Category: role-playing (Page 2 of 4)

It Came from the Game Closet: Hobbit Tales from the Green Dragon Inn

July 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I teased this ages ago, but it’s finally here. The first installment of what I hope to be a regular series on the blog: “It Came from the Game Closet.”

We have this closet, you see. It is in our living room, and it is quite tall, and it is filled with games. Stuffed. Bursting. Unruly and untapped.

You see, we have filled this closet with games, but we’ve hardly ever played ANY of them, we’ve just let them languish in the game closet and think to ourselves, our heads nodding with pensive melancholy, “Someday… someday…”

And yet, “someday” never comes. We keep putting new games into the closet and never playing them.

Until now.

I’ve opened the weird sliding door of the weird corner closet with the triangle-shaped shelves and I’ve pulled out a game. It’s one of the few games in the closet we’ve actually played, but we haven’t played it in a long time, and it gives me warm fuzzies just looking at the box’s cover art, so it’s the first one I picked.

I wasn’t able to PLAY play it (it’s not really a game that works solo because you need the other players to play the hazard cards), but I did use the cards to make up my own stories and added in a few hazards just to keep it fun. I tried to imagine myself as a hobbit sipping a pint at the Green Dragon, regaling the crowd with my masterful yarn-spinning skills. I felt silly at times, yes, but I had a good time.

Hobbit Tales is a storytelling game, and as such, it lends itself to use as a storytelling tool. As I was playing it solo, I realized how I could use it for my writing and role-playing game prep (I should have realized its use for RPGing sooner, since the game literally bills itself as an aid/companion to the first edition of The One Ring RPG… I feel a bit dumb about not catching that until now).

Each card has a title, a picture, and a quote from Tolkien’s fiction, and thus there are lots of jumping off points for storytelling/prompts for writing and gaming. Yes, there are a gazillion writing prompt-generators out there, digital and analog (I have these really cool Writing Dice, in fact, that my husband got me for Valentine’s Day), but there’s lots of charm in using the simple story seeds from the Hobbit Tales cards.

The open-ended quality of the titles, illustrations, and quotes means they’re flexible enough for any kind of fantasy story, and because they are simple and often archetypal, they prompt lots of symbolic and even mythic ideas.

For instance, one of the random cards I drew “Weather-beaten Traveler.” This immediately prompts me to think of types of weather that could beat someone down: rain showers, snow storm, wind storm, floods, even sandstorms and drought. And the idea of a “traveler” is so basic and yet full of possibilities. The traveler could be a stranger in a strange land, a person seeking a way back home, an explorer, someone on a quest, or someone simply out for a stroll who got caught up in a weather phenomenon.

What would happen if I drew such a card as a prompt for a story, or to give me something to insert into a story where I’m stuck?

I’m currently working on Norse City Limits, an urban fantasy inspired by Icelandic sagas and old 1940s film noir, and my main guy, Grettir, is about to speak to a dead man (could be magic or Grettir could simply be hallucinating due to a drug-induced haze… I don’t know yet). If I wanted to, I could play a free-association game with my “weather-beaten traveler” card.

Perhaps the dead man is a vagrant, caught up in a web of lies and vice that he’s totally alien to, just the wrong man at the wrong time.

Or perhaps he was traveling to find Grettir, got caught and killed by Grettir’s enemies, and now he’s shown up anyway in the form of a corpse.

Or perhaps he wasn’t killed by humans at all. Maybe the weather killed him, an extreme form of weather (and maybe that weather was caused by a spell or a god), and his death is a portent of things to come.

The Hobbit Tales cards are really fun in this regard because they spur ideas, invite me to play with archetypal elements, and provide several points of entry, all without being too specific or “out there” in content. Nothing in these cards will veer my stories wildly off-track or be too wacky.

The uses of these cards for role-playing games is obvious. Instead of a random encounter table, simply draw a card from the deck, or several cards, or a adventure card and a hazard card and try to combine them into a unique encounter, combat, trap, or puzzle.

Sometimes writing prompts from outside sources are too particular or too prescriptive. There are times when that specificity or oddball quality will instigate an exciting and unique story idea, but more often than not, I end up with something that doesn’t fit my sensibilities as a writer.

With the Hobbit Tales cards, I have prompts and ideas that work much better with the kinds of stories I like telling and which can easily be integrated with my current works-in-progress (if need be).

Also, the artwork and aesthetic of the game is charming and a pleasure to interact with. I like taking out the cards and the green coasters and spending time with them.

As a game, Hobbit Tales is low-stakes, congenial, and more about creativity and having fun with mates rather than the competition of who has the most points at the end. Yes, it is “competitive” in that there can be a winner at the end (teller with the highest score at the end of all the rounds), but that’s really not the impetus for playing. It’s much more about enjoying Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, pretending to be a hobbit, and flexing your storytelling muscles.

