#RPGaDay2025 - 30 Experience


Experience points, development of characters… or the experience we get from playing a great session of a game. I remember my first few TTRPG sessions, I don’t know if it was the people running the game, or the systems we used (old school D&D Rules Cyclopedia), or maybe the mismatch of what I expected from the game compared to the other players in the group. I just didn’t get the imagined experience I was hoping for.

I played games with a few people, and I caught a glimpse of what could be. Moments where I caught the dragon, and moments that I looked for again, hoping to string them into full sessions. Wanting something more, and chasing the dragon like a junkie chasing the amphetamine high.

It was a moment of enlightenment, satori, where a bond with others led to something more. It was how I tried to run my games, trying to make sure everyone got a taste of what had addicted me. I became a dealer of the TTRPG narcotic, and became a “forever DM” as a result. I don’t know that other people didn’t want to run games this way, or didn’t know how to.  Instead of consuming the experience, I became the provider.

Naturally I’m thinking about the weekend I just had, travelling over 1000 kilometres across wild bushlandto run a gae for an old friend’s 60th birthday (I’ve known him for 30+ years now). I hadn’t bought a present for him and a bunch of his new gaming group had wanted to have a birthday game for him, so I offered him that experience. His wife reached out the next day and said that he had the best weekend that he’d had for a long time. So that was cool. I may not be able to catch the dragon myself, by I can offer it to others.



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