RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 31 Favorite RPG of All Time

There are so many favorites. I really like Ryuutama and Cyberpunk 2020. The original World of Darkness got tons of play back in the old days and of course Marvel Superheroes was the one that really started it all for me...but it has to be D&D.  It may well be the McDonald's of TTRPGs but it's also iconic for a reason.  I'm not as enamored as the true fanboy who says there would be no TTRPGs without D&D, but I don't think TTRPGs would have ever gotten as "big" as they have under any other name. 

So this wraps up another year of RPGaDay. It's hard to respond to every entry with something worthwhile, but it's fun trying to meet the challenge. I like reading and watching the responses and look forward to next year...but I like taking the break. 

I may have said it before, but didn't we all learn to play the same way, being taught by two pretty girls?

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 27 & 28 New Edition Wishes and The Scariest Game

08/27 I skipped yesterday because I have nothing to say on the matter except there are too many games and too many editions of existing games already. I think even WOTC is realizing this and apparently is only revising 5E from now on rather than going full 6E. If a new edition of a game was truly innovative or if the previous edition of a game was truly broken, then maybe a new edition would feel warranted,  but most of the time edition updates feel like money grabs.  Supporting games with supplemental materials or updating an out of print game would be worth while. 

08/28 I've never played a TTRPG that truly had me scared. I enjoy Ravenloft setting and other horror scenarios, but nothing has left me feeling fear. The closest thing to it was years ago when the first Resident Evil came out and the dogs break through the window. Back then it really sucked me in. Today it just sucks. It's clunky, moves slow and  looks like crap. It was a different time. I recently backed a fun game supplement called 'Grizelda's Cursed Curiosities' by Scoundrel Game Labs. It's for 5E but for my purposes I run it using Shadowdark rules instead. It reminds me of the old  Friday the 13th TV show. This system features a special gimmick called a haunt. I'll copy and paste an excerpt from the free pdf below.  The KS is over, but you can still preorder the supplement or it's prequel. It still didn't scare me but it's creepy and fun.

APPENDIX A: HAUNT RULES

Haunts are visceral scenarios where adventurers are trapped in a dangerous location plagued by supernatural phenomena. To escape the haunt,

adventurers must neutralize the dark energy or exorcise whatever curse, spirit, or phenomenon they are actively fighting against. This is done by making use of diverse skills and abilities, giving each adventurer a potential path to victory. Since haunts make use of the initiative system, they

serve not only as potential encounters but also as exciting arenas for other combat. Combining haunts with various monsters or even other haunts can create an exciting, thematic, and fresh experience for any table.

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 22 Best Second Hand RPG Purchase

This one is scraping the bottom of the barrel for me because I don't normally find any second hand books overseas.  What really grinds my gears is in the States--on the rare occasion that I'm there--the only used bookseller in my town is in the know. It can't be doing much for his sales, but you won't go in there and find anything RPG related that isn't priced with the collector in mind. Somebody needs to inform folks with an eye on earning that if you sell an old hardcover for $10 you have $10...if you price it at $25 and it sits there at $25, then all you have is something collecting dust on your shelf. Too many people know there's an alleged market for these things, but not everything old is really worth what you think...a thing is only worth what you can get someone to spend on it. I will also shout out to R Talsorian Games who recently told all the fans not to get the gouged price on their older stuff as they would do more print runs on the more popular items--and the less popular ones probably still had originals in stock. 

All that said, one of the best games I bought online second hand was Dragon Quest board game by TSR. The game teaches you how to play a simplified version of advanced D&D--I think so because THAC0 is in it. The system itself really doesn't matter as much as the sturdy board inside. You could use it to generate random dungeons all day using whatever you want. I'm going to run it with the  Shadowdark rules. There are also lots of cardboard standees included, but those didn't hold up so much  over the years. 

