The Last Campaign
Long term readers (all 6 of you- heh) probably know that I am a bit of a gaming fool, RPG style. Back in CA, I hobnobbed with the Old Masters for a decade and some odd, and while not exactly a by the book kind of campaign, we had quite a bit of fun, and we collectively got to see a lot of the virtual world I dreamed up, or rather, built onto: the original GM laid out his world map in 1972, and for the most part, I got to play around the edges...
So we came to Texas, and pickings were slimmer: its easiest to say that folks around here are a bit more practical. Over time, I did find interested fellows, but they were a) half my age roughly, and b) all wrapped up in new versions of AD&D like 3.5 and 4e. I went with the flow as best as I could, studied the rules in my spare time, and crafted campaigns to try the systems out- the show must go one, as it were. The 3.5 rules versions was first, and while it went well enough, there were only three players, and scheduling became unsupportable, plus the changes in rules left me on uneven ground. The second crack I tried began with a young punk I met at a local bear run along with various other friends I'd met along the way. It persisted on a weekly schedule for most of the previous year through various turns and personnel changes, before coming undone this week.
We played with the current 4e ruleset, which is a distant at best relation to the old 2nd edition game of my youth- things change je? It's telling that the core rule set expanded from 3 books (6 along the way) to 9 volumes format he start, along with a near mandatory online subscription so that you could keep up with the errata and with the incredibly complex nature of character generation and updating. The new system is designed and optimized for modern gamers who're at home on console games and in world of warcraft, and so I got caught a lot in trying to do things as I knew how, only to find them unsupported or difficult to translate. Nore troubling was player attrition, as it turned out that everyone I knew directly who was interested were either unsuitable or unavailable; by half way through, I was GMing mostly a group of strangers, including one fellow we snagged by way of his Scruff profile. In Ca, I was as young to the old Masters as my new group was young tome, but the social aspect of my old game fell away, as these new players and I shared only the game itself. Strangers n all,they were good people and a fine group, and they put up with me picking up the rules no the fly and my inability to put lots of time into prep beforehand. it made for a mixed experience, but we soldiered on, up until this week, where one player announced he's switching to an evening shift and will no longer be able to attend. It's the seventh change, and just when infect i was getting a groove going, as i started to get comfortable with the rules and the story i wanted told. new players are possible, but the story requires renewal and reset, yet again. so, we'll see, come the new year, but ah, maybe the stories untold will remain so. The Old Masters still meet, mostly via WoW, but also in sessions facilitated via Skype. Old school. heh
So we came to Texas, and pickings were slimmer: its easiest to say that folks around here are a bit more practical. Over time, I did find interested fellows, but they were a) half my age roughly, and b) all wrapped up in new versions of AD&D like 3.5 and 4e. I went with the flow as best as I could, studied the rules in my spare time, and crafted campaigns to try the systems out- the show must go one, as it were. The 3.5 rules versions was first, and while it went well enough, there were only three players, and scheduling became unsupportable, plus the changes in rules left me on uneven ground. The second crack I tried began with a young punk I met at a local bear run along with various other friends I'd met along the way. It persisted on a weekly schedule for most of the previous year through various turns and personnel changes, before coming undone this week.
We played with the current 4e ruleset, which is a distant at best relation to the old 2nd edition game of my youth- things change je? It's telling that the core rule set expanded from 3 books (6 along the way) to 9 volumes format he start, along with a near mandatory online subscription so that you could keep up with the errata and with the incredibly complex nature of character generation and updating. The new system is designed and optimized for modern gamers who're at home on console games and in world of warcraft, and so I got caught a lot in trying to do things as I knew how, only to find them unsupported or difficult to translate. Nore troubling was player attrition, as it turned out that everyone I knew directly who was interested were either unsuitable or unavailable; by half way through, I was GMing mostly a group of strangers, including one fellow we snagged by way of his Scruff profile. In Ca, I was as young to the old Masters as my new group was young tome, but the social aspect of my old game fell away, as these new players and I shared only the game itself. Strangers n all,they were good people and a fine group, and they put up with me picking up the rules no the fly and my inability to put lots of time into prep beforehand. it made for a mixed experience, but we soldiered on, up until this week, where one player announced he's switching to an evening shift and will no longer be able to attend. It's the seventh change, and just when infect i was getting a groove going, as i started to get comfortable with the rules and the story i wanted told. new players are possible, but the story requires renewal and reset, yet again. so, we'll see, come the new year, but ah, maybe the stories untold will remain so. The Old Masters still meet, mostly via WoW, but also in sessions facilitated via Skype. Old school. heh