I have is definitely an "overlay" game. It's only got a few levels of content, and specifically states you need to pick your favorite OSR system and use it for additional spells, classes and monsters.

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    5. OK, it does need other OSR books for monsters and spells, but the system itself is standalone.
      If you use it with an old published adventure (which I understand was Sarah's idea in the 1st place) then all the monster descriptions are already there, and then honestly only the spell descriptions are missing.
      I have been running a M&M campaign game for about 1 year and a half, and it certainly feels like its own game.

      And if you use Ebon Gryphon Games' M&M supplements (http://ebongryphon.com/main/), then the game really becomes independent, because you have a bestiary and a spellbook.

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    6. Ebon Gryphon looks like the resource I need....also, I noticed it looks like mordiphius took M&M up a published since I purchased it from Mindjammer a while ago.

      There's a lot of neat ideas in this book, need to present it to my group.

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