A lot of new leaves turned up this week. Let's see, I can think of three things worth mentioning here.
First, my daughter and I were able to make it to a Shadowrun 3.0 game this Friday with some new friends (thank for the invite!). The game involves some similar ability scores to D&D 4e but all the skills seem ad hoc to fit the story. Also the game runs entirely on d6. You get to roll more d6 the higher your level of a particular skill is (including your various fighting skills). All in all, I did not enjoy the game as much as D&D 4e, but I also know better than to judge a whole gaming system on a single encounter. If you want to learn more about Shadowrun, I found the wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun a great overview on not to many pages.
In this encounter, my daughter got to roll a bunch of important skill checks, while my friend and I got lost and had to find our way back. I do look forward to giving it another go someday. I also wanted to commend the GM. He ran the whole campaign from his mind, never referencing a book or story. He reviewed what he wanted pregame and just made it work. Our part was essentially on three different action paths though we were in the same area and he kept us in turn and engaged. He also created a father-daughter team in game for us with the requisite skills to survive the encounter. I have a few things to learn.
In case any of my new friends are reading this, thanks for a great game, I really enjoyed the role playing, and hope to be able to make it back soon.
Second thing of interest this week was a continuation of one of my conversation regarding D&D 4e at Gnomecon. They don't have a game going yet, and with greater participation of conference attendees than expected already registered, they haven't had a chance to organize a D&D 4e game. I had already volunteered to run a game or two for them, but now I am also going to contact Wizards of the Coast and see if we can get a sanctioned game going. Either way, it will be a blast and I encourage you to come join us.
I think I wanted to try to write an appropriately timed adventure involving gnomes and HumanCon. I have only had a hand at writing "Thank you, but our princess is in another castle!" which feels like I have barely begun so far. At least the Gnomecon game can be smaller in scope and hopefully easier to write.
Lastly, a friend of mine and I are looking at starting a small business providing some custom tools for table top RPG gaming. I would love any thoughts on this. There are so many things I wish I could customize for my DMing or playing, but honestly don't always have the time or skill to do. If I could pay a nominal fee for someone else to customize a DM Screen for me, for example, it would be worth to me. Lots of other ideas going on, and I need to get some more experience with other game systems as well.
