The Blog of Roon

This week’s WISH asks that we comment on what other people wrote for last week’s WISH. (What did I write? This.)

I have to say I was amused by the number of “Plan B people.” Michael, for instance, or Arref . I don’t doubt there were more, either. Excellent advice, of course. And being the good gamers they are, the most important bit about Plan Bs escaped them, since they wouldn’t think of committing the sin involved: Never, ever blame the GM for the failure of Plan A. Don’t whine. Don’t get mad, and don’t try to get even. Just go to Plan B.

(Which is likely to work better anyway, since the GM won’t have heard about it beforehand. *evil grin*)

I think I’m going to take my other two from Michael also, not because other people didn’t write good stuff, but because Michael hit my still-tired-from-Gen-Con eye.

“You’re not heros, you’re assholes!”

I am disturbed sometimes by the minor role reputation plays in most gaming—reputation other than the Nodwickian “you guys are duh adventurers, right? well, lemme tell yuh ’bout dis problem we got…” sort of reputation. If characters who are supposed to be heroes stop being heroes, there ought to be in-game repercussions.

D&D used to handle this with alignment limitations, but gamers whined about this so much that 3e largely dispensed with them. Ars Magica’s Reputations system is a little better, since it allows for negative as well as positive reputations, but it frankly feels tacked-on to the mechanics (as does the Personality Traits bit).

I just think the GM is in a better place to enforce ατη appropriately than is the gaming system. A GM who does not do so is falling down on the job, I think. How is a party supposed to integrate with its society if its actions have zero impact on the way that society reacts to it?

And finally, “Gaming is like sex. It’s only fun if you trust your partners.” Must confess I’ve never done multiply-partnered sex, but I do see what Michael’s getting at, and I agree with it. Good campaigning often gets (in)tense. Not a few gamers project themselves onto their characters, just as I do; working stuff out in the game realm can be scary, revealing, ugly, or all three at once.

I am very lucky to have found a gaming group that accepts my quirks as well as my characters’, and is willing to forgive me and welcome me back when I go over the edge (which I do now and then). They are all excellent friends as well as excellent gamers. I hope I’ve given back a bit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 10th, 2002 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.