June Game Day

Another Game Day has come and gone.  This time we took advantage of a location in Benton County, a very nice clubhouse at an apartment complex that we were graciously allowed to use.  It was a nice setup, very comfortable, little kitchenette for the snacks, a little short on tables and chairs, but that was mostly because of the turnout we had.  Which I believe was 32 people at the most according to those that were counting.  That is the biggest turnout for a game day I can remember; so huzzah!

I ran two games of the Marvel RPG.  Just a couple of short scenarios that were basically all setup and action scene; so nothing too in depth.  But I think everyone had fun, or at least that's what the feedback is saying.  The first game had 8 players if I remember correctly.  We had Spiderman, Iron Man, Emma Frost, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Captain America, and Thing.  The scenario was the What If? Thor bonus content from the Margaret Weiss Productions website.  The basic plot deals with the Breakout mini-event, and is meant to be tied in to it; but works just fine by itself for something like this.  The Wrecking Crew invades a mansion owned by a collector of various super themed and related items and memorabilia; seeking to retrieve their magical, construction themed weapons.  The What If? scenario as written has the heroes fight them, and proposes that Thor's hammer is in the collection as well so that you can bring him in as a PC or NPC as the fight progresses.  I added in a few of the B-list villains from the core book because of the large player count, as well as Loki from the Plot Points website.

The heroes fought the villains with great success, taking them all down in a couple of rounds.  But then Loki, being the God of Mischief and Lies and Such, used his regeneration power to come back from his supposed defeat and then called out a mind-controlled Thor to help him fight.  Luckily the heroes met the challenge with great force and skill and managed to down the evil god and his brainwashed brother quickly; saving the day.

After a short break I launched into a second round with an all new group of players, six of them this time.  We had Wolverine, Iron Man, Black Widow, Shadowcat, Colossus, and Thor.  I used the Attack on Avengers' Mansion scenario from Plot Points, as well as various villain and item datafiles from their site.  The heroes faced off against Loki, Ronan the Accuser, Blaastar, and Wizard; who had broken into the Avengers' vault and taken the Cask of Ancient Winters, the Cosmic Control Rod, the Symbiote, and the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak respectively.  An all out brawl ensued, during which the heroes ended up letting a villain go last in the initiative order for the round, and therefore they faced all the bad guys in a row, doing massive AOE attacks.  They got pretty dang beaten up all across the board, but then turned it around and in a single round of hero turns wiped the floor with all of them.  This scenario was a bit shorter, but felt deadlier, and was quite a bit of fun.

I thought both groups were really great, and had fun running for them.  I'm quite glad I got the opportunity to introduce the game to so many different people.  It was quite exhausting though, and I only got to play a short game of Ghost Pirates (which I'll talk about in another post) as well because of spending so much time GMing.  But I'm not really complaining.  I do think for the next game day in July I'll either just try to play stuff, or maybe run something but definitely put a limit on the players this time around to make it more controllable.  The game does a great job of handling large groups without breaking, but it does slow down and it is taxing on the GM.

I didn't pay a ton of attention to the other stuff that was played and run.  I know Chris did his Eldritch High game and it sounded like it went well.  I think there were some games of Fluxx, Apples to Apples, Fantasy Journey?, Ninja, and probably others I didn't notice.

Oh and there was the fuzz ball.  The place had a pool table and fuzz ball table, which was nice for them that like those games.  Not really my style of thing, especially when I've the opportunity to play better games, but a good number of people played them and had fun; which is 100% a good thing.  The only downside was that the fuzz ball games were REALLY loud, and they were being played during RPGs, when loud noises are especially unappreciated.  So I think it would behove us to instate an official no fuzz ball during the RPG session rule or something next time we are at that location.

Other than that this was a triumph.  Note:  Huge Success.  Look forward to next month's.

And for those that have survived the reading down to here, just a quick FYI; I'm going to be trying to increase the frequency of my blog posting via scheduled and themed updates.  Shooting for 3 a week at least to start, moving up to 5 a week.  The intended content will be a couple of different short, serial fiction stories, RPG and board game reviews/actual plays, and notes on my own RPG design projects.  So keep checking back and hopefully you'll find interesting stuff.