What games do YOU play?

[Le Grognard]

In light of our having a new member join us (and the lack of some of the Company to post on these boards ), I thought I'd open discussion on gaming in general.

Hopefully our half a dozen or so members not part of the Company directly will post some of their feedback. I hope that they can take part in making these boards more dynamic and exciting. *nudge-nudge*

What games do you play? Some types more than others?

Do you have a favourite type of game? Or a favourite game?
_________________
"Why smilest thou, Lord Dragon, sir?" asked our hero in armour laden.
"Why, you'd smile too," the Wyrm replied, "if you'd just 'eaten' a maiden."

[Le Grognard]

My gaming habit ... I mean hobby ...

Well, I guess I'd have to say I'm a gaming - uh - dilletante. I'll play (and have played) just about everything.

Right now, it seems I spend most of my gaming time (read: "all") in the roleplaying category. So I'll break it down as preferences by category ... which of course does not mean you all should post your feedback in the same manner.... have fn and please express yourself:

Roleplaying - D20 system (D&D v3.5, et al) ... I really feel that the introduction of the D20 system was a boon to me in that I did not have to learn a new gaming system every week.

Miniatures Gaming - I am definitely in the historical minatures camp, having gotten into it back when it was next to impossible to find a ready and regular supply of miniatures (even the Airfix plastics). I have enjoyed GW Fantasy Battle, WizKids Mage Knight, and GZG Stargrunt, but am primarily interested in the historical periods Napoleonics, American Civil War, and a little dabbling in British Colonial.

Collectible Card Games - I used to play Magic (back in the day - stoppoed after I think the 4th supplement), and even used to play once a week - almost like a bridge night - with Demo Monkey and another friend.

Regular Card Games - Cribbage, Euchre, Poker ... etc.

Wargames - While I prefer miniature wargaming, I also play board/hexagon-based wargames (Avalon Hill/SPI/etc). My faves in this category are Kingmaker, Wooden Ships and Iron Men, and Squad Leader (before the tomes of Advanced Squad Leader).

Video Games - The Tomb Raider series, Resident Evil series, and some first person shooters ... I also almost piddle myself when I play the Lego Star Wars game.

Board/Parlour games - I enjoy Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Fortress, Eurorails, and many others.

Have I missed any?

Now ... a list of the games I usually win at:

... um ...

Well...

Does anyone else have anything to add?
_________________
"Why smilest thou, Lord Dragon, sir?" asked our hero in armour laden.
"Why, you'd smile too," the Wyrm replied, "if you'd just 'eaten' a maiden."

[SQUAWK]

Thought I'd toss in my 2 cents to hopefully get some more responses coming...

[Kildar]

Let me see now,

RPGs - I've played alot over the years. Some more than others, and almost exclusively d20 based stuff for the last 7 years. While d20 (and it's variants) does an admirable job at being a multi-genre game system, I'd have to say the best I've played for modern settings would be Cyberpunk 2020's Interlock system. I found The Friday Night Firefight section particularly adept at dealing with modern gun battles (full auto, burst, suppressive fire, etc). The setting has the potential to be incredibly dark and vicious, but the system itself (sans cyberware) could easily be used for any modern or near future style campaign setting, like Twilight/Merc 2000 ... or even The Morrow Project. Regardless, I have to say that RPGs are my game of choice for spending time with friends. They fire the imagination and give a bit of escapism like none of the others.

Miniature Gaming - I've dabbled a bit in this over the years. Tried the Warhammer/40K stuff, but it wasn't to my taste. Played a thoroughly enjoyable Napoleonics wargame (followed by an equally enjoyable hard-liquor debrief for several hours afterward). Perhaps the one I've played the most was Stargrunt. I really enjoyed it because of my military background, as I found what I learned there was represented very well on the tabletop. I would even go so far as to highly recommend the game as a useful training tool to junior officers and NCOs, as it works very well for section (squad), platoon, and company level (where it starts to bog down a bit ) engagements.

