thread: 2006-10-17 : My roleplaying summary
On 2006-10-18, ScottM wrote:
I did this back in January, but I don't have as much good commentary, so I'll add that here.
The early years (5th-8th grade) were filled with random wandering around dungeons and having a lot of fun trying crazy stuff. I still remember playing on those long chairs that could lie flat around the pool after midnight, by the light of the pool light. We got into Car Wars and enjoyed spending hours designing cool cars to smash into each other.
In high school, I found my new crowd through gaming; I was invited to play in a semi-PVP tournament thing. I did well enough that I was invited to return. We played a lot of different games, often at my house or Carson's after school and on the weekends. I remember six months taken up with a huge battletech battle (12 mechs per player, free for all). The group was two volatile half groups (the Scott-Scott-Kev-Gary axis and the Carson-Aaron-Aaron axis) that complained behind the scenes, but gamed together. I ran a very successful D&D campaign (by demanding concessions at the start, about alignment and party unity), but it exploded several months down the line when they turned their firepower on each other. (I also clearly remember them mocking Aaron for his new ranger falling to a couple of common muggers, due to poor die rolls.) I quit GMing for the whole group early in Senior year and the group never reunified for a campaign afterwards.
Playing Sython with an entirely new crew in college illuminated exactly how different a game can be in different hands. There was a strong emphasis on "good roleplay" and avoiding power creep, plus we did rotating GMing. That's where I found out that it's better if you hook people with something other than "there's a bounty on some goblins..."
The next few years I played as much Mage and Amber as I could get my hands on, including trying some PBeMs... but they fizzled. I learned to let the players shine, giving them challenges they could overcome and look good doing it. There was an Amber game I played in near this time that was basically a series of dungeon crawls—not even good characterization could save it for me.
After college I returned to my hometown, but all attempts to play with my old group died within a session or two. I found a new group through RenFaire, and was introduced to more by my friend and later roommate. Then he introduced me to Will and Jen, and I had a couple of parallel groups going. I got more confidence and ran a Mage game with people from both groups—it went very well. After that, while play was both thick and thin, we kept playing oWoD and AD&D. My "experimental group" tried a few sessions of MLwM and Dogs, in between some homebrew Wheel of Time and Shadowrun. My experimental group foundered due to work schedules and Emily's new child... but my current group is pretty happy with Star Wars and D&D—I had them willing (though not eager) to try FATE just recently. PTA still sounds too strange for them to try it...
