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The Adventure So Far
14 years ago
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Gaming Experience
There is just something about the sound of dice as they bounce across the table, and decide the fate of you characters. It just plain cool to open your dice-bag and see the multi-colored pieces of plastic (although the Flagons have lately acquired metal dice too) spill randomly out on the table as you and your buddies prepare to embark on the night's adventure. In fact, the process of preparing to game is damn near as much fun as the actual gaming.
If you are running the game that evening you are setting up your GMs screen, putting markers in all the right pages of the books your are using, taking down adventuring parties marching order and other vital statistics, and getting ready to put on a good show. As you are doing all of this, you set the tone for the gaming session and, hopefully, getting your brain ready to immerse itself in whatever gaming world you are playing in that night.
If you are one of the players, you are making sure your character sheets are up to date, going over your lists of spells, equipment, and special abilities in order to get the most of out you characters. If you are artistically inclined, you may be perfecting those character drawings that help make your character come alive in your mind and, if possible in the minds of the GM and the other players.
Then the session gets started. The GM sets the scene, perhaps giving a brief recounting the events of the last session, and then unleashes his fiendish imagination on you characters. In your mind's eye, steel clashes against steel, arrows fly, and killing magic crackles through their air leaving ruin in its wake. When it is over, some of your characters may be dead; some will be better than they were before, and some will be laden with hard won, but precious imaginary treasure. It is imaginary adventure yes, but also quite real.
Imaginary events become great memories in real life. Things like getting just the right die-roll at just the right time, the stupid idea that actually worked, or one that failed in spectacularly hilarious fashion and caused an equally spectacular death of a character. All of these occurrences make memories that can be relived and enjoyed for many years.
What I am saying here sometimes the experience of gaming is worth more than the experience points earned by the characters. Like my point in last week's post, gaming is about people, and an experience shared by people. This thought struck me over the holidays because I realized that most of my most treasured memories stem from gaming with the Foaming Flagons, not the "It’s a Wonderful life" type memories that are supposed to stem from the holidays. I have a few of those, and they a great, but the memories that make me smile over the years involve gaming; imaginary adventures; real memories.
If you are running the game that evening you are setting up your GMs screen, putting markers in all the right pages of the books your are using, taking down adventuring parties marching order and other vital statistics, and getting ready to put on a good show. As you are doing all of this, you set the tone for the gaming session and, hopefully, getting your brain ready to immerse itself in whatever gaming world you are playing in that night.
If you are one of the players, you are making sure your character sheets are up to date, going over your lists of spells, equipment, and special abilities in order to get the most of out you characters. If you are artistically inclined, you may be perfecting those character drawings that help make your character come alive in your mind and, if possible in the minds of the GM and the other players.
Then the session gets started. The GM sets the scene, perhaps giving a brief recounting the events of the last session, and then unleashes his fiendish imagination on you characters. In your mind's eye, steel clashes against steel, arrows fly, and killing magic crackles through their air leaving ruin in its wake. When it is over, some of your characters may be dead; some will be better than they were before, and some will be laden with hard won, but precious imaginary treasure. It is imaginary adventure yes, but also quite real.
Imaginary events become great memories in real life. Things like getting just the right die-roll at just the right time, the stupid idea that actually worked, or one that failed in spectacularly hilarious fashion and caused an equally spectacular death of a character. All of these occurrences make memories that can be relived and enjoyed for many years.
What I am saying here sometimes the experience of gaming is worth more than the experience points earned by the characters. Like my point in last week's post, gaming is about people, and an experience shared by people. This thought struck me over the holidays because I realized that most of my most treasured memories stem from gaming with the Foaming Flagons, not the "It’s a Wonderful life" type memories that are supposed to stem from the holidays. I have a few of those, and they a great, but the memories that make me smile over the years involve gaming; imaginary adventures; real memories.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Fire in the Belly
As my fellow members of the Foaming Flagons will tell you, I have not had the proverbial "fire in the belly" for gaming recently. I'm not quite sure why. It certainly is not the fault of either of my game masters, for they are imaginative and skilled, so I've asked myself: why is gaming not as much fun as it used to be?
To be clear, I still enjoy gaming a great deal. My passion for the game is what is lacking. Cavorting with my fellow Flagons, friends of many years, is always a welcome distraction. What is eluding me is the emersion into the game's setting, whatever that may be. No longer do my characters take on lives of their own as I play; no longer do they demand my attention when life demands my attention be elsewhere.
Granted, the dice have not been kind to me in most case over the last year. Many characters perished because of this, and this was discouraging, but the deficiency I speak of goes beyond the random chance of the dice. It lies with me, and I know not why.
It is my hope that over the holidays I shall rediscover the passion that captured the heart of the young man I was over twenty years ago. Restarting this blog is one way I hope to do that. It has been months since I have made and entry here. Hopefully by commenting on the game related thoughts and activities
To be clear, I still enjoy gaming a great deal. My passion for the game is what is lacking. Cavorting with my fellow Flagons, friends of many years, is always a welcome distraction. What is eluding me is the emersion into the game's setting, whatever that may be. No longer do my characters take on lives of their own as I play; no longer do they demand my attention when life demands my attention be elsewhere.
Granted, the dice have not been kind to me in most case over the last year. Many characters perished because of this, and this was discouraging, but the deficiency I speak of goes beyond the random chance of the dice. It lies with me, and I know not why.
It is my hope that over the holidays I shall rediscover the passion that captured the heart of the young man I was over twenty years ago. Restarting this blog is one way I hope to do that. It has been months since I have made and entry here. Hopefully by commenting on the game related thoughts and activities
Saturday, July 11, 2009
That Which Endures
I started playing RPGs in my sophomore year in high school. Two buddies, who were and are, my two closest friends (more like brothers really) had tried to get me to play D&D for a long while but, because of my rather strict religious upbringing, the idea of magic, swords, and sorcery caused me not a little trepidation. Besides, I was a hard-core sci-fi fan, and unicorns and faeries seemed passé. The three of us would hang out, but I resisted their attempts to make a dungeon-crawler out of me.
