Roleplaying Night - Round 1 - 3:16

We had our first RPG night tonight, and overall it went pretty well. Our first game was 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars. I picked this game because it was an extremely simple system requiring minimal GM preparation, and looked like a perfect way to get my feet wet after over a decade since running anything with more than a single player. It worked just about as well as I'd hoped.

There were a few things I'll do differently if we come back to it again. I should have planned out a couple more encounters so that they weren't quite so similar. I had come up with an initial encounter idea, and an idea of where I'd probably end it, but decided to leave it up to the players on how to get there. It worked, but probably would have worked better if I'd done a little more prep work so that the encounters felt a bit more varied.

The game itself ran very quickly, taking only about two hours. I'm reasonably sure that at least three of my four players enjoyed the session. The fourth claimed he did, but I don't know him well enough to tell whether or not he was just humoring me. I still think the game was an overall success based on the reactions of the other players. I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in running a simple game focusing on a straight up bug hunt in the style of the movie version of Starship Troopers.

I'm now looking forward to giving Dogs In The Vineyard a try, hopefully in two weeks.