Savage Worlds 6 Sessions In

So I've been running Savage Worlds' Evernight campaign for some six sessions, and it's my first experience with the system. Six sessions in, what do I think of it?

1. It's more old school than I would have thought. Despite my being pretty new school and the system having drama points (Bennies) and other tweaks like card-based initiative, there's still a strong focus on leveling up, which I associate with old school gaming. The frequent addition of abilities to the group as we speed towards the eventually epic finale (in another 8 or 9 sessions) fits the pulpy idea that heroes are meant to be heroic and damn the logic. Except, you know, movie logic, and that's fine. I'm still flashing back to the olden days of XP hoarding , body looting and the assurance that characters would eventually break the bank. The use of miniatures certainly helps foster that impression.

2. Combat is unpredictably deadly. While no one has died yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at some point. You can have long stretches where the goons can't even hit the heroes, and then a lucky strike aces and puts a PC in mortal danger. Healing is problematic, with a golden hour restriction on healing spells and a week's rest per wound for natural healing. I do like how being incapacitated may lead to permanent injury, but all this seems at odds with the power trip feel that's otherwise in effect in the game (i.e. the advantages of being a Wild Card). My players must really start thinking about their strategies if they're to survive what's to come, the wild attack being a favorite right now, but not suiting every character.

3. I'm not sure about the magic system yet. I personally have no problem with such a streamlined system that has so few spells/powers, and prefer mana/power points to learning specific spells. However, spellcasters do tend to run out of points early. Still, that's offset by their unrestricted access (Strength willing) to weapons. so it's serviceable, but has little flavor to make it stand out. By comparison, tactics and Combat Edges are much more interesting.

4. Character generation is tough on Novices. I like "point-buy" chargen generally, and found Savage Worlds to be easy to work with. I asked players to come up with character concepts first, and then helped them build those concepts with the rules. We succeeded in every case, and in a modicum of time. Being used to GURPS, I was happy with how quickly things came together. If there's a problem, it's that "level 1" characters (Novices with 0 XP) get to take so few starting options to differentiate them. Different Races and a Professional Edges will likely do it, but over time and many chargen experiences, things might start to look samey. I will likely start future campaigns with already Seasoned Characters.

5. Advancement is too steep. On the one hand, that's ok, because I do want to race through this opening campaign and finish it before Christmas, and I do want the characters to grow quickly. I generally give the maximum (3) XP award every session. I do have a problem with Bennies being turned into XP however. I've noticed players hoarding their Bennies and only rarely rerolling or soaking damage in order to get that roll at the end of the session. One player in particular has been extremely lucky with those, and in one of the sessions, I had to tell a player I wasn't comfortable with him leveling twice in the same session (in other words, his Bennies went and gave him 3 XP on top of the 3 I was handing out). In a slower-moving campaign (or maybe even in the near future), I may rule that the number of Bennies you have left represents a number of chances at rolling for an extra XP, limiting the bonus at +1 per session.

6. I like Plot Points. Evernight's, at least, work very well to date. I'd say I'm much more Story-oriented than Campaign-oriented, so the idea of telling a finite story appeals to me and my players strapped for time. Savage Worlds products like Evernight feature a strong setting + prewritten campaign combo that not only saves on prep time and money, but also allows the story to take an unexpected turn. If Evernight was a standard setting, GMs would probably start the story with the sky already obscured, but Evernight first sets up the idyllic fantasy world before pulling the rug out from under the players' feet. The Plot Points also support a learning curve for new players as more and more Savage Worlds and setting concepts come into play. The setting is revealed through the adventures, so the GM doesn't need to assimilate and then parcel out setting information in contrived ways. I know the quality of these varies, but in Evernight at least, I've nothing to complain about.

7. The card-based initiative fuels momentum. I was worried at first that the use of cards, which seems cool in Deadlands, would clash with other settings. While it's not exactly on target when it comes to genre, it's a fun initiative system. Players like to throw down, and my quick calling out of card numbers gives pace to combat that can sometimes be long (especially against larger forces). To make it better suited to fantasy, I'm using Tarot cards instead of playing cards, with the Knights taken out and all but the Fool and the Sun (Evernight's god) as jokers.

8. I'm using the Adventure Deck. This is a fun tool full of New School goodness. They don't come into play all that often (though as the characters become Seasoned, they'll get more cards to use).

9. Allies are a good way to learn the later echelons. The players have had a chance to play with Allies of higher level in one session - something Savage Worlds recommends - and not only did it open up new strategic possibilities, but it also gave the players a look at what was possible at those higher levels. They hit Seasoned a little wiser than they might otherwise have been, and will be able to make more educated choices of Edges and spells, having had a chance to "test-drive" them.

10. I will continue using Savage Worlds. After Evernight wraps up, I'm quite willing to pick up another Savage Worlds setting and have more fun, whether with Plots Points or not. I'm even interested in using Savage Worlds to play in non-SW settings (like doing that Ninja Wars OD&D thing that was almost our next campaign). he system is quick, fun and easy to adapt. In 2011, I look forward to some Rippers, Slipstream or maybe some kind of Kung Fu epic, depending on what my players want to do once they've had their fantasy fix.

Maybe I'll have more comments 15 sessions in...

My RPG DNA, Part IV: The Mini-Series

(Part I, Part II, Part III)
I'd call it the finale, except that I won't stop role-playing any time soon. One side effect of the Rise of Genre and Multi-Genre in my campaigns was to push me more and more into the New School arena. I blame/thank genre emulation for this. As I said in Part II, D&D is in many ways its own genre. Game sessions have little to do with Lord of the Rings' or Stormbringer's narratives. So when one explores different genres, one may have to divest oneself of those D&D genre trappings, many of which are staples of Old School gaming. This is a lesson I learned early when running Supers campaigns. This genre doesn't call for killing and looting, or even accumulating XP. If D&D is its own animal, emulating itself, Supers generally attempt to emulate comic books, where the genre began and is still most represented. Supers have their own tropes that must either be obeyed or twisted (which is its own acknowledgment of genre). Batman must be able to bust out of a block of ice despite his human strength. He must have the perfect gadget for any situation regardless of his equipment list. He must take the time to deal with a romantic subplot in between story beats. He can't buy a super-power no matter how much XP he's racked up. And he can't kill even if he causes damage that would overwhelm the Joker's hit points. So beyond the emulation of Powers, a Supers game trying to emulate "4-color comics" needs to address many issues that are DRIVEN by genre as opposed to realism and math. DC Heroes, for example, dealt with these with Pushing the Limit, Omni-Gadgets, Subplot support and Bashing Combat. These, and other aspects of the system, said one very important thing: Genre matters.

