Vote for us in the Stuffer Shack RPG 2012 Site of the Year Award!

This year I’ve decided to join the Stuffer Shack RPG Site of the Year Award, and I’m really hoping that I’ll win. I’ve been working on Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer since 2007, and in many ways it has grown far beyond my initial expectations. I’ve met a lot of awesome people, got to speak with the brilliant minds that were involved in the hobby that I loved so dearly and got to spread my ideas to those who are just discovering the hobby for the first time.

I know that I’m at a disadvantage compared to more professional looking blogs, with multiple authors, but I’m hoping that my blog’s content will speak for itself. So if you’d like to vote for this blog, click on this link!

[Mage: the Awakening Actual Play] Endangered Species Episode 5

Yesterday’s game was something of a catch-up session for two players who weren’t able to make it in the past few games, who were thankfully working on the same plotline. This was a decidedly short session, but sufficient to wrap up the plot hooks that they’d been investigating in the first story arc of the campaign. The player characters present for today’s session were Mikaboshi (played by Paulo), Melon Pan (played by Mappy) and Amaya (played by Silver Countess).

GMing Status: First Quarter Review

Early this year, I decided to put up a planned New Year’s Campaign Inventory up on the blog, right around the time I was midway through the Never A Dull Blade campaign for L5R. That said, the first quarter’s come and gone so quickly, but I’m glad I’m still technically on track.

Right now, I’m knee deep in Endangered Species, the Mage: the Awakening campaign that I’ve been hoping to pull of for a while now. I’ve run into a few kinks in running and have been making adjustments on the fly for a few sessions now, but I’m still confident that I can finish this game well, and with the sense of closure that I was able to get with the L5R campaign. I’ve also put together my own Consilium as evidenced by the slew of Tokyo Consilium Cabal posts I’ve been putting up over the past few days.

I’m not entirely certain how long the Mage campaign will go, but if I’m using the L5R campaign as a basis, then we might be looking at wrapping things up at around July. That’s a lot of sessions left to go, and I’m pretty interested in seeing just what the players will be doing by the end of the campaign. As with L5R I’ll be implementing breaks between story arcs to represent the kind of downtime that Mages have when they’re studying and otherwise pursuing the less glamorous aspects of their Awakened existence, so maybe the experience might flow just a little more freely then.

Of course, taking a break from a long campaign at around July means that there will be a lot of anticipation for what games will be launching in GenCon, which may or may not derail my hopes of running some of the games on the list. I feel that I owe it to myself to run Mistborn sometime, but I’m thinking of waiting until I get my hardbound copy from Crafty-Games before I do so.

As for Sci-Fi, there’s suddenly a ton of possibilities on the horizon, with Blue Planet 3rd edition and Fading Suns 3rd Edition also making their debut this year. While I’m waffling, I might decide to run a short Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game campaign just to get the Supers itch out of my system.

[Mage: the Awakening] Endangered Species Cabals – The Justice Knights

Eccentric would be too kind a word for the Cabal that call themselves the Justice Knights. A team of young, and perhaps deluded Mages with an obsession with the new and interesting are somewhat of an odd duck in the Tokyo Consilium. Still, as one of the other forces of the Free Council, the Justice Knights are also perhaps the most proactive Cabal that involve themselves in many different aspects of daily life.

Led by a masked willworker calling himself Zero Renja, the Knights take on a worldly view of their station. As Awakened individuals, each of the Knights believe that it is their destiny to use their powers for the good of mankind. This rather childish view of “Good” vs. “Evil” has earned the Knights the general disdain of both the Amatsu-Kami and Yomi. Thankfully, the Knights have some measure of caution in their crime-fighting heroics, and have so far not been caught in a violation of the Veil.

The Justice Knights might be strange, but that doesn’t mean that hey don’t make for interesting allies. The members of the Knights are often well connected, with large networks of sleeper subcultures that listen to them if they decide to push their influence. These Mages cultivate strong ties with these marginalized subcultures and can use them for information gathering and as a smokescreen for their efforts.

Members:

Zero Renja (Mastigos, Free Council)
Antoinette Du Winter (Acanthus, Free Council)
Laughing Man (Obrimos, Free Council)
Bancho (Thyrsus, Free Council)
Hime-Chan (Moros, Free Council)

[Mage: the Awakening] Endangered Species Cabals – Negoro-Gumi

The Negoro-Gumi Cabal is a secretive group consisting of members that all belong to the Adamantine Arrows Order. They work closely with the Amatsu-Kami, having sworn oaths of fealty to protect the harmony of the Tokyo Consilium, and are quite possibly the only group of Mages that can give Emma-O pause.

The arrangement between the Amatsu-Kami and the Negoro-Gumi is quite simple. The Adamantine Arrows are warriors, assassins and all around thugs that handle the lion’s share of combat and violence as required by the Tokyo Consilium. In exchange, the Amatsu-Kami take care of their requirements for mana, artifacts and a sanctum. The Negoro-Gumi also enjoy more worldly perks such as finances and influence necessary to keep their operations running. When they’re not out on missions from the other Cabals, the Negoro-Gumi are involved in various Security Firms that specialize in bodyguards.

The Negoro-Gumi also enter into shorter term contracts with the other Cabals if things get hairy, but this is done sparingly as recruiting the Negoro-Gumi is a considerable investment that most of the Cabals won’t normally be able to afford.

Members:

Benkei (Mastigos, Adamantine Arrow) *Councilor
Hanzo (Moros, Adamantine Arrow)
Jubei (Acanthus, Adamantine Arrow)
Kotaro (Thyrsus, Adamantine Arrow)
Musashi (Obrimos, Adamantine Arrow)