Welcome to the last Finding the Fun of 2015 folks! Its been a busy year at Casa Draper, between work, embarking on a few personal projects (I’ll keep my incessant whining about the futility of decorating to Twitter), adjusting to some changes at home like my wife starting work full-time as a toymaker, and welcoming our kitten Ezra into the family, and not least of all, finding the time to game with my friends and loved ones.
This was also my first full year with the Mad Adventurers, and I’m grateful to our Glorious Leader, Fiddleback, the rest of my Mad Adventurer colleagues and you, the audience, for giving me the chance to develop my writing and confidence through my articles here at the site, as well as giving me an excuse to explore and talk about my favourite subject, gaming. With the year coming to a close, I thought I might share my gaming highlights of the last twelve months with you, as well as the products I’m looking forward to in the coming year.
So if you’re ready, buckle up, and we’ll start with the top five Finding the Fun highlights of 2015, as voted for by myself and the Casa Draper gaming group (Hannah, Tom, Oliver, Adam, Ally, and Llewelyn)!
Finding Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars
Back in April, I jumped out of my comfort zone of home gaming and attended the annual Seven Hills convention right here in Sheffield. I met with some lovely folks from the UK roleplaying scene and played some great games, including an Age of Rebellion one-shot. Alright, admittedly I had some doubts about the FFG Star Wars system due to my inexperience and the GM’s nerves, but it piqued my curiosity enough that I bought the Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion (and eventually Force and Destiny later in the year) starter games in order to explore the game further. I wasn’t disappointed, finding the system both enjoyable and rewarding to adjudicate from the GM’s viewpoint, and (based on games run by Mad Adventurers’ own Nick Watanabe and Ben Yendall) remarkably enjoyable from a player’s perspective.
Whilst the narrative dice system introduced by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is challenging to introduce, the starter games expertly tackle many of the hurdles common to new systems, after running the Edge of the Empire starter game for my home group, we started an Edge of the Empire campaign called Project Sunspear, based around a disparate group of Outer Rim lowlifes dragged into helping a rebel colony project get off the ground. It’s playing second fiddle to our main D&D 5e campaign, Reach, but so far the handful of games we’ve played in that campaign have shown how well-suited FFG’s system is to a variety of adventures and playstyles, and I reckon we’ve barely begun to explore the tip of the iceberg in terms of its potential.
Discovering Misspent Youth
A handful of my gaming group had the privilege of playtesting Misspent Youth, an indie title by Robert Bohl, earlier this year, after Robert was kind enough to contact the Mad Adventurers and offer us the opportunity to review his game. Coming from a high fantasy power gaming background, I must say I was genuinely surprised at how much fun I found the story structure-based system and the player-engaging world creation elements. It was a hoot!
A limited amount of time to play new games means we’ve not had the chance to revisit Misspent Youth as a full table, but the few of us that played it enjoyed it enough that I’m hoping to get the chance, time allowing, to make a full campaign with this system, or use it to introduce a few new players to roleplaying. Hats off to Robert, Misspent Youth is a great concept and elegantly designed, definitely worth a look if you’ve got space for an indie title in your gaming collection.
Feeling the Dread
I’ve heard people raving about Dread for the last few years, but I didn’t get around to buying it to try for myself until this summer, running it for my home group as much to satisfy my curiosity as for reviewing purposes. It makes for a great party game, requiring only a little preparation and a Jenga or similar block tower game to set up.
Of course, the most important part of any RPG game is the participants’ enjoyment and Dread doesn’t let down here, the competitive block-pulling and the rising tension the game creates make for a really exciting play experience, and I’m sure that Dread is going to be a Halloween staple for my group in years to come.
Exploring the Apocalypse
I’m not exaggerating when I say Apocalypse World and games under the Powered By The Apocalypse umbrella, like Monster of the Week and Dungeon World, have changed the entire way I view the role of a GM in roleplaying and the nature of failure or success in dice rolls. When we played Monster of the Week I felt simultaneously challenged as a GM and invigorated at the idea of being removed from from dice-rolling but using monsters, traps and other world elements to make moves that drove the story.
I was pleased to find Dungeon World equally enjoyable to play, enabling fast, conversational dungeon delving that seemed eerily reminiscent of OSR-style games despite it’s modern outlook, though that might be a reflection of my playstyle rather than the game itself. Either way, Dungeon World seems like a great way to introduce fantasy roleplaying to new players, with quick, archetypal character generation, a fluid play style and the simple move system that comes with every Powered By The Apocalypse game.
Investigating Gumshoe
I heard about Gumshoe while I was looking for a way to fix investigation and mystery in Dungeons & Dragons, and was instantly intrigued by the idea of PCs not rolling to find clues, and making the game about how the characters interpret the clues to uncover the suspect or reveal the mystery. As a gamer, it’s great to see a designer cut straight to the heart of a problem like investigation, and come up with a design that addresses the problem in a simple and straightforward manner. Robin Laws is a genius, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve used the Gumshoe system in a few different ways this year, straight up with the Trail of Cthulhu game (which had some issues with the included adventure and a slightly clunky combat system, but was enjoyable overall), as a D&D investigation hack in our last home campaign, and as the inspiration for a mystery mechanic for D&D 5e, but I still feel like there’s so much more I’ve yet to see from the system, and I hope I get to try some of the other Gumshoe titles (especially Kenneth Hites’ Dracula Dossier for the Nights Black Agents game) over the coming year.
With 2015 nearly completely in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start looking ahead, here are four future gaming products to look out for.
Dead Scare
Written by Elsa S. Henry, published by Exploding Rogue and using the Apocalypse system, Dead Scare is a zombie apocalypse experience that does things a little differently. Set in 1950s America, Dead Scare puts players in the shoes of women and children survivors as they try to rebuild in the world left behind. With a strong team behind it and an awesome concept that ties feminism and gender perspective into survival horror, I’m expecting great things from Dead Scare and look forward to its estimated release early next year.
Blue Rose: The AGE roleplaying game
Blue Rose was originally released by Green Ronin Publishing in 2005 as a romantic fantasy that put the emphasis on character development (as opposed to advancement), personal discovery and interaction. Now Green Ronin are updating the setting to fit with the AGE engine (introduced in the Dragon Age RPG and as a generic fantasy system in Fantasy AGE), and I’m really excited to see a socially progressive RPG setting with bags of personality. Blue Rose is slated to appear next summer.
Blades in the Dark
Created by John Harper of One Seven Design, Blades in the Dark is an industrial-fantasy roleplaying game that revolves around scoundrels and their crews finding their fortune in the industrial city of Duskwall. The game is played as a series of scores (heists, capers, skirmishes, investigations, etc) that have players working as a team to try to get ahead. Whilst I’ve not had the chance to playtest this game yet, the Quick Start guide has definitely piqued my interest and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this when it (hopefully) turns up in a finished product next year.
Phoenix: Dawn Command
Phoenix: Dawn Command is the brainchild of Keith Baker of Twogether Studios and Gloom and Eberron fame, a card-based roleplaying game (I know, I was skeptical of card-based RPGs until I got the opportunity to playtest Neon Sanctum earlier this year) that toys with the concepts of mortality and character development in roleplaying, having characters gain abilities as they die. The art available for viewing so far is gorgeous and with a designer of such pedigree behind it, I can’t wait to get my hands on the box set, which is estimated for delivery early next year.
These are the four I’m most excited about, but there’s all manner of great products ready to enrich our hobby next year, what games are you looking forward to in 2016? Feel free to let me know in the comments! More importantly, have a great New Year and I look forward to sharing more gaming opinions and reviews over the next twelve months, watch this space.
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