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Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath ([personal profile] tcpip) wrote2010-05-01 10:00 pm
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May Day, Games and Time Travelling!

[livejournal.com profile] hathhalla and [livejournal.com profile] ser_pounce visited today, a pair that we haven't seen since for more than a year. They're part of a semi-regular planned group (we hope) of Saturday attendees to our abode at Willsmere estate. Being May Day, we had a round of the Avalon Hill boardgame Class Struggle, which could really do of a re-write more in the game-system, but also perhaps its politics. Early game session of Eon's Quirks was significantly more enjoyable.

On a related note on Friday my review of Trail of Cthulhu was published on RPG.net after several fun sessions. Reviews of Torg and Powers & Perils are planned. Thursday was our regular Dragon Age game which will be replaced with Mouse Guard in about a month or so. This Sunday will be a continuation of my RuneQuest Prax game which has had some recent significant events.

Last Sunday our co-GMs for the GURPS Krononauts game resolved a lot of the well-known paradoxes of time-travel (grandfather paradox, free lunch paradox). With a little bit of dealing we've adopted a policy of object independence of items (including people) that have time-travelled, an observer effect for things that have not (very Phillip K. Dick), and the future not being affecting the present (because that would be too hard in actual play).
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[identity profile] brucenstein.livejournal.com 2010-05-15 04:06 am (UTC)(link)
In that review you mentioned Masks of Nyarlathotep! That was one of the most epic, and most fun, campaigns in which I have ever participated. At one point my skeleton had jumped out of my body and I was being carried around as a bag of flesh in a basket.

This is what happens when you start off with 50% in Arabic.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2010-05-15 08:02 am (UTC)(link)
That's pretty cinematic, but still within the Cthulhu 'grim horror' style.

I've played a couple of sessions of Masks, but nowhere near to completion.

[identity profile] brucenstein.livejournal.com 2010-05-15 02:00 pm (UTC)(link)
My group has always taken Cthulhu a little more upbeat than most, I'll admit. Not to say it didn't lack the horror but I think truly epic Cthulhu games (IMO), need the rules concerning magic and sanity (less so sanity) loosened just a tad - less so sanity - and you have to bypass the crazy insta-death moments. POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT - I'm not sure it was in Masks, but there was one book that had a room with various tiles on it with no information regarding their significance whatsoever, but if you stepped on the wrong one you basically died instantly.

You ever play the PC/Console game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth? It's worth a rent only because they get the atmosphere and tension right, and some of the scenes are really white knuckle (I recall one early on when you're running from people in a hotel room and have to lock doors behind you, just to have them bash through it). I stopped playing it a few hours in because it started to really suffer from poor design and there were far too many times when you died and had to do the whole 20 minute scene all over, which is a damn shame because you could just tell there were so many good ideas packed in there. Not to mention that when it was flowing I had a room full of gasping and squealing people enthralled with the goings-on on the screen.

I would have liked to have actually seen an elder god, even if it was "only" Dagon, but c'est la vie. If you have more patience than I you might get more out of it. Every once in a while I think about renting it but I just can't bring myself to do it again; it was far too frustrating.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2010-05-20 09:53 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure it was in Masks, but there was one book that had a room with various tiles on it with no information regarding their significance whatsoever, but if you stepped on the wrong one you basically died instantly.

Sounds like Tomb of Horrors, the notorious "killer dungeon" for AD&D. I gave it a fairly negative review once.

You ever play the PC/Console game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth? It's worth a rent only because they get the atmosphere and tension right, and some of the scenes are really white knuckle

Alas no. I'm not a big PC/console game player, although I keep on thinking I should rewrite World of Warcraft or similar. I could actually do that...
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