Category: The Gauntlet: Our Community

Some pics from Friday and Sunday. 

On Friday we had enough people for two games, so Rob ran Apocalypse World and I ran the regularly-scheduled Anthology game. I can’t speak to the details of the AW game, but I can say that our DW Anthology game was AMAZING! It was probably one of my favorite DW sessions ever (and that’s saying a lot, considering how much we play it). The party had to battle their way through a rampaging hydra; the followers of the rat god, Reekeesik; and the Three Wicked Kings of legend – Old King Mermeron, Old King Abradon, and Old King Celadon (and yes, longtime Gauntleteers, I know this is a sort-of “greatest hits” of my DW villains). We ended the session with a cliffhanger (which we will pick up in a few weeks) that saw our elf mage being possessed by Old King Celadon and the halfling thief climbing a mooring chain into the mist-shrouded sky to a spelljammer ship.

For Sunday, we played another session in the Anthology series (I have a lot of notes to catch up on, haha). This time it was Derek’s hack of Our Last Best Hope. We told the story of the dysfunctional Umberbill clan, “destined” to save Kingsburg from the demonic rift that has opened up beneath it (see Anthology Timeline – The High Dale). Unfortunately for mankind, the Umberbills were all horrible people and were utterly incapable of working together well enough to save the world. It was a lot of fun, but Our Last Best Hope really shows its spots when you increase the number of players past four (we had six).

I don’t have any pics, but last night (contrary to my earlier post today, Daniel Lewis ) we did not play a game about talking fish, but instead burned-up some Burning Wheel characters for a proposed “Adventures in Kingsburg” thing. I was reminded last night that, despite that game’s many flaws, few things in RPGs are as fun as making Burning Wheel characters. We ended-up with some really cool ones. Our characters are all agents of a powerful thieves guild boss. Mine is a cross-dressing, cannibal brothel owner (like a cross between Dr. Frank-n-Furter and Littlefinger); Rob is playing a former street urchin who is now a powerful judge in the pocket of our criminal benefactor; Russ is a bored, sadistic noble who works in the criminal underground for fun; and Daniel F. is a dwarven oathbreaker with a gambling problem. We may or may not ever get to play with these characters (since we were just doing this in the absence of two our regular players), but I hope they get at least a little play time at some point. 

Thanks to Rob Ferguson Daniel Fowler Nathan S Scott Owen Russell Benner Jacob Densford Nicki Khan Derek Grimm James Melott and Gary Wilson !

Last night we were short a couple of people for our regular Monday night game, so we played a session of Archipelago. Our setting was talking fish living on a coral reef. I played a sexy angelfish with a Southern accent called Angela Brinebottom; Daniel Fowler played a hammerhead shark engineer called Tool Time; and Russell Benner played a psychotic, serial killer clownfish called Chuckles. Rob Ferguson decided to go outside his box a bit and played  a steampunk seagull revolutionary with amazing gams called Ché Gullvara. It was a lot of fun!

Many of the documents in the Anthology folder have been updated. I have also added Timeline – The Kingdom of the Lamenting Moon (with thanks to Scott Owen Kristen D and Stephen Crawford ). 

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByS4_7KbXro_Q2NuaGd2NzRscGM&usp=sharing

I’d like to get the May and June calendar sewn up for Story Game Sunday. Does anyone have something they want to run for the following dates:

May 25

June 1

June 8

June 15

June 22

June 29

Let me know in the comments.

Here are some pics from our first Saturday Super Medley (!!!). We had an absolute blast. We kicked off with a game of First Impressions, which is about assembling a fantasy adventuring party, speed-dating style. It was chaotic and amazing. We then rolled a D20 to determine which games we played throughout the day.

The session went from 12-7:30, and we played the following games: First Impressions, Ghost Lines, World of Dungeons, The Calais Bunker, Coup, Space Team, The Resistance, and The Final Girl. 

Everyone had a great time. The only suggestion I got was that, next time, it should be scheduled for longer (!) All in all, a great success!

Thanks to Rob Ferguson Daniel Lewis Ferrell Riley Jacob Densford John Dingman Gary Wilson and Lynn Byrd ! And extra thanks to Gary for coming early to help me pick up a card table from Walmart. 

Last night, I ran a DCC module for our DW Anthology game. It was a mixed bag. I really loved the artwork in the module, and it had some nice, creative story details. And converting things to Dungeon World was painless. 

On the other hand, the story didn’t really gel with what I had in mind for the Anthology, broadly, and this particular campaign, specifically. There was also the fact I’m simply not comfortable in my GM skin running a module. I have always designed and run my own adventures. I’m good at making-up details on the fly, and I have a good sense of pace and drama developed over years of GM’ing. Sticking so close to this module felt very awkward. I wasn’t happy with the outcome.

We had some laughs with it, but I am retconning this adventure out of existence. We’re picking-up the campaign in two weeks and will pretend none of this happened (although the characters can keep their XP). This is something that has to be done from time-to-time, and knowing when to do so is a hallmark of good storytelling, I think.