I probably should provide some information about the other half of my life, tabletop gaming. For those of you who are unaware, I'm referring to games like Dungeons and Dragons, where a group of players all roleplay characters to weave a story. I'm currently playing in five campaigns or story arcs currently.
Bears and Octupi
So, the game is set in a world where Bears are the dominant race on Earth, with a technology level roughly on-par with the industrial revolution. But deep in the ocean lies in wait a unknown threat; an entire civilization of space-age octupi dwells in the depths. But they aren't happy with their sea-dwellings anymore. They want land.
We're playing this game in a system called GURPS, which stands for Generic Universal Role-Playing System, which, as it's namesake would imply, was generic and universal enough to have a whole bunch of semi-intelligent bears fight futuristic octupi in an interesting way.
I'm currently playing a circus bear, we've only played one session, so I haven't done much with the character yet.
World of Darkness
This campaign is mostly to try out the new system, namely World of Darkness, which is heavily based around vampires, werewolves, golems and mages. So, since nobody had any ideas for a campaign setting, everyone is playing themselves as if in the next year and a half, they had become Batman or Dracula.
The play-style so far has been really dark and gritty; physical and mental trauma are easy to come by, and hard to get over. This opinion may just be colored by the low power level of our current characters, but it doesn't really seem to be that way, based on how I expect characters to grow.
I'm playing myself as if I went to a wizadring academy, becoming a mage of time and fate. In our last session, we were being chased by the police after an encounter with a dark corporation with sights on killing unnaturals such as our new selves. Our car was crashed, and as we were being captured, Sam, a mage with affinity for magics that blow stuff up, cast a spell to shock (as with lightning) the police officer who was guiding him. In World of Darkness, magic isn't to be shown to those who are unaware of the unnatural world, and doing so can cause catastrophic paradoxes. In our case, Sam's lightning summoned the Grim Reaper. Now our campaign has an easily defined story, we need to unsummon death before he kills everyone.
Mortimor, Thomas and the nothingness
This is a run-over from last quarter, played on the Pathfinder system, which is based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, which is meant for heroic medieval tales. This story was started mainly for the purpose of a layover after our first campaign ended.
The story is pretty undeveloped right now; pretty much, there is several instances of nothingness consuming towns. Thomas (my character), a ten year old boy who was told his whole life he was destined for something great, went out to find out more about the nothingness. Thomas has no innate ability or talent, just the force of destiny, good luck and some companions protect the boy. Mortimor, one of aforementioned companions, and affectionately renamed by Thomas as Morty, is another interesting character which may drive the plot at some point. Morty wishes to improve quality of life by making undead perform the menial labour. Essentially, he is a Socialist Necromancer.
Final Fantasy X
This campaign is based off of the setting presented in Final Fantasy X. Basically, we hijacked the setting to play a similiar story in a tabletop roleplaying fashion. This game is also played on the Pathfinder system.
A brief summary; There is a beast called sin who is unstoppably powerful and kills many, many innocent people. There is a process where a person called a summoner calls down a "Final Aeon," a creatuer capable of fighting sin and bringing the calm, a period without sin. Unfortunately the calm is not forever, and sin returns in usually 10 to 20 years. Before calling the Final Aeon, a summoner must pilgrimage to each temple of Yevon.
In the campaign, the party is a summoning party; a summoner and her guardians.
Sam's campaign
This in an introductory campaign for Sam to learn how to DM (Dungeon Master), or run a game. The game is being played in the Pathfinder system. Basically, as far as plot goes, there are three demons who fight over the mortal realm. Power has become inbalanced, and these demons threaten the mortal world. The party is trying to restore balance and save the world. A little cheesy, but it's been fun.
Alright, this post is all together too long, but this summary will be accurate pretty much all quarter, so meh.