   

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 18 Favorite Game System

 I'm afraid overall I have to go with Dungeons and Dragons 5E. The controversies with WotC are well documented. I don't like the company. I don't like the way they address their legacy products. I don't like the tone or "feel" of the 5E product. I don't like the direction that they are headed in terms of digital/monetization of the game nor their real-life politics. The charities they support IRL alone have turned me off to ever giving them a dime's worth of further support. All that said, it's an easy game to get into and to learn. It's easy to find players. It's not too difficult and yet not too easy. The truth is that I choose to play variants that use 5E as the engine more so than playing 5E RAW. Currently, I'm loving Shadowdark as the new sweetheart game, but prior to this I was using Hardcore mode from Runehammer. I also run oldskool TSR modules using 5E conversion to keep the tone at least a little less lighthearted and traditional. True enough the games I'm currently playing in and running have become gonzo as all get out, but when I have my druthers I'd choose to go a bit more classic feel, but it's completely possible--and even preferable to me--to use 5E or one of its derivatives to do it. 

 

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 17 Funniest Game You've Played

This one may have a surprising amount of material that I can speak about. It won't exactly be a rant as I don't really feel strongly about the things I'm writing today, but there are a few things to say.

* Most games I've played have had some humorous elements. I try to take things a bit seriously from time to time in a campaign, but cracking jokes helps release the tension even in real-life. Out of character table talk in a serious game is okay by me, but not always. Respecting the characters and acting how a character would act when their friend dies is kind  of important to setting the tone. Out of place humor can take you  right out of it. 

* I don't like "multi-verse" stories, but everywhere I turn these days some show, movie, book or game seems to be doing that kind of story. Not only did the live table I play in turn into one, but the online game I run--I RUN IT!!??--turned into one. As I'm writing this, the latest 5E book soon to be released is a revisit   of Planescape, so these style of stories look like they're not going anywhere. For the better part of this year at the live table the party found themselves in the extra-planar kingdom of Freshtovia.

* For those that don't know, American fast-food hamburger joint, Wendy's has become a real internet presence over the years. Their social media guys are really funny and have leaned into the whole thing. The company is known to be savage--in a tongue in cheek kind of way. They often cater to the niche audiences released their own TTRPG called 'Feast of Legends' back in 2019 apparently. It's a fully playable system which the DM converted--very easily--to 5E. 

* You can probably guess that the Wendy's mascots--such as they are, I'm only aware of Wendy herself--are the good guys while the  McDonald's and Burger King mascots are the bad guys. We didn't encounter any BK guys but the McDonald's mascots are easily identified and turned on their heads. The funniest one for us was the Beef Bandit who is their version of the Hamburglar. We wound up taking him with us, and he's continued to make trouble to this day. 

*Now for the ranty bit, I never liked these food based characters. Ronald, the Burger King, and Wendy are fine as are fantasy creatures like Grimace or living containers like a milkshake cup or happy meal box.  I just always have had a problem with  Officer Big Mac, Mayor  McCheese, the hamburger guys and the chicken McNugget guys--which are starting to reappear in commercials in HK and China at least. 

I hate having to kill animals for food. I once thought I was a vegetarian for five years--as God as my witness, I didn't know Jello was an animal product--but now, I accept use of animals as a necessary evil. Having worked in a meat department, I can tell you that going vegetarian will not save a single animal's life, at least not in the States. Human beings are more important than animals. There is no reason for a nation to have people starving in the streets while cows are roaming the neighborhoods and being worshiped. With all that said, I believe the animal should be respected. Raising a living thing, killing it, taking its flesh--mechanically separating the flesh of several and mixing it into a hodgepodge of goo to be honest--processing those bits into shapes, deep frying the shapes and then having the marketing department come up with cute mascots based on the various bits of these once living creatures is about as far from respect as one can get. At least in McDonald land continuity the hamburgers grew on trees. 

Wait a minute...this was supposed to be the funny entry...yes, Feast of Legends was very funny for us and gave us a lot of laughs in spite of my misgivings. 

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 15 Favorite Con Module/One-Shot

 I've written about my times in the United Arab Emirates before in previous years, so I hope I'm not retelling too many stories. I taught out there for nine years at the same high school. I read a lot of PDFs and tried to introduce TTRPGs in my classroom. It was mixed success at best. At some point I did find the Gulf Roleplaying Community (GRC) which continues on to this very day. As I mentioned yesterday, there are big conventions out in the area much like the cons in the States, but the better thing was when GRC ran mini-cons. They were usually held on  Fridays only, but we played the whole day, so we could fit in two game sessions and a big lunch. 

