Currently my regular game night is on Fridays. It just happens to be where it has ended up and it has been there for a good long while. A group of friends gather and we play a wide range of RPGs. Recently we’ve run shortish, maybe eight to ten sessions, tasters, which have included: Houses of the Blooded, 13th Age, Marvel Superheroes, Traveller, Dragon Age and Uncharted Worlds.
There are some advantages to the set-up. The principal one being that it is not a school night, however it is right at the end of a full week of work. I’m usually exhausted by about Thursday afternoon these days, so getting the creative juices flowing, focussed and immersed in a system, setting and story can be difficult. I’d also like to go deeper and run or play in a good long game, with lots of character development and plots that materially affect the characters and setting.
We have lots of options. Forking off and running on another night, in another place, is a possibility, as is the lure of Hangouts, a format that has worked very well before. We have no shortage of games that could run long and well between us, indeed with sufficient enthusiasm most of them would. I have innumerable on my shelves right now. Here are some current contenders:
- Symbaroum – I’ve pitched this for a Longcon in July, so that may sate my needs.
- Yggdrasill – full on Scandia heroics following the in-house campaign from the books.
- The One Ring – so much excellent material to mine.
- Qin – I’d need to put in some serious preparation, which has slightly put me off, but there is an awesome game of loss and hope in that strife ridden setting.
- Traveller – wheel out the new Mongoose edition and let fly. Just because it has always been my playable backstop.
- Mindjammer – Fate in the Far Havens setting.
- Honor+Intrigue – swashbuckling action in 17th Century France. I have no plot but with prompting we’d be away with many an intrigue. I love the Barbarians of Lemuria system.
- Fading Suns – an oldie and a goodie.