RPG A Day 2018: Day 15...Describe a tricky RPG experience that you've enjoyed.

I am spoiled for choice today as almost every RPG experience has been both tricky and enjoyable in some way.

I went into great detail about my Roll*20 GM experiences yesterday, but in case you didn't guess, running a text chat based game is very, very tricky...not as bad as you might think, but everything you want to do has to be typed. I don't do it very often, but I have the advantage as I can type out a lot of responses and description and then just copy and paste into the chat as needed. The players have to give their responses and descriptions in real time. It's also tricky when all seven regulars show up--it's really too many especially in combat situations, but I have to overload the roster to compensate for the inevitable absences I encounter each week..this is also tricky as I try to come up with excuses as to why character X is really quiet and/or missing this week. It really challenges my brain by trying to keep up with what everybody is doing and by the end of the night I usually want a cigarette although I don't and never have smoked.

I'll also mention running...or at least trying to run...games as a means for teaching English to the ESL students that I teach overseas. I have tried both for students in Taiwan--allegedly an "English Club"which would have been ripe for RPGs--and three times with students in the UAE--these were small classes that may as well be a club although it's actually a second session of regular English class on paper. Every time has been disastrous.

#1 the Taiwan kids had too many students. Allegedly the region is into both Warcraft and Starcraft, so it shouldn't have been a completely foreign concept for them. I had the map of a local mall and tokens to represent the players. I tried to run a zombie attack scenario like 'Dawn of the Dead' with a homebrew that was little more than roll a D6 and whoever gets the higher score wins. I probably should have gone with paper/scissor/rock instead. I gave candy to players who won their combat or made a good choice as a reward. They seemed to enjoy it, but I think they just mostly wanted candy and had no idea what was going on. It was a one-shot that I opted never to repeat.

#2 the UAE students. In a couple of weeks, year number nine starts for me at my current school. Throughout the eight previous years, I've made three non-consecutive attempts to bring RPGs to the unwashed masses that are my students with varying degrees of success/failure. I think I'm a glass is half-empty kind of guy, so each time I've given up on the project due to what I perceive as lack of interest. The first year I tried was maybe the most successful. I ran a few scenarios using 4E. The students were able to create halfway decent characters and backstories--which is part of the justification for playing the game in a school setting--but the game was just too complicated. The second year I tried to run the Castle Ravenloft board game. It too proved to be more difficult and the students were more interested in "roll" playing than "role"playing, and far too many weren't even interested in that aspect. I most recently tried last year with an advanced group of 11th grade students. It was a very small class of six--only five of which showed up regularly. I tried to go with my beloved Ryuutama which is the easiest game in the world if you ask me. It even comes with the GM character to hold the players' hands, but alas...it's just too much for them, and I dropped it very quickly.

In both scenarios we're of course dealing with the language barrier and the fact that neither nation would be considered to have a "reading culture". Reading for pleasure just isn't something that they do, and not everyone "gets" role playing as a concept. It's just a pity that both school curriculums listed "role playing" as a potential "learning outcome". Unfortunately, the students wouldn't buy in, but I still enjoyed it because it killed a lot of time.         

RPG A Day 2018: Day 14...Describe a failure that became amazing

Let's first say that I think Roll*20 is a godsend and I'd almost use the big 'G', but I'm not sure if it would be blasphemous or not, so I won't risk it. This app has made it possible for me to play more now than ever before, and in general I love it. That being said, there's a lot more flakiness because of the venue being online. This comes from me, my players, and sometimes the app itself. It's like we're all willing to cancel a session at the drop of a hat, disappear from the campaign without notice or show up unreasonably late on a regular basis. Those are behaviors I certainly try to avoid at the live table, and I've never played with people who've behaved that way, but on Roll *20 it happens all the time. My greatest personal fault is that I sometimes cancel on short notice--but at least I always give a notice. As to the app itself--sometimes it's down completely, broadcasting video and audio slows it down greatly, and just like playing a game, the group is only as strong as the weakest connection. This has led me to stick with text chat games only--they aren't as big a pain in the butt as you might imagine. It would be a lot cooler if we could broadcast, but what can you do?

