Reaching Day 19 of the RPGaDAY 2024 Challenge and our topic is Sensational Session. This one is a little vague. Yesterday we had “Memorable moment of Play” which is just about the same thing. So I’m going to talk about what I think would make for a sensational session.
In my humble opinion, a sensational session is where everyone (GM included) has something to do that contributes to the game in a timely manner. I’ve played in a WEG Star Wars game that had so many players in it, my character could take his turn and then I could take a 15-20 minute nap before needing to do something again. I’ve played in a Cyberpunk game where the hacker had a mission to complete, so the rest of us left to get some food. These are not good sessions.
Now that I’ve been typing up this blog post, I think the RPG that has succeeded in giving everyone the opportunity to play no matter the scenario is Star Trek Adventures. They had the concept of a “Secondary Character” that you can create before hand or create on the fly. If you are playing the Conn officer on a Starfleet vessel and there is an away team going to the planet on a rescue mission, instead of the player being bored, they could create a secondary character that is a member of the security team.
Sure, there might be sessions that are geared more towards one or two players, but remember that there are other players at the table that have taken just as much time and effort to be present for the gaming session. With how limited our gaming time seems to be, lets make sure that everyone gets something sensational out of them.
Feedback from a reader: Phil Hatfield on MeWe responded to my Quick to Learn post noting that he thought MiniSix was an easy to use game systems. It looks like it is free on DriveThruRPG so I’m going to check it out. He also stated that the FATE system was very simple. This is one I keep hearing about, but never had a chance to try.
Do you have any thoughts on what makes for a sensational session? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
