After a busy few weeks, it is nice to pause for a moment and reflect on some of the gaming I have managed to sneak in.
Since the first season of 'Empire State Secrets' finished, Dan has started running a Dragon Blooded Exalted game, which has been mighty good fun. Playing Exalted has been a new experience for me and one, to my surprise, I have really enjoyed. He has even set up a very slick blog for the game, which puts my Trail wiki to shame.
If I'm honest, the concept of Exalted has always left me a little cold in the past, but Dan has done a great job of introducing me to the setting and the features of the game that do make it so much fun (I have forgotten how satisfying it can be to roll handfuls of D10s). I that feel there is a nice symmetry at play here, in that I have 'talked around' Dan to Cthulhu, while he has got me on side with Exalted.
Dan also spent a lot of time and energy in running in depth preludes for the characters, which has worked really well. It has given us all a lot more 'depth' to our characters and this shows in the quality of the roleplaying. I haven't really used preludes as a technique before that much, but I'm looking at re-accessing that for the future seeing how well it has worked in this instance.
Unfortunately just as we were getting into a good rhythm, one of our players had to go off and do something awesome like go to Antarctica. He'll be back in a few months, so the collective decided to hold fire until his return. Which is the perfect opportunity for me to throw some Cold City into the mix...
My other regular game is Dale's 'Kingsport's Tales' for Call of Cthulhu. This game continues to be a lot of fun and I have been involved in it for well over eight months now. Dale runs the game very well and rolls very easily with all our off the wall ideas. Playing the Innsmouth scenarios were a particular highlight, though all the different adventures have been strong.
It has been particularly refreshing to work with some of the often maligned Dreamlands material, something for which I now have a new appreciation.
The only slight downside for me is that I still don't feel like I have a handle of my character's 'point of difference' in the game. Since we're usually playing with a big group (5-7 people), I feel his characteristics and mannerisms are perhaps too subtle and he blends a little into the background. His skills (like researching, history, persuading) also overlap with others in the group, so this has led to him being less involved at times than perhaps I would have liked him to be. This is something that is more of a 'roleplaying issue' for me than a 'game issue' for Dale, so I will keep working it through and see what I can do.
However, this doesn't detract from the fact that I enjoy the game immensely and look forward to it. Perhaps the best part has been getting to meet a good bunch of guys to game with!
I really want to get my Kapcon scenario finalised in the next couple of weeks as well to have a playtest before Christmas, so say tuned to hear more about that!
