The Times They are a-Changin'
In similar circumstances to the introduction of Atlantis to my 5 year old fortnightly Thursday night group, my 7 year old monthly Saturday day group has also undergone a significant change. The Saturday group has always been about old school RPGing. Essentially recreating those weekend D&D games of old where we would meander through prewritten adventures, barely staying in character, looting, pillaging and rules lawyering as we go.
It started with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e and this continued for almost 6 years, playing through Paths of the Damned, then Terror in Talabheim and finishing with the Doomstones. This campaign had naturally ran its course, so we moved on to Rogue Trader as it seemed a logical extension. Unfortunately, Rogue Trader proved not to be a good RPG. The added rules complexity and cruft reminded me of playing D&D3e. Where WFRP2e's rule system was a pleasure to use (modern design) and robust (especially to our abuses), Rogue Trader's was painful and crumbled under stress. This meant that the GM had to really up their workload to make it work and that kind of defeated the group's purpose.
As a result, we haven't played since early this year. The group began stirring; wanting greater regularity yet recognising the issue with Rogue Trader. One player had offered to run The One Ring as an alternative. Two other events happened: one of the players announced he was moving away and I had offered a 3-4 session D&D5e game for the group as a stop gap. Then the GM announced that he was happy to shelve Rogue Trader.
In the space of 24 hours, the above events combined to see the group move on to the next phase. Rogue Trader will be replaced by two alternating campaigns. The first is The One Ring run by the player who offered it and the second being D&D5e run by myself (Lost Mine of Phandelver and then Tyranny of Dragons). I am a huge fan of The One Ring, and its great that I get to continue to be a player, so I am very pleased with that. Though I know TOR's mechanics are sublime and prewritten adventures amazing, I will be interested to see how it handles the overall ethos of the group, given the RPG is neither particularly old school nor assumes PC behaviour that we are used to.
I am also pleased to be running D&D5e. Where D&D3e would likely have ended up with the same result as Rogue Trader, and D&D4e (despite the group's love of it) is just too much effort all round, D&D 5e is an almost perfect fit for the group, like WFRP2e was. Its easy to play (modern design also), robust (including to player abuse) and should have plenty of support by way of prewritten adventures. Also, the expected PC behaviour is exactly what we had inspired by when we played WFRP2e :) I have always wanted to run the "prewritten" adventures for D&D too, though there was always some impediment (in 3e, the game sucked, and in 4e, the adventures sucked).
Between Atlantis being the outlet for me running a dramatic narrative focussed campaign of my own creation, D&D5e being the outlet for me running a low effort old school "pre-written" campaign, and The One Ring being an outlet for me playing RPGs, my RPGing is looking pretty good at the moment; possibly the best it ever has TBH
It started with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e and this continued for almost 6 years, playing through Paths of the Damned, then Terror in Talabheim and finishing with the Doomstones. This campaign had naturally ran its course, so we moved on to Rogue Trader as it seemed a logical extension. Unfortunately, Rogue Trader proved not to be a good RPG. The added rules complexity and cruft reminded me of playing D&D3e. Where WFRP2e's rule system was a pleasure to use (modern design) and robust (especially to our abuses), Rogue Trader's was painful and crumbled under stress. This meant that the GM had to really up their workload to make it work and that kind of defeated the group's purpose.
As a result, we haven't played since early this year. The group began stirring; wanting greater regularity yet recognising the issue with Rogue Trader. One player had offered to run The One Ring as an alternative. Two other events happened: one of the players announced he was moving away and I had offered a 3-4 session D&D5e game for the group as a stop gap. Then the GM announced that he was happy to shelve Rogue Trader.
In the space of 24 hours, the above events combined to see the group move on to the next phase. Rogue Trader will be replaced by two alternating campaigns. The first is The One Ring run by the player who offered it and the second being D&D5e run by myself (Lost Mine of Phandelver and then Tyranny of Dragons). I am a huge fan of The One Ring, and its great that I get to continue to be a player, so I am very pleased with that. Though I know TOR's mechanics are sublime and prewritten adventures amazing, I will be interested to see how it handles the overall ethos of the group, given the RPG is neither particularly old school nor assumes PC behaviour that we are used to.
I am also pleased to be running D&D5e. Where D&D3e would likely have ended up with the same result as Rogue Trader, and D&D4e (despite the group's love of it) is just too much effort all round, D&D 5e is an almost perfect fit for the group, like WFRP2e was. Its easy to play (modern design also), robust (including to player abuse) and should have plenty of support by way of prewritten adventures. Also, the expected PC behaviour is exactly what we had inspired by when we played WFRP2e :) I have always wanted to run the "prewritten" adventures for D&D too, though there was always some impediment (in 3e, the game sucked, and in 4e, the adventures sucked).
Between Atlantis being the outlet for me running a dramatic narrative focussed campaign of my own creation, D&D5e being the outlet for me running a low effort old school "pre-written" campaign, and The One Ring being an outlet for me playing RPGs, my RPGing is looking pretty good at the moment; possibly the best it ever has TBH