I have some good and bad news on this issue for everyone. I can say I have been rejected, in uncomfortable situations, and met people. Though I will always like tabletop roleplaying, meeting people in general is exactly like the way Jim Gaffigan describes a box of chocolates "I don't know what I am about to eat but I am a pig enough to find out" or you can use the fictional character Forrest Gump quote "Life is a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get".
For everyone out there that is new to the hobby, you are probably putting out feelers about the people while at the same time trying to get your foot in the door to start engaging in tabletop roleplaying. Will you get along with them? What house rules have been established? What is happening in the campaign? I have known this group of gamers in tacoma close to a decade ago that I particularly didn't get along with after attending a few of their sessions in the Tacoma Mall and then eventually in their house. Yes, I did accidently cause a fire on a wooden boat in the campaign, but that was due to a crappy Profession (cook) roll and I was mocked quite a bit for that and for the reaction of my character at the time. From my personal point of view of the whole experience, I didn't feel welcome in that group so I quit hanging out with them after only a couple sessions. The point is that people make or break the quality of roleplaying.
I have looked up classified ads and some of the information out there. A real roll of the dice really, but there are several ways of looking at the scenario. You might make a few friends, or it might be a dangerous situation so use your common sense when meeting new people. Another possibility would be to introduce your current friends to this activity and see how they react to the idea. If you are planning on hosting a new tabletop roleplaying session, plan out the whole event as if you were throwing an actual party such as arranging the time place, ensure that the DM and all of the players are prepared (especially make sure that all of the players finished crafting their characters otherwise the whole time will probably be wasted on character creation), buy some party food & drinks (or the event can be a potluck by encouraging all the guests to bring food) for all of the guests, and spread the word among prospective guests about the event. Depending on the group, they just might like the idea after they try tabletop roleplaying especially if they walk away from the event having a lot of fun.
I find myself in a similar situation at the moment. I am going to try dabbling in the action of LARPing (live action role playing) and I am bridging new ground for myself as well. LARPing seems to be tabletop roleplaying taken to another level of interaction through actual acting. When I was in high school, I was a bad actor on stage because I would always forget my lines and you can't really improv shakespeare lines in a believeable way unless you are a professional actor. As I try out LARPing over time, I will type up more blog posts about this subject. At the moment though, I have to finish typing up my character's background information/profile and then submit my PC to the GM. Good luck to everyone and most importantly, have fun! :-)
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Blog promotion attempt # 1
Hi there everyone. To everyone that is currently reading my blog, I really deeply appreciate the time that you put into reading the articles that I post on this blog. In an attempt to promote my blog, I created a cause facebook page so check like on roleplaying blogger. I am also researching other outlets to promote my blog as well, but I find myself stumped when trying to think of ways to promote this blog. I am just stumbling blindly trying to figure this out by myself. As a reader, feel free to leave comments or questions on my blog relating to the blog. I would love to read any comments or questions that you have about what I am typing as well as give my input on your responses. I have changed the settings on the blog so that anyone can post responses on this blog. Thanks for reading !! :-)
I will be posting on roleplaying blogger & on here too. However, I would prefer to place my blog posts on this blogger site.
<a href="http://www.hypersmash.com%22%3ehypersmash%3c/a>
I will be posting on roleplaying blogger & on here too. However, I would prefer to place my blog posts on this blogger site.
<a href="http://www.hypersmash.com%22%3ehypersmash%3c/a>
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Remembering all the campaigns I ran that went unfinished ......
Wow, I think I could be a real short story novelist if I could run down this whole list of general. I took a break from writing my story for a few months since I have been working out some personal issues that I would rather not discuss on a public blog about roleplaying; let's just agree that life sucks and all of us have our own problems. I haven't been actively writing out a general plot for a campaign idea for when I become a regular DM again, but I have hosted a few improv sessions as a DM recently. So where does that leave me at the moment for roleplaying? I am just experiencing life and I am sucking up experience, inspiration, and trying to be as original as possible, acting as a player while someone else is taking on the role of DM.
