What are you playing?

[Groffa]

I'm curious to hear about the different games people are involved with at the moment.
What system?
Setting/milieu?
Are you a player or the GM/DM?
Type of story (ready-made or written by your GM/DM)?
Heavy on role-playing or more combat oriented?
Does the system cripple or encourage you as a player/GM?
One-time sessions or long campaign-arc?
Playing face-to-face or some modern variant (Skype/OpenRPG/play-by-post)?
If you're a player: why did you create your character the way you did?

And most importantly: if you're a player, what's your characters name?

I'll start:
I'm DM:ing a Swords & Wizardry-game with only one player via Google Docs. The story is written by me, and the milieu is a crossing between The Wind in the Willows and "standard" fantasy/Rustfooty.

We're up to 8000 words now, and so far it's been more about role-playing than die rolling.

With such a rules-light system, I don't feel hindered by it, although at times it feels like we've could've just started playing without any system (since the rules are mostly absent).

[kumakami]

dm: about to run a 1 on 1m with the wife in NWOD (white wolfs game line)
playing: in a buffy the vamp slayer game, as a MALE slayer....hehe

[SheikhJahbooty]

Just bowed out of an Amber game to focus on the move back home to New Jersey.

[pstmdrn]

I've been playing Deadlands adapted for Savage Worlds. It is an original series of adventures designed by my close friend, the GM.

I play Tobacco Joe, an ugly, greedy, arrogant Native American Huckster... as good with a pistol as he is with his magic.

[koipond]

I've just started running a Shadowrun game for some folks.
I'm always running Geasa, but because of it's one shot nature it doesn't lend itself to campaign play.

[maledictus]

I'm not currently playing anything I've just moved from city, so I don't have a group anymore. I've been very busy and unable to gather a new one. I also want to test my new game and I hope to play very soon.

[apness]

Been running a BoL game online for 9 months or so, and a Golden Heroes/Squadron UK game for a year on my own forum (well, forum, it's specifically to run the game on really so no real chat about anything else).

Playing in (all of these are play by post, it's over a decade since I played in face to face RPGs) a D6 Fantasy game and a D&D mashup (which has just started, both on RPG.net), a T&T game over on Trollbridge, a Starships and Spacemen game on Old School Star Trek RPG site.

Been cooking up my own basic-like rpg specifically to use on play by post forums, but may end up just using BECMI house ruled to fix the glacial pacing. I need a combat system that doesn't bog down into attack, miss, attack, miss etc, in other words one that generates a winner every round. Even in BoL I found the combat dragged when the 9 or over roll to hit generated more misses than hits. The Barbarians in question were more or less idly standing by whilst their opponents swung ineffectually, and the bad guys were filing their nails whilst the good guys fumbled and tripped their way through the fight.

Tunnels and Trolls is the best system I've seen for fast paced 'always a winner in a round' combat but isn't perfect. The Spite rules mean some damage gets through, but well armoured combatants can make a fight drag on for weeks in play by post...

Any suggestions based on the criteria above, for a fantasy rpg with a definite winner every round of combat? (As opposed to everyone losing, aside from the occasional hit?)

I also thought of houseruling Basic D&D. If you need 17 to hit and roll 14, you still hit but do -3 damage, so need a higher damage roll. The same thing would be rolling to hit and adding the damage die at the same time, doubling the strength bonus (as its added to hit and then to damage anyway) but I think the maths are kind of wonky on that. I see a trail of splattered bodies instead of fierce to and fro hand to hand combat.

[Runjikol]

Just finished a "chapter" of epic L5R game. I am playing a Unicron shugenja, Iuchi Kazu. It's got too epic for my taste and the lack of concentration of the other players suggests it's too epic for them, too.

I'm running a Battlelords game. All the players love the game but two of three don't like the system. So we'll wrap up that "chapter" and I'll figure a conversion to my Simple 2d6 or some other ruleset.

About to start a Dark Heresy game as a player. My character, Kar Zuriel, is a feral worlder guardsman with an aggressive chip on his shoulder but need of recognition (used the excellet Synapse RPG motivation chapter). I've not played this before but have played 1st Ed. WH-FRP. Group is excited, I am too, but I have some wariness that it may become too epic even though it's a different GM to L5R.

[Groffa]

Started a Mouse Guard-game yesterday with my girlfriend (I GMed), her first real RPG-experience (at least in years) - and she loved it! We've done two sessions á one hour so far, and although the first one was more about page flipping than roleplaying (a mail delivery mission straight from the book), the second one was a blast (in which she among other things had to help an old carpenter find his axe - only to find it stuck in the ceiling).

[DavidEBest]

Unfortunately, my biweekly game group petered out a few months back. We've been meeting occasionally, but more for board games than RPGs. Last good RPGs we played were a session of Fiasco and a one shot Call of Cthulhu adventure.

Groffa - Does Mouse Guard work okay with one player? I have a copy and my wife showed some interest, but the rules didn't seem conducive to that sort of play. Any tips?