RPG July/August

Read
I got totally engrossed in DragonBane last month. The two campaigns look like fun and feel like Fighting Fantasy gamebooks with towns surrounded by wildernes and roaming orcs and demon cults.

Also from Free League, I just got the PDFs for the Coriolis The Great Dark. I've only flicked through them so far but they are very pretty.

I've been reading an unusual number of D&D 5e alternatives. His Majesty The Worm is another attempt to do old school dungeon crawls with modern narrative rules. It's enormous and did nothing to convince me that I'd have any fun playing it.

GrimWild tries a similar thing but trying to capture 5e adventuring with a sort of Blades system, it's really bad. There whole book reads like a reference for a much bigger book with words choices like critical roles being explained on the Odds&Ends page. Everything the pcs fight or try to achieve is rated in dice pools which don't work the way the rules seems to want them to. In simplifying magic they've just made it dull… I'm not impressed.

Not really reading but I've been listening to the Critical Role AP of DaggerHeart. Outside of combat it's the same old loose RPG casual play, during combat though it's all about the points! Roll to hit, gain 1 Hope, roll damage, target loses 1 HP, spend 1 Stress to do another 1 HP worth of Damage. GM spends 1 Fear to do 2 or 3 HP Damage to everyone, PCs spend 1 Armour to keep 1 HP. It's not enthralling to listen to. It might be more fun in play but you probably have to be really invested in pools of points.

Play
[This space left deliberately empty]

Run
My Reach of the Roach God game has been on pause for a bit. I'll hopefully be back to it soon.

The D&D club at the community center was a success. Over eight weeks we had eight regular attendees and a few others too. We managed to get them running games for each other too and all in all fun was had. We are already booked in to do another ten sessions later this year. I'm going to try and introduce them to other games this time.

I'm hoping to start a second group soon probably running DragonBane or Mutant Year Zero.

Read
It may not be an entirely essential revision, but ALIEN Evolved Edition has had its second beta round now, and it's in a really good place. It's streamlined what it needed to, and I think the separation of the full Panic table from Skill rolls is a really smart change. There are still a couple of things in likely to houserule, but I'm looking forward to getting the final book in (hopefully) September.

Play
D&D - I'm now on my fourth character for Descent into Avernus, after my Reborn Paladin did a Big Heroic Sacrifice™ to save the party from a rampaging group of Shambling Mounds with frighteningly good luck on their die rolls. Next up is a satyr wizard/bard!

GM
Nothing, for a while, but hoping to get back behind the screen soon.

I've got an increasing list of one-shots I want to run, and I'm thinking I'll have to give up on my hopes for an IRL One Ring campaign and see if I can scare up an online group instead. Would anyone here be interested in joining, if I get something set up?