To combat this flakiness, I decided to run a "West Marches" campaign. For those who aren't in the know, this type of game is almost completely sandbox. Players can come and go as they are available to play, but they're always on the roster. Parties will form from the roster and different characters may work in various combinations over the campaign. The characters impact a persistent world while the GM keeps everyone updated on the changes...in Roll 20, that would be easy to do via forums. I really wanted to play Ryuutama and to me it seemed perfect for this style of game as it is a system that's all about travelling. I planned to go oldskool and even found a scanned Outdoor Survival map like they used for original D&D that would be perfect for the system and Roll*20. 

When I posted the campaign in the active listings, there was a ton of interest in playing. I had 20+ people who signed up to be in the pool of players. Unfortunately, very few of them ever showed up. I'll be generous and say I maybe had seven people make characters and play in at least one session. After about a month of unsuccessfully trying to get players to attend a character creation session, I wound up with a core group of five people who showed up regularly. After that, I just dropped the "West Marches" idea due to lack of participation. To this day, although the game is now on indefinite hiatus, there remains a pool of players on the roster that I've never met, and who have never made characters...that's the fail. 

The amazing part is that the core group of five continued to play Ryuutama with me using a traditional weekly schedule for several months. They remained a bit flaky, but we ran from October of 2017 until May of 2018. Eventually, they fell into their old habits again and a couple of guys had to stop playing completely, so I put the game on hiatus. Due to renewed interest in Cyberpunk 2020--thanks to the upcoming video game--I decided to start a new campaign using that system. Three of my Ryuutama players came with me. That means we've been gaming together almost every week on Roll*20 for nearly one year continuous. Anyone who's tried to keep an online group together knows that is a fairly amazing feat.    

RPG A Day 2018: Day 13...Describe how your play has evolved

As a player I guess my style has gone from wanting to fight everything "murder hobo" style to being more of an actual role player. At times I used to be a bad player--and most of the other players at the table were too! I'm surprised the DM put up with us. I remember instigating a lot of player vs. player fights in our campaigns.

I particularly remember in the original Vampire: The Masquerade how one of my friends and I were focused on killing a fellow party member because in game lore our clans didn't get along. We also wanted the bonus you got for doing in a fellow vampire which was a part of the game--see I'm not completely to blame because White Wolf shouldn't have dangled that carrot in front of me.

In D&D often took my role as a thief too literally, and was always looking at the chance to back stab an unwary NPC figuratively and literally. I remember in one D&D session wherein we were hired by a treasure hunter and his halfling companion to escort them through a particularly nasty dungeon. At the first opportunity, I killed the halfling for no reason at all. His friend, who had a blunderbuss type weapon, rightfully fired at me for what I had done--he missed me at damn near point blank range--and then the rest of the party fell on him and killed him. The DM finally had enough of my--maybe our, but I started it--bullshit. When we went into the next area there was a skeleton sitting at a desk in a library writing in a large ledger. He would talk with us, but he wouldn't tell us what to do. We could try to attack him but he would do nothing save to get mildly annoyed and put himself back together and go back to the writing. With this happening several times the party finally got frustrated and had to go back topside. The Marvel movie universe would use a variation on that idea for the climax of the Doctor Strange movie nearly two decades later. That being so long ago and the Mandela Effect being in full play, I don't remember if the DM's stonewalling technique taught us a lesson or not. We were probably back up to our old tricks the next time we played. I wasn't always the main culprit, and came up on the short end of the stick a couple of times. In any case, in our games most characters, in spite of stated alignment, were always acting chaotic evil/retarded.

Over the years I think I've become a better player. I've played in a lot more groups and thus been exposed to different styles of playing. The players--and actually the GM too--should be working together to have a good time. Storytelling and role playing does that for some while having a dungeon crawl will do that for others. At the end of the day, we should all be on that page. For the most part the characters in the party should ultimately have a common goal--this doesn't mean you can't have trust issues, thievery, betrayal or even fights to the death, but those things should be used sparingly. If the Dwarf Paladin will not rest until EVERY goblin has been brought to justice, then he probably shouldn't be in a party with a goblin thief. Hammering that kind of thing out in session zero makes things run a lot more smoothly. As to interacting with the GM, we should hope to make an impact on a session and the world as players, but we shouldn't actively try to wreck what the GM has planned. There's a certain amount of buy-in that a player has to give in order for the game to be a game. If Sir Robert refuses to follow the "adventures this way" sign, and would prefer to live his life as an entertainer, then he probably shouldn't be in an adventuring party. Players don't like to be railroaded too much, but if rumors abound of bandits in the east and an NPC has requested aid...then the party shouldn't flee to the north. They're supposed to be the stars of the show not the other guys. 

