I’ve been having some cravings lately. Here they are, my gaming soul bared to the world so that I might have them fulfilled:

* I need to play Twilight Imperium again. Soon. Very soon, and with all the expanded rules. I’m talking a “veteran’s night” here, with 6 to 8 folks who have played before, know the ropes, and want to play again.
* I need me another night of D&D&D, but this time, I want to play. Who’s down for playing, and who’s down for running?
* Beer + Lunch Money at the Goodfoot (or Stark Naked?) - who’s down?

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

While riding the bus this morning and listening to my Creative Zen Vision M, jamming out to some sweet tunes by Manowar (seriously, if you haven’t heard their song Courage and you’re a fan of inspiring metal, check it out ASAP), I had a really simple yet excellent idea to try out next time a player brings forth a min-maxed Combat Zombie character into one of my games.

As a game master, I prefer that players enter my game with characters possessed of solid concepts and lots of good and chewy story fodder, like relationships, opinions, financial investments, and personal histories, to name just a few. Aspects like these give me a lot of juice to fuel my ideas, and the players only benefit from these considerations in the long run.

However, I don’t like saying no to a character just because it lacks these things. I like to think that just about any basic character sheet can potentially be turned into roleplaying gold, if only the right amounts of inspirational creative pressure are added to the right spots. I enjoy the gaming company of several individuals who often struggle with their character concepts when they surpass the base mechanical aspects, and sometimes I struggle as well with helping them grasp deeper ideas and attach them to that character sheet.

Preface: this is me ranting, and I hope you enjoy.

From my perspective, the roleplaying hobby is screwing itself in the bung, and has been for some time now. Gamer geeks who should be united in their dorkiness and proud that they share such a great hobby with millions of diverse types of folks are instead at each others’ throats. Insults are fying, flames abound, and at the core of it all is a conflict which I doubt will ever subside: Indie Games vs Traditional Games - aka the “My Game Is Better Than Your Game” War. If you weren’t privy to this subject matter, allow me to break it down in simple synopsis.

My gaming shelf happens to be located on the path through my house that I take to get to the bathroom (read: right outside the bathroom door), and I often grab a random book to read while doing the business. Over the past few weeks, this has sparked an idea that I’ve finally decided to make efforts towards fulfilling. My shelves are full of old games that I’m pretty sure are only kept around for purposes of nostalgia, and frankly, I’m getting tired of the feeling of sadness I feel every time I look at them and realize I’ll most likely never play them again.

So next year, starting in January of 2008, I’m gonna embark upon a personal crusade to give each and every one of those games a “Last Hurrah” before packing them away in a closet somewhere, or - heaven forbid! - giving them away to someone else who will find them more useful to their own games. I hate to part with them, as they led to some real good memories, but the thing is, I just don’t ever see any good new campaigns from them in the future, especially with the ways in which my gaming tastes have so drastically changed over the last few years.

Currently on the list:

• Alternity - specifically, Star*Drive and DarkMatter, although if there’s actually an interest I’d love to run the StarCraft setting too.
• Earthdawn - I am determined to run at least one of the modules I have.
• Midnight - I sadly don’t foresee any good campaigns growing out of this with my gaming groups.
• Nightbane - More mutation charts than you can shake a gazebo at
• Palladium Fantasy - 1st Edition, yo!
• Rifts (shudder)
• Shadowrun - 4th Edition. Mind you, I love this game, but I’m kinda tired of rules systems like this. I might keep this one around, though.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (although I might just end up giving this away at Dragoncon)

I’m not sure which one I’ll start with, but I do foresee a series of mini-campaigns, one with each game. I think I’ll start with Alternity, doing a Star*Drive game and then a DarkMatter game, and who knows where I’ll go from there.

Also, I’ve got another set of AP reports coming for both last weekend’s Undiscovered Countries game and last night’s Warhammer FRP demo. I need to finish listening to the recording before I finalize the first one, and finish recovering from whatever freak sickness has overtaken me today to do either. The UC report is mostly finished, I’m just unclear on a few of the details.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

My buddies and I have this weird tradition wherein we get together and randomly play a game we affectionately call D&D&D, or “Dungeons and Dragons and Drunkards.” This weekend, we’re doing it again, and we figured it would be a good idea to turn it into an actual drinking game. The goal of this game is to start playing sober, and then as the module progresses you get more and more wasted. This of course means that the module becomes more and more entertaining, and D&D becomes actually somewhat playable and (dare I say it) fun.

After discussing with some gamers on another forum, here are the rules that I’ve got worked out so far:

• If you roll a 1, you become the Gobber Chugmeister.
• Every time someone rolls a 20, the Gobber Chugmeister takes a drink
• If the Gobber Chugmeister rolls a 1, he takes 1d6 drinks.
• If the Gobber Chugmeister rolls a 20, he gives the title of Gobber Chugmeister to another player/GM of his choice.

• You explode a die*, you have to take a drink
• Every Save you miss, take a drink
• Every Skill you fail, take a drink
• Every time you confirm a critical, your opponent drinks a number of times = the weapon’s crit multiplier.
• Every time you take damage, take a drink according to the die type: d4 = 1 drink, d6 = 2 drinks, d8 = 3 drinks, d10 = 4 drinks, d12 = 5 drinks; multiply the number of drinks times the number of dice rolled. Magic Missiles can be a cheap way to get your opponent drunk.

• If your character drinks, you drink
• When someone quotes Monty Python, Dead Alewives, internet memes, or other such hilarity, ALL take a drink
• If you talk about an old character, take a drink
• If you measure a spell radius, take a drink
• If you purposefully malign another PC, take a drink

• When you gain an experience level, take a shot.

Any other suggestions?

* We started using Exploding Dice in D&D games. This means that every time you roll a die that rolls its max, you reroll it and add it again.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

As I’ve posted before, I’ll be running some demos of various games at Guardian Games on Saturday, June 23rd, a date also known as Free RPG Day. I’ve looked over the materials being given away, and chosen two quick-start adventures to run. I’ve read over them, and I feel I’m as ready as I’ll possibly be for running them with such short prep time.

As some of you know, June 23rd is the first-annual Free RPG Day, a national (international?) event inspired by the success of the fairly recent Free Comic Book Day. While RMG has no brand new products to contribute to this effort, I’ll still be spending most of this day running demos at Guardian Games, helping to promote the new free stuff (and getting free games and store credit in the process, woot). I’m looking forward to running a con-style demo again, and hopefully they’ll actually get the free stuff in advance so that those who wish to help run demos (like me) can see what they’ll be running and have a few days to prep. Cold-run Demo RPGs are theoretically possible, but I dunno. Maybe. We’ll see. If you’re interested in the events, check out the website, and if you’re interested in the game I’ll be running, then drop a comment and help make this an awesome event.

I meant to post this on the day-of, but it totally slipped my mind. Here’s a recap of our very first Grind Night, May 26th 2007, and the various timed milestones. I’ve linked to pictures when I could find them.

Date: 05/26/2007
Game: Shadow of the Colossus
Grinders: Nathanael, Alex, Andrea
Goal: To defeat all 16 of the colossi in 6 hours.