Alright, here's my last week-and-change writeup for this year's RPGaDay. Honestly, might be the last one I do in general, I'm torn. I explain more in the final entry. Enjoy.
Day 22: Which non-dice system appeals to you?
I'm not sure there's any one non-dice system that jumps out at me, especially since I don't have a lot of personal experience with such, though I've always been fond of systems that use cards, particularly playing cards. (I may have, on occasion, briefly kicked around the idea of designing one of my own) But then, I've always had a weird thing for playing cards and I honestly couldn't tell you why.
Though while we're on the subject, I want to give a shoutout to Howard Ingham's game Chariot. I've unfortunately not had the chance to run or play it myself, but there's a lot of cool stuff in there, and it uses Tarot cards!
Day 23: Which game do you hope to play again?
Oh jeez, which game wouldn't I hope to play again? But then, I so often run games as opposed to playing them, I mean, that's a pretty long list even if I just restrict myself to playing (as opposed to running). I mean, any number of Chronicles of Darkness games, any of the Trinity Universe/Continuum stuff, Fate, Eclipse Phase... I could go on.
Day 24: Which RPG do you think deserves more recognition?
Honestly, like yesterday, I think there's a laundry list of RPGs that could be answers to this question. In general, there are so many games out there that more than a few are just going to get missed or left behind by the community. I mean, I've mentioned Chariot before, and as I glance at my shelf I note that I always felt it was a shame that Stew Wilson's Æternal Legends never really picked up. Or, to pull something semi-random out of my backside, there's the Shard RPG (warning, that link goes to a crappy old-style Flash site that plays music) that came out about a decade ago, tried (and largely succeeded) at doing a lot of interesting setting stuff, never quite made an impact, and is literally just now getting its first supplement (because the game came out right before the recession and things fell apart at the studio almost immediately afterwards).
Day 25: Game that had an impact on you in the last 12 months
Um... admittedly, I'm having trouble thinking of a good one. I can't recall any major 'eureka' moments that I've had from gaming, either playing or running or reading in the last year. So I'm gonna fish for an alternate question.
Alt Question: How do you prepare for a one-shot?
This is kind of a simple-ish process. I come up with a plot and a general tone, and use that to broadly sketch out character concepts (if I'm doing pregens) and/or picking playbooks if it's a PbtA game. Once I've got a basic plot down and I have an idea of what sorts of characters will be participating, I start working from a series of 'tentpole' scenes I want to bring the session together. These might be encounters with specific NPCs, or an action scene, or a 'wham' moment. These become a series of scenes that I then, in my notes, rather loosely connect together because I don't want to railroad the players too badly.
While I try to give myself enough of an outline that I could sit down and just fill in gaps and write the adventure as a story or something, there are a lot of times when I'll deliberately leave investigative scenes and such open-ended. Like, there'll be clues and what have you, but about half the time I deliberately don't plan for how characters figure out how to proceed. I find ways to come up with clues on the fly and fit them to the investigative technique. Do they find a guy by asking around? By hacking computers? Through clairvoyance? I'll have enough information in my notes to work from to adapt what I have to whatever seems appropriate, but about a third of the time I'll "check my notes" to buy time to just make something up.
And then, once I've done that, I put together any pregen sheets last.
Day 26: Gaming ambition for the next 12 months
My 'gaming ambition' is a short one, and one I've kinda mentioned before. I'm planning to expand my gaming group's tastes and experiences a bit. Since we've put together the regular gaming schedule, it's pretty much all been Pathfinder/Starfinder and World/Chronicles of Darkness. Now, Pathfinder/Starfinder hasn't been as much of an issue because dropping money on the adventure paths skips me the work of doing a lot of the prep, and those games are largely meant as filler anyhow because it's a bit too much to keep up my own stuff on a weekly basis (but it's so much easier if people are in the habit of a weekly game night). But I'm pretty much burned out on seeing character concepts boiled down to 1-5 dots in Attributes and Skills and Merits and Backgrounds and what have you, so now that we finished up our Chronicles game I'm going to pitch them some Fate or PbtA ideas and see where that goes.
