Vondy
Aug 17th, '09, 09:39 AM
An anniversiary.
I played in my first role-playing game session when I seven years old. It was the light-blue colored Basic Dungeons& Dragons set. It was just my friend and I so we each had two characters. Mine were Cedric Anvilslammer, a dwarf, and Ritzdjamar, a mage. Miraculously both survived module after module. My friend's characters were not so lucky. One died in that session. The other died a few modules later. By New Years I had my own copy of the game. It started what has been a life long hobby.
I've played a ton of games, and a ton of systems. If TSR published it I played it. Other games nudged TSR systems out by high-school, though. When we did play fantasy we used Stormbringer (the system). It was usu. a homebrew version of Harn or Al-Qadim ported onto Hepekeria. I played my first female character with that group, Claudia. She was a character who was with me for years to come. But we were a freewheeling group. We weren't into comics or supers. We were into pulps and action genres. We experimented with other systems, including Justice Inc., but aside from our fantasy game, our mainstays were MSPE, Spacemaster, and Chill.
That was a great group of guys (and one gal). But our senior year spelled our doom. That summer we played our last game and I started playing with a group who divided their games between Champions and D&D. I really got a yen for Hero at that point - even though supers still don't move my mojo. That group was the psycho dysfunctional group from hell. And the gamemaster was the poster boy for sadistic loser gamemasters the world over. But I learned the system. That was the period where I got a rep for running a great gothic horror game. And since we played in a pizza parlor, where other gaming groups met on sunday afternoons, I made connections.
Those connections turned into my long-term gaming group. They were interested in Champions, but not the group, so they asked me to run a game for them at my place. I've mentioned this episode in more detail before. I don't want to hash it out again. But suffice it to say, I played with this new group for over a decade. I still wasn't into supers, and my game ended up being what one might call "Conspiracy X with Capes." I ran four long-term campaigns in that world, often pushing two years at a stretch. In between them we played other genres. This group liked WoD and Star Wars. I ended up running a bunch of that. I could never get them interested in some of my faves: pulp, espionage, and straight up action.
Then I moved to Israel. I settled in a community where there are no gamers. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Efes. Even if I were in a big city its all D20 (99.9% fantasy) all of the time. My gaming has become PBEM solo games, which I run for one of the guys from my long-term group. I haven't been a player in years. The system isn't overly important. We use Hero because of its rigor in character design. But run time mechanics are largely non-existent. My only interactions with other gamers is online, mostly on the Hero Boards. Oh how I jones to play, especially if it were something other than supers or mainstream fantasy.
Even so, its been a wonderful hobby. I learned a great deal of history and anthropology to give my games verisimilitude. I'm a didactic researcher who wants to get the details of the games I run correct. I've studied weird bits of minutiae from dozens of fields and am better for having done so. I know a good deal about armies and intelligence agencies as a result. My own background with the criminal justice world didn't hurt. I even learned how to calculate transit times from rockets between planets in our solar system for a game. That's right: what my high school math teachers failed to teach me I taught myself because I was gaming: geometry, calculus, probabilities, and physics.
Reasoning from effect and applying abstract principles has even helped me with the Talmud (though epistemology courses and a degree in criminal justice and a hobby reading legal philosophy texts didn't hurt, either). But mostly it freed an imagination that needed to imagine. I have a real need to express that part of myself and gaming has allowed me to do so. Its even helped me precisely out the major elements of story, narrative, and character for more serious writing.
I realized its been thirty years as of this week. Thirty. 30!
That's not just a hobby. Its something of a vocation, though far from an exclusive one, or a primary one. In that vein I'm giving a top games list that holds my fondest memories (and remain infinately playable)...
Gangbusters!
Stormbringer!
Chill
Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes
MERC 2000
and...
Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic
I've traditionally preferred homebrew settings, literary settings, or real world with a twist settings, but a few game-born settings evoke fond memories...
Harnworld
Al-Qadim
Delta Green
Jovian Chronicles
and...
Conspiracy X
...are all great game-derived settings and have, to some extent, inspired my own ideas, though for fantasy I'd have to say Newhon and Hyboria, with a little Thieves World thrown in, tends to tinge my settings. And for my modern games the X-Files and Alias tend to have some influence, though I prefer more pulpy, historic settings.
It will seem odd that Hero isn't on the list. That's not because some of my best games weren't run using it, or that its not the best system I've ever run. Its because its not a game, but something you build games with. In that vein...
Hero... because its the best.
Gangbusters... because its really playable despite being old-school and minimalist.
AD&D... simply because it got me started.
Some characters remain my imaginary friends....
Ritzdjamar the Black. My first character. And later when we really started ROLEplaying my first truly dubious character, though he was loyal to the core and always kept his word. His name is feared in the netherealms. Asmodai shudders at the thought of him.
Claudia... who world hopped and campaign hopped for years on end. Red Sonja with clothes!
The Preacher... a black operations contractor and assassin in a delta-green/conspiracy x type of world.
Judah Berab... my Jewish version of Indiana Jones, but in a world with more of an occult kabbalah oriented twist.
Jake O'Niel... a prohibition era FBI agent undercover with the mob and willing to break a lot of rules to get his man. His on-again off-again relationship with Esmia Bouchamp, a French-Persian slinkinator-femme-fatale (thief-informant-lounge-singer) complicates his life.
