Graph Paper Games

Blacksteel recently referenced MegaTraveller in a comment, which got me briefly reminiscing about the one time I played another Traveller offshoot, Traveller: the New Era .  Which got me thinking about games I've only played once, and why.  Which got my thinking about making a regular column about games I've only played once.  So, here we go... RPG: Traveller the New Era When: I'm guessing 1994 or thereabouts. GM: Paul, a friend of mine Capsule: As far as I can tell, the GM was angling for a gritty, noir-esque storyline featuring criminal underworld figures, helpless ingenues, etc.  I played a doctor (the medical type). What happened: my PC decided the best way to get information from one of the aforementioned ingenues was to go full-on Rico Suave, backed up by some pretty impressive social skill rolls.  The GM was very uncomfortable roleplaying this, and even after some prolific hand-waving of the action never came back to this game.

So, I was in the mood for some retail therapy the last week for a lot of reasons, none of which have real bearing for the purposes of this post, but for me retail therapy often has a big impact on my gaming collection. Most of what I purchased were second-hand, used wargames (including All Quiet on the Martian Front , In Her Majesty's Service , and Field of Glory ) but I also bought two RPG's, one used on eBay and another new. The used one was the most recent edition of Traveller. I bought this on the spur of the moment because of a comment one of my players had made recently to me about how the group rarely roleplays, and by that she meant do anything that wasn't a combat action.  And she's right--fight scenes are the bread and butter of my gaming group, although that's slowly changing.  But my thought at the time was that combat in Traveller isn't quite as common, is more dangerous, and isn't the core theme of the game (being a merchant marine and...

Continuing my coverage of the 2013 End of the World gaming weekend... The second scenario also took place in the ongoing campaign's “Traveller” universe, but in a very different way. In this game, the king of a Tech 1 world of medieval culture is brought into the Empire of Man. The king arranges to have eight of his elderly and loyal royal knights retrofitted as cyborgs, a process taking about 18 months. When the knights return, having been restored to youthful vigor, they discover the king dead, his son imprisoned, and usurper aspiring to the throne. This, obviously, can not stand. One of the big factors in the system that is used at EOW is first that it is heavily geared towards shooting combat (mostly firearms) rather than melee combat, and second that the game is so lethal.  You can die in one hit.  Not only that but if you are shot, you're likely to die or at least be no longer able to fight.  That's the "realism" of the system, and it has a bi...

For those who have been reading this blog for less than a year, or just don't bother following the minutiae of my life, a little background. Five or six years ago I joined this gaming group that has been in existence for the last 25 years or so. You read that right—25 years of consistent gaming. Now, some caveats about the group. They only gather four times a year. Three of those times they spend the entire day (traditionally a Saturday) gaming. The fourth time, they spend three days gaming with each day being a different adventure led by a different GM. One of those sessions is the “campaign” session, the quarterly game that's run the other times of the year. The other two are one-shots. The first three-day event was held in November of 1989, on the date that the little-known RPG Morrow Project said would be the beginning of World War Three. As a result, the gaming mini-convention would be known as “End of the World,” or EOW. A little more background. These g...

I thought I might give my review of my three-day gaming fest in Columbus called "End of the World" or EOW for short.  This is an annual event for myself and about ten other people, with most of us participating in three one-shot day-long events Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  We use one system, a homegrown ruleset appropriately called the EOW System.  I'll take each day as its own post, just because of length (and to milk it for the week). After arriving in Thursday and checking in, Friday we had our first session, which was judged by my friend Scott.  This was a little bit of an unusual game because it was not a one-shot, but a session for the quarterly Traveller campaign that Scott is running for the group.  Normally you get three sessions a year, then EOW to cleanse the palate, but this year they decided to have one session be the "home game."  I saw "Traveller" but in fact it only takes place in the Traveller universe.  The rules are the EOW Syste...

"After I graduated from college the Navy offered me the sort of opportunities and job security I was looking for.  I know when you think of the Navy you think of the big flyboys or the starship gunners, but I was part of that organization that made everything run smoothly.  In my initial tour of duty I continued to improve on my education with a study of military history and computer programming.  By my second tour I was commissioned as an officer and soon after promoted to lieutenant.  Those were great days aboard a hospital ship.  I was learning everything I could, but did most of my work in medical records and engineering. "I continued to serve aboard the hospital ship for my third and fourth terms, having finally convinced my superiors that I could be out in the field.  I was part of an emergency response team that would board spacecraft in distress and provide relief.  My the time I was done with my fourth term, I had risen to the rank of Comman...

"Back when I entered into the merchant service, I knew I could go far, given the chance. That employee recruiter from Webber Transports was pretty quick to sign me up, and I didn't disappoint him. Engines, computers, there wasn't anything I couldn't do. I made Fourth Officer and had hoped to make Third, but my supervisor said it was only a matter of time. Shows what he knows. "My second term I was assigned to a transport ship called Tangerine Sky . A couple of years into the term the crew of the Sky became terribly ill in the middle of a run. The chief engineer and many of the other crew died, leaving us stranded in space. Even though I was pretty sick myself, I ended up being pressed into service in the sickbay. I heard after we were rescued that the Sky had been carrying medical supplies that were somehow contaminated and leaked into the environmental systems. Webber lost a ton of money on the deal, not to mention all the bad publicity. They diss...