Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Postcard From My Gaming Groups

Just a post to tell folks where I am with things! I haven't been posting much, as I am sure no one much cares about what I am doing in my game sessions, and I haven't had any big breakthroughs with StarCluster 4. I really need to make up some Template Trees and start playtesting, but right now we are doing some Look! Up In the Sky! supers gaming. LUITS is fast becoming my favorite Supers game because (TADAAAH!) it's so very flexible. We are running pulp level in a made up city called Santa Cosima, which is between Los Angeles and San Diego in California. The Association is based on helping (hidden) aliens settle into the population, and pays for itself by (painlessly) integrating alien tech with current human tech, and taking a percentage of the IP rights. Should be interesting!

My Sunday IRC (StarCluster 3) game is as usual a tangle of soap opera relationships - if soap operas had multiple member marriages with hermaphroditic aliens, that is. One big threat has been nullified, but uplifits, bioroids, and robots remain effectively enslaved on Human worlds within Jeshen Space. The group is wrestling with how to free slaves who are engineered to get pleasure from serving, and thus not want freedom, who are also pampered and indulged in their servitude, even loved, and only belong to the rich as playthings. No "Rise up and shake off your chains!" rhetoric is going to work. Their only chains are in their minds, and are invisible.

My Wednesday IRC group (Vanilla Volant) has succeeded in stopping the Orc army from romping through the almost uninhabited ithsmus, and is now attempting to cut an ally from the main bad guy empire, a nation they had no idea even existed since it grew up where nothing much was before the Great Plague. This will be interesting! There are no guides to what this culture is like, and the party will be walking through a cultural minefield. The carrot they have to dangle is the possibility of trade with their (good guy) empire. The trouble is, the bad guy empire is just over those mountains to the south.

4 comments:

  1. As always it is great to hear about your games. I can't say which one I liked to read about the most for they all are interesting. Have great holidays and continue to have fun and turn out great products.

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  2. Thanks, Bon Bon! My three gaming groups are very different in what they like and expect. My Wednesday IRC group are young - there are two teens and 2 in their twenties - and like a lot of action. My Sunday IRC group is a much older group, with consummate roleplayers, who do not really need me and if fact frequently play without a GM if I can't make it. My Saturday face to face group are my family and a couple close friends. We've been playing together a long time, and they are the best Alpha playtesters I have ever seen. If I leave any weakness in the game rules, they will sniff it out and seize on it like bulldogs. They love trying out new and strange games, unlike my other two groups. I love them all! :D

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  3. That's why I love your games. The Alpha Testers are some of the best. Once my group gets hold of game there isn't too many questions or suggestions. My IRL gamers are Saturday night also and it is great to get together for that socialization. It's been different seeing how the group has changed over the years. I've been with the original founder of the group for 23 years and have seen the college students come and go but the older members stay.

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  4. Both my Sunday group and my Saturday group have been remarkably steady. The youngest of my Saturday group, in his mid-20s, has been with us for half his life, having started at the age of thirteen. :D

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