Another broadcast from somewhere in the vast Tabletop Multiverse

Greetings from the far reaches of the tabletop multiverse. I hope I am finding you all in good health and a merry mood! :)

It's been roughly two weeks since my last transmission... eh, blog post. It's been busy weeks, but also good ones.

Sadly nothing new to report from the 3.5 game I wrote about in my last post (you can read about that here). It has been on a sort of unplanned mini-hiatus since then, due to IRL things popping up for various people and having to postpone it until next time. I am hoping we can get back to it in the coming week though.

In the meantime I have actually finished a second D&D 3.5 character - a catfolk, knight/bard/inventor/rifle-user (it's my DM's world and my character belonging to a knightly order essentially has turned him into... that. XD lol ). It seems like it will be a fun character to play though. It's going to be a Saturday game, that will be a bit on/off, so not every Saturday. Essentially, I have no clue how often we'll play. I am just going to wait for my GM to tell me when we play. I am looking forward to it though, and to trying out playing this character. I had a lot of fun playing my Shugenja character in the other 3.5 campaign, and I am sure I will enjoy playing this one as well.

One of the 'features' I am looking forward to trying out with the new catfolk character is the fact that he delivers most of his spells via the medium of magical bullets from his flintlock rifle. Now, I have played a 'gun mage' before, in the Iron Kingdoms RPG, though I have a suspicion that this catfolk character is going to be less broken in combat than my IK character was. XD lol I won't go into too much detail about it. It is possible that in a different campaign that character would have been less broken in combat. After all, when I played her we were all new to IK, including the GM!

It can be difficult getting new games off the ground though. I have a Mutant Chronicles campaign sitting there waiting for an opening (using 1st and 2nd edition MC), as well as some other ideas that probably will have to wait even longer. The problem is all the players need to find the time for it, but generally when some have time other's don't. Though I guess this is an issue all GMs & DMs face at some point in their lives. There's no rush for me though. We'll get around to it whenever we get around to it. The campaign isn't going anywhere.

Right. I think that will be all from me for today.

Until next time!

A look at a few tabletop roleplaying genres

Greetings!

Today, I thought I would talk a little bit about different genres in tabletop roleplaying games. If you are new to the world of tabletop roleplaying, then perhaps you think that it is all about wizards and warriors fighting against demons or dragons. That however, is not the case. The fantasy genre is but one of a multitude of genres that exist within the realm of tabletop roleplaying games.

I'll cover a few, but covering all of them is pretty much impossible as any type of setting or genre can be adapted for a tabletop roleplaying game. This is a subject I might return to later though in another post.

Fantasy

Let's start off with Fantasy. The classical setting, if you will. It's been a thing since Tolkien's days, and is probably the most popular roleplaying genre out there. There are a lot of different types of Fantasy though, for example:

• Dark Fantasy
• High Fantasy
• Low Fantasy
• Urban Fantasy

.. and many, many others. I included links in there to Wikipedia pages about the individual types of fantasy. Personally, I really like fantasy. It's a broad genre, that pretty much can cover almost anything. I mean, who doesn't want to be able to cast cool spells, or defeat a dragon with a sword? ;)

Some examples of Fantasy games include: Dungeons & Dragons (various editions, 5th being the latest) and Symbaroum (Swedish tabletop rpg which has gotten an english release. More leaning towards Dark Fantasy), 

Steampunk

Steampunk is a genre that I find very interesting. It is a good way to take a break from the 'standard' fantasy settings and look at something often a little bit different. I suppose it is 'technically' counted as a sub-setting of Fantasy, but I still want to give it its own section here. Steampunk games deal with the idea of steampowered technology, but taken to the next level. They also often include magic in the setting. 

Some examples of Steampunk games include: Iron Kingdoms (GREAT steampunk game, in my humble opinion) and Victoriana (Victorian age steampunk game with magic. Looks good but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.).

Horror

Horror is a genre that has been around a while. There are plenty of horror tabletop games out there, of varying kinds. Call of Cthulhu might be the most well-known, but there are others as well. It's a genre that I don't think requires much extra explanation beyond that.

Some examples of horror themed tabletop roleplaying games include: Call of Cthulhu and Dread (a slightly different take on normal roleplaying games in that it doesn't use dice and instead uses a tower of jenga-like bricks. Interested? You should be.).

Science Fiction

A very popular genre. People are probably familiar with things like Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and many many other TV-shows, movies, books, etc that takes place in a sci-fi setting. 

Some examples from this genre include: several Star Wars games (too many to pick one to link to here, but if you search I am sure you will find one), Stars Without Number and Traveller.

Beyond these four, there are many other genres as well. Too many for me to cover here, in this post, but I might return to this subject in another post further down the line and there cover some other genres. Hopefully you will have found this somewhat helpful at least.

Until next time!

My current games

Greetings!

Due to feeling unwell - something I have discussed more in my other blog - I probably won't have the energy or mental capacity to write any in-depth or long posts until my head starts clearing up again. Though I will try to write something at least, for you all to enjoy.

So today I am going to write a short list of what game systems I am currently playing in with my friends. Right now it isn't really an extensive list, but then again I unfortunatelly can only fit so many games into my schedule.

Currently we are playing:

• Star Wars Saga Edition
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition - Published by Wizards of the Coast, D&D is one of, if not the most well-known tabletop RPG out there at the moment. Especially after the launch of the 5th edition rules, and online attention from shows such as Critical Role and Dice, Camera, Action!. We, however, are still running our old campaign using 4th edition rules, a campaign which has been running for... 3 or 4 years now? Head is a bit too cloudy to remember right now, but we are still running it because we all love the campaign.
• Ryuutama - A Japanese tabletop rpg which has got an English translation via a Kickstarter. We only just started this, so I am still new to the system.
• Iron Kingdoms - A steampunk fantasy tabletop roleplaying game by Privateer Press, which is based off of their wargame Warmachine. We were running a straight up Iron Kingdoms game previously, but now that that has ended we are currently running a new Iron Kingdoms game which also includes elements of a supplement/expansion called Unleashed.

There is a lot of interesting lore in both Iron Kingdoms and Warmachine which I highly recommend reading if you enjoy that sort of thing.

I am planning to go more indepth on various tabletop roleplaying games & systems, and my thoughts on them, in future posts. So stay tuned for that.

I think that will have to do from me for now. Time to go lie down and rest a bit.