RPGaDay 2024 (Days 23 and 24)

Day 23 - Peerless Player

During the late 1990s, there were a particular group of players at game conventions in Sydney (and who regularly played at a variety of conventions across South Eastern Australia). I think I've mentioned them before on the blog, or at least alluded to them. They were generally known as "Big Name Gamers" (BNGs). 

It seemed like everyone wanted to become a BNG, or at least get in the same social circles as the BNGs so that they could influence the local gaming scene, maybe work in one of the local gaming stores, maybe just set themselves up in the local network of favours and influence the led to work in the entertainment industry, theatre, or even political networks... there was a big black market in favours then, real world favours that were a deep iceberg, and the roleplaying community seemed to be one of the odd locations where the deep network protruded into the real world. 

But were they actually good players? Not in my experience they weren't. 

As a result of this, I take each player as they come. I don't care about their reputations or the various levels of prestige they supposedly have. Some players get into the spirit of a game better than others, but this can vary from session to session.

Day 24 - Acclaimed Advice

I think the best gaming advice I ever received was that there is no wrong way to play an RPG, just ways that might be unsuitable for a given group of players.

If you're after more of my advice about running games, I'd really have to recommend that you'd read the series I wrote earlier in the year.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

There's 25 posts in the series...

(While I've been answering these questions, the character generation system for Walkabout has generally been developing smoothly in the background.) There have been a few interesting glitches as I've worked through some sample character generation examples, so it will be interesting to see how the system works when I expose it to the public for feedback during September) 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 7)

Image
A working computer and scanner...that means it is time to get back to work on the geomorph sequence. A lot of the discussion in this set of tutorials has been focused around square geomorphs. They're the easiest for most people to wrap their heads around.  But my preferred form of geomorph is based around the hexagon, these tend to produce more organic and interesting shapes. This is true for natural environments, but it's no less true for urban environments. The example set of geomorphs above as a simple two-phase system. One edge type is plain, the other edge type has a road piercing the centre. There could be dozens of combinations and permutations for each of the two phases around the hexagonal edges, but a quick look at the variety of buildings and road shapes shows that there could literally be hundreds of possible options when drawing these map fragments. But you certainly don't need to create hundreds of designs for the system to be effective. Usin...
Read more

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 1)

Image
After numerous requests to get back to map tutorials, it's time to start our new series. This time focusing on the concept of geomorphs, modular map fragments that can be mixed and matched. We'll start with a couple of theoretical tutorials before sinking into a few more practical posts. I'm predicting a dozen or so posts in this sequence, but let's see how long it lasts.
Read more