Game Day and Recent RPG Adventures

So, fellow blogger and All Around Cool Cat, Dylan from Digital Orc, recently called me to the carpet for not posting for the past month or so.  Despite my lack of posting, I have continued to be able to get together with friends for some gaming. 

Most recently, a group of friends met at my friend Wil’s house this past Saturday for a game day.  We haven’t done one of these in quite a while, and it was a great success.  Sadly, it wasn’t until after we got there that I realized that we had the entire group of our Cal & D game in the same place at the same time since our last session back on February 20^th.  However, all of our spouses were there as well, so it wasn’t really the time to bust out a Cal & D game. 

After gathering a little after 12pm, we spent the next 90 minutes or so doing the requisite catching up – talking about family and friends who were missing, chatting about our friends Steve’s and Julie’s new five month-old baby twin boys (whom none of us had met yet, since they live up in San Francisco), and of course talking about work, how my wife made me watch “Ringer” on TV last week, why we still hate 4^th Edition, was Pathfinder really outselling 4E, why we really like Savage Worlds, and could we could to agreement that maybe we could try to use Castles & Crusades to DM some old-school 1^st Edition D&D adventures, rather than using OSRIC.  We also bemoaned getting older and discussed the many changes lately in our broader group of friends, which we call the Boise Spuds (it’s a long story). 

Then we got down to gaming, and despite Wil, Julie, Anne, and Raellen constantly getting up from the table to do who knows what, we actually made it through five games!  I can’t remember the last time I went to a game day and played this many games.  It helped that many of them were quick, and we only played each game once so that we could fit more new games in.  We started with Get Bit, and then eventually played Resistance, Dixit, Wits & Wagers, and ended with a rousing game of Battlestar Galactica, in which I ended up being the only Cylon (and also playing the Admiral, which made things tough for the humans), and the humans lost in a most disastrous way. 

One of the really cool things was that, with the exception of Wits & Wagers (which I’ve played many times) and Battlestar Galactica (which I’ve only ever played once), I’ve never played any of those games before.  I love playing new games, especially if I can find one that scales easily, so I can play it on a weeknight with my wife after we put our daughter to bed, but can easily add other players when we have friends over. 

Wil also provided a veritable litany of tasty food for us, including some awesome cheeses, some of his homemade beer he’s been blogging and tweeting about for weeks, and then for dinner a very good salad and this really great vegetarian lasagna using a recipe that his son apparently made up, paired with some tasty wines from Wil and Anne’s cellar.  Cal and I supplemented the festivities by each bringing two 4-packs of Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, which has become one of our favorite beers lately.  Cal and his wife also brought some awesome homemade chocolate cookies and “fancy marshmallows” with which to make a homemade s’more type dessert.  As if that wasn’t enough, my wife surprised everyone by bringing over a really great chocolate cake from Porto’s bakery, on which was written “Happy Birthday, Martin” and “Roll a D6…” since my birthday is coming up tomorrow.  It was a great day spent with great friends, great games, and great food.  I just wish they could happen more often.

I’m continuing to play RPGs as well, of course.  Since I last updated it here on my blog, I’ve had at least two more sessions of my World of Samoth game.  I’ll post some more detailed recaps later, but the group met the last surviving member of the Order of the Ishari Lier (at least, in this part of the world), who had done the unthinkable and turned himself into a lich in order to be able to continue keeping the secrets of his Order rather than having them lost to all time.  He agreed to share his knowledge with the players if they promised never to come back and try to destroy him, and also if they would try to cleanse the town of a recent undead scourge.  They agreed and are in the middle of what appears to be a pretty epic battle given that they did not prepare well, and two of the party members were knocked unconscious for several rounds, and a miscommunication between Sameer and Xiao (Shao?  I can never remember) caused Shao to use his abundant step ability to flee the combat, thinking that Sameer had also planned to retreat and regroup.  We unfortunately had to end the session at that point, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

I’ve also played in a Savage Worlds game, refereed by my friend Cal and including most of the “Friday Night” game players, with the exception of Brian.  It’s a World War II era game, which is awesome because I’ve never played in a genre anywhere close to that.  We are all members of a special paratrooper squadron.  Everybody is American (“because they had the best paratroopers”) with the exception of me – I play Lieutenant Colonel Lord Nigel Hawthorne.  The other characters don’t like me very much, but Lord Hawthorne is in charge of the entire mission.  In Savage Worlds, characters have things called “Personality Quirks” or “Hindrances.”  One of mine was listed as simply, “English.”  The game was so much fun, and I’ll have to write more about it later.

Lastly, my friend Brian has started up Andalusia II campaign back up, after a many year break.  He ran us through two “pre-campaign” adventures that took place in the past, where we made different characters for each.  In one adventure, we all played evil characters, and in another we all played elves.  The first “true” session, wherein we are all playing the same characters we played during Brian’s Andalusia I campaign a few years ago, was a couple of weeks ago.  I’ll also write more about these games later. 

So, while I continue to be extremely busy during the week running my agency business and trying to get some new business, I have been keeping up with hanging out with my friends and playing some games.  It might not be as often as I would like, but I do count myself fortunate that I’m able to play at all, and have a great group of friends to game with.