My favorite con game was one I played at one of these sessions. It was a module from the original--as far as I know--version of Deadlands. I played as a gambler and I remember the module taking place on a train. I believe it was titled 'Ghost Train' because I distinctly remembered there being a poker game involved in the module and that my gambler had lots to do. I don't know if that module is actually an old one or not, but it was presented using the old system I remembered. The best thing about this system for me was the mechanics involving playing cards. In this game there were premade characters that we picked at random as if drawing from a deck of cards. We also had a few simple costume props provided by the marshal. They call the DM/GM the Marshal in this game to go along with the Western vibe. It made for a memorable experience. It didn't feel like a generic run of the mill session.

There are a lot of games coming out nowadays that also employ different gimmicks and I think that's the way it should be, and I welcome the return of such. For a long while there during the D20 system and 5E centric years, a lot of the different games were released under that banner and they lost a lot of their own originality and charm. Very few really have the time or inclination to learn dozens of new systems, but for me,  when I play Deadlands or any other classic, I want to play with the original mechanics. Of course, at the table YMMV and if you don't like a thing then just toss it and use house rules, but there comes a point when you throw out so many of the things that made a system special, that you're no longer playing an alternative ruleset/setting, but just reskinned D&D. 

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 13 Most Memorable Character Demise

Some players are more attached to their characters than others, but I play with sort of a troupe of them. I've played so many versions of Gnissa Fumblebuck that I could have an 'Into the Gnisssaverse' movie. The downside of this style is that she's met many different fates over the years and on occasion has died. None of those deaths hold much meaning because I'll be playing her again somewhere down the line. 

On the broader subject of character death it seems like we had more time back in the old days and characters dying wasn't a big deal. It reminded me of the old video game, Gauntlet. You went as far  into  a dungeon as you could until the character died. Certainly, memorable characters came out of that time frame but only the best of the best lived for very long. If a character died, you just made up another one. Obviously, games like Shadowdark and DCC are trying to bring that style back. The characters are easy to build, so making a replacement isn't too taxing on the time. I can fully understand a player who builds a character for hours only to have him die and then return as son of 'X' because they're already playing the character they want, could be a pain. At the end of the day, I'm still more of a fan of letting characters live and die through a campaign as it happens. Making new characters has always been fun for me anyway. 

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 8 Favorite Character

 I'm almost positive I've answered this one or a  similar one in an earlier RPGaDay. I've had several appearances by my female gnome bard, Gnissa Fumblebuck, which was a play on one of the suggested names for gnomes in 5E. I think their suggestion was like Stumblebum or something like that. In my head cannon my current character at the table is her brother, Gnubnaver. He's an arcane trickster. I don't like him as much as Gnissa, but for me at a live table it's far easier to be a male. When we have a real girl playing at the table, I tend to play males,  but when it's all males at the table, I have more fun playing as a girl character--it gives me a chance to play a character without reason or accountability. My regular live group sometimes gets to have a one-shot or two throughout the year and I like the human female cleric pregen--from what I think is basic--named Maxalla Trigosta. I have a lot of fun with her by playing her as very masculine and using all the current tropes of 'modern audience' sensibilities as she is the most "Mary Sue" of characters that can be as long as the dice cooperate--Keep in mind this is a legit PC so my concept of her being better than everyone  at  everything doesn't always work out since I'm not the one running the game. I haven't put her in one of the games where I GM  yet, but maybe one of these days I'll bring her around. 

RPG A Day 2022--Day 27--How Has Your Character Changed?

This will be the shortest one yet. We're still talking about Navi Brightheart, the Green Ryuujin from the TTRPG Ryuutama. Navi has maxed out, so she has a lot more powers, artifacts, life points and spell slots. Note that I have put her into my 5E smash-up campaign and though I haven't had to tweak much of what she can do, some of her powers aren't prudent to the 5E mechanics. The best thing I can say is that when the characters were low-level, she had to help out a lot. Now that the characters are higher level, her powers aren't nearly as impressive as they once were. That's the way it should be as the PCs are the stars. 

RPG A Day 2022--Day 13--How Would You Change the Way You Started RPGing?

