Holiday Season

The holidays of 2018 have arrived and Christmas is only a few short days away and so we will be skipping the next gaming session. In fact… about that next session – it won’t be myself that will be running it. In fact I am off the hook for a short while which is nice. No, we are not cancelling our Sunday games so let me clarify the situation.

I had a new player join us at the table for the Vampire game I am/was running every other week with D&D being on the opposite weeks (as noted on the individual game pages) and at a recent birthday party we ended up discussing the idea of me wanting a break and he offered to run a Pathfinder game. Now I am not the biggest fan of anything 3.X and the OGL/SRD rules but I have been assured that he will run a decent game and keep things in check. It also helps that we currently have a group that won’t look to break mechanics and argue rules for hours on end. So now that game is a reality and I am really excited about it since I finally get a break from running anything. At least for a short while.

He wants to get us fully established in his game and once that happens we will be going back to every other week with me doing Vampire on the opposite weeks to the Pathfinder game. Vampire is very easy for me to run, especially since I’ve done a lot of the planning well ahead of time and it’s not hard for me to spin off story ideas as the game progresses based on what happened in past games. That means I do not have any prep time over the weeks anymore. Ostensibly the original idea was for me to have prep time on D&D weeks and then have no prep time on the Vampire weeks which would allow me to either A) prep more D&D if it was needed or B) work on other projects. With zero prep time worries I can now dedicate myself to planning the rest of the D&D game AND working on other projects which at this point in time means the Final Fantasy RPG.

As to what I will playing in said Pathfinder game? A half-orc Slayer (which is a hybrid of Rogue and Ranger) based loosely on the concept of being a monster hunter/slayer similar to Geralt of the Witcher series.

So to anyone who reads this (not sure a lot of people do), have a Happy Holidays and I will return in the New Year to hopefully update the Vampire page and write up the brief bits that happened in the D&D campaign before it was put on the back burner, and yes, we WILL be getting back to it.

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Current Gaming & Projects

As we head into the holiday season of 2018 I felt the desire to update this site again. I have not felt the need to update over the last several months as I have been pretty steady in running a solid AD&D game. I had some good plans going into the game and I have recently run into a situation where I felt that I needed to break up the AD&D game a little to give myself some planning time, as well as give us as a group something different to do. As a result D&D is now only run ever other week with Vampire the Masquerade being run on the opposite weeks to D&D. I work on game stuff every Monday and Tuesday night, though sometimes I also do so on Sunday nights as well, now I will have two weeks to plan for D&D as I usually have to do very little prep for Vampire.

I currently have the D&D page completed and 100% updated to the current state of the game. I will actually endeavor to keep it updated after every game. The World of Darkness game will be updated sometime next week and it will be much easier to keep updated as I will only be covering the major city events in brief bullet points. The hope is that I will have everything situated so that I have to do minimal work in order to run both games and update this site.

Meanwhile I have been hard at work at designing my vision of the Final Fantasy RPG. I have actually come a very long way in the game’s overall design and even have the first three chapters done so far. Hopefully once I get things set up for the Vampire game next week I can start working on the Final Fantasy game again on Mondays, Tuesdays and the occasional Sunday.

Again I will bring up the fact that we are heading into the Holiday season, this means that there is a chance due to inclement weather that we will not be able to game if we get snowed in. If that happens it will give me even more time to work on the Final Fantasy game since whatever I had planned for the game we had to skip will still be waiting for our next session.

So check out the D&D game page and remember to check back every once in a while to see how the adventures of the Company of the Snow Raven is progressing, and then check the World of Darkness page after next week to get acquainted with the cast of Vegas by Night, and after that check back to see if anything major has happened in the Vampire game!

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Upcoming Plans

Again I haven’t updated as much as I want to, but I am now, so it’s something. I am hoping to keep updating it for my players so I can use it to make announcements and such. We are currently playing Vampire the Masquerade using the v20 rules. It is primarily a transitory game because I can run it with pretty much zero planning and prep.

Meanwhile I am setting something up and prepping my next game – at least somewhat. I will be revealing the next big game this Sunday to my players, after which I will post here what we will be doing. I am pretty excited about it, but it will take some time to prep, so luckily I can do that while running Vampire.

So check this page next week to find out what we will be playing next!

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Updating and plans

I’ve said in the past that I need to update this more – but unfortunately again I haven’t had the time. First I was planning a Birthright campaign, which I did start, but had to stop due to the SHEER amount of planning needed for that particular campaign because of Domain turns. The idea is start it up when I can figure out Domain turns with a couple of my players over this Summer.

I then started a Dragonlance campaign because it’s what my players voted for – and I thought I could get right into it without any sort of overall planning. I was wrong. So now I am getting back to the Star Wars campaign which we will be playing until the current Episode is done. After that we will be getting back to Shadowrun for a while. During this time I will be planning a long-term Dragonlance game that will likely see high level (15-1Smilie: 8) and hopefully getting my Final Fantasy RPG done when I have the chance to work on it.

