Seek the Wolf in Thyself!
It takes a lot for me to sit down and write about MACE after it is over. I invest so much time, emotion, and work into it that when it is over, I really go through something like postpartum. But writing about it helps with that in some ways, and the sooner I do it the more I can recall. This year was tough – probably one of the hardest years – and my fatigue has lasted longer than ever before. But I am going to make an effort just to get it down before things are less fresh in my mind.
This was a great experience. Thanks to Jim St. John, I was able to get play off tickets and see the Panthers win their first Play Off game. They did not make it past the Wildcard round but it was still a great home game experience.
I asked John Watts once what TV show he would relate his setting to. I predicted correctly that he feels it was most like Firefly. In many ways, it really has that feel – the grittiness, and the feeling of being a western in space. However, at the same time, it addresses a lot of the things that Firefly and the subsequent RPGs ignored – the realism, the vastness of space and the isolation one planet can feel. It keep a lot of the adventure local, instead of planet hopping across the universe. It is that sense that makes it attractive to me.
The Rapture has been the subject of various books and movies and all have approached it from a similar fashion – portraying it as something in the near and foreseeable future. No one that I have seen before this game has ventured out and asked the question “What if it happens way far in the future after man has found ways off this world?” Rapture: The End of Days is a game about that very thing.
Much has been said about the staggered release of the new D&D rulebooks and as much as I understand the complaints, I don’t really think it is all that big of deal in the grand scheme of things. Some say that the staggered release will hurt D&D’s chances of gaining any ground lost to Pathfinder but I seriously do not see it. Come December when the DMG is finally out, people are going to forget all about the staggered release and invest a lot of time in whatever game they choose.
Every once in a while, when I am running events at a convention, a dealer who knows me will drop off a game for me to check out. At ConGregate in Winston-Salem, NC, Dan of Walt’s Cards (out of Maryland) dropped off Shadows Over Camelot, The Card Game, a game based on a very good board game. I love the board game, so I was very intrigued about the card game.
System/Setting: D&D 5e/Forgotten Realms Ended: March 13, 2015 Tried my hand at D&D through the new version. This was a straightforward short campaign with very little depth and a lot of combat. My experience with D&D 5e was very pleasant but the adventure was just a little shallow for me.
System/Setting: Savage Worlds/Achtung! Cthulhu Ran this at RonCon Fall 2014. Very cool adventure but hard to fit into a 4 hour session. Because the players have multiple identities, a lot of prep work is needed. My review of this adventure on JustUs Productions The Gamer’s Codex.
I tried to make the board game a little more flexible and I also upgraded to minis.
Cascadia has proven to be a fairly descent hotbed of adventuring with the previous two adventures in this series and this closes it out in similar fashion. In this adventure, the players have a great opportunity to do something big for the patron throughout the series and be greatly rewarded. Or if things don’t go well, they could end up with a considerable number of enemies and perhaps be blamed for a terrible crime.