The Tabletop Report – Gears of War: Session 6 · 11:07pm Mar 8th, 2018
It’s time for Tabletop Report! For the uninitiated, Tabletop Report is a new series chronicling the adventures of my DnD group as I run them through a custom campaign and ruleset based off of Microsoft’s Gears of War universe.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Gears of War, and I’m totally not claiming otherwise. I just really love the universe, and have wanted to run a campaign set in it for the longest time. The system I built is entirely my own, and this game is a test-run of its viability as a full tabletop system.
This is the report summary for session 6! Prior sessions will be listed before the break if you need to catch up. Some knowledge of Gears of War‘s greater universe may be helpful. Now, let’s see what happened to our players after last week!
- Session One – Prologue
- Session Two – Act 1, Chapter 1
- Session Three – Act 1, Chapter 2 Part 1
- Session Four – Act 1, Chapter 2 Part 2
- Session Five - Act 1, Chapter 3 Part 1
Session Six – Act 1, Chapter 3 Part 2
When we'd last left our players, they'd decided to head out the following morning for a remote weather station out to the east, with the goal of installing a relay into it so that Ray—and the team—would have radio coverage over a larger area, as well as weather reports. However, the team didn't want to leave the moment the sun rose. Instead, after camping out in Ray's shop (he didn't let them into the heavily fortified house above it) they decided to spend a little time first acquiring some more stuff from his scrapyard—mostly odds and ends to make sure that their own equipment would stay in good shape. They also hunted down a few more bike frames in order to make travel easier. Of course, they were missing tires and gears, but it was a start. They added the bike frames to the wagon and trailers they'd put together. Unfortunately, due to some poor rolls, this took them several hours.
Ouch when rolls want to be that way..
Oh fun, it sounds like next time will be the first real gunfight and thus test of your cover system. I'm very curious to hear how that turns out.
Also, I'm a bit surprised you didn't call the game before they got to the Raven since that seems like it would have been a much better break point than the start of the fight.
Lastly, I was wondering if they managed to salvage anything else from the dead Gears before the ambush because their weapons are obviously superior to those crappy pistols you gave the players and their armor probably still has some protective value even with the inevitable damage.
4812863
Ending on cliffhangers such as right before a fight is a good place to end tabletop sessions because it gives everyone something very clear to look forward to and prepare for in the next session (a fight) as well as keeping the players from delaying said fight with a lot of roleplaying.
These are actually delayed posts by three weeks, so I can already spoil that it worked quite well. :) No more spoilers than that, however.
They actually did. In addition to the COG tags, one of them had a batterered Lancer MK I that one player took.
4812870
I can see the logic in that, although I feel like it puts a bit of an artificial break in the storyline which isn't ideal.
That's very good to hear. One of the big things that has always made me roll my eyes every time I look at any kind of gun-based rollplaying system is that it forces everyone to stand in the open and get shot like an idiot, so the fact that you have a viable alternative is a very good thing.
I figured that was the case, but you usually mention that kind of thing so I wanted to check. Oh well, you can always mention it in the start of the next post for everyone else.
4812875
You've not done much tabletop gaming, have you? You kind of have to have breaks like that, or you'll need to set aside several straight weeks to play. Just like a TV show has episodes.
I did mention the COG tags. The rifle I didn't because it didn't wind up being that useful until much later.
4812878
Not for lack of trying. I've probably made a dozen different characters over the years for games that either never got off the ground or died after one session, and the one that actually happened was with an awful GM who did lots of stupid stuff that actively discouraged actual roleplaying.
4812880
Ouch. You've had a rough time with RPGs.
Keep looking, though. Good groups exist!
4813223
Yeah, I know, but now that I'm out of school it's harder to find people and easier for life to get in the way. Granted the bad game that did happen was after graduation so that's proof that it is possible to make something happen, but when you get a string of luck that bad it's very easy to justify spending time elsewhere. I'm sure something will come along sooner or later since I do still have friends interested in that kind of stuff, but at this point I've decided that I'm better off taking a more passive approach.