Defining Moments For Me In The Gaming Hobby Part Two

So I thought I would look at the games and what has influence my gaming life in adulthood. See what you think?

When I started my degree I met up with Jim and we played a lot of Traveller. Jim's other love was 6mm WW2. He had Brits and Germans and plenty of other stuff but no Americans. So I embarked on a crusade of trying to be able to play just about every formation which I failed. At the time the money I spent on Heroics and Ros seemed obscene at the time. We played a lot of Command Decision, the only game I think I was ever any good at and I lost, a lot. I dipped my toe in again a few years, on a smaller scale, but using GHQ figures. Still love it.

After I started work and got my own PC I started playing UFO: Enemy Unknown but you probably know it as X-Com. This was my first computer gaming obsession. I spent days playing it. I have gone on to play this game over and over. I have completed it well over a dozen times. Although I haven't played all the games in the franchise I have played nearly all of them. This has been another crossover experience. This has become a game I want to do on tabletop.

After finishing my degree I had a fairly stable gaming group. Most of the GMing was done by Mike and Mike loved Cyberpunk. This is a game I had looked and I had read the William Gibson novels and I liked them. The system was okay and I was more into sci-fi than fantasy games so it was a win win for me. What really made the game tho was Mike. He created a great game with plenty of paranoia. It was the kind of campaign that still lives in my head and my main character in that is still one of my all time faves.

Fallout came out not long after UFO. This was another game I have played and played. I have always considered myself as a child of the apocalypse that never came. The world of Fallout would have been one that I could have carved a life out for myself, if the worst had come to the worst. I had read some post-apocalyptic books and  looked at games like Aftermath and Gamma World. This has started a lifelong love of the genre as a gaming arena.

We moved on from that to Harn. Again this was with Mike as a GM. This was another great campaign. As a team we really gelled, apart from one of the mages who had a habit of killing his mates with a crazy  powerful spell. This is a game I really brought into. My character is this was one of my most beloved. Sadly, due to player pressure it was turned into a D&D game as 3rd edition had just come out at the time. This gutted my character and the game for me. I ran it myself a couple of times and it has become one of those games that I would really like to play again.

Conspiracy X was the first real campaign I ran as an adult. Although I guess inspired by The X-Files it was it's own game. There were aliens but the main focus was on the supernatural. This game has over 50 detailed NPCs and a database of well over 600 hundred entries. I spent years of using all my gaming time devoted to this.  I had player characters from one season battle their characters from the season before. It went on for a few years and has been reborn a couple of times and had a few special one off sessions. Although I love all the stuff I have one this is the one I have the softest spot for.

Savage Worlds came along after an introduction by a friend of mine called Mark. This has become a staple of the games I have been running for over a decade. It is a great, yet simple set of rules. Given that I play in an environment where the games change frequently, it is even more ideal. It has become the backbone of the Viking Game I am running on and off and what I have aimed to convert all my other games into.

When Fallout 3 came out I was hooked. It had been a decade it more since I last played the game and I kind of missed it. It took a game that I loved and turned into an open world shooter with a lot of choices to make. I have played it through to the end multiple times and still not finished it off. The post apocalyptic vibe is still one I love. New Vegas and Fallout 4 have just reinforced that for me. This became a game I spent years trying to reproduce. The figures I have for this are all in 15mm and that hasn't really got much of a look in for a long time. I keep hoping that Bethesda is going to release another game although I guess I might be a bit hopeful.

I remember seeing a promo video for Skyrim in HMV and being hooked immediately. It is perhaps the perfect fantasy setting for a computer game and to me at least the definition of open world game. Whilst I couldn't say for certain I am pretty sure this is the individual game that I have the longest time investment in, although it may be UFO. There is just so much to do. After all this time I am still finding stuff to do in the game. There is DLC I haven't even touch yet.