Friday 2 September 2016

Games I Want To Play

Up in the top navigation I have a page called "Games I Have Played". I started it back when I first started the blog. I thought it might be a neat way to collect what games I had played. I think I had an idea to do something which was almost like a micro-review; I didn't update it very often, and haven't looked at it for a while. I'm sure there are things that I've missed.

In the last few days though I've been thinking more and more about running a game, partly because I've not played anything regularly for a month or so while noisms Ainu Moshir game is on hiatus. I played in a game that Patrick ran a few weeks back, which was good, but also served to point out to me that I've not got a lot of gaming done this year.

So, in no particular order, here are some games that I've been thinking about playing lately:


Night Witches

I backed the Kickstarter for this Bully Pulpit game of Soviet women bomber pilots a few years ago, because it was just too interesting a setting and idea not to. I looked over the drafts as they came through and liked what I saw, but then promptly filed it away in my pdf folder. A few nights ago, for some reason, it was really rattling around my head. So I sat and read the pdf on my phone and thought, "I really, really want to run this." And not only do I want to run it for a one or two session story, I want to run it for WWII. I want to do the full thing, from pilots getting out of academy through to the end of the war. And then do it all again.

Wolf Packs and Winter Snow

Patrick blogged about this game a few days ago. Prehistoric D&D is something I was turning over in my head about six months ago; I even started populating a hex map and coming up with tables for randomly generated prehistoric megafauna (e.g., roll 3d6 and consult a table: it's like a 2. horse with 4. horns and 6. four metres in length). Working on the zine and day job took my attention away, but now I don't have to write a prehistoric D&D game because it exists! I've not read it yet, but may put it on my Christmas list. Patrick's description really makes me want to run/play it.

Thursday Night

A microgame that I've made for the print extra of Issue 3 of a A Random Encounter (out now!). After I made Escape The Undermaze for Issue 2, I've been bitten by the bug of making small games; games that give a little hit of setting and situation, some simple but flexible mechanics for resolving situations (mechanics that would be very familiar to anyone who has played Into The Odd). Escape The Undermaze was a very D&Dish game, monsters and traps and a randomly generated labyrinth. Thursday Night uses similar mechanics, but is a very different game. I created it and made it in pretty much a day: I'd been throwing around some ideas, but nothing was sticking. Then this did and it exploded from there. I think it works as a concept, but I'd love to run it for a group. I don't know how long of a game it might be. It's supposed to be quite tense and "real time" I guess.



Maze Rats of the Blue Medusa

I really like Ben Milton's Maze Rats (I think it is still developing; I saw it in Odditional materials). It's a great take on a D&D-style game using Into The Odd-style mechanics and formatting. There are a series of beautifully connected tables that give weird and wonderful inspiration. I rolled up twenty spell names when I first read it, including Aether Tower, Spray of Grasping Brimstone and Spiral of Venom. Oh, and Mouth of Perceptive Insects. I want to describe these spells and more, and have people make the choice about vomiting telepathically-connected insects who will fly away and scout ahead... I think Maze of the Blue Medusa would be a perfect setting to try some Maze Rats adventures.

What's on your list of games that you want to play?


2 comments:

  1. I've thought about running this as well, but Maze Rats seems more suited to one off adventures I think. Not sure though as I haven't run it yet.

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    1. I've still not run it, although I've got the updated take on it that veers away from the origins of Into The Odd. Still got lots of great tables and inspirations, and mechanics are now uniformly behind d6s and nothing else. Still on my to do list, but I spend most of my creative attention on work of late, and I don't leave much for playing or running games :(

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