"He looked at me with fire in his eyes. It was already his 6th day in the mental hospital, I was only bored for the 4th. But now the commission of the military registration and enlistment office that sent us to undergo this test, the psychiatric hospital itself with its green walls and empty rooms without doors, slowly blurred under the surging images of a fevered imagination. I finished my story about what tabletop role-playing games are and looked at my friend with a challenge. There was no doubt: immediately after leaving the psychiatric hospital we would start playing Dungeons and Dragons!» — 2014.
As a preface: hello, stopgame blogs! I’ve been wanting to write here for a long time about what’s going on, but I didn’t have time to do so. Although I’m not a frequent visitor to comments here (0 of them), I check the blogs themselves from time to time (although I rarely log in for this). And I was, of course, a witness first to the birth of those same D&Dologists, and then to their gradual extinction. I hoped that one way or another the consequence would be to raise the topic of NDT from its knees – but no, for some reason people were not inspired to try it themselves. But in vain. No matter how this attempt of Stopgeym’s people to bring role-playing games to the masses was kicked by the role-playing community itself, the message was definitely good. And somehow it came together that around that moment I decided to approach the issue of role-playing in a new way.
It was then that I wanted to write a blog about this, but I was too overwhelmed with things to do. Well, there’s still a lot to do, but it’s time to stop this shameless procrastination.
At the end there will be tl;dr, the article will be a long wall, as I like. Happy reading!
Part 1: Role-playing games “seriously”!
In fact, this story began back in 2011. Then my schooling was coming to an end, I had already completed such masterpieces as Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale 2 more than once, Fallout and Arcanum had been explored far and wide, and my brother had already told me more than once about this wonderful AD&D, which he played in the dorm. It was unequivocally clear: tabletop role-playing games are an amazing thing (it’s not for nothing that the video games I listed were “mowed” for them!), but there’s simply no one to play them with.
That was until my classmate played Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition while vacationing in his grandmother’s homeland, and then brought his impressions to me. I responded to the offer to play with a decisive “Yes.”!", and already during the week we sat on the floor, laying out scanned character sheets, rules and a game map. With games… well, it didn’t work out. Being completely new, we endlessly got confused about the rules, argued and swore, the result of which was that a school friend simply gave the reins of the Leader to me.
In Tabletop Role-Playing Games, in general, all players. I would have avoided many painful evenings if I had understood this at the beginning of my journey! Yes, one of those who want to plunge into a role-playing adventure often has to take on the role of the Leader: he will come up with an adventure, place dangerous creatures in the hills and swamps, and also voice all the consequences of the players’ actions. But he, like everyone else, should enjoy the game, be surprised and worried, rejoice and wait with tension for the outcome of the battles.
School ended, everyone went to different cities and somehow there was no time to play role-playing games. At the institute, I was lucky to find those who also liked it, but I was unlucky to run into other people’s interests: we played in the worlds of the Apocalypse, urban fantasy and zombie thrillers, which was not at all interesting to me. I was still drawn to dragons and dungeons! So from 2012 to 2014 I hardly played.
But now a friend calls me on Skype, who I jokingly call “a friend from a mental hospital,” and demands that the theory presented to him be confirmed by actual practice. Well why not? I take on the role of the Leader again, open Photoshop and draw my first global map in a week.
My first serious gaming card!"
To keep it from being empty, I also wrote my first setting. I was proud of the 20 pages of word 12 font that I gave out to my players in a fairly short period of time, but in fact my first attempt at writing a setting was terrible. A huge amount of unnecessary information, coupled with the inability to imagine a picture in your head – what is this world all about?? — they didn’t give the players a chance to figure it out without me.
Inexperience! My friend, if you want to write your own setting, you must forget about beautiful and pompous descriptions, calm down the intriguer in yourself who draws hundreds of lines of relations between large states, and start playing the role of a prying spectator. Why do I need my personal setting?? What is his main theme?? Why is this city needed?? Why is the geography of places this way and not some other?? And don’t try to answer such questions in monosyllables! In fact, the most interesting things that can appear in a setting come only from the answers to uncomfortable questions.