And I'd say that's been my background philosophy since the 90s, but it's taken a more and more central role in the last few years. From Old School roots as grown a decidedly New School tree. When genre matters, certain things get more attention than others. One of these is the game's narrative structure. If Supers come from comics, then you start thinking of role-playing sessions as single issues of a comic. If you're playing a Doctor Who RPG, then you're looking at how episodic television tells stories. I realize that mixes Genre and Medium, but it's how things worked out.

Back to DCH
In the mid-2000s, I was having problems with player availability. Though Dream Park accommodated this well, it also meant I was trapped in one-shot hell. They made me long for campaigns where I could do more long-term planning and truly explore a world. Campaigns had a knack for collapsing when players became unavailable, however, as happened to my GURPS epic, Shiftworld (see Part III for details). Games became either unrewarding or disappointing. I returned to DC Heroes, this time with a different group of players from the Dream Park gang, because it allowed for one-shots within the same world. By taking the JLA's "roll call" concept and sticking to one or two-part adventures, players could show up based on their availability, could miss sessions, etc. It also became possible to have guest characters in (usually actual DCU heroes), or run one-on-one mini-sessions that were all about the subplots.

The players called their team the Crusaders (no relation to the Archie heroes), and for the attendant website at least, I treated the game as a comic book (as if it had spun out of the Legends crossover in the late 80s). When it went one-on-one, that's just an issue focusing on a single team member. Comics do it all the time. It ran 32 "issues", a good run, and ended, wouldn't you know it, in the middle of a longer arc ("Neutron Dance"). Grrr. DC Heroes' usual emulation did its work, of course, but I added more. By setting it in a particular continuity, and numbering the issues as if they were a monthly, I could make the characters go through that continuity's big crossover events. For example, I brought my issues of Millennium, and allowed them to interact with other heroes in the big crowd scenes (usually in place of Infinity Inc. or the Outsiders, cuz really, who cares if they get wiped from continuity). They even changed some outcomes, and lost a hero in Invasion!

I think we ended the campaign mid-stride by consensus. The motivation just wasn't there anymore, especially with a key player or two moving away. I booted up Planescape again with the remaining players, but despite my best efforts, and 'porting over the idea of subplots and a single living location, sword & sorcery remains a tough sell with my current crop of players. Though I wouldn't say this campaign died in the middle of things, there were a lot of things laid into it that never paid off.

There must be a compromise
Back to the drawing board... What made the Crusaders campaign (where player availability was fluid) last so long, but Planescape (where players remained available) not? I decided it wasn't about availability, but rather boredom. It's my own fault. Through the decade, I trained us to like variety. When I became bored with one-shots, I ran in the opposite direction, towards the interminably sustainable campaign. I ran too far. After a number of sessions, players became bored with the lack of setting variety, and disenchanted with whatever they felt was wrong with their initial character concepts or the setting's shortcomings. With one-shots, they could ride it out. In a Supers campaign, it was also pretty easy to run a subplot to change a character's concept because that's part of the genre's tropes (and it happened). Not so easy in AD&D.

The solution was staring me in the face: The mini-series. Those huge open-ended campaigns of my youth could be called novels (if not very good ones), and lately, I'd been doing way too many movies (one-shots), but seeing my Supers role-playing sessions as a comic book installments had trained me to see games as largely episodic. What else is by its very nature episodic? Television. And so I began to exploit that comparison.

I started attracting players to the idea of a single episodic "season" that would last X amount of time (number of sessions = number of episodes). If they loved their characters and the "show", we could return to it at some point and do another season. If they felt the story was over, we wouldn't need to. It even allowed players to sacrifice themselves in the last episode if they felt it was the way to go. The structural conceit also informed mechanics, and I endeavored to pick a game that was very cinematic (which was in tune with the pulpish habits I'd picked up running Dream Park and DCH). That game was GURPS Black Ops, using Warehouse 23 as an HQ (this was about a year before Warehouse 13 came out on tv for real). We used Cinematic Points and other cinematic rules, in keeping with action movie and television tropes we were trying to emulate. I sold it to players as Men in Black meets John Woo meets Torchwood. It sold even before the pilot, and ran for a whole summer. To emulate the genre further, I added a teaser to the front end of each episode in which players could riff high octane without the need to roll dice, catching the end of an untold tale (think Indiana Jones).

Following it up would prove difficult. Everyone in the group was deep into Doctor Who at the time and emulating an actual television show seemed to be the next evolution (and would bring in new interested players from the friend circle). Cubicle 7's new DWAITAS was coming at the perfect time. And then there were delays with the product, compounded by drifting interest in key players (real life was interfering), and it made us skip an entire summer. It's much harder to start something during the university year (as opposed to keeping something going), so it wasn't until March of this year that we finally got to play DWAITAS (and we're 2 episodes away from the season finale, I'm happy to report). The game pushed us even more deeply into New School narrativism with television structure ideas like Previews of the next session, while keeping it very quick and cinematic just as our previous games had been.

The future...
Our Time Lord story should end within two or three sessions, sadly delayed to the beginning of July (real life again), but it's a delay that allows us to prep for the next mini-series. What will it be? I'm looking very closely at Savage Worlds, which has the same pulpy, "story point"-driven style as most of our recent games. Its multiple settings provide hope that we can re-use it for other mini-series, with less chargen fuss than GURPS tends to represent. And its Plot Point campaigns are already working from a mini-series point of view. Just a matter of choosing a first setting and going with it.

The adventure continues... (Part V in 3-5 years, thanks for waiting)

Further reading about this era :
Thoughts about the Doctor Who
Who RPG: Casting the Time Lord
How to tie all those loose ends
New School Lesson: Role-playing between sessions
New School Lesson: Subplots
New School Lesson: The secret function of dice
New School Lesson: Cinematic Points
New School Lesson: Picking up the pace
New School Lesson: Worse things than death
New School Lesson: Diceless moments
New School Lesson: Previews

My RPG DNA, Part III: The Rise of Multi-Genre

(Part I, Part II)
By the end of my university days, I'd amassed an important collection of role-playing games. The question then became: What do I do with it all? Then my current pool of players finally acquiesced to play a little game from R. Talsorian based on Niven & Pournelle's SF novel ABOUT role-playing, Dream Park, and that gave me the answer I was looking for. Dream Park was a fairly simple, I'd go as far as say BROKEN, little game that encouraged you not only to play in all kinds of genres, but to merge them as well. In Dream Park, you play a player who, based on a vague invitation, selects the skills, powers and gear he thinks he'll need for a one-shot scenario put together by a GameMaster (played by the GM) in a sort of holodeck/animatronic/actor-filled environment. The players play for points that will allow them to purchase even more stuff for their next game, but risk losing them if they die, although some can be recouped if they come back as villainous NPCs later in the game. It's a nifty gimmick, and the published scenarios highlighted multi-genre concepts (1001 Nights/Star Wars, Superheroes/WWII, Postapocalypse/Zombies), though there was definitely a pulp feel about all of them.

