Welcome to the Forums and the Gauntlet, @Avi_the_Jackal.
New User Introduction
Heya!
I’m an old hand from the Forge and Story Games communities. I’ve been running RPGs since 1981 or so, dabbling in game design since 1985, editing other people’s games for ten years or so, and publishing small gaming supplements for the last couple years. I’ve played a wide range of games. These days, I mostly play “old school” games like D&D and Traveller, informed by all the techniques I’ve learned from story games over the last two decades.
I love talking about game theory, game design, D&D house rules, and setting creation. My white whale projects are:
- Towerlands, a fantasy setting that is a parallel universe to medieval Hungary and Slovakia
- Main Sequence, a dark cyberpunk SF setting for Traveller / Cepheus Engine
- a fantasy RPG based on the “signal and noise” dice system I used for my Verge cyberpunk RPG years ago
I attend a handful of gaming conventions every year, including:
- Dreamation (Morristown, NJ, in February)
- Camp Nerdly (Prince William Forest Park, VA, in May)
- TravellerCon USA (Lancaster, PA, in October)
- DEXcon (Morristown, NJ, in July) – somewhat infrequently
I live in the Baltimore, Maryland (USA), area and semi-irregularly attend live gaming events at Drinking & Dragons, currently hosted at R HOUSE in Baltimore once or twice a month.
I’m married, no kids, two cats (probably four by Christmas). I lead a software group for a financial publishing company; five years ago, I was a full-time software developer and software architect. I play a bit of chess online as a low-rated patzer. I’m also interested in music theory, physics, linguistics, and psychology. My amazing wife is a NYT bestselling author of historical fiction and women’s fiction.
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Hello everyone!
My name is Mark and I am new to the Gauntlet. I am fascinated by the community after listening to We Hunt the Keepers! and The Farrier’s Bellows, and I am looking forward to getting more involved as my schedule allows!
I have been a GM (and every so often a player) for the last 7 years or so, and I have fallen in love with the narrative power of tabletop RPGs. I consider myself a storyteller and RPGs are my chosen form of art. I love narrative experiences that bring out emotion in me and allow me to take on new headspaces with other people who want to play to find out what happens. Looking forward to meeting so many of you, I am always down to chat about anything, on here or on discord (sadly don’t currently have access to the Gauntlet discord though). I’m also dipping my toe into game design and that’s been an exciting journey so far!
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Welcome to the Gauntlet!!
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Howdy! My name’s Dom and I’m a 37-young software engineer from Poland who’s been into ttrpgs on and off for the past 25-ish years. Poland is pretty odd when it comes to the ttrpg landscape with Warhammer, WoD and post-apo games winning the majority of the mindshare for a long time. Only with the introduction od 3ed did D&D become popular. Or at least that’s my perspective.
But even though this probably differs from what was popular in US in late '90s, early '00s, my experience was atypical still. I started playing MERP and Kryształy Czasu (Time Stones/Gems/Crystals/whatever; I’m fairly sure this was the very first Polish system/setting to come out in print form). My GM at that point was dabbling in design and he would modify mechanics to his needs. So I sort of thought that this is what ttrpg is about: playing and redesigning. This resulted in my first disastrous GMing experience, several incomplete heartbreaker designs and a bunch of tiny unplayable roguelike-like pieces of code. 
Around my year 2 (things get faster from this point on, I promise!) I started playing and running WoD (mostly VtM), attended several local cons, participated in a few larps. Started running CP2020 which was a blast.
Then Uni happened with no people to play with, then I moved to US where I discovered indie RPGs. Still with no folks to play with (actually it was my English that was the limiting factor) I bought and read through a lot of systems. I moved back after 3 years; some more downtime happened. Then I found a group of people playing online things like Burning Wheel (burning what?) and AW (not another post-apo…) and decided to join. One of the most active GMs (refs?) was hacking a lot of one-offs of his own so I ended up playing AW and his apocalypse-inspired homebrew games. Never got to play BW (or Mouse Guard) which is a shame still.
Since I write software, there’s a bunch od obvious interests adjacent to ttrpgs that I have. Video games (and level design and gameplay design), board games (2-player ones I dig the most), languages and conlangs, 2d and 3d art and a bunch of others. I’m not that much into comic books but there are several graphic experiences I cherish: Mouse Guard, Artesia, anything by Enki. I’ve got a massive pile of Heavy Metal magazines and sometimes think about designing game based on the power fantasy HM represents. But it’s a difficult subject matter to tackle in a respectful manner so I’ll let others figure it out.
I found Gauntlet stumbling across the term OSR which due to my most recent rpg hiatus I did not know anything about. So I decided to learn everything I could. 
I like how OSR (in some representations at least) twists the player-character dynamic. I’m plotting to finally get my wife into p&p games with this. Wish me luck!
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Welcome to the Gauntlet! I’m envious at all the WoD you’ve gotten to play…those games are all in the “I’d love to play but can never get a group together” territory. I’d especially love to play Mage: The Ascension but honestly, I love WoD.
Re: Artesia (I’m still upset that he just stopped writing it!), if you liked this I think you might want to check out Monstress. Beautiful art, and a cool story. It’s not quite the same (again, I’m upset that Artesia isn’t still being written!), but I think you might enjoy it.
