Monday Musings - Role-playing games

 

I started role-playing in college.  My friend Eric didn't care for D&D but loved GURPS, so he'd been running games for friends  before I got to college (he was a year ahead of me).  He invited me and two other friends to play - Jay was an RPG old hand, but Allison and I were newbies.  We each created a character based on ourselves with bits added.  Allison realized quickly that it wasn't for her and bowed out.  But me, I was hooked!

Through college we had a fantasy game where I played a magic user (and was then forbidden to do so because I death touched everyone from the end of my quarterstaff) and a Supers game that took place at our college with the serial numbers filed off.  I enjoyed the Supers game more, I think, because that was the character based on me, adding psyonic powers.  And it was so much fun to play off of my other friends.

After college, I was in a gaming lull for awhile.  My step-mom had definite negative feelings about D&D and even mentioning it around her was a bad idea.  At one point, I bought a copy of the GURPS players handbook and hid it away.  Not that it mattered much because I didn't really have anyone to play with anyway.  But owning the books made me feel better and gave me a chance to play with different characters.

Upon my move to NYC, I found some people that I was able to game with occasionally. It was my first introduction to D&D and it wasn't nearly as scary or boring as I'd been afraid it would be.  Rather than going magic user, this is where I found my love for playing rogues.  Gaming was still sparse but at least it happened more regularly than in the previous 5 years.

Of course, when I met my (now) husband, the fact that I was a gamer girl was a big draw.  He'd been playing D&D since he was 10 years old and here was someone that he could share that passion with.  We played occasionally when I was in NY and he was in Philly, but once I moved to Philly with him that's when our real gaming love took off.  We had a few friends in the area from the message board we'd met on.  A couple had RPG experience, the other was a complete newbie.  (He wanted to roll dice on an electronic device!  The horror!)  We started regular campaigns and for those three years, we met every Tuesday night, either in a local bar or in our apartment.  It was as much BS session as it was gaming and some of my fondest memories came from those days.

The move to Nashville meant that we were once again groupless.  I think it took about a year for us to find a group that we could game with.  It had been a bit rough because by then, Teddy was born.  But the group we started playing was hosted by a couple that had three kids, one of whom was Tedd's age.  We had a lot of fun with that group, playing a lot of different games over the couple of years before that couple moved.  By then, though, we found our other gaming half.*

I'd met Becca during a Mom's Club get together and noticed that she had a D&D book.  We started talking, then traded numbers, and before long she and her husband met with Rich and I to play a couple times a month.  It helped that our kids - first Tedd and her daughter, then along came her son, then Pete - were close to the same age.  We expanded for D&D to a few indy titles (Burning Wheel, primarily), and then into board games.  Over the past 13 years, we moved apartments, they moved houses (closer to us) and they had two more kids.  Our families became chosen family.  Whenever a new game idea came into someone's head, or a new board game was purchased, we talked about getting together and trying things out.  Some of our RPs lasted, some ended up being one shots, but they were all fun.

As our kids got older, they became curious about D&D and wanted to play some with us.  Rich and I ran the boys through a couple of scenarios as they grew and, by the time Tedd was in 6th grade, he was wanting a bigger group.  So Rich started DMing Tedd, Pete, Becca's daughter and a pair of brothers that my boys were friends with.  When Tedd moved from Apollo Middle to MLK Magnet, it gave them a chance to get together.  We tried for once a month, comnined it with sleepovers and had a lot of fun.

Things slowed down all the way around when COVID hit.  By then we had the kids group and our adults group, who had grown by one more thanks to my librarian friend wanting to get back into things.  The adults group had been bouncing back and forth between a few scenarios, and the lack of gaming killed me.  It was about a year before we were able to start getting the group back together.  We pretty much started over, partly for personal reasons and partly because it felt right to get into new characters.  Gaming was now at our house (which helped me keep things a little cleaner).

