You know what I haven’t done in years? Update that one page in the sidebar that talks about all of my current games. So in an attempt to rectify this situation, illustrate the point of today’s comic, and kill two birds with one stone, here are all of my current gaming responsibilities. Note that this is my first semester as a college prof teaching three classes, which is not overwhelming AT ALL in and of itself. Ahem:
Current Games
- Dragon’s Delve (Pathfinder)
- Laurel’s spiritualist and heir to the throne of Galt.
- Girl By Moonlight
- One shot with gender queer peeps over on the Handbook of Heroes Discord.
- Werewolf: the Forsaken
- Kids’ campaign for local queer youth.
- Rultmoork
- Scattershot
- E6 West Marches PF1e Hex Crawl in the Weird West
- Exalted of the Stolen Lands (Exalted 3e)
- An adaptation of Pathfinder’s Kingmaker AP set in Creation’s Scavenger Lands.
Hiatus
- Curse of the Crimson Throne (Pathfinder)
- Dead Suns (Starfinder)
- Animal Adventures: Dungeons and Doggies
- Death in Space
I begin hyperventilating when I look at that list for too long. I want to give ALL of these games their due, but there are only so many game nights in the typical work week. Giving it a quick count, it seems like I’m currently running 4.5 games and playing in 1.5, while the hiatus category is split 2 and 2. Add in my New Jersey buddies’ Friday night board game nights, my own ambitions to start a monthly board game night on the Philly side of the Delaware, and my newly acquired role as advisor to the Tabletop Gaming Society on campus, and this life o’ dice has never been busier.
The sad fact remains, however, that some of these games are destined to live short lives on “Hiatus” before dwindling away into “Recent Games” status. Like Wizard, I am tempted to say “yes” to literally everything, and to jump in with both feet to every available campaign. But just as I’m reminding you guys today, I must periodically remind myself: Pace thyself! That way lies burnout!
How about the rest of you Handbook-World denizens? What does your current slate o’ games look like? Are you close to overload, or do you have a solid handle on your hobby? Tell us all about your own struggles with being a gamer who can’t say no down in the comments!
Wizard, NO!
‘I want shinies’ is your wife’s thing!
Narrative shinies.
They do make a good team though. While Wizard is stealing the spotlight, Theif is stealing the coin purses.
The sheer gremlin energy of Wizard here is delightful to see. Who needs arcane might when you have that going for you?
There was some discussion on the Discord recently about, “Why don’t we see as much crazy on Wizard these days?”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/knowledge-is-power
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/travel-time
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/elves-dont-sleep
Thought I ought to remedy the situation. 😀
Sure, it might be F2P, but then rant and alt-text end up as paid DLC though. It’s how they get’cha!
Wizard would totally be a ‘Whale’ in their community though.
One gacha pull bet that to get those asthetics one has to either relybon 0.001 pull rate or fork over enough money to buy every AAA game next year with monthly subsciptions and season oasses they cone with.
I think I may have hit a vein with these techno vampires.
Rant and Hover Text, now Patreon exclusives? That’s… A really good idea actually.
https://media.tenor.com/5ivthjs-x9MAAAAC/evil-laugh.gif
Is that murderous rage or covetous frenzy we’re seeing from Wiz?
No reason it’s not both. Wizard is even more of a drama queen than the Bard I play these days…
Scenes from a hat: Your Bard and Wizard discuss the merits of joining the Aqua Vitaens.
Ahem:
WIZARD: In the first place, it costs absolutely nothing to sample the dark delights of vampirism. There is a ‘try it free for one month’ bargain in place.
Given her previously stated *opinions* regarding appropriate tech level for a fantasy setting, and her previous goth phase, I’m gonna say both.
This is what is known as “character conflict.”
Yes.
Well, looks like the vampires have found one of wizards many weaknesses: Her represed goth self. She had, however briefly, moved out of it but the temptation remained there, and now has surfaced again after being temtep by black lether, piercings, a +2 Int and a handful of supernatural abilities. And it’s free? I’m sure there are a lot of blood microtransactions, but seems worth it.
One would think that the party would had learned to avoid trying to gain a monster template after Fighter tried to become a werewolf, but no one is going to argue that becoming a vampire sounds really cool.
Except, you know… Because you would be a Vampire Spawn instead of a fully fledge vampire, slave to your master and forced to follow their order while confronting your allies in a climatic battle to the… Actually, I guess Wizard would be cool with that, she likes drama way to much.
XD
Ah, but remember: these are Aqua Vitaen vamps!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurVampiresAreDifferent
I don’t get why wizard is so stoked about vampirism. Sure you get enhanced strength and speed, eternal youth, dominating gaze, and a whole bunch of other abilities, but it also comes with a lust for blood… okay actually drinking the blood of your enemies is a vibe. But you’ll never be able to go out in the sun again!… is something I’d say if I regularly went outside during daylight hours to begin with. Okay, well, there’s the dress sense, the fact that you’re allowed nothing but scantily-clad black leather…
Someone bite me on the neck I need to be a sexy vampire lady yesterday!