Super short...I wish in the first go at it that I had known what was a D&D starter set and purchased that  vs. the supplement that I picked up instead--whatever it actually was. In the second go--the proper start--I wish that I would have pushed to play more with my mom and dad. If I knew the rules of the game itself better or had the skills with which to run general games better, it would have been more fun. However, it's just not possible to get good--er, passable--at a thing unless you start at the bottom and work your way up. Also, generally speaking, I wish I had run more games with family and friends than investing time on solo pursuits like video games and watching TV shows. 

This is the artwork I always imagine when I bought the "kit" rather than a proper starting set when I first tried to play D&D...but it couldn't be as this one was much later in the product line. Some mysteries I'll never solve. 

RPG A Day 2022--Day 10: When Did/Will You Start Gamemastering?

I'll use this entry to summarize my DM/GMing career as I remember it today. Hopefully, it doesn't contradict the entries from previous years too much...at the same time, I hope I'm not rehashing a previous entry.

If you've been following along with the past several entries, you can put it together that I was the DM/GM right away as I was the only one in my family with any interest in picking up the hobby and I didn't have a close circle of neighborhood kids to hang out with. In my first failed attempt with the D&D product that I can't remember, I would have only been running for my brother. The second attempt with Marvel Superheroes and my Dad's...er, non-conformity...would have been me running for my Mom, my Dad and my brother. The parents humored me with that one and maybe a couple more sessions before it went to just running for my brother and eventually one of his younger friends named Matthew. Even these memories are suddenly 30+ years ago, so I'm forgetting exact details, but I recall running for my brother and his friend from around '89 until about '91 or '92. I graduated high school in 1992 and would eventually hook up with the 'main group' of my youth later that summer. I never ran during those years which lasted for quite some time. I played a lot then and had semi-regular gaming days between TTRPGs, Card Games, and War Games. At some point though...I finally needed to "grow up". I hated it, but I caught on that things change. There is a window of time wherein you are deciding who you want to be. It's cute buying toys and playing games all the time in your late teens and early 20's...it's something different to still be doing it when you are approaching 30, still living at home, have no girlfriend and no prospects. 

I pulled away from my gaming friends and decided to acquire a girlfriend/spouse. I spent two years in the search and courtship and finally won my wife over. We had to be one of the first online romances out there as I used my Sega Dreamcast and Library computers to correspond with her. I couldn't even get a hold of a scanner to send her my pic and had to go with snail mail. I was using phone cards to call her up long distance multiple times a week. As it turned out she wasn't--and isn't--much of a gamer, and since I eventually made the decision to go back to college, I continued to have no time for gaming. This was the situation for five years full of ups and downs. As a newly minted--yet, already 35 year old--licensed teacher with no teaching experience in the thick of the so-called 'Great Recession' I found myself going overseas to work. Taiwan was my first stop and there wasn't much English being spoken out there. I tried to run a zombie survival type scenario for a bunch of 7th graders in my "club" using candy for a reward, but they were far more interested in the candy than the gaming. I never found any colleagues or enthusiasts that wanted to play so Taiwan was a bust and not just for gaming and I left them behind after only year of employment.

My next teaching gig was in the UAE and it lasted for nine years. I've documented before that I played more during that time than possibly any other time in my life. I tried to run using various board game versions of D&D including DragonStrike and Castle Ravenloft...along with full game version of 4E and Ryuutama. There were varying degrees of success, but at least I was running. I mention here that I somehow missed all of D&D 3.0 and 3.5 during my time away from gaming and didn't even know about editions and the like until this time. For a few years I ran virtual games via Roll*20 which slowly, but surely developed during this time period. I'm fairly sure I was once again in on the ground floor. Around year seven I found what I call my 'UAE Gaming Group'.  I ran Cyberpunk 2020, Curse of Strahd, and an Al Qadim game for them. Again...varying degrees of success. By the time of years eight and nine, I had gone back to primarily being a player. I wouldn't call any of those games flops, but they were definitely learning experiences. 

