{Quest Log} Happy Valentines, Gamma World and Need Some Advice on Session Recordings

First of all, happy Valentine to those who are celebrating the day (hmm...it just passed a few minutes here as I'm writing this) with their loved ones. Just wanted to take this opportunity to post a little of what I've been doing on the gaming front these past weeks.

Gaming
My first one-shot session of the year went well, although the player we had it for didn't manage to have his last game before he upped from town and moved to the capital for work. I wish him all the best, though we will miss him.

The one-shot ended up being a two-shot session since the first two encounters took a little longer than expected. So we saved the climatic last encounter which lasted for the whole of the second session. It was a blast, but had no much to mention about, except for that it showed how rusty I have been with GMing.

I regretted not taking photos of the session, so I could show you guys our gaming group and remember the great moments we had during the session. Recording my gaming sessions has been something on my mind for a while. I do know there are sites that do live-stream or keeping voice recordings of their games but I wonder if anyone here who has done this before would be willing to share their experience, and what equipment do you use for recording your session?

This week, my gaming group invited me over for a game of Gamma World during the weekend. I'll admit that I'm not as hyped for this 'boardgame-RPG hybrid' (at least from what I've heard) but am willing to try it none the less. Any tips anyone would like to share while playing this game?

Silver Marches Wiki
Progress of my Silver Marches wiki is going slowly but steady, I'm already starting to get into the city entries. Once I'm done with that, I still have the regional history, organizations and NPCs to deal with. But overall, things are going well at the moment.

Blogging
Only in the second month of the year and I'm already not being able to keep to my new year resolutions. But I haven't been completely absent for the past weeks in the bloggersphere, it's just that I've restarted seriously contributing RPG-related news to the Purple Pawn, so my posts were mostly there than here.

I'm still playing with an idea of putting up my notes for the one-shot I did if I sorted them properly, would anyone like to see them?

{Quest Log} New Year Resolutions for 2011

2010 has generally been a year where my gaming has taken a big hit. New job, new life, new priorities means that gaming has been taking a real backseat for the past year, as you can tell with this blog going really quiet compared to in the past.

It's hard to imagine sometimes that this blog has been around for more than 2 years and looking back at some of the old posts, it does show how the quality and quantity over the years has been a dead drop.

While I won't say that these resolutions that I have in mind for this year are the sure things that I want to keep due to real-life circumstances, I think this post should be a good reminder of what I plan to do with my gaming life for this year.

Game More
Since I started my new job, I've only had a handful of sessions last year. This is due to scheduling conflicts with my day offs with my player's (I work during the weekends).

But things are looking slightly brighter at the end of the year as work is starting to stabilize and it's easier to plan ahead for gaming sessions. So, this year, I plan to run or play in a gaming session at least once a more, if not on a weekly basis.

So far, my Eberron one-shot is coming out really well and I should be running it soon sometimes during January 2011, which makes me excited. Probably would do a post about how it goes.

Finish My Silver Marches Wiki
Progress on this has been slower than I like. I admit that procrastination is among the faults of why it is still undone. At this point, I'm almost done with the wilderness aspect of the wiki and am making headway into databasing the cities of the region.

I hope to get it done as soon as possible within this year, so that I can run a 'Western Marches' style sandbox campaign with it that will sustain my gaming life for a very long time to come.

Blog More
I've told myself many a times that I would get this blog back up to speed to whatever glory days it had, if any.

Unfortunately, my detachment from 4E has been so long that I've gone completely out of touch and have little interest to support whatever WoTC does with the IP.

While I claim many a times that Pathfinder is my new love, I have yet to really take a deep crack into the rules system and decipher them.

At the moment, I'm forseeing that this blog will be filled with more personal posts about my games and session preps than actual 'real' content for gamers to share. My plan is to increase my frequency back to a weekly, if not twice monthly basis.

I'm still open to do reviews but I doubt that I'm really the right person, with the right experience to say anything reliable. I've also been playing around with an idea of including more RPG news into this blog but I think it would be more appropriate if it was in another blog. What do you think?


That's all really, these gaming goals/resolutions are simple and intentionally abstract since they do collide with my personal and real-life resolutions.

I don't need overly complicated ones like learn and play a new rules system, a new genre or introducing the game to new players when I know full well I can't maintain or achieve those goals.

Maybe those will come later when real life circumstances permit. Do feel free to share what are your gaming resolutions this year and how you plan to go about them.

Happy New Year and keep on rolling those dices!

{Quest Log} Writing Campaign Wikis isn't easy...

So I have decided to build my Silver Marches sandbox and have reactivated my Obsidian Portal account, thinking that it was the right tool for the job.

Well, it is but right now at this moment, I'm getting a little frustrated about the formatting and all the information crumpled together looks like an unorganised mesh, which wasn't what I had in mind when I started writing in the wiki.

I think I have ran straight into my first brick wall about writing this sandbox which is how am I going to put the information from the books in such a way that it makes it easier to reference. Bear in mind, the reason why I wanted to take the information out of the books is so that I can put them somewhere where they are cohesive and linked properly.

I think I need to draft a template which list down the significant information for adventurers in a certain order. I'm starting with the town of Quaervarr, which is really a simple town that only has one landmark (but more of my own creations will be added later) but it's already giving me a headache as I try to rearrange where and how should I present each information about the town's defenses, government, people, food source, important NPCs and plot hooks.

So far my template would include in order;

Overview - A brief overall look of the location, perhaps one or two paragraphs just to give a general feel of the place.

History - The complete history of the place, somehow I tend to get a better idea of a place when I know where it's coming from that led to its current position

Population - A rough estimate of the populace but combination of what races inhabit the place is more important. Should I mention where each race comes from?

Law & Order - A breakdown of the location's enforcement, defense and judicial system just in case the players want to get smart in looking for trouble.

Economy - The important imports and exports that the location and what sort of goods that can be found there.

Points of Interest - A list of places that might interest adventurers, each with their own wiki entry.

NPCs of Note - A list of NPCs and personas that the adventurers would most likely meet, each with their own separate wiki entry along with a short description to mention any titles or positions.

Plot Hooks - For GM information. What could draw the adventurers to the location and what adventurers are afoot in the location?

Somehow I feel something is missing and there's where you guys can come in. Do you think this list of information is complete for a sandbox? What would you include in your list of information for a sandbox-type wiki entry?

If you have a different approach of organising sandbox information, I would like to hear them too!