Books
This week I read:
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Another book I’ve put off re-reading for too long, I picked this up as inspiration for my Traveller campaign. It’s probably not very good inspiration—the campaign is about a new empire starting up, not an old one coming to an end—but a good read nevertheless. I’ve never actually read the other Foundation books, they’ll have to go on the list.
Roleplaying Games
GoAdventuring
It’s January now, a whole week into it, and when I paused this game I said we’d re-group after the Christmas / New Year break for another session 0 and to get things going again.
I’ve not organised that yet.
I am kind of playing games here (and not the fun sort), but I’ve decided to not reach out to the players first. I put the game on hold due to the players’ lack of interest: people missed so many sessions it was impossible to run. So I want some sign that they’re actually interested before starting it up again.
Sylea Rising
We resumed this campaign this weekend, with session 4 being a survey mission turned first-contact situation / Alien-style infested colony. Or, so I’d planned it to be. Turns out when all the player characters have hostile environment vacc suits, large insects aren’t much of a threat. The first contact situation (actually “recontact”, it was a long-lost human colony reverted to barbarism) went well, the players didn’t manage to convince the locals that they weren’t emissaries of the gods, but at least managed to convince the locals that they didn’t want to be treated like emissaries of the gods.
I was actually going to put off running an ALIEN RPG one-shot for this group, thinking they probably wouldn’t want an Alien-inspired adventure and then an ALIEN one-shot, but the adventure didn’t feel very Alien-y at all. So I guess the next one-shot will be ALIEN after all.
After repairing their ship, they decided to make a beeline home, rather than do the additional survey work they’d planned, so I was a bit caught out, but fortunately I’d done enough prep for future sessions that I was able to improvise something fairly easily.
All’s well that ends well.
The players decided that the lab ship, while cool, isn’t a very good vessel for deep-space exploration, so we’re going to swap that out for something else between sessions. I’ll just start the next session after a few in-game weeks and say that that time was spent sorting out the paperwork and finances.
Then, when they’re about to head off, a Sylean Federation diplomatic ship with a battleship escort will jump in, all outbound traffic will be halted, and the Third Imperium will be founded.
Future games?
Even though I’m enjoying my current games and have no desire to end them yet, I’m always thinking about what to run next. Recently I found, and very much enjoyed, the Glass Cannon Network’s actual-play of Impossible Landscapes, a campaign for Delta Green. I’ve been aware of Delta Green for a while, but never really looked into it: I think I will, now, and I’ll have to run some one-shots to see what the players think.
Will Impossible Landscapes be the next campaign? Maybe. I do like the King in Yellow.
Miscellaneous
It’s another new anime season. I think I’ll be checking out Bofuri 2, Vinland Saga 2, NieR Automata, Gokushufudou 2, The Vampire Dies in No Time 2, the Junji Ito thing, Kaina of the Great Snow Sea, and probably a bunch of isekai rubbish.