However, I think that originality is dead. After reviewing several forms of campaign settings from several editions over the years, all of the broad ideas are covered for tabletop roleplaying settings whether you want the setting to take place in the past, present, future, on space ships of realistic or magical based, varying planes of existance based on various ancient religions written in old literature, et cetera. I really could go on but then the sentence would become a lengthy run-on sentence filled with at least fifeteen more commas filled with other cited examples. "Originality" seems to be not in the campaign setting that the DM runs the roleplaying game session but how the DM/GM (whatever term you prefer) steers the direction of the plot.
When I was growing up, my brother and I used to buy madlib books where there was a general short story written on the notepad but there were blanks lines in the story where you would fill in some random word or phrase that would fit on each line. After filling in all the blanks with random suggestions, someone would read the whole story and we would laugh at the final result of the story since the suggestions were ridiculous. So why did I bring up that strange little factoid about my childhood? The answer is the last sentence of the previous paragraph. The general suggestions of campaign settings are in place, the types of characters are already established, and the suggested rules of how to run the game already exist. The only real control DMs have is the madlib plot, unless you are reading out of an adventure module. For the record, I have never ran a campaign using an adventure module as a DM, but I have enjoyed adventure modules as a player. I have read through a few of them and I seem to get lost reading them for some reason. I do not have dyslexia but I seem to get lost in what is written in the passage. I prefer my madlib method of inserting stat blocks, and having a general plot idea established from plot hook to climax to conclusion. Even though players can at times throw DMs for a loop with strange incentives, interests, or strange actions ( I have heard of all sorts of strange stuff, like the almost naked dwarf that would turn their thong into an improvised sling for example, yeah, ....... you know who you are .......... ), I find that having several madlib plots strung together in the same setting creates an ADVENTURE WEB. I capitalized the last two words since that is an important concept. Set up several adventure modules / adventure ideas for long term campaigns that way players can advance their characters several levels.
In a future post though, I will discuss leveling pace when I get the article finished from the point of view of the player and the DM, but I will just move on for now and check my facebook page. Feel free to contribute any comments or questions that you may have ........ :-)
However, I think that originality is dead. After reviewing several forms of campaign settings from several editions over the years, all of the broad ideas are covered for tabletop roleplaying settings whether you want the setting to take place in the past, present, future, on space ships of realistic or magical based, varying planes of existance based on various ancient religions written in old literature, et cetera. I really could go on but then the sentence would become a lengthy run-on sentence filled with at least fifeteen more commas filled with other cited examples. "Originality" seems to be not in the campaign setting that the DM runs the roleplaying game session but how the DM/GM (whatever term you prefer) steers the direction of the plot.
When I was growing up, my brother and I used to buy madlib books where there was a general short story written on the notepad but there were blanks lines in the story where you would fill in some random word or phrase that would fit on each line. After filling in all the blanks with random suggestions, someone would read the whole story and we would laugh at the final result of the story since the suggestions were ridiculous. So why did I bring up that strange little factoid about my childhood? The answer is the last sentence of the previous paragraph. The general suggestions of campaign settings are in place, the types of characters are already established, and the suggested rules of how to run the game already exist. The only real control DMs have is the madlib plot, unless you are reading out of an adventure module. For the record, I have never ran a campaign using an adventure module as a DM, but I have enjoyed adventure modules as a player. I have read through a few of them and I seem to get lost reading them for some reason. I do not have dyslexia but I seem to get lost in what is written in the passage. I prefer my madlib method of inserting stat blocks, and having a general plot idea established from plot hook to climax to conclusion. Even though players can at times throw DMs for a loop with strange incentives, interests, or strange actions ( I have heard of all sorts of strange stuff, like the almost naked dwarf that would turn their thong into an improvised sling for example, yeah, ....... you know who you are .......... ), I find that having several madlib plots strung together in the same setting creates an ADVENTURE WEB. I capitalized the last two words since that is an important concept. Set up several adventure modules / adventure ideas for long term campaigns that way players can advance their characters several levels.
In a future post though, I will discuss leveling pace when I get the article finished from the point of view of the player and the DM, but I will just move on for now and check my facebook page. Feel free to contribute any comments or questions that you may have ........ :-)
Sunday, April 1, 2012
So .................. You went crazy and decided to design your own form.
