2010 in review

Floating around somewhere is a post I did early last year saying what I wanted to acheive in gaming in 2010. I would link to it, but I can’t seem to find it. Regardless I thought I would sum it up here:

• I spent the better part of 2010 writing, in collaboration with two others, a 66 person LARP called Al Shir-Ma. It’s set in an Arabian Night-esque world which borrows from Al-Qadim. It was done for the yearly KapCon gaming convention here in Wellington, and it’s first run through is happening next weekend. It’s been a really interesting experience and has I think made me a better scenario writer. But man, has it been a lot of work.
• I wrapped up my campaign, using the Green Ronin A Song of Ice and Fire rules, in a not hugely satisfiying way. By the end I’d kind of lost interest and time, and it all got a bit too railroady. It showed me that I really want to run long term games that leverage off character backgrounds and story rather than some over arching plot I’ve come up with. Means less work for me too.
• I ran Peril in King’s Landing a pre-written scenario for ASoIFRP. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually run a pre-written scenario and while I liked the low prep of it all, I found that I had the most fun when I was adding in new elements passed on player actions.
• I played a lot of Xbox 360. Notably Alpha Protocol, Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Some of these games, like Mass Effect, I played through for a third time so I could carry my character into the new game. Yes I am that much of a geek.
• I played a lot of table top and LARP games. For the first time I played more than I GM’d and it was great.
• I discovered some great new table top games like Prime Time Adventures and Apocolypse World.

So from a gaming perspective 2010 was great. Though as the silence from June on might have told you, other stuff wasn’t. Now though it’s time to look forward to 2011!

Winter Is Coming.

Green Ronin bags another licence

But is it one too many? I was surprised to read that Green Ronin had signed an agreement with DC Comics to release a series of four books as part of their Mutants and Masterminds line. It makes me wonder how many licensed products are sustainable for a small publishing house like GR.

HBO greenlights A Game of Thrones

George R. R. Martin reacts here, with links. I’m pretty excited about this – the series is human-centric enough to not require much in the way of effects and the story is complex enough that it needs TV, not movie, timelines. Who knows how well it will do but I can’t wait.

2010 – A year in gaming

With KapCon now behind me I’m starting to look forward to what kind of gaming experiences I want to have in 2010. Essentially a list that I can look back on later in the year to see how I’m going.

So with out any further ado. The List!

1. Actually finish my KapCon SDC entry this year. I’m going to tidy up and polish Still to Come.
2. Stop being so soft on the players in the A Song of Ice and Fire game I GM. It’s a tough world and sometimes, people die.
3. Continue to overcome the distrust I have of LARPing.
4. Play more of the games I look at and think “I really want to play that!”.
5. Blog more, not just re-posting cool stuff from elsewhere.
6. Get a new PC so I can play all these awesome CPRGs on the platform they are meant for.

I think that’s it really. There are other things, but these are the main ones. What about you? Do you have any gaming goals for the year?

Seven more to the mix

Yesterday, US time, seven more parts of the HBO pilot for A Game of Thrones were cast. They all seem to be actors of relative unknowness this time round, though by all accounts very strong. An article over at The Hollywood Reporter runs through them all, but for ease of use I’ll list them here:

• Jaime Lannister – played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
• Daenerys – played by Tamzin Merchant
• Robb Stark – played by Richard Madden
• Ser Jorah Mormont – played by Iain Glen
• Theon Greyjoy – played by Alfie Allen
• Sansa Stark – played by Sophie Turner
• Arya Stark – played by Maisie Williams

Some of these actors are such unknowns that they barely have a web pressence at all. So for more info head over to George R. R. Martin’s Not a Blog to read up on them.

This is all very good news. The finished product is still a long way away, but it looks like it’ll be pretty grand once it gets here!

And the winner is…

The ENnie awards were announced last week and I was pretty pleased to see that a game I’ve talked rather a lot about here, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay picked up a Silver for Best Rules as well as the Gold for Best Free Product for the Quickstart rules. Coming second place to a game like Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is a pretty good feat and Green Ronin Publishing must be very pleased.

I’m hoping that off the back of this positive response to the game that Green Ronin firms up the plans for further products as well as officially announcing when the Campaign Guide will be released. According to a report from Gen Con on the Green Ronin boards, the hold up is not that they are waiting on approvals from George R.R. Martin. Though this of course should be taken with a grain of salt until there is some sort word from Green Ronin.

Most of the other award winners covered off DnD 4th ed, Dark Heresy and Paizo Publishing, though it was great to see that some of the smaller publishers and games had a good showing like Mouse Guard (which I own, but have never actually played) and Evil Hat Productions with both Don’t Rest Your Head and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. Unfortunately my friend Malcolm’s Hot War didn’t pick up awards in the two categories (Best Setting and Best Writing) it was nominated.

A full list of winners can be found over at the ENnie Awards site.

A small GRRM update

The Wertzone, a great fantasy book and other things blog, has a small update about A Dance of Dragons from George R. R. Martin’s recent FinnCon appearance. Martin is apparently saying he hopes to finish by the end of the year. He also says that he ‘envisages The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring taking three years apiece’.

We can only hope. At that rate, he might be finished in time for me to get the last book for my 40th birthday…

The Chronicles of Araeden

Further to my last post about ASIFRP house creation I’ve made a campaign page in the Campaign Files section. I’ll be adding details about the history of the world and other titbits as I come up with them. You can find it here.

House creation in A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying

A few weeks ago my long running gaming group sat down with the new Green Ronin A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying rules to make a House and characters. I had read the rules, but not actually put them into play yet so was really looking forward to how this very collaborative part of the game panned out.

To start with the World this house is going to inhabit is not George R R Martin’s Westeros. I’d decided a while ago that as two of the players hadn’t read the books and as I wanted them to have as much freedom as they wanted to mess up the world that I’d make my own setting, which borrows very heavily from George R R Martin’s masterwork. So I filled the players in a little on what to expect, and then we lept straight in with total random rolls to let the dice decide the history of the House.