Zak S. asks

Repost and answer. Or, if you don’t have a blog, answer in the comments. Or be a big rebel and do neither.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

SFX!’s “Primary Rule”, which requires that proposed actions make sense according to the genre, but gives the players final say over whether they find their own actions sufficiently plausible to go ahead.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Tuesday night.

3. When was the last time you played?

Last night.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven’t run but would like to.

A Mission:Impossible or Dortmunder style caper adventure, where the players concoct and carry out a scheme so cunning they could put whiskers on it and call it a weasel.  That’s actually my next project after Zap! and Zorch! are released…

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Try to keep a poker-face.  Think about what the NPCs are likely to do, or if there’s anything important going on in the environment.  Listen to what they’re saying, in case I have to correct their recollections or elaborate on something that they seem to be misinterpreting/jumping to a conclusion about.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Depends on the game; we usually have cheese and crackers or something like that at the Sunday game.  Hangout games, maybe some pretzels but usually nothing.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Yes, but that may partly be because I tend to play at night.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Figuring out a way to thwart an enemy spy-camera installation without alerting them that we were on to them.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Always.  I don’t try to make the settings too serious any more.  I try for a balanced tone, but assume the attempts to lighten things up mean they don’t really want a serious setting.  Or maybe they don’t like the way I deliver it.

10. What do you do with goblins?

I hardly ever use goblins.  Last time I did they were a bunch of oddballs,  more or less out of Labyrinth.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

I’m always looking for stuff.  Illustrations from John Carter books and H. P. Lovecraft figure heavily in the feel of the Skyships of Atlantis setting.

12. What’s the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

When one of my players, having successfully in character smooth-talked the posse searching for one of the party members turned to that party member and (still completely in character, using her character’s distinctive accent) completely blew it addressing him by his full name and commenting on his lucky escape, realized what she had just done and exclaimed “Oh, shit!” I literally fell out of my chair laughing.

13. What was the last game book you looked at–aside from things you referenced in a game–why were you looking at it?

Moldvay’s Basic D&D, to transcribe the recommended reading appendix.

14. Who’s your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Frazetta, or Gustave Doré

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

No.  Creeped out, sometimes, but afraid, never.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn’t write? (If ever)

I’m running Stonehell for some kids, and that’s fun, but mostly I run my own adventures.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Anywhere there are enough comfortable seats and relative quiet.  I don’t usually run anything that requires a battle mat or table.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Arduin Grimoire and Risus

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

L. Frank Baum and H.P. Lovecraft.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

A creative, engaged, and cooperative one; I don’t like players who can’t mesh their agendas with what the other players want out of the game.

21. What’s a real life experience you’ve translated into game terms?

I usually mine the cities I’ve lived in for locales in games.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn’t?

Other than the ones I’m working on?  I really like character portrait generators, but I’d like some that were more robust as far as poses and body types…. something more like the character costume generator in City of Heroes, but with an easy way to publish to the web.  Then the same sort of mix-n-match toolkit for building scenery.  Not a full-fledged virtual walkthrough, just something that you could quickly whip up an illustration of a locale that you could share with the players to give a feel for a place.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn’t play? How do those conversations go?

Not really.  Once in a while I find myself having to explain what an RPG is to somebody’s relative, but the conversation isn’t usually very long.  It’s gotten a lot easier since video games and MMOs have become fairly mainstream.

I particularly like the use of the balloons and caption boxes to make it look more comic-book-y

Grab ‘em and start playing Kapow! today!

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

The submission deadline for nominations of blog posts closes January 15th, 2010. I’ve streamlined the submission process so that all you need to is submit a valid URL. Up to 5 per submission form can be accomodated; but there’s no limit to how many you can send in. The nomination form, and more information, can be found here

http://rpganthology.wufoo.com/forms/open-game-table-vol-2-blog-post-nomination-form/

Not really, but anybody who expects me to pass on an opportunity to use a perfectly apropos quote from Tom Lehrer obviously doesn’t know me very well.

