I started running Black Wyrm of Brandonsford on D&D BECMI (using my dad’s Basic) with family (my wife, her cousin, his girlfriend) and it has been very fun to see completely new players pick up the game. Highlight of the session: my wife’s cousin getting all excited to enter his first dungeon.
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I’m running Nightwick Abbey, stemming from Miranda’s blog and Patreon. It’s been a ton of fun and provided lots of great play over nearly a year now. I was originally a player in it, and when that campaign ended I started to run it for my friends. Many cool ideas have come from the dungeon contents.
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I am currently in a few PBP and online games as I haven’t found a group in my timezone but here’s what I’ve been up to:
- Playing a Lich/Napoleon build in Lancer in a homebrew setting. Cyberpunk city with the corporations wanting to own the eternal soul itself, current issue is that multiple PCs are seeing their backstories weave into this years long plot and one is unraveling themselves as they mess with causality to help (gee, I wonder who).
- Playing a swashbuckler-type character and assisting in GMing a homebrew 2d6 system. Based more on using skills to try to reach higher difficulty bands (average being at 12) and health is based on wounds and damage severity over points.
- Just wrapped up a 4 session adventure of Snow’s Songbirds to try it out and learn its quirks; it is excellent by the way! Hacking it or using some of it for 0e house rules is what I’ll probably do for my own setting!
How are you liking cataphracts? I played it for a couple weeks in a game and had loads of fun, but the Ref unfortunately wasn’t able to continue the game.
I enjoy it. The game I am currently in is a little over my head, I kind of came of age, had a bit of stumbling around as another general and I were unsure of who should use transportation to get to pressing matters, and when I finally did, my side was ambushed, I had my back broken and I was imprisoned.
From there it took time to release me and heal, and I had to interview some potential wizards as I recovered. Then my nation’s general and my characters parent went on a pilgrimage so I took over their armies, but I’m kind of bumbling my way through figuring out how to further our goals.
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I’m running Swords & Wizardry CR for some friends. We’ve played through The Jeweler’s Sanctum, the Moathouse from T1, and are now exploring the Caverns of Thracia.
I’m still figuring out my preferences for refereeing:
- My on the fly descriptions could use some work — I’m trying to say less and leave room for questions.
- Combat can be stale. I’ve switched to simultaneous initiative where the monsters signal intent and the players declare actions to try and address this. Also trying to get the players to understand that they can do more than just attack by having the monsters utilize tactics against them.
- I haven’t found a satisfying solution for resource attrition yet. Tracking turns doesn’t seem to result in much pressure since our sessions are only 2 hours typically. And the overloaded encounter die is a pain with sequential rerolled results.
- Playing motivations of NPCs could be better too.
Despite all that, we’re having a good time. It’s a small group of 2 core players so I’m a little worried about their chances for survival as they press deeper into Gnoll territory… Thankfully the players are starting to realize that classed hirelings are useful and not just a tax on their XP.
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I am an active player in multiple campaigns and also running my own.
Playing:
- 5e spelljammer campaign. Very beer and pretzels. Sometimes it’s a bit too breezy and I think the table has evolved into a culture of not really taking anything seriously any more, which can make it a bit tiring.
- 5e trad campaign. Lots of deep character roleplayers in this one. Multiple multiple-page backstories and that kind of thing. The DM does an excellent job tying all these threads together, I feel as though I’d struggle to do that. This one is mostly great fun and very atmospheric, however I’ve found it sometimes to have the opposite problem of the one above; things get super serious and super slow and my attention can slip, leaving me lost and slightly stressed. But the DM is always helpful and the times I’ve voiced this the group has tried their best to keep me in the loop.
- Dogs on the Isle, open table wolves campaign. I’ve not attended the last couple of sessions due to personal reasons, trying to recalibrate what I can commit to and how to balance my time. However, this one is great. We’ve ran into some small issues now n then with boasting mechanics and how quickly / slowly combats are run, but for me it’s been just what I wanted out of Wolves. Exploring a messed up fantasy Ireland, bumping into monsters, druids, and feeling generally apocalyptic all over.
- Delta Green, Impossible Landscapes. I’m not sure how to do spoiler tags here, so I’ll keep it light. We just finished what feels like “act 1” a few weeks ago after 10 sessions of play. This has been very fun, I play this with 3 close friends who I’ve known for years and years, so we have a great implicit understanding of how we play best together. It’s been very confusing, at times very spooky, and other times slightly irritating, but overall I’m loving the vibes and really enjoying our characters confronting the unnatural madness in front of them.
Running:
- Mothership, Dead Planet / A Pound of Flesh / Gradient Descent. As you can tell from the title I was maybe a little over-ambitious in how much I just wanted to run everything at once here. That said it’s been going very well after an initial rocky start. The players have now entered into the main part of Dead Planet, and have found themselves tangled up in all sorts of crises as a result. We are 11 sessions in and play bi-weekly. I’ve struggled at times to encourage players to take action over analysis paralysis, but I think open communication has helped us mitigate this and everyone’s trying their best to keep the game fun. I’m happy with the group of players, everyone is very friendly, and the place we play in is run by very cool people (Roast & Roll in Banbridge) which is great!
Didn’t really mean for this to become a big post. I’ll try n post in here again from time to time for more concise updates of individual games.
Keep on rolling those dice,
Feir
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I’m part of a group in a 5e D&D campaign that we play a few times a year when one of the players is visiting from abroad. I definitely prefer 1E AD&D, I have to say.
I was planning to run games of TMNT, FASA Doctor Who and some Star Frontiers but I have unreliable friends and so this has not happened thus far 
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Running Dyson’s Delve with Marcia’s FMC Basic for two friends on Discord.
Playing with other friends irl in a dungeon one of those friends wants to playtest. Ruleset is Cairn 2e.
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