The Blog of Roon

Game WISH wants to know what’s off the table. Where I won’t go.

You mean, aside from maturity-challenged males and their masturbatory fantasies? Right, right, okay, you all knew that already.

Truth be told, I’ll put up with a lot, and I’ll try almost anything. There’s really not very much that’s completely off the table.

Game systems and games completely predicated on physical conflict. That’s pretty much off the table. I don’t play superhero games for that reason, nor am I much intrigued by mecha. People relate to each other in myriad ways aside from trying to kill each other. Characters should have the same freedom. Even D&D is trying my patience on this point lately.

Monty Hauls. Munchkinism. Push my buttons. Look, if all you want is kewl swag, just sit around and create 16th-level characters all day, with the ridiculous amount of swag allotted by the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Don’t bother me with it; I have other things I want to do. Like play a character, not a collection of kewl swag and uber-buff abilities. If I ever run a D&D campaign, it’s going to be very low-swag.

Random character deaths push my buttons; I’m trying to get over that, actually, because I recognize that characters get into dangerous situations and they shouldn’t be guaranteed to survive them.

Resolving character-generated conflict out-of-character irks me. Your character got a problem with mine? Take it up with her in-character, please. If you need clarification on whether I and my character are bleeding into each other, by all means ask—99 times out of 100 the answer is “no.” Otherwise, please respect that my character has opinions about people she encounters. Your character doesn’t have to like those opinions, and is welcome to try to change them. You, however, are requested not to edit my character outside the game. I offer the same courtesy in return, naturally.

The single biggest button I have, though, is GMs who try to trap me when I elide over things that ought to be obvious. My husband is a past master at this; he knows it ticks me off and does it anyway. If you need to know a detail beforehand because part of the plot hooks on it, ask. If the standard preparations I make for a desert journey do not matter to the plot, and I don’t care about them, please don’t make me make an exhaustive list of everything I’m hauling along. If you do make me make such a list, it had better matter. Conversely, if you did not ask about a particular preparation, don’t use my not having said anything about it to gig me later on.

Grrrr. Argh. I hate when that happens.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 21st, 2002 at 10:33 am 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.