RPG A Day--Day 1--Beginning

It’s that time of year again. My viewers—such as they are—tend to go up during RPG-a-Day and some even stick around although I’m not really a prolific writer apart from this time of year. For those rejoining me—I’m doing well, still trying to lose weight. I’m sticking with the DDPY program which has given me quite a bit of success albeit non-scalable. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t do so well at my first school in China. However, I will soon be starting year two in a brand new school in Beijing itself. Let’s hope for good things out of this new beginning.

Speaking of Beginning, that is the topic for the day. Last school year actually had a promising beginning and I was able to find a live table group. It turned out being one of the best groups I’ve ever been a part of. I was complimented by one of the new players a couple of weeks ago when she gave thanks for playing such a fun and memorable character. I’ve talked about Gnissa Fumblebuck—the gnome bard— here before as she is one of the troupe of characters I bring out from time to time. She was pretty gonzo in this version of the Gnissaverse. I had to be careful not to tick off my new GM by being too much of a scatterbrain, but she was borderline kinder in this game. I was definitely wrecking things with her not the least of which was letting a bear loose to roam the city because he looked sad locked up by himself in a cage.  I’m glad people liked it. Sadly, she was a part of a TPK in our last session, but only because I didn’t let her live on as a coward.  I’m fairly confident that she could have gotten away from that last encounter, but I was equally convinced that the GM wanted to wrap the campaign up. It was a mystery type scenario and unfortunately, we the players aren’t always as intelligent as the character stat would suggest and it was becoming something of a slog.

Unfortunately, our beginning campaign also became the ending campaign. We’re all international teachers and lots of the guys—including the GM and the host—decided to vacation overseas during Chinese New Year. When the pandemic struck, they were unable to get back into China. For better or worse, I didn’t leave the country, but time just marched on and we were never really able to get it back together. I’ve always said that holidays are the bane of RPG groups, but now I can say pandemics don’t do them any favors either.