A Weekend In Sacramento

I drove up to Sacramento last weekend to do the photo shoot for A Penny For My Thoughts, and while I was there, I managed get in a little bit of gaming. Ryan and I broke out BattleLore and managed to get in two Lore adventures, Crisis in Avignon and Assaulting the Tourelles. These were my first games with a full War Council and with a customizable one, and I really like the flavor that the latter option adds to the game. I also realized that I'm willing to deal with BattleLore's setup time for a six or more banner game. Otherwise, I'd rather play Memoir '44. Still, my love for the Commands and Colors system goes deep.

On the roleplaying side, I got roped into producing a pilot episode of Primetime Adventures for Ryan, Jerry, and James. The idea of cop show in the vein of The Shield or The Wire was floated, but we settled instead on Air Crew, which was a cross between Airplane! and The Love Boat (with a good helping of the Airport movies as well). I was the only one at the table with prior PTA experience, but that didn't matter much. We had a few problems with disagreements about how long the episode should be and what the tone of the game was, but everyone picked up the Fan Mail mechanic pretty quickly, and it ended up being a lot of fun. And as Ryan said, "That was the sort of game we wouldn't have considered if we hadn't been playing PTA."