Another Fifth Week Event with some gaming war stories! Don’t forget to follow my channel to get the podcast as soon as I put it out, plus other stuff I might put on there.
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Nice podcast!
As you were talking, a lot of the stuff you said really reminded me of a webcomic called Sam and Fuzzy. I think you would like it, because it’s a really fun comic. It’s about a guy named Sam and a talking bear named Fuzzy, and the current plot starts with them turning the Ninja Mafia into a help-for-hire company.
Also, what are your thoughts on Roll20?
Crossbow? HAH! Until third edition wizards couldn’t use anything that fancy. Wizards get a sling. And no there is no ‘feat’ that you could take that’d let you use anything better. And no being an elf doesn’t help.
A sling.
Crossbow? You wish…
“Alignment is your character’s side in the great cosmic conflict.” I just would like to ask for a clarification: Do you mean the in-fiction conflict of good vs. evil/law vs. chaos, or the meta conflict of drama llamas vs. chaotic neutral?
Alignment shift from chaotic good (a.k.a. Woodstock) to lawful neutral (a.k.a. The Man) coinciding with a person acquiring major property actually makes sense. It happens to real people. Just saying because it’s a funny coincidence.
About destroying games by not understanding the game… A friend of mine once wanted to try GM some Cyberpunk. Okay, we all make characters and start with a scene where we’re at the bar and an npc comes and tells us some guys are looking for us. So we peek and see what the guys looking for us look like, and the GM describes them as really tough-looking and armed to the teeth.
Now, in Cyberpunk people like that are dangerous. Always. It’s a setting where if you play it by the rules, crossing a street carries a meaningful risk of getting you shot.
So we players read the situation as fight or flight, and start crawling under tables to escape.
The thing is, the GM had planned that these guys looking for us were going to give us our big quest for the adventure, so the GM decides to stop us from escaping by having a person at one of the tables pull a gun and tell us to get the hell out from under his table.
I’m sure you can all see what happens next.
So yeah, there’s a big firefight and everybody dies. Never did learn what sort of adventure the GM had planned.
I have a problem with White Wolf games, and I know for a fact I’m not alone with this: The setting correlates poorly to everybody’s power level. You have the basic human society that’s supposed to be fairly normal, but even a starting player is more than powerful enough to not give two shakes about it. Only the supernatural stuff ever matters to anyone, and there are oodles of creatures around that could declare themselves king of all humans at any time they felt like it, but somehow there’s still the normal human society anyway. My suspenders of disbelief aren’t quite strong enough for it.
Which is not to say the games can’t be fun. I especially liked Scion, where you play children of old gods. Being ridiculously overpowered and acting like it can be fun when it makes complete sense. Also being a demigod of death, darkness, and chaos while being a good guy is great.
About playing oneself, I totally agree. I play role-playing games because I want to put myself in the position of someone else. This larp of being me has been going on for over thirty years already so I don’t need any more of that.