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OK, I got up there for about ten minutes to look for a notebook, didn't find the notebook, and am now knackered by the effort, and have to sit down again. Being ill sucks, so to take my mind off it, I'm going to ramble a bit about RPGs, D&D, high and low fantasy, and other such stuff, and all of you are going to comment and ask me interesting questions, and before I know what's happening, I'll have the energy to have another crack at finding the notebook. Which is, of course, a D&D notebook.
People know I'm a gamer. They might not know the word "gamer", but they know I play D&D, and every now and then I'll get asked how the D&D is going - usually in work, since most non-work people will know to ask about the campaign, or even campaigns. I used to just mumble something about it going well, but of late I've decided that fuck it, you ask one of my co-workers about soccer, and you'll have to gag him to stop him talking, so why shouldn't I do likewise? So now, when people ask, I set off into a big long ramble about the current plots, and what the PCs have done, and what this NPC did, and why time travel is a bad idea, and why I'm really glad I got rid of speak with the dead and resurrect and (*spit*) time pool. And instead of backing off in a stunned way, they... ask questions.
One of the more thoughtful ones that gets asked once in a while is "So why do you run games, and not play them? It sounds like a lot of work."
And sometimes I'm hard put to answer that one. It's a lot of work, yeah. And even though it's a lot of work, I don't put as much into it as I feel I should. By rights, with the three hours preparation to one hour's playing that leads to a really good game, I should be investing upwards of fifteen hours a week into solid preparation for this week's (or this month's) games. I don't do that, and sometimes I feel guilty about it, and then I decide that being guilty about it is daft, and stop. But still, yeah, lot of work.
First up, I like my campaign world. My campaign multiverse, even, because it has its own cosmology, more or less ripped off from Spelljammer and Planescape, and pushed to fit where they didn't quite mesh, and with bits bolted on at various points. As an aside, I want to read some of Michael Moorcock's stuff again, and would appreciate a loan of some from anyone local-ish. It's very much my campaign world, with a few concessions to the sensibilities of my players - but it's all personal. I know that world inside and out; I can write short essays on the tax practices of a given kingdom off the top of my head, and tell you exactly which of the three kinds of luminescent fruits is a hallucinogen that only works for halfbreeds. It's my world, I built it, I spend a lot of time thinking about new stuff to do in it.
Second up, I like running games. The mixture of acting and calculating and on-the-spot-plotting and improvisation is something I'm really rather good at. I may need to emote a bit more, but I'm working on that too.
And third up, I don't like playing all that much. Other people run games in published worlds, which are kinda dull and not as alive as home-built ones, or they run sci-fi, or superhero games, or White Wolf stuff, which I've tried, but which I'm not all that enthused about. I've yet to find anyone who's running a decent D&D campaign in a home-built world, let alone one which I'd actually like to play in. If someone does that, sure, I'll play. No, I'm not all that interested in other systems - D&D took me long enough to learn, and I know it well now; I can't be bothered to learn another one, and I really can't be bothered to learn the ones where the system and the world are tied together. Yech.
High and low fantasy, now. This is one that bugs me. I know a good few people who like low-fantasy games - I'm married to one, even. But low fantasy... well, it bores me. I read, write, play fantasy so that I can deal with things that are not possible in this world. The notion of a game where it's swords and mud, well, that was here six hundred years ago. I'm much more interested in examining the consequences of a world where anyone, given opportunity, time, and some basic suitability, can create magical items, be served by undead, travel to other planes, or talk to rocks. Low fantasy misses something essential, to me - it doesn't think it through. You have wizards who can do incredible things, and they're not hired by monarchs to increase their prestige, de Medici style, or to wipe out their enemies. And if the wizards can't do incredible things, then, um, what's the point? People point at low-fantasy books, like The Mists of Avalon. And sure, that was cool, but the bits that stick most in my mind from that are the bits that weren't low-fantasy; the Isle of Avalon moving in and out of the Real World, for instance. In my mind, at least, people will use whatever they can get their hands on to make their lives more comfortable, easier, or interesting. For me, trying to run a low-fantasy fantasy setting is like trying to run a low-science modern setting.
So, enough rambling. Tell me what you think.