Yesterday, we played our second session of the D&D module "Out of the Abyss".  Becca, Chris (my librarian), the older two kids (Tedd and Becca's daughter) and I played while Rich ran it.  And it felt so good to get back into charcter.  Tedd learned not to get too attached to NPCs, and I learned that playing a Wild Mage can be fun but it's gonna take awhile to get my brain out of Rouge thought.  I'm again looking forward to playing and wishing that we could get together every weekend to play.  But teenagers, COVID, and real lives don't let it be that often.  But I also know that it won't be too long before I get to game again.

* Also in this time, I was playing games online, both play-by-email and play-by-post. It was through those that I was introduced to the world of Amber and the freeform world of Tazlure, where I got my first taste of being in charge.  I'll probably write more about that later.

Monday Musings - Being Someone Other Than Me

 

I've been a role-player for almost 30 years. I started in college when a friend pulled me into a GURPS game that he was running.  He started my friend Kat (who was also a newbie player at the time) in a GURPS Supers game, having us base our characters on ourselves.  Kat kind of shrugged and said it wasn't for her.  But me.... I was hooked.  Through our time in college, I played my psionic-self (who managed to create a 3 day long building party thanks to a REALLY good roll), and a magic user who had Death Touch on her staff and used it without abandon (I didn't completely get it... I'm much better now.)  And it was one of the best times I had throughout my 2 1/2 years at Florida Southern.

I didn't game again for almost 10 years.  My step-mom had a lot of problems with role-playing games in general, so at the times I was living with her and my dad, I didn't even dare have books in the house.  Even if I did, I had no idea how to find other gamers.  The Internet was still in its infancy and I had no idea how to find anyone.  When I moved to NY, that's when I found out that a friend was a gamer and we played a one shot or two.  But that, and my previous love of GURPS, was enough to help catch my future husband's attention, because he loved the fact that I was a gamer girl.

That's when role-playing really started for me again.  While we were living in Philly, we had a regular 2nd Ed D&D game that we played with three other friends.  It started as minor-horror, Ravenloft, in an awesome place called Eulogy.  (They had a room with coffins as table - it was our room on Tuesday nights.)  For a few years, I played my rogue, Lidda, with occasional forays into some other characters that never really stuck with me.  But my rogue.... some of my favorite stories involved her.  That was also the time I was getting into play-by-email Amber Diceless games and going to a few local Gaming Cons.  I played flirty characters, fun characters, any character that wasn't me.  

I worried that motherhood, and the move to Nashville, would change my ability to role-play.  But it didn't.  I played in a few online games, even moderating occasionally.  And within a couple years of Tedd being born, we had a few different friends that we role-played with semi-regularly.  One couple, my best friend and her husband, became our regular gaming partners.  For over 10 years, we tested out 3rd Ed D&D, 3.5 Ed, 4th Ed, and even playtested 5th ed.  We tried to introduce them to some of the indie games that Rich fell in love with, but they didn't get into them the way we had.  We played post-apocalyptic  games, games set in Eberon, games from pre-created game books, games that were just... wherever.  For the most part, I stuck with my rogues, though I would branch out occasionally into other classes.  

Within the last couple of years, all of our kids have joined us.  Tedd has tried just about every class, while Pete fell in love with his barbarian,, Bob.   When we started, I played to help herd them and keep them from wandering too far afield.  They don't really need me for that anymore.

Over the years, I have found that I love to subsume myself into the characters I play.  I can set them aside when a session is over, but for the few hours when I'm someone else, I don't have to worry about the problems happening in my own world.  I can be as amazing as I want to be in my mind, doing fantastic and wonderful things that the real me would never dare try.  If I'm Naivara, my drow elven assassin, I can be quieter and a bit inscrutable, sneaking behind foes and doing far more damage than one expects her to do. If I'm Glenna, my halfling rogue, I get to Mama our little team of odd balls, ushering in the next generation. If I'm Pure Riddle, my Tabaxi Wild Magic Sorceror, I can be more playful and let my "what will THIS do" unpredictability come through.  Playing Imogen McKena, my teenager with severe OCD, lets me delve into my mental health issues.  Playing Ciasteczka "Chess" Piekarski, my 1st generation  Polish American baking teenager, lets me dive a little into my Polish heritage.

