#RPGaDAY2015, Day 8: Favorite Appearance of RPGs in Media

by ThomasNo Comments

Today, on #RPGaDAY, our writing prompt is Favorite Appearance of RPGs in the Media.

I can’t really think of any, or at least any that are positive. Either they’re played for jokes, or they’re present to show the players themselves are the jokes:

INT. SHELDON AND LEONARD’S APARTMENT. DAY.

PENNY
What have you guys got planned for the weekend?

SHELDON
We were going to play Dungeons & Dragons.

[audience laughter]

SHELDON
(holding up player’s handbook)
It’s Advanced.

[more audience laughter]

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Boardgames have a better presence in television. Over on Orphan Black, Runewars from Fantasy Flight Games made an appearance late in season two, with members of Cosima’s lab playing. The showrunner is a fan of the game, coordinated with FFG’s president, and went over the script with the actors to make sure they actually were (seemingly) playing the game. In season three ((I haven’t caught up yet. No spoilers, please.)), more FFG games show up. Carcassone, Settlers of Catan, and other gateway games have been seen on other recent television shows. And that’s not counting things like Geek & Sundry’s Tabletop or the celebrity game night thing that came out on network television right after Tabletop became an internet sensation.

It’s a golden age for boardgames, but we’re not seeing that with role-playing games. The closest we’ve gotten are on the Geek & Sundry shows Tabletop and Titansgrave. Over on Tabletop, they ran Dragon Age and Fiasco ((While the Fiasco episode was good, I think it’s better to compare the other two.)) ; Titansgrave was a campaign-length show that featured Fantasy AGE, based on the game that powered the Dragon Age game. But readers of this blog are probably aware of those.

4319880-6905332273-fonziThat Dragon Age episode, I particularly didn’t like. It’s an awesome example of what happens when you don’t have a social contract or good buy-in to the game you’re about to play. Pramas brings a dark fantasy game, Hardwick wants to play goofy fun dorkiness, and Wheaton just wants to have fun with his friends. After Hardwick describes his character as Fonzie, whose goal is to sleep with every woman in the setting, there’s a cut to Pramas diplomatically talking about how every group has a player like this. ((Which is complete BS, but this is a show, so rather than scream out in frustration, Chris Pramas takes the high road.)) It’s an amazingly awful start to an episode that several people believe is a good example of gaming. When I mentioned this on Google Plus, one of the responses was, “it felt like Hardwick was mocking my favorite hobby. It really was not fun to watch.” I agree.

No, the better example of gaming is the Titansgrave series, where Wil Wheaton runs a game that lasts ten episodes. ((Chris Pramas and the rest of Green Ronin were on staff to facilitate.)) There, everyone is on the same page ((Except the opening narrator, who seems to think there’s all this Foreboding and Darkness, when the game they’re actually playing is all about THE BEER!, robotic NPCs named “Keggy”, and general light goofiness in the foreground.)) and it’s a great representation of role-playing games to people who haven’t played them before. The campaign book (and the base Fantasy AGE game) sold like crazy at Gen Con 2015. I’ve heard and read so many people talk about that game and how much they’ve enjoyed the setting. I’ve got nothing but goodness to talk about that series. It’s going to be something that brings more gamers into the hobby.

titansgrave2

#RPGaDAY, Last Year: Day 8 – Favorite Character

by ThomasNo Comments

Again, not a good topic to revisit, as I typically run games instead of play in them. ((Maybe I should rethink this whole “Last Year” concept. Nah. I’ve got some good stuff coming.))

So last year today on #RPGaDAY, a subject that really is called “Tell me about your character”.

I’ll try not to bore you.

I play in games very rarely. Since picking up that boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons, it seems like I’ve always been the GM. There were a handful of characters I actually played, usually thieves in the pseudo-European magical medieval fantasy games due to my dislike of the Vancian magic system D&D and its imitators favored. ((It’s probably why I’ve never read any of Vance’s books, too.)) As those few moments of being on the other side of the DM screen drifted away into the hazy past, I really only recall two or three characters worth mentioning. They all do the right thing, but wind up suffering for it.

The most recent character I played was doomed from the start.

