12/19/14

Five for Friday 31: New-To-Me Games in 2014

I had a groovy gaming year in 2014. With the exception of a rough patch at the end of the summer when work kept me from gaming, it was an outstanding year. The best part were the friends in our Monday Night Über Gaming Group gathering on Monday nights and, as a group, at Con on the Cob. Happily, at least for the purposes of this edition of Five for Friday, I had a chance to play five new games (not counting playtesting for +Tim Shorts and +Rob Conley).
  • Cryptworld: I had a chance to play this at Con on the Cob, with +Tim Snider as our Crypt Master. I fell in love with the system (and hope to use it with our in-house gaming group in 2015). The session itself was a blast and I hope to see some of the same men and women at Con on the Cob next year.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5e+Rob Conley ran our Monday Night group through The Lost Mine of Phandelver, with Rob being his excellent DM self. We are just starting to use D&D 5e in the Montporte Dungeon campaign, which I am running.
  • Dungeon Crawl Classics: Another Con on the Cob session, completely taken over by the Monday Night boys. +Roy Snyder gave us all a good time. I could see use DCC to run a wild and woolly mini-campaign in the Montporte Dungeon.
  • The Esoterrorists+Tim Shorts ran this as a side session for the Monday Night boys at Con on the Cob. I really enjoyed the Gumshoe system...I had a set of really elaborate color-coded notes by the end of our session. I am hoping that Tim will finish on some Monday nights what we started at the Con (hint hint).
  • Labyrinth Lord: Okay. I have played Holmes D&D, AD&D 1e, and Swords & Wizardry, so I have come close. But the B/X version of D&D came out when I was in college and my time and money spent on gaming was waning (so no B/X and, much later, no LL). At Con on the Cob, I finally had a chance to play LL, in a well-run session by +Jim Yoder.
Sadly, there was no GURPS for me in 2014, so I haven't a chance to stretch my GURPS newbie wings. There are some other games where my hopes to play never came to fruition (Dead Inside, Don't Rest Your Head, and Trail of Cthulu, to name a few).