MikeRapin.com A man. A nerd. A web dev.

D&D summer

via arexistence.blogspot.com

It's about half-way through summer and I've been playing D&D every week on a semi-regular basis. Currently, I'm involved in 7 games... it's kind of ridiculous.

Here's a breakdown:

Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy - A game run by my friend John, based in the Warhammer 40K universe. This isn't Dungeons & Dragons, but it's a tabletop game based around a percentile system (that's a d10 and a d100 added together). It's a pretty cool system. I play along with four other friends (Pete, Brian, Kyle, and Megan) as a Cleric, who's similar to a Bard, that empowers the party and still can kick some ass with guns and a sword. Our party is currently working for the Inquisition, hunting down the big and horrible things of the universe. Our GM, John, makes it interesting by winging the story as he goes by taking what we say or think is happening and skewing it to work into the system. This is a weekly game we play on Mondays.

Werewolf: The Foresaken - This is a game run by my friend Megan. The system is based on rolling a specific number of d10s based on how many "ranks" you may have in a particular skill (or combined skills). In this game, I, along with John, my roommate Brian and our pal Kyle, play as part of a pack of werewolves who live in a set territory and are told to basically clean up the area by dealing with spirits and cleansing the area of evil. It's a lot of diplomacy on our character's parts, but there are a lot of very interesting twists and turns dealing with different werewolf packs, spirits, and "the herd" aka everyday people. We play this game bi-weekly on Wednesdays.

The Solstice Adventures - This game is a 4th edition D&D game that I act as DM for. The game is based on a d20 system (as all D&D games normally are). The story here is a bunch of near-epic and epic characters (Brian, John, Kyle, and Megan) are travelling through the Astral Sea on a Spelljammer, piloted by an NPC character named Argo Mort. The travelers were following a set of quests I had originally set up, but as of our last session they kicked my plans away and ended up pursuing something I had no expectations of them pursuing. It's turned into a great game. This is the only D&D game we podcast, and I have set up a wiki for the game--it's not up to date, but it exists for character backstories-- http://wiki.grenka.com/ . We play this game bi-weekly on Wednesdays.

The Modern Day Campaign aka Apocalypse Forever - One of the longest games I know of existing that is played on a regular basis amongst my friends. This is a game I've been involved with for a year, run by my friend Jared and was started in 2006. It's a 3.5 edition D&D game based in 2006-2007 where a group of secret-Vatican soldiers (and a few non-Vatican soldiers have been hired to stop the big bad demons, myths, and greater evils of the world. Oh, and the apocalypse has almost occurred 3-4 times. I've lost two characters since I started and man... this game is crazy. We play this whenever we can gather the main players in this game: Myself, Brian and our buddy Duncan.

Overworld Evil - A 4th edition D&D game run by Brian, with the premise of: evil has taken over the surface world and has driven those who are civil to live in the dark underworld. A team of the strongest adventurers have been assembled to head to the surface to see what remains. My character is an evil looking Minotaur Monk who has been dwelling on the surface trying to make his way until he dies until he stumbles onto the adventurers from the underworld. It's been a pretty sweet experience, so far--though we've only had 3 sessions. Brian, Kyle, Megan, John and I play this game once every week or so on variable days.

Three Nobles and a Ranger - This is a game run by Jared's older brother. It's a 3.5 D&D game where myself, Brian, and two guys Jamie and I know (Mike Cooke & Joe), play as former nobles cast out into the wild (myself, Mike, and Joe) and meet Brian--a Ranger of a local nomadic tribe--only to face the open and dangerous world. This game has a lot of cool roleplaying with a dynamic of us all being teenagers in the game and being assholes to each other. We play this game usually once a month.

Dark Heresy: Deathwatch - Our friend Pete runs this off-shoot of the aforementioned Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy game where myself, Megan, John, Brian, and Kyle play as bad ass Space Marines who are made to just destroy our enemies. We've played this game once--as it was a pre-built campaign broken down into three acts--but after once session, I am super excited to just be a big huge marine (we're literally 8-9ft. tall) who kicks evil's ass. We're going to start playing this weekly on Mondays before we play John's game.

And I think that's it... for now. We have some ideas cooking (namely John and Jared) for more games, and there's a few I didn't mention only because they were games that trailed off and disappeared--either we lost character sheets or just don't mind--but these are the active games.

So, a real D&D summer. I've got two more months...