Fortunately, we found the players online, and they turned out to be very experienced role players. They approached the matter with a sparkle in their eyes, helping me fill our first adventure with interesting details. Trying to maintain their spirit, I draw a second map, a little more local.
Talmekia – the land of opportunities!
That’s when I realized that I couldn’t get out of my way. Every day I think about what else I could come up with for the game, I come up with the details of the first adventure, I draw dungeon maps in my free time on the roll20 website.net.
Part 2: Formation of gaming principles.
I won’t lie: I hardly remember my first games. Because they were shameful! Although I could write on the player search site “I’ve been playing for 4 years!", in fact, the devil will break his leg in this Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition of yours! Rules – darkness. Ambiguous rules – a cloud. For the first one, it’s not that I couldn’t remember everything, I barely even caught the most important skeleton! Again, I was lucky to have experienced players who also showed a fair amount of endurance.
Like what? Same as computers! Only it’s not the computer that calculates everything, but real people. The scheme is as follows: The host prepares the game, calls the players with a bad look, and then begins to describe out loud to them where they are and what is around them. Players, sometimes even after thinking, describe their requests (REQUESTS, not actions!), after which the Presenter describes the consequences of player requests. The description of these consequences becomes a new description of the environment: we find ourselves in a cycle that will end with the words “Thank you for playing!».
But I got experience. Valuable precisely because it is mostly negative. I closed my failures in the following games, gradually forming in myself the principles of playing games, which I still adhere to today.
First and foremost: tell the players “You can’t!"unpleasant. Unpleasant for the player. His mood fades, he begins to play worse. The player plays worse – the whole game becomes worse. The whole game is getting worse – it’s becoming unpleasant for me. So I never say "No". And this is no joke! I never refuse any application. But games don’t descend into a rain of artifacts, easy victories, and inadequate stories. The secret here is that I add “But” to the word “Can”.
“Yes, you can try to fly by flapping your arms frantically, but you will need a special artifact for this!»
“Yes, right in front of your barely alive party there was a village with living people. But they confused you with the enemies of their state, so only men ready for battle come out to you.»
“Yes, you can try to do a high somersault jump to gain an advantage over the awesome enemy, but for this you will have to use your comrade as a spring!»
But more often I will say something simple, without any “Buts” "You can try"
Second, no less important: the most interesting things in games will come from places you don’t expect. You can write a script for a role-playing game that would look more at home in an AAA game, a blockbuster movie or a good book, but the best thing about it will still be the improvisation of the players. It is important to shut up the “creator” within yourself as early as possible; the creator is not me, the creator is each of those sitting at the table.
Just as I am the same player as they are, they are the same creators of the world as I am. Look at the examples with "But" above. Each of these would make an interesting story that I would never have been able to predict in advance! And the lore for it, which is written by the GM one way or another, can be formed after the game, and not before.
Third, and last for today: when it’s good for the players, it’s good for me. Therefore, each of them, whether there are 4 or 7 of them, sitting waiting for my words, should be given time. Enough for them to finish the game in a good mood. They don’t have to just have fun: they can be sad and angry, but if I managed to get live and sincere emotions from them, I did everything right. The only thing is, they shouldn’t leave with the thought “Why did I even play??».
Drawing by our player illustrating her character’s death
Part 3: History of our party.
But what were the games about?? Well, at that time I was not yet completely tired of standard role-playing plots. So I took one of these as an analogue, and more specifically took the module for D&D 3.5 “Dry Spell”, even called the game that way in roll20.net. And I planned to play it out honestly, filling the gaps between the main events with something of my own.
The essence of the module is that all the water in the surrounding rivers and lakes suddenly disappeared. Everything is completely dry! It doesn’t rain, there’s no water. To maintain life, locals use the services of priests, fortunately they can create water from level 1. The group of adventurers had to find out that it was a gang of some bandits who stole an artifact, which is an ordinary bath sponge, which, however, can suck up water in obscene quantities. They, in fact, dried everything up so that they could then bully the local landowners: we give you water, you give us money.
