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.
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Actual Play
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. People often include video or audio recordings, but text-only is fine too. You can also attach documents, like maps or character sheets or brief sections of the rules you're using.
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 embed 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.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
21 Oct 2018
Games: Cosmic Zap
0 comments
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.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
21 Oct 2018
Games: Champions Now
1 comment
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.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
17 Oct 2018
Games: Sorcerer
2 comments
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.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
14 Oct 2018
Games: Champions Now
9 comments
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!)
Posted by: Ron Edwards
11 Oct 2018
Games: Champions Now
3 comments
First session of Sorcerer! Allowing for a little more time to finalize the characters and one of the demons. As discussed in the previous post, the starting statements are Demons are pets and Ancient ruined cities, and our first meeting resulted in a strong Nordic Noir vibe as well. Pedro is playing Ingmar, a Swedish police detective, and Aybars is playing Ahmet, a Turkish police captain.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
10 Oct 2018
Games: Sorcerer
3 comments
This is a recording of a session of the game "Masks: A New Generation" I run in a friend's twitch channel. It is in Spanish and the video can only been seen on Twitch. Once it gets uploaded to youtube, I'll post the link so you can give a try to the automatic subtitles. In the mean time, here's the basics of what happened in this session.
Posted by: HijosDelRol
08 Oct 2018
Games: Masks: A New Generation
7 comments
Back in April, I sat down with three college friends, Alejo, Cecilia and Edson, to play Vincent Baker’s Murderous Ghosts for the first time.
Posted by: Santiago Verón
07 Oct 2018
Games: Murderous Ghosts
16 comments
Just what the inheritor of the century-old superheroic powers and the sixty-year-old superhero-veteran need: a barely-legal vlogging celebrity hound who claims to be the Bay Area's' own indispensable crime-fightin' hero guy. Meet Komodo Dragon! (and thanks to Rod dropping by to be our entirely enjoyable guest player)
Posted by: Ron Edwards
06 Oct 2018
Games: Champions Now
24 comments
Here's the next round of seeing how Cosmic Zap is shaping up. It's an important phase because Ian is the project developer for Chaosium, and Rod and Juan are both artists who are very familiar with the source material.
Juan screen-shared during most of the session, allowing us to enjoy his emerging character sheet. I've pasted a few moments of the progress over his field in the video.
Posted by: Ron Edwards
06 Oct 2018
Games: Cosmic Zap
2 comments