Gamer Community

[Homburg]

I think here in the house we have...

About five computers, two X-Box 360s, a PS3, about four PS2s, a WII, two old X-Boxes, a gamecube...

For four people.

Hmm *counts*

Five computers, one Wii, one PS2, one PS1, and 3 game-boys, and had a Super NES and another PS1 but gave them to my folks so that the kids could have something to play with there.

I have stored in my dad's garage: 2 Atari 2600 (well, one is the Sears model), a VIC-20, a TI-99/4a, and a Commodore 64.

I have three computers active in/on my desk right now. I feel oddly geekish, especially as I'm not usually a computer geek.

 

[Homburg]

Pendragon was great. In my home town there is still a game running which started 17 years ago!

I remember when we started we didn't have any D20 so we used 3 D6 and worked our way round it.

17 years?!? Wow, I wonder how many generations they've gone through in that campaign?

 

[Arkhilokhus]

This thread is really taking me back. So I have to ask - am I the only one who really adored Torg?

 

[Homburg]

This thread is really taking me back. So I have to ask - am I the only one who really adored Torg?

Ha, no my gaming brother, I can reach in the dice bag sitting on my desk right here and pull out my blue and red Torg die. The system was twitchy as all get out, but the very best game I ever ran was a Torg game under a different system.

I used White Wolf's "Adventure!" system primarily. A! is a stunningly incredible game on its' own (best thing WW ever produced, hands down), and the mechanics work bloody well for Torg. You just use the characters' Inspiration stat for various Storm Knight stuff.

I actually converted all the PC's to 3E D&D when they went up the bridge to Aylse. That was a lot of fun actually, and made for a very different feel.

I still have a pile of the Torg books, supplements, and even the Torg comic book mini-series. I think I have a few of the books on pdf too.

I dig me some Torg.

 

[Recidiva]

Hmm *counts*

Five computers, one Wii, one PS2, one PS1, and 3 game-boys, and had a Super NES and another PS1 but gave them to my folks so that the kids could have something to play with there.

I have stored in my dad's garage: 2 Atari 2600 (well, one is the Sears model), a VIC-20, a TI-99/4a, and a Commodore 64.

I have three computers active in/on my desk right now. I feel oddly geekish, especially as I'm not usually a computer geek.

I have one computer, but its display is over two monitors. Ooooh. I still think it's cool when the mouse passes from screen to screen. Magic!

I used to run two computers because a lot of games I liked couldn't really be soloed well. Dark Age of Camelot I'd usually run two characters.

But now they're making games more soloable (thank Gods) and I don't have to resort to that any more.

 

[Recidiva]

This thread is really taking me back. So I have to ask - am I the only one who really adored Torg?

I have played a LOT of games...but not this one.

 

[Arkhilokhus]

Ha, no my gaming brother, I can reach in the dice bag sitting on my desk right here and pull out my blue and red Torg die. The system was twitchy as all get out, but the very best game I ever ran was a Torg game under a different system.

I used White Wolf's "Adventure!" system primarily. A! is a stunningly incredible game on its' own (best thing WW ever produced, hands down), and the mechanics work bloody well for Torg. You just use the characters' Inspiration stat for various Storm Knight stuff.

I actually converted all the PC's to 3E D&D when they went up the bridge to Aylse. That was a lot of fun actually, and made for a very different feel.

I still have a pile of the Torg books, supplements, and even the Torg comic book mini-series. I think I have a few of the books on pdf too.

I dig me some Torg.

That sounds awesome. I never got the chance to play A!, but it looked brilliant. I always wanted to use it to do a "action movie" style game.

But Torg! God, so much fun. Genre mixing is just awesome.

 

[Homburg]

I have one computer, but its display is over two monitors. Ooooh. I still think it's cool when the mouse passes from screen to screen. Magic!

I used to run two computers because a lot of games I liked couldn't really be soloed well. Dark Age of Camelot I'd usually run two characters.