It has a couple of amusing features, and I’m glad I took the trouble to enter since it forced me to figure out how to use Chgowiz’s One Page Dungeon templates and the various tools I have to make a semi-decent looking free-hand dungeon map.  But compared to some of the other entries I’ve seen (such as Michael Wolf’s astonishing Horror of Leatherbury House) it’s pretty weaksauce.

Blogger: Chgowiz’s Old Guy RPG Blog – Post a Comment

I play in three different groups, which meet with varying frequency, one of which has rotating referees, so my answers are somewhat complicated.

1. What are you doing with an original edition/retroclone D&D?

I’m a player in an AD&D+homebrew campaign, and I GM two retroclone-inspired homebrew campaigns, and play in a 3rd edition campaign that’s switching to a homebrew 3e variant.

2. What type of roleplaying game were you playing (or are still playing) before you became interested/involved in an original edition/retroclone?

So I’ve always played in one AD&D campaign, and one 3 campaign

3. If you were playing 3E, why did you decide to investigate/play an original edition game or retroclone?

I still play in a heavily 3e inspired campaign, though I mostly hate the mechanics.

4. If you were playing 4E, why did you decide to investigate/play an original edition game or retroclone?

Don’t play 4e

5. What attracted you to investigate/play an original edition/retroclone D&D?

Always played in one, decided to GM one in honor of Gary Gygax when he died, and decided to continue it w/more homebrew rules.

6. How did you learn about the original editions/retroclones?

The one GM has always had AD&D 1e books, learned about retroclones when searching the web for original edition for Gygax tribute game.

To elaborate a little more:

My friend Mac has always been running an AD&D plus houserules campaign for the past twenty-seven years or so, and I’ve been a player for the past…elevenish?  Russell was a player in the same campaign back in college, though he only gets to play now when he’s visiting.

After Gary Gygax died I wanted to GM an homage game for my other group, which I did (though I used Mentzer’s Basic, so technically not Gary’s actual rules).  I was hoping to turn that game into a “back-up” game for when we didn’t have a quorum of our regular group, something that happens a bit more frequently now that so many of the players have young children.  I wasn’t very satisfied with how it went, mostly because I wasn’t fully back in the mind-set of “rulings not rules.”

I shelved the idea of actually running some kind of retro-clone for a while, but when Mac’s kids started playing D&D we discussed my running a game for them sometimes, because she didn’t want them to develop the bad habit of thinking there was only one way to play D&D based on the way she ran it.  At that point I’d read a lot more of the old school renaissance blogs and thought more about what I liked and disliked about D&D in the old says, so I set out to create house rules that would let me run something along the lines of what Mac was doing (straight ahead dungeon bashing) but that I’d be comfortable with.  I’ve been describing what’s been going on in that game as they explore Amityville Mike’s Stonehell in this blog.

I’ve also started to use that homebrew and setting as the backup game in the regular Rambling Bumblers group.

Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?…

Michael Moorcock (b. 1939)

11 High-Brow, 3 Violent, -5 Experimental and 31 Cynical!

Take Which fantasy writer are you? at HelloQuizzy

4. Make your games simple and fun

First impressions are always the most lasting impressions, so make your first games simple and fun. Leave the complicated plots and backgrounds for future games – make your first games simply about exploring a long lost temple or dungeon, or a simple rescue or some other common fantasy trope. Your family will feel familiar with the story and it won’t be a stretch for them to participate.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! My wife played RPGs with our group every week for six months, and never really got it until she started playing in Mac’s game where the plot was “Go into the dungeon, kill monsters, take their stuff.” Once it clicked for her, she started enjoying the more complex story-lines in the other games, but there was just too much to absorb being thrown in the deep end of the hobby. Learning the ropes one room and monster at a time was invaluable for her.

A book of random dice charts for the kind of referee who likes lots of random dice charts. Broadly compatible with most games involving deadly underworld environs and magical flying dinosaurs with acute halitosis. Dice sold separately.

Next step: putting some of them in my tiddlywiki to use with Rollon!