My CURRENT plan is to add to the Star Wars bios for the new characters and then add bios for the Shadowrun, Birthright and Dragonlance campaigns within the next month as well as a what happened so far in the campaign for each. Hopefully. Then I will HOPEFULLY keep up with each game as we play them like I always planned to do.  Fingers crossed that I actually keep up with this blog for once.

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Moving Along

It’s official, I’m horrible at keeping this updated or even keeping general game information on here. It takes time to do these things and when I’m not working on planning my weekly games, I’m working on my Final Fantasy RPG or the Altered Realities RPG system or playing video games (Final Fantasy XIV still has its hooks really deep in me).

I probably need to set aside a specific day where I input information here – after all it’s supposed to be a chronicle of my gaming in general and a place for the players to find information on the current game. While I do post stuff on our Facebook group, I feel that I should post things here as well – especially since a LOT more information can be dispensed from here.

The other thought would be to only keep current game information here for players and do a Youtube channel with my “chronicles” on it – which has potential, if I had the correct software and equipment to pull it off. Either way I have been absolutely terrible at keeping all of my gaming information in one place and up to date. Hell I’ve been running a Changeling AND a Mage game concurrently in the same city and have yet to jot down one single thing about it. In fact I’ve run the ENTIRE thing off-the-cuff with only some mental preparation where I decide what events will happen before each game.

The Changeling game just came to the end of the current story arc and Mage will follow suit within the next session or two. After that we will be playing Birthright and I know keeping information on the campaign here and keeping it updated will be a TREMENDOUS help in keeping track of Domain turns and what the players have accomplished.

I don’t know how long I will run the campaign – probably for as long as I have ideas for it. I have an idea as to where it will end – if the PCs are successful that is, I do know this much; I would like for the PCs to be between levels 10 and 15 by the time it ends. Once that is done I will likely return to running Shadowrun since I never got to run that to the conclusion I wanted to get to nor did we really get settled into it long enough to really get to know the rules well enough to have a smooth session, something I wanted us to be able to do.

Anyway I think I’m just rambling at this point, right now I have nothing to post, but I do still need to get the info from the Eldritch Empires campaign pasted onto a document so I can clear it for Birthright info. Here’s to hoping I can get enough self-discipline and motivation to keep things rolling on this page for once. Oh and I WILL eventually get current info for Star Wars, Changeling and Mage up since all three of those games are continuous (in other words I run singular story arcs for them and then shelve them – the characters remain the same unless they meet an untimely end).

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New Year, New Updates

So 2016 has been a productive year for gaming to a decent degree. We got the Rise of Nexara campaign finished and in the books. As a result I will eventually be copy/pasting the info here into a separate document while adding the synopsis of the events of the last portion of the campaign. It ended on a high note with the PCs not only saving their world from a realm of undeath that was trying to subsume the world, but cleansed a goddess as well. The next time there is current info on the D&D page will be when I get around to starting the Birthright campaign that I’ve been wanting to run.

We also started the second episode of our Star Wars game, but due to weather and holidays we were only able to get one mission completed before everything came to a stand-still for over a month now. As a result I will be shelving the campaign for the time being and move on to something new and hopefully exciting for my players (I know i’m excited about it) – Shadowrun.

Next week we are likely to play some board games and discuss the setting and its unique history. The week after I am hoping to get character creation done. It is likely to take an entire session due to how equipment heavy the game is, and I know that equipment heavy games tend to have very long character creation sessions. Plus the game is based on building a character with points, another indicator that it could take a while.

This is all, of course, weather permitting. It’s been a bitter winter for us, and it seems to be unrelenting in its desire to dump foot upon foot of snow and ice on us. Either way once characters are made, I will post bios with basic information. Like Star Wars, these bios are likely to grow over time as the characters evolve.

I don’t know how long I will GM this inaugural playing of Shadowrun, but I hope it will be for a while at least. A couple of months at least, hopefully a bit longer. Afterwards, who knows? Maybe that Birthright campaign I mentioned above or the Changeling game we still have in a holding pattern, or maybe we will get back to Star Wars, or (and this is my hope) I’ll have a home made Final Fantasy RPG to playtest. Time will tell.

In closing I am really hoping to post more here with information for my players. If I do I will make a separate page for such information, and this main page will remain for me to talk about our gaming in general. Here’s to hoping for another great year of gaming in 2017!

 

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Updated and Linked

Okay so I finally updated the pages for the individual games and I will hopefully be better at keeping things up to date, especially since it seems my group will finally be able to access the page and use it for extra in-game info (and yes guys, if you’re telling me you can get to the page now I will post extra in-game info here).

So the Star Wars page is updated with full bios and a run down of what has happened so far. The World of Darkness page is as updated as it can be. See that page for details.

And this Sunday we will begin the second half of my AD&D Campaign – Rise of Nexara set in my Eldritch Empires homebrew setting. I am really looking forward to it and it seems like my players are as well. New bios will be up as soon as I see the new characters in action during the game. This week is going to be very busy as I continue to work on the campaign and get other things I want for the game set up.

