Descent!!

So my comparision between Warhammer and Dragon Age aside, there are many things that I enjoy about the new incarnation of Warhammer. The production value being chief among them. Fantasy Flight games makes pretty toys. Lots of neat shiny bits, and cool runic dice. While researching Warhammer I came across FFG's dungeon hack board game Descent. Tempted by thoughts of the Heroquest box set back in the day I went and picked this up for my birthday a few days ago. Man is this game fun! I love everything about it from the amazing plastic figures, to the cool extra bits (wound and fatigue markers) to the puzzle piece dungeon maps! It's a great hack n' slash with no roleplay required.

Warhammer 3E vs. Dragon Age: Round 2

I had a great Holiday break. I caught up on all my rest, enjoyed the first Christmas with my daughter, and did a whole hell a lot of gaming. An old gaming buddy of mine from back in the day joined me and the Dandies for some good ole clickety clack. I ran 2 demos of Warhammer, ran one game of Dragon age and played in another. After a few more sessions, I can honestly say that I much prefer Dragon Age over Warhammer. Don't get me wrong. Warhammer is fun, and I'm starting to get into the mechanics a bit more, but Dragon Age runs like butter. It slips right into the background, and after a couple of combats, you really start to get the stunts. I really like simple elegant systems. Warhammer tends to be pretty crunchy (and I can acknowledge that much of that comes from learning the systems ins and outs). Dragon Age you can explain to a new character and just jump right into your story. There's a serious learning curve that comes with Warhammer. That said, there's also a lot of room for cool nuances in the dice mechanics.

Now these are still early impressions. I'm planning a WHRP game at the moment and I'm really curious to see how that goes. I'll post further impressions after I run a few sessions. 

(Oh btw- I planned on running a Earthdawn game from my buddy but switched at the last minute and wrote up a Dragon Age adventure on the spot. I scribbled down some notes, wrote down the adversaries stats and ran the game. I don't think I'd be able to do the same for Warhammer.)

Dragon Age!

So we played our first game of the Dragon Age RPG this past saturday. Meanmunkee did a great job for his first time in the GM's chair. I daresay that with some practice, his skills could very well rival my own one day. ;) I played Weyon Faydrick, a city elf from Denerim wanted for attacking a powerful noble. I was travelling with Siknaz's character also a City Elf named Dresden who is a  friend/rival of mine, and Munchanka's character Aryn the noble's apostate son.
Character creation was quick and easy, and although I found a lot of complaints on the forums about the random character gen, I really liked it.
I wasn't sure about the rules, but after playing them I have to say I dig them. We did have to refer to the stunt list a lot which slowed down play some, but by the end of the game, we were already getting some. It was cool because we started developing individual tactics as players. There were definitely some stunts we each favored more than others. It made the characters stand out a bit more which was nice. I also have to say that I enjoyed playing in a smaller group. I'll have to do more of that. The 8 player Deadlands group is a bit like trying to herd sheep.
All in all, I really really enjoyed it and I'm excited to play again. We'll have to see how it holds up to Warhammer.

Fantasy Overload!

It's been awhile since I've posted and I've been BUSY! Not only working on my comic, but working on being a new dad and crunching like crazy at work. But I've still managed to find time to game. And game I have! The Lunch hour supers game has, for the most part, fizzled out. Whether due to lack of interest or scheduling, I'm not entirely sure. I'm sure at some point we'll be circling back around to it, but for now, it's on the back burner.
I started up a Deadlands game on Monday nights and that's been a blast. We're actually really close to wrapping it up, but that's not the big news. Fantasy has been slowly creeping back into the mix in a big way. 2 new games have been released and we're looking to play both. The culprits; The Dragon Age rpg based on the computer game of the same name, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Both take place in a grim setting, they're pretty much polar opposites gameplay wise. Dragon Age is a rules lite game aimed at rpg newbies, and Warhammer is a prop heavy game with tons of dice, cards, paper minis and other such fiddly bits.
I'm running a Warhammer session, and my buddy Meanmunkee is taking a stab at Dragon Age. I'm really excited about both because each hasan  interesting set of mechanics that I'm looking forward to trying out. Dragon Age should be especially good seeing as Munkee has never run a game before. Never really PLAYED either! @_@. I'll post about the experience of both. I think at least one of these may become the big campaign for next year.