Recently, I’ve been corresponding with the friendly and affable Pat Eyler, who reached out to me out of curiosity regarding my Brindlewood Bay hack, Something Tookish! (See here if you don’t know what I’m going on about here.) Anyway, Eyler interviewed me about the game, my background in gaming, and what I learned hacking the game together. Here’s the interview!
I have not much comment, but this song has been running through my mind since the news cycle started to cascade through the Discords and other social media I’m on: If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s elfgame stuff and you would probably know if you cared, but just in case, well, see here, I guess. Social media is on fire with memes and hot takes and links to thinkpieces about it, and I don’t need to add to that. But since I’m trying to start blogging again, okay, a few thoughts: I agree with everyone paying attention …
If you’re considering tabletop RPG systems and thinking about how XP (experience points) should work, or maybe just thinking about a fresh perspective on how adventurers might see what they’re doing, you could probably do worse than to read some old Greek manuals on hunting: Do not envy those who push ahead rashly for their own advantage, either in their private business or in public affairs. Remember that the best of them, although well thought of, are envied, while the evil ones are both ill thought of and badly off. For they make off with the property of the private citizens and that of …
Having just finished Jim Baker’s The Cunning Man’s Handbook (which I discussed earlier here, and mentioned in passing here: it’s a big book, so I’d been reading it for a while now) I can say that big chunks of history suddenly make a lot more sense to me. For one thing, the constant fascination with hidden treasure. Basically, a lot of people seemed to think of the world as if it were some kind of Monty Haul D&D campaign: at least in the English speaking world, the idea that there were hidden caches of treasure everywhere was bizarrely common, to the point where treasure hunting was a significant part of …
I’ve posted before here about using RPGs as a learning tool with students. One of the things that’s important when you do this is to (a) choose a story structure that emphasizes communicative tasks: your students should have to talk a lot, whereas combat is something they want to avoid, or something that must be coordinated when it’s absolutely necessary. That is to say, pedagogically, it’s better for students to end up having to negotiate treaties or beg for their lives than it is to have them running around doing hack’n’slash adventuring, or dungeoneering of the type epitomized in the phrase, “kick in …
For the last few days, I’ve been taking medicine for an ear infection I suddenly developed. It’s not completely clear what caused the infection: contamination of the water in the pool where I swim is possible, but it’s just as likely that it’s a side effect of a particular asthma medication I’ve been taking. In any case, it’s not completely resolved, but it is a lot better than it was… yesterday, I was worried my eardrum might burst from the pressure, but today it’s almost normal again. (On the one side, at least.) Anyway, as a result, I’ve been unable …
Update: One of the points below was unfinished. I was actually planning on splitting this post into two parts, but I guess I left it scheduled and it got posted while I was doing other things. It’s been linked a few times, so… I’ll leave it as it is. Except I went ahead and finished that point. ORIGINAL Post: So: what did I learn from RPGing, and specifically from GMing? This is the last post in the projected series (though who knows, there may be more to say…) I think I should put this into two categories: stuff I learned …
Having discussed those times when I gamed with other people in live RPGing situations, I figured I might as well also talk about my limited experience with PBeM RPG gaming. That is, Play By e-Mail. It’s an offshoot of the older PBM gaming that developed before the internet, but I never played that. My first experience with remote gaming was online. At some point during my first three or four months of using the Internet–which puts this back in 1995, I think–I discovered the website Mormegil’s Scrollworks (now defunct, do it’s a dead link) run by Christian Walker, a wonderful …
Continuing on my memories and reflections on RPGing as a hobby in my life… A few days ago, I ran across some fanfic I wrote in middle school. It was fanfic for someone else’s world, but not for a movie–though I’d been writing that (for Ghostbusters and, thinly veiled, The Neverending Story/The Princess Bride) for a long time. No, this was fanfic that I felt was my own creation, even if it was set in the franchised world of TSR’s The Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Realms is a sticky thing for me, now: for a few years, I spent every …
Some discussion of types of superheroes and superpowers over at Stephanie Denise Brown’s LJ led to a pretty fascinating exchange in the comments section, finally (for me) culminating in a discussion of gaming with one of the original writers of what remains my most fondly-remembered RPG system, Wraith: The Oblivion. My Wraith books were, along with nearly all my other White Wolf RPG books, lost in shipment to my parents’ home when I left for Korea. It’s been eight years, but the loss still stings a little. I had almost everything that had come out in the Wraith line, as …