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My History with Gaming

My History with Gaming

I first encountered D&D in late 74, in the LA area. Up to then, the most involved game i knew was Risk. But i had already developed some ideas for two different complex games, one of which involved a fantasy setting. But when i found D&D i gave up on them. Silly me, i still didn't know how big the gaming universe was or i might have taken them to Flying Buffalo.

I was a voracious reader of scifi, fantasy, and history and i took to D&D immediately. Of course it was mostly dungeon crawls and very little story depth back then but stories emerged anyway. And characterization, too. 6 months later i started gming.

I've seen people call themselves "oldschool gamers" for not switching from AD&D 3.5 to AD&D 4.0. That seems weird to me since i never switched to AD&D 1. I mean i played it, i just never ran it. Instead, like most gms of that time, i made my own house rules. House rules were the norm at that time, every pick up game involved explanations and negotiations. My world was fronted by a place called The Dispatcher's Office, which had a lot of lockers for characters to put their Rings of Ultimate Destruction, and Belts of Super Duper Strength, and other things i deemed unacceptable.

There were three different focuses for gaming. 1) The UCLA Computer Club, whose kill happy gms taught me to be devious and adaptable. 2) the Valley, full of people competing for the title of most outrageous creativity. 3) LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society), home of the first frp fanzine, Alarums & Excursions, where they expected sophisticated world building and literary knowledge.

Eventually, my house rules evolved into a separate game. I moved to Orange County, and went to UCI majoring in Computer Science. I did some BBS gaming after that. In fact i actually managed to run a game that lasted a year and only lost 2 players, but most attempts failed miserably.

Then i moved to Tucson, to take care of some family property. The rent was right, you see, or i would never have considered it. As a true child of southern California, i found Tucson not only too hot, but too cold as well. And the cacti are just the beginning of a long list of actively hostile plants. I wouldn't have minded bringing back the sky, but the rest of the environment can stay there. Anyway, i formed a group there. I had a lot of good games, but nearly all of them were mine. I was the only one willing to gm consistantly, so although i have played a lot of differrent games, most of them were for just one or two sessions. I tried some gaming over Fidonet but it didn't do much better than the games on single bbses.

In 2000 i came back to my hometown, Santa Maria, at the northern end of southern California. Gaming is very sporadic here. Most gamers have moved on from frps to cards or computer games. I hate that there are computer games that use the term "roleplaying" when what they mean is that they have a large number of finite choices available.

And as for the people who do still play frps, most prefer to play something they've heard of. Homebrew means exploring the gm's head and that's too much of a challenge. Personally, i relish it, but i guess that's just me. When i do get players, i eventually lose them to real life. I've also tried gaming on dedicated online forums but i lost interest when i kept having players disappear before i could even get to the first plot twist.

As a player, i am in one game as a player that only gets 2 hours for each session because of the way people's schedules work, and another that gets 4 hours, except the gm just let us know his own schedule is about to change and he doesn't know what will be going on in 2 weeks.

More later.

Gaming Session 2013-03-15

Gaming Session 2013-03-15

GM: Kevin Rohan (Silver Gryphon Games)

Venue: live online via Google Plus Hangout

System: Aether. Campaign: "Persian Clockwork"

I'd never played this before, but the character sheet was fairly simple. I was told that the setting was the late Bronze Age somewhere in the Persian Empire. Well that eliminated a bunch of skill choice related to the modern era. I decided that my character would be a temple scribe with lots of knowledge and little physicality. I named him Belshazzer.

So, it seemed that mysterious stone structures had been appearing all over the country. For lack of a better word, they'd been dubbed "temples", since they looked like very small one level ziggurats. The appearances had been of the "it wasn't there yesterday" kind and accompanied by reports of attacking monsters. The rulers of the city we were in (not named yet) had their hands full handling panicking refugees from the countryside. And what does that mean, boys and girls? Obviously, it means that it would be up to a small band of adventurers to handle the investigation. And that's where we came in.

Now when i say "we", that should have been at least 4 people. This was the second session in this campaign and most of the players had been expected back. But, you know, Real Life... So it was just one player from before. Plus me. The local satrap wanted the religious hierarchy, which were also his administrators (as ancient societies didn't separate church and state) to be involved. And they decided to send Belshazzer. Touching the tattoo of Ahura Mazda on his arm, he resolved to make them proud.

Fortunately, the other character, Simeon, was a mercenary, with high tech weapons. That means he had an iron sword and iron tipped arrows. It seems that they had found out that what was inside the structures was especially vulnerable to two things: iron and fire. So we took torches and i had iron caps placed on the end of the staff i was hoping not to use.

So we went to the nearest structure, where Simeon had been before with his previous group, and we reconnoitered. I had a fresh scroll for notes. With what Simeon told me, and what i observed, i collected the following facts:

1. The structure appeared to be made from a single piece of black granite.

2. It was merely the top of a vast underground complex.

3. Simeon had built some small catapults but had ended up not using them. They were still just outside the entrance.

3. The entrance was a long staircase. At the bottom there were two braziers flanking a large featureless door.

4. The only way to open the door was to light the braziers, after which there would be some strange mechanical noises, and then the door would rise in the track that was holding it, allowing passage.

