ACTUAL PLAY
This is where we do what we do! We talk about playing table-top role-playing games. This is not a play-at or streaming site - it's for discussion of what you're already doing.
You can discuss decades of play or thirty seconds of play, or anything in between. Any table-top role-playing game is welcome: old, new, in print, out of print, published by you, published by whoever. You could have played it at any time, from back in the early 1970s to a second before you hit "post."
From there, I trust you to work out how you want to talk about your games. If you'd like, check out my best-practices manual for suggestions, but it's really flexible.
If you already do a podcast or other actual-play series, live or not, please consider yourself invited to discuss it here by embedding a link as a topic.
For games in design, i.e., playtesting - yes, go right ahead, that's welcome too. For consulting sessions with me, which is different, see the Consulting page.
I'm currently designing Champions Now, for Hero Games, in active alpha playtest. The dedicated page for that is here.
I'd provide the two character-sheet diagrams I examined while preparing for play, but they are both the same: about 80% of the items on each one was now slammed into the center, including new ones that had been acquired from each other's sheet.
In other words, both sorcerers (Ahmet and Ingmar), their demons (Solomon and Odd John), the crucial designs of the tattoos and runes from the ruins, the murder victims (Mehmet and Julia)
Second session of the current Cosmic Zap game, displaying one of the game features that it's robust relative to player attendance.
Rod mentions at one point that it's the most self-indulgent role-playing he's done, either lately or maybe ever. That's why this time the lead image for this post is a link.
I call attention to a couple of things.
You play a game set in L.A., I tell you what, you’re going to be driving hither & yon a hell of a lot. This session brought us downtown, then to Corona, Venice Beach, the northeast burbs, and eventually to Antelope Valley, in the wilds of Palmdale. There was even a mention of La Fontana over the county border. Almost worthy of a local to sneer, “You ain’t from around here.”
My other Gauntlet game! Unlike the Cosmic Zap session, running Champions of any stripe in a convention setting is no picnic for prep. But the hardest part is not the character construction ... it's the fact that the players will not have the necessary buy-in and sense of "let's do this" per interesting item or opportunity that's inherent to each character. The net effect is that the GM/preparer must be constantly pointing out to them what they can do.
Here's the first of three games I led at Gauntlet Con 2018! A Cosmic Zap playtest. When I initially signed on for playing it months ago, I was unsure about how well-developed the game would be, or even how playable/failed at all. But it turned out to be a decisive validator of the project.
I guess it won’t surprise anyone that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been tapped again for a Hunted. This time there’s no supervillain component, it’s just (“just”) the agency, so in looking for villains to create, and seeing the Crusader on the Curator’s sheet, I focused on the “trapped between two worlds” feature that both heroes share.
It may not appear in every Sorcerer game, but if you have to bet on what's in one, you won't go too far wrong with tattoos. In this case, due to the emergent Nordic Noir in our pets + ancient ruins opening statements, it's tattooed dead people. And apparently, tattooed dead people getting up and walking out of morgues.
I’ve been resisting the obvious suggestion about defining the superhero group, “set everything ahead of time,” for very good reasons. Most of the trouble that’s cropped up in playtest so far is not due to failing to do that, but directly traceable to introducing a new hero, whose definitions and problems tend to bulk up disproportionately. Introducing a hero even as a limited-only guest throws everything a curve.
A new Champions Now Beta playtest! With Jason and Rick. I told them, "powers are dark, ancient, and secret," and "crimes are moral, not just legal," and we set it in Los Angeles, where Rick lives. (lots of west coast going on in play ... I'll have to keep an eye on that, and make sure of a wider range. I'd really like to set it in Sweden some time!)