Nowadays, I run consistently more often than I play. I'm a laid back GM, so I let my players be gonzo if they like it, but I have to railroad them a little now and then and I will allow them to take actions back sometimes. I've got a couple of hot heads who were just like me in the old days who are liable to fire a mini-missile or throw a grenade into a crowd that may or may not include their allies seemingly without even thinking. We're playing Cyberpunk 2020, but it could be just as deadly and dumb casting a fireball into the same crowd. No matter what system I'm running, in as much as I can,  I try to focus on story and character development with RP opportunities, but if players want to let loose, I'm going to let them do their worst. It's no secret, the GM can really do whatever he wants. In our pretend worlds, we have all the pretend power. If the players get too out of hand, I can just say Tiamat shows up, and have an instant TPK which would be very strange for a CP2020 campaign.     

RPGaDay 2018: Day 12...Alt question 1--A memorable character retirement

Well, the regular question of the day was the Wildest Character Concept. I thought and thought even with the NPCs and I just couldn't think of one that was particularly wild. I do have a few short retirement stories I can tell though.

One of the drawbacks of running a long campaign--even one planned with the best intentions wherein we've planted seeds for logical plot twists and have set the stage with with an epic satisfying conclusion in mind--is that the parties tend to fall apart for one reason or another before the ending comes around. It happens all the time winter holidays, spring break and summer vacations are all banes to a good RPG group. It's probably even worse on Roll*20. It's not that online players are flakier--although they arguably are--so much as it is that we are all coming from such diverse places that scheduling problems are almost preordained to rear their heads sooner or later. That said I'll give you three brief tales of retirements that actually happened.

Gnissa Fumblebuck: Although I still pull the name out from time to time. Live table Gnissa--in this case gnome bard with a street urchin background--and her mouse, Baldric were pulled into a 'Hunger Games' type of situation with her other party members and some NPCs to perform contests and competitions for beings whom we officially never met. We saw crowds of spectators, but we never discovered who they were. Everyone had a magical device on their necks that kept them from escaping. We played through several events and were well taken care of as survivors. When the campaign wrapped the party never made it home. Instead the characters continued the harsh, yet celebrated lives of gladiators. For her part Gnissa had been possessed by a demon of some kind that controlled her now elongated right hand, but other than that she was none the worse for wear.

Charlie X: This character was from the 7th Sea campaign I ran on Roll*20. Charlie joined up with the crew while they were in one port or another. He began as a total amnesiac knowing little more than his name. His personal quest was to find out who he was. By the end of the campaign he found that he was the heir to a massive shipping operation out of Castille (I believe that's the stand-in for Spain in this alternate world). His corrupt uncle had gotten rid of  Charlie, his nephew, many years before. Eventually, Charlie was able to learn and clear his good name, and help run bandits and occupiers out of town. However, he was hurt very badly in the battle and decided to retire in his hometown having won his fortune and even getting the girl.

Amber "Spade" Spayed: I may have mentioned that I've been playing and running games for 30+ years. The campaign with Spade felt the most "complete" I've ever run or played in. She was still a relatively low-level character (level 8 apparently, although I could have another updated sheet somewhere) but I feel that I got the most out of her. She was a Tabaxi rogue using unearthed arcana scout background. She was fast (re:broken), but had a hard time with anything involving CON or STR. At one point the angry Dragonborn Cleric in the group threw her into a Gelatinous Cube (because of my being "funny" as a player. When the cube showed up I claimed to be far from it and behind the Dragonborn). She barely escaped that and was ready to throwdown right there...but I made her hold her temper because I was the one that started it (player not character really). Another time she got stuck in a spider web and couldn't get out for anything in the world. Eventually, the other party members had to free her. We saved some children from a homebrewed group of villains that were "D&Dized" versions of the weeping angels from Dr. Who. Our big bad was a serpent-men cult who planned to bring their god, Set into the world. We fought our way through the minions, but we didn't stop the ritual and Set was about to materialize for the biggest smackdown of nearly year long continuous campaign...but I called a time-out and had a private conference with the DM. I knew that my Dragonborn Cleric friend from earlier had 'Banishment', but I wasn't sure if Spade knew it or not...and I had the suspicion that the Dragonborn player would have never remembered on his own. We recalled that Spade had indeed heard about the cleric using the spell in an earlier episode. So, as soon as it was my turn in initiative order, Spade told the Dragonborn to "disappear him" which the Dragonborn did. Set never laid a hand on anyone. Note: I consulted the DM first in case he didn't want the Big Bad getting taken out so cheaply. The Cleric still had to cast the spell and Set still had to fail his charisma saving throw--he in fact crit failed with a natural 1--but it was kind of assumed that banishment to his own plain was probably going to be the end result. I almost didn't do it myself, so that we could have had the epic fight, but I figured there wasn't a need to 'play' with the big bad. Had the DM asked me not to, I would have backed off--and he could have always used DM fiat to say, "funny that should have worked...", but he instead, he graciously chose to let the spell work as written in the RAW. The whole crew was then allowed an epilogue, and Spade decided to stop her roguish ways and went to work for the royal family--the only remaining member of which herself had just been saved from serpent men--as personal security. After it wrapped the DM said had we not saved the queen, the entire kingdom would have fallen to us. I think for her part Spade would rather work security instead.

