Day 27: Group
Getting together with a group of friends is the biggest reason I play role playing games. These games are a social activity. Those who show up early can chat about how things are going before the game starts. A good game usually results in members of the group talking with each other between sessions.
I recall one campaign with the FASA Star Trek Role Playing Game where the session had ended on a cliffhanger. We were trapped on a starship with several enemy torpedoes heading directly towards us. This was in the days before texting and emails. So phone call by phone call the different players called each other with different ideas of what we could do. Which idea was the best? Which idea would actually work? There was a problem and we were going to solve it.
When it came time for the next session, the GM picked up from where we left off. As the torpedoes hit, the power suddenly went out on the ship. A voice called out “OK, open it up” and the simulator wall holding the viewscreen slid open a la Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. An instructor walked through checking off a box on a clipboard stating “Well you messed that one up, didn’t you?” We don’t know if the GM planned to make this a simulation or it was his idea to get himself out of a painted corner. I just remember that one player screamed. The GM quickly gulped and ran out the door. When he dodged the player chasing him and ran back in to the house, he had discovered that we had a belt converted into a hangman’s noose. While we were upset about our ideas being thrown out the window, we were not really going to hang him… or were we?
I’ve made many different friends in different gaming groups. Some of them I haven’t talked to in years. Others I am still in contact with today. One lives so close I could hit his house with a well thrown rock. It is still my opinion that gaming in person with the group was much better than gaming over an online platform. Yes, the online options have allowed games to continue while we work our way through recent challenges. But I want to see the body language expressing secret messages via glances, I want to hear the groans as I let loose a joke (If I could make the DM laugh during a session he’d give me extra experience points), I want to hear about how my friends are doing.
Having re-read a lot of my gaming books or checking out new systems I want to get a group of friends together just to try a system. While we may not make a campaign out of the game, we would at least try out the system and see if it worked. I just wish that we could actually get together. Not just health wise, but trying to arrange scheduled (the same old story). But we would to it together as a group.
Final Thoughts:
I had a hard time with this set of suggestions. “Fraction”? It was my understand that there would be no math. “Kindle”? I guess I could have talked about reading books on a kindle. “Practice” You want me to blog about practice?