But now they're making games more soloable (thank Gods) and I don't have to resort to that any more.

I have my laptop for work, my PC, and my new mac mini (bought because the PC is slowly dying). I'm still getting used to the mac. I like it a lot, but am still trying to get it set up as I like it.

I'd like to run a two monitor set-up just for the coolness factor, but it won't happen. I can't afford the money or the space on my desk for a second monitor. And, as I run my set-up through a KVM switch to keep from having separate monitor, mouse, and keyboard, I can only run one monitor gracefully.

I used to use another work laptop to two-box EQ. That was interesting.

I have played a LOT of games...but not this one.

Torg is awesome. Well and truly incredible idea for a setting, and some really neat things going on. It was just saddled with a really obtuse system. Running the setting through the lens of functional mechanics really allowed me to do some great stuff. This is a game that happened some six or seven years ago, and the players still talk about it. I've walked in on them telling new people stories of that game and the craziness that went on.

Honestly, how many games can meld Nazi air pirates, spellcasting dragonriders, techno-daemons, cavemen, and the USMC's fighting finest in one workable mix.

 

[Homburg]

That sounds awesome. I never got the chance to play A!, but it looked brilliant. I always wanted to use it to do a "action movie" style game.

But Torg! God, so much fun. Genre mixing is just awesome.

Brilliant is an enormous understatement for A!. Check Ebay, or half.com or somesuch for a cheap copy. You will not regret it.

 

[ZRT]

Let's see. Started at eight, I'm thirty-four.

*pauses to point and laugh at Hom* OLD MAN.

Anyway, I did a lot of the eighties games, so many that I can't even remember. Small press stuff, like Justifiers, the main brands like D&D, Twilight 2000, that sorta thing.

Then I fell in love with the WoD from White Wolf. It wasn't just the world that I really enjoyed, but the Storyteller system was what really set me off, because I hated cumbersome rulesets. There seemed to be a trend back in the eighties to try to make the systems as realistic as possible, with tables and charts for everything. That didn't do a thing for me, and more to the point those systems were the playground of my mortal foes, the min-maxers. As someone who has largely been secure with himself throughout his life, I really hated those insecure twits who'd munchkin out a game to compensate for their mental, moral, and physical shortcomings.

WoD made it fairly easy to overcome that, properly applied.

Tzimisce elder: Who's your daddy? (Dominate)
Annoying player: Uh, you're my daddy.
Tzimisce elder: *chomp*

Then I could get on to the players who actually put some more work into their characters than 'He's just like that guy from Highlander, except he carries twin silver katanas and a pair of Desert Eagles.'

(Bonus points for those who know the reference.)

However, as discussed in the other thread, WoD burned me out. Now, having been several years since I've done anything with it, other than some brief games (one awesome WtA game comes to mind), I might actually even be able to look at it again.

In the meantime, I get my fix from creating my own worlds and storylines and luring my victims/players into the web. My principle in running games is that all good players have some masochistic tendencies going on. To borrow a notion from the Legend of the Five Rings gamemaster's guide, players want their characters to suffer horribly, then win. I'm quite happy to provide that, assuming they earn the victory. I do challenge them every step of the way.

These days, I prefer online gaming to in person, simply because online allows my imagination to run wild and frees me from having to imagine the guy across the table from me as a beautiful elven maiden or whatever. My friends and I pass our time in more traditional gaming pursuits (Munchkin, the BSG board game, etc.) and I do my serious RP online.

Funny tidbit: I follow 40K, but only in the novel line. I've played like three TT games (one 40K, two fantasy) of it. I love the universe, but the game itself never really did anything for me. I have done a fair bit of RP in the universe, though.

Okay, it was kinda awesome to unleash a Bloodthirster on that hapless line of handgunners.

 

[Homburg]

Let's see. Started at eight, I'm thirty-four.

*pauses to point and laugh at Hom* OLD MAN.

