Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

I was skimming though a chapter of the Book of Mormon in Alma and it hit me I'm a dummy for not pulling NPC names from the master story teller. Not sure why that never occurred to me before. Perhaps because I haven't opened the book in years?
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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Welp, it was bound to happen eventually. The campaign I have been running for my daughter and her friends appears to have come to an early end. One of the couples broke up just as school was coming to an end, and in the face of finals we had been postponing the game. I had told them I was putting the campaign on hold as they kept asking if we could cancel that week's session last minute over the last month due to studying and personal issues. It seemed best to me that we confirm what was causing the cancellations so we could identify when we would be past them. It became apparent that this caused a rift and I left it with a thank you for playing, let me know when things get worked out and we can pick up where we left off. My daughter confided that it wasn't straight-forward as one of them graduates from college in a week and hasn't decided if they want to move to get away from Arizona, another is having financial problems, and a third wanted me to just tell them how the campaign ended since he didn't think they were going to play again either. I told her I could only tell her what was going on in the world and what was happening in the main plotlines, but not where it would have gone or how it would have ended. But I wasn't up to sharing even that at this time as I figured it would confirm the game was done. So maybe someday after things have settled out but not any time soon.

So...I reached out to someone I work with at another firm who, when I told him about the game I was running at work, had gotten excited and told me he had never played but he and his spouse were interested. And now I'm prepping for a game with six new players there. I also joined a game I found through an online meetup invite. Fun to play again which I haven't done in a while, and the DM told me he wanted to play sometimes, too, so he was wondering if I'd be interested in alternating running a game once in a while. So, the game goes on.
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Physics Guy
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Physics Guy »

That is, alas, the downside to role-playing games. The characters are just roles, played by players, and the campaign is a game, not a commercial production under contract. Real life can always step in.

Sometimes you can see the effects coming and adapt the campaign to them. My old high-school group gradually dispersed over a few years as we moved away to different colleges and got back together more and more rarely. I was able to wrap up our long campaign in a satisfyingly epic way, recognising that it was time to pull out all the stops. Then we continued for a while with shorter plot arcs, knowing that the years of years-long sagas were over.
Prospero wrote:Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
This is a more somber subject for me than it needs to be in general, because along with people going off to college, the big thing that came with the end of my original long campaign was that one of the core players got cancer. We partly organised our weekend marathon games around his chemotherapy, but within about a year, he died.

Tom did live to see the grand finale, as well as the best of the shorter subsequent campaigns; and the group did play a few more times after he was gone. And after a few years I ran some more campaigns with different players. It was fun, but never as big a deal as it had been when we were younger. Tom's parents told me, years later, that our D&D games had really been a big part of his life.

Sorry for the downer. A campaign winding down abruptly doesn't have to be nearly as heavy as that. It can still be a bit sad, nonetheless.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Physics Guy wrote:
Tue May 02, 2023 3:55 pm
That is, alas, the downside to role-playing games. The characters are just roles, played by players, and the campaign is a game, not a commercial production under contract. Real life can always step in.

Sometimes you can see the effects coming and adapt the campaign to them. My old high-school group gradually dispersed over a few years as we moved away to different colleges and got back together more and more rarely. I was able to wrap up our long campaign in a satisfyingly epic way, recognising that it was time to pull out all the stops. Then we continued for a while with shorter plot arcs, knowing that the years of years-long sagas were over.
Prospero wrote:Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
This is a more somber subject for me than it needs to be in general, because along with people going off to college, the big thing that came with the end of my original long campaign was that one of the core players got cancer. We partly organized our weekend marathon games around his chemotherapy, but within about a year, he died.

Tom did live to see the grand finale, as well as the best of the shorter subsequent campaigns; and the group did play a few more times after he was gone. And after a few years I ran some more campaigns with different players. It was fun, but never as big a deal as it had been when we were younger. Tom's parents told me, years later, that our D&D games had really been a big part of his life.

Sorry for the downer. A campaign winding down abruptly doesn't have to be nearly as heavy as that. It can still be a bit sad, nonetheless.
Hi Physics Guy,

I meant to get back to your post earlier but either was limited on time or unsure how best to express my thoughts. Didn't resolve the latter problem but I do have some more time today so I'll do my best. I sincerely appreciate your sharing that short tribute and memory of your friend and core group member. Rather than it feeling like a downer to me it made me appreciate more the friendships I have made, the current folks I play with today, and it helped me reflect on the importance of keeping in touch. So thank you.