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Welcome @dominik - hope to run in to you in a GMT-adjacent Gauntlet game at some point. Maybe at Gauntlet Con in a couple of weeks: https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/gauntlet-con-2019.html
I suspect that with 5ed VtM and the licensing they’re doing in video game space there’s bound to be some WoD revival so you’ll have tons of opportunity to play. 5ed is very close in tone to the pre-nWoD games. Whether mages are coming back IDK but MtA characters were extremely OP and mage games I’ve experienced were more of the “make stuff up and get what you want every single time” type of affair. Combined effort of a tight group of mages shreds any challenge into pieces. :-/
@Alun_R I’ll see if I can virtuattend Gauntlet Con. My time is limited and with a lot of rpg intake over the years, I feel I should focus on output right now (hence my goal to get gaming party together). Thanks for the pointer though! I didn’t know GC is online before you hinted at it. 
oh man this is my other issue with the WoD stuff…I am extremely confused by the continuity. There’s old world of darkness, new world of darkness, and…other stuff!!!
High level view is rather simple, IMO. There’s 1) old WoD (Masquerade and other stuff) that includes everything up to and including Time of Judgement (2004-ish). There’s 2) a parallel universe/alt timeline in what’s known as nWoD or Chronicles of Darkness (Requiem and friends) that almost killed the IP. Then there’s 3) 5ed which is a recent reboot and deals with lore very close to old WoD but set in modern times (we’ve got smartphones and Interwebz in 2019 - who knew?). Then there was also 20th anniversary that tried to expand on old WoD but didn’t really succeed so let’s not talk about it.
In general 5ed would be the way to play today unless you want to try old WoD for a nostalgia trip or something. There are 100 maybe 200 supplements to the old WoD so there’s enough stuff to fill several lifes with. Some good, some bad, a lot can be adapted to 5ed easily, which is nice.
FWIW video games were set either in old WoD or are in 5ed (new Bloodlines and Coteries of NY). I don’t think there were any based on Chronicles but the one CCP (of Eve online fame) worked on was probably set in nWoD. HTH!
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This is a great explanation. Thank you! I’m definitely down with 5e…of the games, which do you think is the best? Thematically I love vampire, but I’m curious if any others are particularly well done?
Hi there, I’m Simon. I came here from the Discern Realities podcast, having got into Dungeon World recently.
My longest love in gaming is RueQuest, and all things Glorantha, and various other Chaosium and Greg Stafford games by extension. Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon and a few others. Gregg was a good friend, I used to meet him at conventions over here in Europe from time to time. I miss him deeply. I’ve been a member of that community here in the UK most of my life now, in the convention scene here in the UK and in Europe.
I’ve gravitated towards rules light and indie story games for some time now. Amber Diceless was a huge revelation for me. I’ve not played it for a long while, but will be starting up a game with my daughters and some of their school friends soon. I suggested Dungeon World, but they wanted something less restrictive genre wise, where they could have more diverse characters, and ADRPG should fit the bill nicely.
My great love at the moment in game design is PBTA. The incredible terseness, expressiveness and flexibility of the system is still shocking even, what, 9 years later? So I’m working on a Glorantha hack and played it a little and it’s shaping up well.
My most recent game play experience was running a short Blades in the Dark game for about 10 sessions. That was a ton of fun, with a finale that’s probably the best few sessions of gaming I’ve ever played or run.
Anyway, I’m loving the forum and Gauntlet community, and had a great welcome so far.
Simon Hibbs
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Right now 5ed is Vampire only (with Werewolf in the works, I’m being told) so there isn’t that much to choose from. As for the old WoD I’d probably still go either Vampire or Werewolf or Hunter so from my POV 5ed expands as it should. 
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Welcome @Simon_Hibbs - Glorantha … Ahh, Yes, I remember it well & with great affection. Hope to run into you in a game from the Gauntlet Calendar.
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Hi folks, I’m Victor. I’ve only been involved in the ttrpg community for a few months. Last month I participated in the Mega RPG game jam on itch io (you can find my submission here https://victor-a-gonzalez.itch.io/orphn-1). That project is still in development. Apart from that, I designed a monster A.I. ruleset for automating monsters which I’m told was good. I’m currently in the process of writing lots of monsters for an eventual book release of that system and would love to get some playtests going.
Also, embarrassing confession, I’ve never played a ttrpg before. I come from a board/card and video game background, and I love to read rpg books (currently devouring all the cool releases for the MegaRPG jam). I know it’s a bit odd to have designed RPG supplements and even a game without ever having played one, but I think that’s informed my style of game design which is out there, I think, in a positive way. Anywho, I’m excited to play my first real ttrpg at Gauntlet Con 2019.
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Welcome to ALL the new folks. Great to see!
–Ron–
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Hey!
I’m Georg (they/them), a bipolar queer game designer from Austria, Europe.
I don’t have words for how long I have meant to join this place and community; but I was feeling weird, and out of place. I have social anxiety, but I’m trying to be pro-active so … here I am!
Trophy got me here. I saw its elegance and immediately thought that I want to connect with the people that exist here. I really also appreciate the accessibility of having a Jargon post, so I don’t feel completely culture-shocked just from coming here.
I appreciate all of your work, and hope I’m welcome, even if I am a very weird and out-of-place stuffed animal.
-Georg
EDIT: Oh, absolutely feel free to grab a free Community Copy of Michtim: Fluffy Adventures or any of my other itch things. It’s like I’m coming here without a welcome gift.
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