This Week: Free Games, Insanity, Black Mirror & RollPlay!

Welcome to This Week, a weekly series where I discuss all the gaming (both video and tabletop) content I've played, made, prepped, run and seen that's cool this week. If you want to see what I got up to last week, go here.

This one's a little light. Firstly, I've been very busy (as I discuss below) and it's been very hot in Melbourne (today, at least, which is melting my brain even now). I do apologise.

Let's jump in with what I've done This Week...

What I've Made

I released (for free) a super short and sweet game called I'd Like You to Meet which can be found here. This game was inspired by a thread on the RPG Opinions group on Facebook - a rather great group, if you're into RPGs. The thread was talking about games for convention spaces (in this case, PAX Aus 2016) and how a) players want a complete experience in as short a time possible to move onto the next thing, and b) con-floors are so damn loud that often people can't hear each other. So I made a silent game that could be played in a few minutes. Enjoy!

(Image created from pieces at game-icons.net.)

I'll be releasing more small games like this, for free, over the coming months. Expect more weird and (hopefully) wonderful things!

What I've Run

NOTHING! No, seriously, this is getting to be a problem. I haven't had the chance to run any games for a while now. I'm starting to go insane, in fact. Watch this space for more examples of my insanity.

What I can say is that my Curse of Strahd campaign should be starting up again in 2 weeks (right folks?!) and that on December 10th I'm running Sagas of the Icelanders as a one-shot. Thaaaaats about it. Depressing, huh? Things are just very busy at the moment. We're planning on moving house in the next two months, and a few of my projects are ramping up into overdrive (which is good news for those of you who like my work *desperately waves to my one fan*)

Anyway...

What I've Seen

I finished watching Black Mirror at the very start of this week, after a few weeks of watching it. I hadn't seen any before this, so it was three seasons in one go. My honest opinion? It's our generations The Twilight Zone, except that each episode could easily be the news... In maybe a few years time.

(Image from schmoes know.)

Now, I mean everything by that review. I mean it's great, and its influential, and it's important, and challenging, etc. I also mean it's ham fisted as all hell, and in a lot of cases, is pretty predictable (after a while) and pretty gratuitous. Once you get the cadence of the show, everything seems samey (except for one glaring exception, which I won't spoil here). It's also horrendously depressing. Watch it at your own risk, but do watch it, at some point. It's worth it.

Otherwise, I've been watching a lot of RollPlay again. To be honest, after Swan Song and Mirrorshades both ended, and West Marches disappeared into thin air, I lost a lot of interest in RollPlay. The shows that came afterwards didn't grip me as much, and I stopped waiting between weeks for the next episodes... Then RollPlay Blades and Dogs in the Vineyard came up.

(Image from itmejp.)

Whilst Dogs is a one-shot, and therefore I've seen all there is to see (holy hell you should watch it!), Blades is an ongoing campaign. And the cast is amazing. With Geoff, Wheat, Anne, and Zeke, we re-collect my four favourite players in one spot. Add to the John-fucking-Harper, the creator of the game. Yeah, it's incredible. It's no secret how much I love Blades in the Dark, so to see it played every week by great roleplayers is really inspiring (and driving me insane because my next session isn't until JANUARY!)

That's all for This Week this week. I'll talk to you next week, and tell you of all my adventures again! In the mean time, fill your own week with as much awesome as possible.