What systems and/or campaigns are you currently actually playing? I spend so much time thinking about new systems and reading old ones, and I sometimes forget that playing is actually a part of things.
So, what are you actually playing right now?
I am currently running Curse of Strahd for two of my adult kids and two of their friends.
I am about to start a Mouseguard-like campaign in FUDGE, with my wife and all of my adult kids.
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Pretty much everything I run these days is based on Savage Worlds. It just works the way I like to run games. I’m currently working on a conversion of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to Savage Worlds and I’m looking to run another test game in about a month. Things have been going pretty well with it!
I do still get around to running a little Swords & Wizardry now and again too.
I’ve never heard of Savage Worlds or Swords & Wizardry. What are they like?
Savage Worlds has fast, brutal combat that instead of feeling balanced always feels risky. This is counterbalanced by the players having “bennies”, which are basically poker chips they can cash in for a re-roll of basically any roll, to tank (“soak”) some damage after an attack hits them but before damage is resolved, change a small story detail at the GM’s discretion, restore power points (basically mana for spellcasters).
At its best it feels like a pulpy, campy action system. The rule-set is generic and there’s over a hundred setting books in various genres. IMO it’s definitely worth checking out.
I’m running it for a multiverse-spanning multi-genre game. It’s a ton of fun so far.
I’ve been in a bit of a break from running 5e DnD and have been blitzing through some other RPGs mostly as one shots to keep things fresh, honestly they’ve all been great in their own way:
- Black Sword Hack (Moorcock/Lieber OSR sword and sorcery)
- Black Hack (OSR)
- Mörk Borg (Doom Metal OSR)
- Mothership (Sci-Fi Horror)
- Mekton Zeta (Anime Mecha)
- Age of Sigmar: Soulbound (Heroic Fantasy)
Ooou, how are you liking BSH? I finally received my copy and I’ve been itching to try it.
On paper, it seems to hit my subjective nail on the head for heroic, yet still mortal characters. Also the magic systems are really neat. I love how uncontrollable they seem. Magic should be scary, even for the wielder.
I have doubts about the perks, though… There aren’t that many, and I’m concerned about characters feeling very samey by top level.
Yeah its a really nice system, combat has a nice flow to it and characters can feel pretty fragile, but also appropriately strong, we’ll see with time how the progression holds up but it’s been really fun so far, it really catches that Moorcock Sword and Sorcery Itch 👌
Masks - I currently did a session zero for this game this weekend, and will be doing the first session next tuesday. I’ve played Masks a bunch before, and having seen Across the Spiderverse twice recently I’m really looking forward to it.
Pathfinder 2e - currently playing through Abomination Vaults on my Sunday livestreamed variety game group. I think one player isn’t enjoying it so much as he enjoys playing unusual characters more than the tactical combat itself, but I think everyone else is enjoying it.
SWN Revised: After two previous SWN campaigns, this one is a bit different. Instead of starting off as a free crew with a ship, the PCs are a part of a faction that’s half mercenary company half adventurer’s guild, that focuses on mech combat. So I made some systems for them to work their way up the ranks of the faction, a variation of the faction turn that represents different crews within their faction vying for control and influence, and a reputation system that unlocks more purchase options over time as missions are complete.
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Our game right now is just a normal Masks game, but after the first Spiderverse movie a friend and I collaborated on a multi-table convention oneshot where each table was its own universe.
It should be noted that a lot of the ordinary Masks setup relationships will take a back door to the plot and events, as with a oneshot in general and even moreso with switching tables/universes things like Influence and relationships will take a bit of a back door to the action itself.
Good ol 3.5. Homebrew piratey setting. Getting towards the end of this campaign, which is exciting. I’m pretty slow to put games together, this is only my 3rd major campaign in more than a decade of DMing, and only the second time I’ll actually bring it all the way to the conclusion (if I didn’t just jinx it)
Been running a ton of solo 5E stuff with the wife. It allows us the option of a quiet night in without sitting in front of the TV.
1on1 roleplaying has been a staple of my marriage since almost the very beginning! I cannot recommend it more to happy roleplaying couples, it’s a fantastic group activity. The wife and I swap back and forth who is doing the DMing.
I also get to playtest new game systems during these games. We’ve done first played FFG’s Star Wars, PF2e, and Worlds Without Number in a 1on1 context before doing anything at a larger table.
Running a D&D5e game. Possibly the last one I ever run. It’s a blast though, and the players are amazing. The MCDM Flee, Mortals! book is really helping make it interesting to run.
I’m getting ready to start an Iron Kingdoms Savage Worlds game. It’s a one-shot, but if they like it, we’ll continue it into a campaign.
I’m also possibly going to be starting a Pathfinder 2e game soon. I’ve ran it a bit, but I still don’t feel like I know it very well, so I’m going to run the Beginner Box (possibly lead into Abomination Vaults) on Foundry. It’s a weird experience feeling like a newb again, since I haven’t really felt that way in decades. Most games just aren’t that challenging to master.
Flee, Mortals! is so excellent and makes me so sad that it’s likely to be the only monster book MCDM produces 😭
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A year-long 5e campaign that is likely going to wrap in a few months when I run out of ideas and the players get too high level. After that, one of the players (a massive Elder Scrolls fan) has talked about possibly running a thing with the unofficial Elder Scrolls 5e supplement.