This allowed me to adapt a lot of the adventure scenarios, setting books and RPG magazines I'd purchased over the last few years (and lead me to buy even more). I didn't stick with that particular group very long, just long enough to gauge what was missing from Dream Park as published. I would dabble with old favorites in the late 90s (DC Heroes, Planescape, Paranoia), but I would eventually return to DP when I recruited a whole new batch of players as we entered the 2000s. By then, I was almost exclusively recruiting improv players into my games. There are some very good reasons for this. 1) I was (and still am) deeply involved in improv/theater games, and most of my friends are improv players. 2) There's a natural relationship between improv and role-playing, though in the latter, you have to stay in character a lot longer. And 3) improv players tend to be naturally quick witted and funny, which makes for an enjoyable laugh-filled role-playing session. I could probably write a paper no one would read about how improv skills and flaws translate to the role-playing environment. In any case, this choice would mold my role-playing activities a heck of a lot. Playing with people who are more used to acting out scenes than the nitty gritty of rules has led me farther and farther into New School territory.

(LARP aside: In the late 90s, I tried my hand at LARPing with the improv gang, organizing two or three events that relied very little or not at all on rules, but were heavy on role-playing. Great fun, and the fewer the rules - in other words, the less fighting there could be - the more fun we had. My thanks to White Wolf magazine's diceless columns for many of the ideas. Some people have been pestering me about doing some more, and I just might. They better get their sowing machines out or it won't be the same.)

Before jumping back into Dream Park, I tried my hand at Last Unicorn's Star Trek TNG game, but it was a less than stellar success. Players shrugged off the show's conceits and played it more (too) realistically. The captain refused to get off the bridge and the department heads sent their underlings into danger. It turned the NPCs into the real heroes, and though the players seemed fine with it, I chose to end the campaign. There were other changes in the air. More people were asking me about playing, and yet were afraid of the committment a campaign represented. Everyone was either in university or working, and schedules were tight. I took ST: TNG's surviving players, grabbed a few new guys and started running Dream Park again.

I crafted a website with all the player options, so that players could pick their skills and gear beforehand. Soon enough, I'd added a lot of missing options, created new Professions, ported skills and a more granular Tech Level over from GURPS, and tons of superpowers from all those Supers games I collected. (The site is still active and people I don't even know have told me they use it.) With Dream Park, my pool of players ballooned to the teens. It was easy to assemble whoever was available for any given one-shot, while players also racked points and felt they were progressing. For my part, I got to use all manner of material from my shelves (or Pyramid Online which was a great source of multi-genre material): Call of Cthulhu (especially the non-Mythos Blood Brothers books), GURPS, In Nomine, 2300 AD, Space 1889, AD&D: The Horde/Spelljammer, Time Master, Torg, Chill, Shadowrun, James Bond 007, Weird War II, DC Heroes, Ghostbusters, and more all provided adventure material for those games. Every game was completely different.

GURPS Heads, GURPS Heads, Suck 'em up, yum!
But I still wasn't using everything I owned. That, along with my desire to run something other than one-shots (as fun as they were), pushed me to come up with a GURPS campaign that could make use of the 100+ sourcebooks I had. That campaign was Shiftworld, in which we changed settings every few sessions, but the characters remained the same, except not. The frontier town sheriff would turn into a motorcycle cop and later into Mars base security chief, for example. However, he would still remember the other timeline when the setting shifted. His memories would also hold the revised timeline. Aside from the heroes (and one recurring villain), no one noticed the "shifts". So while we took advantage of the settings' potential for adventure, there was an overall arc about figuring out this mystery. Old West, Autoduel, Mars, Ice Age, Mecha, Steampunk, Vikings, Time Travel... and then too many of the key players moved away, so the mystery was never resolved. It was probably the single best campaign I ever ran though, and I'd love to get the old guys together again to put a button on it once and for all.

Between that disappointing unfinished business and an overdose of one-shots, something had to give...

In Part IV: The Mini-Series

Further reading about this era :
Remembering a Dream Park scenario
RPG award shows started in this era
Lesson from Dream Park: In Medias Res
Lesson from Dream Park: Multiple GM personalities
Nazis and dinosaurs: Part of EVERY genre
Hosting a one-shot LARP
Culling the massive collection... possible?
Profiles of my players from this era:
-The Obsessive
-The Flusher
-The Noble Hero
-The Hipster Doofus
-The Dud
-The Rest

My RPG DNA, Part II: The Rise of Genre

Continuing my four-part series on my personal role-playing experience... We left things at the end of the 1980s where, from primitive homebrew beginnings, a group of teenagers found its own particular way of having fun. After 4 years of intense sword & sorcery play, I was looking for other pastures. And when a hobby store finally opened in my area, just as I entered my first year of university, it opened up so many doors as to leave my head spinning. Suddenly, money burned in my pockets, and a number of important purchases were made: Much of the early output of AD&D 2nd edition, everything ever published for Paranoia (1st and 2nd ed.) and a lot of DCHeroes material, most notably the 2nd edition boxed set. And while we slowly finished up ye olde Temple of Elemental Evil (still not using proper AD&D rules), I was running side games using other RPGs, mostly Marvel Super Heroes and Paranoia.

My God, it's full of stars!
You'd think that after a veritable drought of real AD&D product in my area, I would have finally converted to proper Dungeons & Dragons, sending my group into a more balanced and structured world of gaming. And the amount of AD&D product I bought in those days would indicate I at least had plans to do this. Instead, I abandoned AD&D. Or rather, I didn't abandon AD&D, but sword and sorcery as a genre. Why play the same thing I'd been playing for four years when there were all these new worlds available? Through my university years - thanks to moving to the larger Moncton with its comic book/gaming stores - I almost became more of a collector than a gamer. All manner of games too. Those games that I was playing, sure, but really anything that seemed interesting, either based on magazine articles, ads or from back cover copy. I didn't get into Palladium's stuff or I.C.E.'s output. My favorites were instead Steve Jackson Games (I own almost every GURPS book there is), West End Games and IDW. I picked up the very first edition of Ars Magica and the latest in MegaTraveller. I gobbled up every Torg sourcebook. I delved into grown-up stuff like Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon. Small indy games like Macho Women with Guns became collector's items. I collected every issue of Challenge and White Wolf magazines. And all the while, I continued to buy up AD&D product, mostly the excellent Planescape setting's.

That first hobby store also sold really cool AD&D lead miniatures, and so I started painting them, sometimes with results I was quite happy with. However, I was seldom playing in games where they would come in useful.