Most of that stuff is of little interest to Wizard. Enhanced strength? Not a melee fighter. Enhanced speed? Can caste haste when needed. Eternal youth? Wizard’s already an elf and therefore has a few centuries to spend before worrying about aging. Dominating gaze? Got spells for that.
Freaking MOOD, bro!
I am definitely one of those people that eagerly accepts games, though I do have some limits.
Poor Wizard though, about to fall victim to the F2P money hole.
A technophobe, she has no natural defenses against these machinations.
My gaming schedule is all but non-existent at this point. Down to one game a month. The pandemic was the catalyst. But real life obstacles, in-group drama, and competing interests have served to demolish most of the games I was in.
There is some possibilities for games on the horizon. But I don’t hold high hopes.
Get on the Handbook Discord. We got an LFG channel and such!
Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.
Monday – Dresden Files RPG (Playing)
Tuesday – Clockwork RPG (Running)
Wednesday – Pathfinder Reign of Winter (Playing, Hiatus), MES Werewolf the Apocalypse Discord game (Playing, One Wednesday a month)
Thursday – Free
Friday – MES Werewolf the Apocalypse Discord game (Playing, One Friday a month)
Saturday – Exalted 3e (Running, All but one Saturday a month), MES Werewolf the Apocalypse LARP (playing, Once a month), Vampire the Masquerade LARP (playing, once a month), Changeling the Lost 2nd Ed LARP (Running, Once a month)
Sunday – Exalted 3e (playing)
I think I have a decent balance but this is pretty much my maximum. I had a game thursday for a while, but I was burning out so it was dropped.
Oof. You’re honestly running a heavier load than me. I’m trying to make time for reading, learning guitar, and being a writer when I’m not doing all-games-all-the-time. Good on ya for hitting the hobby hard! 😀
On the topic of hobbies out of my control – while I have a good grasp of my RPG games, I have less of a good grasp on my videogames backlog, with multiple games I bought and never touched.
I’m also a 3D modeler and haven’t touched that in months. Which is a problem since that is supposed to be my source of income. Executive Dysfunction sucks.
Ask me how much work I’ve done today. :/
PF1
Age of Worms (play by post, a decade in, newly co-GMing)
Age of Worms in Golarion (play by post, a couple years in, planning to convert to pf2 eventually)
PF2
Age of Worms in Golarion (voice call game, roughly weekly, about a year in)
Age of Worms in Golarion (pbp, roughly half a year in)
Misty Valley (pbp, sort of co-GMing, about to start after about a year’s delay, think Over the Garden Wall meets Dark Souls)
A campaign set in the Valley of Nesh (monthly, done as a paid semi-risque game for Patrons, look up Nesh if you want to know the twist they’re building to)
i have a Problem.
That’s right, the problem is my obsession with spooky valleys. two separate games? get a new aesthetic, Lorelei.
Oh, I forgot that I have a one-shot currently on hiatus. It’s a side adventure foreshadowing stuff in Age Of Worms
What are your patroning? Art? Gaming stuff?
Serialized fantasy stories, mainly.
I’ve got eight regularly scheduled games, three of which are on Fridays… and then I went and signed up for that Girl By Moonlight game on a Friday!
Hell yeah. 😀
Wait, just now!?
lol. methinks i know why username is yours. 😛
Currently Playing:
Ghosts of Saltmarsh (D&D 5E)
Currently DMing:
N/A
On Haitus:
Falcon’s Hollow (Pathfinder 1E) 🙁
RookieNumbers.gif
*turns around trying to figure out where all my free time went.*
It may not be much, just once a week, but I do cherish what time I get to game.
Wizard really wants to escape the D20-verse for the World/Chronicles of Dimness huh?
I also kinda feel for Wizard, I spent like, 4 years trying and failing to get my friends to try non-5e systems. Eventually made some friends via hoping from discord to discord that are willing to play other systems, now in a Chronicles Game, might hunt for a Lancer one later as well.
Finally branching out on account of all my gaming-club purchases. Maybe that’s why the avalanche o’ games feels overwhelming.
“What does your current slate o’ games look like?”
Just the semi-weekly boardgame night.
I was in like 10 messageboard games two years back, but hit a wall of “no sleep, too much work, no time”. And while I’ve freed up some time, I’m still in “no sleep, too much work” space to really feel like gaming, as much as I enjoy it, there is such a thing as ‘bad game” (it exists, just like bad pizza and bad sex). So, I’d rather not game if I’m going to be a grumpy grouch or unable to focus on things, or in the case of messageboard games, not posting in a reasonable time frame (or some weeks at all).
What does Wizard’s face remind me of?
My current long-running table just imploded because the DM brought in an intolerable munchkin with a habit of cheating who I had previous dealings with, I told the DM “Him or me”, the DM rather than confront his friend blew up the table.
As of next year, four weekly games (one DMing, three playing). My group has the opposite of the “Eternal GM” problem, as ALL of us have game ideas we want to run, so we got together to figure out what campaigns we’d run in 2024. All of us went in planning to join one, maybe two games, but as more and more campaigns were pitched… well we managed to keep the number of weekly games below seven, at least
Currently I am DMing two PF1 campaigns (“Black Stars” and “The Chezdryl Device”, which isn’t too bad.
