Or are you wrong, that is the question. For serious, I continue to be amazed by how awesome this game consistently is. I’ve been gaming for two and half decades. I cut my teeth on the Red Box and 2nd editions. Toon, Shadowrun, Paranoia, and Call of Cthulhu were all played with great abandon. In college White Wolf’s storyteller games promised Story based games and totes failed to deliver; I even larped for a few years, because the first few times were completely sweet and awesome. Disillusioned I ran GURPS with almost no rules, played D&D because that was all there was.
Still I do love a good board game, tactical strategy, miniatures. And really to a much larger extent than most people are willing to admit, that is what D&D is. A series of battles loosely (sometimes more or less, depending on the DM) tied together by story. There’s nothing wrong with that. I enjoy it. Love it even.
AW has won my heart over completely. I can’t wait to try my hand at it (albeit Monsterhearts, and AW Hack). I can barely stand the wait to play the game again next week (especially when we have to skip a week or more). Part of it is surely that we’ve got a rocking MC. No offense to Dave though, a huge part of it is just how the game itself is set up. I don’t worry so much about what my characters can do, or how I can make them better. No, I worry about how Eliza is going to fix everything. I worry about how Twice is going to keep all the promises that have been made. I empathize with my characters and then I do my best to be them for a few hours. That’s not to say I don’t think about how I can make the other players’ characters’ lives more interesting and entertaining for them, but I trust the players to play the characters, and I’ve gotten to know most of the characters.
It’s like watching a great ensemble cast TV show, but you get to be one of the characters. And maybe some episodes not everyone gets screen time, and usually even when someone gets what they want there are strings attached. And even though it seems like things just keep getting worse, hope is always there.
If you play table top RPGs of any stripe, you owe it to yourself to check this game out. There are tons of APs out there. I recommend checking out The Walking Eye* and Jank Cast, and of course our play group is posting our APs too (though we started a bit late.
*As I write this The Walking Eye is having some server troubles. You’ll just have to check back later and find the APs yourself.