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A Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game that has been going on since January. It will also likely wrap within a few months, mostly because our group isn’t a great fit for it. After that, I’m not sure. Maybe we’ll do pathfinder, maybe we’ll do DSA (because one of our german friends really likes it), or maybe we’ll do something completely different.
Curse of Strahd is the 5e module I’ve wanted to try the most over the years, and Mouseguard is one of the more interesting systems I’ve gotten a taste of from one-shots. I kinda wish I was part of OP’s family right now, NGL.
Curse of Strahd is truly fantastic as a setting and basic ideas but the module itself is a piece of crap.
Hammering it into shape, making sense of it, and making it all hang together has been a craptonne of work, and I’ve used loads of 3rd party stuff. The Curse of Strahd subreddit is AMAZING for that.
It’s truly a pile of hot garbage RAW, but I’m having the time of my life customizing and making it mine.
I’m a fan of the 3rd party campaign module Odyssey of the Dragonlords and it’s hilarious how much this is the consensus on the dedicated Discord community for that adventure. Everyone loves the bones of the module, but everyone also agrees it needs a lot of love and polish.
@dwgill @TripHammer we dropped it. Our GM had a hard time filling all the gaps in this adventure and it was a pain to watch. Good ideas but our consense was it is poorly executed.
We hoped for more and were hyped. Glad you have a blast with it!
I mean I don’t want to give the impression I ran it with any great success myself. I gave it a shot but scheduling doomed that campaign. I was just sharing the impression that I got from the discord when I was lurking at the time. Plenty of gaps to compensate for, though, no doubt.
@dwgill totally misunderstood that. :)
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I’m playing through Rise of the Runelord with my wife and some friends. Its a pathfinder 1e campaign that our DM has converted to 2e.
I want to run my own 2e campaign and was thinking about picking up a shorter pre made campaign to run, I just have to take the time to read through them and pick one
Running a Cypher System (Numenera) game.
Playing in a Cypher System (sci-fi setting with Farscape influence) game and a Star Wars Edge of the Empire game.
SW Edge is great, but it really needs the right kind of group to work. It feels like it requires so much creativity compared to other systems.
I really dislike the Genesys System. Dice are too fiddly and swingy, and it’s hard for me to gauge my odds based on the dice pools. But it’s a fun campaign overall so I tolerate it. I’d much rather play a Star Wars game in most any other system (except Starfinder, terrible for other reasons IMO).
I have three games running at the moment. I’ll post them in order of how novel they are.
Blades in the Dark (BitD)
I run this when there aren’t enough people put together for my primary game. I like it, but I think the default setting suffers from Warhammer40k grimdark blandness. There should be more in the book that talks about how to pepper in beautiful moments, and things that the players want to protect and strive for.
Then again, BitD assumes that players want to dispose of their characters, and have them become traumatized in a way that I feel is a poor representation of mental health, but an accurate depiction of toxic genre tropes.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition (PF2e)
PF2e is a smaller game I play with only a few dedicated players. I find that players that do not want to spend a lot of time creating characters and learning the intricacies of the system do not retain interest. Those are absolutely the cost of entry for players. I also find the game is at times slightly easier, but for the most part as difficult to run as 5e, and that most people who say that PF2e fixes everything that D&D5e does poorly was attempting to play 5e like 3.5e, instead of leaning into Rulings-not-rules. Of course the DMG doesn’t exactly lay out the Rulings-Not-Rules attitude clearly…
Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (D&D5e)
This is the game that has been going on for over a decade, porting in from 4th edition.
My most recently started campaign is a fully homebrewed world, based around a rewrite of elven history that puts the axis between high, drow, and wood elves into a spectrum of spiritualism and materialism, with high elves wanting to ascend above the physical world, Drow wanting to help the mortal races (and get mad rich yo), and Wood Elves shooting the moon on the material world and finding spiritualism in nature.
As systems go, I think it is the easiest game for players to pick up and participate in, and that is asks as little of players as possible. It also is not the easiest system for new DMs to get a handle of, although I am hopeful that OneD&D will be fixing most of those issues with a rewrite of the DMG and the various fixes that I think will be making CR a much more useful tool.
ive actually been playing dungeonworld recently for the first time as we take a break from our usual D&D game. It’s been a bit of a refreshing change of pace.
I’m running Burning Wheel. The group are wizards on the cusp of the fabled third age of magic. I’m using the Trilemma Adventures as well as the setting from the book. I’ve got seven players so I’m just over the stressful threshold.
It’s absolutely awesome.
I have no familiarity with Burning Wheel but everyone I know who’s ever played it seems to consider it one of their favorites. I always got the impression it’s quite mechanically sophisticated without being altogether combat focused, which is a bit unique among ttrpgs in my experience.
I am running:
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A 4th edition D&D game for a group of 5 people
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A 4th edition D&D game for one person who is running multiple characters.
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A bunch of one-off Pathfinder 2E games for a group of people (basically whoever is available on a given evening)
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Currently playing a harengon rogue in a Wild Behind the Witchlight 5E game. I’m way more excited about the Savage Worlds game I’m running, which is an isekai-style game where the PCs were transported to a strange fantasy world with new and amazing powers.
I’ve wanted to run an isekai-style game for a long time. I feel like so few isekai stories properly explore the implications of being transported to a fantasy world with real-world knowledge.
In the process of trying to put together a Pathfinder 2e campaign where I run them through an adapted version of Curse of Strahd. It’s just working out the scheduling…
