The mandatory first bad post

As I mentioned in my other more tech-oriented blog, an old, and much missed, friend put me on to the fact that the first post in any blog is, apparently, inherently bad. This is, however, rather appropriate for this blog, because there's a distinct tendency when you start an RPG campaign to have a pretty dull, long-winded explanatory session during which characters are created, details of the game system and game world are outlined, and people introduce their characters to each other. Hopefully you'll have some people in your group who manage to do this in an interesting, in-character, way, but quite often you'll find that people just say “erm ... I'm Bongo, a halfling rogue ... erm, yeah.”

Of course, you could have the opposite first session - you've run through character gen in no time, and your GM just drops you in a situation with no introduction at all. Those kinds of first session can work well, but they can also be disastrous.

So, I'm going to go with the first kind for this first post: I'll gen up my character, and tell you a bit about what we're doing here!

So, to start with my name's Jim, and I'm a (pretty much) human (pretty much) drudge. What I do for a living is irrelevant, and what I do for fun should be obvious (although by this point some players will have already started messing about on twitter ... bloody smartphones). But in case it isn't: I'm a roleplayer. More to the point, I play, run, and write roleplaying games.

What is a roleplaying game?

If we need to start off this basic you're probably not going to enjoy this blog ;) but in simple terms a roleplaying game is one in which you take on - as fully as possible - the role of a character in a story. More specifically, I like to think of a roleplaying games as a collaborative story-telling experience, in which one person - the Game Master, Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Narrator etc. (depending on the exact game you're playing) - sets the scene, and then everyone takes part in moving the story forward - often with unexpected outcomes. And technically, that's it - you could play a roleplaying game without any special equipment, not even dice, just agreeing that one member of the group got to decide whether people's ideas got incorporated into the story or not. But a lot of people like to determine whether their plans work out in a random, or semi-random, way: that's where traditional RPGs come in - they provide a framework for working out whether your cunning plan succeeded or failed (usually through the rolling of dice, although there are other methods). A set of rules for determining outcomes is often called a roleplaying system, and I will at various times discuss various systems.

Why do you play roleplaying games?

Good question, and not one that has an easy answer. One of the main reasons I roleplay is the social aspect: getting together with a number of like-minded individuals to have a good time. Roleplaying games - certainly when I play them - are usually accompanied by food and drink, and are as much a social event as anything. There are other aspects too though - the lure of escaping mundane life for an evening and pretending to be a great hero, the challenge of overcoming the obstacles between me and my story goal, and the creative endeavour of bringing a fantasy world to life all contribute to my enjoyment of roleplaying.

So what's this blog all about?

Basically, this blog is a place for me to whitter endlessly about roleplaying games and hopefully avoid boring my nearest and dearest. If you know a roleplayer you'll know just how involved they can get in their game worlds, to the extent that they can bore even seasoned gamers into a stupor talking about their latest character and their amazing exploits. Well, I'm basically one of those gamers, so this blog will hopefully protect them from some (although certainly not all) of that boredom. Unfortunately for you, that means I get to bore you instead (unless you choose to google up something more interesting to read, of course ;) ).

The blog will be written from three perspectives: as a player, as a GM, and as a (very amateur) writer.

So when you say you “write” RPGs...?

As I mentioned earlier, a set of roleplaying rules is generally called a system. All gamers have their favourite systems, but most gamers would admit that even in their favourite systems there are some parts that just don't work the way they think they should. One option is to introduce “house rules”, little tweaks to the way a system works that everyone playing the game agree to, but another option - if you're a nutter, like me - as to start from scratch and try to create your own rules for determining outcomes. I have written a couple of systems, and will occasionally blog from the point of view of writing/amending roleplaying systems, either from scratch or by considering the application of house rules.

So, with the scene set, I'll wrap up this first session/post, and look forward to seeing you next time :)