A Year of NetherWar

Hello heroes! I hope you’re having a fabulous day out there in blogspace. Thank you for tuning in for a bit of a nostalgic one this week. As I’m sure you noticed, we wrapped up our NetherWar game after 53 adventures, 3 recaps, and more spent Hero Points than you can shake a stick at. We laughed, we cried, we faced so many Overdrive variants. At the time I’m writing this, we’re a week away from the finale and I am just a wet ball of emotions trying to put the pride and joy I feel about this game. I wanted to take some time to write it out so I can really express how spectacular this experience has been to me. I’m sure I won’t be nearly this articulate when I’m blubbering on stream next Monday.

Gratitude is the primary emotion I associate with this experience. I’m incredibly grateful for the experience I’ve had running this game. Being the Gamemaster for this amazing series with this phenomenal cast is one of the highlights of my gaming career. I am so fortunate to have players that trusted me to guide this experience and were willing to go along with my shenanigans. The story, which started as 6 pre-written modules, truly became our epic superhero tale. It ballooned into 12 story arcs consisting of expanded/modified versions of the core adventures, a modified version of the Astonishing Adventure Into the Idiot Box, and individual story arcs centered around several of our protagonists. I’m still working on the final write ups for each story arc, but it’s truly astonishing what we managed to pull off here.

I want to extend a special thanks to the primary cast. Andy for knowing me well enough to keep me grounded and on task, encouraging exceptional roleplaying from his fellow cast members, and for embodying the role of team leader so well. Kevin for bringing his deep knowledge of Mutants & Masterminds, being flexible as I kept pulling him into different versions of his own character, and for breaking his no Zoom at home rule for our game. Jonesy for giving me so much rich material to work with, bringing truly vile villains into the story for me to embody, and for being the quiet heart of the group. Also shout out to Jonesy and Kevin for bringing their Heroes Incorporated characters back for a wild ride. Kat for jumping in “for just a couple of weeks” at a moment’s notice, for taking an iconic character and making her own amazing version, and for always being willing to dive into scenes with both hands and a full heart. Calvin for your constant innovation and creativity with a character who could have been easily overshadowed by the magical heroes around him, your investment into the story, both with emotional reactions, thorough note taking, and by giving me plenty of material to work with (cough, cough thank you for Sophie cough, cough), and for always being a positive presence in our group.

Finally, I want to extend so many thanks to you, the audience. It really means a lot seeing your engagement in chat, knowing you’re there to root our heroes on, celebrate their wins, and mourn their losses. I appreciate all of you so much, we do this streaming experience for you, because I truly believe we have great storytellers with valuable stories to tell. Thank you for your comments, your subscriptions, your shares, and just for being there. It means more than I can say.

This is the end of a chapter in our USP Earth-Prime Tabletop Universe, and I want to celebrate that. We have so many exciting things in store for you, but I am going to miss NetherWar once it’s gone. That’s enough from me for now. Thank you for indulging me this time and I can’t wait to see you again in our next stream.