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It launched today. Anybody out there got their hands on a copy? I’m seeing people at the WW forums that do.

At any rate, I don’t have much to say beyond that. I’m hoping I can get my hands on a copy sometime next week, but I don’t know what the actual timeline looks like for that.

I’m sure I’ll have more to post once I’m either running a Changeling or Geist game. In the meantime, you all should take care and, if you’re not already, read many of the other fine blogs on the RPG Blogger network.

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!

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In case you’re wondering what Ellis’ Keystone is in the Giest: the Sin-Eaters quickstart, here you are.

Excerpted for posterity, from Christopher Simmons, the author of the quickstart:

According to my notes, it was supposed to be a vulture’s skull on a leather thong that gives him a +3 to his Grave Dirt effects (Grave-Dirt Caul and Grave-Dirt Rage) and allows him to spend 1 Plasm to increase his Survival by 1 point, up to a maximum of 5.

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Somebody— specifically Matt McFarland, one of the fellows who’s written for many White Wolf games— happened to playtest Geist: the Sin-Eaters. This same fellow happens to write up games he runs and/or plays in in his LiveJournal, and Geist is no exception.

The long of it is here. The short of it is that every Monday, Matt’s going to unlock each of the eight entries devoted to the Geist playtest. The first one’s here.

Give it a read. It’s well worth a moment of your time.

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My last post was a lot of facts without much of my opinion, which I feel obliged to share. That’s what blogs are for, right? Right?

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So let’s see. At the outset, it’s good to keep in mind that the quickstart is short on many details. Like the ones for previous games, it’s juuuuust enough to let you and your friends play the game in question. Nevertheless, it’s a good read, and if you can get your hands on it, I recommend it. (I expect sooner or later the folks at White Wolf will put up a PDF of the quickstart.)

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For those of you into RPGs, this is a friendly reminder: it’s Free RPG Day! Of particular interest to me are two things: the Geist: the Sin-Eaters quickstart and the D&D 4e module Khyber’s Harvest.

Needless to say, I cracked open Geist first. I’m on a few pages in but it’s really cool so far. For those of you familiar with the old World of Darkness, imagine something like Risen except designed to be sustainable. That’s my initial impression so far, at any rate.

I’ve got a friend in town, and perhaps enough people around that I could actually run again of it tonight. We’ll see, won’t we? It’d be a challenge for me, but if there’s enough diggity demand, I’d do it.

Oh also I got my hands on a copy of Spirit of the Century. My friend Alex talked it up, and since my local store had 10% off, the price was right.

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I’ve been carrying this book, Horror Recognition Guide, around off and on over the last few months.  It wasn’t until recently that I really took a crack at it. It’s a fascinating read! I expected something analogous to Mysterious Places, a treatment of various phenomena accompanied with hints as to how to use them. It has the former, but the latter is conspicuously absent.

As it stands now, I’m nearly 100 pages in— more on that in a moment— and it doesn’t break character. It’s a collection of files, notes, journals, and ephemera detailing people’s encounters with the various nasties in this book. There’s nary a stat to be found and even the credits are at the back of the book rather than the front. Altogether, it’s 300 pages, covering 16 different phenomena. If you were to mistake this for a collection of short stories, you wouldn’t be far off the mark!

It’s definitely in a more Hunter-y context than any of the other games, a plain World of Darkness mortals game being one big possible exception. By that I mean that these stories are laid out more like mysteries than threats. So far, they’re fairly localized phenomena, though for at least a few of these horrors it’s obvious how you could increase their scope, at least to the point where they might give any of the other supernaturals cause for concern.

Anyway, it’s a real treat so far. It adds a lot to what might come to mind when you think about Hunter: the Vigil in particular and the sorts of things you’d see in World of Darkness in general.

All that said, I imagine you’ll get a bunch more more mileage out of it if you pick up Collection of Horrors. From what I can tell, it gives you something more concrete than a story, using the SAS system, various props (incl. audio) (!), and presumably statistics for some of the phenomena concerned. I’m intrigued, to the point where I’m considering buying the bundle. I like it when companies experiment like this, and I suspect these would be ideal for one-shots.

Since it’s evening when I’m writing this, I’m going to have at the rest of the book.

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I can’t lie to you, blog. I’ve got the World of Darkness on the brain lately.

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A full-fledged postmortem will have to wait, so let’s just talk about this session.

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