Category: The Gauntlet: Our Community

We had a terrific kick-off to our new DW campaign (which will continue through the summer). There were several great moments, including the appearance of the mysterious Red King, a hyper-OCD apothecary, and a hilarious scene involving the use of a bronze soup tureen to strike up conversation with slack-jawed peasants. 

Also . . . mega-dungeon! The party hasn’t quite dipped their toes into it yet, but they definitely got some sense of its scale. 

Thanks to everyone who came out: Russell Benner Daniel Fowler Marcus Centurian Jeff Burke and David LaFreniere. 

Though it is entirely beyond your perception, this new campaign of Dungeon World is going to be fucking amazing. 

Last night we played Epidiah Ravachol’s Invisible Empire. It was pretty great. It’s Tales of the Arabian Nights by way of Swords Without Master. The players take the role of courtiers of the Silent Emperor, telling stories of Dread and Awe, in the hopes of not boring/offending the Emperor and getting themselves killed. I would love to play it again, mostly because I think we weren’t really on our best behavior, tone-wise (I think it had already been a long week for some of us), and the restaurant was particularly noisy last night. I think in a small, quiet environment, with everyone sticking to the tone, this one would be really damn cool.

Thanks to Daniel Lewis and Russell Benner for prepping, and to Scott Owen Kristen D Gary Wilson and David LaFreniere for coming out!

We played a one-shot of Jason Morningstar’s Night Witches for Story Game Sunday. The premise of this one is that you are in an all-female Soviet air bomber regiment during WWII (referred to by the Germans as the Nacht Hexen, or Night Witches). The Red Army treats this regiment as a joke, and one of the main themes of the game is that these women are patriotic warriors, putting their lives on the line every night, but they also have to deal with a lot of chauvinistic bullshit from their comrades during the day.

The game is excellent. This is probably my favorite AW-hack after Dungeon World and Monsterhearts. Bully Pulpit has knocked it out of the park on every level here. The playbooks are fun, the move sets are useful and interesting, the pre-made one-shot scenario is a breeze to work with, and the production values are extremely high. The game’s narrative structure is really damn cool, alternating between Day/Night cycles, with each cycle having its own set of Basic Moves. Even in a one-shot, we were able to experience all of the game’s main themes, particularly the non-stop grind of these women’s lives, and the infuriating sexism they had to deal with. 

I expect we will discuss it more on Friday’s podcast. Thanks to everyone who came out: Daniel Lewis Ferrell Riley Russell Benner and Steve Mains.

Wow! Way to go, GEN CON!

http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/24/8285287/gen-con-threatens-the-governor-it-will-leave-the-state-over-indianas

Some pics from Odyssey: Journey & Change. You may want to skip this one, honestly. It’s kind of boring (our laughter and smiles in the pics were basically us not taking the game seriously anymore). More thoughts on Friday’s podcast.

Thanks to Daniel Lewis for reading the 144 page rulebook and Ferrell Riley David LaFreniere and Russell Benner for coming out.

We just finished playing Twilight Imperium. And I am spent. Completely and utterly spent. It’s worse than that, actually. I feel hollow. Like a husk.

Nearly 8 hours and we didn’t even finish.

Kill me.

This has been a pretty excellent week of gaming. Today we played Matt Snyder’s 44: A Game of Automatic Fear. This is the second time The Gauntlet has played this one, and it does not disappoint. I suspect we’ll discuss it on Friday’s podcast, but for now just know 44 is basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers RPG. 

Thanks to David LaFreniere Ferrell Riley and Steve Mains for letting me turn them into robots!