Hello all.

Big geek weekend this past weekend. Friday was a bit slow, worked on some notes for my upcoming Global Frequency game. Saturday I made it out, with a number of the guys from my gaming group to see Iron Man. Excellent film, and a another quality piece for Marvel’s stable of movies. I would have to say that this ranks above X-men 3, and on par with X-man 2.

On Sunday, our gaming group got together to discuss the state of gaming within our group. The talk was very productive and we came up with a number of updates to our social contract. Some of which include:

• When Possible all games should be rescheduled not just canceled.
• Cancellations should be done as early as possible, with cancellations on game night, reserved for true emergencies.
• We will keep a stock of backup games on hand so on a night when a game gets canceled that someone else can come in and run a single-night adventure.
• GM’s who want to run new game systems, must now run a single night, using pre-gens to demonstrate the game system and to give the players an idea of how the game works, before starting character creation.
• A GM will pitch a new campaign to the players. Players will be honest if a game is something they would not play at all. Games that players are not strongly opposed to will be played (see below).
• GM’s of new campaigns, have 4 sessions to get their game off the ground. After the 4th session the GM and the players will discuss if the game is viable enough to continue. Those that are not end and a new game can be started.
• Players of new campaigns, need to put a full effort in during those 4 sessions, and give an honest try to help get the game off the ground.

After that we discussed our three running campaigns. My Iron Heroes game will be continuing, but we have decided that running a full mass-combat system and the main storyline is too much for the players and I to keep up with, so we are going to remove the mass combat system and stick to the main story.

The Dresden Files game, having only been run one and a half times (once by IM) was declared dead by the second GM to take it on. In its place, Spenser will run the new 4e material that comes out later this month, and after GenCon will launch a full 4e campaign. This was met by excitement by the group, as we have all been playing the ENworld created material, and loving it.

Sargon also killed the Cyberpunk game, as it had 2 actual sessions out of 6. In its place he is considering running a Start Wars Saga Ed campaign, based minutes after Order 66 is issued. It will be Jedi Hunted game, with all players playing Jedi on the run, during the rise of the Empire. This pitch was also well received, when Spenser said, “You had me at Jedi.”

All in all it was a very positive night, and a real boost the sagging morale that was surrounding our group. I forgot how useful these State of the Game meetings are, and I am sure we will have another one, hopefully under less dire circumstances, next year.

This week, I am going to keep the posting light. I will do a reaction article or two, to some other blog posts on the net. This week I will be spending time writing my first article for Gnome Stew, being run by Martin from Treasure Tables, and being staffed by 10 of the large contributors to Treasure Tables, and the Treasure Table Forums.  I don’t want to give anything away about the article, but I think I have a pretty good opening topic.

So check out what is going on this week.