A small cave of bandits would become the final test of the module: the heroes kill bandits, get a sponge and use it to their advantage. The good party returns the artifact to safe hands, the bad party bullies everyone about it or experiments with the nearest ocean.
Here it is: the dungeon of my dreams!
As you understand, it could not go smoothly and simply. The players ate up the premise: they decided to help people, and decided to start with a small settlement of goblins, whom the locals first of all suspected. The goblins met them with their corpses (I already said that the players were experienced. ), but they were still captured. The goblin leader said: we won’t kill you if you get a special artifact for us! The players swore that they would certainly deliver the artifact (thanks to the “Deception roll”!), and they went off to ask the village for disinfection.
As a result, they ended up in a large settlement of farmers with huge completely sown areas in excellent condition. While trying to figure out what’s going on, they discover that a local landowner has been using a new invention of the dwarves – copper sewer pipes! – to cling to rivers that have not yet dried up. They freed him from the annoying bandits..
And no sewer rats!
… and from them we learned that there is another dense gang like this. We decided to take care of her. On the way, we accidentally stumbled upon a “flooded” dark elf temple (I hope it’s clear that there was no water in it), in which the party was deceived by a cunning ghost, the high priest of the dark elves. He told them the sad story of how the dark elves were expelled, walled up in a temple and drowned, and also that his spirit could be freed by a certain ritual. The ritual turned out to be the rebirth of the liar into a terrible golem, which he did not have time to complete because of his followers, who, recognizing the elder’s intentions, set out to stop him by flooding the temple. The sacrifice of their lives turned out to be useless: the players destroyed the guards guarding the dark rooms
These cuties
and completed the ritual of the ancient sorcerer. He, having demonstrated his power to them, nevertheless spared his saviors, warning them not to chase him. In general, the party made an enemy out of nowhere..
The golem eventually became the https://lucki-casino.uk/withdrawal/ main enemy of the entire adventure. The unsightly three rooms of the final dungeon were reborn into a huge temple, in front of which the dwarves built a small village (the picture can be found among those where I listed the maps I made), at the end of which not bald bandits were waiting, but a golem surrounded by more than a dozen dark elves.
Before the final campaign, the party survived the persecution of the dark elves (who were able to kill the magician by accurately throwing first “twenty”, the maximum number on the twenty-sided dice, which means crit, and then the maximum value of damage), then the party thief completed a difficult quest with stealing a valuable hammer from a large mansion (the thief killed the owner of the mansion before he found out where the hammer was, after which the whole party miraculously escaped from its ferocious defenders, stealing it later hammer from the goblins who suddenly attacked the mansion). The ritual preparation before the final push was over, aaaand
Part 4: Conclusion.
And nothing. Unfortunately, the games had to be stopped: we played from midnight to 6-8 am my time, and entering a university made such a pastime simply impossible. There was no time to sleep, but it was not possible to sacrifice sleep for a long time. In the final dungeon, we barely reached the temple and sadly parted, having not completed it to the end.
But what is this blog?? So far, my goal has been to get to know where I came from and where I started my role life, as well as what principles I developed along the way. This is not in the text above, but keep it in mind: these principles were knocked out by my stepping on a rake, falling face-first into a cake while stepping on a banana, that is, when I did something and had a negative experience. I forbade a lot of things, I constantly complained that players were leaving the main plot, I got furious when they didn’t understand obvious hints and lured themselves into a trap I had built with my own hands.
Even the experienced players seemed like a burden to me! Each combat encounter had to be carefully designed, which seemed to me a little interesting activity, in addition, players constantly asked to add classes and abilities from additional materials, and theirs in D&D 3.5 almost limitless abyss, also in English. In general, I was not a good Leader.
Felt like this
I omitted the funny stories that I tell new roleplayers I know: the scene in the mansion was very memorable, the deception of the ghost priest was more skillful, and from time to time everything was enriched with co-quests, where I came up with a lot of things. Yes, role-playing games are so wonderful that you can tell stories from them in many places with a mysterious look. But first of all, I wanted to draw attention to what is actually the most important thing in them: the game process. In which the players (And the Leader is also a player, remember?) is the center of everything. It was because of their decisions that a banal story about bandits and a bottomless sponge turned into a thriller about an ancient sorcerer who began to gather armies of dark elves, using bandits and a bottomless sponge in his nefarious plans.
