Summer Games and Vibes

Takeshita Kin-u

It's good to have time to dedicate to this place again. Now that my summer schedule is in full swing, I wanted to sit down and think about what's going on in my gaming-sphere for the foreseeable future.

My seasonal summer campaign this year is Kuromiyamonogatari, an 11th century Japanese game of character drama using the Burning Wheel and it's historical-fantasy supplement, The Blossoms are Falling. With a productive session 0 all done we dove into session 1 with great results! Our weekly session is tomorrow, which I am very much looking forward too. The character dynamics and cast of side characters we have made already are really a testament to what happens when you mix a great system with a wonderful group of players. I think I'll keep track of our end-of-arc recaps and trait votes here too.

That's the stuff

Aside from that I recently backed some promising games on kickstarter. First is Lancer, a game that I have been following for quite some time. Seeing it grow into a juggernaut of a project that just destroyed its goals has been amazing. The system looks slick, the art and setting are amazing, and I really want to run short missions and arcs in an 08th MS Team style. Perhaps I'll take the pre-release rules (which are completely free at the moment) for a spin for that, but I'll most likely wait until the full release to unleash pure mech goodness upon my unsuspecting players.

I also found myself, as always, being drawn back to that old school pit with the Old-School Essentials kickstarter form Gavin Norman. B/X is my favorite edition of D&D and Gavin does really good work. I'm looking forward to using it sometime soon. It will also go nicely with any usage of Whitehack what with it being fully compatible.

Speaking of Whitehack, this game has really surprised me. It's extremely flexible right out of the box, straight up implements some of the house rules or intuitions I use in other OSR games, and is ridiculously easy to make content for. It's is practically fully compatible with any OD&D, B/X, AD&D/clone content with little to no modification as well. Easy to use and fun to play is a potent combo. It's really become my go-to OSR system and I don't see that changing it's impressed me so much. Perhaps I'll do an in-depth review of it?