January
6, 2011 -
Two Years Later...: It's
hard to believe that I let two full years (to the day!)
go by without updating the site. I guess I owe you an
explanation - "you" being anyone who still
reads the site, of course!
I haven't been doing any roleplaying for
many years now. As I've written before, when I moved away
from the Boston area and got married ten years ago,
opportunities for roleplaying became few and far between.
The birth of my son nine years ago reduced my options
still further. But although I missed
roleplaying and much of my social life, I have to admit
that I didn't miss it that much. Being a father
has been wonderfully rewarding. I'm very lucky.
I did manage to get into a couple of D&D
games in the area, but ultimately neither one worked out.
I'm not going to try to cover the past
ten or even two years here in any detail. If you're
curious, it's all on my LiveJournal.
Due to a crazed stalker, more and more of the entries in
that journal have been made viewable by friends only, but
if you're that interested, LiveJournal
accounts are free and I'm certainly open to new friending
requests.
I'm also on Facebook.
It's not that I particularly like Facebook, it's just
that there didn't seem to be a choice; you pretty much
have to be on Facebook if you want to function online
these days!
World of Warcraft: I
finally gave in and began playing World of Warcraft (WoW,
from this point on) in late 2009. It's a time-sink, as I
expected it would be. But it's fun, and since I don't
have a roleplaying group in this area, it's a tolerable
alternative - sort of.
RuneQuest: I still have
things to say about RuneQuest, but I find myself in the
odd position of not being sure what is wise for
me to say. I guess it's inevitable that I'm less
passionate about the system now, since I haven't been
able to play it in so long; I still firmly believe that
it's the best roleplaying game ever made, but, well, I
don't get to USE it any more! At this point it's hard to
know what to think. I'd like to see Chaosium's multi-genre
Basic RolePlaying succeed, though.
Scenario: I did get to
run a few sessions of RuneQuest recently, for my son,
Sebastian. He's nine, getting close to the age where he
can follow the rules without wanting to break them all of
the time, and he's a geek at heart - just like his father.
I hadn't GMed in a long time, but I
walked him through character creation. He created a human
boy called "Ash", the son of the village
blacksmith. I worked up a scenario off the cuff, and you
know, it worked out okay! A rival of his challenged him
to a race; he suggested a fist-fight instead (which
surprised me quite a bit, since that's really not in Sebastian's
character). They arranged a rendezvous north of the
village near the mouth of an old cave, but when Ash got
there he could hear the voice of his rival calling for
help from inside the cave. A large spider-monkey-like
thing had attacked him and dragged him into the cave,
cocooning him in silk and giving him a mildly poisonous
bite as well. Ash got lucky and criticalled the spider in
the head with a Disrupt spell for maximum damage; all
fair rolls, no cheating on my part (I was actually
anticipating more of a battle than that). He rescued the
boy and got him home, with a few minor happenings along
the way.
The second scenario began with Ash's pet
wolf (well, wolf-dog) acting rather frantic. He managed
to lead Ash off into the woods. Hacking his way through
brush that was higher than his head, Ash encountered a
large, shadowy shape that was taller than he was. It
turned out to be...the foot of an injured giant.
Unfortunately before he realized what it was, he
criticalled the foot. Luckily for him, the giant was
unconscious. He went back to get others from the village;
two of his friends, and the village healer. The healer is
now working on the giant, while Ash and his friends are
guarding them both. From occasional delirious mumbling,
they've been able to determine that the giant is hiding
from someone or something, and that something else has
been taking bites out of him in the middle of the night.
Since Sebastian isn't web-enabled, I can
tell the rest of it here: The giant is actually quite
young, only nine years old (Sebastian's age). He ran away
from home, and is hiding from his parents. He fell and
hurt himself badly; a large carnivore has been coming by
in the night to dine on him, bit by bit.
His parents will eventually find him.
They are, however, quite small: only half human size. You
see, this race of giants shrinks as they get
older.
Arisia: I'll be doing
eight or nine panels at Arisia on January 14-17 in Boston.
The RuneQuest panel two years ago was a dud, I'm afraid;
there were only two people in the audience, and I was the
only panelist. I won't be suggesting a RuneQuest panel
again. But I am doing a few roleplaying panels. The
highlight of the con for me will probably be the
Masquerade (costume contest), though. We've made a
costume for Sebastian at the Kamikaze Kids event every
year, and he always goes on stage. It's a big event, and
lots of fun. Next year we might actually enter the
contest!
Zines & sheetless article:
No progress on these, unfortunately. But I do want to get
them done. I'll do my best not to let things go again!
|
