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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]. | |
[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. |