WAAHOO! D&D Gone Wild. What Do You Do For Fill-In Games?

[WayneLigon]

We have a few times when the regular GM does not show. A couple weeks ago, we decided to just start a simple beer and pretzels game, with no holds barred. Nothing is left out, at all. If you have the resource for it, you're good to go.

We did the first one this week. We had a nymph druid , a winter wolf druid, and a catman weretiger monk as the PCs, all neutral. It was a blast, just doing total experimentation with anything that came to hand. The raid into a yaun-ti lair to retrieve golden cups for their red-dragon patron was great. The setting is one huge city where space and time have been pushed so hard they've backlashed into fractures, allowing the city to trade with multiple worlds and times.

IT was pretty cool as a temporary thing to blow off steam.

So, when the GM is not there and everyone else still wants to game, what do you do?

 

[Crothian]

So, when the GM is not there and everyone else still wants to game, what do you do?

I don't know, its never happened

 

[Teflon Billy]

Robo Rally

 

[Jolly Giant]

We've played Magic; the Gathering. We've had a spontaneously generated one-night D&D adventure, where all the PCs were goblins. We've designed truely weird; yet strangely fascinating, prestige classes...

Lately though, we've been playtesting/brainstorming either Vikings D20 or the RPG system one of the other guys is working on.

 

[scourger]

We have 3/5 of our current group who have DMed (although only 2 of have actually done so in a while), so it's usually more of an issue of last minute cancellation by the DM that requires an alternate game. The last one was the Zombies minis/tile based board game. We also have several other card & board games for such times. I've actually run a number of "filler" RPGs, but I've had varying degrees of success with it--so I'm not anxious to do it again. Luckily, there are enough RPGs that are campaigns on hold that I could pick up one of those if I were really motivated (but I'm not). I even made a game that was designed ot be such "filler." It was great for a while, but it crashed the worst of any game I've ever run. If my weekly group/DM had to cancel, I think I would just go play poker instead.

EDIT: But I would love it if we could just do an RPG "on the fly" like you did.

 

[francisca]

Robo Rally

That will be on my list after I pick up a copy of the new game from buddy, who runs a gamestore.

In the past, we've done one-offs with Shadowrun and GammaWorld, played Pirates of the Spanish Main, and run Kobolds Ate My Baby. I imagine we'll be adding the Reaper Warlord Minature game before too long as well.

 

[Kanegrundar]

We tend to play boardgames when we don't have a full group, or I'm just not prepared to run the game for the night. Right now our favorites are:
Heroscape
Zombies!!!
Memior '44
Arkham Horror
Strat-O-Matic Baseball
Warhammer Quest
Hero Quest
Talisman

Once Descent: Journeys in the Dark comes out I'm sure it will be on the list as well.

Kane

 

[Azar]

We have a massive free-for-all battle.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I've never missed a session, and I've even made it to ones that weren't supposed to happen, so I wouldn't know what happens when the DM isn't there! This intrigues me, however, that they could do things without me present. Boggles the mind, almost.

 

[Romnipotent]

depends on the mood... if we stick around (and have keys to University gaming club lockers)
Poker (mostly Texas Hold em)
Munchkin
SPANC (maybe)
PIMP: The Backhanding
Lunchmoney (plus sticks and stones and beer money)
Doom 3 boardgame
Settlers of Catan
Twilight Imperium
Escape from Colditz
Modern Naval Battles (Cold War Naval Battles, now days)
MagBlast Edition 2 OR 1
Robo Rally
Formula De
the list goes on and on

We also run one shots and sometimes we just go home.