I used to play a lot of sci-fi RPG back in the day at various clubs and amongst friends at each others' houses. It was mostly a very much amended version of the original small black book Traveller which was renamed Auslander by our referee due to those changes, and the occasional tabletop battle. As the years went by, real life got in the way and we all moved away to different parts of the country. Our face-to-face gaming sessions dwindled so much so that the small group of us that were left began to play via email (PBeM). Although it is slower paced than face-to-face, it is still just as immersive.
These PBeM games mainly moved to new "eras" from sci-fi and consisted of a variety of fantasy/faux-history strategy games, as well as games that were higher level that involved manoeuvring forces around a map culminating in occasional face-to-face tabletop battle games. But, that said, Auslander was slowly developed into StarVigia by our referee, so the few of us gamers who are left still manage to get our sci-fi fix.
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| Free Space Photo from t'Internet |
Eventually, though, the remaining group of us have had to settle on only playing RPGs via email. The latest iteration of StarVigia I have played on and off for about four or five years, but I have played prior to this latest resurgence and I think its first iteration was several years prior to this whilst we still managed to occasionally play face-to-face.
My particular character for this scenario, Thomas Aquinas, first saw adventure back in 2020, but there have been delays in playing recently due to real life getting in the way. I had also played one or two other characters by email prior to him and also a number of characters post-Auslander whilst we still played face-to-face.
I won't go into too much detail about this particular StarVigia game here, only to say that gaming takes many forms, and depending upon our individual circumstances, we must play what we can, where we can.
Off on a bit of tangent now as this is mainly just a free-form chat post - I am very lucky that I have had a very full gaming life. It started when I was a mere nipper at primary school in the 1970s with Basic Dungeons and Dragons, which then moved onto a solid group of friends I met at a local gaming club with whom I played with (all sorts of games ranging from Runequest and the sci-fi games mentioned above) for decades slowly moving from meeting several times a week, sometimes with up to 30 players over weekend sessions, to just a handful of us playing by email today. Since having a family, my two sons have played several tabletop games with me and I have had the fortune of meeting a number of other Dungeons and Dragons groups in the last decade or so, including the latest group where we play online TTRPGs.
On top of all of this, I spend a lot of my time solo-gaming and thinking about gaming. This blog is my repository for games played, figures painted and thoughts I have about gaming. It keeps me going.
