If you haven't read any of my previous posts from this series, I'm playing The Mecha Hack, an OSR take on BattleTech style games, with my wife and my 7-year-old son, Xander. Here's the setup... We're using the off the shelf Mech Hack "mini-setting." There are three main factions from Old Earth. Our scrappy heroes, … Continue reading The Mecha Hack Actual Play Ep. 4: Ambush!
I've wanted to play Davide Pignedoli's Maelstrom Dreamers for a long time. This underrated title features one-to-one play where the protagonist's real life dreams are a key component in the game's highest stakes moments. As I mentioned last week, Maelstrom Dreamers riffs on some of the implied setting for Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World without relying … Continue reading An Apocalypse for Two, Maelstrom Dreamers – Ep. 1: Village of Notor
To orient you if you're new to these pieces, I'm playing The Mecha Hack with my wife and son, and these are our session reports, along with my observations about the game. This Saturday we picked up where we left off a couple of weeks ago. (GM Dad just didn't have it in him last … Continue reading The Mecha Hack Actual Play Ep. 3: Bows & Curtsies
Picking up where we left off last week... Starian and Thumper came out of their simulated battle to discover that their lunar base was under attack. Since they were already suited up, they headed out of a rupture in their hangar and onto the edge of the battlefield. LEEROY JENKINS!!! In classic 7-year-old aggro fashion, … Continue reading The Mecha Hack Actual Play Ep. 2: Hard Lessons
I've often wondered when I'd open the door to the realm of in-game violence for our son. Up to now we've played RPGs that either don't have a combat system, or that just aren't about physical conflict. I've known for a long time I was going to hold off on introducing him to the play … Continue reading The Mecha Hack Actual Play Ep. 1: A Little Simulation
Hunh, turned into kind of a big week around here when I wasn't looking! Champions NOW, right now! So I guess it took a pandemic to do it, but you can find me on my first ever podcast this week. MadJay Brown and I have been whiling away our Tuesday nights in the seedy meta-human … Continue reading Weekly Round-up: My Podcast Premiere, BattleTech/The Mecha Hack, We Play How to Host a Dungeon
Now that we are home schooling and I'm working on getting the taxes done, there was very little time this week for much of anything. My wise wife says, "Write about what you're doing!" So here goes... a roundup of the week in my corner on the gaming cosmos... Roll20 FTW My regular group has … Continue reading Weekly Round-up: Wicked Mazes, D&D, Champions Now, & Deep Dungeon History
My current game group is far too wonderful to let something like a global health crisis stop us from playing. But even if caution didn't dictate social distancing, we'd still be under a shelter in place order. So, online we go into the sometimes bewildering forest of apps to help us chat, roll dice, manage … Continue reading My First Online GMing, by Crom, with Simon Carryer’s On Mighty Thews
Last Saturday night a few regulars, a newcomer, and I convened to play Hope Inhumanity at Black Diamond Games' Indie Night. It's a taut story-telling RPG that unlike many post-apocalyptic games focuses on the tough, heart-breaking choices of survival. With every new situation it asks you to balance altruism against self-interest. If you feed the … Continue reading Hope Inhumanity session: Brief Recap
With a young son there’s always some negotiating around scheduling come convention time. This year my wife had an excellent opportunity to a design for a show at A.C.T., one of the premiere theaters in the Bay Area. (In fact you can actually buy tickets here to see her show if you're reading this in … Continue reading DunDraCon 2020 wrap-up
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