| ---------------------------------------- | |
| The games we play | |
| May 01st, 2018 | |
| ---------------------------------------- | |
| 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. |