The Tabletop Report: Gears of War Campaign Update · 6:27pm Jun 15th, 2018
So, I doubt any but a few of you noticed, but there hasn’t been an update on the Gears of Wartabletop campaign in a few months.
It’s not because the tabletop game stopped, or the campaign ran out of gas. No, it’s actually been moving along at a good weekly clip, with the players really getting the hang of things and figuring out the system. Which doesn’t mean that there haven’t been a few missteps: There have been a few systems I’ve made small changes to, and the system has turned out to be a little overly complicated in some situations. Some streamlining could be done.
At the same time, however, it’s proven fantastically flexible in adapting itself to a wide array of player choices and actions. Players needing to make multiplesuccessful rolls to pull something off, for example, as opposed to just one make-it-or-break-it roll has led to a lot of interesting moments and tense countdowns among the players. Enemy encounters remain threatening as well, with the players often coming quite close to not making it out alive.
So why did the tabletop reports stop if the campaign has actually been going quite well? Well … pretty much because no one was reading it, so it wasn’t worth the time investment. Writing up these weekly reports about how the campaign was going was fun, but at the same time it was a fairly large time investment once a week on topof how much time I had to spend being ready for each weekly session, plus work and everything else … And when it was only garnering one or two views a week (yes, that few) it was clear that I should just focus on getting each week’s session ready rather than providing updates on the adventures of my gaming group.
That said, for those curious, no one has diedyet … though they’ve certainly come close. They’ve also put themselves in some hair-raising scenarios due to underestimating the intelligence of their foes: The week before last they tried to set an ambush, not realizing that their ambush they were trying to pull was insideof someone else’s ambush … Theirs! Which they then escaped by, I kid you not, slamming the boom of a construction crane atop a skyscraper into anothernearby skyscraper and running across it. With safety clips so that they wouldn’t fall nine hundred feet to their deaths if they slipped … which several characters did.
Their opponents responded to this by blowing up the base of the crane, which led to the players franticallyrunning down the boom and into the next skyscraper over … and the boom twisting and falling away, leaving the last two swinging out into the abyss, connected only by their safety rope (yay for that!) before being pulled in.
Is it a perfect roleplaying system? No, there are definiteflaws to it. It’s a little complicated in places for one; I’d definitely simplify a few things before doing a second run. And there’s a lotof pressure on the DM when it comes to leveling, unlike something like DnD.
But it’s working so far, and the players have been having a good time adventuring through the ruined world of Sera. Don’t expect weekly updates to resume, but know that it has been a fun weekly adventure thus far.
Ah, that explains where those went then. I was enjoying them, but I can definitely understand why you deprioritized them with all the other things on your plate. That said, it is good to hear that the system is generally working well and that you're finding ways to improve it as well.
One little suggestion I have for your simplification issue is to consider ways of making them optional. That will allow the DM and/or players to decide how they want to trade detail for flow, either generally or on a case-by-case basis, in order to better suit the situation and personal preferences. This probably won't apply in all cases, but it might help with some of the stickier issues you will inevitably run into.
Huh. Makes sense. Well, they were fascinating while they lasted, but I guess I was one of the few people reading them.
That skyscraper crane chase sounded awesome. I hope your players provide you with many more such opportunities for shenanigans. (I'd say the other way around, but I already trust you to do the same for them.)