Chimerical Realm

  New Year, New Character   Day 21    Shadowrun  Of all the games from my initial list, Shadowrun was the one I was most dreading. I've never actually made a proper character for the game. The only GM I've ever played it under is an expert in the game and world, not only running it for decades, but he even wrote a few source books as a freelancer. For my first character, he worked closely with me, and we used an auto-calculating spread sheet. Subsequent characters were "pre-generated" by the GM, using Hero Lab.  So, this will be my first attempt to make a real character, by the book, with no help. It's rather intimidating. Even separate from Character Creation, Shadowrun is an intimidating game. Its a mix of cyberpunk and fantasy, melding together over the top action, cyborg super soldiers, magic of various type, netrunning...there are just so many sub-rules covering all of these "types." And the world is just as complex, being gripped in decades chaos...

My recent Dark Ages: Vampire game ended recently, thanks to an ambush that went horribly wrong and ended in the entire party getting killed. I’m still rather bummed about that, but I've instead decided to move on with a new game. I've decided to try my hand at one of the more elusive games I've ever done, which is a Super-Villains game. I've been in a few games that have tried to make this genre work, but it’s never really worked out. But, I think I have an idea. The basic setup is that the world is a fairly classic 4-color superhero world—you have heroic capes flying around beating up super-powered psychos, bank robbers, and the occasional alien invasion. Most villains are of the classic mutant extremist/bank robber/crime lord type. The PC’s, however, are different. They’re mercenaries, Villains for Hire, who travel the world looking for the best jobs, and getting paid well for their dangerous and highly specialized work. The game so far is called “Hero Hunter...

Back in my first post , I explained a little bit about my inspiration for starting this blog and trying to create an AD&D world.  It was accurate as far as it went, but I skipped an additional, yet major, influence—the Knights of the Dinner Table comic. I recently dug out my old and minor collection of these comics and have been rereading them.  For those who don’t know, Knights of the Dinner Table is a comic series that retells the adventures of a group of D&Desqe players and a satirical look at the most extreme and horrible things that happen in the game.  It doesn’t show the characters but instead focuses on the players as they sit around the eponymous table—a bunch of adults sitting around, rolling dice, yelling out things like “I WASTE HIM WITH MY CROSSBOW.”  It’s supposed to show, in a humorous fashion, the WORST aspects of D&D style game play. And I every time I read them, I want to pick up an Old School game and play that.  I LOVE...