Finally--and not a moment too soon--this lands us right here in China and my current teaching gig. I was a player in a local group the first year I arrived, but did no running. When the Wuhan Flu hit and that group went our separate ways, I started running on Roll*20 again. I did a one shot of a KS project I backed called Heckna! in Halloween of 2020 and I've been running my current campaign--D&D 5E Hardcore Mode/Ryuutama mash-up--since early November 2021.

There it is my entire gamemastering career--possibly a reimagining of an early entry for all I know. I will close saying that if you haven't been DM/GM yet, you should give it a try. It's a lot of fun and it's like running your own character except so much more. You may have to go through a lot of weeds with the whole WOKE vs. OSR thing going on, but you can search YouTube and find several useful channels to help you run a game including Dungeon Craft (Dungeon Professor), Runehammer, and Seth Skorskowsky.

RPG A Day. 2022: Day 6--How Would You Get More People Playing RPGs?

I think the interest is there, but as "big" as RPGs have become--specifically D&D in the States and Call of Cthulhu internationally--they are still niche and small potatoes. Generally speaking, people have neither the time nor the desire to read books that are over 200 pages long. If they have a life with responsibilities, they probably can't play any more than three hours a week--if they're lucky--whether they desire to do so or not. For all the 80's and beyond 'Satanic Panic' and today's Culture Wars that show supposed evils in the hobby, the one constant and true "evil" is that our hobby is a time sink. It can be a money sink too, but that's up to the individual. There are enough options these days to play for free and legally. It's the time and lack thereof that is the biggest deterrent to regular, sustained play. What should we do?

1. Explain the rules in a simplified way: You should be able to explain the rules as if you were giving an elevator pitch in a movie. As I mentioned yesterday, if you don't have time for a session zero, that one shot  can take a good ten to fifteen minutes to get the rules and general concept communicated to newbs, and they'll get lost no matter what you say, so it's better to get right on it. Say something like:  "It's like playing cowboys and indigenous peoples, but we roll dice when the outcome of an action is in doubt"

2. Choose a rules light system: Several games I've played lately could be considered 'rules light', but they're not 'kiddie' strictly speaking. In fact, I've found a few "kiddie" games in searching for an easier entry-level game for my young daughter that had more "crunch" and high-concept rules than she would ever be able to play with.  The stories and settings may be kid friendly, but the rules sure weren't. I choose games like ICRPG, Tiny Dungeon, Ryuutama and the Deathbringer supplement are all easy to get into. Any system that is D6 based like 'Tiny Dungeon' is going to infinitely easier to the beginner just because we're all familiar with the D6 dice. I haven't played Deathbringer, but I understand it is only pamphlet sized.

3. Choose basic race/roles/class: If I want more people playing--and staying at the table--I have to follow K.I.S.S. procedure. Letting an inexperienced user play some crazy race, advanced role or class--Magic User (fantasy) or Netrunner (cyberpunk)--won't be good for the players or the DM. There was a reason why D&D had basic and advanced versions way back when. In the case like the Netrunner in cyberpunk, it would be better to regulate that to NPC only no matter how interested the player may be in running one. You don't want any gimmicky race or class slowing down the game for the others at the table while you deal with them.

4. Keep the sessions shorter:Err on the shorter side for the session and leave the players wanting more. YMMV but for me and wanting more people to play means making the session shorter. I normally play at three hours max and we have managed to have a weekly game for the most part since last November. Once in a great while we may run over, but my goal is to always finish under. It's hard to clear out even three hours for the Average Joe on a consistent basis nowadays. Those 8 hour marathons from our youth are out of the question--consistently. If you want to play regularly, it has to be a short session. The creator who's able to create a system that can provide satisfying results after one hour of play could make a mint.

I'll end it here to practice what I preach, but in summary, if we can simplify the rules and run quicker games, more people are likely to get into playing and keep playing.   

RPG A Day 2022:Day 5--Anecdote Alternative

 Couldn't really think of any specific reasons why anybody would like to play in the hypothetical "first game" we've been talking about other than some of the general info already in the blog entries. Either they'll like it or they wont. The fact is, I don't have too many anecdotes to tell either. I find that strange as I'm sitting here wracking my brain trying to come up with a decent story to tell...let alone coming up with people to tag...that I have plenty of hours in at live tables, across many nations BTW--love my VTT groups but even the ones that are closest to becoming real friends are gaming friends only and I have no 'real' knowledge of their personal lives, so what can I tell you? I'll summarize a recent play with a lot of rookie players that I was a part of.

