2010 is on its way out. You’ve played a lot of games this year. What sticks out? Not the titles—not just the titles—but the big wins and the bad beats. What do you recall from this year’s epic battles, risky bets, sly bargains, and other outré gaming maneuvers?
As a DM this year, I beheaded an Avenger PC in an ongoing D&D campaign that blended the Northlanders comic with The Lord of the Rings. That character was known for his deer-head mantle and it got cut away by an evil counterpart—an Avenger NPC worshipping a befouled vision of his same god. That battle ended, on an altar sinking into a volcano’s fiery mouth, with the heroic (and insane) PC dead, but the villainous Avenger met his end, too.
I also managed to make money playing Omaha High-Low for maybe the first time ever this year.
What about you?
What’s your game story for 2010?
I will look back at my 2010 in gaming as the year I finally, after almost 30 years of gaming, escaped my little local-gaming fishbowl and opened my eyes to the huge global sea of gaming.
I left a group that I’d been gaming with for most of the past 10 years (in large part because they were among the only local gamers I knew), as we were just no longer a match for each other, gaming-wise. I hadn’t been getting anything out of gaming with this group in some time.
I started Geekcentricity and have been able to dialogue with many amazing minds in the world of gaming.
I can’t wait until next year!
Apart from getting my Avenger’s head cut off in the above mentioned story, which was awesome, a couple come to mind:
In a futuristic nWod Werewolf game, my character had some epic highs and lows. The low was when he failed a roll to kill a prey spirit the pack had captured as part of a test. That’s right, my big, furry, death-machine couldn’t kill a rabbit on his first try. The pack will never let him live that down.
Or they might, because his high was founding the only tribe in existence (others all gone via backstory), and being it’s alpha. So let them keep talking about the rabbit. Haters gonna hate.
Another moment came in one of Zack Walter’s 4e games. It had a wild-west theme, and there was a great mounted-combat fight, where he scrolled the scenery past us each round. I enjoyed the technique, and may steal it in the future.
From a GM perspective, I have fond memories of the moment in Zombie game where I realized the PCs had forgotten to check the NPC they’d rescued for bite marks…
Oh, man, Zack, that reminds me of that crazy round with Olmstead Early, when random side-effects of playing a Chaos Sorcerer caused teleportations, ricochets, and a hippgriff to be stolen all in the air above a speeding train. That was this year, right? (The move to Chicago has put a big slash across my year, and everything Before Chicago feels like last year.)
I also remember so much from your sprawling, grand D&D campaign, but I couldn’t recall if that was 2009 or into 2010.
2010 was a great year for RPGing for me—lots of fun had in lots of combinations.
Yes, the speeding train was this year. I’d forgotten about that. Choas Bolt bounced what, 6 times? Insane
My huge, bloated, campaigned ended at the very beginning of this year, so I suppose that counts. 10 points for picking up that mini for the final boss for me, like, months in advance.
An amazing game of Zombies!!! that hit almost all the beats of a three-act structure perfectly and climaxed with all the PCs in the Chopper space, entirely surrounded by zombies, with a zombie in the chopper…. I honestly can’t remember another time that the end of a board-game had my heart racing to see who was going to win.
The win for the gaming year that was 2010 was the discovery of the Smallville RPG and the resulting sequel to a supers game originally run using Prime Time Adventures.
In a universe where the DC and Marvel characters served and aged side-by-side, the PCs are the next generation Avengers, though they won’t acknowledge it yet. The daughter of Iron Man and Moonstone, the Blue Lantern-ring wielding son of Captain America and Libby Lawrence, the daughter of Spider-Man who trained under the Bat-family, the daughter of Rogue and Morpheus, and a seven-foot-tall blue minotaur weekly struggle against each other and evil while trying to find their place in the world. The combination of my players and the Smallville mechanics lead to consistently great sessions!
For me, the best memories of the year come from the gaming conventions that I attended. I went to five different cons this year, including Origins and GenCon. Prior to this year, I had never been to a gaming convention and had never played anything besides D&D (3.5 and $e) or Pathfinder.
