Thursday, December 04, 2008

Top Three Gaming Moments: 2008

Here we go again! - you know the score.

Honourable Mention: Spirit of Exalted Lite at CottageCon II

CC2 was a great event, even though I think it is fair to say that some of the games didn't quite measure up to the heights of CC1. My highlight was Andrew's Exalted game, which used the Exalted starter rules combined with some aspects of Spirit of the Century (no pun intended). The game was high drama and played across a massive vista. It certainly laid the groundwork for things to come from Andrew.

Honourable Mention: Horror in Hot War

We played a playtest of Malcolm Craig's Hot War and I tried to run a 'horror' game. Now I have a big problem with horror games and horror in gaming in general, so this was a bit of a challenge. I ran a game called 'The Square' dealing with an isolated survivor community in London which was a facade for a horrendous social pact. I had a great time running the game and we gave the system a good working through. However, the best thing was that I got a real 'eewww!' reaction from at least one of the players and thats the best I have ever managed in a horror campaign. A victory. (I ran the same scenario as a con game as well, and got the same reaction!)

Number Three: The End of Pendragon
Nigel's Pendragon campaign was a roaring success and is currently, I believe, the longest campaign that I have played in. We lived long enough to see the Boy King come to the throne and to help in the formation of his new kingdom. Hell, Sir Brion, my character, even knighted the King! However, these five knights were always doomed to a sorry end and they warred on Cerdic, the saxon pain-in-the-ass and ended the conflict by taking his town of Hantone. The Death Flag was flying and slowly but surely, each knight was overcome in the battle - except Sir Aeron the Younger, who survived somehow. Brion died fighting on the steps of the keep, surrounded by saxon warriors and taking many of them down with him. It was an excellent end to an excellent campaign - one which in many ways rescued our groups gaming.

Number Two: Running Duty & Honour for Keary
As I have developed D&H, there have been people who I have been aware that I would eventually have to show my game to. The first is Keary, one of the guys who I gamed with in Rugby and well ... lets just say, not the greatest advocate of so-called indie gaming. Ian is part of my gaming group but he probably knows the most about this sort of stuff. I've ran the game for both of them and they had a good time. For me, that was the personal triumph I needed. I'm sure Ian will be horrified to read this but it's true!

Number One: The City of Kings

Take D&D4e - a fair whack of crunch - add four gamers, an inspirational GM with a elephantine memory, some indie-game sensibilities and a whole bucket of sword and sorcery inspiration and you have 'The City of Kings'. Its been a rollercoaster ride of adventure and intrigue leading to Sunday's 'season finale'. Andrew has done an exemplary job as a GM and I like to think that we, the players, have added a little ourselves. There have been precious few games over the years where I have been eager to play again, desperate to know what happens next. Thats a Good Thing. (Post-End of Tier Edit: I held back on this post because I knew that there was one more session of this phase of this game to go and it rocked. We rocked, despite some really quite atrocious dice rolling. It was an epic end to an epic campaign phase. It maintains the #1 spot!)

So, those are mine - what are yours?

2 comments:

Fandomlife said...

Well horrified. I think the time when I was the 'most knowledgeable indie game person' in the group past into history some time ago.

AndrewW said...

I would just like to add that most of the things I have included within the game has been built on or inspired by things the players added as part of the process of developing it.

Much kudos to all of you.