@Haladir: Are the 1 session games failures, or are there some of those you'd recommend?
I recommend all of these games! The only one you can't get is "Project Perseus," which is still in private playtest. (It's good, but still needs some work IMO.)
I'm in two regular weekly RPG groups: I've been running a regular weekly "Monster of the Week" game since January. And I've been a player in a PF2 "Age of Ashes" game for about a year now. The MotW campaign is on hiatus at the moment, and the group has switched to "Brindlewood Bay" as a change of pace.
The "Night Witches" game was the conclusion to a months-long campaign that ran through 2019 on The Gauntlet online gaming community.
Star Trek Adventures was intended to be an 8-session campaign on The Gauntlet, but the GM's work schedule changed unexpectedly and he had to cancel after the first session.
The rest of those one-session games were all intended to be one-shots. Most of them were online con games. Some were B-games that I ran for a standing group didn't meet quorum or the usual GM couldn't make it.
Trophy Dark, Honey Heist, Escape From Dino Island, and Lasers & Feelings are all designed to be one-shot games.
Those 5 sessions of Trophy Dark were one-shots for different groups. I ran one session each for both of my regular groups as a B-game. I also ran sessions at PaizoCon Online, Gauntlet Community Open Gaming, and Gehenna Games Weekend.
Looking ahead, I'm running one-shots of Trophy Dark and the GUMSHOE game "Swords of the Serpentine" at the online con "Games On Demand Online" next weekend. And I'll be running the same games again at GauntletCon in October.
While 2020 was a terrible year overall, I had a very good year in gaming...
Haladir's Year of Gaming: 2020 in Review
Total TTRPG sessions: 104
Different RPG systems played: 23
Pathfinder 2e: 24
Monster of the Week: 15
Brindlewood Bay: 14
D&D 5e: 8
Trophy Dark: 7
Pathfinder 1e: 6
Swords of the Serpentine: 5
Offworlders: 4
Trophy Gold: 3
Mörk Borg: 3
Call of Cthulhu: 2
Fall of Magic: 2
Bluebeard's Bride: 1
Escape From Dino Island: 1
Honey Heist: 1
Laser Metal: 1
Lasers & Feelings: 1
Lovecraftesque: 1
Night Witches: 1
Project Perseus: 1
Rapscallion: 1
Star Trek Adventures: 1
Starfinder: 1
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Sessions as GM: 54
Sessions as Player: 47
Sessions of GM-less RPG: 3
Online Conventions Attended: 4
Games On Demand Online: 2 sessions
Gauntlet Community Open Gaming: 7 Sessions
Magpie Games Curated Play: 2 sessions
PaizoCon Online: 5 sessions
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Gaming Communities/Groups Played With: 10
My Home Group: 34
Adam's Home Group: 24
The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community: 19
Rick's Home Group: 8
JP's Home Group: 6
PaizoCon Online: 5
Games On Demand: 2
Gehenna Gaming: 2
Magpie Games Community: 2
Storn's Home Group: 1
-----
Games played in person: 10
Games played online: 94
Online A/V Tools Used:
Discord: 4
Roll 20: 1
Zoom: 89
Virtual Table-Top/Play Aids Used:
Astral: 1
Google Docs/Sheets: 63
Fantasy Grounds: 1
Roll 20: 29
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...and, yes, I did keep a spreadsheet!
What do you think of Star Trek Adventures?While 2020 was a terrible year overall, I had a very good year in gaming...
Haladir's Year of Gaming: 2020 in Review
I have a copy of the rules (a physical copy of the Core Rulebook plus a bunch of PDFs from a Bundle of Holding last year).
As a physical artifact, the STA Core Rulebook is freaking beautiful!
I would recommend picking up a copy if you're a Star Trek fan even if you never play the game: It's chock full of Trek lore and the art and layout are fan-freaking-tastic!
As for the game itself... I think it's OK. I was only in one session of what was supposed to be a 10-game series, but the GM had an unexpected work schedule change and had to cancel the series after that first session... which was 2 hours of character creation and 30 minutes of play.
STA uses a modified version of Mophidius' 2d20 system (the same core system as their Mutant Chronicles, Conan, Fallout, John Carter of Mars, and Dune RPGs. It's a traditional RPG in that the GM does roll dice and that the resolution is pass/fail. It's also pretty complex... I'd put it at roughly the same level of rules complexity as 5e, AGE, or Shadow of the Demon Lord. This makes it a lot more "crunchy" than I prefer these days. That said, the Life Path system for character creation is evocative and works with you to build your PC's backstory. (It reminded me of the things I liked about the old Traveller back-story generation, with a lot more player input and no danger of dying during character creation.)
