Happy Monday, tabletoppers!
What games did you get up to in the last ~7 days? Feel free to share any stories, anecdotes, thoughts, and opinions about your game sessions. And don’t forget to discuss others’ games too, of course!
Bonus question of the week: What game do you introduce/recommend to almost everyone?
I’ve had a bit of a low gaming week, only played
D&D 5e (1x 4p): We’re taking a bit of a break from our main campaign that’s been running for 5 or 6 years, and one of the players is DMing a few sessions of something from the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book. We’re enjoying the very strange Witchlight Carnaval! I play a Fairy druid, and as I discovered as we started playing, my character has ADHD. I’m really enjoying the silliness of the setting, and the DM is fantastic at doing silly voices which fits so well!
Bonus question of the week: one game I recommend to almost anyone is The Crew. Cooperative games are enjoyed by almost anyone, the rules are so simple to explain and fit pretty much everyone’s attention span, games are short but you can play it for hours too, and depending on experience and skill you can dramatically adjust the difficulty. And it’s cheap and small and easy to bring places. Great game all round!
one of the players is DMing a few sessions of something from the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book.
I loved playing through Wild Beyond the Witchlight! It’s such a clear departure from most of the modules that Wizards puts out.
Yeah it’s been really fun so far! I mean we’re only 2 sessions in so I don’t know much about where it’s gonna go yet, but so far it’s a really different experience. I’m excited to play on, just gotta wait for people to get back from their holidays…
Just D&D for me! One of our players has been very busy lately, but their schedule finally cleared up. We got to play 2 weeks in a row!
I had a really fun encounter as a Warlock. I was trying to sneak out of an area while invisible and flying. Unfortunately the imps patrolling the city were able to see me and took chase. I didn’t want to cause a big commotion, so I targeted one of them with polymorph and turned it into a gelatinous cube. Instantly caught all the others and was able to escape!
That’s hilarious! Such a clever way to escape, I love it!
I was very pleased with myself 🤓
Playing as a spellcaster has been a lot of fun. Last campaign I was a Barbarian half-orc, which fun for smashing things, but didn’t offer as much creativity
Nothing in the last week. My copy of Expeditions showed up from Stonemaier Games though and I cannot wait to get into it, maybe next week when I’m on vacation. I played it back in May at a convention in St. Louis and loved it!
Do you prep the game box before first play? I sometimes like to save popping out all of the tokens since my friends like it so much!
I used to pop everything once it showed up, now I tend to wait. I’ll typically have a game already prepped before playing so we can jump into the rules explanations from the get go if possible.
My week was pretty limited. I was extremely busy IRL last week, but I did find time for a few things.
Magic: the Gathering: Thursday saw me at my LGS doing a bit of Magic. The games went okay, but I’ve come to expect very little in the way of enjoyable/interesting fights so I may not be going back for a while. Someone pulled out a Kingmaker deck right at the end too, so there was basically no reason for other people to play. sigh
D&D 5E: The four of us (1 DM 3 players) actually managed to get together to play some of our Dragonlance campaign, which went very well! We’d split the party in the previous session, which involved my main character hiring a couple people (the other players) to track down the Dragon Army and go with him, whilst my side character is leading the other two to Mount Nevermind to go save her sister. We played out the Dragon Army-tracking this week, and ran into a town situated on the back of a skeletal dragon. Now we have some answers on how their leadership works, and can prepare for a second invasion of Kalaman. I tend to play more NPC-style characters, so I was loving it! It helps that I’m the only one besides the DM who likes roleplaying, which means I tend to take a more active role in shaping the story then the other two players.
Mini Wargaming: I painted up a bunch of army dudes for Bolt Action, on commission, and they came out great. Can’t wait to do the rest of the guys; it’s only a small platoon of 25 plus an armored half-track, but even still I haven’t been able to paint in a while due to college so I’ll take what I can get. I’ve never had to do camo before, so I’m experimenting with new techniques.
