Category: The Gauntlet: Our Community

Paul Czege has created a new RPG design challenge.

Paul Czege has created a new RPG design challenge.

Paul Czege has created a new RPG design challenge. It seems like a unique idea, as these things go. If you’re interested, or if you know someone who might be, share it far and wide. 

http://halfmeme.com/threeforged.html

I’m finalizing the Meetup calendar for August and September, and feeling very sad I’m staring at my last days with…

I’m finalizing the Meetup calendar for August and September, and feeling very sad I’m staring at my last days with…

I’m finalizing the Meetup calendar for August and September, and feeling very sad I’m staring at my last days with Houston Gauntlet. 

The wife’s binary dice arrived. I invited them out for Blades tonight but she said they were not interested.

The wife’s binary dice arrived. I invited them out for Blades tonight but she said they were not interested.

The wife’s binary dice arrived. I invited them out for Blades tonight but she said they were not interested.

We had a fun Sunday afternoon of gaming.

We had a fun Sunday afternoon of gaming.

We had a fun Sunday afternoon of gaming. We started with Jackson Tegu’s Kaleidoscope, and then ended with a card game, One Night: Ultimate Werewolf. 

We have played Kaleidoscope before, and it is great fun. It’s a hack of Microscope, but instead of building the history of a world, you are a group of people who have just watched a weird foreign film, and you are recounting memorable scenes. The game rules have a terrific sense of humor, and since you read most of it aloud as you play, they do a great job of getting you in the right head space for the game. The outcomes tend to be surreal and hilarious, and Sunday was no exception. 

One Night: Ultimate Werewolf was a big surprise for me. People have been making Werewolf games for years, and I’ve always kind of written them off, but One Night is pretty special. First of all, it is playable with a small number, which is a big change from traditional Werewolf, which often requires ten or more people. Second, it has a companion app that reads out the instructions, eliminating the need for a “host” player. The game also introduces a number of new roles to the game, and you can mix and match them to change up play. Very fun, and easy to get to the table. We played about ten games in the span of two hours. 

Thanks to Steve Mains Ferrell Riley and Kyle McCauley for coming out. 

We had a solid first session of Dungeon World for Saturday Morning Cartoons, our first event over on Gauntlet…

We had a solid first session of Dungeon World for Saturday Morning Cartoons, our first event over on Gauntlet…

We had a solid first session of Dungeon World for Saturday Morning Cartoons, our first event over on Gauntlet Hangouts. Thanks to David LaFreniere Richard Rogers steven watkins and Yoshi Creelman for joining me. 

Blades In The Dark Session 2: Skillageddon

Blades In The Dark Session 2: Skillageddon

Blades In The Dark Session 2: Skillageddon

Session 2 of Blades in the Dark Included the following:  Boat Stealing for a pile of Concertinas, Guards chasing a peregrine falcon, and lots of terrible jersey accents.  Fun as all hell.

I’m enjoying the teamwork mechanic, and the ability to setup people for greater success by risking yourself and narrating how your actions assist others.  Being able to have others setup help to give you greater chances for success is damn helpful, especially when the other option is being surrounded by angry men with guns and swords.

I think the only item I’m having problems with is the skill rolls.  For Blades in the Dark, you have 4 primary Stats (Guile/Intrigue/Vigor/Resolve), but then each of those has 4 skills underneath them.  Quite often, at least in our game, we would need to pause play in order to hash out what skill was the “correct” one to roll or call upon, which was especially troubling as for some actions such as bartering with a merchant, there was no explicit skill called.  I feel that the skills are a bit much, at least from having played multiple other PBTA games, and would hope to see future revisions return to the more simplistic method of having the 4 Primary Stats assigned a numeric value to roll for dice, and change the current skill lists to something such as “Talents” or make them moves such as the basic/starting moves on the play-sheet.  I feel that each of the Primary Stats has enough flexibility to allow for a crew to naturally feel out what would be appropriate to roll at the table.  I’d be curious to see how the others at the table felt.

Props to Russell Benner for running us and dealing with the interesting methods we’ve been using to keep our sheets from flying away.

The Gauntlet is an ongoing conversation about roleplaying games.

The Gauntlet is an ongoing conversation about roleplaying games.

The Gauntlet is an ongoing conversation about roleplaying games. Part of that conversation is using certain words and phrases in a very specific manner. I like to call it our ‘vocabulary.’ It’s not unlike the terms that were adopted during the old Forge days, though certainly not as comprehensive and utilitarian as those. Honestly, most of ours are just silly things, but the fact they are commonly understood by our members helps strengthen the bonds in our community. 

Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

DLC – a rule we missed in a game we have been playing for some time. 

The Tone Conversation – the conversation we have before a game to discuss the tone we’re trying to hit. Most often used when realizing we forgot to do it. 

What’s on the tin/box? – what a game promises to the players, either in terms of theme or story. 

Can you think of any others?