Unfortunately, because of inconsistent player attendance, I also have to be prepared to run a backup campaign for Chezdryl Device (“The Paradise Scroll”), a PF2 backup campaign if only the two best-attending Black Stars players attend (“Broken Promises”) and a backup backup campaign if only the most frequently available player (who is in both main games) can come (“Fortress of the Stone Giants”).
Fortunately, most of them are based on official Pathfinder books that I own (and Broken Promises and Fortress of the Stone Giants are run by the book with no changes), but it can still take some mental energy to switch on the fly (since I may not know which game to run until the session starts).
I only have 1 game currently going, Vaesen, but my group has a bunch of stuff we want to play but we can’t because scheduling 1 game is bad enough.
Upcoming games include:
Monsters and Other Childish Things
Fiasco (one shot)
Deadlands
Mekton
D&D 5e
Stars Without Number
I have no games at all going on. Trying to get a game of Magnagothica: Maleghast (necromancer tactics game) going, which is also really more boardgame than RPG. Maybe I should try to revive my Deadlands: Classic game? It’s been… over a year since the last session?!
I am blessed currently with two active games and had another that I quit due to irreconcilable differences between me and the GM.
The first is a 5e D&D conversion of Pathfinder’s Ironfang Invasion run by my best friend and long term GM. We’re in book 4 and having a blast.
The second is a game I joined with some people I found online in book 3 of Kingmaker. These guys are a blast and we should be finishing book 3 tomorrow. We will then be taking a break from Kingmaker and playing through book 1 of Strange Aeons.
The game I quit was an online playthrough of Rise of the Runelords. The GM refused to learn how to use online tools like Roll20, so no map and the battle map was entirely in his head. He didn’t allow Half Orcs or Half Elves “because they didn’t make sense”, had characters with different genders get different stats “because Shadiversity had done a video regarding women’s strength and this is close to what he’d determined”, banned classes without rhyme or reason, and had VERY strong opinions on what and how his players could play their characters.
Sadly, due to working full time, I’m lucky to EVER get into a session. Especially since one of my days off is a floater and can be any day from Monday through Saturday. And there’s only so much you can do on a single Sunday.
Back when I was still doing play by post games I’d basically sign up for anything that seemed like I was remotely interested in. Mostly because of the kind of random chance of getting selected and because of how fast games would die. Still this did mean I was almost always in about five games at a time.
This really didn’t help me on being able to focus on any particular character very well. That combined with just constantly making new character ideas meant eventually I just had the issue where it became really difficult for me to usually feel like I was actually getting into my character’s headspace and more like they just started becoming closer to being simply vehicles for me to be able to be in a game.
That combined with other factors is why I eventually (after around a decade I think?) just gave up on doing pbp, at least in that particular community, and decided to focus more on other things.
Oh god… oh *god*
So:
ACTIVE
– Traveller campaign where the characters try to make ends meet I’m a backwater system without violating the terms of their parole
– Running a one-shot voted on by the participants every two weeks for my local club, generally with one week to learn the system and make the adventure (fun, but definitely the major stressor of the list)
HIATUS/DESIGN HIATUS
– Running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e for a small group
– Building a game about vikings where deed-names are the source of your power because that seems like a fun advancement system
BUILDING UP TO/DESIGNING
– The Face of the World, giant worldbuilding project that will at some point be a campaign
– Running Out of the Abyss in LotFP’s Veins of the Earth setting (sort of)
Damn, and i thought that my maximum (5 games a week) was already insane. I have a hard time devoting myself to too many games every week, but in my defense i work during the day and go to college in the evening, so I kind of only have the weekend as Me Time™.
As for my current amount of games, i’m only in two D&D 5e homebrew campaigns, one every weekend on Sunday/Saturday, and a bi-weekly (turned monthly due to scheduling problems), both ran by some friends of mine.
Also, this year i finished GMing 1 to 20 homebrew D&D 5e campaign, and i’m eager to return to the DM seat with Curse of Strahd next weekend!
alternating mondays: playing 5e homebrew
tuesdays: GM PF1 homebrew
thursdays: battletech at the game store near work
fridays: stream vidya games (mainly various Skyrim builds or the really weird games from my youth)
saturday after noon: mechwarrior 5 with friends
alternating sundays: player in a different 5E homebrew
You sure play a lot of queer games.
I’m also running Women are Werewolves for the university’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance on Tuesday:
https://www.9thlevel.com/women-are-werewolves
You should give it a shot. Really excellent little gaming experience.
Eh, I don’t know. My favourite is fantasy and number two is post-apocalyptic. Real world settings never really captured me.
Wizard, the infinite powers of the Cosmos are yours to command with a price of a few components; illusion and transfiguration and more. You could have your Aesthetic cake without a filling of Vampire?
I am currently playing in a game every night except wednesdays.
I have replaced all social interaction with tabletop games.
I have zero regrets.
Something about Wizard and Rogue’s position feels like it belongs in the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy.
Maybe I just need to get my mind out of the gutter.