Grab bag of RPG thoughts

I picked up Swords at Dawn yesterday. Changeling is trending as the World of Darkness game I’m most likely to run, although that’s always tough to predict, you know? I’m equally excited about Hunter, a mortals game, Geist, and (of course) Mage.

Still, I think Changeling would be a good challenge for me; I’ve learned a few things, and Changeling is one of those games that’s kind of amazingly open-ended. I mean, there’s a lot you can focus on in any given game. Off the top of my head, there’s changeling politics; changelings’ relationship with mortals, family (incl. fetches) or otherwise; various changeling-specific supernatural stuff; and of course conflicts between privateers, True Fae, and changelings. It’s intimidating, which I’m guessing is why good GMing advice tells you to consider seriously what your players want.

Divine Power comes out soon, as well, if it’s not out already. I’ll have it by next week, I think. Previously, I voiced interest in running a divine-themed game and I’ll confess my interest in D&D in general has waned somewhat. 4th Edition’s system is less invasive in many ways, but I’m concerned about unintentionally performing a bait-and-switch. That is, I feel I might be cheating people if I ran a D&D game with a little combat as I typically include.

A little bit of my hestitation with regard to running new games is this tension between wanting to run a long-ish game and the improbability of actually pulling it off. This is a pretty common complaint among adult gamers, as far as I can tell; it comes with the territory of being an adult. I saw how my first long-ish D&D game nearly died until I forcibly rescusitated for one last session. I’m glad I did it but it sucks that I had to.

Anyway, all that aside, I’m also really excited about Geist. Here’s a brief roundup of interesting things I’ve read about it.

First off, you can see some examples of character creation from some of the White Wolf freelancers, incl. Stew Wilson and Matt McFarland. Also, I’ve been remiss in not keeping up with Matt’s actual play thread, as many entries have become unlocked since I last checked.

Finally, if you have any substantial interest in the game, you owe it to yourself to read Martin Ralya of Gnome Stew’s preview of Geist. He got his hands on a review copy of Geist, and takes a nice, long look at the game.

That’s all for now!