In those early college years, my longest running campaign used DCHeroes and covered two groups (with one player in common with both). The "Free Spirits" as they'd chosen to call themselves were an 80s-style DC superhero team, as was best supported by the game's adventure scenarios. The characters were all original, and the players almost all recruited from people who'd never roleplayed before, a good portion of them women. This continued to my trend of consciously picking players among the ranks of the uninitiated. The few times I'd been exposed to real gamers, I hadn't liked what I'd seen. Name your negative cliché about role-players, and that'd been it. I guess I had little interest in clashing with such players over how I did things. Or perhaps I was just more comfortable playing with friends, whether they'd gamed or not in the past. Either way, this is an important part of my development as a GameMaster. The focus would remain off crunchy rules and more on juicy roles (which a superhero game can certainly encourage). Beginner-friendly was the order of the day.

Gone clubbing
After a year in Moncton, I'd met a guy in my class who was a gamer from Quebec on the lookout for other gamers. Nice enough chap, and we bonded over role-playing games. The following year, we set up a role-playing club at university together, based on his experience of coming into town and looking for other French-speaking gamers to pursue his hobby. The first meeting did not go well for me, further ostracizing me from the mainstream. Everybody was interested in D&D, but I wanted to try something else. I read over my list of potential games, and was met with either blank stares or mocking laughter. So you DON'T want to try Ghostbusters, well okay! Needless to say, I didn't put a lot of effort in the club after that.

I continued to run other games with my closer friends, but the club's co-founder went on to run AD&D for the players he'd picked up there. I was invited to a few games, of which I have little memory. I do remember making a Bard that followed a Paladin around, and writing songs (parodies of current hits) to accompany his adventures. I seldom got to play, but when I did (when I do), my characters are high on color and low on usefulness, when they're not outright pains in the ass. The guy who owned the apartment where we played thought it was a hoot, and then went back to the "I hit it" style of play. I was obviously trying to make things interesting for myself because I was essentially bored either by the way most people played or the genre itself. (D&D is, I can safely say, a genre unto itself. It goes beyond sword & sorcery, it's also strangely procedural, the way encounters are done, the characters' singular quest for treasure and XP... The way it's PLAYED has become its own genre, quite unlike any literary source). Anyway, that guy got arrested for lying on a job application and the game collapsed.

I would get to use the club's players for new and different things eventually. As I got to know them through those sleepy AD&D games, they started to trust me, and a little game called Dream Park would again change everything...

In Part III: The Rise of Multi-Genre!

Further reading about this era :
One of my failed attempts at playing
My miniatures from that era
Using my RPG book collection as reference for university papers

My RPG DNA, Part I: Early Days

Last week, I was reading Rob Donoghue and Chatty DM's recollections of their role-playing experience through the years, and I was inspired to stroll down memory lane (check for traps, ok, it's safe) and do the same in a four-part series (the SBG is like a long-lasting stick of gum, as you know). It all started 25 years ago, longer than some of my current players' ages, so some memories may be corrupted or entirely missing, but I'll give it my best try.

Even before 25 years ago
Like many hobbies that would later become fairly important in my life, I discovered evidence of role-playing's existence long before I ever knew what role-playing was. Living in a small town (population 10,000) in the Dark Ages before the Internet, there weren't many ways to get exposed to the hobby. When I was 11, my dad moved out of Canada, to Texas, and shared custody being what it was, we were whisked off to Montreal to board a plane and spend the summer in the States. Needing something to read on said plane, I picked up a couple of RPG-related books that would prove important to my initiation into that world. The first was Grimtooth's Traps, Too, a systemless book of dungeon traps, and the next summer's was the original AD&D Monster Manual. In neither case did I understand what these books were for, or what this "game" could be (I thought that perhaps it was some kind of computer thing). But since they were pretty much the only books I had for an entire summer, far from my real home's shelves, I read and reread them, and of course I wanted to learn more.

Back in Canada, I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club, and found two books that could perhaps help me. One was Dicing with Dragons, which described what role-playing was, and the other was Fantasy Wargaming, half manual, half stand-alone RPG. By the time I'd read these, I was in 9th grade, and other kids were bringing their D&D stuff to school. I saw a module or two. I heard a couple stories. I was accumulating friends who, though they'd never played, were interested in trying. Of course, in my small town, there was no way to get at D&D product. An older guy gave me my first polyhedral dice, the numbers already worn off, from one of Basic D&D's original boxes. And that's all we had. That, the Monster Manual and Fantasy Wargaming.

Homebrews
Well, Fantasy Wargaming was nigh incomprehensible to my neophyte brain, and it certainly wasn't compatible with the AD&D book. Perhaps I should have cut my losses and tried to get into someone else's group. I knew they existed, usually run by older guys (and I would later attend one, though I was unimpressed with the rules lawyering and DM versus Players atmosphere), but I didn't know any of them really. So I took what I could understand of FW (mostly the character sheet), created some kind of conversion for AD&D (so that the monsters became compatible), drew up lists of spells from the Monster Manual and gave them effects (just based on the names), stole maps from various sword & sorcery novels for setting, sat down at a friend's ping-pong table and went for it.

It was terribly unbalanced, of course. Wizards rolled for spells every level and got a random one. Could be Powerword Kill as much as Detect Magic. Though bigger XP rewards were handed out as time went along, the amount of XP required to level didn't change. Soon, the characters were multi-class epic level demi-gods and everybody was running at least 3 of them. We didn't care. We were having fun, Monty Hauling our way to the top. At least we were the kids that spoke English amongst ourselves already, so by that point, there wasn't a language barrier. Other than French Canadians trying to say the word "algae" and such.

That campaign would take us through all of our high school years. Along the way, I of course returned to Texas, where bookstores could be counted on to carry product. I bought more monster books (Fiend Folio, Deities and Demigods, etc.), but instead of the Player's Handbook and GM's Guide, I grabbed the much cheaper Arcanum. Though we kept some of our homebrew crazyness (the fun, unbalanced stuff), we converted to the Arcanum system, a D&D clone anyway, but with many more character classes. It appealed to our "more is better/cooler" attitudes. And though I would eventually get all of the AD&D books, I never really converted to that system. It just wasn't necessary. Arcanum was just fine to run Temple of Elemental Evil, a dungeon that ate up our last high school year (and beyond).

There's a whole world out there
Thanks to the few Dragon magazines I'd collected in the States, I knew there was more to role-playing than sword & sorcery, and in those latter days, we did try to homebrew systems meant for other games. Our Arcanum/AD&D combination worked just as well for science-fiction, and stats for DC and Marvel characters in Dragon were used as a template to create a superhero game as well. To take the heat off me, someone else from the group became GameMaster, though he tended towards unfair playing fields which ultimately collapsed those games. And perhaps the homemade systems weren't up to snuff, nor did we have proper experience (or even advice) on how to run those games. I remember being peeved at how NPCs died in our superhero game, for example.

