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07/04/2026 3:41 pm
Hey I'm gonna start shouting about one of my longest-term hobbies in the world!
Tabletop RPGs are an extremely neat hobby where you and (possibly) some friends get together to shoot the shit and imagine a shared story modified by some dice rolls, or card pulls, or some other randomizing element (or not necessarily a randomizing element at all!) I've been playing since my pre-teens, ever since I first found the dog-eared rulebooks for Cyberpunk 2020 in my cousins's bedroom. After Cyberpunk and RuneQuest (both games with popularity over here since they got official localisations in the 90s) I've been the gamemaster for decades of Dungeon & Dragons, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, RuneQuest and myriad other games mostly to small friend groups over time. I am the dread "Eternal GM" but that suits me fine because I like being the mad conductor lol
My current crop of games is:
- A run-through of the old Call Of Cthulhu megacampaign Horror On The Orient Express, which has been ongoing for... four years now, I think? We're nearing the home stretch so maybe by next year the awful investigation into horrors beyond man's comprehension across Europe is getting wrapped up. This is my second classic Cthulhu megacampaign I've run (I ran another one, Beyond The Mountains Of Madness, for a different group of players from 2016-2020) and while they are a chore and demand some hefty commitment, they have been some of my favorite games to run so far in my life. I am eyeing the granddaddy of them all, Masks Of Nyarlahotep next... but that is a completely different beast even in the megacampaign genre.
- My own homemade Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which I am running for the second time for a different group of people in what is possibly my first time ever doing that for stuff I've prepared/written all by myself. Concerning a group of tax collectors who get embroiled in a would-be lich's plan to come back to life in a tropical island setting, I originally ran this in a gaming club for at-risk youth I volunteered at for a few years and dusted it off when our gaming server had an influx of people looking for a game but only wanting D&D. It's been fun visiting, but for personal reasons I hope that this will be the last D&D game I ever run. Too much other stuff out there!
- Speaking of other stuff, tomorrow night I am wrapping up the set of five starter scenarios for The One Ring, concerning the adventures of a group of inquisitive hobbits in The Shire around and during one high summer. It's much lighter in tone than TOR normally is (which, IMO, captures the tone and weight of Tolkien's prose beautifully as a game) but even so I've fallen in love with running it and wouldn't mind spinning this off into a longer-term thing if some of my hobbits also feel the bite for more Middle-Earth.
- And finally, a trio of some of my oldest friends asked in January if we wanted to set up an RPG circle of our own and I of course offered to GM for them. We agreed on doing short adventures of 1-3 sessions in different games in order to sample what RPGs can be all about! So far we started off with Feng Shui 2, are currently going through a Call Of Cthulhu haunted house adventure and for the next... well, I will maybe propose Fiasco! or something similar.
So, what are you currently playing? What are your favorite games, systems or settings? Do you prefer one-shots and shorter scenarios to long-term campaigns?
FruitWhale reacted
Topic starter
08/04/2026 7:33 pm
Our One Ring starter set campaign came to a satisfying conclusion tonight, I was low-key stressing tonight because one of the featured NPCs this time around was the Main Man Himself, Tom Bombadil, and having to do his rhyming style had me worried (... so I just ended up reading part his introductory poem from the Lord of the Rings itself and then flubbed the rest in a singsongy way :P) Players had great fun, we had a nice mix of veteran players and people mostly new to RPGs in general and afterwards everyone showed interest to continue in something more longform in the standard.
Having now been a player and a GM for a comparable number of sessions, I can say I honestly love The One Ring, a great system that does a good job of setting the tone for a specifically Tolkien-style fantasy adventuring where the journey is as important as the destination. Players all had fun and grokked quickly on to the possibilities of roleplaying on the road and all in all the flow of sessions had no particular issues, which I had originally thought could be. I even managed to finish each scenario in our normal-length session of three hours, which is a first for me! (do NOT ask how long the first "one-shot" optional scenario took in our Call Of Cthulhu campaign...)
FruitWhale reacted
Topic starter
01/05/2026 9:05 am
Starting to plan for my One Ring game. Reading the game manual's sections on Eriador before I look over the supplemental books I have for other locations, seeing what hooks I could use from those locales. Then the plan is to write an overall grand plan and sketch out a timeline for whatever my villain is going to be, as stopping their (and by extension Sauron's) plans is going to form the backbone for this I think. Plans might change once I hear what kind of characters my players come up with but no matter what the pace of the game is going to be years in-game, if not a decade or more. One more thing I love about The One Ring: things happen on their own, glacial pace, and there's not much you can do to hurry it along.
Meanwhile I will be running several sessions of Grant Howitt's party game Havoc Brigade that you can check out at https://gshowitt.itch.io/havoc-brigade , I've GM'd it several times now and its always been a hit for some comedic action mayhem. Can't wait to see what the orks will come up with this time around
19/05/2026 8:33 pm
Most of my main TTRPG Knowledge has been 5e, but I've dabbled in at least the following:
- Pathfinder 2e (with a bit of Starfinder, but never finished that side of things)
- Panic at the Dojo (mock battles in the official discord, good group of people that taught me the game well)
- RWBY: The Unofficial RPG (I was a knucklehead back then, but I remember playing a Goat Faunus that could brawl with gauntlets that also worked to blast like Megaman's Mega Buster when she clasped them together)
- GURPS (NEVER. AGAIN.)
- Alien (One-Off Campaign that took a couple sessions, no one survived but each met their fates rather well and was genuinely fun)
- Mischief (Fun System, had a good cast of characters and a well-thought out campaign, only stopped due to a lazy DM)
- Nat19's version of 5e (Haven't played too much of it to give an honest opinion. love the art and changes it brings though, including the Mechs and Subclasses. hoping that one monday campaign I was in for it comes back..)
I really wanna play Lancer if the chance ever comes for me, cause I've got the perfect set of ideas for that one. but honestly having played so much or wanting to got me into the DM Chair at least 2 times, and my 3rd is gonna be a Pokemon: MD TTRPG Campaign I'm gonna be working on. my players have already cooked up character ideas (save one im still waiting for a sheet on) and I even got art done of their Guild Leader, so here's hoping I can shoot things off well for a first session...
This was me just chirping alot, so apologies -//////- -J
Vikingstid reacted