Latest Gaming
The past two weeks, as I wrap up my turn in the GMs chair, we’ve played a home-brewed game of Pirates. The guys started out being marooned on an island, found a sloop, got revenge on their marooners and headed for the Carolina coast. The next week they pirated 3 plantations.
I have been having the “most fun evar” as a GM. And I know why. Basically it all comes down to comfort level. I am comfortable ad libing a pirate game because I am familiar enough with the period to fake and because the players all understand the genre tropes we’re working with. I am comfortable enough with the system because its my homebrew. But more than that I am having fun because the system is simple enough to ad lib.
Seriously, my last game, the only preparation I had was a map of the Plantations of the Lower Cape Fear River 1725-1760. The rest I made up on the fly because, I wasn’t exactly sure what they were going to do. They originally had planned to raid Wilmington. I had prepped that I would have been unprepared for what they did instead.
I don’t mind preparation. During my Dealands:Reloaded game I enjoyed creating interesting and challenging foes and situations. I ran a Risus one-nighter that was a pulp adventure. I prepped for it, but was able to have everything serve the plot (ie serve THE COOL) because I didn’t feel restricted by Risus as I do by other games. If I needed a giant humanoid Croc-monster it was as simply as writing Giant Humanoid Croc-Monster (6) on my notes. Up til now that Risus Pulp Adventure was the most fun I’d had because I felt entirely at ease.
But we had a few complaints about Risus. The notorious Death Spiral was the biggie. For me it was that the crunch level was a little too lite. (I have realized that I like my games somewhere between Savage Worlds and Risus. ) So I brewed up a game with 2 cups of Faery’s Tale, 1 cup Risus, 1 cup Ryan’s cool ideas.
And we’ve had two salty nights of Piratical bounty.