Collectable Card Games - Don't have any interest. I've played Illuminati (years ago) and Munchkin, and didn't find them (or the medium) very engaging at all.

Regular Card Games - Same as collectable card games. Just doesn't hold my interest.

Wargames - Mixed feelings on this one. I've played a few over the years, and most times it's been more of an exercise in sifting through the rules for hours (a quick game of Starfleet Battles, anyone? ) But at least most of the maps were nice. There have been a couple that were thoroughly enjoyable and I would happily play again at any time, these being Wooden Ships & Iron Men, and Tide of Iron. I've even been told there is an RPG supplement for Wooden Ships & Iron Men, which I will have to look for one day. On the latter, Tide of Iron is really a hybrid of a parlour, miniature (unpainted), and wargame.

Video Games - As a "Johnny-Come-Lately" to the video game medium, I have enjoyed a number of 1st person shooters on my PS2 over the last little bit, along with some strategy and tactical games for the PC. For the former I like Kill Zone, the SOCOM series, Ghost Recon , Rogue Trooper, Delta: Blackhawk Down, Call of Duty 3, The Force Unleashed (although I think it was over-hyped), Mercenaries, and I'm about to start Full Spectrum Warrior. And occasionally I'll go over to Kargosh's and play either of the Gears of War games with him, as well as both HALOs. For the latter I have an fair number of games, including some flight simulators, but I'll always have a soft spot for Age of Rifles and Cossacks.

Board/Parlour Games - I really have about as much enthusiasm for these as I do for CCGs and regular card games. Given the choice I'd probably go read a book instead of doing any of these three.

[Kabucha]

[Gunnvaldr]

Haha, I should have seen this thread and used the format set in telling what games one plays. well here's a dab of what I play(ed) in the link to another thread under administration section where I was asked to describe my gaming experience.

http://www.thecompanyofstrangers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=243

video games...well I belong to a Old gaming clan called the Brotherhood of the Wolf. Made of personal friends and such like thats been kicking around more than a decade. link as follows if you're curious:

http://www.bowonline.com/

Basically I played RTS, FPS, RPGs, MMO's where there is team-base elements. Currently I play Left 4 Dead 2 or Dragon Age extensively. I would like to Play Aion Online moreso whenever I's not sharing my online connection with another.

CCG: I have played the first Magic: the gathering set back in the day. Other then that I've tried the L5R CCG.

card games: brisk, scopa, war.

board games: Go, monopoly, A Game of thrones, HeroesQuest.

sorry if I'm a bit vague but it will take too long than I'm willing to list all the games i played.
_________________
Gunnvaldr Stormbringer
Loyalty. Honour. Valour.

[Kabucha]

[Gunnvaldr]

[Boethermsbrukan]

Geez.

I'm really not sure where to start. I guess it's because I haven't been gaming regularly for almost a decade...and because I have a considerable supply of gaming books, dice, CCGs, a fair number of lead & pewter minis- and only a handful have ever been used in an actual game session.

Meh, I got used to it. If anything, apart from having a monster RPG reference library (I amassed these books on a regular schedule between 1989 and 2006) I have a thorough familiarity with quite a few RPGs and their playing systems. May I?

Tabletop Book 'N' Dice: The first one I was familiar with was the old 4-box D&D sets from the early 1980s; they didn't belong to me but from their owner and his gaming group- who met regularly at lunch and whom I encountered between 1989 and 1991 in 7th & 8th Grade- I learned the basics of Armour Class, THAC0, and which of the funny looking dice I should roll. I finally got myself those four sets- used, mind you, but aside from one missing page that I replaced with a photocopy, they were in pretty good shape. $10 for the four of them in the Dealer's Room at Ad Astra 2001. Even had the blue hard plastic dice, no less.