Redesigning your own player character sheet for a tabletop roleplaying game is frustrating to say the least about the endeavor. Depending on your knowledge of how to use the office program, this can be a frustrating side project to engage in since unexpected problems can arise. Yeah, I designed a character sheet as well as other forms for other purposes such as the stronghold sheet, the custom monster sheet, et cetera. Currently, I am designing an animal companion sheet and a spellbook sheet. I hit a writer's block sort of a wall regarding my spellbook sheet since I wanted to number every line of the spellbook's contents by inserting a field but I keep running into problems. I will figure something out but I hate the alternative of typing stuff up manually over 100 lines. UGH!
So why did I write up all of these forms? Well, back in 2006 approximately, I was really frustrated with the design of the character sheet in the back of the book for some reason. I think the issue I had was how they tried to cram everything onto two pages of paper. Then they did the same thing in the expanded psionics book in the back, and then in the Incarnum book as well. I wanted to combine all of these rules, but create separate sheets for each type of character.
I ended up creating a 10 page file. WOW right? A general character sheet for pages 1 & 2, a Basic Magic sheet for 3 & 4, an incarnum sheet for 5 & 6, a psionics sheet for 7 & 8, and then a cleric/paladin sheet for 9 & 10. It works very well generally, but I keep reviewing the file to find ways to tweak the form to design it to trim down certain sections or clean up the look of the sheet. Microsoft Word can be a little unforgiving at times so I try to save often.
Then I discovered the printer margin problem, so I had the help of the officemax people to resave the file in a PDF format. I was proud of my work but at the same time I felt a little bit of embarrassed. I think about 95 % proud of my work for hearing the praise from the officemax worker but 5% embarrassed for how crazy and geeky I sounded describing my work. I wasn't sure but the guy sounded like he was pretending to be fan of tabletop roleplaying.
So now I am tweaking the character sheet file as well as designing a spellbook statistics sheet and an animal companion sheet. Yeah, a little bit of a headache but in the end I think the efforts are rewarding. The game is about adding unique presentations and roleplaying afterall, so adding flair in description and design can be fun afterall. Even if printing the pages out at the Officemax makes you feel proud to be a geek. YAY!
PS: My document files are a trade secret so I won't share my files with just anyone.
So why did I write up all of these forms? Well, back in 2006 approximately, I was really frustrated with the design of the character sheet in the back of the book for some reason. I think the issue I had was how they tried to cram everything onto two pages of paper. Then they did the same thing in the expanded psionics book in the back, and then in the Incarnum book as well. I wanted to combine all of these rules, but create separate sheets for each type of character.
I ended up creating a 10 page file. WOW right? A general character sheet for pages 1 & 2, a Basic Magic sheet for 3 & 4, an incarnum sheet for 5 & 6, a psionics sheet for 7 & 8, and then a cleric/paladin sheet for 9 & 10. It works very well generally, but I keep reviewing the file to find ways to tweak the form to design it to trim down certain sections or clean up the look of the sheet. Microsoft Word can be a little unforgiving at times so I try to save often.
Then I discovered the printer margin problem, so I had the help of the officemax people to resave the file in a PDF format. I was proud of my work but at the same time I felt a little bit of embarrassed. I think about 95 % proud of my work for hearing the praise from the officemax worker but 5% embarrassed for how crazy and geeky I sounded describing my work. I wasn't sure but the guy sounded like he was pretending to be fan of tabletop roleplaying.
So now I am tweaking the character sheet file as well as designing a spellbook statistics sheet and an animal companion sheet. Yeah, a little bit of a headache but in the end I think the efforts are rewarding. The game is about adding unique presentations and roleplaying afterall, so adding flair in description and design can be fun afterall. Even if printing the pages out at the Officemax makes you feel proud to be a geek. YAY!
PS: My document files are a trade secret so I won't share my files with just anyone.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Okay, I should type up an update
So you are probably wondering whatever happened to that new year's resolution. Yeah, my computer crashed. My computer was brought down by a virus but I had a friend help me out with my laptop. You know who you are and I send you praise by saying thank you to that person. Now that I have my computer running the default windows programs, I can discuss my update for my book. I have unfortunately made very little progress on my book. Boy does my life have its highs and lows. At least I have my own place, I am still alive, and I am independent.