For people who are intimidated by the improvisational storytelling, the game might not be as enjoyable, or it might take some time to realize that none of these stories will end up being “good.” The fun is in trying to tell the story and include the hazards if necessary, not to be some brilliant performer.

In some ways, it’s a good lesson for everyone, professional storyteller or amateur: Have fun and don’t worry about whether something is “good” or not. Let the creative voice do its thing. Let go of perfection and have a good time.

Creative Writing: Week ???

May 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

“Take art seriously without going about it in a serious way.”

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act, p. 354

I’ve lost track of which week it is in the term. End of April and all of May are such a whirlwind when teaching high school. I feel like All the Things are happening. I can’t keep up.

Anyway, in one of my recent weeks of teaching Creative Writing, we spent a week dedicated to playing games and thinking about how making art is/can be/should be playful.

To help them along the way, we played a storytelling RPG where I and another student were the game masters, and the rest of the class were our players. I played with two different groups on two different days, and one of the groups was a real struggle to engage with.

There were some in the group who just could not take it seriously, and therefore they could not be playful.

I don’t mean they were being silly and I wanted them to be serious. My aim was quite the opposite, in fact. I wanted shenanigans. I wanted laughter and high jinks.

The first group I played with was generally able to do this. They committed to their ridiculous characters (the world we were playing in was a bit of a spoof of the Twilight series), and we all laughed a lot and had a fun time. They approached the game on its own terms and took it seriously, while at the same time, being playful.

But for the students in the second group who wouldn’t take the game seriously, there was neither laughter nor pathos nor anything in between. Only grim faces and boredom.

Now, maybe my GMing skills were subpar and that ruined things. Maybe I should have done a better job of crafting the world and the challenges. But I don’t think that was the case. The likelier culprit was that for some of the students in the group, the game was beneath them. They were embarrassed by the whole notion of playing an RPG. Of pretending to be a character. Of romping around in a fantasy world.

And that’s fine. Not everyone digs that kind of fun.

But I think their overall attitude to the game illustrates Rubin’s point quoted above: Games, like art, should be taken seriously without going about it in a serious way. The first group, who DID meet the game on its own terms, ended up having a blast. They weren’t playing in an overly-serious, solemn way. They were light. They were silly. But they accepted the game on its own terms and committed to what the game was trying to do.

The second group could not do that. They didn’t see the value in the game, nor could they approach it with any sort of commitment. And thus, they couldn’t have fun.

Or maybe they thought they HAD to approach the game in a serious way, and therefore they were blocked from having fun. Because they thought they had to be serious, they disengaged entirely.

Either way, their experience illustrates Rubin’s point. We have to take what we’re doing seriously, whether it’s playing an RPG or writing a story or illustrating a comic or directing a film or whatever. We have to believe that the thing we’re making is worth making. That our commitment to the project is worth our time and effort. That we’re doing something worthwhile.

Because this is the paradox: If we don’t have that commitment, that seriousness about the enterprise, then we can’t be playful about the making of it either.

In order to do good work, we have to go about it without seriousness. We can’t make the work “important” because then we’ll freeze or play it too safe. So in order to be light and playful, we must believe in the seriousness of what we’re doing. But in order to not get bogged down, we can’t approach our work with a grim-faced sense that we’re taking our medicine or doing what we’ve been told. We have to be playful.

For my grim-faced, bored students playing the RPG, they were being told to play. And they couldn’t be bothered to. Playing an imaginative role-playing game was beneath them, I guess. So they slogged through it and never got to experience the lightness and playfulness of taking something seriously without going about it in a serious way.

I’m with the band now

October 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Ever since discovering Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, I’ve been a fan. I’ve been playing with family and friends for a few years now, but there’s always been that itch to run a public game, to sit down at my FLGS and play with strangers and initiate more people into the wonderfully weird world of DCC.

In July, I finally did it. I joined the DCC Road Crew and ran a game open to the public at RIW Hobbies and Games in Livonia, Michigan.

And, of course, I ran one of the all-time classics, one of the greatest character creation funnels known to humankind, the inimitable: Sailors on the Starless Sea.

I was nervous as hell, but thanks to a super-friendly and experienced player who sat at my table, and the participation of my husband and brother (who gave tons of moral support), I made it through with only a few boneheaded mistakes, and everyone seemed to have a great time. I must have done something right, because the players all came back for round two in August.

I had never run Sailors before, although I was familiar with its legendary status in the DCC community. I have to say, the hype is warranted. It’s a great module, a wild experience that really captures the feel and tone of DCC. It is both metal and epic. There are grotesque beastmen (verging on the absurd), there is a burnt-out husk of a Chaos chapel, a pool of glowing skulls, an underground sea, a magical ship that sails of its own volition, an ancient ziggurat at the center of a foul sacrifice, and several other wicked and horrific encounters that would test the courage of even a hardy band of adventurers — and all of this is meant for a pack of zero-level newbs who fight with pitchforks and carry stinky cheese in their pockets.

