Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Home Again! Super Short Reviews! July Plans!

You would think with several quiet evenings at my parents house in Western New York, I'd have squeezed in some kind of gaming but, no, unless you count reading:


  • Platoon Forward! - Although I've read plenty of suggestions about characterization of commanders in the pages of Lone Warrior, I bought this primarily for that purpose. But I found I also really like the campaign generation. Taken as a whole, it's a nice system of  personality, scenarios and events.  It's  system neutral and can be used with your favorite set of WWII rules. 
  • Mutant Future - I am going to play a mutant hedgehog (inspired by the cover of the old Dragonsroar RPG) in an online, play-by-post game. Thought it might be good to check out my mutant powers. The mechanics are Labyrinth Lord, which automatically means I'm somewhat endeared to it, although it does feel like they simply copy and pasted a good bit from LL. It probably could have been a setting book with new classes and a bestiary. 
  • GURPS Lite (3rd and 4th eds.)  - I am going to be facilitating a feudal/mythical Japan game in the fall and, having purchased GURPS Japan, thought I'd check out the Lite rules, which I had heard were far easier to digest than the complete rules and offer a good gaming experience as is. They don't seem terribly complicated and frankly, I'm wondering why so many people seem to find GURPS difficult. Perhaps I need to read the complete core rules.
  • Jack Vance's The Gray Prince (1 chapter to go) - I've been reading this here and there for awhile now. It stands to be the first novel I've read in some time. Provides a nice mish-mash of magic and technology on a far away planet.


I probably should have spent some time thinking about the next session of my USR campaign game or playing the next session of the Ever Expanding Dungeon (I actually HAVE played a session since the last one I posted, but it was solely the encounter with the giant rats and the zombies. I ran out of time to do anything else.)

When I wasn't reading, I was watching American Dad or Keeping Up Appearances (which I find to be side splitting fun) or practicing drawing. I may or may not post the results of that over on my other blog. If I wasn't doing that, I was working.

I took on a second job, which began last week, doing QA testing for a website related to the gaming industry. I'm pretty excited about it, even though it's only a few hours a week. 

The position is temporary for now, with a chance it might become permanent (although the same number of hours) after an unspecified time period. The only disadvantage so far is that they are backed up on testing and, as a result, there's a bit more work than would be usual.

You can probably guess what this means. Yes, my gaming will be severely limited for a time. Especially when I juggle in my non-gaming hobbies.

My USR game will continue for sure (the PCs are waiting for the next session), I have the next encounter planned for a Pacific WWII game, and I'd like to get enough adventuring in so I can write up the next entry in the saga of the Ever Expanding Dungeon.

All of those are feasible within July, I think.

4 comments:

  1. Welcome home, sir. And I look forward to reading the encounter with the rats and zombies . . . or was it with rat zombies?


    -- Jeff

    PS, what would one do with a zombified giant rat anyway?

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  2. Welcome back. Hope all went well and fun.

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  3. Good luck with the schedule and game when you can. I'm living vicariously through you.

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  4. Thanks all!

    I'm hopeful thing'll settle down sooner, rather than later. Indeed, tonight there was no testing to be done but I had other things to do (including writing up my summary of last week's social game session).

    Never the less, I realized earlier today that I had NO IDEA how late in July it was when I wrote this post. At best, I'll probably get one of the items I mentioned in.

    -John

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