But then, something happened to change everything. A hobby shop opened in our area...

In Part II: The Rise of Genre!

Further reading about this era :
How we kicked a guy out of our group WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE!
That one time I went to play in someone else's game
Props I made for those games
Grimtooth's Traps recollections
Fantasy Wargaming recollections
Arcanum recollections
Dragon Magazine recollections

Gamer Profiles: My Guys in the Early Millenium

In the early "oughts", I had a pretty large and varied group of players. I was running weekly Dream Park one-offs (really, anything from moldy James Bond 007 scenarios to expanded cross-genre ideas found in magazines) more or less with a first come first serve policy, so though I had a dozen players or so, they alternated spots - perfect for our tight schedules.

At one point, I wrote a guide that treated them as "problem players" and how to handle them. Not that they truly were, you understand, but a GameMaster has to deal with his players' quirks. Here is that long-lost guide (names changed to protect the moronic):

Gloves gets easily frustrated or impulsive if answers don't come up right away. My solution: Let him sulk and concentrate on the other players. ;-)

Absolut WILL sacrifice himself if need be, which could lead to unwanted character death. My solution: Fudge rolls to save him at least some of the time, but have him suffer mentally at every turn.

Twelve gets dangerously violent, but is really good at thinking outside the box. My solution: Keep him away from good weapons and throw more "impossible" situations his way (while Gloves sulks, I guess).

Willow wants to role-play more, but always winds up taking the combat solution. My solution: It's what he actually really wants, so make sure he has combat to keep him happy.

Gahkar tends to kill helpful NPCs and betray the party, but he's really good. My solution: Make his character's life miserable, and only really take him out toward the end.

Sherlock is skittish about even coming in to play and leaving his girlfriend at home, but he really enjoys himself. My solution: More games that specifically attract him, at least when I advertise them.

Psycho is a crazy madcap loon, but oh, so entertaining. You just never know what he's gonna do to derail the whole thing. My solution: Take it like a man.

Red goes for the jugular every time, never side-tracking even for interesting bits. My solution: Giving him something time-consuming to do plotwise, while the others linger to taste the flavoring.

Dash likes to come up with fun, but not useful, concepts for characters. My solution: Let the bad guys ignore him most of the time so he's relatively safe, and give him latitude in what he can do with his silly abilities.

Willy always plays his characters as silly caricatures and will always do the stupidest things no matter his character's IQ. My solution: Laugh, then sometimes just call it a joke that was "never said" or "never actually happened".

J basically does nothing, says nothing even when addressed, and contributes very poorly to any adventure, but he's a nice guy. My solution: Make him the center of attention, in the same sense that the calmest part of a hurricane is its eye. Whatever that means ;-). Being at the center doesn't mean he does more or HAS to do more. It just means the story's occasionally about his character. Result: He feels like he's an important part of the story, when his actions really aren't (by his own choice).

Well, that's a cross-section of my group, and what I did with them in those halcyon days... How do YOU deal with your players' particularities?

1001 Things I Will Not Do When I Play RPGs (Excerpts)

All based on true events.

1. I will not kick the GM out of my house during a game.

27. I will not make swords and arrows have the same sound effects as mech lasers and missiles.

125. I will not refuse to play a game on the single basis that "it isn't D&D".

250. I will not request to play a race not covered in the rules, nor will I imply that I will not participate otherwise.

251. I will not make such requests for my girlfriend either.

379. Samurai armor is not appropriate attire for a modern era game.

448. If the plane is crashing, I will not stay aboard and play guitar while the rest of the characters parachute out.

459. Certainly not because I think it's "funny".

460. Or because my character is based on a single silly premise which is more important than any standards of human behavior.

593. Disembodied heads - even those of Nazis - are not meant to become ventriloquist dummies just so I can use that skill on my character sheet.

665. I will not take out every manual in the collection until I find an optional rule that proves my point.

666. Certainly not the AD&D 1st ed. Manual of the Planes.

801. Why would I keep the bloody remains of smaller humanoid species in Mason jars? Answer: I would not.

928. I will not make the GM uncomfortable by putting the moves on him every time he plays a female NPC.

1001. I will not ask for the game to be moved to a Sunday morning "because it's the only time I can make it" and then not show up, especially if everyone else has a hangover.

Excerpts from 1001 Things I Will Not Do When I GM

Gamer Profile: The Dud

I've had a few, and some of them at some point improved, so it's perhaps better not to give up on them, but... THE DUD! The Dud is that particular creature of role-playing that would probably enjoy it as much as a spectator. He likes to play, but is vastly more entertained by what others are doing and saying than entertaining himself.

A few examples of what I've gone gone through: The Dud is told by guerrillas that he will be shot unless he answers their questions. His reaction is to say nothing. Not WITHHOLD information, mind you. He simply says nothing because he can't come up with anything to say. The same player, later that year, allowed the bad guys to drive off in a van while he just stood there, completely befuddled by the event (not to mention he had the only superhero without powers there... he couldn't think of any).That's the particular frustration associated with the Dud. For other players, he's the team member who can't be trusted. For the GameMaster, he's the spanner in the narrative machine, the cog that doesn't do anything no matter what you throw at it. It's a problem because the GM is more likely to get a quiet player involved directly - make things happen to his character, etc. - to make sure his session is as interesting as a more proactive player's. That GM needn't do it, because the Dud is often quite happy just being there.

When being a Dud is an advantage...
I once ran a Paranoia game where a Dud miraculously survived with a couple clones to spare! How? No one - including myself - ever thought about his character. But if your goal is simply to survive, you're acting on the wrong reflex. I'd much rather have players jumping into the fire than constantly skulk well away from the action. It's not role-play if your character acts exactly like you do.

The Dud is not beyond redemption...
My example player came back to the game after a hiatus and had us bent over with laughter. I think it was about finding some self-confidence. Maybe a new game or group intimidates some players. Maybe that hesitation transforms them into duds. Maybe they even made some bad choices during character generation. And maybe if you don't give up on them, they'll learn to become valued members of the party.

What are your Dud stories?

Other Gamer Profiles available on the SBG:
The Monster GM
Mr. Obsessive (Pout)
The Jerk
The Professional GM
The Crook (Gaa-Kar)
The Straight Man (Mitrael)
The Curve Ball (Fireball)

PbEMemories

Play-by-email role-playing games. Remember those?

In the late 90s, I got involved in a couple of well-established Star Trek PbEMs. I don't remember the ships' names and have changed computers enough times that no email has survived, but I do remember the characters. Albert Michaels was a pretty innovative holographics expert, at a time before Voyager introduced the EMH, and Skoid was an odd Bolian counselor filled with tough love.

