Archive for the ‘Role-Playing Games’ Category

Atlas Games is doing this thing called “Reverb Gamers 2012″, with 31 question prompts to kick off 2012. I’m going to post one up each day, including weekends, throughout January. I invite you to do the same! And check out @ReverbGamers on Twitter or Facebook.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #26: Who or what was the most memorable NPC you’ve ever encountered? Why?

Hmm. So many games.

I can think of one, but it was memorable because it was a really bad GM bit, where the GM had his pet NPC in a convention one-shot, and was talking about him after the game was over. I won’t go in any further, because that’s unkind.

There’s one thing. I was playing in a Sorcerer game run by Jesse Burneko (of the Actual People, Actual Play podcast). It was a Victorian gothic game with a heavy familiar theme, and my demon was my grandfather bound in a pocket watch. The only way the watch could communicate was through normal pocket watch activity. During a tense scene, I was talking with him/it. Jesse delivered a powerful performance of a barely animate object that sticks with me today.

- Ryan

Atlas Games is doing this thing called “Reverb Gamers 2012″, with 31 question prompts to kick off 2012. I’m going to post one up each day, including weekends, throughout January. I invite you to do the same! And check out @ReverbGamers on Twitter or Facebook.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #25: If you game enough, you’re bound to run into someone being an ass. What’s the most asinine thing someone’s done in a game with you? How did you react? Did that experience change the way you game?

Two stories.

I once told a guy I regularly gamed with to never come back to one of my convention games when he, in two of them, talked shit like “oh, well, when Ryan’s running at home, the game would have already been over” or “oh, Ryan will let me get away with this.”

For the second one… [TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault]

One time, this one gamer in a Montsegur 1244 game (a GM-less one with scene pass-around) had a scene with my character, and he started it by screaming “You raped me!” In, uh, a crowded game store. There wasn’t a person at that table who happily engaged with him after that.

I sort of half-larp sometimes, standing up and exploring the physical space, and I literally walked out of that scene. Paul Tevis talked about this some time ago on Have Games, Will Travel.

The solution that some of us have taken is to just avoid these sorts of people. Sometimes I’ll walk away from a game if I see such a person there. Life is too short to play games that I feel are going to be shat upon by toxic gamers.

- Ryan

Atlas Games is doing this thing called “Reverb Gamers 2012″, with 31 question prompts to kick off 2012. I’m going to post one up each day, including weekends, throughout January. I invite you to do the same! And check out @ReverbGamers on Twitter or Facebook.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #24: Have you ever been to a game convention? What was it like to be surrounded by so many other gamers? If not, would you like to go to one? Why or why not?

*laugh*

Once or twice. [1];)

I love it. I do small, regional shows. I do Origins, Gen Con & PAX. I run game gatherings. I love getting the tribe together. It helps purge the toxicity that Internet bullshit & miscommunication creates. Plus, it’s just great to meet people in the flesh and game face-to-face with new folks.

- Ryan

[1] By which I mean between ten and twenty a year, for those who don’t know why I’m laughing.

Atlas Games is doing this thing called “Reverb Gamers 2012″, with 31 question prompts to kick off 2012. I’m going to post one up each day, including weekends, throughout January. I invite you to do the same! And check out @ReverbGamers on Twitter or Facebook.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #23: Have you ever experienced Total Party Kill (TPK), or been close to it? What effect did that have on you personally? On your group of players? Have you ever used retroactive continuity (retcon) to save yourself? Why or why not?

Quite a few times, but I’ll just talk about two unusual cases.

One was a game of Mythender that went a different direction, and we played with the PvP rules. The PvP rules, incidentally, are geared to make mutual play death likely.

And they did. Total party kill, if I remember right. But it was a good end to that game, a fitting note about what godlike beings might do to one another.

Another was an old GURPS Black Ops game I ran. The idea was that I was going to TPK the group in the first session, in order to end it with all the characters coming back as reanimated operatives five years later. And like many ideas, this was a good idea…that was almost executed for shit.

One player was in on it. And we did a long running attempt-at-Ronin chase/battle where I kept overwhelming and killing them one by one. Which was not exactly one. One guy kept rolling really well, and eventually I decided to stop pursuing him when he was the only one left.

They were about ready to tell me to fuck off and never run again when I turned to one guy and said “Hey, Mike, you should roll Fright Check.” He looked confused — they all did — but he complied, and we ended up the characters waking up mid-reanimation procedure. As a group, we ended on an interesting — and good! — note.

Oh, and this was my first time GMing with this group, over a decade ago. So, yeah, there are better introductions. But I stayed one of the regular GMs, so that’s something.

I later pulled this trick again in a GURPS WWII Winter War/Weird War game, but I started with “We’re going to start with normal soldiers being slaughtered, like the beginning on a zombie flick, before we get to your Ski Patrol badasses”. I learned to preface. :)

- Ryan

Atlas Games is doing this thing called “Reverb Gamers 2012″, with 31 question prompts to kick off 2012. I’m going to post one up each day, including weekends, throughout January. I invite you to do the same! And check out @ReverbGamers on Twitter or Facebook.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #22: Describe the worst game you’ve ever played in. What made it so bad? Did your fellow players help, or make it worse?

My very first game of Dungeons & Dragons. I think second edition. It’s the high water mark for “shittiest game”, which I guess is more “high sewer mark”.

I was asked to join a game for a one-shot, as I was in town crashing over at a friend’s place. They were a third level chaotic evil party.

Yeah, it’s one of those stories.

I make my character before the game, with some help. A third level elf wizard named Brennan Quisinart.[1]  When we get to the game, as it starts, the DM describes the camp and then asks me what I’m doing.

“Uh, I guess I’m warming myself by the fire?”

He rolls some dice behind the screen, and says I take some amount of damage (he said something specific, but I cannot recall the numbers, just the hatred). I died, due to arrow fire that came in from no where.

Then the attack begins, where everyone else fought and I did fuck all but watch.

After the fight, we talk for a moment about whether I need to roll up a new character. I pointed out that I hadn’t actually played the old one, so maybe I could just rename him. So I did.

Oh, and my body was looted by another PC. So when I come back, I played my character’s half-brother, Shaft Quisinart. Because, well, I got shafted. I also described my elf as essentially blackface, because apparently I thought mock racism was funny once.

I asked for my character’s stuff back. What happened instead was said PC murdering my second character.

So…take three on my elf wizard. This was was Superfly Quisinart. I remember describing goldfish platform boots. I don’t know why. Probably because I was being shat on and making someone laugh was a new personal win condition. Said character did not challenge to tough fighter for his shit back, mainly so I could actually play.

And we played some bullshit game where “oh, you mesmerize the barmaid” was cool. They found some table of STDs in D&D and randomly rolled “Mummy Crotch Rot” for my character, though that was a long-term affliction, so whatever. Ha ha, STDs. Ha ha, joking about the fantasy equivalent of rohypnol.

Later, we had the climatic fight and we won…somehow with me having two Magic Missile spells memorized. So I used them against the guy who killed my second character, took back my item, and no one gave a shit. There was a joke of “yeah, that player never has characters survive.” They were even sort of celebrating this momentary win until I took it away.

I only remember one guy’s name, and haven’t seen them in years. I hope those guys aren’t douchebags anymore. But yeah, that was my first experience with D&D, and I’m glad it wasn’t my first experience with gaming.

- Ryan

[1] Don’t judge me. We were all young once.