Gaming yesterday...

So, yesterday I went to the game day in Pittsburgh.

It is a monthly event that you pay five bucks and can play 3 games over 12 hours. Considering I don’t really have a gaming group now, this is a must for me to get to each month.

As usual, it was a lot of fun.

Game one. The Quiet Year. It is hard to explain this game. You play a community instead of a character. You draw a map and throughout the game, you are adding details to it, making the world up as you go. May be more of a card game than rpg, but it has elements of both. Either way, it was a blast to play.

There are four seasons (starting with spring), and each of them have 13 cards. Each turn, you draw a card and do what it says. It can tell you to create a project (or destroy one), or make a new location. There was a bit of variety in what you could do when drawing the car. Then on the same turn you can also do an action. Which was start a discussion in the community about something, start a project, or create something new in the world.

By the time you are done, you have this complexly filled out map and have resolved quite a bit. The interesting thing is when you get to winter, there is a card called the Frost Shepherds. Once that card is drawn, the game is over. So, you have a 1 and 13 chance of that happening when you start winter.

The cool idea was that we can play a session of this game next month, and use it is a basis to play an Apocalypse World game. I thought the idea brilliant.

Game two. Dungeon World.  I have been excited about this one for a while. I got the book this week, which was perfect timing for the game this weekend. I like how it starts with the GM asking questions to everyone, therefore creating the world a bit. You background, what is the name of that forest, why do you have bonds with other character. Things like that. It is a lot of fun to start playing.

I am still struggling with one aspect of the game.

There are not turns, so if you are someone that doesn’t step up to do things, you can feel left out.  I normally do not play fighters, so I was a little apprehensive about how to play it. That is my own issue and not the games fault.

It was one of the oddest sessions I have played in a long time. There was: butterflies, shapeshifting, unicorns, a living dungeon, a barbarian that thinks HE is civilized one, a panther named kitty that did more damage to the ranger than anything else did, and lot of blood and puss that anyone every wanted to have anything to do with. Very odd, but still a lot of fun.

Game three. Ghost Lines.

Ghost Lines is created by John Harper. It is hack of Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker. Harper made another game I very much want to play called Lady Blackbird.

Anyways, so the game is that you are A Bull. Someone who travels the train lines fighting ghosts. It is the only way for people to travel, and someone has to do it right?

The idea is very cool and the game was fun. The only problem I had was I was getting tired by this time and don’t think I played as well as I could have. Not to mention, my dice hated me. J

Since there were only two of us playing, it was very fast. But the problem was that my character was more of observer, and other character was someone that actually trapped the ghost. By the time we got to the end, it was obvious we were in trouble because neither one of us really were fighters.

So the train was out of control as ghosts had taken over the train. We got into the last fight and tried to keep the train from crashing. We did ok at first as my character was wiping out the minions and the other character was taking care of the bad ass ghost.

Then things started going wrong, also known as rolling poorly.

We ended up failing our last six rolls, taking damage and eventually the train crashed into the imperial city and we died.

It was a lot of fun to play. I think you need four people to play it right, as the roles of the game would work better then. But overall, it was a good hack of AW.