Game Night with my Kids: Wushu Actual Play

My kids have been begging me to run  one of the roleplaying games that their mother and I play, and after they did their chores and homework, we sat down to make some characters for the setting of their choice. They chose the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender for the setting, loving the idea of being able to control the elements and i chose Wushu for the system. I am been interested in Wushu for the past year or so, but have yet to find a game or players to test it out on. Lucky for me, my kids would be willing to even suffer through the hours long combats that the Palladium system enjoys (that last bit was sarcasm, if you didn't notice).

Going with the basic 5/4/3 for attributes a 1 weakness, here is the cast of characters:

Game Review for Spycraft 2.0

My game review from RPG.net:

Spycraft 2.0. I was asked by one of the players in my gamimg group if I would purchase and check this game out due to his desire to possibly run a game with it in a few weeks and felt that there were a few aspects of its rules that I would like. So I did what any good friend would do, I purchased it on that recommendation alone. When the .pdf download was finally finished, and I opened it up, I was shocked to see the amount of pages that this game had: 497. I was not excepting this game to be so large, I was expecting something with a hundred or so pages to get through the rules and setting stuff. Mind you, I had never even heard of Spycraft before this point and still did not know what type of system it would use. I’m a good friend, what can I say?

Game Review for Tri-Stat dX

After writing this review for RPG.net, my wife and I got to talking yesterday in the car. We determined that Tri-Stat dX would not be used with as near of frequency as it is online for our game group if we had a real-life game group. The reasons for this are two fold: Online, Tri-Stat dX brings combats to a quick end making it the system of choice and yet, Tri-Stat dX would more than likely read and play a bit blandly when sitting around a table. There is just not enough going on in Tri-Stat dX too keep up the mental facilities I feel that games like Savage Worlds, Gunslingers and Gamblers, Apocalypse Prevention, Inc, Alpha Omega, and Spirit of the Century bring with them. That is not to say that i would not run or play Tri-Stat dX around a table, but that is why I gave it a 4/4/ score at RPG.net.

On to the review...

Game Review for Alpha Omega

Another review I posted to RPG.net and I gave it a 5 for Style and a 4 for Substance due to a few things that were missing. However, it is an excellent game that I cannot wait to play again.

Disclaimer: While I received the pdf and print copy for free, it was not for me to review them, it was due to a give-a-way that was going on in the rpg.net forums around a year ago.

Game Review for Apocalypse Prevention, Inc.

I originally posted this review to RPG.net, but felt the need to re-post it over here due to quality of this game and the number of sourcebooks that are coming out, on schedule. Unfortunately, since this review was written, I have yet to have been able to play or run a game using this system and setting. I hope to rectify this in the near future. However, what I said in this review still stands.

The cover touts the game as "An Action, Horror RPG... with a twist of Humor", and it gives some humor already in just the Disclaimer, though it is slightly lacking in the rest of the book. Starting off, there is summary of the setting, the mood of the game, playable races, and of the system that is used. I rather like a page full of short and sweet summaries of what the book is planning on giving you.

Can Round-Robin-style of GMing Work?

I proposed the following game idea to my gaming group today:

I think it would be fun for a "round robin" sort of styled game, where each person makes a character.. and a villian. We roll a dice to see who plays the villian, i.e. GM's it, at the end of each "episode". As each villian is jailed or killed, a new one is made, and after some time in game, the jailed ones get thrown back into the mix to see if any breaks out and so on. I think the characters would be a mix of Batman-esque up to Iron Man-esque to fight said villians.

Of course, if someone has a really good plot and they want to run it because it would fit with the end of the previous plot, no need to roll. This way there isn't just one GM, and so that the villians are ran differently.

I would say the swap happened when the villian got carted off to jail or died, and that any background notes, like what various seedy underbelly elements were up to should be handed over to the next gm

So, any thoughts?

Somewhat immediately, one of the members in our group became worried about what would happen if there was a disagreement with how some of the more subjective elements present in nearly every game system. There was a rather long debate over this, with myself believing that while "shit happens", we were all adults and could get past such problems. His contention was that if one player disliked a general consensus to a rule, he/she might try to against the general consensus when his/her turn came up to GM.

While I agree that this could present a problem, I believe that if the GM at that moment can not stand the fact that he is helping everyone play a game, instead of that everyone is just acting as placeholders in HIS story, then he shouldn't be playing.

So I wonder, how many people out there have been involved in a round-robin-style of GMing and how did it work out for you?

Dresden Files RPG - Preorder and Impressions

According to the Dresden Files twitter account,

Incredible first-day response to the preorder (and it's not over yet) -- 240+ copies of Your Story, 230+ of Our World preordered already.

I, unfortunately, have not yet pre-ordered the books, but I want to oh so very much. I have read all of the Dresden Files books and am trying to get my wife to read them as well, after all, I will need to have at least one player to play the Dresden Files RPG with me once it gets here. I am in love with the tv show, even though it had a short duration, and am naively hoping that the interest for the RPG will help to bring the show back to life with at least a second season or a movie in the same vein that Firefly had Serenity.

So, what is someone without the actual pdf's to do? Live vicariously. There is an excellent thread at rpg.net detailing the impressions of those who have already pre-ordered the RPG and have digested the pdf's as much as possible. What is nice is that Fred Hicks is involved in the thread as well, offering answers to many of the questions.

And where to pre-order this wonderful Dresden Files RPG book duo? Why at Evil Hat of course.

Here's the lowdown about this preorder:
You will get a nearly-complete version of the PDF of each book you order as soon as your payment is confirmed by the website software. Instant gratification!
Updated PDFs will be made available once a final version is achieved.
The actual books will not ship out until late June/early July.
You'll be paying up front.
If you place an order of $79 or more, you'll get free shipping in the USA. So if you get one of each book, or two copies of one, you'll qualify.
For our international customers, we've dropped the estimated weight on the books by 20%. This should save you close to $10 on the shipping costs, but they're still going to be steep. Our apologies, but that matter's out of our hands. Make sure you're aware of the customs issues you may face if ordering internationally!
We're only able to take payment via Paypal. Sorry about that if you're unable or unwilling to use that service!
For those of you who want to order locally but still get the PDFs...
We are partnering with retail game stores to make the "instant content preorder" possible through their stores. This option may be particularly cost-effective for international customers if there is a game store in their country (or in the EU) able to handle the preorder. If you'd like your store to sign on board for this, please contact them, let them know about the possibility, and point them to the Evil Hat contact page to let us know about their interest.
Right now we have the following stores on board with our instant content preorder program:
USA - Endgame (Oakland, CA); North Coast Role Playing (Eureka, CA); Black Diamond Games (Concord, CA); Gameopolis (Idaho Falls, ID); Comic Book World (Florence, KY); Myriad Games (Salem, NH); Rainy Day Games (Aloha, OR); The Dreaming (Seattle, WA)
Internationally - Leisure Games (UK); Sphaerenmeisters Spiele (Germany); Mark One Comics & Games (New Zealand)

Today's Gaming (Tri-Stat, Buffy, Fallout 3, DnD 3.5)

In which I talk about gaming!

Tri-Stat dx Teen Supers game


The Atomic Brain!