Evolution of my Gaming habit

Posted in response to a comment in ‘s journal. Then I decided it would be fun to share.

I started off with choose your own adventures as a wee little kid. I would run out of fingers to hold places in the book trying to figure it all out.

After that I moved on to this old series of books called one-on-one adventures. It was a 2 person, dm-less, choose your own, with combat and puzzles, and stuff. Pretty close to 2nd ed AD&D. I never had a second person to play with, so I played against myself. I thought they were pretty cool, still do actually. The tone and feel of the books was what really captured me. Excitement, adventure, and big happenings.

From there, it was a natural step to pick up a few rule books. I still had no one to play with, so I read the rules to the point of memorization, and made up characters and stories, but never actually played the game, per se.

Toward the end of my junior year of high school I started karate classes (out of fear related to being a homo in a small town catholic high school, and a nerd to boot). I loved karate. Anyway, that’s a digression. Through karate, I met Max and a less memorably named (though far more memorable in terms of personality) guy who actually played. I figured this was my chance to actually do gaming. I had memorized rules to AD&D (2nd ed), Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and Mage, at that point. They were traditional AD&D 2nd ed-ers. Turns out that the guy they played with was the brother of this chick I had a passing friendship with during high school. Go fig.

He was also an incredible min-maxer. I was also pretty mechanics obsessed, at the time, just in a different way. He was a kill-things-quickly min maxer. I was a ‘ooo, bet you can’t see me’/’what a cool set of spells’ sort of min maxer. I was never terribly stimulated in these games. But they were better than watching tv.

Enter college. I manage to hook up with a group of gamers including Andy Presby, Talia Sofer, Eric, uh, I feel mega-lame for forgetting eric’s last name, I can picture his voice, personality, blah, anyway, Cliff Wood, Mark Shieh, and maybe others. It was shadowrun. I think I played my generic ‘mysterious female elf shaman’, who really made little difference in the game overall, had a personality about as thick as the paper her stats were written on, and basically just allowed me to hang out with the crowd, but it was fun.

I ran an abortive campaign over the summer, which was where I learned that DM’ing is hard. Furthermore, if you ever experience the urge to run a game, do not, do not, do not start with Mage. I didn’t have enough stuff to throw at the players, and no sense of controlling the run of the game. One of the players got really pissed at one point. Otoh, Rob Abrazado, one of my players, came up with an incredibly cool backstory. I liked. Might eve. have it lying around somewhere. An alcoholic drinking to drown the memory of his Awakening as an orphan mage, where he fried the hell of out this guy robbing a liquor store. That’s the sort of stuff that got me going.

That fall (only my 2nd year at cmu, hmmm) I got into a game with a bunch of friends. Choli, Leon ran it, cute straight Dave who smoked, and whose last name I’ve also forgotten, Jesse, who else was in that one? It was a mage/vampire crossover campaign. I remember playing tricks with a coin to convince Choli’s character that my character was supernatural. Her character remained unconvinced. It was an odd thing. My character was still paper thin at the beginning of the game, but I think by the end had thickened to about cardboard. My favorite moment from that game was probably where my character was leaving footprints in the concrete sidewalk (not deliberately). Dave’s character pointed this out, mine, wanting to deflect attention, responded “I’m a heavy kid, whaddaya want?” Dave’s character then picked mine up, and pointed out that the foot prints stopped. Guess you had to be there.

I’d like to think I’ve gone from 2d characters to something a little fuller fleshed. In the longest running campaign I’ve ever been in (skipping the bulk of my gaming life), with running it, my character achieved a certain semblance of complexity. She was a nurturing (if free-handed) parental figure, a big ol ho, and, occassionally prone to getting herself in over her head, and causing trouble. We had some fun interactions there. My fellow gamers started calling me “Mom.” (my character was mother to the party’s sorceror-rogue. It had all sorts of fun and amusing results). The guys I played with were a great bunch.

Since then I’ve played in a few one-shots, though I haven’t had a table top experience in almost a year now. I kinda miss it.

Years ago, it was half the rules, and half the fantastic world that was created that drew me in (hence my love of shadowrun and earthdawn, which come with a very much pre-assembled world for your convenience, and do a good job of blending the world with the rules).

These days, I realize that the best part of gaming for me are those moments where a cool story emerges. Whether it was ‘how we escaped from the slave labor camp at the bottom of the sea’ or the comedy of errors. Or how “ho bag” came to be associated with a kindly, old, helpful, if not especially bright, gentleman. But most of it’s a “you had to be there” kind of thing. And you have to be willing to both let the character live and breathe as an entity independent from the player, yet keep the character realistic, and get into their headspace (and get off on being in their headspace…).

