It has been a late summer of transitions and the gaming reflects that.
My buddy, Pete moved out and that has rearranged the games I was in with him.
The O’Declan Brewing Company (Burning Wheel): If we pick this game up again, it’ll be when Pete is good and situated and me and Aaron find a night when we can head up north to get our games on. From talking to Aaron, I have a feeling we might pick up something else; we might be able to get Aaron to GM something for me and Pete, which would be a hoot.
But I also really want to play a few more sessions with the O.B.C. At the end of our last session, they paid a mercenary company to skulk into town and murder their enemies. I want to play through the consequences of that, dammit.
The Hudson River Valley (Apocalypse World): This summer’s weekend scheduling made gaming with these folks all but impossible, so we haven’t gamed in months. But we’re picking it up this Saturday. I’m cooking up letters to the players that lead us into play five years after our last game.
Lights of Hoover: Dammit, but I think this game is a fatal casualty of Pete moving out. I’m not sure that any of us have the will to start it up without him here.
Cyberpunk Lunches: The half-hour format was rough but I think we were making it work. A few weeks of consistent summer traveling put the kibosh on this one. I’m beginning to think that Autumn and Spring are my gaming seasons. Summer travels and the winter holidays tend to muss up gaming the other half of the year.
Lady Blackbird and then what?: Continuing with our house game tradition, we’re getting together with my housemates and a few friends to consider a Thursday night game. Our first night will be Lady Blackbird and then we’ll figure it out from there. I’m hungering for a campaign of Dogs in the Vineyard until I leave town but we’ll see…might be Dungeon World or somethin’ else.
The Surprising Ballad of Hal Whitewyrm: I’m shocked at how much I am enjoying playing this play-by-post with Daniel. During an online conversation about pbp someone had taught em the valuable lesson that the pace is glacial and they were right. But there are advantages to that. I can peruse books, character histories, look over beliefs and take my sweet time. That has been good fun and it has me writing regularly, which is a nice start for other things.
And medium of the game aside, Daniel has made this romantic, stuck-between-worlds character who has really charmed me. Yeah, he is a fugitive from junior high daydreaming but there is passion in those daydreams and the burning up process has left its mark, veering it off from perfect reinventions. I think that the restrictions of the lifepaths has helped and Daniel has embraced that, making the tough choices necessary to make this version of the character, rather than trying to hold on to an ideal version. Burning Wheel demanded that he let some parts go and allowed him to accentuate other bits and its led to interesting choices.
And how about you? How were your summer games and what is your autumn looking like?
Githyanki Diaspora 
My only gaming (outside of cons) has been my roughly-monthly BW group. We started off with a city-based campaign focused on intrigue, but it started to spiral into confusion. Last session we rebooted with a semi-THAC0 game based on Keep on the Borderlands. I flipped the premise around a bit, and so the focus is on reclaiming the keep from the Cult of Evil Chaos. It ended up being much more fun, so I think it has legs.
June’s Chicago Gameday was an eight-hour Burning Empires marathon; writeup posted on the BW fora.
October’s Gameday will see me running some CoC d20, and maybe some Dresden; still hashing that out.
And then there’s Burning Apocalypse Con, which I’m trying to figure out if I can pull off.
May your dice fall to the table like Autumn leaves 🙂
It’s great that you’re re-starting AW with a 5 year in game gap. Are you letting the players tweak their characters to reflect the time spent or will you make that part of their love letters? Gives you the opportunity to really shake things up in the world too.
Hope you get to play Dungeon World, that’s high up my list of games to play sooner rather than later.
My gaming on the whole this year has been pretty decent. It’s like I’m having a second wind of gaming after a numerous year absence as I’ve found a local bunch of awesome gamers.
Burning Song Stones : Me GM’ing with 2 players, a husband & wife, and the interactions between their 2 elven characters were so much fun to witness. Was bi-weekly, then dragged out due to RL and finally petered out to make way for Dresden. One day we may finish it, there’s only a couple of sessions left before it reaches a natural end anyway.
Dresden Files – London : Was a player in this which made a nice change. This was bi-weekly and due to holidays a couple of times we had 3 weeks between sessions. But the game was solid and we finished season 1 at the end of Summer (with a suitably epic ending) agreeing that we’d return after trying something else.
One shots : When we couldn’t all meet up for Dresden we had a couple of one shots – Dogs & Lady Blackbird. Both went down a storm. One shots will continue as required 🙂
Board gaming : Over the Summer I got in a few games of Arkham Horror, Last Night on Earth, BSG & Pandemic. Also have a semi-regular Star Wars CCG (the Decipher version) feud going with a fellow local gamer – so far we’ve re-created the Battle of Yavin 3 times, each time with my Death Star getting blown up by the pesky Rebels… Got in a couple of games of the original Middle Earth: The Wizards CCG, but it turns out it’s a bit epic and requires far too much time to finish…
On Monday we’re starting bi-weekly Apocalypse World with the Dresden players & me MC’ing. There’s a Hocus, Brainer, Battlebabe & Savvyhead and we’re all really jazzed about it.
This weekend I’ve got my annual boys boat trip (one of my childhood mates has a family cottage on the River Thames & owns a 4 berth boat) where we head up to Windsor, gaming as we go. Last year was AGON, before that was Danger Patrol and this year will be Dogs (with AW:Hatchet City up my sleeve just in case).
Bi-weekly RP’ing plus an extra occasional night of board/card gaming is a good balance with my family life so I’m pretty pleased with how Autumn’s shaping up.
We got to play DW a few nights ago and it was a good time.
Your games sound great, especially Burning Song Stones.