After that, I guess I got into the Palladium FRPG (around the same time, about 1990), or rather saw Kevin Siembieda's awesome pencil art in the Revised (1987 printing) Monsters & Animals for the PFRPG, in this case getting me hooked was the pictures of the Wolfen and Coyle sparring. Thus began my love for the Northern Canine races. I picked up the main Revised Core PFRPG, Book IV: Adventures In The Northern Wilderness (wolfen!) and eventually by 1992 I had everything save 'The Arms Of Nagash-Tor' for Palladium, and eventually found it at a yard sake as well. Rifts was still pretty fresh news in 1991 when I started collecting that RPG's supplements, and amassed pretty much all of the Dimension, World & Source-books up until 2001.

Winding back a few years, my interest was piqued in the form of White Wolf's fledgling World of Darkness/Storyteller System in late 1991. While I never got a copy of the 1st Ed. Vampire- something I still regret- I immediately fell in love with Werewolf in August of 1992. (If it bears saying, I thought the core book was so -to me- off-bear and lavishly illustrated, that I initially assumed it was a graphic novel! [Silver Snail Queen.]) I ended up collecting everything for Werewolf: the Apocalypse until 1998 (Book Of The Wyrm, 2nd Ed. [Worldhouse]), although a year later I bowed to myself and picked up the 3rd Ed. core book. (Ad Astra 1999.)

Over the years- and I guess we're talking on the order of twenty or so- I put together, besides Werewolf, Rifts, the Palladium FRPG, and some *D&D, on the order of just short of 300 individual supplements, core books, media/novels/teasers, and a little over 150 dice. Even have two 30-siders! Add to that my CCGs- Magic's early form, Rage, Jyhad/V:TES, Spawn (yeah, huh?), Ani-Mayhem- probably numbering in the several-thousand single card range in 15 longboxes- and one might think I'd be playing a _lot_.

Didn't quite work out that way, tho'. Outside of a series of gaming sessions over those years that I can count on one hand, and a half-dozen games at conventions between 1994 and 2002, I really have never been in a regular gaming session with any reasonable frequency, although I wish that hadn't been so. The second last campaign I ran in that lasted more than one session has been on hiatus since 2000, as the GM (and a longtime friend of mine who thoroughly enjoys gaming) has been working on his Doctorate in Computer Engineering at the U of T for the last 5 years, and as of this post is nearly finished his thesis. The last game would've been at Red Nails II- little gaming/comic store across from Jane Station on the Bloor-Danforth subway line- that hosted the D&D 30th Anniversary session in Toronto (the other store was 500 Convenience, which I have never frequented), and while a pleasant expenditure of an afternoon, it only lasted for that one time. I guess that would've been 2003 or so.

(The _really_ depressing thing for me there was that I came armed with two backpacks full of 2nd & 3rd Ed. D&D books, my dice box and a couple of other assists, and I didn't even end up rolling one of my own dice. Mind you, I did get a couple of swell-looking 20siders in the deal, along with 4 plastic miniatures, and it was, regardless, quite enjoyable.)

So one might wonder why I'm posting, if (gaming) is something I've never had the opportunity to do a whole lot of. The reality: I still yearn towards it; I really want to play in a regular campaign, because the tastes I've had of gaming, the familiarily with the game worlds and universal concepts, have not let my interest ebb or fade in all these years. I'd love to get into it- if I can't necessarily say _back_ into it.

Thanks for having me!

-Boethermsbrukan, Chief Metallurgist & Weapons Expert To Her Imperial Majesty, Quallonine II.

[SQUAWK]

Welcome to the board - always nice to see another addict joining in!
_________________
In righteous day, or boogie night; No jive or funk escapes my sight.
Let all who groove on evil's might beware my mo-jo...DYN-O-MITE!

[Boethermsbrukan]

Well met, Squawk!

Danke for the welcome; it's a pleasure to be here. I told Jodi a bit about this when she was setting up my registration over E-mail, but I see no reason not to explain myself here as well. For several reasons (Worldhouse shutting down, Orion/Pandemonium going bankrupt [they ran the gaming track at Ad Astra, which itself had been moving away from RPGs], most comic book/gaming stores scaling back their games) I've wondered if RPGing has any real presence in the GTA any longer (and so you know, I don't think of 'Soul Calibur' or the myriad 'Final Fantasy' games as RPGing). Both Grey Regions are dead, and even the Games Workshop on Queen is gone (although I believe the one in the Eaton Centre is still running, since they only specialize in Warhammer I don't know if it's fair to count them); there are at least two Mind Games (Eaton Centre and Scarborough Town Centre), but they don't necessarily specialize in it.

