We’re here, on the final installment of the retrospective of my past 40 years as a gamer. It will not be the last post on the topic, mind you; this is just the end of the decades-long account of how gaming has been a part of my life. This instance overlaps with the previous post because I left off just as Hurricane María devastated the island.
If you don’t mind me paraphrasing The Sound of Music…
How do you solve a problem like what María left?
I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that in September 2017, Puerto Rico suffered some damage from Hurricane Irma early in the month, and on September 20th, María devastated the island as a Category 5 hurricane. This CNN article, one year later, is a great summary of the impact and aftereffects, if you are interested.
Irma began to wreak havoc with our gaming schedule. A week-long blackout after Irma meant we cancelled game plans for both the home game and the Desde la Fosa game, and we might have gotten two or three sessions in before María hit. We had a Geeknic planned for the weekend before, and we cancelled it. All gaming stopped after that!
With no power and gas shortages, we could not meet to play. From September to December, I played twice. I was lucky to return to work about 10 days after the disaster, but there were very few leisure opportunities. Friends from Puerto Rico, Role Players who lived nearby and knew I was going stir-crazy, dropped by, and we played board games, helping me stay sane!
The weekly gaming group met once to try to continue the D&D 5e campaign, but we knew we would not be able to meet regularly for the time being. Two players were across the island; one was about to leave for the mainland US to continue his PhD research. So, we finished some plotlines and paused the campaign until we could gather again.
From left to right: Luis Lao, Edgardo, Richard, Mariana, José Fernando, Naida, Fernando, and Roberto (me).
Desde la Fosa was similarly affected. We met a few more times, but over the next few months, two of the team members emigrated. While the channel continued to post content and videos about RPG a Day and other topics, getting together to play games and stream them online stopped.
By November, some of us had power, but connectivity was spotty, so we could not reach players across the island. One player remained out of the country, so we decided to start another campaign until we could get back to D&D 5e.
My god, these are Stars Without Number!
In November 2017, we had session zero of our Stars Without Number (SWN) campaign, a few days after Thanksgiving. We were grateful to be all together and well! We called the campaign Alternate Frontiers Without Number, because I mashed up the aliens from Star Frontiers and Alternity to populate the SWN sector I rolled up using the book’s tools. I posted about my conversions for the campaign here and here.
The smaller group consisted of five players playing D&D 5e (José Fernando, Fernando, Naida, Carlos, and Luis Lao) and one player who rejoined us (Raul), while Mariana, Edgardo, and Richard could not play at that time. I planned a “short” campaign, which for me is anywhere from 9 months to a year.
This plan worked out great because, a few months later, my wife and I found out we were going to be parents! My son was going to be born in December, so I planned for the campaign to end before his birth, when I planned to take a hiatus to help with his care.
Alternate Frontiers Without Number was a lot of fun! It solidified my love for Kevin Crawford’s work. We had a satisfying story arc with an epic finale. Luis Lao’s girlfriend, Aileen (now his wife), played a few sessions with us, as well as Fernando’s brother, who dropped in for a cameo in the game.
From left to right, top to bottom: José García, Luis Lao, AJ, Gustavo, José Fernando, José García, José Garcia (again, he was the GM after all!), Kenneth, and Gustavo.
We also played with friends from Desde la Fosa. José García ran Symbaroum for us before AJ left Puerto Rico. The Symbaroum system and setting made me a fan of Free League Publishing. We also played some more Free League games when José García ran Coriolis for Felipe, Enith, Tracy, José Fernando, and me.
On December 18th, we played the 53rd and final session of our SWN campaign. My son was born the next day!
From left to right: Luis Lao, José Fernando, Fernando, Naida, Raul, Carlos.
I am your father!
Parenthood is the most wonderful role I have ever had in my life. From the moment I carried him after his birth to today, my son’s presence has filled me with endless joy. Despite the hardships and challenges, the rewards are thousandfold, and being called “dad” is my favorite moniker.
As I’ve said before, TTRPG gaming is part of my wellness routine. It helps me relax, refocus, and keeps me connected with my close friends. However, I recognized that caring for a newborn requires time. I paused my weekly campaign, telling my friends I would take a few months off, and when I thought Marchelo’s sleep patterns and care were something my wife could handle on her own once a week, we would start playing again.
I knew this was unpredictable. But my son’s sleep patterns were so regular that he would slumber through most of the night, getting up only once to feed and be changed. When he was four months old, we had established a routine, and my wife, knowing how much I missed gaming, encouraged me to resume weekly gaming. We only took a short hiatus!
The good, the bad, and the gamer
I wasn’t ready to get back to playing D&D 5e in my homebrewed world and all the prep that entailed. We still had a lot to do with my newborn son. Also, I started a new job a month after he was born, so I was taking on many new responsibilities. We were going back to gaming, but I wanted to run a simpler game. There were also some genres I had never run, so, in consultation with my players, we decided to run a western-horror game using Down Darker Trails from Chaosium, designed for use with Call of Cthulhu (CoC) or Pulp Cthulhu, but using Troll Lord Games’ Amazing Adventures.
This was a great experience. Chaosium’s adventures are the sort of adventures I enjoy: a framework with lots of setting information I can use to run a game. This was the smallest group of players in ages: Naida, Fernando, José Fernando, Luis Lao, and Carlos. It kept the adventure lean, moving at a good pace, not too complex for me as a GM.