But since I've always been more of a GameMaster than a player, I had to start one of my own. And so was born Moncton Supers.Moncton is where I live and I reimagined it as a vast metropolis à la Astro City or City of Heroes. Various sections of the city were repurposed as ghettos and mystical mountains, so that any kind of super-hero story could be told there. Using egroup technology, I launched 4 teams, each their own story and genre, and I played a character in each of them. The conceit was that you could create your own character or you could take one from any source, wholesale or with the details filed off. The four teams were:

The Justice League
Epic superhero comics in Morrison JLA mold. I played Green Lantern John Stewart (as if the only GL ever on Earth). Other members included the Jester (a Flash/Joker hybrid), Captain Marvel (until his player went all porno and we had to shut him down, prefiguring Judd Winnick's take on the Marvel Family), Doc Manhattan and the Undertaker (yes, the wrestler). One big story arc involved the JLA going on an outer space adventure and another Justice League full of vigilante types rising on Earth (mine was Gamma Man, an Ultra-Man/Hulk Amalgam). There was going to be hell to pay when they came back, but the game collapsed before that could happen.

The Titans
Angsty superhero soap opera in the Marv Wolfman/Chris Claremont style. I played the Tangent version of Flash, great fun. She had a huge rivalry with Flamebird, who, just like in the comics, was only in the team because Nightwing was. Our accompanying website even had diary entries in which the two girls (Flamebird, at least, was actually played by a girl) wrote scathing remarks about one another. Original creations filled out the team. Stories felt a lot like RPG modules, with lame villains and cookie cutter plots, but this was all about the interaction between the characters, which is where it shone. The peripheral (NPC) characters were pretty cool too, including Flash's judgmental mom Celeste and the Kryptonian Batman from Speeding Bullets.

Hero Hotline
Superhero parody and silliness. I played Zeep the Living Sponge, the sad Dial H for Hero creation that made a cameo in the actual Hero Hotline mini-series (I wish DC would do a sequel). A lot of original creations in this group, from a guy who only had powers where he was drunk (and was the only one with a driver's license) to the Tintin/Haddock mash-up who's only real power was getting hit over the head. The Hotline had such bizarre employees as Dr. Duck (no relation to Howard) and Noo-Noo from the Teletubbies. As you might imagine, this was the most fun of the lot, completely ridiculous.

The Defenders
Gritty and mystical, the Vertigo section of our shared world. I played Daredevil in this one, but the star of the show was really Doctor Mi's John Constantine. He and the other players managed some good creepy prose, shifting between mob-inspired stories and pure horror. I think the addition of Carnage was a mistake, and a dire warning to any superhero PbEM group allowing psychotic/anti-hero/vigilante loner characters in their midst no matter how cool the nerd herd thinks they are.

The campaigns collapsed twice, usually because of time constraints, but now we're on the cusp of starting over (it's all in French, so this isn't an invitation to my blog's readers) on our improv forum. Some of the old players, lots of new ones, and I'm already fighting off the interest in such luminaries as Punisher and the Goddamn Batman. Sigh. I've already called dibs on Ambush Bug (Hero Hotline, knows he's in a PbEM), Iron Fist (JLA, epic martial arts), Tangent Flash (remains in the Titans, I liked writing her too much) and Rom Spaceknight (Defenders, which I think will be renamed Watchmen... Vertigo Rom? Well, the Dire Wraiths seem perfect for it). My most loyal player wants to use Plastic Man and a teen Metamorpho, so I guess he's got a thing for polymorphism.

I might chime in again and let you know how it works out.

Library Reference Section: The Role-Playing Game

(Or, Am I the Only One Who's Ever Listed a GURPS Sourcebook in a University Paper Bibliography?)

Yes, I've done that. Specifically, used Viking proverbs pulled from GURPS Vikings for an essay on Beowulf. Just an epigram, but I was forced to put a role-playing supplement as a reference.

Now, I wouldn't advise students to use GURPS books (or other well-written historical RPG books) as legitimate sources of information. Wiki is probably more reliable (but far less referenceable). After all, they're necessarily more skewed towards creating a world to play in than facts, dates and figures. However, they're great for the little details you wouldn't get in your standard history text. What people ate, how they named their children, and just how much damage a glaive-guisarme might do.

My 5 Favorite University Paper-Enabled RPG books
GURPS Vikings
Taint of Madness for Call of Cthulhu (it's Psychology 101 with 1930s asylum methods!)
GURPS Imperial Rome
Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore
GURPS Celtic Myth

Yours?

Gamer Profile: Fireball

Fireball (actual nickname, even ran for elections with it) is the kind of crazy-ass player that I would wish on all of you, and yet would also warn you against. He's as dangerous as his namesake.

Archetype: The player who lives outside the box and will think nothing of derailing your campaign.

Explain: Fireball is that player who's never content with being ordinary. He's the one who asks you if he can play a race that isn't normally for Player Characters. He's the one who comes to the session in costume or with props, when no one else is. And ultimately, he's the one who'll be doing all the crazy stunts and contributing to your most memorable games. If the purpose of gaming is to be entertained, then you could do worse than have a Fireball on board.

In fact, he was part of my gaming group for a long time until we started playing other games. We've tries to lure him back many times, but job and marriage have been keeping him away. He may never be back, but everyone's got a Fireball moment. Here's mine: I was holding my second annual RPG Awards Show (the Nivens), and he arrived at the intimate gala with a trophy under his arm. He's "borrowed" it from some guy and replaced the plates with a giant one that apparently put him on top for the last 7 years, with a tiny plate for the previous year's winner. If someone wants the Moosehead Cup (whatever that is), I still have it.

Psych Profile: As can be gleaned from my story, Fireball's a crazy loon in real life too, so of course it bleeds into his gaming. He can't help it! I've been to parties at his house where the main attraction was jumping down the stairs to awaiting mattresses. He's glued a roommate's furniture to her ceiling. He's covered himself in foil to dance the robot. So keep an open mind and be ready for a derailed adventure, yes, but an entertaining one.

Best Game: All I played with Fireball is Dream Park, but I most remember his first death scene, crashing to the ground on a homemade jetpack shouting to the last remaining party member, "Good luck, Ga-Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr!"

So I raise my glass to that Dream Park character, Patrick O'Neil AKA Sir Psycho, he will be long remembered.

Gamer Profile: Mitrael

I haven't done of these in a while, and I really should get back to covering things other than comics. Older player profiles can be found at:
Gamer Profile: The Jerk
Gamer Profile: Pout

As for Mitrael, he's one of my actual players like Pout (and since the very same day), but where Pout is anti-establishment, Mitrael represents the forces of order.