Now my games are developing in the most unpredictable ways, I allow players to create entire storylines and their own enemies. In the end, it’s more interesting to fight with those who have personally seriously annoyed you with something, and not just abstractly threaten all living things. I put D&D 3.5 in the archives. My favorite D&D: Next (or D&D 5) came out, I tried many new systems, from which I also take all sorts of useful things.
But, most importantly, I decided to stream this thing, also inspired by stopgame D&D streams. It seems to me that we, the current composition of the parties, can show people something truly interesting. And, most importantly, to attract strangers to role-playing games not with fluff stories or trash games, but with the ability of tabletop role-playing games to evoke real and dizzying emotions. And I don’t mean that the first or second is necessarily bad. No. On the contrary: I even defend those who occasionally interrupt their pizza eating and discussion of the latest Marvel movie. NRI is, first of all, leisure time that everyone spends as they please.
To prove that we are not salami and pretzels, I will talk about the next stage of my role-playing career: how I decided to play in a system that was unfamiliar to me, as well as what Juicy Questions are and how a Dark Souls-inspired story turned into an epic battle of armies, Gods and… oh, more on that in future blogs.
Let me leave a link only to our discord channel. Not from a question of advertising our activities, I will just be pleased if new people join our company. I will be happy to answer all your questions and explain everything to the best of my ability. The topic of role-playing games is generally very capacious, and this wall of text is already stretched to the edge.
In 2011, I started playing D&D, but I was a student and somehow it died out. In 2014 I ended up in a mental hospital, there I met a friend with whom I started a new round of games. We gathered people on the Internet – we turned out to be pros. I stumbled, hit my face on a stone, I drove so badly, but they endured and helped. As a result, I formed three principles: don’t say “no”, let the players figure out their own ass, it’s good for the player – it’s good for me. At the same time, it turned out to be a really epic fantasy, which began as crap about a magic sponge and a bunch of homeless people, and ended with a fight with a hellish golem and his plans to conquer the planet. What’s the result: it’s turning out just ok, we’re starting to stream, and you, EXACTLY YOU, will be welcome in our discord. And we’ll be happy not to be on discord. You read this, that means you’re cool
Best comments
I’ve been playing board games for over 10 years.
This is a wonderful hobby – unique, unusual, giving an unprecedented experience.
But you need to understand – tabletop role-playing games are not only and not so much dnd.
DnD is not the best, not universal and not the most convenient system.
So the post is great, but it doesn’t convey half the excitement of the hobby.
Damn.
I have never played such games, except for Life is Strange: Before the Storm in scripted games. And then your blog really whetted my appetite for DnD – both emotions and stories (both in-game and life ones).
And negative experience is also valuable, but I think you understand that yourself)
But as for the blog, separate paragraphs with blank lines – it’s more readable.
Thanks for the advice! I thought about this myself at the beginning of the text, but for some reason I stopped myself. I decided how to make it more common. In general, I still have a lot of room to grow in terms of blog design =)
In general, I was hoping to hook more than just D&D. Even more: I advise you to take a simpler system to start with! Next time I’ll talk about Dungeon World, and that’s what I recommend reading if you’re interested in epic fantasy. True fantasy will turn out to be epic. We managed to make significant contributions to dark fantasy, Dark Souls, Berserk, all that. But the system just generates epics, and nothing can be done about it.
Ever since my character (a halfling barbarian who was raised by dwarves) got his hands on a magic pickaxe, he started speedrunning, breaking down doors instead of looking for the keys to them.
In an attempt to stop our group from prematurely fighting the dungeon boss, the DM casually mentioned: “By the way, this door is quite large and made of adamantine. So you won’t be able to break through it.".
Instantly dollar signs shone in my eyes.
After all, adamantine costs a shit ton of money.
First, I showed my superiority over the DM’s idea and dug a passage in the wall near the door.
Of course, there was a boss behind this very door, but he died rather stupidly.
