What are you playing?

What games aside from D&D (PnP, board, card, video, sports or otherwise) have you been playing as of late?

-Pen and Paper games-
Call of Cthulhu
CthulhuTech
Street Fighter Story Telling Game
(possibly) Pathfinder (a friend keeps trying to rope me into a game)

-Card Games-
.Hack//Enemy
Megaman NT Warrior TCG
Yu-gi-oh

-Video games (current era, as including previous era would make this list almost endless XD)-
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Team Fortress 2
Dynasty Warriors 8
Warframe
Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend (getting ready for Chronophantasma)
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core (getting ready for Xrd)

-Sports-
Baseball

In addition, what games that you have played do you recommend folks try, whether you're playing them currently or not?

I recommend folks try the Monster Rancher series of video games if they have yet to do so. Monster Rancher 2 is the best title of the series in my opinion, but each of the games have their own merit.

-PnP-

Star Wars Saga

-Card Games-
MtG

-Video Games-

Knights of the Old Republic 1&2 (replays for ever!)
Battlefield 3

-Board Games-
Star Trek Fleet Captains

-Other-
Star Wars Miniatures

-Sports-
Football when I can find some people to play with

-Pen & Paper Games-

Call of Cthulhu
Legend of the Five Rings
13th Age

-Card Games-

Munchkin
The every now and then game of Magic

-Video Games-

Super Mario Galaxy
Halo 4
Super Mario World
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Spelunky
GTA V (When it comes out)

-Board Games-

Talisman

-Sports-

Not really a sport I guess but I do like biking.


I really would recommend Talisman and Legend of the Five Rings to those that haven't played them. Talisman is a very cool (and long) fantasy board game, much like D&D but with less RP involved. ANd Legend of the Five Rings is a Feudal Japan based RPG which rocks.

Pen and Paper
-Monday nights alternate between an 8th level 4E game and a Heroes Unlimited game (though we may be converting the characters over to Mutants & Masterminds 2E once the current arc is done).

-Wednesday nights alternate between three different 4E campaigns and a Mutants & Masterminds 2E campaign, each run by a different person as part of a rotating schedule (we run one arc at a time for however long it runs then switch out rather than doing a different one every week).

-Every other Saturday I GM a long-running game of Mage: The Ascension* (as in we have 15 years of pre-established history for the campaign).

-Three Sundays a month we've been playing Rifts. Before that I was running an extensive LUG Star Trek game for the group, but that's been on an extended break for the last six-months or so due to workload issues (I don't have near enough time to prepare for running more than one campaign at the moment and Mage will ALWAYS be my highest priority.

Video Games
-I'm playing a bit of Marvel Heroes because it doesn't take deep levels of time investment and I so desperately miss City of Heroes.

-I play custom Portal 2 maps when I'm feeling the need for puzzle solving.


*Technically we are using a set of house-rules so extensive it turned into its own homebrew system (currently its a 60 page [50,000+ words] PDF that I occassionally call Ascension 4E). There probably isn't a single part of the original rules that hasn't been modified in some fashion.

We use different attributes (physical, mental and social categories are broken down into power, precision and speed attributes for each), a more cinematic stamina/wound system for damage, much crunchier mechanics with variable fluff (i.e. 4E's approach), rebalanced spheres of magic (aspects of prime were split up into the existing spheres and entropy split up into death and fate) and even a completely different way to build characters (point buy using XP).

If you're interested in taking a look, PM me and I'll shoot you a copy either as a PDF or Word docx.

I'm actually kinda jealous

I've wanted to play Mage for some time.

Felorn Gloryaxe wrote:

I'm actually kinda jealous

I've wanted to play Mage for some time.

It really IS a blast, though if you don't have a GM who's on top of things the magic system can get way out of hand very quickly because by the standard rules it is pretty free-form.

That's actually one of the reasons for my rule update... with the seperation of fluff and crunch and creating specific rules for how magic interacts with the game mechanics I can generally let the players build whatever spells they want and know they'll come out balanced. The only thing I really have to determine about a spell they're attempting is whether or not it's going to be coincidental magic (something that could be explained away by a viewer as a freak accident or luck) or vulgar magic (something that is completely impossible in the real world... including too many freak accidents in close proximity to each other).

I'll also sometimes question whether or not a specific spell falls under the caster's magical paradigm (i.e. a Verbena who believes his magic works by calling down the power of the Old Gods is not going to be able to use magic to turn a collection of spare parts into a functioning jet pack. MacGyver is DEFINITELY a Son of Ether), but I don't have to worry that what they're attempting to do is unbalanced in terms of how its going to effect the mechanics running under the story anymore.