So I have also just hosted a quick and dirty dungeon crawl last night that lasted a couple hours and it was fun for something that took 5 minutes to prepare and spent most of the rest of the adventure improvising as a DM. Idea, quick drawn sketch, knowledge of game mechanics, and lastly improvisation ....... There you go people, That is all you need for one improvised campaign. Roleplaying can be quite fun. However, what really sucks all of the time and fun for roleplaying is preparation. Preparation is important, but if you are spending too much time preparing the roleplaying session on game night either as the DM or the player, then you are sucking all of the fun out of the pastime. Basically, you are turning the night into a studying for a test night by spending time with character creation, writing up plot points for the session (DM job), reading game mechanics, drawing up site maps (DM job), et cetera. As either a player or a DM, no one wants to sit there and be bored looking at a DM or looking at a few players to play on game night while preparations are taking place. The options on the table for everyone involved at this point if this is happening on the night you decide to roleplay are the following:
1) you wait on the people (this will only work if it takes a few minutes, otherwise everyone will be bored with waiting).
2) decide to do another activity
3) help out to speed the process along to get game night started
4) start without a few player(s) and just start the roleplaying session with the players that are ready
5) or just hang out as friends
What I personally think about this personal situation is that I like options 2 or 5 if I want to take a break from a roleplaying session. However, what happened was that one person had a prebuilt character and the other person was so skilled at knowing the character creation mechanics that he built a 5th level fighter in 10 minutes. With graph paper, I quickly drew a few rooms and then I improvised the rest. I am awesome and I am thankful that I am an imaginative person as well. The game wasn't a serious session, but it was fun for me to host anyway. I enjoy being a DM for a roleplaying session.
So I have also just hosted a quick and dirty dungeon crawl last night that lasted a couple hours and it was fun for something that took 5 minutes to prepare and spent most of the rest of the adventure improvising as a DM. Idea, quick drawn sketch, knowledge of game mechanics, and lastly improvisation ....... There you go people, That is all you need for one improvised campaign. Roleplaying can be quite fun. However, what really sucks all of the time and fun for roleplaying is preparation. Preparation is important, but if you are spending too much time preparing the roleplaying session on game night either as the DM or the player, then you are sucking all of the fun out of the pastime. Basically, you are turning the night into a studying for a test night by spending time with character creation, writing up plot points for the session (DM job), reading game mechanics, drawing up site maps (DM job), et cetera. As either a player or a DM, no one wants to sit there and be bored looking at a DM or looking at a few players to play on game night while preparations are taking place. The options on the table for everyone involved at this point if this is happening on the night you decide to roleplay are the following:
1) you wait on the people (this will only work if it takes a few minutes, otherwise everyone will be bored with waiting).
2) decide to do another activity
3) help out to speed the process along to get game night started
4) start without a few player(s) and just start the roleplaying session with the players that are ready
5) or just hang out as friends
What I personally think about this personal situation is that I like options 2 or 5 if I want to take a break from a roleplaying session. However, what happened was that one person had a prebuilt character and the other person was so skilled at knowing the character creation mechanics that he built a 5th level fighter in 10 minutes. With graph paper, I quickly drew a few rooms and then I improvised the rest. I am awesome and I am thankful that I am an imaginative person as well. The game wasn't a serious session, but it was fun for me to host anyway. I enjoy being a DM for a roleplaying session.
Friday, January 27, 2012
My progress writing a bit of fan fiction ............
Okay, an update on how far I have progressed on writing fan fiction of planescape. So after writing on regular filler paper for about a few pages by hand, I decided to type out my work on the microsoft word program single spaced in 10 point font. Wow! Something is lost in translation in space when you write the information on a piece of paper. This brings me back to my early high school days when I was writing research papers and then I was typing up the information on a computer. I am a reasonably skilled typist but my progress truly feels dismal after seeing this information on a computer screen hardly taking up any space at all. I was really glad I decided to take a break from typing for now. Just like what Confucious said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.". As long as I keep trying, I will triumph and I will get this written. I am sure that I will get chapter one finished within two weeks at this pace.
