Sunday 7 June 2015

Running two games & late night atmosphere

13 years this fall of 2015 we have been playing and the game is entirely different now vs. over the years. Now we play Sunday nights from approx 6 pm to 10 pm.

In the past we would play from 5 pm to about 12 Midnight, then it got shortened to 11 pm. Somewhere over time we pushed back the start time to allow for getting kids supper and settled and move to 6 pm and then with early am jobs we shortened the game from 11 pm to 10 pm.

I am no fan of this new short game, finding that before a good 5 room dungeon with a good 2-3 combat based encounters would take the night, now is changed to 1-2 rooms and allows one fight. I know life changes and job's start early (as do mine 7:30 am Monday's and every 2nd weekend 8 am sat and 9 am Sun), but with Dan's wanting to run a second game we can look at a few new options.



  • Our game continues Sunday night like always and Dan's game is a Friday or Saturday night running late enough to compensate for people who work am, but allowing going super late for the alternate weekends (if applies) where we don't have to work am.
  • Our game switches with Dan's, allowing him to run the Sunday slot, and move Pale Moon to a new night, running late night games. (Again based a bit on schedule)
I will provide some reasons for this later desired game in a sec below. 

Also ideas on the second game. Is it to be a pathfinder based game or a 5th edition based game? Is the game in his world or set in Pale Moon? Just some points I wasn't to clear on. Do we still run our gaming group under our "Under the Pale Moon Gaming" or do we have maybe some new players for each game, making new game groups?

Today my wife had "The Gamer's" on when I got home so I sat down and watched some of it. The main thing I liked and had forgotten about was the late night game mentality. In the past we ran late, we were always dead tired by the end of the game in that stay up late kinda way and I liked it. 



In the movie they play late, one game ran to 2 am for example and after each game the player go out to celebrate at a local waffle house. This reminds me of me and buddy's going out to a place like "The Husky" which is a 24/7 truck stop diner. You can get breakfast at 3 am if you wanna. I really like this feeling of "Hey I don't work in the am" and going out to talk more about gaming, chill and get some food before taking off for the night. 




Before this I was also looking a lot at small articles in my Dragon magazines which had to do with "3 am Games" and a series of RPG books called "Midnight". I have always like the feel of late night gaming and want to do some. My campaign setting as always has been dark, inspired greatly by Ravenloft, Diablo and Conan, the world is generally not sunny and the PC's don't travel and quest by mid afternoon daylight. In fact most games are based in the late fall with overcast skies and constant storms.




Some exceptions were the great journey south to bright sunlight and brilliant blue skies of the Savage Continent, but that was a rare exception. Most games, were uncovering a secret in a haunted town at night by lantern light, or treading through the snows of the elven lands in cover of darkness to infiltrate a demons tower, going down into the ground to the Underdark or through a portal to the shadow plane at times even traveling to the dread realm it's self Ravenloft to raid a castle or stop a villain.



Many games include vampires and werewolves, late night creatures and taverns with suspicious characters who venture in after dark looking for entertainment. This is no change to what, we play just a more insightful look at our sad, dim world which rot's under the pale moons influence. As in the write up the people of this world are broken and depressed, the common city dweller can be driven mad by the influence of the lingering moon and never travels outside the safety of the walls.


Ok the end was rambling, but what I wanted to take from this was if there were two games up, what do we want to play and what night best works for everyone? There are going to be lot's of scheduling conflicts, but I think two games is good for the group and allows a more diverse party. Thoughts?

No comments:

Post a Comment