Question 4: Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?
The group has had a number of games on the go since then. The standard procedure is to have two games running on alternate weeks; with the opportunity for some random stuff if people can’t make it, need a change of pace, whatever.
There was a lot of Lamentations of the Flame Princess; in a 17th century London milieu/melee where the characters are investigators on behalf of academia. A GM plan for us to complete all of the Lamentations scenarios one-after-t’other has resulted, in approximately half a year of gaming sessions, with one whole scenario done and dusted. Let’s say we’re very methodical. Still, onwards and upwards, eh?
I began running a retro-clone superhero game called Guardians from Night Owl Workshop/Thomas Denmark. It’s mostly just a system of rules (built on the notion that the first RPGs were based on four-colour superhero comics and not on Tolkien and Leiber et al), so there’s no background as such, just a bunch of character creation and tables etc.
My particular campaign (called London Zoo or The Berlin Game) is set in and around Berlin/East Germany in the 1950s and is based on a long running British military liaison mission known as BRIXMIS.
BRIXMIS was initially tasked with fostering good relations with their Soviet counterparts, whilst also operating against black marketeers, repatriating POWs and deserters and hunting for Nazi war criminals etc. They also took the opportunity to run daily intelligence gathering operations against Soviet forces in the region from around 1946 to the end of the Cold War.
It’s a rich setting (and a long timeline) for a supers game, and –as the only powered individuals available—the player characters have the added authority to locate and detain errant supers and track down a lot of missing experimental/alien technology. It’s all good so far.
We embarked on a Call of Cthulhu campaign in the New Year, and that’s proved to be a rolling maelstrom of mayhem and death, with regular fifty to seventy-five per cent fatality rates in some weeks…
There were a few instances of Silent Legions, here and there: 1920s San Francisco, with cops meeting strange folks and investigating a series of mysterious murders and robberies. All of this business centred on a curious crystal cadastre that’s allegedly a map of some sort. Or is it a door.
And then I began the Runequest Griffin Mountain campaign. Mostly third edition (the one a lot of people seem to dislike), some second edition, a few bits of house ruling. The player characters are a part of the Lunar occupation of Balazar, far beyond the safety of the homelands and the Glow Line. It’s been great entertainment so far, and it’ll be interesting to see what New Runequest brings to the table when it’s finally out.
So, the short answer is, I think, tied first place for Lamentations and Guardians. Or probably Runequest and Cthulhu. But who’s counting? Clearly not me.