Since finally getting a rig (computer) that could make the most out of my DSL connection in late 2005, I've occasionally spent an afternoon looking- usually through Google, though sometimes through a handful of functional 'game pages'- for any sign that open gaming is still a factor locally (Toronto and surrounding)...and most often have been disappointed by not finding much of anything. This is where you folks here come in- I was trying different sets of keywords regarding Google ('toronto groups gaming active', 'GTA gaming') and lo and behold, Company of Strangers came up. I noticed the lack of activity (the last post was in January before my own), but frankly the well-kept architecture of the page and subpages- not to mention the enthusiasm fostered by you and the other members, Squawk- and the fact that this was specifically a Toronto-area gaming group- behooved me to join up and see what I could see.

Good to be here, ami!

-Boethermsbrukan, Chief Metallurgist and Weapons Expert to Her Imperial Majesty, Quallonine II.

[SQUAWK]

It's odd what happened to the organized gaming cons around about TO, and ashame. There's definately the need to introduce newer gamers into something other than Yu-gi-oh cards and video games. It's amazing how quickly kids get into miniatures gaming.

One of the stores I visit on a weekend up in Markham is called Heroes World, and lately I've heard they've been running some 4th ed. camapaign games with great success. Enough that at one point they had to expand it to a morning and afternoon game. I don't know if they're still running it now, but it was certainly good to see a lot of younger people calling up to find out if there was space for them to join the games, and even better to see a game store devoting a little time and space to running an RPG, if only more stores would give it a try.
_________________
In righteous day, or boogie night; No jive or funk escapes my sight.
Let all who groove on evil's might beware my mo-jo...DYN-O-MITE!

[Boethermsbrukan]

Squawk;

I agree. A lot of younger kids; maybe who'd been our ages when we started gaming, and they being at that age just after gaming presence took a nosedive, have never really been exposed to tabletop gaming. Most of the people I know who are both aware of and actively interested in gaming, and all of the people I know who gamed for many years (or still do) are my age (early to mid-30s), none of them much younger. With the plethora of computer games to enjoy- many of them marketed as 'RPGs for non-geeks', or allusions to that effect- it tends to be hard to pull the younglings away from them.

In many ways, seeing my nephew (he's in his early teens now, but he started getting into this stuff before he was nine, if you can believe it) get into anime like Beyblade, Lego Bionicles, and as you said, Yu-gi-OH!, both the card game and the animated series', reminds me of my own 'scanning', testing different science-fiction and anime creations in my early teens. I don't know if he's settled on anything in particular, it's hard to tell. The best news is that his Dad- my oldest brother (to clear it up, my two brothers were born about 2 years apart- I came down the chute when my eldest brother was 15)- is responsible but respectively permissive of his son's science-fiction interests, and for what it's worth I've encouraged him thus with my brother's blessing. And a big thing is that he has no problem with me familiarizing him with dice & book RPGs. Good hopes, all!

I know of Heroes World- it's on Steeles, around the T.O. city limits, am I right? I've thought about going there but it's far enough from me (relatively speaking) that it's not a place I'd necessarily go without a particular, distinct purpose in mind. With that thought, I don't really know anyone at all who's ever played D&D (or still does) from 3rd Edition onwards. It might be worth it if I can figure out how to get there by TTC. Thanks for telling me about it, in any case!

