All Entires In Roleplaying Category
By My current Ratkin story arc came to a successful conclusion last night. The rats managed to infiltrate the bad guy's haven and after a fairly lengthy battle defeat him and his 4 demon cohorts. This was mainly due to some careful planning beforehand where everybody was assigned tasks by the pack leader. Whilst the rest of the pack concentrated on the 4 demons the pack leader; Fred, a warrior, went toe to toe with the vampire. With both the vampire and Fred close to death Fred put in one last concerted effort; he spent a willpower point to ignore wound penalties, and managed to finally drop the vampire. Everybody received a healthy award in terms of their renown and a substantial XP award.
Even though I really enjoy running Ratkin I now want to concentrate on actually playing something for a while and have warned my players that I may not run Ratkin again this year.
This week is week 7 of the current 8 week session of Ratkin and it should hopefully reach a conclusion this evening. With this only being week 7 of 8 it means that if they run into difficulties there's still next week to get the story arc finished. Either way, next week will hopefully see the party get back to an area of safety and get their exploits acknowledged.
The current story arc has involved a vampire causing no end of problems to Umbral travelers and the group have gained information that leads that to believe that the main bad guy has a hideout on the island of Isla de Vieques, just to the east of Puerto Rico. However, they still need to reach the island and then find his hideout.
Information they've received suggests that he's a 700+ year old sorcerer/infernalist who was originally sentenced to death for witchcraft in the 14th century. They've done some considerable research and his name pops up every now and again. Evidence also suggests that he's a very wealthy and influential figure with places on the boards of various Pentex subsidiaries.
There's been a few deaths along the way and Craig's character is the only character still left in the current party from the original 8-hour session. Although, that session did only have 3 characters. The party has seen some changes over time and is now a party of 6 characters with another 7 characters that are not involved in the final stages of the plot.
Hopefully, they can manage to catch up with and dispose of the bad guy; although, there is still a chance he may escape. There's also the possibility that some or all of the rats could die. I'm hoping not though; because there's a really good group dynamic going on and I want to finish this arc and then move on with them; possibly after a couple of months away from it.
Whatever happens, it should be an interesting evening.
Up until yesterday we hadn't had a game on Saturday for almost a month due to the Lord of the Rings marathon, the 24 hour sponsored event and a party. John had been running Vampire nWoD prior to our break to test it ready for running it at the 24 hour and wasn't willing to continue running. Paul wasn't ready to continue his Horse Lords / Horde D&D game because he was still trying to convert to 3rd ed, Colin had offered to run Hunter but had said he really needed a couple of more weeks to prep but could go if necessary. So I offered to run either Werewolf Dark Ages or Vampire Dark Ages. The majority decision was to give Colin some more time and play Vampire Dark Ages.
I haven't run a Vampire game before, let alone Dark Ages, and was really interested in testing a setting I had plans for. I've played plenty of Vampire and Werewolf in the past and do run Ratkin on a regular basis. These are all Storyteller based systems and the mechanics of the system works across them all; albeit with some subtle differences between them.
Anyway, the setting I've placed them all in is the Holy Land in 1195; right between the 3rd and 4th crusades; during the 5 year period of peace accorded to the region by the Treaty of Jaffa. One of the interesting side effects of the setting is that there are significant amounts of holy ground in the area which can affect their abilities, or in some cases their willingness to even enter an area. I'd originally planned for them to be based in Jerusalem and gave them the choice of playing either nominally Christian or Saracen characters and they've chosen Christians. Now, since Jerusalem was under Saracen control in 1195, although individual pilgrims were free to come and go, I've relocated them slightly further north in Tyre.
Colin's playing a Lombardy Nosferatu, Paul is playing a Burgundy Salubri Healer, John's playing a Swedish Gangrel, Scoot's playing a Slav Tzimisce and Ginger Paul is playing a Basque Malkavian. Thankfully, they have all managed, among some rather interesting language choices, to select Latin, which was the main tongue spoken in the period.
There's been a few severely mutilated corpses discovered both on the road south to Jerusalem and the road north to Damascus and after looking at the latest corpse they've had a foray out into the wilderness to see what they could discover. They've done some research and they think, thanks to reports that they've received, that they've figured out a pattern for the attacks and plan to lay an ambush for the next attack.
Following this morning's announcement that Jeff Healey has passed away comes news that Gary Gygax; the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons has also passed away. Mr Gygax was 69 and had been in poor health for a length of time. Mr Gygax resided in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and was in semi-retirement, having almost suffered a heart attack after receiving incorrect medication to prevent further strokes after those on April 1 and May 4, 2004. He had also been diagnosed with an inoperable abdominal aortic aneurysm. He is survived by his second wife, Gail, 6 children and 7 grandchildren.
The 24 hour went great; but, boy am I tired. I got home by 9:15am and went to bed about 10:30am. Even though I woke up twice during the afternoon, at 3:15pm and 4:30pm it wasn't until 6:15pm that I actually got back up.