From left to right: José Fernando, Carlos, Fernando, Naida, Luis Lao,
While currently I don’t think I will run Troll Lord Games for the foreseeable future, back in 2019, playing Amazing Adventures motivated us to change the system when we restarted the fantasy campaign we paused in 2017. We switched systems from D&D 5e to Castles & Crusades.
There, Crusade. There, Castle.
As 2019 ended and 2020 began, Puerto Rico was still recovering from Hurricane María, and a series of earthquakes struck the southwest of the island. Despite the new hardships, we soldiered on with gaming, and in February 2020, we restarted the fantasy campaign but converted it to Castles & Crusades. It was great to return to the campaign we had paused three years before. Mariana and Edgardo had married and moved from Puerto Rico, but Carlos, Fernando, Naida, José Fernando, Richard, and Oscar returned to the campaign. Naida, sadly, did not finish the campaign, and losing a player was not the only challenge we would face. We began playing in February, and by March, the Covid-19 pandemic had hit Puerto Rico, and we were in lockdown!
From left to right: Oscar, Richard, Carlos, Naida, Fernando, José Fernando, and Luis Lao.
We moved the game online, and while we played a few sessions in person when lockdown orders were lifted due to lows in infection rates, outbreaks soon kept us playing remotely again. We finished the campaign a year later, playing virtually.
This was a challenge; we tried Discord first, but eventually settled on Zoom for ease of use for all involved. At first, I was not a fan of playing online, but we adapted. My friends were great sports; some really were not into playing online, but they soldiered on, and we managed. All this was compounded by some health issues that affected my voice, which made playing online even more difficult.
Playing online would be a good practice for the future.
Listen to them — children of the Red Death.
After finishing our fantasy campaign, I wanted to play something different, so we played a mash-up of the Victorian-themed Ravenloft setting, Masque of the Red Death, using the horror toolbox system by Kevin Crawford, Silent Legions. We called the campaign Legions of the Red Death.
Do you see a pattern? First, we switched the latest iteration of my long-running homebrew campaign from D&D 5th Edition to Castles and Crusades. My fantasy campaign has adapted to different editions, from BECMI to AD&D 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, D&D 3rd Edition & 3.5, Pathfinder, and then to D&D 5th Edition. But never mid-campaign! Then playing a Call of Cthulhu adventure using Amazing Adventures, and now Masque of the Red Death using Silent Legions.
Carlos, Fernando, José Fernando, Luis Lao, and Oscar returned for this campaign, and José García from Desde la Fosa officially joined the group. These six core players have been the regular weekly group for the last five years!
This campaign lasted most of 2022, and by the end of the year, we began planning for the campaign we are currently running: Savage Fading Suns.
The stars are fading, and if they die, we die, everything dies
Here was another mash-up: The Fading Suns setting with the Savage Worlds rules. I had intended to play it using the latest iteration of the setting rules, but after reading and discussing them with the players, we settled on Savage Worlds, which has quickly become our go-to system.
With the same six players (Carlos, Fernando, José Fernando, José García, Luis Lao, and Oscar) and Felipe, who dropped in for a guest appearance, we’ve been playing Savage Fading Suns since December 2022. Over three years now. As of this writing, we’ve played 130 sessions.
This has not been a campaign without challenges! My health worsened, and I had trouble speaking. My friends stuck with me while I struggled to run games because they knew how important it was to me. I got treatment and improved, and then I had to spend extended periods of time away from home due to work, so we moved the game to Discord and continued playing virtually when I was away, which was more often than not.
This was not the only game I’ve played these past three years. José García ran Free League’s Alien game for us on Halloween 2023, Ten Candles for Halloween 2024, and I ran The Dare, a CoC adventure, using the Eldritch Hack rules for Halloween 2025. Keeping alive the recent tradition of running a setting with different rules from the ones it was written for.
I also played a two-session fill-in game of an improvised TTRPG I put together when some players could not make our regular session, and a fantastic Fabula Ultima campaign that José García ran, which I would love to finish. For an online gaming weekend my friend Brightcadle (that’s his Discord handle) organized, I ran a Savage Worlds one-shot for Yamir and Maite, a Shadowdark one-shot for the same event, and ran a play-by-post short campaign with my good friend Pierre, whom I miss every day.
By September 2025, I was back in Puerto Rico. We’ve been playing face-to-face again. Since being back, I’ve also re-engaged with Puerto Rico Role Players. We had a holiday event at El Gremio in Cayey, and a Geeknic in February, where I playtested a TTRPG system I am developing. I am celebrating these 40 years as a Game Master and gamer and reconnecting with the local gaming community after an extended absence due to work-related travel.
The Savage Fading Suns campaign has maybe six to nine months left, or thereabouts, before we conclude. I am famously bad at predicting when a campaign will end, especially one I’ve been wanting to run since 1996, when I first read the Fading Suns book. This campaign has been meaningful not just for that reason, but also because my players stuck with me during my illness and my travels.
I am lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful friends, who sit down to play our weekly game, but beyond that, those who are part of my immediate circle of friends, the Puerto Rico Role Players community, and those I reach and interact with through social media and this blog.
I am truly lucky to have had this hobby for most of my life, for the people I’ve met, the connections I’ve made, the lessons I’ve learned, and the abilities that I have developed every day. Thank you all for this wild ride. Here is to many, many years more!
One final note: I mentioned which movie the first section title came from. Who can tell what other movies I reference in the other sections? A few are rather obvious. Let me know in the comments.