Mage is definitely not the game for you if you're looking for beer & pretzels entertainment... its at its best when you're debating the very nature of reality itself. That said, it can also be played for laughs and the things you can pull off will at times be the epitome of the term "Crazy Awesome."

Yeah. I really like RP heavy games so that may be an option for me. 've also wanted to play Vampire: The Masquerade, Earthdawn, and Shadowrun. But sadly I've only dealt with D&D style fantasy and Horror RPGs.

I'm envious of those that have enough time to play more often that once a week!

I currently am DMing a 4E campaign set in the Shadowfell. We've been going almost a year now, but we had a 3 month hiatus a while ago due to scheduling issues. We play a 3 hour session on most Thursdays. The party started at 8th level and is almost 11th now. My overall plan is to run the game all the way up to 20th level.

We try to have a board game night about once a month if we can get some other couples over. That depends upon what everyone decides at the time, but some of the games we play are:

Any of the D&D Adventure System games (Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt)
Settlers of Catan/Seafarer's of Catan
Loch Ness
Dungeon Command
Dominion (and all of the expansions, though I need the latest)
Munchkin, including Munchkin Bites, Munchkin Booty, Zombie Munchkin, and the original.
Gloom (we LOVE Gloom)
Order of the Stick once in a great, great while
Talisman (only played 3 times all total)
Three-Dragon Ante (and Emperor's Gambit)
Inn-Fighting (this is a great beer drinking game)
...and I think maybe a couple others that I can't recall right now...

As far as video games go, not many newer games peak my interest. Its been that way for a long time. Recently replayed KOTOR2. I enjoyed XCom: Enemy Unknown, but quick playing about 6 months ago at the end of about my 5th or 6th play through. I was a huge fan of the origin and played it off and on for years and years. The reimaging was different but pleasing. Might pick up the expansion in a few month when the price drop/goes on sale.
The only game that has kept my interest lately in Puzzle and Dragons on my phone. Casual, simple, both short term and long term goals. Free. Been at it for a couple of months.
Every once in a while I play a level of Candy Crush on my wife's phone, but mostly that's just an exercise in frustration. I'm always good for a sudoku, but the "hard" ones are usually not, and the super expert master ones just take a little more time to piece together, so that's usually a kill 5 minutes game while waiting for something else.

With 4 kids stretch between 14 and 3 it hard find dedicated time for other games. Sometime you can get quick card games in. About the only board games that we can cover fast enough are kids games like Chutes and Ladders, or some the Lego adventure game - can't think of the name of them, we have a couple and you can hook them together, you have a barbarian, wizard, thief etc and go through to a treasure fighting goblins, skeletons, bats, etc. The little one love those and you can play pretty fast, but then they just want to play with the parts and then I'll have to spend 20 minutes trying to find the one they lose afterward.

Pen and paper just recently dried up too. I have some prospect for a new game though. We'll see how that goes.

TjD

I play Diablo 3 with my best old friend, for a few hours every couple of weeks. I haven't even beat normal difficulty yet.

Maybe once a year I get a hankering to play Magic, so I'll compulsively build decks and play for about a month. But then I'll remember why I stopped playing in the first place, and end up throwing up my hands and giving it up for another year.

My gaming life kinda sucks right now.

Tequila Sunrise wrote:

Maybe once a year I get a hankering to play Magic, so I'll compulsively build decks and play for about a month. But then I'll remember why I stopped playing in the first place, and end up throwing up my hands and giving it up for another year.

$?

Not too much lately;

Table Top
4E Eberron game (this started as a quick pick up game but is slowly becoming the main RPG at our table)
sporadic Basic Fantasy RPG (update to the Moldvay/Holmes Basic D&D from the 80s) meets once a month at most.

Boardgames
Still have a weekly Friday night board game night - last week we played Alcatraz: The Scapegoat and Vivajava (some game about mixing and brewing coffee). We tend to try a new game each week and then play an old favourite.

Video Game
Might & Magic I (yeah the one from 1986 - got it super cheap at www.gog.com during a recent sale)

(virtual)Table Top
I run a 4e campaign online for some friends scattered through Europe. They are currently level 10 and on their way to close their backstory quests to move onwards to World threatening stuff. Will be my first time reaching Paragon level, so I am quite curious how that will play out compared to heroic level.

Video Games
I started playing Mass Effect 2 again (played through it the first time when it came out), after finishing the ME1 again. i really like the universe and i am baffled no one has made a table top RPG for it yet.

Boardgames
sadly none but I hope to get my fix for that over the Holidays when I visit my family.