(Clerics combined with the Dawn spell, which creates sunlight and deals strong AoE damage, are really good against vampires and their spawn.)
(Seriously, a room full of vampires and a couple of meat golems. We didn’t take a single unit of damage.)
(The cleric cast Dawn, the bard used an illusory wall of fire and blocked the exit, neither of them could make a good save to realize that it was not a real wall.)
We cleared the dungeon and I told the rest of the group that we need to take this hefty adamantine door with us.
At first the cleric did not understand, but when I explained to him that this adamantine was enough to make two hundred copies of plate armor, he immediately agreed.
We examined the door and apparently adamantine had about the same density as iron.
Which means a 2′ x 6′ door would weigh about ten thousand pounds (4.5~ tons).
Which means it’s far beyond what we can carry.
We were a little confused about what to do next.
We didn’t want to just leave and leave the door there, besides, we came to this dungeon using a portal, and we were sure that it wouldn’t open if we came with several horses.
At that moment the bard remembered that he had the spell “Revitalize things”.
He cast it and the door left on its own feet.
Having set up camp outside, we waited for the cleric to prepare a teleportation spell and take the door with us.
And now we have to spend a week trying to sell five tons of adamantine.
Obviously, a significant portion of the profits will go to the various lords and guilds involved in this, but from this we can gain approximately fifteen thousand gold.
And all this because the DM didn’t want us to fight the boss too early.
Blog is fire! Author write more!
And take these pictures out of the spoilers: it will be more beautiful.
Frankly, I didn’t like this comic very much and I almost didn’t read it. But they are all like this: DM of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons (the original title of the comic, yes), Goblins: Their Life Through Their Eyes well convey the spirit of NRIs.
It’s just that humorous comics, including The Order of the Stick, often focus on role-playing party fakap. When the processes in the party are poorly established, everyone plays at themselves, someone generally tries to “win” the game, masterful arbitrariness reigns on the master rails… in general, when the full range of either a novice player or a spoiled old man. But even in this (ESPECIALLY in this) case it generates tons of funny situations and cool stories. And it’s obviously more difficult to catch a fan from a competent player – he simply doesn’t give a reason to joke about himself.
So, in terms of how the story develops in role-playing games, I highly recommend Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes. An amazing comic in itself, it manages to show the image of the “munchkin”, laughing at it well, and the masterful arbitrariness touches, but quickly disappears purely into history, in which everyone has their own Hour of Glory, the plot develops unpredictably and excitingly, and, most importantly, evokes a variety of emotions. Many moments from the comic are not inferior to Berserk in terms of darkness, which personally really appeals to me. You can even determine for yourself: the party of people is a party of dummies, and the party of goblins are experienced players who understand the essence of role-playing games. And lead by example accordingly.
Regarding the desire to stream: what format is meant?? Will it be just a stream as a show, or will you simply broadcast your games without paying attention to the viewer in the spirit of “you can watch if you’re interested”? If it’s the first option, then I’ll express my opinion, don’t do it. And before they throw tomatoes at me, I’ll explain my point of view. THIS IS JUST A POINT OF VIEW.
I saw DnDologists at the beginning of the first 2 streams and the final, watched harmon quest (yes, it’s not a stream, but it’s a show about DnD and NRIs as a phenomenon), heard about other DnD streams. And I noticed the following problem: a person who has not touched NRI before viewing has a somewhat incorrect opinion about this hobby. I’ve met players (especially school-aged ones, I’m so lucky) who have seen enough of the SHOW and are trying to imitate it, which most often results in trash and madness. And then you have to communicate with them and demonstrate how just a game happens, without filming, without viewers in the chat, without creating a show for the viewer in the chat.
P.S. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t laugh from the same Harmon quest, from the “Players” duology, which is about DND from nerds DND. I just think that this is not the best advertisement for NRIs.
P.P.S. I totally appreciate Brother Wu’s old videos,.To. they are just recordings of games.
We will look for a middle ground.