Anyway, we had fun playing In Nominee. We were Demons sent to the town of Whitehaven in the 1840s with the intention of reducing the town's level of piety. Got into a couple of fights with an Angel and his buddy and eventually succeeded.
The Ratkin that I ran was really a filler between my normal sessions of it. After settling down in Barstow after the devastation caused in Las Vegas previously one of the party went off to find an old friend and ended up getting into trouble in the sewers. After a big fight in the sewers with a Mokole, were-crocodile, where one of the characters died, it was a case of preparing for their next adventure and Fred's continued hunt for the vampire he was hired to kill.
The D&D I ran was more or less a basic dungeon crawl with the party charged to entering an old abandoned gold mine and clearing it of nasties. Most of the nasties were undead and the party managed to get all the way to the penultimate bad guy before we ran out of time. 2 of the party died in the fight with the Wyvern; which would've only left 4 characters to go up against the final baddie; a Vampire Drow Cleric. Unfortunately, as mentioned, we ran out of time and it's unlikely that I'll run the group again.
The final session was Fuzzy Heroes. We managed to get two rounds in and I ended up losing both. However, people were starting to flag by then and we decided to have a game of Munchkin and a game of Frag to round out the night. I won both.
It's 24 hour time again today; 9am today until 9am tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it; should be a lot of fun. About the only downer has been that my new printer hasn't arrived yet and I've had to do all the printing on my old 1100. No biggie; just time consuming and awkward.
This weekend is our annual 24 hour sponsored roleplay event. This year we are raising funds for the RNLI and the local hospital's Acute Care Unit. The 24 hours is split into 4 6-hour sessions. In the first session I'm playing In Nominee, 2nd session I'm running Ratkin, 3rd session I'm running D&D 3E and 4th session I'm playing Fuzzy Heroes. Ratkin is a continuation of my normal game and most of the group already have characters and I have a couple of spares for the people who don't. The D&D group is going to be a rather straightforward Dungeon Crawl and I've already got characters generated for that too. I think that might be a small group. Jacqui's In Nominee game has been fun whenever she's ran it in the past; it's from Steve Jackson Games and is an Angels & Demons game. Fuzzy Heroes is Steve's own creation and is best described as a wargame for cuddly toys. Looking forward to it.
Today has been a rather quiet day; so, I took the opportunity to do some preparation work for the 24 hour sponsored roleplay event which we are running at the start of March. I've cut back to running only 2 sessions this year; Ratkin and D&D 3E. I'm planning on just running the Ratkin as a continuation of my existing campaign and will need to do very little supplemental work for it. The D&D that I'm planning on running is separate from my weekend Kobold game and both the Savage Species and Goblins game I run occasionally on Monday evenings. I'm planning on running a Dungeon Crawl for 6th level characters and to try and maximise the amount of time people get to play I've spent this afternoon generating characters for people to use. I'll take the opportunity at various times over the next week or so to sort out the dungeon and enemies.
The long-mooted Dragonlance movie has finally arrived. It was released in the US straight to DVD on Tuesday and I've managed to get hold of a copy of it.
Vocal talent includes Kiefer Sutherland as Raistlin Majere, Lucy Lawless as Goldmoon and Michelle Trachtenberg as Tika. With Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman both acting as creative consultants it's fairly faithful to the original novel and would appear to be the first in a series of films; depending upon how successful it is.
I watched it this evening and whilst it's not the greatest movie ever released, it's still reasonably enjoyable. It's an animated film more in the style of an updated version of the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon rather than something like Hoodwinked or Flushed Away.
The SASRA FRP & Wargames Club are having a late Christmas Party this evening.
We'd originally booked the venue; a local Scout hut, for an LRP but when it was decided that the LRP wasn't going ahead the idea was raised of holding a late Christmas Party instead. The nice thing is that we have the venue exclusively for ourselves all weekend and means we can crash at the venue overnight.
It's not going to be a classic party more of a communal get together of a load of like-minded friends.
We'll have a Nintendo Wii there and a few tabletop games such as Munchkin and Illuminati.
Should at least take my mind of things and give me a chance to unwind and maybe have a little bit of fun.
For all you roleplayers out there...
This weekend is the SASRA FRP & Wargames Club annual 24 Hour sponsored roleplaying session.
This year we are raising funds for West Cumbria Coronary Care Unit and MacMillan Nurses.
Ratkin went very well at the 24 hour sponsored charity roleplay event.
Was discussing the possibilty of purchasing d20 Modern with Pixie the other night and he asked why?
The Quest meet is in two weeks time and I've agreed to run a Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition Dungeoncrawl whilst we're in Blackpool.
Today is the start of the annuanl SASRA RPG Club's 24 Hour Sponsored Roleplay.
I went roleplaying yesterday, as I do virtually every Saturday.
Just read mcphee's blog and discovered that Averil has sold the Sutton Park.
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