July ends as August and GenCon begin!

August (named after the  very unhumble Roman first citizen Augustus Caesar) will be a month of personalities from the Sea of Stars (and possibly other places).  If there is someone -or something– in particular you would like to see, write a comment or otherwise let me know.

I will be off to GenCon from the end of July to early August but page updates should continue during that time (and this is where you can find me at GenCon).  If you have not commented before, your comments may have to wait to be approved once I get back (sorry).

July saw the following posts published on the journal:

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Finding Me at GenCon 2018

Should you wish to, first review my advice to those going, then look below:

My schedule is unusually up in the air this year as I am part of a new team for my employers at Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG).  The two fixed points I know in my schedule are:

Friday, 6pm – 2am(ish), you will find me in the Board Game Hall overseeing and helping with AEG’s Big Game Night (BGN).  I will be busy but if you want to come and learn one of the recent AEG games, drop by after 9pm and you can join in and play (though not get any swag unless you already have a ticket).  As it winds down I will have more free time, though you may have to talk with me as I check and back away demo games.  In any case, feel free to drop by.

Saturday, 2-6pm, I will be demonstrating the new games from BGN at the AEG booth in the exhibit hall.

Thursday day and night and Friday during the day, I will be around the main floor of the Embassy Suites teaching board games to our team for BGN.  Not sure exactly where or how busy that will be, so drop by if you are in the area there should be a cluster of people learning board games and I will be among them.

Spotting me in a crowd!  On duty I will be wearing a red AEG t-shirt and my hair (pulled back in a pony tail) and beard are mostly white, and I am an average height slightly overweight white man, so, yeah, I will not be that easy to spot.  I have included a picture to make it easier.

Beyond that, who knows?  But I arrive on Tuesday to help with setup.  So drop me a note if you want to try and meet up, I am sure we can work something out.

In any case, to all those going and not going, have fun and play more games.

Player Expectations, Game Reality and Killing Characters

So, about every four weeks I GM a Learn to Play D&D (Fifth Ed) session as part of Tyche’s Games‘, our local game store, Friday Night Initiative program to teach RPGs to people.  This last Friday was one such session, it had four players, three of whom had played in my games before and one new player to D&D as well as my games.

Everyone generated starting characters and it was decided that everyone knew each other, so they were starting as a group,  The initial adventure had them following up on a mystery in the town they were in, two teenagers had disappeared in recent nights.  They set a trap and they managed to lure out the creature and then chase down to its lair in the basement of a house.  That all went well and the monster was dispatched in a brutal and noisy battle that, in usually D&D fashion only took about thirty second in the game world and the kidnapped teenagers were found and recovered.  However, the house owner had no idea what was happening and shouted down “what is going on down there?” after the fight ended.

One player at first made a jokey reply (“We’re naked don’t come down.”) and then when the house owner showed up at the top of the stairs, tried to use a Persuasion skill roll to get him to come down.  Note that this was just after sounds of combat and the player character was holding a battle axe, so even though the player rolled well for the Persuasion skill, the house owner would not come down but was willing to keep talking.  When the house owner said that they would go to the authorities, the player tried Intimidation and the house holder ran, again even though the player rolled well (17ish) because that what you do when someone with a weapon threatens to preform violence against you.  The player seems annoyed that his “good” rolls did not allow him to control the situation (i.e. the actions of the NPC).  Now, it did not matter as the the important part was the rescue and everything else was glossed over in the glow of saving the teenagers and the monster being defeated, as it should be.  Escalating the situation with the house owner was an unnecessary digression, I just tossed him in for color, and no reason to have it distract from the game as a whole.

Sean’s GenCon Advice 2018

GenCon is just about two weeks away, so, I thought I would (again) share my hard-earned experience and try and help out people who are going as I do every year.

Preparation:

Rokugan SRIU Episode 14 “Wild Horses and Wind Shrines” (L5R Campaign Report)

After surviving gunfire and just normal fire, our heroes find themselves in still in Dragon’s Guard City, two weeks later.  Akodo Akina has been sent to Shiro Matsu to return the daisho of the slain governor, Matsu Hotohara, and those of his bodyguards to their families.  While Tonbo Sanetomi has been sent with a report on the Teppo and Gaijin pepper to the Agasha shugenja in the Dragon mountains.

The city, especially the docks and warehouse district, suffer from damage and fires and repairs are ongoing with the nearby monastery of the Order of Harmonious Work dispatching its monks and nuns to help out as well.  The Mirumoto investigator has been helping solve petty crimes as the confusion has led to considerable minor theft, he is surprisingly lenient with the perpetrators, only demanding the items be returned and otherwise delivering a stern warning.

Suzume Ryosuke (last seen in Episode 5!) arrived with

Matsu Yakoshi, a petite and pretty Matsu who was trained as a Bayushi courtier, due to a clause in her parent marriage contract.  She does not get on with her mother . . . or her ancestors.  (Bayushi courtier 1, played by M.)

who is newly assigned to the SRIU and new orders from Doji Akira.  It seems there is considerable debate as to whom should govern Dragon’s Guard City, so while that is being sorted out in the Imperial Court, Hida Kenta is assigned as acting governor until such a time as a permanent replacement is decided upon.  The city is overjoyed, as they know Kenta and his team from several previous visits and promptly throw him a huge welcoming party with food, mostly seafood, and drink from all over town brought in.

To July, leaving June

Hope all of my readers in the Northern hemisphere are enjoying Summer and those in the Southern are having a safe winter.

As my long time reader will know, July was named after that ambitious Julius Caesar in the re-formalization of the Roman Calendar creating the Julian Calendar (which, unsurprisingly, is named for him too).  So, in honor of Caesar, we shall be looking at governments, organization and people of ambition in the Sea of Stars and elsewhere.  As usual, if there is a particular subject you would like to know more about or see more of, please let me know.

Looking back over June, 2018, it was a fairly light month for posting but did see the following:

June RPG Blog Carnival – “Why do I love RPGs? Why do I love GMing?”

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is on a the wonderful theme of “Why do you love RPGs? Why do you love GMing?” hosted by Campaign Mastery.

I have been a gamer for most of my life, it is my primary and favorite hobby, starting way back in 1977 at the age of ten when my mother pointed out that the library in Eugene, Oregon, where I lived at the time, had a wargaming club on Saturdays.  It was there I first encountered D&D and I was immediately hooked.  Over the years I have watched the hobby grow from a closet obsession of people on the fringe, survive a “Satanic Panic” where good-meaning but mean-spirited people tried to stamp out the hobby, to watching the lexicon of our hobby (and our title “gamers”) snatched from us by the video game industry and now the rise of RPGs as a spectator sport over various internet platforms.  What a long strange trip it has been, but oh, so much fun.

What do I like and love about RPGs?  The freedom to do and be what you can imagine and do it all in the company of friends.  You get to have adventures, many of which will become fun stories of heroism and chaos in retrospect, from the safety of your (or your friend’s) home or other friendly meeting place.  I enjoy the chance to see other worlds through the eyes of imaginary people, and sometime playing around with rules systems too, but mostly it is the joint adventuring and story-telling that I find fun.

What do I like and love about GMing?  Much the same as for being a player.  But this time instead of being an actor or co-author, I get to be the primary author or director.  I set the stage for the game to play out on, with the input of the other players, and we have a great adventure together.  When it all works right, it is quite magical, and when it just works, it is still fun.

There is more I could write, but that is the essence and I want to get it in before the deadline.