Session Update; July 5- The Podcast!

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RPG Thoughts: Lost and the Damned

So I've been thinking about getting my old stuff together for a new campaign. Like I said earlier, I remember all the rules, but the world is nothing more the ephemeral wisps in my memory.

The stuff I remember is the fun stuff, things that PCs did, and neat world building locations. I can't remember the names of countries or cities. I can barely remember NPCs, and those I do remember are either dead or retired.

This isn't the first time this type of thing has happened to me. I lost the campaign bible for a Vampire campaign, in the middle of the campaign. So I had to rebuild stuff. I don't know how we continued at that point. We lost sires and locations and all sorts of things that were mentioned at some point and we never got back to. It must not have been that important since we didn't bother with it again.

Then there was a time when the guy running a game kept all the character record sheets and left the notebook on the bus. Gone forever. We were able to rebuild the characters, but we lost quite a bit of really cool character treasure.

Of course, who could forget the time in High School when I joined a Traveller game at the FLGS, and the dude had all the rules and characters on his laptop-which then catastrophically crashed in the middle of a session. We gave up and went for wings instead.

Then there's the couple people who left 40K models in my basement. It's been a decade, I declare them mine now. Lost to them, free models to me. If it were a big deal, they would have picked up those 2nd ed metal 'nids a long time ago. On a related note, Jason, if you happen across this, can I have all those Fantasy Orcs in your gameroom that what's-his-name left there years ago?

Then the best was when we decided to play on the porch, since it was boiling in the attic, and my buddy dropped a set of brand new dice into the bushes. Eight years later, there's still a hole in my bushes where he jumped after them, but he never found the d10. Almost as funny as when my wife decided to use his hand as an ashtray.

Another buddy chronically forgot his character sheet to every session in every game that I ran for 7 years. I eventually started keeping them myself, rather then risk loosing them.

Of course, the worst thing is the FLGS that are gone. The Hobby Horse (where I bought my first minis and D&D adventure, not to mention my first X-Men comics- lost due to the rent at the mall going up), The Comics and Gaming Dungeon (where I learned of GW, and played Traveller- lost due to early embezzlement and never recovering), and Helm's Deep Games (where I played more games then I care to remember- lost in part to the owner losing interest and part to theft).

Those are my stories of things that I've lost, what are some of yours?

RPG Thoughts: Coming Home

In RPGs all things are cyclic. I find myself going back to the same themes over and over again. The stuff I like doesn't fit everywhere. What I like is weird. There are few games that work, so I keep going over it. There seems to be no way around it.

I think I have to go home.

Way back in 1992-1993 somewhere along there, I created my own gameworld for D&D. Something designed specifically to hold the weird stuff that I like. There's guns, and psychics, and a vaguely steampunk feel . It works, because it was designed from the ground up with all of that in mind. When you just toss that stuff in, it feels wrong and out of place. That's why psionics and Forgotten Realms doesn't really work, it comes off as alien.

Since I created the world, I've used it to run more successful campaigns then any other game world. Three massively successful ones, two that phased out due to real world concerns. The thing is that I keep advancing the timeline, and things change. The actions that PCs take change the world. I love that about it. PCs become important NPCs in future campaigns. It's the best of all worlds.

My main problem is how much actual background info is missing. My mind ain't as sharp as it used to be. I remember characters, and a vague map. City names, and politics are all gone. It's sad. I remember the rules clear as day. That's the easy part. I had to spend so much time on the rules, getting the balance right that I'll probably never forget them. Besides the capital city (Crynin), the rest of it is gone. I'll probably search through all my old papers for any scrap of info, and try to dreg my friends minds, see what they remember.

What I am thinking of though, is finally going ahead and making a PDF of the game. I am tempted to actually go ahead and do up a full game guide and maybe get it professionally printed or self published so that I have a nice hardback of it. Something to remember from. I did a quick logo. Let me know what you think.