Party Spotlight: Alex Shreve

Happy Friday! Today, we’re turning the Party Spotlight over to Alex Shreve who came into Alex Zubarev’s playtesting group as a newbie to Tabletop but loved playing Role-Playing Game (RPG) video games. What made you want to try out tabletop? We’d love to hear about it, feel free to comment below! Now, let’s turn the spotlight over to Alex Shreve.

Q1: You played a lot of Role-Playing Game (RPG) video games before trying out Tabletop RPGs, what made you want to try Tabletops?

Alex Shreve (AS): You really just cannot beat the sense of realism that you get when you are there in the same room with all of your friends playing something physically interactable and entertaining. For me and our group, that's tabletop. It's something a video game can never replicate.

Q2: Is there anything that stood-out in your experience switching from Video Game RPGs to Tabletop RPGs?

AS: The level of freedom that the players have. For tabletop RPG’s, there are a number of outcomes as limited as your imagination. It is not linear like video games are.

Q3: What do you like about War and Aether (W&A) over other Tabletops?

AS: It might seem like a small thing to many, but I really enjoy the scaling in this particular tabletop. There is a certain unique motivation to getting numbers as big as possible in something.

Q4: Being new to Tabletops when you started, how easy or hard was it to learn W&A?

AS: Being new to tabletop in general, it made learning W&A easy because there were no bad habits from other versions of games to fix for this new game.

Q5: What’s been your favorite character build so far in W&A, and why?

AS: I enjoyed a recent tank build in a campaign we just completed as a group. It was a swamp orc tank that was my first attempt at any sort of armor build, and it did not disappoint and I will be trying different versions of that in the near future.

Q6: What’s been your most memorable combat encounter so far in W&A, and why?

AS: The final campaign combat to our dwarven underground campaign. It was only two rounds because of the preparation and work that we put in all campaign long, knowing what we were up against, just made it feel that much more satisfying executing in the end.

Q7: You’ve been playtesting Zubie’s games for years now, what makes you come back and playtest more?

AS: I am always looking to get out with friends and meet new people sometimes, and being a part of these sessions help me both do something I enjoy, but also get to spend time with people that have similar interests to me.

Q8: Having been exclusively a player, have you ever considered Game-Mastering (GM’ing) a game? Why or why not?

AS: No….just no. I do not have that amount of time in me for that. Respect your GM’s everyone, they do a whole lot.

Q9: If you could take any one thing from W&A and bring it to real life, what would it be and why?

AS: I got nothing…(no real answer)

Q10: What’s something in tabletops that you wish were in RPGs?

AS: Wider story possibilities for sure. Going back to earlier, variety is the best way to get a gamer coming back for second, third playthroughs. People like the ability to choose their outcomes.

Thank you, Alex, for taking the time out of your schedule to answer these questions! What made you want to try out tabletop? We’d love to hear about it, feel free to comment below! And don’t forget to check back here for all things regarding War & Aether!