The joke is this: you can ignore the viewer only if you don’t care about the viewer. Of course, every viewer is happy for us, so we want to make it easier for the viewer to get involved in the process, so that it is comfortable and convenient for him to follow what is happening, and this will leave its mark one way or another. If each of us were interesting to the viewer on his own – yes, then they would watch us without any show or interaction. But we try to be honest with ourselves. We are not a conventional Maddison, who comes to the GTA server RP with an honest attempt to do everything according to conscience, but his flavor still draws us out, making his streams memorable and eventful. Therefore, hardly anyone will dare to watch just our games with our usual performance.
Besides, I am one of those who defends these careless schoolchildren who imitate what they sincerely liked. Yes, trash games are usually something that an experienced roleplayer left behind his back, if he had such a thing behind his back at all. But an experienced role player forgets that other people have their own heads on their shoulders. And this head has its own unique dump. And saying that landfills are right and wrong is like saying that people are right and wrong. Nonsense. What I’m getting at is this: I’ve never had any problems with newbies. A meticulous and sensitive heart-to-heart conversation in this very dump will find something good, and then it’s not difficult to direct a person in the direction of what will bring him more joy. The biggest problems I had were with old school people who built a concrete fence around their landfill. And they don’t even let you in there to see what’s going on. And in the end it turns out that the person who sincerely cared about “acting out”, about the harm of “manchinism”, about the greatness of “narrative” in games has no idea what it is and from which side to approach it. And you can’t do anything with them anymore.
This is generally a conclusion. It is not difficult for an experienced DM to train a schoolchild to suit his games. The schoolchild himself will jump with a burning gaze, seeing his personal passion in an ordinary entertainment “show.”! So what spoils the community is not bad advertising, but worthless DMs and spoiled old people. Who build fences instead of bridges.
Thanks to the author for the blog, it was very interesting to read. I hope this isn’t your last desktop blog.
I didn’t set myself the goal of luring people specifically to DnD. It so happened that I started playing exactly according to it. No force can drag me into that same 3.5 editorial office, it’s just the memory of it that makes me sweat. Although I can easily be called a conservative person, I think that the issue is not at all in the preferred rules, but in the process of the game itself. It’s easy for me to believe that even without any rules in pure words there will be a company that gets a signature thrill from what’s happening.
Yes, and it would hardly have been possible to convey the delight of my obviously unsuccessful DMism =D Although I could embellish everything and focus on those things that were successful for me (for example, my players really liked the riddles in the dungeons), I preferred to generalize the story. Partly because I don’t remember it very well myself, partly because the aperitif should only whet the appetite before the main course, and not spoil it!
Feedback is important anywhere, we also gather after each game to discuss what we liked and what we didn’t. And after completing the campaign, I let everyone speak, even if it takes several hours per person.
Shadowrun also attracts us precisely because of its setting. Let’s see. We are already playing according to the “Make the rules yourself” system, specifically Dungeon World =) Maybe against its background Shadowran will seem more consistent and clear, who knows?
You see, the problem is not “assemble it yourself”. The system presents itself as well-developed, taking into account the details, while due to stupid editors these details are scattered at all ends of the book, and also, as I said above, for some mechanics the book tells you “this area of the setting is very chaotic and varied, we give the DM the opportunity to come up with everything himself,” which in this situation is more upsetting than freeing up your hands.
If it had been properly assembled and edited (oh yes, and get ready to wait for errata until the end of time, even on Reddit they joked that corrections to the book of the 15th year will appear with the release of a new edition) and calibrated – no complaints about the complexity of development.
And considering that the lore and mechanics are connected here (which I really like), problems arise when you have difficulties with the lore, for example with the matrix.
Also, get ready to solve the problem of proper spotlight division, t.To. a hacker can easily get into the matrix for 2 real hours, and the rest are kicking the bolt during this time.
It’s not that I’m trying to dissuade you, it’s just that the system has a really high barrier to entry. And I judge not only by my driving, I also played online with other people and right now I continue to communicate with online players and the master, everyone has different role-playing experience, but the opinion is the same (moderators sorry) – my mouth fucked up the editing and layout.
P.S. An interesting story – during the creation of the 4th edition (now the 5th, like DND), one of the bosses of Catalyst Game Labs (owners of the setting and system) spent all the money allocated for the development of the edition on coconuts and golden toilets (figuratively), so the editing there had already suffered. Or was it after the release of the 4th and relates to the creation of the 5th, it doesn’t matter.