Day 27: Share a great stream / actual play
Unfortunately, I need to do an alt question for this one because I don't follow any of those. 80% of the reason I do my own actual play blog posts is because my players have suggested that doing so helps them keep track of the story so far when we have to skip a week or two. But I don't go out of my way to read about the games of anyone I'm not already following for other reason. So...
Alt Question: What makes you want to GM?
This one's easy. I'm a storyteller, by nature. It's why I run games and also why I enjoy RPG writing. I want to share stories with an audience, or share tools of varying sorts to help people run their own games and tell their own stories. I enjoy entertaining and making people feel entertained, and running games and writing gaming material are just how I do that.
Day 28: Share whose inspiring gaming excellence you’re grateful for
Look, my brain tries to parse this one and can't. Like, intellectually, I can get what the words mean but there's nothing about this that really jives with any of my gaming experience. So let me see if there are any alt questions I haven't done yet.
Alt Question: Most ambitious campaign idea achieved
At the risk of sounding like a cop-out, my ideas rarely get more ambitious than "Finishing one rather than have it peter out due to drama or people moving away." And I've done that, a couple of times now (including one just recently).
Day 29: Share a friendship you have because of RPGs
Those of you who've known/followed me for a while can probably guess this one. It's my roommate Sean, whom I've known for about 15 years (I wanna say we met in 2003? Maybe 2002, but I doubt it). We first met through the old 'Gamer locator' thing on the old White Wolf site in the ancient past. It turned out, funnily enough, that we'd both come into very brief contact via the furry fandom but never really 'connected' there. But we met through the gamer locator, and started hanging out, and then we started hanging out more, and... I mean, I'm not really sure where to go from there. We've been best friends for a long-ass time, and I have trouble imagining what my life, gaming and otherwise, would be like without having him here.
Day 30: Share something you learned about playing your character
I'll be honest, I'm skipping this one. I'm only making this post for consistency's sake so it doesn't look like I just forgot. (Ironically, my reason for not giving an answer is going to be as long as some of my answers.)
Thing is, I don't have a good answer. The question itself borders on nonsensical -- I really wish these had more detailed descriptions this year, as they have in the past. I mean, I looked at the couple of other responses on the net so far, and they describe the sort of gameplay experiences that, if I've ever had, have been so long ago I couldn't relate them.
I'd go for an alternate question, but there are three left and the best answer I have for any of them is "Fuck if I know." Woo.
Day 31: Share why you take part in RPGaDAY
I mostly do it out of a sense of participation in the larger gaming community, there's a certain degree of camaraderie in it, and it gives me an excuse to think back on my gaming stories and share them.
That said, I'm sort of torn on whether I'm going to do it next year, partially because I'm the only person I really know who did it this year. Now, yes, I know that comes down to whom I follow/associate with online, and I can be really picky about my followers list (so that's not a knock on anyone reading this who may be doing RPGaDay themselves but I don't follow them). And I understand that everyone's got stuff they're dealing with, not everyone has the time and energy for gaming or even just escaping into a bit of analysis about their gaming. That's fine. But I can't deny that it's got a bit of an impact on my enjoyment of the exercise.
There's also the fact that I oftentimes find myself frustrated by the selection of questions. I mean, there's alternate questions every year, and not every question can work for everyone, but it feels a lot like there's a lot I just can't do because I don't play enough as opposed to running. And that's frustrating. I'm that guy in my gaming circles that runs most of the games because few folks want to and I've got the stories to tell to make it work. But I'd love to play more, and I can't, and a lot of these questions just remind me of that. (Also, I really do wish there was some expansion of what some of these questions mean, like the "best character hook" alternate question or yesterday's. These questions are less fun when I have to guess at what an answer looks like.)
As much as I hate to end this year's RPGaDay on a down note, I mean, that's it. I do it out of a sense of camaraderie with fellow gamers, and I'm getting less of that these days. I also do it because it lets me stop and think back on my gaming stories, and more and more those stories are a decade old because my more recent experiences just aren't applicable, so that's frustrating. So, I mean, that's why I take part in RPGaDay, but the end result might be why I might not take part next year.
So there we go. Month over.
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