        

RPG a Day 2018: Day 11...Wildest Character Name...

I usually give my characters punny names or else give obscure references that only older people may "get". I'll give you a few of my better efforts with an explanation for the reference if needed.

Coco Lopez: She's a Mexican-American news reporter in my Cyberpunk 2020 game. She's named for a popular coconut flavored drink mixer.

KiraKira: She was my Ryuujin character from the Japanese RPG, Ryuutama. One of her forms was a pixie. If you read one of the earlier entries from this month, you'll know that KiraKira is the Japanese word for glitter. Glitter was the name of a little pixie in the 80's cartoon Kidd Video. There's the connection

Gnissa Fumblebuck: She is a forest gnome, street urchin, rogue for D&D 5E. I gave her a little mouse pet named Baldric. I had never heard of Minsc and Boo, but we were doing much of their shtick. 'Stumbleduck' was a suggested gnickname for gnomes in the PHB, but I think mine goes one better, and the obvious silent 'g' in 'Gnissa' is a longstanding thing for gnome gnames.

Amber "Spade" Spayed: Another race from D&D with nicknames are the Tabaxi. Amber was a rogue with the scout background from unearthed arcana. Spade was a cool nickname for a rogue...and spayed is what you do to control the pet population among cats. She was also billed as being from the Heath Cliffs.

Kendall Ling: Red Dragonborn Monk. kindling is related to making fires and Ling sounds like an Asian name.

Darville Frostbeard: He was a mountain dwarf and a bootlegger of fine ale. Darville is of course the surname of Bo "Bandit" Darville in Smokey and the Bandit.

Syllin Blackleaf: A female wood elf fighter. Blackleaf was the name of a character in Jack Chick's infamous 'Dark Dungeons' gospel tract.

Mabaho Ako: from the anthropomorphic animal game, Iron Claw. I had a female skunk named 'I stink' more or less when translated from Tagalog--my wife's home language from the Philippines.

Caladium Araceae: Yet another female this time a Pixie ranger from D&D 4th. Toward the end of 4th they released Heroes of the Feywild marking one of the few times a Pixie was officially stated as a player character. The pun here is Caladium which is a poisonous plant from South America that means Angel Wings...it also means Elephant Ears, so she had big ears to be teased about.

I'm sure there are others and I haven't even started with NPCs yet, but I think that's enough for today.

RPG a Day 2018: Day 10...How has gaming changed you?

It's therapy day on RPG a Day for 2018 with the prompt 'How has gaming changed you?'

Before I go into what gaming has done and continues to do for me, I will first give credit to God, my Christian upbringing and my family--mom, dad, and younger brother back in the old days--without which no amount of gaming in the world would have saved me. In spite of the fact that my dad was working all the time, we never a lot of money growing up. He worked all of his life and really never got ahead. However, he did have a successful marriage, and raised two boys who are at least somewhat functioning members of society. Ultimately, Dad was able to retire happily for a few years, before we lost him back in December of 2010. I love him, respect him, and wish that he was still here today, but some of his financial and "career" choices set the family back for years. We made a lot of moves--some lateral and some for the worse--meaning going to different schools in different towns and never getting to form "lifelong friends". Adults from a certain era--my parents were born in the 40's--didn't understand how important it was for a child, especially an introverted one, to develop strong social skills. I'm sure they were more concerned with keeping us in food, water, clothing and shelter, but it didn't make the time any easier. It's hard to go through high school with little or no friends--depending on what year it was. I more or less missed out on everything that an American high school student expects to do aside from the graduation ceremony--and I wouldn't have even done that had my parents not insisted. It doesn't bother me as much now, but I still remember the feeling at age 44 and if I live long enough I'll remember at age 104. So, aren't we supposed to be talking about RPGs...yeah, and here's the abridged version of how they've been around like the "life long friend" I never got to make in Elementary School.