Now I love a much wider variety of games and I write about them as a game blogger for Troll in the Corner. I’m looking forward to seeing what 2011 will bring.
When 2010 started, my Pokemon campaign was winding down. I had started with four players, and eventually it just boiled down to two. And even though I brought the weird, those players brought the awesome. It ended with a metalhead ghost-type collector and a hardboiled detective standing against Arceus to prevent the cosmic pokemon from rewriting reality.
After that, I ran my zombies campaign. It ended with an all out zombie assault on Cinderella’s Castle while the eleven PC’s struggled to protect the survivors long enough to be picked up by military choppers.
At the start of summer, my Dresden Files campaign got started, and the best moments weren’t when someone was slinging magic, but when the sole mortal in the group proved himself the most frightening being.
Most recently, the Dresden Files group agreed to take on the role of space pirates in the Mass Effect universe. We’ve only played four sessions and they’ve taken out a network of slavers, mutinied against the drunken NPC captain and forged the beginnings of their own pirate fleet.
I completed GMing an epic Lord of the Rings RPG campaign set in around 2579TA concerning the Fall of the Witch King. Aside from one problem player and an awkward introduction of another, it worked out pretty much exactly as I had planned, down to the final confrontation.
Sometime I’ll have to get around to finishing writing it up on my blog, perhaps when my current plate is clear.
I was running a one-shot of Mouse Guard and one of the players, a kid who couldn’t have been more than 12, tried to take on a bear. I told him it was like trying to take on an aircraft carrier. He kept repeating that description to his dad (who was wargaming) with excitement.
That type of player makes me want to run more!
On the release date of The Dresden Files RPG the local store (Endgame, Oakland, CA) held a special event with 6 tables of DFRPG being played. I already loved the setting and the system was a great overlay. Even better, some of the staff that worked on the books was there and either participating or GM’ing. Our game ended with an epic confrontation with the baddie in a penthouse full of evil-doers. GREAT fun.
I ran a Muppet Spaghetti Western at a little con in Madison, SD this last fall. Used Savage Worlds and something akin to the Superpowers Compendium to build the Muppets. It was the most vicious, violent, amazing, side-splittingly funny thing I have ever GMed for.
This summer I began running D&D Encounters sessions at a local game store. Our group includes a father and his two teenage daughters (14 and 16) among the regulars. In the adventure, there is a scene where the players are caught between an evil Shaman (along with his minions) and an Ankheg. The adventure is set up so that one of the PCs can have a battle of wills against the Shaman to make the Ankheg take actions. The 14 year old figured this out and won more often than not in the struggle.
All of this was entertaining in and of itself as she roleplayed her struggle against the Shaman, but the encounter became even more memorable when the Shaman and his lackeys had been defeated. The Ankheg remained and the party is supposed to have to combat it when all other targets are gone, before that could occur the 14 year old asked “Can I turn it into my pet?”
Using rule #1 from improvisational theater, I immediately said “Sure” and quickly looked up the DCs for a Skill Challenge and ran the rest of the Encounter as one. I made the players roleplay out the actions they were taking to tame the Ankheg, and it made for a wonderful session.
I think my favorite gaming memory of the year is the shocked response I got from the room when I really dove into playing my goblin in Will’s steampunk fantasy 1900’s heist game. My character and Mr. North’s were tasked with creating a distraction while our second story woman worked her way into our mark’s mansion. It was decided that we would fake an assault in the street outside the gate to draw the guards away, but the details of the attack were left up to me. Since my character was awarded experience when he acted creepy, I decided to capitalize on the opportunity.
I described the vicious little guy suddenly jumping onto his associate’s shoulders and clawing at his face while screeching, “Give me your face! I need your face!” Everyone leaned away from me as I calmly reached over to claim my XP token.
Zack, that truly was a great moment. That whole mini-campaign was great fun, but you sure took to Tock, didn’t you?