The most recent live game I've been a part of took place among teachers after school at my current place of employment. This particular school has an activity called "Sharpen the Saw" wherein the teachers should take in an afternoon activity--about an hour--that some would call mandatory fun or a team building exercise. One of my colleagues decided to run a one-shot of D&D and it was approved, so naturally I signed up.

The first problems was what edition to run. I suggested he go with 5th because it is easier and most likely current players will be expecting that one, and it's better for rookies--my Pathfinder Beginners Box is stuck out in the Philippines, but that's another story.

Then, the next problem is that there is just no way one can run even the most bare bones one-shot in an hour. There is no session zero so we just have to jump right in. Should I attempt to do the thing next year, I'd try to be in touch with everyone by email in the weeks leading up to the event just to get everyone on the same page. As it stood he went with pre-gen characters to save a little time. I lessened that burden by bringing my own character, but in the end we still wound up being short a character leaving one of the experienced players scrambling to quickly generate one for himself. That led to the next problem of having rookies and experienced players at the table. If I remember correctly, we ended up with three rookies--the only girl was a female Chinese colleague with the English name 'Hamburger' who didn't speak much English--and three experienced players along with the DM. That would have been a bit unwieldy for me. Personally, six players is right at my max, but I prefer 3-5. Our DM carried on. 

This mix of newbies and oldies brought us to the next hurdle. The experienced players tried to help the first timers, but it was a bit of a clown show. I can't speak for the other guys, but coming in directly after a day at work means my own brain was already mush.  I'm not completely shy at the table, but I'm also not the most vocal either, so unless I'm the DM, I'm easily drowned out by more verbose players, and the later it gets--the more quiet I become. These factors made the game run more slowly than it should have and we were already pressed for time. It's such a fun hobby, but so difficult to explain to the true first timer.

We managed to get our feet in the door with a set-up. There was a little bit of role play there and I got to try a spell, but all the magic wasn't working for some reason. We then went literally down a rabbit hole for the adventure. The DM decided to run a world using creatures from the Final Fantasy video game series. It didn't really matter in the end, and personally, I never critique someone willing to run as it gives me a break, but I think if I were in charge of it, I would have stuck with more traditional monsters. There needs to be something for the newbies to hang their hats on. The FF series has a lot of weird stuff going on and that's cool, but for rookies? Since we were already running under time constraints, it takes less time not having to describe these off the wall monsters. To make it less of a burden I'd just throw some goblins out there and call it a day.

Text messages started coming in at around the 45 minute mark of our scheduled hour, and fifteen minutes later when we actually were an hour in, a few already needed to go. I think Hamburger hung in there for a little while, but eventually she left too. I'd have liked to sink my teeth into that Hamburger...but I digress. We ended up having two combat encounters--one kind of introduced the crazy creature we were fighting and the second had us fighting a pack of them; can't remember exactly but they were either snails or some living plants of some sort.

It was around the 90 minute mark right at the end of the second encounter when we decided to go ahead and wrap everything up. I remember that there were four of us that stuck around to the end--DM included. We had one real rookie standout--the P.E. coach. He was really using his imagination and pushing what his character could do. He tried to come up with something unique on each turn of combat. Of course, that's not sustainable and the DM was letting him get away with murder--er, that is--encouraging creative game play :) but he showed a lot of potential to continue with the hobby. We all agreed that we should meet again and run a live table right at the school. 

That was either in April or May of this year, and in spite of all our promises to schedule a real gaming time, you can probably guess that we have yet to meet up again for another session. I have my VTT weekly game and the reason I have it is that I push myself to get up and do it...even when I don't feel like it. The DM in this story forces some gaming from his wife and kids at times, but hasn't fully pulled the trigger to game with me in spite of us living in the same building. Scheduling is just a pain in the butt and the bane of all would be TTRPG groups. When we go back next year--which is to say in September--we may give it another shot. I'm thinking to run 'Alice is Missing' for them, but they'll need to commit to 2hrs if they want me to do it. 