Here we apparently really have a view from different places, t.To. I’ve seen the impact of bad advertising.
Well, I’m not saying that there are “right” and “wrong” games. My opinion in this regard is simply that it is better for a beginner to first play, so to speak, a classic DND game (which I have hardly seen lately, by the way, I already miss it), where they kill dragons and save princesses, and not smear themselves with magical feces and make hands with a drow to pass the test, and only then try to increase the degree of absurdity. Kind of like in an RPG on PC/consoles, when at first you play “by the rules” and play according to your feelings, and the next replays you start experimenting and testing the system
And regarding the heart-to-heart talk: there are times when you get tired of such “education” and you just want to play, just lead, without unnecessary complications. Well, I wasn’t talking about newcomers who came and rather absorbed experience, but those who came from streams/shows and are precisely moving this paradigm in the spirit of “but in Game of Wycc. »
P.S. And I also have a personal excuse for not taking schoolchildren – I drive Shadowrun, which in terms of the setting is not very suitable for children + the system is complex (DON’T TAKE SHADOWRUN, IT’S CRAP), and this means spending a lot of time helping a schoolchild))) Yes, I know that such problems also quite occur with students/adults, it’s just less likely.
We’ve been eyeing Shadowrun for a year now, and we’re unlikely to stop ourselves from trying one day – I’m very interested in what’s going on with those fifty hexagons of theirs =)
So I maliciously stand in opposition to such an opinion>=) I got this idea from my gaming experience, which is, of course, subjective. There are simply very few people, and it is very difficult to draw any far-reaching conclusions. I also had no luck with careless schoolchildren, but in a different sense: they refused to make contact, refused to look for compromises, ultimately devolving the game into that same trash, but this time angrily, desperately. We just said goodbye to these. Maybe the problem is the same, maybe not. I don’t argue that a completely rabid player will have to be suspended from games, but it was the advertisement that brought him in. But somehow… nevertheless. Bad advertising is when mothers of young players are shown agitprop with pentagrams and demons, in whose celebration embittered role players sit. And when a certain percentage of players behave inappropriately, this is a sad reality.
By the way, “there are times when you just want to play” – sometimes I really want to be a simple player! But I’m burning to the ground from sloppy and rotten DMism. I can see that there could have been a different turn here, the trashy-looking move could have been resolved here and it would have been better… In general, as long as he DMs, I’ll be a DM!
Well, regarding the sloppy DMst – it’s twofold, maybe the DM intended it that way, or maybe he’s really not experienced, or maybe something in between. In any case, I took such a thing from my DMs as feedback at the end of the game, and not in the way that “I’ll write to you in a personal message later,” but the game is over – and we begin a debriefing to immediately decide everything on the spot, otherwise shit in the VK/discord chat dialogue can go on almost endlessly.
As for Shadowrun, I seriously warn you – the problem is not in the heap of d6, the problem is in crooked layout, crooked wording and, despite the elaboration (even taking into account the recoil of weapons_, the game sometimes tells you “in general, the rules are such that you come up with everything yourself, go for a walk”. Well, the mechanic is broken in places. And forget about the translation, it’s there, but it won’t help much, it’s better to read the original right away. Also, get ready to go to Reddit, 4chan and the official forum for explanations, and there is still no guarantee that you will find the answer to the question you need, in the end you will have to home rule. Seriously, seeing Wizards of the coast’s approach to DND, I would like to give them the rights to the system/setting, t.To. what’s happening right now is terrible. We stay on shadowrun only due to the setting; if it weren’t for it, we would have dropped out long ago.
Wow, the theme of board games is popular. So much so that I even wanted to file my own guide or just take a detailed look at one of the systems (no, not shadowrun or DND, only lazy people don’t play Dynda in one form or another).
Thanks for the post, I hope it’s not the last!
I’m a complete novice in board games, and especially in such complex ones, so I’ll be looking forward to the next blog about Dungen World (I’ve never even heard of it, to be honest).