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The games we play
May 01st, 2018
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There's been a lot of people talking recently about games they're
playing, whether on the computer, board game, or pencil-based
RPGs. It's been really inspiring.
I love RPGs so much, and I'm happy that I've got a monthly game
going with a local crew. We're playing online with Discord and
Roll20.net and it's... fair. I prefer no electronics involved in
my table-top, and everyone around the same table. Still, I'll take
what I can get.
At work I spent a little bit of my team-building budget to buy
a couple board games. Charterstone, a fancy new legacy game, and
a casual game called Lattice are the first purchases. I'll report
back on how they work soon.
I've also been thinking about other games I play or have played
with my friends over the years. Some are easily categorized, like
the D&D campaigns I've run or played in. Others are hard to pin
down, like the De Profundis writing-game I've got here on
gopher.black [0].
(DIR) [0] De Profundis
This is a game of sorts, but it's also collaborative writing. It
started with the first letter when I wrote it in an email to my
friend Dan. I didn't give much explanation other than, "you get to
write from the other side and move the story along." We don't
communicate about our plans for each letter and we can introduce
characters as we see fit. We meticulously research historical
locations and events to prepare each one, and try to keep to the
style of the time as best as we're able. Dan's got the next letter
coming my way soon and I'm thrilled.
My game experience isn't all table-top or computer based, of
course. When I was a teen in Boy Scouts we did a lot of
night-gaming. Usually it was something akin to capture the flag,
or a moderately violent hide-and-seek variant we called Man Hunt.
My favorite thing was what I called "Flee-running". If you're
familiar with Free Running or Parkour, it's more in line with the
latter. It wasn't about flourishes, but rather about getting from
point A to point B as efficiently as possible. The only difference
was, you were being chased. It's a combination of tag & parkour
usually played deep in the woods, often in the dark. It's skill
based only so much as it takes a lot of skill not to stop running
when you take a branch to the face in the middle of the night. It
was so thrilling, though. I've lept from cabin roofs, tarzan'd
across creeks, and jumped through windows. So dangerous, and so
fun.
We also had really stupid high school games. There's one that
I picked up on in college that started from a friend's high school
time. It's really simple, if someone says the word "bogwan" you
have to freeze exactly where you are in the position you're in for
thirty seconds. If it's dangerous or whatever, then you don't...
but once you're clear of danger you have to freeze. It was mostly
used to emphasize some stupid expression you were making at the
time. Make some embarrasing face and you're bound to be bogwan'd.
It's still active and on rare occasion I'll get a bogwan text from
that crew.
There's so many other stupid games from that time. A lot of them
involve getting punched in the balls, for some reason. High school
again, I guess.
Board games are coming back into my life again which is great.
I've got one RPG going and will likely run a Numenera game
sometime in the next year. I'm doing a retro-gaming playthrough of
the complete Zelda franchise and occasionally twitch stream it.
I'm 8bitino on Twitch, but I rarely go on. I'm about halfway
through Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It's hard! Next up will
be the Game Boy games, and I'm really excited.
I also am in a slow retro-playthrough of the Quest for Glory
series. I rocked QFG1 in style on Twitch not too long ago. I have
my saved character for QFG2, but I'm going to restart it now that
I found a VGA version. The most exciting thing about this
playthrough is that I've never played QFG5. I stopped at #4 and
loved it so much, but 5 came out after I'd moved on to other
things. EEEk, so much fun!
In a future post I'd like to cover off on some of the RPG
campaigns I've run in the past. The Assassini is probably my best
one, so I think I'll start there.
Assassini
Setting: 1716 Paris
Mission: Two agents of the Catholic Church, armed with Papal
dispensation, have been dispatched to undermine the political
power in the region, uncover a religious mystery, and combat
agents of the British Crown who seek to disrupt their plans.