The week before last my work game group had a taco bar set up for a little celebration before the game since it was the week of Cinco de Mayo. While we were chowing down on tacos and commenting on the various salsas, they surprised me with a gift and card expressing appreciation for DMing for the group and introducing the majority of them to the game when they might otherwise have never had a chance to play. The gift was nice, but honestly the card kinda gave me a little lump in the throat. I started playing in another person's gaming group I met through an online meet-up, and it's been its own kind of fun. That group being all strangers to me before we started playing. The work friend I mentioned and I have their game scheduled now with six players excited to play their first time, and the wheel turns yet again.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Thanks for sharing PG and H. Those heart tendery moments are what’s life’s all about.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sat May 13, 2023 9:27 pm
Thanks for sharing PG and H. Those heart tendery moments are what’s life’s all about.

- Doc
Thanks, Cam. Probably anything that gets people together interacting and building memories together would do what gaming does for me these days. It was more sport and outdoor activities in another phase of life. Today being Memorial Day, there's an "all of the above" category the military created where friendships and memorials crossed so many shared experiences.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

For the sake of bumping the thread, I'm adding the backstories of the two characters I'm playing in two different campaigns on top of the two games I'm DMing at present.

Jaquinn (wood elf ranger, horizon walker)

Backstory
The wood elf city of Himyar, while small by high elf standards, is the largest among Jaquinn's people. At least, that he had ever heard of, anyway. Keeping so many mouths fed, so may tools busy, so much activity fueled required everyone to have a special skill to contribute to appeasing the city's unquenchable appetites. Jaquinn's had been hunting. Where many of the other residents of Himyar may never step foot outside the city for weeks at a time, Jaquinn had rarely remained in Himyar longer than was needed to deliver the game he slew to the butchers and merchants, restock his packs, and leave. Because the area around the city had been so heavily hunted already, Jaquinn's hunts often ranged far, lasting weeks to find and slay the needed game.

Jaquinn was young by elf standards, very young. But Jaquinn had always intuited the world was dying, sensing it was doomed by the ambitious and foolish, and this made him hard, cynical, impatient with the weakness he saw in others who craved comfort and softness. But fate had turned the tables on Jaquinn because, deep down, Jaquinn feared being alone. He had witnessed what happens to those caught alone by the darkness. He had fought and killed many creatures, beasts and humanoids, monstrous and fiendish. He even enjoyed the hunting and defeating of a clever foe attempting to kill him if it could. But he was fated to discover there were somethings so much worse, things that could not be hunted, could not be killed, could not be appeased.

On a fateful day, he had followed the blood trail from a large bear he struck with an arrow, knowing from experience it would tire and collapse from blood loss so it was wisest to follow at a distance rather than risk foul luck trying to finish it off. Approaching a stream coming from a cave where the bear seemed to have chosen to make its resting place, Jaquinn was surprised by nightfall descending suddenly...surely he had kept track of the sun and had at least a couple of hours more before dusk? Dropping down to the stream bank out of the riparian hedge, he followed the trail into the cave and found wherever he was now, it was not of this reality. First among his senses, his ears and then his eyes fought to make sense of what crouched possessively over the bear. His mind made no sense of its shape, the sounds it made not registering in his ears but instead vibrating his very soul in harsh, terrifying shredding... noises? Whatever it was, it seemed to be consuming the bear, but not only its flesh. It seemed to consume its very essence. Something in Jaquinn broke, and he only became aware he was fleeing as fast as he could after he had traveled, what? a hundred yards? a quarter of a mile? a lifetime and through dimensions to get back to something that finally was familiar?

The trauma of what he witnessed could not be shaken, though with it came something useful. What he had experienced marked him, but he found he had a sense of it as well. And he could channel something from it out towards his own enemies when he attacked them. His own fear, what haunted him when he passed into fitful trance, also made him slightly stronger.

Shaken, this experience also fostered in Jaquinn a respect for, and a necessary loyalty towards, competent people. People who could overcome and endure in a fight, who could take on a job and get it done, and who knew when and would run together when needed. And so, Jaquinn found himself bound to a band of competent misfits that no self-respecting high elf or dwarf would call friend - a human, a half-elf, and a goblin. The world bleeds, indeed.
Last edited by honorentheos on Mon May 29, 2023 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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Rys'pn (red dragonborn paladin, oath of the ancients)

BACKSTORY
Rys'pn was fledged into a close family in the dragonborn village of Eyr'Shallegh. The founders of Eyr'Shallegh had established their community away from the corruption of more "modern" civilization and the diminishing memory of the important place of the ancient dragons that had first inhabited the world.

Growing up in Eyr'Shallegh provided Rys'pn with a deep connection to the natural world, and each day he was reminded of the place of dragon-kind in its history and order.

On his sixteenth fledge-day, the clan matriarch had a vision in which she foresaw a bright white storm cloud, sizzling with lightning and bitter cold sleet, descend and cover the village, freezing it in ice. She felt it a portend from the ancients that she received this vision on Rys'pn's fledge-day, and that the ancients were indicating he had a role to play in protecting the village from whatever this vision revealed threatened it. Eager to find his destiny, and to fulfill the will of the ancients, Rys'pn swore an oath to take the spirit of Eyr'Shallegh to mend the corruption he had been raised to believe afflicted the world outside of the village. And to find and stop whatever evil threatened it.

