I’ve been bloodied, i’m now a GM.

I ran a little adventure the two of my friends who make up our motley game group. I chose the star wars D6 system. Needless to say I made a few minor errors but I enjoyed myself. Hopefully the players did too.

What I enjoyed:

I liked that familiar feel I got with the universe. We’ve all seen star wars. It was really cool to tell your own star wars story. I loved throwing hundreds of dice! One of the NPCs was a force user. He was really quite powerful; 12d6 for DEX is a huge number of dice clattering around the table. All roleplayers love chucking die!

I stole the wild dice idea from the 2nd edition rule set. I’m very glad I did. On a couple of occasions the characters attempted to roll against something really difficult to near impossible. The wild die managed to allow them even though they are not skilled enough to roll high enough to pass normally. I think this adds a great Cinematic experience. They are heroes after all.

What I didn’t enjoy:

Counting all the rolls, especially for the hugely powerful NPCs! I know that I will become much quicker in the mental arithmetic area, but it does slow the game down a little. In the end I just had to glance at the roll and judge on a scale 5 point scale of dud to excellent. Just to keep things flowing.

What I did well:

I managed to avoid railroading. The player who gives me a lift after the sessions really emphasised how much I should avoid this, so I put a lot of effort into open-endedness.

What I should improve for next time:

I don’t think I gave both players equal opportunity to fully use their characters. One of them was a Pirate and the other a Scout. The pirate was easy because he’s a Womanising, drink riddled gambling addict. The strong silent type was hard to play in this adventure. I will not let this happen again. It will balance out over the course of the campaign, but no one likes spending a 4 hour game session being left out. I will try to cater the adventures to get the most for both players.

Call of Cthulhu, a newbies POV

Call of Cthulhu it turns out has the ability to freak me out worse than any hollywood gorefest movie. The atmosphere, the strangeness of the characters and places all have the ability to freak me out good and proper!

Why does roleplaying effect me more deeply than movies or books? Is it the fact I am “in” the game, imagining the world through your character’s eyes, using my imagination, does this bypass the normal jaded hardnose filters, thereby reducing me to a state of childish whimpering? I don’t know but this game has totally blown my perspective of what roleplaying is.

In the short game i played last night (of which we are halfway through) nothing truly wierd happened. We saw some wierd-ish things. All of which our characters explained away. But it still scared the knickers off me.

I really enjoyed this game. It was a completely unexpected hit with me. I come from a history of mini wargaming, warhammer 40ooo etc. My personal literature, movie and video game preferences are fantasy, science fiction.

I’ve never been interested in horror.

I am now!

My First Game

Last night (wed 28th Oct 2009) I played my first RPG game.

We played James Bond 007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_007_(role-playing_game)

My character was based upon a young James Bond. Set in 1967.

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The opening scene was a feast in a Latvian gypsies farmstead. We were celebrating the finalisation of a new supply route for anti-soviet partisans.  Agent Gordon proceeded to sneak out of the party with an attractive local. Agent Stuart sat and dined with the Latvian host Mr Zerib. Agent Stuart listened to many war stories from a slighty drunken Mr Zerib, who eventually introduced his daughter to Agent Stuart as the most important thing in his life. The typical drunk proud father, slightly embarrassing his daughter.

Meanwhile Agent Gordon proceeded across the yard into the farmhouse, he began to make himself comfortable with the Latvian woman .

At this point a huge firefight broke out, bullets were peppering through the wooden shutters sending splinters into the. It looked like the lower decks of a 19th Man-o-war. Latvians started handing out weapons from a cache under the floor. Mr Zerib instructed Agent Stuart to take his daugter to the jeep to the north-west of the compound. He told him he will be there in 10 minutes.

Agent Gordon meanwhile was struggeling with a hysterical Latvian woman, eventually resorting to force. He began to carry her unconscious form down stairs when she started to recover and whispering “pistale, pistale”. Agent Gordon then dropped her unceremoniously as he ran back into the room to search out the pistol.

Agent Stuart was given a ww2 era bolt-action rifle and proceeded to escort miss Zerib, out of the feast. With skillful use of stealth, dodging and flat-out sprinting Agent Stuart began to extract them both from the fight.

Agent Gordon met two enemy commandos on the stairs as he tried to escape. He dispatched them with ease and took one of their sub-machine guns. 

As Agent Gordon out the front of the house a streak of gunfire attracted his attention. he could see it was aimed at Agent Stuart as he ran past with a woman. The shots came from just around the corner.

Four commandos were chasing Agent Stuart into the woods. Agent Gordon dispatched two with a short burst of automatic fire. The other two did not hear as they raced into the woods. Agent Gordon successfully approached one silently, and dispatched him with deadly efficiency.

Agent Stuart flanked the remaining commando as miss Zerib readied the jeep. Agent Stuart was completely unaware of Agent Gordon presence as he dispatched the commando. Agent Gordon shouted when he heard the gunfire as he thought Agent Stuart may have been hit. His shouting saved his life as agent Stuart lined up a shot onto his silhouette aborting at the last second.

They aproached the jeep when they noticed mr Zerib running towards them. A few minutes late. before he could reach them he was shot in the back of the head.

Agent Gordon struggled to control another histerical Latvian miss Zerib as agent Stuart careened down the dirt track. Agent Stuarts excellent driving outclassed the approaching enemy jeeps. The secret agents and the young Latvian boarded the fishing boat at the Emergency randez-vous and made a swift escape to Gotland.

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This was only 30 mins of a 3 hour game! needless to say I had a blast. Covert surveillance, Close Quarters Combat, Gun fights, car chases, running along the top of trains as they careered through the alps! 

WOW.

I really could get into this.

Big thanks to Peter and Stuart