thread: 2006-10-17 : My roleplaying summary
On 2006-10-23, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Hey, mine is relatively simple in comparison.
2nd or 3rd grade:
A 6th grader (practically an adult!) had some version of D&D - Lord knows which: He DM'd, I was the only player. I remember correcting his spelling of "sord" (the weapon).
I showed remarkable grasp of the essence of D&D the very first session when one of the NPC party members died and I asked, very intently, who would get his stuff. Some cleric resurrected the guy instead. I felt both frustrated and vaguely embarassed.
He wanted to play another session with the same characters, but I explained my guy from last time had gotten lung cancer from being too near the dragon last time (this was ca. 1982, so the anti-smoking revolution was just gathering force). So we ended up making me a psionicist pit fighter. My guy killed a bartender by accident —I just wanted to throw him around to teach him a lesson, but the DM decided he'd landed on a weapons rack; I felt bad—then annihilated his first arena opponent in a one-sided match, then got annihilated by his second opponent who was a more powerful psionicist.
I think dice got rolled at some point, but basically it was cool Color plus GM Fiat & Force.
Late elementary school through high school
D&D monster books—never bought the rules—and writing up my own monsters.
Then Traveller—rolling up characters and planets—and Car Wars—designing cars.
Playing? With other people? Why would I do that? Where would I find them?
Actually, I played Car Wars once with some kids who didn't quite know the rules, and there was a D&D group in my high school that I mostly remember plotting gleefully to murder each others' PCs for their magic items.
College & (my one year of) grad school:
My first ever actually roleplaying campaign—Star Wars d6 in the homebrew setting of the (female!) GM.
Then a flurry of traditional and relatively traditional games, in one-shots and short campaigns: Various D&D, Ars Magica, Amber (one-shot), Tales from the Floating Vagabond (just once, but my character's name became my nickname for two years). I GM'd Tales once, GM'd a GURPS one-shot or two and swore off the system (though I loved making characters). I ran a few one-shots in a streamlined but fairly traditional homebrew (stat plus specialization plus 1d6, all rolls opposed) and a year-and-a-half campaign in a homebrew gothic space fantasy universe with a vaguely Amber-meets-Ars system.
The next ten years:
Roleplaying? Where'd I find people to do that with?
I tinkered with character creation and homebrew rules design a bit, nothing more.
The last two years:
I have a new baby. I am very, very tired. I am on paternity leave. I search the web for free RPGs. I run into this "Forge" thing.
I get involved in playtesting Tony Lower-Basch's Capes.
I play much Capes, one shots of Dogs in the Vineyard, Inspectres, Trollbabe, and The Shah-aribi Roach; I play in a campaign ofPrime Time Adventures; I GM for the first time in ten years, running The Shadow of Yesterday. I go to the zoo with Vincent Baker, and have lunch with Ron Edwards. I design and redesign apocalypse girl.
Old preconceptions fall away like the scaffolding that holds up a rocket on the launch pad before it shoots into space. I suddenly start understanding story structure, not just in games but in what I read and watch. My characters change as people while I am playing them. I come back from games and tell my wife, "Wow—I just learned something new about myself."
I am never, ever going back.