There are so many great moments in this adventure that it’s hard to pick the best ones. My group had fun exploring the burnt-out chapel, they had some epic battles against the beastmen, and they even had one PC get put under a spell and try to sacrifice another PC by using a magic ring he’d found earlier. Of course, the spell not only failed but misfired, and the PC who used it suffered corruption. His face broke out in boils, and he had a permanent loss of Personality! Good times!

The final encounter atop the ziggurat was also epic and had a twist that surprised the group and made for an almost-TPK. There are so many things to interact with and explore in this module, I could see myself running it multiple times and having totally different results each time. I’m kind of itching to run it again, in fact.

(Maybe I’ll invite some unsuspecting family members to play DCC over the Christmas holidays…)

If I had one major criticism of my own Judging skills during the game, it’s that I panicked when the party got to the big climactic battle and I ended up rushing things and making unwise judgments when I had to improvise rulings. After the party defeated the Big Bad, I should’ve had PCs with the lowest Luck get hit with falling debris and such, so that only a few PCs would have to make Reflex saving throws. Instead, I had all the PCs making saving throws, and that meant even more casualties at the end. Those deaths felt anticlimactic and unfun. DCC’s Luck mechanic is a great way to deal out random effects without it feeling punitive against the players, and it was something I had forgotten to utilize.

(This is another reason I want to run the module again. I know I can do a better job the second time around.)

I was incredibly nervous about running a public game, but it turns out, the experience was more rewarding than I could have imagined. Not to be too much of a nerd, but I feel like I’ve “leveled up” as a Judge. I did something I wasn’t sure I could do; I rose to the challenge. And going forward, I’ll continue to grow and hopefully get better at running games.

And most importantly, I now have another option for playing RPGs. I love the hobby and finally feel like I’m getting to play games as often as I’ve always wanted. To my surprise, there’s a whole burgeoning community of players in my local area who are interested in DCC RPG. That has been an incredible, delightful surprise. All it took was putting myself out there and taking a little risk. Glory and gold were won that day, and not just by the PCs. I came out a little richer too.

Works in Progress July 2023

July 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’ve settled into a groove. My early morning writing routine has kept steady (with a few days here and there where I’ve had to shift my mornings to accommodate the varieties of parenting and life), and with my morning sessions, I’ve mostly focused on Norse City Limits. I’m up to 13,000 words in that project, which is amazing in some sense because it doesn’t feel like I’ve written that much. Not that 13,000 words is a lot, but when I see it all totaled together, and then I think of how I got to that 13,000, it doesn’t feel like I did any work. That’s the point of a daily habit, isn’t it? A little bit everyday adds up to a lot over time. Well, I’m proving that adage true.

My other project is a story I’m calling “Dark Was the Morning,” about an old dragon and an old dragon-slayer who must decide whether they want to face off against each other or not. They’re both tired and filled with ennui, facing the end of their lives and the slow betrayal of their minds and bodies as they age. I’m not sure if this will be a short story or a novella or something else. I’m just writin’ it and seein’ where it goes!

I wish I could say I’ve been working on Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess, but that book is on the back burner again due to my focus on Norse City Limits. Maybe when fall rolls around and I’m getting to the midpoint of NCL, I’ll feel like I need a shift to something different and pick up Ysbaddaden again. I really want to finish the Merlin series, but I also know that these other stories are closer to the surface and need to be fished out first. I’m trying really hard to let my creative voice dictate my writing, and if Creative Voice says NCL is the way to go right now, that’s the way I’m going.

My blogging has been pretty shitty since summer started, but maybe that’s for the best. I should be outside doing summery things not hovering over my keyboard like a pasty crypt keeper. I would like to blog more, though, and maybe my renewed focus on Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and other OSR/indie games will be the material I need to start blogging with more regularity. I’ve written before about these old-school games, and perhaps I shall write about them again in the near future. Old school RPG stuff is wildly creative, particularly the modules and settings, and I find that it’s often more interesting and inspirational than any other fantasy media. Who needs AI when there’s a random d12 table to roll on for ideas!

I think my earlier goal of 2500 words per day is too ambitious. Maybe someday I’ll hit that goal with regularity, but I think the better goal is to keep the streak of days alive. Writing a little bit every morning before the family wakes up is working well so far. 13,000 words of fiction isn’t a lot, but it’s something. And if I can keep it up, by summer’s end, I’ll hopefully hit 30,000 words. That’s a third of a novel. Not bad for a few minutes every morning.