You can do all that with any set of rules. And by judiciously throwing out the rules from time to time. But the rules do make a difference.

D&D (probably D&D 3rd edition) is the most widely known set of rules, though it’s a very constrained, system that’s like 80% combat oriented. Which means that alot of the non-combat time, skill use, etc, is nowhere near as structured or sophisticated from a rules perspective. Probably the system I’ve played the most in.

White Wolf (Mage, Vampire, Werewolf, etc), seems to be very much about the feel of their universe. (Matrix-esque reality war (up until Neo jacks out, I was convinced the Matrix was an attempt to put Mage to movie), political machinations of immortals, and Ragnorock-ish motif, respectively). Rules are simple, and highly flexible. Hard to DM because you make so much up (especially mage, a thousand times, especially mage). Combat systems are there, but aren’t a major part of the rules. Played many, many times.

FASA’s Shadowrun and Earthdawn were about a detailed universe with a rich story and rules that match the story. The rules are flexible, but fairly easy to grasp. About 50-70% combat in the rules. (I think FASA is either dead or dropped Earthdawn, not sure about Shadowrun.) (Earthdawn is a specifically pre-historic Shadowrun, lots of magic, ancient civilizations, nasty magic critters threatening humanity). Shadowrun is a speculation on future history (or it was in the late 80’s early 90’s. Reality has already diverged from their proposed future), involving something they call the Matrix (similar only at the basic level of virtual reality network to the movie of the same name) borrows heavily from cyberpunk, but throws in magic as well, complete with elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons, but makes it realistic, with orcs forming their own civil rights movements and so forth and so on. I really like some of the mechanics (rolling in both games, though they use different systems, are done well, and summoning in shadowrun makes me very happy), but what I most like is that they are smoothly integrated into the universe in question. Played Shadowrun soo many times. Earthdawn a couple times.

Ars Magica has the byzantine codified rules feel of D&D (for me), though it does explicitly allow for some mage-esque flexibility in its magic system. It has story/rules integration down pretty well, as per FASA. But I find its universe (fantasy middle ages of europe, explicitly, whereas the default d&d universe is more a parallel universe) kinda enh. It does have rotating storyteller/gm/dm/whatever, and encourages multiple characters for each player, so that while one is off studying, the player can play one of the others. Also a little too realistic for my taste. played never, though I have played games that involved magic rules based partially on it.

Exalted has an Earthdawn + Vampire feel to its universe, though it’s rules are alot like Vampire’s. Haven’t played it, bought a sourcebook, (back in pittsburgh?), would like to try it. Played never.

GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System), is an attempt to make a totally story-less single monolithic gaming system which allows you to play any number of different universes. High tech, low tech, magic, psychic powers, superheroes, whatever. It has the specificity of D&D’s combat system, the soul of a microchip, and a bunch of other things that irk me. I like some of the ideas that went into it: Skills based on statistics, learning through practice/studying, their magic system is fairly reasonable (though I prefer shadowrun’s summoning stuff), and it does cover most everything with fairly reasonable rules. But it has no real draw for me, it doesn’t tell a story. And I hate, hate, hate, their rolling mechanics. Played once.

Call of Cthulhu. Don’t know this system very well at all. I do know that it eats through characters like they’re candy. Your character will die, and it probably won’t take long. The character will probably also go completely bat-shit loony before the end of the first session. This is the world as it is being invaded by extradimensional baddies that drive you nuts just looking at them. Otherwise, it’s reality. I think it’s supposed to be set around the 1920’s or so, but, I’ve only played it once with a character that was set up for me. I don’t like the idea of creating a new character every time.

Paranoia. Never seen a rules book for this one. Just heard things about it. As I understand it, the mortality rate on this one makes Call of Cthulhu look like you’re sitting in a room having tea with the queen mother. You have clones in abeyance for when you die. It’s intended to be horribly silly. It’s illegal to be a mutant, belong to a secret organization, and something else, and, I believe, every player character has all three of these things running against him, in an insane, computer run, trigger happy dictatorship. I credit it with the phrase “the computer is your friend”. This was all pulled out of my ass.

I know a few other gaming systems, including:

Feng Shui – martial arts action movie/reality war/casual time travel A slew of super hero games – hero, champion, and the darker ‘brave new world’

There are tons more out there, but alot of them are unknown to me, and this is already waaaay longer than I intended.