And yeah, I know what you mean. There was a gaming group that met regularly at Red Nails II (little comic/gaming store along the east-west subway line in the West end) and hosted in 2003 Toronto's D&D 30th Anniversary session that November. About a year later, there was a full-page obituary for none other than the group's head honcho- fellow named Dave. He was the only guy there that really seemed interested in encouraging me regularly to jump in (although none of the group were less than friendly- I just remember Dave the most clearly)...poor guy was barely my age now. It was the weight he carried, heart troubles. I don't know if the group disbanded (I doubt it, it certainly wouldn't have happened if Dave had anything to say about it) or reshuffled, but I stopped by a couple of times during their previously-regular time, and I never saw them again. I asked the owner- really nice guy, too- and he had no idea, other than a couple of them still got stuff there through mail order.

As it is, that was the last real gaming session- aside from some sandbox work, briefly, at Games Workshop in the Eaton Centre- that I saw at a shoppe here in Toronto proper, up to the present. Even though I don't really have any experience with 4th Ed., if they're receptive to beginners I'd be willing to take a crack at it.

-Boethermsbrukan; Chief Metallurgist & Arms Expert To Her Imperial Majesty, Quallonine II.

[Le Grognard]

It sounds like you've been starved for regular gaming for some time.

There are still avanues (as Squawk has alluded to)... And every new member we've had on the Message Board has mentioned they're interested in finding gamers locally here in TO (even though they seem to disappear from posting shortly after joining).

It's a pity that we can't seem to sustain a gaming community forum or arena (like a convention).

Having been involved in Ad Astra for many years, I know the fellow who runs the gaming section wants to pump it up. And we've had better response over recent years. But it always seems to take a back seat.

I tried 4th Ed at Heroes World one World D&D Day ... it was fun and I met new people (and handed out crads to see if they wanted to join the message board ... no takers apparently)

I also know that even some of our own crowd have made noises about playing soemthing other than RPG all the time would be good. A few get togetehr once a month for miniature gaming. And a few hook up for netwroked video gaming.

And I also know the gaming organizer for FanExpo (have for years) but have never managed to make it out to one of his get togethers either.

Why can't we seem to make this work?
_________________
"Why smilest thou, Lord Dragon, sir?" asked our hero in armour laden.
"Why, you'd smile too," the Wyrm replied, "if you'd just 'eaten' a maiden."

[Boethermsbrukan]

Grognard;

I'm glad AA is still something that you find interest in. I guess after it started shifting away from RPGing to comic book fandom and general media... well, honestly speaking there wasn't a lot of reason left my me to attend. AA 2004 was probably my last big gasp; the biggest dealer's room- chock full of RPG dealers, and from one of whom I got a copy of Palladium's Beyond the Supernatural and Shadowrun, both 1st Edition- since the first one I attended in 1994. 2005...I don't even like thinking about it. No offense to the Jane-Finch crowd, but I really didn't like the neighbourhood the hotel was in. And that was the first big thing- it wasn't right at Jane & Wilson; it was three city blocks away, recessed 70 yards into the real estate boundary. I finally found it after 30 minutes of searching. The layout of the hotel itself- and as a result, the convention- was abysmal. No turning room, and I could never find my way anywhere. I don't even know if there were Track Rooms- I couldn't find them! The dealer's room was very disappointing, at least compared to 2004's.

So what did I do? I bought a couple of Tesseracts sequels, and left about 30 minutes after I registered for the day. I then took the Jane bus all the way down to Bloor, and arriving at Red Nails II, bought the 3.5 Core Collection I had seen there the previous November. And went home.

Honestly speaking, I suspect that year was a blip. 2005's was actually pretty good; there was even a media alley. But because of 2004's, a massive seed of doubt got stuffed up my mind...and in 2006, I didn't attend, and haven't since.

Feh, I shouldn't be so critical. But what could I have done otherwise, in my mind?

You're right on the mark when you suspect I've been starved for a good sit-down dice & book RPG session for some time now. And I very much plan on staying here; don't worry, I don't plan on vanishing- the conversations I've have with Jodi, yourself and Squawk have given me more hope than may be apparent.

I suspect that we can make it work, realistically. Luck is more on our side than you might think.
_________________
From the desk of Wolfen Imperial Army Quatoria Boethermsbrukan, Chief Metallurgist And Edged Arms Expert To Her Imperial Majesty Quallonine II.