2020 GMing Review

So over 10 months since my last blog post. Where did the time go? Well mainly it got taken up with Covid related issues but also pleasingly a lot of table top roleplaying.

After re-reading my post, My Plan To Run Some RPGs, from November 2019 I was quite surprised to see I'd largely met the goals I set out, although in different ways than I'd outlined in the post.

Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha

First up was running Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and while I did manage to run at least one session at Bean Gaming RQG really took off online when I ran a campaign with sessions every two weeks, on Saturdays, pretty much constant from April and still ongoing now. This included two players from our gaming group that started in the 1980s as well as Tim Challis, who I'd formed the East Midlands Runemasters with and two new players to me, Richard & Kevin.

The characters we have are:

• Dogmaz, a member of the Black Spear Clan and Humakti initiate
• Darin, a Grazelander and follower of Lankhor Mhy
• Ælfflæd, from Wilmskirk and a Chalana Arroy initiate
• Jarang, from the Narri clan and a follower of Orlanth
• Saronil, from the northlands around Alone and a follower of Odayla

We use Roll20 for the virtual tabletop; dice rolling, handouts and maps and Discord for audio. The sessions run from approx 12:00 until 16:00, although we usually try and wrap up once we get to 15:00 and we have a couple of 10 minute breaks during the session.

I'm currently running the third campaign arc, the first one was travelling across Sartar trying to find a way to destroy a chaotic musical horn they had discovered, the second arc was travelling and participating in the Battle of the Queens and the third arc is travelling to New Pavis, where they have just arrived, and acting as emissaries for Queen Leika of the Colymar with instructions to report on Argrath's movements and intentions.

I wrote all the scenarios/encounters myself, initially because the players were familiar with the published scenarios and later on because I actually enjoyed writing my own content. 

OSE Wilderlands

I also ran an OSE Wilderlands campaign weekly, every Thursday from April until mid December with only a handful of sessions missed. These sessions were based on map 6, The City State of the World Emperor starting Tell Qa. I started with three players and over the course of the 9 months we had at least 9 players and ended up with 5 fairly regular players.

I again used Roll20 and Discord to run the game online. Sessions ran from 19:00 to 21:00.

It was a very enjoyable experience. I mainly wrote my own material but did run The Palace of the Silver Princess, a module I last ran back in the early 80s. I think three characters died (including one in the very first session) and we potentially had one TPK after all the characters failed their saving throw versus a Harpy. However, I got the harpy to send the party on a quest.

I called a day to the campaign mainly because the latest lockdown in the UK meant my kids are being home schooled and with my wife's health being poor at the moment I am pretty exhausted in the week and just not up to preparing and running a weekly weekday campaign. I may try and resurrect it if the players are still interested once lockdown in the UK ends.

Summary

I've GMed more (around 50 sessions) in 2020 than any other year since I discovered roleplaying games back in 1981 so it's been a massively successful year. In fact I've probably GMed more than I've played.

I've also found that RQG has become my favourite RPG over the course of the year. It's not a case of liking OSE/Wilderlands less, I've just found I've liked the RQG ruleset and more importantly the world of Glorantha more and more as I GMed it more.