What systems and/or campaigns are you currently actually playing? I spend so much time thinking about new systems and reading old ones, and I sometimes forget that playing is actually a part of things.
So, what are you actually playing right now?
I am currently running Curse of Strahd for two of my adult kids and two of their friends.
I am about to start a Mouseguard-like campaign in FUDGE, with my wife and all of my adult kids.
Just finished up A Keep on the Borderlands campaign running in White Box FMAG, real old school!
Playing Star Trek Adventures right now, with my brother GMing. He absolutely loves the game, and this is our third campaign. Love the game, but holy smokes the main book is badly organized.
Once that’s done, it’s my turn to GM, and my daughter wants a magic school game, so we’re going to do Kids on Brooms.
Been playing D&D 5e for years, currently corralling my group into a transition to GURPS 4e. Technically not playing it yet, but characters are being built and the pre-session 0 conversations have been had.
Masks - I currently did a session zero for this game this weekend, and will be doing the first session next tuesday. I’ve played Masks a bunch before, and having seen Across the Spiderverse twice recently I’m really looking forward to it.
Pathfinder 2e - currently playing through Abomination Vaults on my Sunday livestreamed variety game group. I think one player isn’t enjoying it so much as he enjoys playing unusual characters more than the tactical combat itself, but I think everyone else is enjoying it.
SWN Revised: After two previous SWN campaigns, this one is a bit different. Instead of starting off as a free crew with a ship, the PCs are a part of a faction that’s half mercenary company half adventurer’s guild, that focuses on mech combat. So I made some systems for them to work their way up the ranks of the faction, a variation of the faction turn that represents different crews within their faction vying for control and influence, and a reputation system that unlocks more purchase options over time as missions are complete.
ive actually been playing dungeonworld recently for the first time as we take a break from our usual D&D game. It’s been a bit of a refreshing change of pace.
I’ve been in a bit of a break from running 5e DnD and have been blitzing through some other RPGs mostly as one shots to keep things fresh, honestly they’ve all been great in their own way:
- Black Sword Hack (Moorcock/Lieber OSR sword and sorcery)
- Black Hack (OSR)
- Mörk Borg (Doom Metal OSR)
- Mothership (Sci-Fi Horror)
- Mekton Zeta (Anime Mecha)
- Age of Sigmar: Soulbound (Heroic Fantasy)
Ooou, how are you liking BSH? I finally received my copy and I’ve been itching to try it.
On paper, it seems to hit my subjective nail on the head for heroic, yet still mortal characters. Also the magic systems are really neat. I love how uncontrollable they seem. Magic should be scary, even for the wielder.
I have doubts about the perks, though… There aren’t that many, and I’m concerned about characters feeling very samey by top level.
Running a Cypher System (Numenera) game.
Playing in a Cypher System (sci-fi setting with Farscape influence) game and a Star Wars Edge of the Empire game.
I’m running Burning Wheel. The group are wizards on the cusp of the fabled third age of magic. I’m using the Trilemma Adventures as well as the setting from the book. I’ve got seven players so I’m just over the stressful threshold.
It’s absolutely awesome.
I have no familiarity with Burning Wheel but everyone I know who’s ever played it seems to consider it one of their favorites. I always got the impression it’s quite mechanically sophisticated without being altogether combat focused, which is a bit unique among ttrpgs in my experience.
I have three games running at the moment. I’ll post them in order of how novel they are.
Blades in the Dark (BitD)
I run this when there aren’t enough people put together for my primary game. I like it, but I think the default setting suffers from Warhammer40k grimdark blandness. There should be more in the book that talks about how to pepper in beautiful moments, and things that the players want to protect and strive for.
Then again, BitD assumes that players want to dispose of their characters, and have them become traumatized in a way that I feel is a poor representation of mental health, but an accurate depiction of toxic genre tropes.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition (PF2e)
PF2e is a smaller game I play with only a few dedicated players. I find that players that do not want to spend a lot of time creating characters and learning the intricacies of the system do not retain interest. Those are absolutely the cost of entry for players. I also find the game is at times slightly easier, but for the most part as difficult to run as 5e, and that most people who say that PF2e fixes everything that D&D5e does poorly was attempting to play 5e like 3.5e, instead of leaning into Rulings-not-rules. Of course the DMG doesn’t exactly lay out the Rulings-Not-Rules attitude clearly…
Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (D&D5e)
This is the game that has been going on for over a decade, porting in from 4th edition.
My most recently started campaign is a fully homebrewed world, based around a rewrite of elven history that puts the axis between high, drow, and wood elves into a spectrum of spiritualism and materialism, with high elves wanting to ascend above the physical world, Drow wanting to help the mortal races (and get mad rich yo), and Wood Elves shooting the moon on the material world and finding spiritualism in nature.
