Ninchilla

I've done a few of the Escalations now, and if I have a complaint, it's that the UI isn't very helpful - chiefly, would it have killed them to have the Suits menu tell me how to unlock the Suits I don't have yet!?

I don't think the shooting is too bad, but there are too many shooting sections, and they're all at least 30% longer than they need to be. It's also not great at telegraphing when you're supposed to stand and fight (e.g., the red room) or when you're supposed to just book it through the area and get to the objective as quickly as possible (e.g., the chopper).

The first time the theme really kicks in, Spoiler - click to showyou're smashing down a back alley in a bin lorry, and it's great.

I still haven't finished it (soon!), but I think all of what Gar said lines.up pretty well with my experience.

Read
At UKGE last month, I finally picked up Call of Cthulhu. It's been something of a white whale for me - 6e(?) was the first TTRPG I ever played, so it's been a gap on the shelf for some time. I forgot quite how involved and math-y character creation is, but it seems like once you get going it's pretty straightforward.

I also bought indie peasants' revolt RPG Gallows Corner based largely on the book's art and politics, and I really ought to dig into it more.

Play
I'm now on my fourth PC in our ongoing Princes of the Apocalypse D&D 5e campaign. I think this one is faring a little better so far, but the last one picked up a cursed weapon that got them killed, so I guess we'll see.

GM
I ran the Discworld RPG quickstart Up In Smoke a couple of weeks ago, which went down well. Rather than using the pregens, everyone made their own Watch members: a pun-powered dwarf baker, a PR gargoyle from the posh part of town, and a swarm of bees in a trenchcoat. Things somehow got even more chaotic from there (in the best way).

Still really enjoying The One Ring. We're coming up on the end of what I'm thinking of as "Season 1", but I'm already seeding in plenty of hints for things to come, and everyone seems to be having a great time. They're very keen to go to Moria (as am I), but I've made it clear that they've got to work up to that. I already have some ideas for how that's going to work down the road, though.

My occasional Friday meatspace group is about to go into the last session of the Blade Runner starter set adventure, Electric Dreams. It's been good, though they somehow worked things out quicker than the book expected, meaning I had to spin their wheels a little bit to make sure that all the characters were.going to be able to take part in the finale. It did let some of them get an extra shift of downtime in before things kick off, so that'll hopefully improve their odds of survival.

After that, I suspect they'll want to return to Vaesen, so I need to do some prep for that and check up on which mystery I might run. I've got a long list of things I want to inflict on them run for them, however, so Vaesen will probably be interspersed with some Alien and Call of Cthulhu (maybe closer to Hallowe'en…).

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Free RPG Day stuff was delayed for the UK, and there doesn't seem to be any official estimate for when it'll be available, which is annoying. If anyone can get their hands on the Vaesen booklet for me, I'd appreciate it!

Play
I can't stop playing Overwatch. I'm starting to branch out a bit from my old favourites, and have discovered I'm actually pretty good with some of the characters that were added during my OW2 drop-off.

I need to get back and finish the campaign in 007 First Light, but I've been holding off on it while Sarah catches up. I've done some of the TacSim stuff in the meantime, but it's not really clicked with me; the initial spread of options aren't very open-ended, and are both combat-heavy and quite punishing, forcing a full restart every time you fail, which can get frustrating after a while. You can do it dressed as a skeleton, however, which is amusing.

Want
The wishlist is long, but there's nothing massively exciting on it. The thing I'm looking forward to most is probably Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, because we had a blast with the first one in co-op. Adding the fourth marine also means we won't have to rotate squad members so much, so that's good.

Bin
I'm aware that I'm probably one of maybe seven people on Earth in this group, but I'm already fed up with GTAVI. R* do excellent world design - nobody else has ever really had places that feel as well-designed and organic as theirs do - but then fill them with just the most abominable, adolescent shit. Outside of brief excursions into the early days of Online, I found V completely reprehensible, and am not looking forward to having to hear about this one for the next decade.