As for the actual play... my jury is still out as I haven't really gotten a chance to take the rules for a spin.
I haven't been able to play too much variety, but I've been getting more consistent games since the quarantine.
For my history, I started with D&D 4e, which has some warranted criticism but is a fine place to start as any.
Shadowrun 4&5 have been huge staples of my gaming career and I love the systems dearly.
Dread has been great for some horror one shots.
Burning Wheel was an interesting experience and I'd like to go back to it.
I don't much care for D&D 5e as I find it all a bit restrictive when it comes to character customization.
With that out of the way, I still buy many, many RPG books that I will probably never play. Listed below:
Blue Rose
Monster of the Week
Savage Worlds
Troika!
Cyberpunk
The Strange
Numenara
Legend of the Five Rings
Monsterhearts
Call of Cthulhu
I have a horrible addiction.
Spent the majority of 2020 running a Saturday group through PF2 in my custom setting, while our Sunday regulars played a bit of PF2 that I wasn’t running.
Both of those games are on a bit of a hiatus now and we’re playing Vampire: The Requiem and Genesys set in the 1980’s as a crime family trying to not get squeezed out by more nimble gangs.
We also have a sort of background Star Wars Edge of the Empire game that we can just drop into if we have a scheduling conflict in the middle of a story arc where it isn’t easy or fair to write a character out for the session.
Been having the time of my life running Songs for the Dusk, a post-post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy game with a heavy community focus that uses the Forged in the Dark ruleset.
Games I've played so far in 2021...
Pathfinder 1e - 6 sessions (player) - "Shattered Star"
Back Again From the Broken Land - 6 sessions (played in a 1-shot; GMed a 5-session series)
Naked City Blues - 4 sessions (GM) - playtest of an RPG I'm writing.
Rapsacallion - 2 sessions (player) - My daughter is the GM!
Mörk Borg - 1 session (GM) - Conclusion of a 4-game series that started in Dec 2020.
Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars - 1 session (player) - Only session of what was supposed to be a 4-game series (organizer had to cancel).
Escape From Dino Island - 1 session (GM) - Convention one-shot for Gauntlet Community Open Gaming (GCOG)
The Final Girl - 1 session (player) - Hack of the game called "Batman: The Final Rogue"; convention one-shot (GCOG).
Swords of the Serpentine - 1 session (GM) - Convention one-shot (GCOG)
Monster of the Week - 1 session (player) - Convention one-shot (GCOG)
Burning Wheel - 1 session (player) - Convention one-shot (GCOG)
Spirit of '77 - 1 session (GM) - Convention one-shot (GCOG)
Trophy Gold - 1 session (GM) - Convention one-shot (GCOG)
Carbon 2185 a cyberpunk reskin of 5E. The designers shaved off the top 10 levels and rejiggered some of the skills and feats to fit the theme of a CP game. Its ok, the GM is running as more or less beer and pretzels D&D in a cyberpunk T-shirt.
Which has led me to look into Android via the Genesys system from FFG. I just got my books and dice last week and now im going over the system and thinking about writing a game to run at some point. Looking for something more story building and less non-stop combat with a limping skill system as im getting out of Carbon 2185 at the moment.
I haven't played either in a while, but my two favorite TTRPGs for cyberpunk are The Sprawl by Hamish Cameron, and The Veil by Frasier Simmons. They both use the "Powered by the Apocalypse" rules framework, but the similarities end there.
The Sprawl is a game about freelance agents living in a cyberpunk dystopia taking on jobs for shady clients, doing them, and then getting paid.
The Veil is a game about AI, transhumanism, transformation, and what it means to be human.
I recently got Cyberpunk Red, it's pretty good. I'll use that for Cyberpunk type games.
I played a fair amount of Cyberpunk 2020 back in the early 90s. Cyberpunk Red is an update of that system, correct?
Im trying to get into a more sleepy noir conspiracy story game. More Bladerunner and way less Johnny Mnemonic. The folks I've seen with Cyberpunk Red tend to go cyber twink murder mayham with it. Not what im looking for at the moment.
Im trying to get into a more sleepy noir conspiracy story game. More Bladerunner and way less Johnny Mnemonic. The folks I've seen with Cyberpunk Red tend to go cyber twink murder mayham with it. Not what im looking for at the moment.
I'd recommend The Sprawl for that sort of Neuromancer-style cyberpunk game.
I played a fair amount of Cyberpunk 2020 back in the early 90s. Cyberpunk Red is an update of that system, correct?
Yes. It's a collaboration with the video game developer.