As systems go, I think it is the easiest game for players to pick up and participate in, and that is asks as little of players as possible. It also is not the easiest system for new DMs to get a handle of, although I am hopeful that OneD&D will be fixing most of those issues with a rewrite of the DMG and the various fixes that I think will be making CR a much more useful tool.
Running a D&D5e game. Possibly the last one I ever run. It’s a blast though, and the players are amazing. The MCDM Flee, Mortals! book is really helping make it interesting to run.
I’m getting ready to start an Iron Kingdoms Savage Worlds game. It’s a one-shot, but if they like it, we’ll continue it into a campaign.
I’m also possibly going to be starting a Pathfinder 2e game soon. I’ve ran it a bit, but I still don’t feel like I know it very well, so I’m going to run the Beginner Box (possibly lead into Abomination Vaults) on Foundry. It’s a weird experience feeling like a newb again, since I haven’t really felt that way in decades. Most games just aren’t that challenging to master.
Playing in a D&D 5E game, running a Scion campaign heavily inspired by German folktales and folklore.
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A year-long 5e campaign that is likely going to wrap in a few months when I run out of ideas and the players get too high level. After that, one of the players (a massive Elder Scrolls fan) has talked about possibly running a thing with the unofficial Elder Scrolls 5e supplement.
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A Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game that has been going on since January. It will also likely wrap within a few months, mostly because our group isn’t a great fit for it. After that, I’m not sure. Maybe we’ll do pathfinder, maybe we’ll do DSA (because one of our german friends really likes it), or maybe we’ll do something completely different.
Curse of Strahd is the 5e module I’ve wanted to try the most over the years, and Mouseguard is one of the more interesting systems I’ve gotten a taste of from one-shots. I kinda wish I was part of OP’s family right now, NGL.
Curse of Strahd is truly fantastic as a setting and basic ideas but the module itself is a piece of crap.
Hammering it into shape, making sense of it, and making it all hang together has been a craptonne of work, and I’ve used loads of 3rd party stuff. The Curse of Strahd subreddit is AMAZING for that.
It’s truly a pile of hot garbage RAW, but I’m having the time of my life customizing and making it mine.
I’m a fan of the 3rd party campaign module Odyssey of the Dragonlords and it’s hilarious how much this is the consensus on the dedicated Discord community for that adventure. Everyone loves the bones of the module, but everyone also agrees it needs a lot of love and polish.
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wrapping up the Agents of Edgewatch adventure path in pf2e, and rebooting a homegame in pf1e.
AoE has been a fun multi-year-long adventure, though I think after playing through two of these fully and a few shorter term adventures, I think i’m good on longform pre-published stuff. They’re high quality, but there’s an implicit understanding that it’s a pre-built game on rails (whether or not that’s true) that I can’t quite shake. That changes the way I approach the game in a way that plays against the strengths of TTRPGs.
The homegame is just straightforward “there’s a village, go explore it and get quests” sort of game, which isn’t all that elaborate, but i’m a big fan of all the same. I’ll be playing a Medium, a class that required proper research to be able to get into a state where it’s good in all 6 of its modes of play. It’s not the best class, but it’s one I’ve become enthralled with. One thing i’m really excited for is the built-in character arcs with mechanical consequences. You can collect up to 6 “Legendary spirits”, which are like subclasses for each of your 6 spirits, but you have to go on a quest for each, and picking one will lock you out of others. Over the course of play - not levelling up - You might become an ambitious warlord, a sinister body-snatcher, a champion of the wild, or reject all of those new powers to remain closer to your true self.
Good ol 3.5. Homebrew piratey setting. Getting towards the end of this campaign, which is exciting. I’m pretty slow to put games together, this is only my 3rd major campaign in more than a decade of DMing, and only the second time I’ll actually bring it all the way to the conclusion (if I didn’t just jinx it)
Currently playing:
Weird Frontiers game every secondish week.
DnD5 game every secondish week or month. We have a slow pace and probably wont finish the modue, but it´s fun.Running: 13th age, getting ready to start a full campaign now that my introductory fewshot with another group draws to a close. I want to lift the story of tharizdun and the gem-prison loosely for this campaign, but not the greyhawk setting. I´m interested to see how it meshes with the icon system!
Looking at this, I guess I was hungry for some d20 hahaha. I usually play/run more pbta, but just got done on a monster of the week fewshot
edit: I recommend 13th age to all! It´s a great take on a less mechanical, faster and more “fantasy-avengers-y” style of dnd game with some great mechanics for shared stroytelling and letting players decide stuff. Needs an improvisational group, not good for groups with adversarial relationships/tendency to optimize a lot.
In the process of trying to put together a Pathfinder 2e campaign where I run them through an adapted version of Curse of Strahd. It’s just working out the scheduling…