Please Stand By.....

I'm hanging on by a thread, but it's a strong thread. I'm going through a rough patch lately, but I'm coming through the other side. I'll be back with another post in a few days, I just have to get all my notes together. 

RIP Dave Arneson

I have been a gamer since my eleventh summer, and the first game I played was D&D, of course. Along with Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson created that game we all love so much, and he has passed away today from cancer. A release on the Escapist can be found here
I can say nothing that has not already been said for the man, so I will merely join the chorus that is currently sending him on his way.

The Terror by Dan Simmons

I sometimes find inspiration in the oddest places. This time it was in the pet food aisle in Wal-Mart. I was looking for cat food when I saw a paperback novel among the cat toys. When I picked it up, the name caught my eye: The Terror. I'm not one for impulse purchases, but after turning to a random page and reading about a British Petty Officer's narrow escape from a creature of supernatural origin, I was hooked.
Dan Simmons does what few authors I've read have been able to do; he has woven a tale of grim survival against an elusive beast out of the yarn of the real-life 1845 Franklin expedition to find the northwest passage. If you're not familiar, the Franklin Expedition was a British exploratory mission into the arctic that was lost, with only a few bodies ever being found despite four rescue missions. Simmons takes the historic record, the sparse facts that are known about what happened to the mission, and infuses supernatural terror into the story , all without breaking verisimilitude. Simmons makes the reader feel the cold, the starvation, and the desperation those men must have felt after two years frozen in the arctic ice, with provisions running low and a monster stalking just outside the hulls of their ships.
The gamemaster may use this book to run his own historic horror in the generic system of his choosing, and Chaosium has a published adventure(Walker in the Wastes) that features the expedition as a plot point. I personally want to use the Chaosium Basic Roleplay to run this story as a campaign for my regular group. Simmons story reeks of Call of Cthulhu(in a good way), and I can't see a better game to model it in.

The Types of Players

It's that time again. Time for some of my inane ramblings.
You know That Guy? The one that takes everything too seriously? Not seriously enough? Well look around. If you don't know him, you may well be him.
First, we have The Over-Strategizer;
He's the fellow that feels no remorse in dragging a game to halt under the pretense of showing how much he knows about the rules. He'll take thirty minutes figuring out the best location from which to spring an ambush, and tell every other player where to place their pieces.
How about The Uber-Roleplayer?
This fellow takes every opportunity to take center-stage. He's the loudest, brashest, bravest(stupidest), character in the team. He'll try to kill the king and make off with his daughter in the same scene. His character will monologue with the best evil wizard or super-genius.
My favorite ; The Rules Lawyer.
This fine fellow knows the rules better than you. He just does. And he knows the best way to play the game. If you don't play his way, you're WRONG, end of point. He's read every post on every forum having anything to do with the game and has the inside track on new rules before they hit the shelves. He's joined every organized play club and has spent many weekends playing with 'The Big Dogs'
Our last specimen - The Slacker.
This guy may be a friend of the GM, or a boyfriend of another player, but for some reason he's always around. He doesn't have a firm handle on the rules, he's always late, he bums food and drink off other players, and he won't stick around to help clean up. He cares not for party balance, strategic gamism or narrative flow, he just wants to roll some dice and play a game.

These points have been made before, and many a blogger will make them again, but my point to this is that these stereotypes, and others like them irritate us not because they get in the way of any preferred playstyle, but mostly because they reflect facets of all of our personalities. We hate most that which resembles us most, but we can also learn from those reactions.

Start 'em young

Let me tell you something. When I became a father a little over thirteen years ago, I said to my self, "Self, you are going to pass down your gamer genes to a new generation of humanity. How will you handle that?" Well, I'll tell you.

I started with the basics like Candyland and Connect-4. We gradually moved up to Monopoly and Life. When my oldest son turned 10, I decided it was time: I pulled out my Red Box D&D set from my 11th year, dusted it off and introduced my son to the world of Orcs, Goblins, Elves and Dwarves. We sat in his room late one Friday night after making his first level-one wizard and I faced him with his first solo challenge: The random wilderness encounter.
I figured that a solo wizard may want to venture into the forest to gather wild herbs an seek out places of power where he could find ancient inscriptions and perhaps learn new spells. When I posed this line of thought to my son, he agreed and provisioning his mage, he set out for the hinterlands.As the wizard camped for the night, I rolled on an old wild animal table I found and got the result:Wolf. Adding a little flavor text, I described this mangy old wolf who'd been kicked out of his pack for being old and weak. The young mage looked like a fine meal and the wolf was moving in for the kill. My son then did what any good RPG player does and consulted his equipment list. Nothing. No weapon or tool to use against the wolf. He then consulted his spell list. He had memorized two spells: Magic Missile and Light. My son the asked a question that frankly shocked me; "Dad, how many hit points does the wolf have?" Well, I'd figured he'd go for the attack power first, but he reasoned that he could max out the damage on M. Missile, and still not outright kill the wolf, so he read the spell descriptions and proceeded to cast Light on the wolf, or more specifically, his eyes. This so surprised me that I frankly had say the wolf would be frightened and run away. We spent the rest of the evening exploring the world of our imagination, and a gamer was born. In the three years since, my son has played in four different game systems, and ten or more settings in dozens of individual adventures. We both introduced his younger brother to RPG's and they both get together with some friends from school occasionally and play a GURPS setting that we came up with together. The older wants to design his own game and is very interested in the mechanics while the younger is more into making up settings. To say the least, I am very proud of them both.