The Complete Series
Day 5: Which RPG cover best captures the spirit of the game?
I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here because (compared to many other folks online) I don’t read a whole lot of RPGs. That said, I have a preference for complex images, and I love battle scenes. The cover of Dungeon World has both of those elements as well as an “old school updated” vibe that I appreciate. Plus, I understand DW to be about the relationships between the party members, and look at all the little ways they’re helping each other.
Day 6: You can game every day for a week. Describe what you’d do!
I would love to play a relatively short campaign with a different GM each session… but that’s not exactly a summary of the week. Here’s what I’m thinking:
- Monday: Microscope to build the large-scale history of the world.
- Tuesday: The Quiet Year to build the small-scale history and location of our story.
- Wednesday: Some sort of LARP to get us away from the table and establish the political dynamics at play.
- Thursday: Savage Worlds pt. 1
- Friday: Savage Worlds pt. 2
- Saturday: Savage Worlds pt. 3
- Saturday: Outdoor games and feasting to portray the post-campaign celebrations.
On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, a different GM would be at the helm each day. Ideally, we’d do a 4-hour session in the morning and a 4-hour session in the afternoon each day, for a total of 6 sessions/24 hours of gaming. I’m not at all familiar with LARPs, so I’m not sure which one would be best for what I want to achieve. I guess the exact genre and tone would change depending on how things go Monday and Tuesday, so it might be best to wait until Tuesday night before settling on a particular system.
Day 7: What was your most impactful RPG session?
First, I gotta come clean: I hate the word “impactful.” It makes me think of bowels. Anyway.
This is another hard one for me. On the one hand, my games are usually more relaxed than intense. On the other hand, there are a few that stand out.
The most recent one is definitely from a friends fantasy Wild West setting played in 5e. We played a campaign for about a year, and in that time we lost and gained a few players. Every time a character left the group, there was a quick “this is what they’re going off to do” monologue. I didn’t think about them often, but every now and then I wondered how they were doing on their personal quests.
In the final few sessions, we were on a train to confront a bad guy I wasn’t personally connected to, since I missed a few sessions when he made his big entrance. The other characters had a reason to be on the train toward this final battle, but for me it was no more meaningful than “this is where my companions are going.”
Eventually, the train was stopped by debris across the tracks. We noticed it looked like a few people had been hanged in the ruins of a nearby church, so we went to cut them down and give them a proper burial. When we got close we realized: it was _all_ of our old companions, who had been rounded up and executed. Then we had an even darker realization: they were bloated and dripping with a strange liquid. Moments later, we heard a gunshot, saw it hit one of the corpses, and they all exploded. Nitroglycerin.
None of the PCs were seriously injured, me least of all. I ran down the gunman on a horse, and never has a character of mine so methodically, brutally extracted information from a victim. We learned that it was the BBEG who killed our old friends, and we learned where he was. Immediately, I was fully bought into the task at hand.
The moment in question comes at the end of episode 14:
Day 8: What is a good RPG to play for sessions of 2 hours or less?
No question, hands down, my pick is Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf. Inspired, of course, by the Rob Cantor song and music video. I actually tend to play it with a GM-less houserule, where the role of Shia LaBeouf passes to the left every time the players manage to fight him off. It’s simple, silly fun and I reach for it every time my friends want to play a quick RPG.
3 thoughts on “RPG a Day 2017: Days 5-8”
Haha, RE Day 7, I’ll have you know that Padre Estevez was brought down to just 4 HP after the explosion. I’d call that seriously injured. 😉
Ha! Fair point, but I’d argue that there’s no such thing as “seriously injured” in D&D. Even at 1hp you’re still at full power… you’re just closer to dropping. Po-tay-to and po-tah-to, I suppose.
True, I guess. The old lady was killed though… 😉
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