Not wanting to fall too far behind on my gaming writeups, I’ll do a quick summary post:
Wednesday game: We played Time Quest, my Goblin Quest time-travel hack, and it was a lot of fun and resulted in a lot of really good ideas for improving the game. If you want to playtest it, leave a comment here or on Google+.
We’ve decided to put Monster of the Week on hold– my players’ play styles don’t mesh well enough to make it enjoyable for everyone. Instead, we’re going to playtest my Night’s Black Agents scenario, Day of the Wehrwolf, in the next few weeks, and see how well it runs. I was out sick with food poisoning this week, so we start that in 2 days.
Moving Forward: So. The apocalyptic event happened. We all leveled up to 10th level and fought a primordial in 2 phases (so, like 2 separate creatures). We did well. We lost two PCs– Ordune was literally ripped in two, and Firiel was disintegrated into her atomic parts. But we defeated the monster and learned something about its abilities, combat, and alliances. Also learned that Firiel’s patron is going to double cross and there’s nothing we can do about it if this fight goes as planned.
There was, in some of our treasure, a scroll that would undo the past 5 minutes of time. Gwenn has it. While Tristram was putting Ordune’s body onto a stretcher, she used it to undo the shot that killed Firiel. Instead, she slew the last of the monsters in that fight, and promptly threw up. Nobody else in the party knows about the world-ending events, although since their players know, and since Gwenn is presently keeping it a secret (we haven’t left Thuul yet, so we’re not safe enough to talk about it), all the players keep making references that are completely innocent, but make Gwenn blanch. Like Ordune will say something about splitting the party, or Firiel will comment that she sometimes feels downright invisible, etc. It’s awesome and good storytelling. We’re heading now into Vecna’s old house to find whatever horrific thing is in his lab. We should probably die there.
Dungeon World: We converted the Sunday Epyllion game to Dungeon World after the end of the dragon campaign. Now, many years after the Age of Dragons has ended, in the Age of Humanity, our PCs are going about our business, meddling in the affairs of dragons. We are Illustria, an illusionist wizard, Anitra, a sea druid whose natural form is a dog, and Ramona, an ancient bard with a songbook in draconic and no way to read it. We started out as circus owners, and have quickly found ourselves running away from everything until we accidentally-on-purpose released the protective bubble that covered the Hell Chasm, releasing the dragons and all the other monsters trapped within.
First Date: I played a playtest of a game by a friend of mine about going on a first date. We discovered that the math was not usable as it was– it was nigh-impossible to succeed at the game. You start with a goal– his was "to sell a timeshare" and mine was "to make him admit I’m smarter than him." The goal is public, so you can veto the other person’s goal if it’s creepy or weird. And then there’s a dice mechanic that was hard to track and harder to succeed– he’s going to go back to the drawing board on the dice and see what he can do to fix the math.
Whispering Road: We finished the Whispering Road game! After 5 sessions, each covering one act, we finally wrapped it up with a very satisfying ending. I’m going to write it up as a short story to post here in the next few weeks.