The other problem with my 2500 words per day goal, is that eventually summer will end, and when it does, I’ll be going back to a 9-5 job (well, more like an 8:30-3:30 job… more to say about that soon…), and 2500 words will be nigh impossible on most days simply because of time constraints. And I don’t want to make writing into a chore. I don’t want writing to be a pressured thing. I don’t want to even make writing into a “career” (I’ve discovered I don’t want to make anything into a career, frankly). I want to write. For pleasure. For myself. For the sheer joy of it. But making it into a career is not for me. It might be for others, but not for me. I’d like to make art and let the day job make money.

So 2500 words is too ambitious. I would rather write daily — no matter how many words, just daily — and let the practice of writing (not the word count or end goal) be what matters. A daily habit. This is much more enriching to me than striving for a word count goal. (I shiver when I think of the word “striving.” I am not a striver. Down with striving! Up with leisure and habit!)

Solo Old School

March 13, 2023 / / 0 Comments

A few years back, I first discovered Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, and then I found my way into the old-school renaissance sub-genre of table-top gaming, and since then, I’ve become obsessed with games like Old School Essentials and Maze Rats, and adventure settings like Dolmenwood.

Unfortunately, I’ve had little opportunity to play any of these old school-inspired games. I’ve got a sporadic DCC RPG campaign going, but we’ve been meeting less and less frequently. And I’ve only ever DMed ONE session of old school D&D (Rules Cyclopedia version).

My gaming group is more interested in 5e, so that’s what we play. There’s nothing wrong with 5e. It’s not a bad system.

It’s just… not my favorite thing. It doesn’t sing to my soul the way the old school stuff does. The simplicity of the old school games (and old school-inspired games) coupled with the grittier, more classic sword and sorcery flavor excites me a lot more than the rules and flavor of 5e.

For many players, the fun of 5e is in character creation. The character-building process is a huge part of what they like about role-playing. They can choose from a host of different character options: different feats, different skills, different race and class combinations, different bonus actions and powers. For many players, the fun isn’t just playing at the table, it’s creating the character and studying the supplemental books, looking for cool stuff to add to that character.

As a mostly-DM, I’m less enamored with this focus on character creation, but even as a player, I’m not particularly interested in it. Making the character is one part of the fun, sure, but it’s not the main part. I would go so far as to say that playing the character (as in, playing “in character,” i.e.: talking like my PC, exploring my PC’s backstory, etc.) is not the main attraction for me.

What I love about RPGs is the exploration. I get to imagine myself inside a fantastical world. My character is my window into that world, but it’s the world that I’m interested in, not the “character build.”

Of course, I enjoy playing a character and growing an attachment to them, but I’m not interested in “playing a part,” like an actor. I’m interested in discovering a new world, of seeing what’s around the corner of a dark dungeon passage, or what’s hidden in the depths of an enchanted wood. The character’s growth happens when they explore the world. They change as they explore, not by leveling up and gaining new feats and skills.

The other thing I love about old-school RPGs is the aesthetic, which, I’ll admit, is my personal preference and nothing more.

And there’s nostalgia too. Old school RPGs take me back to Saturdays at Waldenbooks looking at all those Dragonlance covers on the shelves. They take me back to third grade when I discovered the Endless Quest books, to playing MERP and HeroQuest, to watching movies like Legend and Dragonslayer over and over and over again. The old school gaming stuff–even when it’s really weird and acid-y like Ultraviolet Grasslands–gives me the same vibes I used to get as a kid. I don’t think it’s the rules per se that do it; I think it’s the DIY spirit of the scene and the messy creativity.

But yeah, the rules are great too because they ARE simpler. The rules leave a lot of things open to the imagination of the DM and the players. I like that freedom.

I sometimes think of 5e as one of those adult coloring books with amazingly detailed and gorgeous pictures inside. They are  fun to color because at the end of the process, you have this amazing piece of art. But old school games are more like one of those “Child’s First Art Book” things, where on page one there’s an outline of a fishbowl and the directions say to draw a bunch of fish, but what the fish look like, how they’re shaped, what they’re doing, and what else is inside the fishbowl is entirely up to you. And each page is like that: a suggestion of what to draw, but everything else comes from your imagination. That’s what old school gaming feels like. Suggestions and outlines, but you get to draw the world.

So anyway, I wish I knew more people who wanted to play stuff like OSE and DCC RPG. When I’m feeling in the mood, I sometimes roll up a couple of characters and start sketching a simple dungeon and wilderness area, and then sorta run my own  adventure in my head. I know it sounds lame, but sometimes it’s all I can do to satisfy my desire to play old-school stuff. Sometimes I read modules and adventure settings and get ideas for games I want to run or even for stories I want to write. Even if I’m just flying solo, the old school stuff ends up feeding my imagination. I might not be able to play a campaign with a full table of people, but at least I can let the old school stuff inspire me.

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