#RPGaDay, part 1-13

...or like, a couple times a month.

I kept getting confused why the RPGA was having a Day, and why it seemed to happen multiple days. I can be kind of thick sometimes.

I'm no good at blogging regularly, so here's short answers for the month so far.

1st - First RPG Played

Still torn between Fianna and Shadow Lords

The D&D Red Box had a solo adventure I played in middle school. I think the first time somebody else actually ran a game I played in was Werewolf: The Apocalypse in high school.
2nd - First RPG Gamemastered
D&D Red Box, probably for family members.
3rd - First RPG Purchased
With my own money? Either some D&D 2E supplement or Werewolf.
4th - Most recent RPG purchase
I just bought some DCC adventures. They're awesome.
5th - Most Old School RPG owned
Wow...Hulks & Horrors? There's so many retro-clones its hard to say.
6th - Favourite RPG Never get to play
I didn't get to play much 4E D&D, and there were some awesome character concepts I wanted to try.
7th - Most “intellectual” RPG owned
Mage: the Ascension. Every spell is a philosophy discussion.

Warp drive is created by space slugs having
sex, but not if anyone's watching.

8th - Favourite character
Eodrid, the Grey Elf Oracle of Pelor.
9th - Favourite Die / Dice Set
I'm playing more dungeon world, so my d6's with cthulhu symbols for "ones" are neat.
10th - Favourite tie-in Novel / Game Fiction
I've never much cared for official rpg fiction, though the Warhammer 40k stuff interests me a bit. I'd rather read the "Appendix N" books that inspired the game to begin with, and historical/pseudo-historical fiction for inspiration.
11th - Weirdest RPG owned
HOL, or the homebrew game system where I played a Werewombatman.
12th - Old RPG you still play / read
Marvel Super Heroes. Its a surprisingly elegant system, and by far the best superhero rpg I've come across.
13th - Most Memorable Character Death
The first one that comes to mind (which by definition makes it the most memorable) was my Storm Cleric facing down a dragon in D&D Encounters. I was low on hit points already when I saw my chance to take him down. I turned to my fellow adventurers and said, "Gentlemen, its been an honor and a privelege." Then I charged with my spear.

I want to play. Lets play.

I came across this post from Robert J. Schwalb that discussed his relationship to D&D. My main takeaway is this bit:

So with all that love, I’m left wondering what the problem is. In suspect it’s that for the last 15 years or so, the most important part of the game has not been playing but rather creating for it. Character creation used to be something you had to do before you could have the fun. The mechanics were the necessary evil, the gauntlet you had to run. In recent years, the fun has moved from the time you spent at the table to the time you spend thinking about the table. Sure, back in the old days, I made plenty of characters for games I played and games I wanted to play but never really did. It was just like doing math problems. They had solutions. You just had to roll the dice, make the choices, and plug the information into the sheet. But hasn’t been that way for a while.

It seems the fun for many is in putting the different pieces together to create something new. Clever play now occurs in isolation. The player earns the greatest reward not from having a good idea at the table or thinking to look behind the wardrobe and finding a magic item, but from the discovery of a winning combination of mechanics, the perfect marriage of two spells, skill and feat, class feature and widget. The pleasure comes from realizing the broken combination and from putting the mechanical abomination into play. No delight is sweeter than that which is experienced by watching the expressions of those who must bear witness to your creative horror. Does it matter that the loophole makes the game unplayable? Does it matter that such shenanigans immediately put the beleaguered Dungeon Master on the defensive, to the point that he or she flails because the game no longer seems to work? Not at all. Why? Because the game wants you to break it. It begs for you to dig in and explore the options. The endless parade of new mechanics demand you to pick them up, peer at them in the light, and plug them in. It’s a game made for the tinkerers. Oh, you just want to play? Well, you’ll need these ten books, this character generation tool, and on and on and on.

The prize for being the best player goes not to the creative mind, the cunning tactician, the burgeoning actor, but to the best mathematician. Perhaps this was the way it was doomed to go. The seeds were there all along. The mechanical-minded played spellcasters—who dominated—while the rest plodded along with fighters. As the game evolved, it was no longer sufficient for the fighter to become more accurate or to attack more often: the fighter had to do things beyond swing a sword or loose an arrow from a bow. The game needed rules for every situation, for every scenario, and with each new rule came a new exploit, a new opportunity to bend the game into something terrifying.

This is what I mean when I say I have a different play style than a lot of gamers I meet. I want to play more than create. I love world building, but I've discovered I'd rather have some cool ideas to fill in questions as they come up in play, rather than a completely detailed setting like an encyclopedia. By the same token, I only care about what your character does in the session, not his backstory. Dungeon World has taught me a lot about how to integrate this into the game as you play. Asking a few questions here and there helps flesh out a character very naturally.

I've said it before, it only matters if it comes up in play. 

Dark Lanterns: Dragon me Down

The most iconic looking dragon breathes...chlorine gas?

This session was a while back, the write-up has been sitting around waiting on me. One of our players had a change in his work schedule and a new player joined, so it looks like we'll be playing a new campaign instead of continuing this one for now. More on that later. So what happened in the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil last time?

One of the cool things about the Crater Ridge Mines, which is the majority of the adventure, is that its a giant ring with two gates, so there's lots of options in terms of where to go. Rather than keep pushing past the Earth temple, the group decided to go the other direction and follow some mine cart tracks.

One side tunnel had some chewed on statues, petrified gnolls. A cautious scouting attempt confirmed that it was a basilisk, and they closed the tunnel off with a Wall of Stone.

Near the end of the tracks, the party was attacked by a green dragon. It got off one breath attack before the ninja goblin got it pinned with repeated Stunning Fist attacks. Checking out the dragon's lair, a fiendish girallon was summoned as a protector. It really tore into the ranger, but was put down.

No shit. Seriously, read a book sometime.

I had mixed feelings about this session. The players felt threatened, which hasn't happened much, but they still took down everything fairly easily. The basilisk was bypassed, the dragon was stunned most of the fight, and the girallon only got close because the ranger elected not to trip attack with its chain for some reason. I'm usually a big fan of player's defeating a threat through smart play, but honestly I was really bored most of the session. The girallon fight was the most fun, and that was just a back and forth slugfest.