There’s a Shadowrun adventure called Missing Blood. In it, the heroes come across a private investigator who fell hard for a girl he was trying to find. He never met her, but investigating her, he was exposed to everything in her life, including what she looked and sounded like. He was hit by the love but, hard. In Missing Blood, the runners get some information from him, head off to be heroic adventurers and eventually find the girl, but she’s the victim of a cult and in the middle of a week-long possession ritual that was impossible to stop. ((I’m greatly oversimplifying the situation.)) She was gone, partially consumed. After the mission, the runners could return to the P.I. and decide what, if anything, they would tell him.

My last character was that investigator. Except I had him go on that mission with the runners, found the girl halfway through her transformation to an Ant Queen, and got her out. And she’s been kept in magical stasis for the past two years in his basement. And he loves her.

There was never going to be a happy ending for Daniel.

Either he saves her and she wakes up and doesn’t know who this guy is or he fails and she arises as an Ant Queen.

That’s my favorite character. Creepy, doomed Daniel. Even if given the chance, I would never go back to playing that character. His story is over. ((What happened? In the end, she was threatened, so he dropped the magical stasis on her; she was consumed by the Ant Queen spirit, and — through a sympathic link that insect shamen and queen spirits have — he knew she loved him. It might not have been her any more, but that love was all that Daniel cared about. So I guess it was a happy ending after all.))

tl;dr: I guess I really like Hamlet.

ants

#RPGaDAY2015, Day 7: Favorite Free RPG

by ThomasNo Comments

Today, on #RPGaDAY, our writing prompt is Favorite Free RPG.

It’s still Lady Blackbird. I didn’t even need to think longer than a few seconds about that one.

Well, see you tomorrow.

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Oh, wait. That’s not 500 words.

What I like about Lady Blackbird isn’t one specific thing. There’s a lot of great moments in those few pages of game material:

The opening. You’ve got a situation that throws the protagonists into peril, reading like a Republic Movies serial opening as it scrawls up the screen. It’s a wonderful technique and a throwback to the film serials that, due to being short movies that were designed to bring people back to the theater week after week, heavily imply near non-stop action and cliffhangers. ((It’s not a coincidence that George Lucas used the same technique in Star Wars back in 1976, followed by one of the most memorable openings to a movie. Go back and watch Star Wars and see how long it is until the first or fourth line of dialogue is uttered. What happens before that? Dire peril.))

The implied setting. We don’t know much about the setting: just enough to hook us in, not enough so the players at the tables get to flesh out the world. Anything as simple as what the imperial guards on board the Hand of Sorrow are in your game: Clockwork soldiers that need winding? Men in suits of armor with blasters? Women in caped Prussian uniforms weilding electro-sabres? To what the words “Imperial Expansion” implies on the map, or that slavery is outlawed on Haven — does the Empire have slaves, or are they fleeing from the Free Worlds? To the barely-mentioned-in-the-game Sky Squids, featured on a diagram of relative sized that shows how small your ship, The Owl, is, in comparison. Especially how it would easily fit in the tentacles.

The characters. Aimed at each other with secret ((Secret to the characters, not to the players.)) goals and desires. “Will they be able to find the secret lair of the pirate king?” the game asks. “If they do, will Uriah Flint accept Lady Blackbird as his bride? By the time they get there, will she want him to?”

The character sheets. Right there are all the rules you need to play the game. The top half, your character. The bottom, the rules summary: how to do things, how to improve your character. It’s crazy clever how much game there is in that little space on the character sheet.

The refreshement scenes. You get to refresh your dice pool by takign a breather with another character, which drives the roleplaying, but there’s this fantastic line slapped at the end that really made our game of Lady Blackbird an awesome game: Refreshment scenes can be flashbacks, too. That single line opened up the world and let us explore the space. We flashback to when Vance first met the Lady. We see the Lady’s life before her engagement. We can experience Count Carlowe’s and Uriah Flint’s power over the common folk. We can even jump back to a quiet moment at the beginning of the journey and watch Naomi and Kale steal a kiss.

When my group played, we ran five or six sessions. We made it to Flint’s base and by that time, no, she didn’t want anything to do with the scoundrel. The Owl, destroyed, the Lady, she took command and stole Count Carlowe’s ship, fleeing into the blue with her crew. A happy ending after all, but probably not the one your group would have.

Lady Blackbird: still a masterpiece.