Each character lets me be a small part of who I am and who I want to be without the consequences that would happen if I let those parts out all the time.   They, along with more regular writing, are what helps keep me sane.

Sitting at the table, character sheets and dice at the ready.

Wildcard Wednesday (on Friday) - RPGs

Today, I'm going to talk about role-playing games.  (And warning to my non-gamer readers, I'm probably going to use Gamer terms that you may not know.  I'll try to explain when I can, but I'll probably miss a lot because it's second nature for me.  If there's something you don't understand about it, please ask!)  I got an e-mail from one of the games I used to play back when I had a lot more free time, wondering if I would be able to join the game again.  Unfortunately, I don't think that I will be able to.  Between the 1.5 games I am still in (and yes, Paul, I know I owe a turn for SB. :)), my swap-bot responsibilities, this blog and my offline responsibilities like housework, kids and reading, there's a lot on my plate.  But I really do miss face to face gaming sometimes.

I started role-playing in college.  My friend Eric introduced my friend Allison and I to GURPS, having us create characters that were based on ourselves for a Supers game.  While Allison fell away after a couple of weeks, I fell in love with being someone else and played through the rest of my college years.  Along with my psionic Supers character (which may get written about on one of these memories Mondays because she got into a lot of trouble), I also played a female mage named Morgana that had an affinity for the death-touch spell.  Even though I didn't realize it at the time, I was doing a great job at breaking the game.  But I learned over time.

I had a pretty long dry spell between college and moving to NY.  I think I played once with a couple friends from HS, but as for regular playing, it just wasn't happening.  When I lived in St Pete, I didn't know any other gamers.  And when I moved back in with my folks, my step-mom was very anti-RPG.  She was a firm believer that role-playing was a tool of the devil.  Later in life, after we'd talked quite a bit about it, she still didn't like it but was ok with me playing.

After my husband and I met, I played a lot more regularly.  We had a regular group in Philly that met weekly - 1st at a local bar/restaurant then at our apartment.  We played for a couple of years before our move to Nashville put a kibosh on our group.  We were able to find a group with kids around Teddy's age and gamed with them until they moved.  And then we found another couple that also games, and have kids our kids' ages.  But due to work schedules and hyperactive kids and the like, we don't get to game with them very often.

I also don't get a chance to go to too many Cons.  The main problem is the kids.  While Teddy could probably come with us and have a good time, Pete's still too young and one of us would have to have an empty slot so we could keep an eye on him.  Travelling further away is difficult for the same reason.  I know that some of the AmberCons are child-friendly (Deb's often told me about how she brought her kids from a young age), but sometimes they're a bit further away.

Plus, my focus in games have changed.  When I was a college student, I loved rolling the dice and seeing the damage rack up.  I wasn't quite hack-n-slash gamer because I did like the story portions, but story wasn't quite as high on my need list as it is now.  I'm finding myself wanting to play more of the Indie games out there than the big names.  D&D 3rd or 4th Ed is fine and so is GURPS, but I'm finding myself wanting to play Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard or Dresden Files, just to name a few.  I want to build a character and watch her grow and change.  I want to see what the GM is going to throw at me next and how I can work with it.

As much as I love PBeM and PbP games, there's an immediacy that comes with face to face games.  With online games, I have times to think about what I'm going to do next, weigh pros and cons, phrase things just so.  It's great for my writing because I have to describe so much.  But when I play a face to face game, I get reckless and that's where most of my best moments have come from.  Like the time I managed to phase myself through the villain in a Supers Steampunk game, forcing him to phase through the center of the world because he couldn't control my power.  It was close to midnight and I was tired and I thought, "What the hell?  Go for it." because I was too tired to think of anything else.  And everyone at the table loved it.

Some day, I'm going to get back to that.  I'm going to be able to play face to face in games that I enjoy.  Teddy is getting older and is starting to get more interested in role-playing.  We even have a game that's made for his age group - Happy Birthday Robot!  And Pete shouldn't be too far behind him.  If I'm lucky, in about 3 more years, we can start looking for cons again.  And I can start to let my creativity loose without my brain to stop it.