RPG A Day 2022--Day 3--When Were You First Introduced to RPGs?

 It would have been the 1980's. I can tie my initial interest to the 1983 cartoon which I saw in first run. I would have only been nine years old at the time. In an earlier blog on here somewhere I probably mentioned having a try at playing back then, but not really knowing what to do. I tend to remember having a thieves kit, but when I look up the kit I remember it was far later--damn, Mandela Effect. I am also old enough to have played 'Cowboys and Indians' with my little brother and later having bought into LazerTag all of which can be considered LARPing and some of which may get a person cancelled or possibly shot by accident today. I wouldn't do my duty if I didn't mention the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style books that were like gateways to TTRPGs and much more manageable for the pre-teen me. My brother and I would later make a simple game using the old M.U.S.C.L.E. toys along with dice to hold many a match and tournament. There was also an official G.I. Joe board game that used the actual toys on bases and worked like a war game for total beginners, but of import to us it introduced a story where the dice decided what happened. Then, there's HeroQuest, but everyone already knows how awesome it is. So many things conspired to make me the TTRPG hobbyist I am today, but to recap the answer is somewhere in the 80's.

#RPGaDAY2021:Day 28--DELVE

 #RPGaDAY2021 for day 28 I rolled a '4' and got 'Delve'.

From a quick Google search I get this:

"What does it mean to delve deeper?

to examine something carefully in order to discover more information about someone or something:

It's not always a good idea to delve too deeply into someone's past".

Depending on one's level of sensitivity that might be good advice. Sometimes one can look back on a person's life--particularly someone we admire--and find statements they may have said or beliefs they held that would be problematic--so called--in today's society. Even more tricky is when the person is no longer with us to defend themselves or clarify their statements. Of course my hope would be--in the case of most TTRPG pioneers--that they would double-down on the "offense" and tell the snowflakes to grow a pair, but I digress.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am far more offended by what is deemed, "acceptable, normal behavior" today, than what was common in the fairly recent past, it wouldn't take too much digging to find something published or said that one doesn't agree with. That doesn't mean you need to CANCEL the past or clutch your pearls and add disclaimers to the front of everything.

We're focused on TTRPGs here, but clearly this happens with all sorts of media. I'm not sure when people became so sensitive and started "straining on the gnats while swallowing the camels" to paraphrase another book from the past that people get offended by, but it certainly wasn't that way back in the 80's and 90's.

All that rambling and preambling to say that for those who are daring enough to delve deep into the dark past of Dungeons and Dragon, you should checkout 'Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History'. No doubt it has probably been sanitized for our consumption, but there is a lot of great artwork showing how D&D evolved from past to present--including some "spicy" advertising campaigns that will probably have snowflakes demanding the book come with a warning label. I'll give one myself.

WARNING: Product was produced in 2018 and the level of WOKENESS among the professionally offended grows exponentially with each passing year. BEWARE!

Side Note: If you never watched 'Song of the South' you should rectify that at your earliest convienence. While everything is subjective to the viewer's own tastes, I find it to be a sweet and gentle movie with a lot of classic animation and humor that only the flakiest snowflakes would find offensive in the least.

RPGaDay2020--Day 27--Fraction

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 27. I rolled another '1' and got 'fraction'. I'm not going into any depth at all for my responses during these final days.

I will say that I hate all forms of math including fractions and that way back when I took the S.A.T.s it was proof. I had a natural '20' in English but a '1' for the maths.

The other things that pops into my head about 'fractions' is that in spite of all the TTRPGs I own, I only play something different than D&D 5E a small fraction of the time, and in spite of what my wife may think, I only back a small fraction of the group funded projects that I wish I could support.

RPGaDAY 2021: Day 25--Tradition

 Day 25--Rolled a '2' which gives me the prompt 'Tradition'.

Another potentially 'spicy' prompt if I wanted to go for it. Luckily, we're in the death throes of #RPGaDAY2021 and I'm keeping all the remaining entries short and (fairly) sweet.

No matter where you stand in the geek hobby culture war--at least as it pertains to TTRPGs--I think there is one common ground we can agree on when we talk about tradition. What is viewed as tradition is largely going to be based on what the particular individual grew up playing.

