The past few weeks has been quite crazy here at the Hey Meepling HQ, from attending great local conventions, trying out new games created by local designers ((stay tuned for the next RPG posts)), and setting up new products for our shop. But things have evened out a bit, and I finally have the time((just enough for me to write this article)) to finish this overdue finale to the We Play Too Much series, where we talked about the Games I Play and the Games We Play. So without much further ado, these are the Games I Run ((and where Angela is also a player)).
Manila By Night
System: Vampire the Masquerade, 20th Anniversary Edition
Ah, Vampire the Masquerade, the game that has successfully converted me ((thru dominate and blood bonds)) away from Dungeons and Dragons. I am a relatively new tabletop gamer, having been playing and running since 2016 only, and initially most of my gaming experience came from D&D. But on one fateful night, one of our friends introduced me to the World of Darkness. He also ran a short lived campaign, also set in the busy streets of Metro Manila. I was immediately hooked, and was turned into a huge fan of the Vampire the Masquerade series ever since then.
Saddened by the immediate end of our campaign, I contented myself with just reading the various City By Night books and others that I could get by grubby hands on. But alas, the call of the blood was too strong to resist, and eventually I decided to run my very own Vampire the Masquerade campaign using the 20th Anniversary rules, and setting it in the city most familiar to us, Manila ((more accurately, Metro Manila)).
This is currently the longest campaign I am running as a Game Master, or more precisely, as a Storyteller. I have been running it once a month since January 2018, with a few breaks every so often. The entirety of 2018 is what I dub the “first season”, while we are now in our second and last season for this specific chronicle.
Over the months, we have gone through a number of players, originally starting with around 10, but now reduced to four consistent/core players. Namely, these are Veronica (Carlo), the Toreador socialite; Alessa (Che), the Nosferatu informant; Adrian (Nico), the Malkavian teacher; and Lexi (Chester), the Caitiff doctor. I even have a co-storyteller, Kyle, who works in the background helping me run the discord channel and creating plots and NPCs.
The campaign is set in 2014, Metro Manila. Originally, the first season is me trying to find out what works for me and the players, so I ran all sorts of plots: political, mystery, investigation, occult, and others. The players were trying to learn about the society their characters live in, how it is to be a Kindred, and the nightly routines of unlife. They had encountered a kid who was also a werewolf, prowling the walled city of Intramuros; they investigated the disappearance of a ghouls master; they played corporate espionage to uncover blackmail against the grandchilde of the Prince; they stopped the importation of blood-infused drugs; they investigated floating body parts in the Pasig River; and even seeing with their own eyes the horrors of the Battle of Manila as reenacted by spectres; and many more.
Eventually, the first season came to a fiery end, when the Sabbat made their final move, and struck swiftly and brutally, deep in the heart of Elysium during a gathering of important Kindred of the city. Right before their eyes, the coterie saw their world and their friends burn.
The second season deals with the fallout of this attack. Here, the Sabbat now control the city, and the Ivory Tower has crumbled, with most of its elders and leaders now dead. The players try to survive nightly, evading the Sabbat and its packs. They have even joined the Resistance group created by the few remaining elders and the former Sheriff to retake the city. Some of them have chosen to take a page out of the Sabbat playbook by infiltrating the Sword of Caine itself, and try to bring it from within; the others decided that convincing the Anarchs of Quezon City and Marikina to join the Camarilla cause is a more worthwhile endeavour. They even worked with the remaining Tremere to create magically encrypted social media accounts for safer communication.
I am very excited to see how this long running chronicle will end. Will the players retake the city for the Camarilla and be its new leaders? Will the infiltrators betray their allies and join with the Sabbat cause? Or will they meet Final Death for defying the unholy crusade? Whatever the outcome, I am proud to have run this campaign to my current and previous players. I hope they enjoy the ride till the end, I know I will.
The Darkening of Mirkwood
System: The One Ring 1st Edition
The One Ring Roleplaying Game, formerly known as The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild, is, in my opinion, the best tabletop RPG set in the fantastical world of J.R.R. Tolkien. It was designed by Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi, and was published by Cubicle 7((the 2nd edition will soon be released!!!! GAAAAAH)).
Immediately, upon reading the TOR books, you will get the sense that the creators of this lovely game have a great passion and respect for the characters and the world that Tolkien made. And since both of us are huge fans of Lord of the Rings ((both the books and the movies)) and The Hobbit ((the book and the 1978 film)), it was an easy decision to start a campaign, set in Middle-Earth, using this system.
With this in mind, we decided to round up all of our TRPG friends who are also fans of the works of the Professor. So for the next few months ((years most probably)), I will be running The Darkening of Mirkwood campaign book for The One Ring, while Angela will be chronicling the fellowship’s many adventures.
The Darkening of Mirkwood is a complete campaign, which spans three decades in-game, and is mostly set within and around the areas near the great forest of Mirkwood. I was told by more veteran players that the campaign seemed to be akin to The Great Pendragon Campaign((80 year spanning campaign)) by Chaosium.
The players hail from the free-folk of Middle-Earth, from Elves of Mirkwood, Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the Blue Mountain, even a Hobbit from the Shire, and much farther still, is a Rider of Rohan. The players will deal with the Shadow growing within the forest, and they will try their hardest to push back the darkness as it expands year by year. They do this for various personal reasons, perhaps to protect the people that they care about and their own personal holdings, or as a mission from their liege.
I am quite interested to see how the campaign will unfold, especially since this is the first campaign of its kind that I have run. Additionally, due to the news that the 2nd edition will be released soon, I might convert the current campaign to the newer edition, but we shall see. So stay tuned with us, as the fellowship’s adventures are immortalized here.
Masks of Nyarlathotep
System: Pulp Cthulhu
This is the newest campaign out of the three, and another first for me due to how the game is set-up. Normally, Call of Cthulhu games by Chaosium Inc., are run with a team of investigators, as they try to “stop” the end of the world. But this time I am trying out the Pulp Cthulhu rules for the 7th edition. Here we can have a game akin to Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and other Pulp-inspired media.
This is the perfect system to run, since I am running it as a one-on-one campaign with Angela. Just like the aforementioned pulp heroes, Angela is following tradition and going at it solo and maybe a sidekick or two ((which I play as well, as a quasi-NPC)). The reason for this is due to limited time, and a schedule becoming more congested than EDSA ((joke’s on you, nothing can beat EDSA congestion)), so we decided, why not play a campaign with just the two of us. Additionally, Pulp Cthulhu is a great choice since I can keep it more on the side of Action-Adventure than Horror ((Angela is not a big fan of the horror genre in general)).
Perhaps you ask, why Masks of Nyarlathotep? First off, this campaign book is one of the most beloved campaigns for Call of Cthulhu, and having played it once ((reaching up to end of London only)), I wanted to try it out again and finish it. Secondly, I believe that the campaign is perfect for an action-adventure, since it involves globe-trotting, fighting an evil cult who is trying to bring the end of the world, and even going toe-to-toe with various eldritch horrors. Also, the 7th edition books are just so gorgeous and it is, in my opinion, one of the better laid-out campaign books in general.
Recently, we have unearthed the journal of a certain Caridad Benitez, M.D., and in her diary, we saw the colorful life she lived back in the 1920s and her multiple brushes with the weird and horrific, as she and her friends try to stop the Black Pharaoh from ushering the end of the world.
This series of articles are finally done, but the gaming does not end. Even as I finish writing this, multiple ideas for a campaign are racing through my mind. There is also the need to try out all of the games that we bought from Session Zero, and eventually make a review of them as well. But with this, I hope you enjoyed reading about the games we play, and I ask you now, do we play too much??