Firstly, lets talk about the preteen years. These were stable times for the most part. I lived in Georgia in the States attending 1st grade all the way to the beginning of grade 7, so as a "kid" kid things weren't so bad really.When I was only nine years old apparently, my interest in Dungeons and Dragons started with the animated series. I was also into the Choose Your Own Adventure books especially a series called Time Machine. I was crazy about the dinosaur one. At some point here my brother and I did buy a D&D book of some kind as I remember it, but since my parents weren't into it and neither were any cousins or anything like that, we had to experiment on our own. I thought it was the AD&D Thieves Screen, but that wouldn't be for another ten years. Damn that Mandella Effect. At any rate if we really had such a thing, we were too young for it. We had He-Man and Visionary toys, but never got any of the D&D ones. Living in the South we did encounter the whole Satanic Panic of the 80's but it wasn't too bad. Mom and Dad were just glad we were reading. CHANGE: You can be a Christian and still be in to fantasy, horror or anything else. It's important that one knows the difference between fantasy and reality. 

Second, these are my early teen years. I was in fact just turning 13 when one of my Dad's bad moves happened. We left the schools we were used to and moved to Alabama. Now, it's nothing that's like a drive of a few hours, but it was horrible as I recall it and the start of a downturn in my life. My brother and I got into the Fighting Fantasy books and the lesser known Wizards, Warriors and You books from my new school library. The town we lived in called Jackson, Alabama was really screwy. Their high school started with 7th grade, so there were guys my age just turning thirteen, going to the same campus as guys who were eighteen or better. It wasn't a great time by any means. My brother and I also came up with a wrestling game for our M.U.S.C.L.E. toys. These were small pink wrestler toys from Japan. They were relatively cheap and we made a rudimentary RPG with them. CHANGE: Seeing my brother as a collaborator and friend...although he'd outgrow almost all of our hobbies including RPGs. The Alabama experiment lasted for a year and we were back in Georgia, but another different town where I knew no one. I did get to make one nerdy friend and his dad had the first edition D&D we tried to play it, but it was too tough for us. Had his dad been available to teach we would have probably gotten into it. CHANGE: You can make friends through gaming. Things were quiet on the RPG front for about two years when my dad decided it was moving time again. At some point during this my brother and I finally hit the big time. We went to the Atlanta comic-book convention known as Dragon Con. This led to me playing and running games of Marvel Superheroes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other Strangeness, After the Bomb and finally Heroes Unlimited. This was the time that I also bought my first set of dice. I ran for a couple of years sometimes only for my little brother and other times with him and one of his friends. I remember specifically playing a Marvel Superheroes session with the whole family. Of course, Mom and Dad were just humoring us I'm sure--and Dad's actions with Marvel's 'The Thing' from Fantastic Four would have gotten him banned from all social media if he had pulled it nowadays. CHANGE: Gaming can be fun for all ages.

Third of all, a peek at my late teens and early twenties. As far as switching schools was concerned, I finally had enough and as clearly as I could explain, beg, and threaten, I told the 'rents that I would drop out if we switched again. I just couldn't be the new kid anymore. We did move yet again, but I didn't switch schools. Not that I liked my school. In deed I hated it for the most part. No gaming was to be had in those years unless it was my brother and I only, and if I remember, he'd already started to turn at this point. I got my fix through video games. I really enjoyed the game Wizardry on the old NES and I fell in love with reading the strategy guide. I wish I still had it. I would bring it to school almost everyday and one of my classmates started calling me 'The Wizard'. For the most part I muddled through my high school career and finally graduated. CHANGE: In a pinch you can have fun reading about games and systems even if you never get to play them. Video Games are not the equal to a live table top, but they are a suitable replacement if you have no other choice...they're also pretty fun. So, after graduation I ran into one of the few friends that I had made over the years at  a showing of Batman Returns. We got together and through them my gaming hit at what until that point was an all time high. We played: AD&D,  Vampire the Masquerade, Deadlands, GURPs, and more Heroes Unlimited. In addition we were going nuts with the board games like Blood Bowl and Warhammmer (in all its guises including Quest) CHANGE: You can use games to make friends II and there is a great variety of games, systems and genres available. If you can get people to play games with you, then you can expand to other interests and make lots of friends. This went on for years and years throughout my early twenties, and I remain friends with these guys to this day. We're mostly Facebook friends, but we still keep in touch and once in a while we get a chance to see each other, but those chances are few and far between and they usually don't involve gaming.