Impertinent whelp! Where I come from you'd still be in short pants, rolling un-inked dice!

WoD made it fairly easy to overcome that, properly applied.

Tzimisce elder: Who's your daddy? (Dominate)
Annoying player: Uh, you're my daddy.
Tzimisce elder: *chomp*

And it could even look like your daddy if it wanted to.

In the meantime, I get my fix from creating my own worlds and storylines and luring my victims/players into the web. My principle in running games is that all good players have some masochistic tendencies going on. To borrow a notion from the Legend of the Five Rings gamemaster's guide, players want their characters to suffer horribly, then win. I'm quite happy to provide that, assuming they earn the victory. I do challenge them every step of the way.

Probably why I make such a crappy, difficult player. Regardless of my role-playing abilities, I suck at suffering. So I tend to short-cut plots, do end-arounds all over the bad guys, and generally make an out-of-the-box nuisance of myself. I've had GM's that are good friends of mine tell me to my face that I'm too difficult to deal with.

Suffering sucks. I'd rather make others suffer. This is probably why I've been the GM for 95% of my gaming over the past 28 years.

These days, I prefer online gaming to in person, simply because online allows my imagination to run wild and frees me from having to imagine the guy across the table from me as a beautiful elven maiden or whatever.

What format do you use for online gaming?

Funny tidbit: I follow 40K, but only in the novel line. I've played like three TT games (one 40K, two fantasy) of it. I love the universe, but the game itself never really did anything for me. I have done a fair bit of RP in the universe, though.

Okay, it was kinda awesome to unleash a Bloodthirster on that hapless line of handgunners.

I don't think I've played a game of TT warhammer in the past three years easy. Painting it a good bit, but, hey, I'm getting paid for it.

 

[MisterSir]

@ZRT: Have you read any of the Ciaphas Cain novels?

If not, the hell is wrong with you man, do it now. Even though Sandy Mitchell seems to enjoy repetition an awful lot, they're excellent books.

 

[bethpage]

I'm totally feeling like a poser, now.

In highschool we had a great GM, and he ran a Rifts game that rocked. We were *all* the biggest, baddest, bestest, so we had kicking bigger, badder, bester monsters and challenges. It was a lot of fun.

He was so good that I never had a lot of patience with fumbling GMs that were learning their thing.

I still have my dice, even though I haven't played in years......my friends are starting up a game soon that I'll be joining. Should be fun.

I want to larp...but I'm out of weekends and free energy. Maybe someday.

 

[ZRT]

Hom- I do forum games and email games, mostly. Been out of that for a while now, but then I was dreadfully busy with life and my latest relationship.

Mistersir- I like Mitchell more with every novel he writes. At first I thought he was losing the thread of the comedy in the Cain novels by showing how he really is sort of noble at his core, however much he denies it, but he really made that theme work over the last two novels. Great stuff. Still and all, the first one was my favorite. "I knew I was in trouble when they were smiling as I got off the shuttle." Classic opening.

Also, given latest non-comedy offering, I'm wondering if the repetition isn't his emulation of the style of an untrained writer. I mean, yeah, 'Jurgen smells. Boy, Jurgen smells. Everybody noticed how Jurgen smells.' But he's writing from the perspective of a man rambling his drunken way through his private memoir, so it's something that I just naively accept as a purposeful element of Mitchell's writing style.

Read Titanicus yet? Fucking AWESOME. My new favorite Abnett.

 

[akuyim]

Homburg, Senzar was another crazy over the top game like Synnibar but much more geared to being the most bad-ass thing on the planet. At higher levels it just became a game of whoever had initiative winning the fight. Still fun to play and some great stories came from that game.

I never really enjoyed Vampire as much as my friends did, i preferred Werewolf the Apocalypse, and still do.

Deadlands is another great game. i really enjoy it.

 

[Homburg]

Hom- I do forum games and email games, mostly. Been out of that for a while now, but then I was dreadfully busy with life and my latest relationship.