Then, during lunch at our high school’s cafeteria one day, my buddies were working on their “Traveler” campaign. I looked down at the already use-worn game-book on the cafeteria table and saw pictures of various weapons on the pages. Swords were one thing, but guns (the greatest invention ever!) were another. “That looks like a Walther PPK” I said, pointing down at drawing of ‘body pistol,’ as it was known in the game. Reading the description of the body pistol out-loud, one of my friends saw that the body pistol was indeed based upon the PPK. A sci-fi roll playing game with weapons that were at least partially based on reality got my attention. Sci-fi and guns: my favorite combo. I was hooked.
I rolled up my first RPG character a few days later. His name was Logan (yes I ripped it off from the X-Men.) and he got vaporized by a force field in his first adventure, but it was an adventure. I had always been imaginative, perhaps even over imaginative, and I now saw a vehicle for focusing that imagination, and for feeding it. From there, I went on to the old Marvel Comics RPG, but it still took some time to get me into D&D. I did finally embrace D&D, and tried everything from “Twilight 2000” to “Toon.”
However, the games were not as important as the people I gamed with. I have been blessed with friends who were imaginative, creative, and perhaps more loyal than I deserve. We played dozens of games over the years, most were abandoned after a few sessions, some we played for years, and some we still play to this day, but it was the friendships that remained, and it was what I treasure the most. Over time, adult responsibilities and distance came to separate us, but we stayed in touch. There were gaps in communication at times, but we always managed bridge those gaps.
Some people tend to get wrapped up in the minutia of rules, and the idea of winning their RPG of choice (can you really win an RPG?) and forget that the whole idea is getting together with friends, bouncing dice, consuming copious amounts of junk food and sugary beverages, and having fun. Gamers (and by gamers I mean dice bouncing, character rolling, hit-point counting role playing gamers, not the guys with an X-box controller permanently attached to their hands) share a camaraderie; a camaraderie based on a love a hobby that most people find rather odd or even frightening.
In the case of me and my gaming buddies, (The Foaming Flagons) The camaraderie I speak of wasn’t the only thing that made us so close, but it did give us something that helped us define our friendship for the outside world. Let me be clear, there is much more that binds us than just our mutual love of gaming, but our shared hobby gave us a way to express some of the commonalities that we shared as people: creativity, intelligence and, above all, imagination.
I have three brothers by birth, and I love them wholeheartedly, but I chose the members of the Foaming Flagons to be my friends, and they chose me. That is what I think of when I see gaming dice, a stack of game books, or some yellow-with-age character sheets: friendship: simple, old fashioned, precious beyond words, friendship. Various games have come and gone, I have had several jobs and moved many times over the years, and times have, of course, changed. It is friendship that has really mattered. It is friendship has endured.
Then, during lunch at our high school’s cafeteria one day, my buddies were working on their “Traveler” campaign. I looked down at the already use-worn game-book on the cafeteria table and saw pictures of various weapons on the pages. Swords were one thing, but guns (the greatest invention ever!) were another. “That looks like a Walther PPK” I said, pointing down at drawing of ‘body pistol,’ as it was known in the game. Reading the description of the body pistol out-loud, one of my friends saw that the body pistol was indeed based upon the PPK. A sci-fi roll playing game with weapons that were at least partially based on reality got my attention. Sci-fi and guns: my favorite combo. I was hooked.
I rolled up my first RPG character a few days later. His name was Logan (yes I ripped it off from the X-Men.) and he got vaporized by a force field in his first adventure, but it was an adventure. I had always been imaginative, perhaps even over imaginative, and I now saw a vehicle for focusing that imagination, and for feeding it. From there, I went on to the old Marvel Comics RPG, but it still took some time to get me into D&D. I did finally embrace D&D, and tried everything from “Twilight 2000” to “Toon.”
However, the games were not as important as the people I gamed with. I have been blessed with friends who were imaginative, creative, and perhaps more loyal than I deserve. We played dozens of games over the years, most were abandoned after a few sessions, some we played for years, and some we still play to this day, but it was the friendships that remained, and it was what I treasure the most. Over time, adult responsibilities and distance came to separate us, but we stayed in touch. There were gaps in communication at times, but we always managed bridge those gaps.
Some people tend to get wrapped up in the minutia of rules, and the idea of winning their RPG of choice (can you really win an RPG?) and forget that the whole idea is getting together with friends, bouncing dice, consuming copious amounts of junk food and sugary beverages, and having fun. Gamers (and by gamers I mean dice bouncing, character rolling, hit-point counting role playing gamers, not the guys with an X-box controller permanently attached to their hands) share a camaraderie; a camaraderie based on a love a hobby that most people find rather odd or even frightening.
In the case of me and my gaming buddies, (The Foaming Flagons) The camaraderie I speak of wasn’t the only thing that made us so close, but it did give us something that helped us define our friendship for the outside world. Let me be clear, there is much more that binds us than just our mutual love of gaming, but our shared hobby gave us a way to express some of the commonalities that we shared as people: creativity, intelligence and, above all, imagination.
I have three brothers by birth, and I love them wholeheartedly, but I chose the members of the Foaming Flagons to be my friends, and they chose me. That is what I think of when I see gaming dice, a stack of game books, or some yellow-with-age character sheets: friendship: simple, old fashioned, precious beyond words, friendship. Various games have come and gone, I have had several jobs and moved many times over the years, and times have, of course, changed. It is friendship that has really mattered. It is friendship has endured.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
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