5. But at the same time, another door would drop above, sealing the party in.

6. To get out, it was necessary to extinguish the braziers. As the cooled the doors would reverse.

7. There was a permanent gloom that swallowed up torchlight far sooner than it ought to.

8. There were three known types of creatures down there.

    a) Shadowy humanoids, as in they might actually be shadows, that were fast and hard to spot, in the dark hallways.

   b) Tall figures when many arms like tentacles.

   c) Ordinary people who were somehow attached to said tentacles and who seemed like puppets under the control of said figures.

So we went into the structure. The stairway led to a large room, with a huge pit and two doorways. Simeon led Belshazzer along the route he and his companions had used before. We saw where they had previously fought some of the dwellers. There seemed to be just endless corridors and large rooms connected by rectangular openings, some with the same vertical sliding doors as the entrance and some without. I suggested we not go where a door might possibly cut us off. Some of the corridors were lined with tall columns. Our torches were the only source of illumination. And the light sucking effect limited our range of vision. Everything continued to be smooth, featureless black granite, with one exception. There was a band of carved symbols at the top of a column i examined closely. They didn't resemble any alphabet known to Belshazzer.

Belshazzer concluded that this complex

9. Was not the work of Ahriman, nor did it resemble any of the underworlds of his own culture or any foreign version.

We found one of the shadow creatures. It laughed at the name of the Great King, and of Ahura Mazda. Simeon shot it, which changed the laughter to screams. The arrows seemed to hurt it but they also went right through as if the creature had no substance. I threw a torch at it. That put us in total darkness until i could find it again. Afterward, we discovered another important fact.

10. The iron that has hurt the creature was itself hurt.

That seemed like a good point to leave. So we did. Back in the city we reported our findings and made some requisitions which would hopefully make us better prepared the next day.

The next day we had a supply of special torches made by the Alchemists Guild. These burned brighter and hotter than regular ones. We had a sturdy wooden frame that i thought we might put under an open sliding door so that if it crashed down behind us, we could still get through. We had some protective oil for our iron weapons, a couple of firepots, iron disks to use with one of the catapults, and 4 slaves. Well we'd asked for soldiers and bearers but slaves from the pens were all they could give us. Belshazzer told them that if they performed well, they would not be auctioned but would go straight into service with the Temple, which was generally considered better than anywhere else they might end up.

We returned to the structure. Once again we went in, with the slaves following, carrying the supplies, plus one of the catapults. We went a slightly different route and i marked the walls with ochre as we went.

We soon ran into one of the tall shapes with its puppets, accompanied by one of the shadow creatures. We ended up killing all but one of the puppets, the puppeteer, and the shadow creature. One of the slaves was killed, and one seriously wounded. Simeon was wounded too, but not as badly. In that encounter we determined:

11. The shadow creature attack, which involved sticking its immaterial claws into its target's flesh, involved intense cold and left hideous wounds with frostbite.

12. The extra bright torches worked well. They did damage and they weakened the puppeteer's control of the puppets.

13. On death, both the puppeteer and the shadow creature disintegrated leaving no traces.

It took just one extra bright torch, an iron missile, and some flaming oil to completely destroy the puppeteer. An arrow and a stroke of Simeon's sword took out the shadow creature. We left after that, bringing along the freed puppet and the body of the dead slave.

Back home, Simeon and the wounded slave went to the infirmary and the dead slave got a hero's funeral.

Hopefully, at the next session, we'll have more players.

Well that was a fail

When i made the previous post i was feeling pretty good. Lots of ideas, lots of plans.

Then i got hit by a monster cold. I broke my tablet. My phone stopped charging and i accidently wiped out my contact list trying to transfer it to my new phone.

Still got the cold, in fact after mostly letting up, it's back for another attack. So, don't breathe to close to this post. As for the tablet i think it's out of warranty, it was one of those $70 christmas specials. But i've got my contact list restored and i can transfer most of it between my pc and the phone. I can't get everything because the no generation phone works with .vcf. That's a universal format, where "universal" is code for "everybody does it differently" and the LG 500 insists on different names for standard fields. But it's coming along.

So: let's see if i can get back into a gaming mindset.

Welcome to the Escapist Club

Yeah, the table is wobbly and overloaded. That's because i can't draw. I practice sometimes, but so far the only way i can make a usable image is to cheat and get some help from CorelDraw.

Fortunately, all the tables i've actually played at have been in better shape, or at least securely taped.

This journal (i truly hate the word "blog" so excuse me if i don't use it) is for my thoughts on gaming and related subjects and hopefully to get some discussion going.

It's also for discussing my own games and for setting up sessions. I've been gming for a long time, but i've never run a live game online. I'm trying to get into that now.

More later.