Magpie Gaming Night

It's time for an update as to how RPG Night is going. We're now calling it Magpie Gaming Night, to differentiate it from other gaming groups meeting to play RPGs. I believe Liz came up with the name based on my self-described magpie gaming tendencies. I got the term from the D6 Generation, which I believe got it from somewhere else. Basically it refers to the tendency to be attracted to anything new and shiny, which perfectly describes my gaming habits, and was one of the primary motivators behind establishing RPG Night.

I've already described the 3:16 game and the Dogs In The Vineyard game that we ran as our first two games. We've now started a Diaspora game. We met to create characters on the 22nd and had a really good time generating the cluster and characters. Seth wasn't able to make it, but we added Josh to the group, and Seth should be there for the actual adventure.

You can check out the results of our session in our thread on the NWARPG Forums. This Monday we'll be running an actual adventure using what we created. I suspect we'll finish the adventure in a single session, but I'm usually wrong about this stuff, so it may take two sessions.

After that, Liz has an idea for a game set in the New World of Darkness where we play ourselves. I'm a bit leery of this idea as I've got a real "been there, done that" vibe when it comes to playing myself in an RPG, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. Liz seems really enthusiastic about the idea, and that's always good to see in a GM, so I expect we'll have a good game

Jonathan also feels he's about ready to run Mouse Guard for us. He's been running a game of it with another group. He was really pleased with how his first session went. He had reservations about his second, but it sounds like they still had fun. I've been looking forward to trying this game for a while now.

If he's not quite ready to run that after Liz' game, then I'll probably run something. I'll certainly be itching to run something after it if Liz' and Jonathan's games are run back to back.

I've got a number of potential games I'm considering. Since we'll have had a mix of sci-fi, western, and modern day up to that point, I'm leaning towards a medieval fantasy game. Third Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP), Chronica Feudalis, and Reign are all strong contenders. I think I actually like the system from Chronica Feudalis the best, but the setting is the least inspiring of the three, which is ironic considering my normally strong interest in history (the setting is 12th Century Europe).

I really want to explore the mechanics of both WHFRP and Reign. I think Reign might be more interesting to the group as a whole due to the Company mechanics that focus on the organizations the characters belong to, but I also think it would require more than just a one-shot to explore those mechanics.

Then again, there's always Burning Wheel or possibly The Mountain Witch. Fortunately, I have some time to narrow down my options.

After Jonathan does Mouse Guard, we may try to run a Burning Empires game. Jonathan picked up a water damaged copy of the book on sale from Castle House Games, which makes the logistics of running it much more practical, and some of the core concepts are shared with Mouse Guard, which should smooth the learning curve a little. It would definitely be a bigger commitment than any of the other games we'll have played up to that point, since we'd likely play a full Phase rather than just a one-shot, which would probably take around a half dozen sessions according to the book, plus a session of world building.

We've also started talking about maybe doing a campaign on the Mondays between Magpie Gaming Night, and if we do that, that might be the best way to do Burning Empires. I don't know if I can do a weekly RPG night yet, so that's still just an idea.

Overall, we're still going strong, and I'm very happy that we got this thing off the ground.