Wednesday, August 14, 2019

#RPGaDay2019 Week 2



Okay boys and girls its week 2 so lets get right to it.


8. Obscure- This may be a little-known fact but I like to include obscure references to innocuous things in documents I write. That’s easter eggs for you video gamers. I enjoy parodies of well known movies and shows so including these obscure objects is my way of including humorous things (well, humorous to me anyway).

9. Critical- Critical failures in RPG’s don’t necessarily mean failure. Everybody thinks of them as a failure with something really bad happening. While I employ this mentality for the most part, what about just adding a complication? Let’s say the character critically fails their notice check to look for someone in a crowd. Now bear in mind that finding this person is crucial to continuing the story. Perhaps the critical failure was that you do see them on the opposite side of the plaza but you bumped into someone and made them drop an earthen jar of their late wife and it breaks open on the ground. Now you have an altercation and a crowd is forming around you. People are upset and an unknown person throws a rock at you, roll initiative.

10. Focus- As a DM/GM/creator I often lose focus. With today’s technology it’s easy to get sidetracked by the new shiny RPG setting. I like to read a lot so I buy these books and get inspired only to have it happen all over again with a new to me setting. It’s really a difficult thing for my focus.

11. Examine- Self reflection isn’t something I put at the forefront of my mind but I constantly need to examine myself in just about everything I do. How could I have made that session better? Should I have waxed Gary’s character? I need to start thinking about this more and more these days because most friends won’t be honest and say that session could have been better.

12. Friendship- Now this one is interesting. According to Aristotle there are 3 types of friendship: utility, pleasure, and good. I’d like to think that many of the people I’ve met through the Nerds-International community are of the good variety but understand that how I perceive a friendship may not be reciprocated in the same way. RPG’s bring many different people together under the guise of entertainment and over time strong bonds are formed with like minded people. I have met a few good friends this way and hope that they don’t view me as a utility friend.

13. Mystery- A true mystery is why people feel the need to defend their RPG system of choice when another person expresses their dislike of that system. It happens all the time and I’m guilty of expressing an opinion just to stir the emotions of those people. While it’s usually intentional, it’s also a social experiment of mine. I’m interested in seeing how many responses I can get. One time on Google + I was able to garner 175 in a single thread. Ah, the good ol days.

14. Guide- As a game master of RPG’s your job is to guide players through the game world. Not only are you an invisible guide but you are also an adjudicator of rules and outcomes of die rolls. There used to be a trend in D&D that the Dungeon Master was perceived to be the antagonist that the players needed to defeat. This in my opinion is reflective of a bad DM, one who is confrontational in nature and is likely caused by a lack of experience. The DM/GM should be on the side of the players. Their job is to ensure a fair representation of the non-player characters.

P.S. If you haven't heard by now The Murder Hobo Show has changed formats. It used to be all about Rifts and ICRPG but now he has changed it to include all RPG's. I highly encourage you to check out his new podcast at https://themurderhoboshow.podbean.com/


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