After reviewing this section, I would bet that you are wondering why am I even bothering writing this bit of fan fiction at all. One of my new year's resolutions was that I try to discover a creative outlet to express myself. After running several campaigns as a DM and then being a player, I always wanted to record our progress of our campaigns with some measure of posterity. I marginally accomplished that with my campaign notes, diagrams, architectual schmatics of dungeons, and character sheets. All that is left of my airship campaign is a Rob Carlos drawing (which looks awesome by the way, Thanks Rob Carlos, I want to hang up this picture somewhere in my apartment), a few of my notes, an architectual drawing of the airship, some character sheets, and some quickly sprawled out dungeon drawings. A PILE OF PAPERS in sheet protectors that is basically forgotten about by everyone but me. A tiny part of me wishes the group would revisit the campaign again but I know that the group became bored of the campaign relatively fast and that David's dragonlance campaign is what needs to be run for now. What matters is the fun to be had by the group, but I was thinking that I have some creative spark that should be expressed on paper. Maybe I have always had this creative spark and I haven't really thought about that until I realized that some of my campaign ideas need to be told in story mode. Will I be able to incorporate past campaigns into the fan fiction story that I am writing? I really don't know, but it will be fun to try to find out by writing out the story in my outlines and rough draft.
After reviewing this section, I would bet that you are wondering why am I even bothering writing this bit of fan fiction at all. One of my new year's resolutions was that I try to discover a creative outlet to express myself. After running several campaigns as a DM and then being a player, I always wanted to record our progress of our campaigns with some measure of posterity. I marginally accomplished that with my campaign notes, diagrams, architectual schmatics of dungeons, and character sheets. All that is left of my airship campaign is a Rob Carlos drawing (which looks awesome by the way, Thanks Rob Carlos, I want to hang up this picture somewhere in my apartment), a few of my notes, an architectual drawing of the airship, some character sheets, and some quickly sprawled out dungeon drawings. A PILE OF PAPERS in sheet protectors that is basically forgotten about by everyone but me. A tiny part of me wishes the group would revisit the campaign again but I know that the group became bored of the campaign relatively fast and that David's dragonlance campaign is what needs to be run for now. What matters is the fun to be had by the group, but I was thinking that I have some creative spark that should be expressed on paper. Maybe I have always had this creative spark and I haven't really thought about that until I realized that some of my campaign ideas need to be told in story mode. Will I be able to incorporate past campaigns into the fan fiction story that I am writing? I really don't know, but it will be fun to try to find out by writing out the story in my outlines and rough draft.
Friday, December 23, 2011
It has been forever since I have last posted, I will try to post more often next year, I promise
Hi there anonymous fans of me if they exist! I know it has been a while since I have posted on this blog. It has also been several weeks since our group has even roleplayed since everyone is preoccupied with the holidays. I am fine with that because I am sure we will go back to what we were doing before the holiday events began. I promise I will keep writing in this blog so bear with me.
Lately, I have had ideas to write a hobby novel about a guy that will unwittingly travel the planes, and I am in a Dragonlance campaign that I am a player with a cleric that has a cooking hobby. I haven't done much with that character though because I had a noble pc character that died from another pc who kept shooting arrows at him on accident using a human bane composite shortbow (the bow was an intelligent racist item that kept wanting to kill humans, so whenever Israel, the player, rolled a 1 the arrow kepted aiming at my character). I took the pc character death in stride and just quickly drafted another character. Some people can really feel invested in a character and when they die players can feel quite broken up about their character dying. However, players should just take it in stride though.
At the moment, I have an ambition of writing a hobby novel and hopefully I will have plenty to write about the fiction fantasy topic. However, I will need to show dedication on the subject by continuing to write in this blog as well.
Lately, I have had ideas to write a hobby novel about a guy that will unwittingly travel the planes, and I am in a Dragonlance campaign that I am a player with a cleric that has a cooking hobby. I haven't done much with that character though because I had a noble pc character that died from another pc who kept shooting arrows at him on accident using a human bane composite shortbow (the bow was an intelligent racist item that kept wanting to kill humans, so whenever Israel, the player, rolled a 1 the arrow kepted aiming at my character). I took the pc character death in stride and just quickly drafted another character. Some people can really feel invested in a character and when they die players can feel quite broken up about their character dying. However, players should just take it in stride though.
At the moment, I have an ambition of writing a hobby novel and hopefully I will have plenty to write about the fiction fantasy topic. However, I will need to show dedication on the subject by continuing to write in this blog as well.
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