Many of us stalwarts of the hobby are going to defend the traditions of alignment--including inherently 'evil' races, DM/GM caveat, and an overall combat heavy game with several elements the typical SJW player of today likely finds "problematic". However, a lot of us "old timers" aren't the oldest. A person like me--an 80's kid in his late 40's--is not a part of that first generation of TTRPG enthusiasts. We really aren't the so-called "grognards" although we probably have a lot more in common with them than the nu-players who want X-cards and safe spaces . Most of us won't be calling for a return to THAC0 or games that need 'callers' or rule-sets that are extra crunchy. We didn't grow up with it, so it isn't a tradition for us.

I wonder if those 'grognards' felt as bad as I often do about the hobby today back when their old systems were replaced by the newer ones came out in the 80's? I think the biggest difference is that the changes and revisions made to editions in the past--apart from removing demons and devils back in the "Satanic Panic" days--weren't made as a part of a political fringe movement and the goal wasn't to run the old folks out of the hobby.

To be honest--strictly looking at the game system and none of the super-WOKE policies of the companies--DND 5E is a great game engine. I think it was built keeping tradition in mind. It's only in recent years that WotC took the hard turn to the left. Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back again some day.

RPGaDay:Day 22--Substitute

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 22:Substitute

This will be the shortest one yet. Here in no particular order are the RPG (related) activities that I enjoy: 

* Reading rulebooks and old modules

* Reading or listening to novels based on TTRPGs

* Watching TTRPG discussion or unboxing videos 

* Working on my VTT campaign

* Commenting on the hobby--just like here

* Watching streaming games

* Playing RPG style video games

* Playing non-RPG style video games

* Watching movies with RPG themes

* Playing on a VTT

* Running on a VTT

* Playing a one-off live table with strangers

* Playing a one-off live table with friends

* Collecting older RPG materials including: dice and toys

* Backing TTRPG crowd funding projects--much to the wife's chagrin. 

All of these activities and any I may have missed are fun for me and keep me in touch with the TTRPG hobby when I can't play, but each and everyone of them are just a substitute--and sometimes a poor one--for playing in a regular live table with a group of well-known, life-long friends.

RPGaDAY 2021: Day 21--Motive

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 21 and I'm running a little late out in my neck of the woods. I rolled the D4 and got a '4' again. That means I need to use daggers more when playing on Roll 20, but more importantly it means my topic is 'Motive'.

I think about motive IRL and when I'm playing the TTRPGs. 'What's the end game?' 'Why are you doing the things that you do?' 'What will you get out of what you're doing?' and a bit of a problem in my mind 'What motivates a non-human character...especially a powerful one?'

In fiction stories there are always villains who want to "rule the world". I guess I'm not motivated by power because that would seem like a lot of work for me. If you were a god what would motivate you to do anything? You don't have to eat, you're not going to die. I suppose you might want more power, followers, or a better place to reign. Maybe if you saw some cute gnome girl running around you might come around to see her Zeus style, but even then when you're that powerful does it make sense that you would even care.

IRL I'm a Christian and I believe that God is motivated by love, but I can't come up with a reason why He wants to have anything to do with a bunch of wicked minded gnats like us. However, I'm very grateful that He does.

RPGaDAY2021:Day18--Duel

 #RPGaDAY2021 Day 18. With the roll of a '2' today's prompt is 'Duel'.

Short and sweet today. I will recommend one of my favorite old movies, 'Captain Kronus: Vampire Hunter' from Hammer. Looking at the picture alone you can imagine that a lot of dueling will take place in the movie...and it does. There is also a 'party' aspect to the whole thing with the protagonist himself, his hunchback side-kick, and even a fighting girl thrown in eventually. Almost all of the Hammer movies put me in the mood for some 'Ravenloft', but for whatever reason Captain Kronus always reminds me of 'Castlevania'.

I also have to mention 7th Sea 2nd edition--altough it's pirates and not vampires as such...unless you wanted it to be--and the dueling rules therein. This is a really fun sub-game within the game...maybe not so much for the other players, but between the GM and the duelist quite a lot of strategic fun to be had.