State of the Game January 2016: What's Distracting Me Now?


There's a player in my gaming group who gets maximum amusement out of my ability to be distracted by shininess. He's compared it to the reaction of a kid to jingling keys...

So what are we playing now? Right now we are continuing our Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game. We are on our 7th adventure, though given most adventures tend to be multi-session, I'm guessing we've clocked in about 14 sessions, though the first session was actually a standalone D6 Star Wars session that we ended up promoting to an Edge of the Empire game. We're had a brief D&D 5th edition game in the middle but have been having a pretty nice run. The characters are starting to show competence and we're getting better mastery of the rules. It's definitely a more narrative-based game than one would have initially guessed from a flip through the rules - I'd consider it a fairly crunchy narrative game. One thing I did which was probably a good move was introducing certain concepts like Destiny slowly.

Overall I'm finding myself a bit less distracted than I usually am after a game has been running for a while. As readers of this blog will recall, we're in the Minos Cluster, as introduced in the old West End Games incarnation of Star Wars, but I've been freely altering it as needed or desired. I'm beginning to get a real feel for a sector that is far, far away from any bright center to the universe. There's not been much of an Imperial presence which is why I had some fun prepping our current adventure which actually does deal with the Evil Galactic Empire - it's definitely a less is more sort of thing and it's also allowed other players in the sector to develop.


However, since I recently had some keys jingled in front of me, what is distracting me? The newest thing is there's apparently a move afoot to release a new version, albeit unofficial, version of TSR's old Gangbusters RPG. I wasn't a huge fan of the game when it first came out but I've come to absolutely love the genre of crime during Prohibition. I've seen some adding of the supernatural but to be honest I'd love to just set up a fictional city and go all Boardwalk Empire.

Of course if I were to add the supernatural to the 1920's it'd need to be with Call of Cthulhu. It's been over a year since my last Cthulhu game and I'm always up for Cthulhu.

If I ever were to want to create my own science fiction setting away from Star Wars I'd really love to give Traveller a try. It's one of those classic RPGs I've never gotten a chance to really try out. I'd probably go with original rules, minimal use of supplements, and not worry about Solomani, Vagr, and the like.

I could also go for another spin of Fate. I miss Atomic Robo but I'm really really really looking forward to Dresden Accelerated. I'm a little bit intimidated by the full implementation of the Dresden Files RPG and am hoping to give the new game when it comes out a try.

I'm sure I'll want some fantasy gaming at some point. The original D&D is again available in PDF and I've grown to appreciate the simplicity of the older versions of the game.

But maybe, just maybe, we'll be playing Star Wars this time next year...

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