People know I'm a gamer. They might not know the word "gamer", but they know I play D&D, and every now and then I'll get asked how the D&D is going - usually in work, since most non-work people will know to ask about the campaign, or even campaigns. I used to just mumble something about it going well, but of late I've decided that fuck it, you ask one of my co-workers about soccer, and you'll have to gag him to stop him talking, so why shouldn't I do likewise? So now, when people ask, I set off into a big long ramble about the current plots, and what the PCs have done, and what this NPC did, and why time travel is a bad idea, and why I'm really glad I got rid of speak with the dead and resurrect and (*spit*) time pool. And instead of backing off in a stunned way, they... ask questions.
One of the more thoughtful ones that gets asked once in a while is "So why do you run games, and not play them? It sounds like a lot of work."
And sometimes I'm hard put to answer that one. It's a lot of work, yeah. And even though it's a lot of work, I don't put as much into it as I feel I should. By rights, with the three hours preparation to one hour's playing that leads to a really good game, I should be investing upwards of fifteen hours a week into solid preparation for this week's (or this month's) games. I don't do that, and sometimes I feel guilty about it, and then I decide that being guilty about it is daft, and stop. But still, yeah, lot of work.
First up, I like my campaign world. My campaign multiverse, even, because it has its own cosmology, more or less ripped off from Spelljammer and Planescape, and pushed to fit where they didn't quite mesh, and with bits bolted on at various points. As an aside, I want to read some of Michael Moorcock's stuff again, and would appreciate a loan of some from anyone local-ish. It's very much my campaign world, with a few concessions to the sensibilities of my players - but it's all personal. I know that world inside and out; I can write short essays on the tax practices of a given kingdom off the top of my head, and tell you exactly which of the three kinds of luminescent fruits is a hallucinogen that only works for halfbreeds. It's my world, I built it, I spend a lot of time thinking about new stuff to do in it.
Second up, I like running games. The mixture of acting and calculating and on-the-spot-plotting and improvisation is something I'm really rather good at. I may need to emote a bit more, but I'm working on that too.
And third up, I don't like playing all that much. Other people run games in published worlds, which are kinda dull and not as alive as home-built ones, or they run sci-fi, or superhero games, or White Wolf stuff, which I've tried, but which I'm not all that enthused about. I've yet to find anyone who's running a decent D&D campaign in a home-built world, let alone one which I'd actually like to play in. If someone does that, sure, I'll play. No, I'm not all that interested in other systems - D&D took me long enough to learn, and I know it well now; I can't be bothered to learn another one, and I really can't be bothered to learn the ones where the system and the world are tied together. Yech.
High and low fantasy, now. This is one that bugs me. I know a good few people who like low-fantasy games - I'm married to one, even. But low fantasy... well, it bores me. I read, write, play fantasy so that I can deal with things that are not possible in this world. The notion of a game where it's swords and mud, well, that was here six hundred years ago. I'm much more interested in examining the consequences of a world where anyone, given opportunity, time, and some basic suitability, can create magical items, be served by undead, travel to other planes, or talk to rocks. Low fantasy misses something essential, to me - it doesn't think it through. You have wizards who can do incredible things, and they're not hired by monarchs to increase their prestige, de Medici style, or to wipe out their enemies. And if the wizards can't do incredible things, then, um, what's the point? People point at low-fantasy books, like The Mists of Avalon. And sure, that was cool, but the bits that stick most in my mind from that are the bits that weren't low-fantasy; the Isle of Avalon moving in and out of the Real World, for instance. In my mind, at least, people will use whatever they can get their hands on to make their lives more comfortable, easier, or interesting. For me, trying to run a low-fantasy fantasy setting is like trying to run a low-science modern setting.
So, enough rambling. Tell me what you think.
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On the other hand, I haven't played for two or three years either, because the group I game with are heavily into playing assassins and thieves and such and I get tired of all the underhanded dealings with the world and backstabbings -- though I must say that everyone is extremely loyal to each other; our party has been together for years in game time, and they're all reasonably good friends.
He To Whom I Am Married and Friend C both have very complex original campaign worlds, in which we have been playing for, well, decades now (though neither is afraid to incorporate something interesting from a book they've read or movie they've seen -- Friend C is a Big Fan of Eddings, for example, so we have done the whole Child of Light/Dark thing). So that the characters can just say, well, I'm off for Tyrsis or Restinford or Keg and it's assumed that they know where they're going and how long it's going to take and that they have plenty of supplies. They're known and have reputations in all of those places. They have a favorite inn in all of those places. There are certain places where we have to go again and again and again to find things and we have learned to "avoid that room, that's where the hook horrors live" or "that used to be the torture chamber; it won't be there."
Um. Where was I going with this?
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Doesn't matter, more!