Last year, we reached a tipping point where we realised that most of our Armchair Adventuring was taking place online. Our never-ending quest to get more people to play games with continues. To support our endeavours we created virtual GROGMEET to complement the annual event in November.
Some of the GROGSQUAD wanted to discover online play for the first time and have the opportunity to play with the GMGMs that make GROGMEET in Manchester such a distinctive experience.
Squadron members from all over the UK plus others from British Columbia, Australia and North America were joined games of Numenera and Maelstrom and others listed below.
Of course the curse of online play bedevilled it with glitches and interventions from real life, but it was an enjoyable event by all accounts.
Hopefully, new gaming connections were made during the event and this is the beginning of more groups forming, because “play’s the thing”. Dirk
WarHammer Fantasy Role-Playing: A rousing version of Summer Holiday, a bar-room brawl, death and destruction in the opening scenario of The Enemy Within. Asako_SohLamentations of the Flame Princess: Having climbed into the Butchers through the roof the party encounter a mutated dog in an attached room. Engaging their OSR drive by trying to avoid unnecessary conflicts, they came up with a clever plan which became known as the Norwich Gambit. Their scheme in place they opened doors while keeping out of the beasts reach and felt some degree of cleverness as their ploy worked and the external door was closed behind the dog as it wandered outside. They were later to discover the consequences of that cleverness. Neil BensonJudge Dredd RPG (GW): Andy, Mark and Brett – were soon in the middle of a firefight. All three really committed to the game, and inhabited the characters of their Judges really well. (The phrase “Eat Judge boot, creep!” was deployed to much satisfaction.) They were very inventive both in their use of the tech, and in their theories of what the clues they uncovered could mean … (continues)Judge Dredd RPG: Their detection methods were also top-notch, leading me to short-circuit one part of the adventure as I thought their ideas deserved to be rewarded. The big finale played out well (sound effects on roll20 at least worked out very well), although at times I felt I was losing “flow” somewhat – I think that might have been down to the system showing its age, coupled with my inexpert hacking of the rules. Overall, good fun for me to run again – I had an excellent set of players who threw themselves into the setting with gusto, and Mega-City One remains a great playground for roleplaying. Next time though, I think I might try a different rules system, more geared to pulp action. Savage Worlds anyone? Alan GaireyNight’s Black Agents: 1984, Harry Reeves pulled together a crew; a wheel wizard, box man and wire rat to black bag Frank Holton: a miner with connections in the USSR: “BagPuss is in the building”. Dirk.Cthulhu Hack: Good time was had by all. The use of my artwork murals and a trap based portion of the game generated a real ‘adventure game’ feel to play. Cthulhu hack worked well especially sanity erosion to build the players sense of dread and I’ve at least 3 different threads out of the game. All in all a result. Keehar.HeroQuest: I had 4 players, with limited experience of Heroquest, so it was good to take them through the character generation system & how contests work. Heroquest is one of those systems that truly opens up through play, rather than reading the corebook- which reveals it’s pearls of wisdom after play. Highlights included grabbing the heart of Orlanth from a Lunar Demon and then just about defeating that demon mid air in the Otherworld- the first time running the scenario we had had major conflict. All because of a “over-confident” character trait from one PC. Andrew Jones.