Archetype: The noble, self-sacrificing hero for whom hit points are not as important as the in-game romantic interest's life.

Explain: Though I've known curses, I've mostly been blessed with actual role-players. To Mitrael, rules are necessary abstractions required to play the game, but are not its ultimate object. The story comes first. Even his character's life can only ever come in second. Here's the player who'll throw himself in the jaws of a Tyrannosaurus Rex rather than see a woman get chomped. No matter how crazy things get, or how ridiculous, you can always count on him to sublimate his own impulses to joke around and bring the entire table's attention back to the matter at hand. Duty and honor.

And though Mitrael is definitely a funny guy, that focus makes him a natural straight man in games, as his character suffers everyone else's lunacy. And when I, as GM, see a straight man, especially a noble one, it's my cue to pile humiliations on his head. And Mitrael always plays to that, the patient victim, the valiant scapegoat. There's great humor to be had in a character hard put upon, but also great elation when that character gets his revenge.

Psych Profile: I always find that the character choices a player makes are revealing of that player's nature. Lets looks at Mitrael's life: The guy is a trained fencer, has real issues with breaking his word in the tiniest ways, and an avid reader of Dumas and Tolkien. Is it any wonder that his power fantasies cast him as a later-day musketeer?

Best game: Mitrael was never so hard put upon than as the new sheriff of Paradise in our GURPS Old West game. The citizenry just didn't take to his Indian upbringing.

So to all his characters - Mitrael, Johnny Spade, Absolut, Agent Dice, Isander Raventree, Fallout, that Vulcan captain and others - I raise my dice glass. Here's to all games past and to come.

1001 Things I Will Not Do When I GM (Excerpts)

All based on true events.

1. I will not kill the same player's PC every game, even if that player is my kid brother.

25. I am not allowed to use multiple 4 or 5-skull traps from Grimtooth's sourcebooks.

176. I will not use the same trap on every door until someone figures out how to bypass it, and then promptly change it to my next favorite on every subsequent door, ad infinitum.

257. I will not kill a PC's entire supporting cast in the first game.

299. If I read room descriptions from an adventure module, I will make sure I can pronounce words in the language that module uses.

401. I cannot use segues like "You get to the castle. During the night, Eric's character tried to rape the princess so now the entire army is after you."

521. If I am willing to provoke a Total Party Kill, I will be ready to go all the way and not suddenly call it all an illusion. If not, then I will not provoke said TPK.

791. The Monster Manual is not looking for me to submit a creature called "DM's Discretion".

802. Narrativism does not mean that I will narrate a story and the players will sit quietly and listen to it.

884. The cops/army/palace guards aren't automatically hostile to every PC they meet.

935. I will not wait for a player to ask if a monster is in the room before telling him that there is.

1001. I will not feel like a badass just because I own Throne of Bloodstone, nor will I gloat about such ownership or its implied badassery.

Random RPG Questions

Sometimes you have little to say, but lots to think about...

Crazy action or realism? I can't seem to make up my mind.

Playing with rookies: Can you teach a new dog old tricks?

Why do Time Travel RPGs have to be so complicated?

Is there any particular reason why Sword & Sorcery is so boring to my group (me included)?

If you play a jackass, how does the rest of the group know you're not one yourself?

Someone in my group tried playing with another gang. 9 hours straight. 11 players at the table. My own games have 5 players tops and last about 3-4 hours. Which game is the aberration?

And finally: Why aren't I posting about Doctor Who instead?

My Love Affair with Nazis and Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Week isn't just about comics, it's about dinosaurs in every staple of geekdom. Yes, this is my weekly RPG post.

Dinosaurs and Nazis. They play a central role in my Dream Park games. All you need to know is that it's a great RPG to run one-shots with, so every week, all different world and scenario. And yet, Nazis and Dinosaurs keep making appearances. Why? Because they're naturals, that's why. Nazis are a natural villain. You see a Nazi, or someone who looks like a Nazi (jackbooted fascists with a cross-like logo on their armband) and immediately, you know who the bad guys are. Simple. Clear. It's gaming short-hand, really.

Dinosaurs are natural monsters. Easy to describe because they captures our imaginations when we were kids, and there are plenty of easily available picture books to help even those players who can't tell an allosaurus from a dimetrodon (not technically a dinosaur). And because they really did live, they're more easily introduced into your games through lost valleys, alien interference, time travel or cloning. You can't say the same about a Beholder or an Otyugh.

And it's an industry "bias" because I usually take off from published material. I think a look at some 35 games of Dream Park I've run over the last few years will reveal a high Nazi/Dino ratio...

Nazis
-Superheroes in World War II, well obviously I had super-Nazis (a Dream Park published adventure)
-A Torg scenario using the Nile Empire (they're Nazi stand-ins based on Ancient Egypt)
-Something I called "The Ancient Midget Nazi Shaman Game" (Call of Cthulhu's Blood Brothers)
-German spies try to steal steam-powered mecha (19th century Germans are just proto-Nazis)
-From this weekend: Nazi werewolves (inspired by Weird War II material)

Dinosaurs
-Zombie dinosaurs raised from the dead to eat the PCs (a sample scenario in the DP rulebook)
-A lost valley full of Incas AND dinosaurs (a Dream Park published adventure)
-A lost valley full of stop motion dinosaurs for that B-movie feel (freely adapted from Blood Brothers)
-A Torg scenario taking place in the Living Land, where dinosaurs still roam (Torg)

Both - Two great tastes together at last
-Best of Pyramid for GURPS has a beautiful little adventure with a time travelling Nazi base in the time of the dinosaurs. How could I resist?

Accounts for at least a fourth of all games, and I know I'm forgetting some lesser appearances. What are your "great tastes" that keep coming back?

Gamer Profile: Gaa-Kar

It's a well-established fact in my gaming group that my autobiography is destined to be titled "Why I Hate Gaa-Kar" (well, it's actually supposed to be the guy's real name, but I'm protecting the innocent and the guilty alike). Don't get me wrong, I love him like a brother, or else I would never game with him, but he's aggravated me and the group more than most. How?

Well, for me, it's the flushing. I hate getting flushed. Do not tell me you're going to be there, then flush me at the last moment. No flushing. Period. Gaa-Kar is the king of flushers. He's the guy who will beg you to set the second chapter of a game on a Saturday morning, and once everyone's there hungover, won't show up because he started ripping out carpets after forgetting he set the date. At least he's always had the good grace to ask me to "kill him off", which we did with relish. Usually, a tall cliff face was involved.*

If I call him Gaa-Kar here, it's because that's always the name he chooses for himself. Whatever the campaign, it's Gaa-Kar, and he's always a rogue, thief, criminal of some type. No matter what. He's the guy who can't be trusted, even within the group. I've never allowed so-called "evil" characters to mix into heroic player groups. It just doesn't fit the type of stories we're telling. But Gaa-Kar is as close as they come anyway. For players, he's an aggravation because he's as likely to kill the most useful NPC (what I would call the "guide") over some argument. Always trying to get the advantage over the other heroes. Always playing things close to the vest. Indeed, everyone always hoped he would get possessed so they could cut him down.**

It's hard to fault his role-playing though. He could play that personality to the hilt. But you can fault the personality. Especially when you're on the Nth iteration of "Gaa-Kar"...

