Murder foul and a robbery daring; Just what is going on in Lancton?

 

We played our third role-playing game session over the weekend. The plot thickened as the players finally reached Lancton and we delved into the adventure I’d planned to open with. The tone of the sessions to date had been light. At the end of the second session, however, upon their arrival in Lancton, I let the players know bad things were apaw in town.

 

A fifth player joined our group this week. Her name is Melanie and you’ll meet her character in upcoming installments of From the Gaming Table and The Furship Chronicles. We played in French, because Melanie doesn’t speak English well enough to follow when things get rolling. This posed a different challenge as I’m much more comfortable conversing off-the-cuff in English. I found myself searching for equivalent names for things in French, as my vocabulary in French isn’t as extensive.

 

 

There’s always been something awkward about the idea of characters joining together in a roleplaying game. Why do they decide to team up exactly? Is there a good reason for it? When you meet someone on the street or in a bar, do you instantly think, “This fellow will make a good travelling companion?” Not really, but it’s a conceit that players often have to adopt because otherwise the game just doesn’t work. When players develop their characters together, they can decide that their characters are friends from childhood, but what if that doesn’t fit their character concept? As a gamemaster, you can try to prepare a common goal with the idea that once the crisis is resolved, the characters will decide that there’s merit to sticking together. But is that how a normal person would react? Plus, you’re depending on the idea that the common goal would appeal to the individual characters in the first place.

 

 

The same problem arises when a new player joins an established group, or a character dies unexpectedly and is replaced by a new character. How do you account for this stranger suddenly joining a group that has been travelling together for some time?  You just toss him or her in as best you can and go from there. At some point everybody agrees that their characters accept each other as travelling companions.

 

Players can choose to be finicky and say “My character wouldn’t care about that,” or “My character is a loner,” but like I said, it’s part of the conceit that the characters WILL join together and that they WILL undertake the quest you’ve prepared for them. Otherwise, there is no game (unless you’re incredibly skilled at free-styling adventures). Players insistent on playing their characters the way they’ve envisioned them without care of the group dynamic can sap the energy from a session. The last character I played was a petulant cleric with a heightened sense of self-entitlement. In simple terms, she was a brat. I had an arc in mind for her that as the campaign went along, she’d come to realize that if she didn’t change her ways, she was going to end up alone, a concept that truly frightened her. This would lead to her becoming a leader in action and fact instead of just in her own mind. I was playing her so bratty though that at least one player was starting to really get annoyed. That led me to try to speed up the change in her character for the sake of the gaming group. Sadly, other circumstances conspired against us and we never did get to go through with the plans for the campaign.

 

In Age of Animus, there are no character classes. The only label characters start with is their species. The way I see it, characters can be plucked from any walk of life: a swindler, an architect, an outcast, an entrepreneur, a gourmet. Either by choice or because fate intervenes, these characters are thrust into a series of events beyond their norm. Relatively untrained, they may be ill-equipped to deal with these extraordinary events. Succeed or fail, they get by as best they can. As they go along, they may learn skills that serve to define them to a point as a fighter, a medic or an entertainer.

 

When I first started out as a gamemaster, roleplaying games were all about trying to create an engaging campaign that kept escalating to epic levels. Inevitably these campaigns would fail on some level or come to an abrupt end as player availability became an issue. So many great ideas for stories were left untold because we just didn’t get far enough. Now, roleplaying games are about getting together with friends and having a good time. Hopefully, we can spin a good yarn in the process but there’s no expectation beyond that. Well, hopefully having a good enough time to want to play again. So far, it’s been mission accomplished. I don’t feel like my friends are playing because they feel obligated to do so.

Okay, that’s all the blogging I’ve got for this week. More words to follow next Monday!

I was talking to one of the new employees in my section and he mentioned that he was a collector of vinyl records. That got me thinking…

As a child, my record collection was probably my most precious possession. I could listen to the same record over and over again (and I did). One year, for Christmas, my parents got me a record player. I’m guessing they didn’t want me on the family stereo all the time. I certainly put it to good use.

Most of my records were of the storytelling variety. This was back before the age of videotape and DVDs. My records were my form of escapism. I wasn’t a very outgoing kid and I didn’t have many friends, so I made my records my friends. Danny Kaye was always available to tell me stories of Clever Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin (I found mp3s of that particular record a few years back, and it was every bit as magical as it was back when I was a kid. He was great!)

Tubby the Tuba was probably my least favorite record, but even that record I listened to over and over again. I couldn’t get enough. Before I discovered Star Wars action figures my allowance would always be earmarked for a new Disney book and record set. They were almost exclusively in French, because the local K-Mart didn’t stock any English ones, except for this one time where I found The Fox and the Hound. The record turned out to be warped which was disappointing, but I never considered returning it, because it was such a rarity to find them in English.

I would borrow records from our classroom library at school and from friends. One summer, my teacher let me borrow this record set of Bible stories and it was just about the best thing ever. I was first introduced to the Fantastic Four through a book and record set a friend lent me.

I have a great memory of finding a book and record set of He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown (in English no less). in a garage sale for something like 50 cents  The sun was shining but there was rain as I walked home to listen to it for the first time. The first time I ever drew Snoopy was from that album. It was that drawing that made me realize I had a tiny bit of talent in copying other drawings. I may be exaggerating a little, but I’d say that record is in some small part responsible for this site. I still remember that feeling of dread when I accidentally sat on the record as it lay on my bed. Unlike some of my other records which got cracked through some mishap or another but were still playable, this one broke. For years whenever I would see a bin of used records in a flea market or something I imagined how cool it would be to find that record again. Two years ago, after a little hinting, I got the record for Christmas courtesy of online shopping (thanks Fab!)

To this day, I still love Disco Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street Fever, records my friend Richard lent me once. When I saw they were available on iTunes, I couldn’t resist buying them so I can listen to them again.

I saw Disney’s The Jungle Book for the first time in 1993, but I knew the whole movie by heart already from my record.

As happens with kids who grow up, I let go of things that I now regret. I don’t even remember what happened to all those book and record sets. I still have a number of the records down in the basement even though the books are long gone. This winter I found a Fisher Price record player at the flea market for 8 dollars. I keep telling myself I need to go rooting around to find what’s left of my records and give them a listen. I’ll probably still be able to recite the stories along with some of them.

*UPDATE* So I finally went downstairs to dig up my records…Boy are they beat up! Sadly, it would appear there’s something wrong with the record player because I can’t hear anything distinguishable on it. I thought it might be the records themselves, but I put on some clean records and still nothing.