I recently posted a Play Report on my ongoing Savage Worlds fantasy game loosely based in Shaintar. In it, I mentioned how as a GM I have been avoiding the system at times. Both JJ Lanza and Daniel Perez quickly hopped onto the comments and asked me to unpack what I meant by it.

This is the story of how I’ve learned to loathe Savage Worlds (OK, to be honest, I don’t loathe it, I just like the alliteration). But I do often regret choosing to run it for our ongoing campaign. It just doesn’t support the kind of play I enjoy and doesn’t give me the tools I want as a GM. Or, perhaps more accurately, as a GM, I’m just not good at doing the things it supports.

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This past Monday was a continuation of my attempt to use Savage Worlds (Shaintar fantasy setting) to do an impression of my Vampire: the Masquerade games from the mid to late 90s: lots of politicking and the like.

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Oh, for the recap.

RoundCon 2010 was a success.  Our Cave of Wanders went pretty well for a first time.  I got to see what Paul was planning for his three games, and he got to see mine.  We filled our our worksheets interviews between games so that we knew what was important and what should echo in future games both at RoundCon and other conventions.  I’d like to think it was universally great, especially in that when things did go wrong, Paul and I were both almost immediately certain of a corrective action.

Full Text can be found at Regret Games.

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[ crossposted from The Harping Monkey ]
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… starring Rich Rogers, Chuck Hedden, Arnold Cassell, and Mick Bradley.

I’m writing about our recent pitch session for a new rpg series that the Canoneers planned to play using Primetime Adventures.

Ah, Primetime Adventures, affectionately known as PTA. ‘A game of television drama’, it says on the cover. I find that to be joyfully true, and thus PTA has become a fun and rather frequent part of my rpg experience over the past few years. Practically any type of premise, any type of fiction, is possible with this game, as long as it can be framed within the general boundaries of a TV series. You could play a high-school monster hunters series, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You could play a premise like The Office, but make the characters an office full of spies![1] You can play super heroes, sci-fi soldiers, Medieval diplomats, pulp adventurers, school-age emo kids, or an emulation of The Beverly Hillbillies if you want. You could do a show about a time-traveling William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln zooming across the heartland of America in a stolen ‘67 Mustang with a goth-chick waitress who’s on the run from the Irish mob in Chicago.[2] In fact you could even play a series about a group of Dark-Age adventurers who go around exploring dungeons, killing whatever monsters they find and stealing all their stuff. As long as it can be framed episodically and the in-play focus is on the characters and their issues, relationships, and QUESTIONS, anything is possible.
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Arnold Cassell discusses his penchant for running multiple games in a shared setting during conventions, a little something he calls… Saga Series!

Witness the awesome power of the Saga Series at a couple of upcoming conventions:

RoundCon – January 29-31, 2010 (http://www.roundcon.com/)

RoundCon Dungeon Story Games
Session 1 (Friday afternoon) – Kagematsu
Session 2 (Friday night) – Dogs in the Vineyard
Session 3 (Saturday morning) – Donjon
Session 4 (Saturday afternoon) – Ingenuous
Session 5 (Saturday night) – Little Fears
Session 6 (Sunday morning) – Usagi Yojimbo

ConCarolinas – June 4-6, 2010 (http://www.concarolinas.org/)

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My horizon of games for this week have no prep requirements.

My Monday night Savage Worlds game is on hold as a player will be missing and we’ve agreed to gather and play board and video games and hang out instead.  I’m happy to do this with the group, we had a blast last time we did this.  I’ve got the basics for the next session ready to go, although I’ll sift through the thoughts in my head as the week goes by.

My Wednesday night Skype game is gathering to prep MapTools and make sure we can all synch up, then we’re going to do a pitch session to set up a 5 “episode” series of Primetime Adventures.  Other than boning up on the rules, there’s nothing I can do before the game begins because the setting and characters and premise are all developed during the pitch session.

So my week looks prep light.  GM prep is a kind of lonely fun I enjoy.  I’ll fill in the gaps by noodling over what I might run at MegaCon.  Daniel Perez, our very own Arnold Cassell and Jarad, a player who I played OD&D twitter with once are all talking about going.  In truth, I’d be happy to just show up in Orlando and run and play games with these guys.  But its also an opportunity to bring some indie RPG love to a pretty big con that has very few RPGs.  Plus, it is close and not too expensive.

I’m also writing this post on game prep.

Wanna hear more about how I prep?  Check out after the cut…

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If my Savage Worlds game were a comic book series, last night’s game would have been a set-up issue. The party resolved some niggling issues from their big fight with Milos and the snake cult, then met with four members of the Council of Seven of Shale, the official head of the city government.

Check out more after the cut!

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Game Advocates is a miniseries of interviews about a single game, not with the game designers but with people who have thoroughly played the game.  In Game Advocates, we ask about how the game plays, what’s fun about it and what players enjoy about it.  We also chat about possible pitfalls for new players.

This episode’s advocate is Robert Bohl, author of Misspent Youth (http://misspentyouthgame.com/) and host of Ooh, let’s make a game (http://glyphpress.com/talk/feed/olmag/) and Independent Insurgency (http://independentinsurgency.com/) podcasts.

Rob advocates for Shock: Social Science Fiction by Joshua A. Newman.  Find it here: http://glyphpress.com/shock/

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I’ve been asked to post about the end of our Lady Blackbird rpg series.

You’ll want to read these two other posts first, for context. Which means three very long posts altogether, just to unpack a wonky ending to a wonderful game.

AP Report from Daniel
AP Report from Rich

It’s been really difficult to unpack this situation in my head and then express it honestly while also avoiding pettiness and selfishness. I have not been able to do it via an AP report, as Daniel and Rich have done. I couldn’t even begin to try to express the ending of the session from Naomi’s (my character’s) POV. Besides, I think the two overviews of what happened in the fiction really cover it well, so I’ve got nothing of value to add to that, in Naomi’s voice or otherwise.

I was very unhappy with the last ten minutes of the session and I spared no passion in saying so to everyone at the end of the game – but I was too worked up at the time to give a good accounting of WHY I was so unhappy. And I owe that accounting to my friends Daniel and Arnold, because I yelled and cussed and ranted at them.

How do I maturely and helpfully express what kicked me in the junk? I think I’ve hit upon a good way to manage it without further whining and ranting. Here goes: Read the rest