Wow....
30
I played in my first role-playing game session when I seven years old. It was the light-blue colored Basic Dungeons& Dragons set. It was just my friend and I so we each had two characters. Mine were Cedric Anvilslammer, a dwarf, and Ritzdjamar, a mage. Miraculously both survived module after module. My friend's characters were not so lucky. One died in that session. The other died a few modules later. By New Years I had my own copy of the game. It started what has been a life long hobby.
I've played a ton of games, and a ton of systems. If TSR published it I played it. Other games nudged TSR systems out by high-school, though. When we did play fantasy we used Stormbringer (the system). It was usu. a homebrew version of Harn or Al-Qadim ported onto Hepekeria. I played my first female character with that group, Claudia. She was a character who was with me for years to come. But we were a freewheeling group. We weren't into comics or supers. We were into pulps and action genres. We experimented with other systems, including Justice Inc., but aside from our fantasy game, our mainstays were MSPE, Spacemaster, and Chill.
That was a great group of guys (and one gal). But our senior year spelled our doom. That summer we played our last game and I started playing with a group who divided their games between Champions and D&D. I really got a yen for Hero at that point - even though supers still don't move my mojo. That group was the psycho dysfunctional group from hell. And the gamemaster was the poster boy for sadistic loser gamemasters the world over. But I learned the system. That was the period where I got a rep for running a great gothic horror game. And since we played in a pizza parlor, where other gaming groups met on sunday afternoons, I made connections.
Those connections turned into my long-term gaming group. They were interested in Champions, but not the group, so they asked me to run a game for them at my place. I've mentioned this episode in more detail before. I don't want to hash it out again. But suffice it to say, I played with this new group for over a decade. I still wasn't into supers, and my game ended up being what one might call "Conspiracy X with Capes." I ran four long-term campaigns in that world, often pushing two years at a stretch. In between them we played other genres. This group liked WoD and Star Wars. I ended up running a bunch of that. I could never get them interested in some of my faves: pulp, espionage, and straight up action.
Then I moved to Israel. I settled in a community where there are no gamers. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Efes. Even if I were in a big city its all D20 (99.9% fantasy) all of the time. My gaming has become PBEM solo games, which I run for one of the guys from my long-term group. I haven't been a player in years. The system isn't overly important. We use Hero because of its rigor in character design. But run time mechanics are largely non-existent. My only interactions with other gamers is online, mostly on the Hero Boards. Oh how I jones to play, especially if it were something other than supers or mainstream fantasy.
Even so, its been a wonderful hobby. I learned a great deal of history and anthropology to give my games verisimilitude. I'm a didactic researcher who wants to get the details of the games I run correct. I've studied weird bits of minutiae from dozens of fields and am better for having done so. I know a good deal about armies and intelligence agencies as a result. My own background with the criminal justice world didn't hurt. I even learned how to calculate transit times from rockets between planets in our solar system for a game. That's right: what my high school math teachers failed to teach me I taught myself because I was gaming: geometry, calculus, probabilities, and physics.
Reasoning from effect and applying abstract principles has even helped me with the Talmud (though epistemology courses and a degree in criminal justice and a hobby reading legal philosophy texts didn't hurt, either). But mostly it freed an imagination that needed to imagine. I have a real need to express that part of myself and gaming has allowed me to do so. Its even helped me precisely out the major elements of story, narrative, and character for more serious writing.
I realized its been thirty years as of this week. Thirty. 30!
That's not just a hobby. Its something of a vocation, though far from an exclusive one, or a primary one. In that vein I'm giving a top games list that holds my fondest memories (and remain infinately playable)...
Gangbusters!
Stormbringer!
Chill
Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes
MERC 2000
and...
Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic
I've traditionally preferred homebrew settings, literary settings, or real world with a twist settings, but a few game-born settings evoke fond memories...
Harnworld
Al-Qadim
Delta Green
Jovian Chronicles
and...
Conspiracy X
...are all great game-derived settings and have, to some extent, inspired my own ideas, though for fantasy I'd have to say Newhon and Hyboria, with a little Thieves World thrown in, tends to tinge my settings. And for my modern games the X-Files and Alias tend to have some influence, though I prefer more pulpy, historic settings.
It will seem odd that Hero isn't on the list. That's not because some of my best games weren't run using it, or that its not the best system I've ever run. Its because its not a game, but something you build games with. In that vein...
Hero... because its the best.
Gangbusters... because its really playable despite being old-school and minimalist.
AD&D... simply because it got me started.
Some characters remain my imaginary friends....
Ritzdjamar the Black. My first character. And later when we really started ROLEplaying my first truly dubious character, though he was loyal to the core and always kept his word. His name is feared in the netherealms. Asmodai shudders at the thought of him.
Claudia... who world hopped and campaign hopped for years on end. Red Sonja with clothes!
The Preacher... a black operations contractor and assassin in a delta-green/conspiracy x type of world.
Judah Berab... my Jewish version of Indiana Jones, but in a world with more of an occult kabbalah oriented twist.
Jake O'Niel... a prohibition era FBI agent undercover with the mob and willing to break a lot of rules to get his man. His on-again off-again relationship with Esmia Bouchamp, a French-Persian slinkinator-femme-fatale (thief-informant-lounge-singer) complicates his life.
Wow....
30