The Gaming Philosopher

Introduction The first session of my 3:16 campaign was stellar . The second session wasn't as good. It wasn't bad, and fun was had, but in some respects it was quite problematic. All the previous players attended, plus one new player, Lenny. I had her make a character as if an old character had died: start from scratch with weapons, but start with slightly higher abilities than a true starting character. Our team thus consisted of Lieutenant Sektor ("by the book"), Sergeant "Mad" Mina ("recalcitrant"), Corporal "Iron" Sue ("Rambo") and the new character Soldier Fabio ("man in the mirror," i.e., very vain). Last time, I had prepared the planets in some detail. This time, I wanted to make room for more player input, so I rolled the planets on the random tables right in front of their eyes; except for AA, which I chose by hand. Overview of play Rubens The first planet was planet Rubens, a radioactive planet ...

Saturday, I played my first-ever session of Gregor Hutton's space marines RPG 3:16 -- Carnage among the Stars . It was a blast. The game delivered everything I had hoped for. The players There were four of us. I was the only one with extensive experience of different RPGs, including indie narrativist RPGs . Partly for that reason, I chose to GM the game. There were three other players: Michiel, Erik and Annet. All of them had role played before, but only Dungeons & Dragons . (With the exception of Michiel, who once played a single session game of My Life with Master with me, and took to that quite naturally.) The fact that most of them had only played D&D was exactly why 3:16 seemed a good choice to me. Just like D&D , it is built around combat scenes in which trying to be effective -- either for the good of the party or for that of yourself, which in this case is not always the same thing -- is the expected behaviour. Death is always a possibility, and the rew...