Wushu: Finally, Wushu. This is a two-player version, but we went all-out on the terrible Ramen Oni and his Noodly Apendages™! He attacked us with his cultist-ninjas at the tea-house we were staying at and escaped with the magical flower from an ancient tree there. Hijinks ensued when we followed him to his hidden temple, where we were nearly sucked into the Ramen Realm and had to tear out his “heart.” He made us promise to save his family, then collapsed into a pile of noodles. Very enjoyable, no DM needed, would recommend.
Bonus Question: I have been desperately searching for a copy of Betrayal Legacy. All of the haunts in Betrayal are fun and pretty easy to understand, but the game still grows as you play.
I painted up a bunch of army dudes for Bolt Action, on commission, and they came out great.
Ooh you paint miniatures? Do share! I’d love to see more painted minis.
I finally got around to playing Stray and it’s such a good game!
It always sounded like such an odd concept to play as a cat but it actually works quite well!
Would definitely recommend it!
Hey! Unless there’s a tabletop game named Stray that I’m not aware of, I think you might be in the wrong community (this is Tabletop, not !gaming@beehaw.org).
(Although now I’m secretly hoping there’s a tabletop game just like it 😁)
Haha yeah, sorry! Guess i should pay more attention!
My group are currently fighting the BBEG in our PF2e Agents of Edgewatch Campaign. We’ve taken our characters from level 1-20 (a few deaths or departures along the way) It’s been about 2-2.5 years that we’ve been running the game, so it’s a bit sad to see it ending, but also exciting that we’ve made it this far.
Mild spoilers are marked below, nothing major plotwise. My character is currently the party member that wields the maguffin. Its a
spoiler
level 25 artifact that can cast a 10th level Dominate spell unlimited number of times/day, with a DC 49 Will save. Downside is that my character is the only one who can wield it safely, due to not having the Good alignment (I’m a LN Rogue focused on Dual Weapon Warrior, so using the super magic artifact is an interesting change).
Shenanigans have been had.
spoiler
During a single fight, there was one boss monster and 4 demons. I ended up permanently dominating 3 of the demons, and had them carry my other party members around, lifting them up near the flying boss, so the melee fighters could smack him.
Ran my first session of Pirate Borg! Opened the session with naval combat to get everyone used to the rules. Really enjoying the naval combat rules and my players were happy with the new system. Excited for the next session where we will be running the in book adventure! In true OSR/NSR fashion someone died in the first session which there were plenty of laughs around the table.
Outside of ttrpgs I finally received my copy of Dustrunner. A solo only board game that fits in a mint tin. Had several plays of it already and quickly becoming my new favorite out of my other mint tin games. If anyone considers solo board gaming a try, Dustrunner is an excellent start.
The Taverns of Tiefenthal is a new one for us, played it 3 times so far. The game combines deckbuilding and dice drafting in an interesting way. First time we played with the basic ruleset after that we felt confident enough to throw in all the modules at once. The game is definitely best in this full mode. The extra modules are not too complicated and make the turn-decisions more interesting. Some act as mini-games of sorts. One of my favorite modules is the one that gaves unique starting setups, looking forward to playing with all of these. I kinda wish there were more besdies the 7 included. There is an expansion out there, will have to look into that at some point.
My group almost finished Act 1 of Stars of Akarios it’s a GloomHaven-esque game set in space. You play a group of fighter pilots and engage with other craft. There is a very neat exploration mechanic too which I really enjoy. There are some teething issues but that will hopefully be corrected in the next release.
Ooh I’m not familiar with this game but it looks pretty cool! In what way would you say it is like Gloomhaven?
Mostly in combat mechanics and story progression. You declare attacks and draw modifiers from a deck to see how you fair. Individual pilots and ships have different abilities that can synergize well. You don’t need to loose abilities to refresh but you can to mitigate damage. The missions that are selected based upon the choices of the group. Unlike Gloohaven you don’t destroy cards or stickers so it’s easy to replay. There is also an exploration game baked in which is a welcome break from combat. The worst thing is the lack of enemy variation. The writing isn’t the best either. I picked it up waiting for FrostHaven and I’m not disappointed but GloomHaven is definitely the better game.
Played a bunch of Azul and Wingspan with some friends on Friday and then we started up a game of Dune Imperium today at work that’ll likely take us most of the week as the other 3 players are new to the game, but I’m super excited for them to learn it.