Fourth, we'll look at my late 20's up to the 30's. So, we were in gamers' paradise there for a bit, but you'll notice that one thing was lacking...girls. CHANGE: Man cannot live by games alone. If you game too much--even today I might add--you are unlikely to encounter romance. For all the Satanic Panic and witchcraft worries this is the real danger in gaming. You are 'investing' lots of time and possibly lots of money into the hobby. People in my day, and to a certain extent to this day, see RPGs as a weird thing. If you look like a basement dweller odds are against any girls following you home to your basement to play, it's just a fact. Nowadays, with Roll*20, streaming games, and the geek is chic thing going on, you may have better luck than guys of my time had. If so, more power to you. If not, you may have to break away like I did. I pushed hard to get a wife--even then in a geeky way having found her via the web browser on my Sega Dreamcast during the infancy of internet dating. She isn't a gamer as far as RPGs go--she doesn't understand a game with no winner--and she doesn't like cartoons, but at least she'll watch scary movies with me. CHANGE: Gaming can get you so far, but not everybody likes it, and that's okay. So, having now obtained a bride I had to start focusing on things to have a successful, continuous marriage. I went back to university and got my teaching degree. In those four years, all I could do was to fall back on video games, but Roll*20 and a great change was just ahead.

Finally, and I should give milestone level up to whoever reads this far, how are things today? I got back into RPGs while teaching because I remembered how much fun I used to have playing and I thought it would be an interesting way for the students to get into reading...it didn't work. As I had already learned, it's not for everybody. I had to drive a long way, but I managed to find a small group to play with in the UAE, eventually got hooked up with the large Gulf Roleplaying Community--which is still too far away, but I check in from time to time, got into Roll*20 where distance doesn't matter, and helped to start up a small group much closer to home that will be entering it's fourth active year. CHANGE: If you think something is worth doing, find a way to do it. Somewhere along there I managed to obtain a daughter who will soon be four years old. I have every intention of introducing her to the hobby and she's already good at Role Playing without dice.

The biggest change RPGs brought to me was self-confidence. I went from a guy who would barely speak--and who to this day would still prefer to be silent--or even look anyone in the eye to making my living by standing up in front of people day in and day out. I try to play a role in every professional situation that I'm in...sometimes I pull it off better than others, but its a skill that I am fairly good at. In social situations, gaming is a very good icebreaker. Once you've gamed with someone, it opens the doors to talking about all sorts of other subjects and enjoying other activities together. Gaming has helped me to think critically, and imaginatively. This is very useful for spending time with my wife and daughter as we think of new ways to enjoy our time and enrich our lives. Gaming certainly isn't the only thing that's gotten me through this life, but with all the positives it has brought to me, I can't help but to preach it when given the opportunity. 

RPG a Day 2018: Day 9... How has a game surprised you?

This will be a short one...plus a little late for my side of the world. What surprises me the most about playing any RPGs is how fast the time goes by. I've been involved with this hobby in one form or another for at least thirty years. I've been playing on Roll*20 for five years now--just over 1000 hrs of play, my current live table group--with roster changes here and there--has been getting together for four years now, and I've been a member of the Gulf Role Playing Community--an RPG club that has conventions and Facebook discussions where I live in the Middle East--for eight years. Whenever I play a session be it at the live table or on Roll 20 they go for at least three hours and we're usually having weekly meetings and wish we could do even more. All of this for what is essentially a group of people sitting around with books, paper, pencils and random number generators--you might get a mini or map or two thrown in, but for the most part it's just the friends sitting around together. With so many other distractions in the 2000's the fact that people want to get together to do such things is pretty surprising, and it's a nice surprise.