Oh and this page is now linked directly in a pinned post on our Sunday Night Gaming Facebook group. Welcome back guys.

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And I’m Back, Maybe?

So it’s been since the Holidays since I’ve actually posted here. The blame falls squarely on… my new PS4 and Final Fantasy XIV.  Yeah I got sucked back into the game after they released a huge new content patch and there I stayed, until recently. I’m still playing, just not as much.

So we’ve gone through some changes as of late. I’m still running Star Wars, but we will be wrapping up Episode 1 here very soon. I am also running Changeling the Lost on the off-weeks. I WILL be putting up the info for BOTH games soon. I mean it this time. I really do. Reason being is that once Episode 1 of my Star Wars campaign is done, it will be going on the back burner, so I’ll need that info ready and available once I come back to the game.

Once Star Wars is done I will be running Changeling every weekend up until I have fully prepared for the next section of my AD&D campaign. That’s right! I’m finally getting back to the AD&D campaign that I put on hold last Summer.

So that’s what’s coming up in the near future. So Star Wars info will be going up sooner rather than later, and the Changeling info will follow suit.

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Holiday season and the upcoming gaming schedule

Okay so yet again I’m horrible at this. I never got the info for Battletech up, but then we only played a few more sessions before I realized that I couldn’t actually run the Clan Invasion since I don’t have the miniatures for it. Soooo that game went onto the back burner.

So after we finished up the last session of that game I talked things over with my wife and she was fine with returning to our table every other weekend. So we worked stuff out in such a way that I would run two alternating games – one that my step-son will play in on the weekends that he is here and on the other weekends when he is at his dad’s, I will run a different game that my wife will play in. Those games are Dragon Age, which will include my wife and an Old Republic Star Wars d6 game which will include my step-son.

And then the Holidays hit. We are one session into the Dragon Age game and haven’t even gotten character creation done on the Old Republic Star Wars game. Even as I wrote the paragraph above I came up with a better solution. Have one game where both my wife and step-son play (so play it on the weekends that he is here) and run it every other weekend and do board games and such on the off weekends to allow my creative batteries to recharge. This will only be until the Summer when I will continue with my AD&D campaign.

The more I think on it, running a game every other week will be better for me in the long run. It will give me extra time to plan events for the game, allow me time to work on stuff like the Altered Realities system and work on the rest of that AD&D campaign. I do hope to get to working on some of the Altered Realities system over the Holidays as well. I have a good idea for the combat system that I finally think I like.

So that is where I am at so far for my gaming. I will reinstate the d6 Star Wars game (two of the bios are up, I will endeavor to get the rest up shortly after the New Year when we start playing again) and run that every other week until Summer. I will talk to the rest of my group about this at some point over the next week.

Anyway, this is me signing off until after the New Year, have a safe and happy holiday season!

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It’s Been a While…

I know, I know, I’m horrible at this – though I’m not even sure if anyone checks this regularly anyway, but hey in case anyone does, I apologize.

ANYWAY, we had to put the Star Wars game on hold for a bit due to my wife being unable to play because of being overwhelmed by work. Hopefully that will end soon and we can continue our Star Wars adventures.

So in lieu of that, if no one guess by the change of backgrounds and headers,  the group is now playing in a Mechwarrior/Battletech game using the new A Time of War rules. The character creation can be daunting math-wise, but once you get into the system, it’s pretty good. We’re having a blast playing it, and running it has been pretty laid back for me. The only thing I plan out ahead of time are the actual ‘mech based missions because I need print outs of the enemy vehicles, ‘mechs and other things they are going up against. I don’t really even plan out the rest of the game outside of a vague story that the players ultimately guide. I throw situations and such at them and they respond.

It’s great too as they have become attached to my various cast of NPCs and I have a feeling if I killed any of them off they would not be happy, which is good. Running a game like this (with very little planning ahead and running off-the-cuff) gives me far more leeway to come up with unique and interesting role-playing opportunities and character interactions. We have even had those mythical “no one touched a dice” sessions of character interactions. Great stuff.

Anyway I do hope to get the character bios up soon along with some pictures of the ‘mechs that they have available to them. There is one lance already painted and another two that are currently being worked on.

In further gaming news we are also gaming on two other nights. We have a Friday night original World of Darkness LARP game with alternating Vampire and Werewolf games. I’m an assistant ST for Werewolf and I run the Vampire game. The Werewolf ST and myself also collaborate on crossover stuff so it’s pretty fun.

And lastly one of my regular players has returned and he not only is playing on both Friday and Sunday, but he is also RUNNING a D&D 5th edition game which I just get to sit back and enjoy PLAYING in for once! We just had our first game on Wednesday and it was a blast even though we pretty much all died in one encounter (the DM had to save us with a story machination – but hey it happens).

Anyway hopefully (if I remember to and have time to) I will post the Battletech character bios and the ‘mechs as I stated above. I’ll also start trying to post the goings on of the games, starting with a post that will catch up to current events. Hopefully…

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