Before he embarked, the matriarch performed an ancient ritual bonding Rys'pn with the clan's treasured heirloom - the dragon's wrath longsword, Brightfire. She advised him to keep it close and it would greatly aid him in his ordeals. The weight of being entrusted with Brightfire drove home the importance of his quest.

For five years, Rys'pn followed rumors, seeking out any news that may shed light on the meaning of the matriarch's vision. Often he found himself engaged in conflict, helping a terrorized village here, banding with a group to stop a wicked plot there.

Following one such adventure, Rys'pn found himself needing to get away from civilization to purge himself and renew his bonds with the ancients and nature. It was during this retreat that he discovered A.P., desperate in a fight to defend his forest from a scheming lord seeking to plunder its resources for his own gain. Rys'pn saw in A.P. a similar devotion to the natural order and joined him in repelling the lord's forces before taking the fight to the lord's very own manor. From this lord Rys'pn first heard the name Adric, spit out at them in declaration that Adric's wrath would avenge this lord to whom Adric had promised the wild forests when he ascended. Following what clues they could gather from the lord, they set out to discover what they could regarding this white dragonborn who promised land that wasn't his to those who would abuse and desecrate it.

Oath of the Ancients: The tenets of the Oath of the Ancients have been preserved for uncounted centuries. This oath emphasizes the principles of good above any concerns of law or chaos. Its four central principles are simple.

Kindle the Light. Through your acts of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness, kindle the light of hope in the world, beating back despair.

Shelter the Light. Where there is good, beauty, love, and laughter in the world, stand against the wickedness that would swallow it. Where life flourishes, stand against the forces that would render it barren.

Preserve Your Own Light. Delight in song and laughter, in beauty and art. If you allow the light to die in your own heart, you can’t preserve it in the world.

Be the Light. Be a glorious beacon for all who live in despair. Let the light of your joy and courage shine forth in all your deeds.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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I've had 4 or 5 play sessions of Starforged: Ironsworn with my friends from Germany. I've gotten to like the system and the adventures it generates. It's DM less, so we all have to switch back and forth between the actual role play and setting the scene for roll playing. But I think we're getting pretty good at the transition. One of my German friends uses Chat GPT to write a narrative of each session, which is fun.

I've now got my PDF copy of Old Gods. Its my first time with the Cypher system, and I like its structure. The DM rolls no dice, so they can concentrate on the story progression. The DM can intervene at any point in the game and introduce a complication. The player at whom the intervention is aimed gets 2 XP, one of which they must give to another player along with a justification for the award. Or the player can turn down the intervention by spending 1 XP. Advancement is not achieved through killing things, but in discovering important elements of the story or completing a personal story arc.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to take it or Paranoia out for a spin first, but I'm thinking Old Gods. Paranoia is just too different for my first time as a DM.
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honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Mon Jul 31, 2023 10:44 pm
I've had 4 or 5 play sessions of Starforged: Ironsworn with my friends from Germany. I've gotten to like the system and the adventures it generates. It's DM less, so we all have to switch back and forth between the actual role play and setting the scene for roll playing. But I think we're getting pretty good at the transition. One of my German friends uses Chat GPT to write a narrative of each session, which is fun.

I've now got my PDF copy of Old Gods. Its my first time with the Cypher system, and I like its structure. The DM rolls no dice, so they can concentrate on the story progression. The DM can intervene at any point in the game and introduce a complication. The player at whom the intervention is aimed gets 2 XP, one of which they must give to another player along with a justification for the award. Or the player can turn down the intervention by spending 1 XP. Advancement is not achieved through killing things, but in discovering important elements of the story or completing a personal story arc.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to take it or Paranoia out for a spin first, but I'm thinking Old Gods. Paranoia is just too different for my first time as a DM.
Hey Res,

I went looking for this thread expecting it was buried back a few pages and couldn't figure our where it went until I searched for it. Guess I'm not paying close attention to the board these days.

First, jumping to your last comment first, I don't know anything about the Old Gods system except what you wrote above and haven't played the new edition of Paranoia. I do think the version I learned on back in the early 90's would be a fun first GM experience if only because the system was incredibly forgiving...in that Friend Computer is inherently not the PC's friend. So it makes up for unfamiliarity with the system to some extent because Friend Computer is inherently capricious and prone to screwing folks over to keep them guessing. You can flub a ruling and shrug it off...of course doing so in a fun way.

That said, I love what I'm reading about the Old Gods system, of course doing so through the lens of the podcast show. It reminds me of Delta Green to some extent, where the fight against the otherworldly and infinitely powerful usually results in party wipes but the organization continues on making progress, barely succeeding in preventing absolute horrors being unleashed, and the like. Old Gods would be a great setting to play that kind of game.
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