So along the lines of PBM/PBEM?

Read Titanicus yet? Fucking AWESOME. My new favorite Abnett.

I've not read this, but I did enjoy the first few of the Gaunt's Ghosts series.

--

Homburg, Senzar was another crazy over the top game like Synnibar but much more geared to being the most bad-ass thing on the planet. At higher levels it just became a game of whoever had initiative winning the fight. Still fun to play and some great stories came from that game.

Cool. Did you ever actually play Synnibar? I can't find anyone that played it.

Deadlands is another great game. i really enjoy it.

Deadlands has been on my "Want to play it, but noone else in my group does" games for a long, long time. I once shoe-horned a weird superheroes game into a pseudo Weird West setting that was a cross between Deadlands and Stephen King's Gunslinger series. Closest I could get to Deadlands before my players would revolt. They did the same thing with Call of Cthulhu. The wimps.

 

[akuyim]

My group and i played it once. When i first got the book and read it. I was the guy to buy all the non-mainstream games.

Deadlands is really great, you should force them to play. Maybe you can tie them up.

Call of Cthulu i have some books for but my group wouldnt play that.

 

[FurryFury]

I played that the other night!

 

[Homburg]

I played that the other night!

*jealous*

My players were wimps. I would sneak CoC stuff into other games. Once I flat ran a full CoC module, modified slightly, into a pulp adventure game. It was awesome. The pul adventure side changed the tone a bit, but it was still scary and dark.

Then I made the mistake of leaving the books out. Suddenly my PC's went from devil-may-care gung-ho pulp heroes to cautious investigators studying every shadow and being afraid of everything. Ugh.

 

[elleanor]

I was addicted to EQ for ~6 years from Velious onward... I was a macroquest fiend and learning to edit the scripts actually got me into programming and such. I met some great people and mentors, but don't regret quitting and selling it off when I did.

 

[satindesire]

"The Cake is a Lie" is from Portal. A very dark humor game that I can't actually play myself because it involves being...well...fast.

But I watched my son and husband play.

The setup is that you're stuck inside this death trap for the scientific purposes of developing new weaponry (i.e., it's being tested on you.) She keeps telling you there will be cake at the end. And at one point there's grafitti scrawled on the wall - in blood "The Cake Is A Lie!"

The vicious bitch computer looking over the experiments is named GLaDos and she's hilarious.

I WANT a companion cube.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/portal/the-official-plush-companion-cube-321259.php

 

[ZRT]

So along the lines of PBM/PBEM?

Mostly play by post, some PBM/PBEM, some chat.

I've not read this, but I did enjoy the first few of the Gaunt's Ghosts series.

--

Keep reading. Abnett really gets good as he progresses as a writer. I liked the original Ghosts material, but it got repetitive and stale for me in places, and the original books mostly blur together in my memory. From Straight Silver onward, I can remember them all very clearly.

So, who here has checked out Cthulhutech?

 

[YourCaptor]

ETW

Having 1,000 men goose step withing 50 yards of an enemy force while under fire, and then all unloading their muskets into them upon my command is not helping with my ego.

I swear I like this game far too much.

 

[FurryFury]

*jealous*

My players were wimps. I would sneak CoC stuff into other games. Once I flat ran a full CoC module, modified slightly, into a pulp adventure game. It was awesome. The pul adventure side changed the tone a bit, but it was still scary and dark.

Then I made the mistake of leaving the books out. Suddenly my PC's went from devil-may-care gung-ho pulp heroes to cautious investigators studying every shadow and being afraid of everything. Ugh.

My GM for that one doesn't run it too scary. I never thought I could play that game but he makes it fun!

 

[sookie80]

ok..... I'm probably off topic here...but all these posting reminded me of a Freaks & Geeks episode where the geeks were playing d&d?....and they brought in James Francos character..taught him how to play and they all bonded.