*Thankfully, we were playing Dream Park at the time, which allows for dying and coming back next session.
**Again, Dream Park. But I'm not sure that would have stopped them in a longer-term campaign.

Gamer Profile: The Professional GM

Or the Pro as I'll call him here. You probably know the Pro. There's probably a Pro in your home town. And he's not called the Pro because he's actually good or professional at what he does. No, the Pro is just a guy who games a lot, maybe even runs more than one group, or at least lets players come in and out of his campaigns. Maybe he works the night shift, maybe he's unemployed, maybe he's unemployable.

I played with my town's Pro only once to see what the big deal was all about. See, the thing about the Pro is that everybody's heard of him. Everybody's got a friend or an older brother who gamed with him. And I guess that means everybody wants to get in on one of his games. Maybe you shouldn't bother.

First off, the Pro is way too proud of himself for his "accomplishments". He likes his reputation and would like it to be akin to The Monster's. He's lethal. He's challenging. He knows the rules by heart. So I walk in and the first thing he does is size me up (as I am introduced as another guy's DM). "So what's the toughest adventure module you ever read? Cuz nothing beats Throne of Bloodstone." For non-initiates, it's an AD&D module that has you face off against big demon lords and is either epic in scope or requires ridiculous player character levels, depending on your perspective. He then goes on to show off a monster he's designed called "DungeonMaster's Discretion". It can do anything the DM wants it to. Very clever.

So let's get down to playing. An old school dungeon crawl, we come into the middle of things as these things usually go. At some point, everybody dies. Total Party Kill, as they say. We don't care much cuz we just rolled up these characters for this try-out session, but it riles up the regular players. The Pro, for a good thirty seconds basking in the sheer unadulterated power only a pair of percentile dice can give you, sheepishly tells us it was all an illusion--? Dealing with the Pro is like asking a child to decide where the family will go on vacation. He doesn't know what to do with that kind of power.

But if that were all, I'd simply write him off as overrated and move on. However, the Pro GM is surrounded by his Pro Players, and that puts him in a totally different category. I'd say somewhere around 70% of the session was wasted on these two guys arguing over rule points with the Pro. It's like being at the Supreme Court, with obscure precedents and references from across the TSR library. They're digging out the Manual of the Planes to prove a point, they're bringing up past sessions, and the Pro just sits there and tries to amend events to fit the rulings.

It was like walking into the middle of your parents arguing about money. Just step away and go mow the lawn before either of them decides to take their frustration out on your hide.

So we never went there again. And once again counted ourselves lucky we only had to deal with The Jerk.

Gamer Profile: The Jerk

Name withheld to protect the idiot. My very first player was the Jerk, part of my initial D&D group for almost 4 years until, well, I couldn't stand him anymore. And neither could anyone else.

Now, this guy was a jerk outside of gaming too, borrowing your stuff without asking - you'd sometimes find him in your home reading your comics (small town, doors unlocked) - stabbing your sister with a thumbtack, breaking your glasses because you beat him at chess (that was the last straw by the way), etc. But just like I can keep my personal and professional lives separate, I can do the same with personal life and gaming life. Just ask Pout who got a glowing review last week.

As a gamer, the Jerk was loud and obnoxious too. Beyond the usual limits, I mean. Each time he went into battle he would make these sound effects and accompanying gestures that went more with a giant mecha robot than any sword I ever saw. It was like D&D night at Police Academy must've been like.

We played at his house and as the perfect host, he would lord it over us. He once threw me out of his house at the start of the night because I had made a prop ring to wear. I don't know what about pipe cleaner jewelry made him freak out. So I took my GMing gear and started to leave, but before I did, I asked his dad if it disturbed him that I was wearing it, and it didn't, so he told his son to stop being such a jerk. Lovely man. Used to give premarital courses.

How we got rid of the Jerk: Well, my displeasure was further fueled by another player's and we concocted a plan. His characters (everyone had two or three at the time, which tripled the mecha sound effects) hated the Jerk's characters, and in old school AD&D, Assassin is a class. The plan on his side was basically to use Time Stop spells and a vorpal katana to make it appear like heads were rolling of their own volition. He even cut himself to make it appear like the whole party was under attack. On my end, I simply covered for him, rolling a lot of "uh-oh" dice and enacting his plan as laid out. All fingers pointed to some Demon Queen or other (oh Zuggtemoy, you BITCH!), and with all of the Jerk's characters dead, we just ended for the night trying to hide our goofy grins.

And with his 4-year-old characters dead, he lost interest and never really asked to play again. We changed venue and never invited him. So maybe in his mind we just never found time to play again and the campaign simply collapsed. Yes, I realize *I* was the jerk in that story, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire...

Gamer Profile : Pout

Pout. You've seen his comments 'round here from time to time. He used to be one of my players (still is when he comes down from Ottawa). Known each other for years. And I probably like his characters better than I do him.

Archetype: He's the player you want to have in your group, though maybe you're afraid to.

Explain: Pout is committed 100%. If you have an idea for a game, he's there, he's driving his girlfriend crazy talking about his adventures, and he's the perpetual motion machine that makes sure you play regularly. He's not one to let campaigns die, and still talks about those old stories you had to leave behind when groups dissolved. In fact, he won't easily let you drop a campaign you WANT to drop.

As a role-player, he's just as committed, playing his role to the hilt. His Plastic Man (DCHeroes) is funnier than most iterations of the character in the comics, that's for damn sure. Unfortunately, he likes to play ladies' men and then insists on role-playing romantic interludes. There's nothing I find creepier than Pout putting the moves on me. The trick is to just say "and at the end of the night, she slept with you".

Psych Profile: Here's the thing about role-players. They naturally gravitate towards particular character types. It's usually something that's close to them (easy to fall into once a week), but different (the wish fulfillment principle). Pout wants to be the cool guy with the trenchcoat and the badass attitude, who gets all the girls and all the one-liners. He's James Bond meets Neo meets Howdy Doody.

Best game: GURPS/Mecha. Surfing on the door of an exploding hotel room was sheer action genius.

So to all his characters - Gloves, Tommy Cruisin, Ace, Captain Cortex, Plastic Man and the others - I raise my dice glass. Thanks for the memories.