Roleplay Life

I know I was supposed to post from Dundracon ‘09, but l was unable to attend. On that first day, Friday the 13th, my wife gave birth to my daughter. While she’s 6 weeks early, she’s doing pretty well, and will get to come home soon.

Needless to say, the convention was right out of the question. However, there were a few convention experiences I did have during that weekend -

• Staying up weird hours.
• Sleeping in a chair.
• Paying too much for food cause you don’t want to/can’t leave the building.
• Running into people you used to know (true story - my wife knew one of her nurses from an after school activity)
• Making new friends.

When I found out I was going to be a parent, I looked for posts and articles by other gaming parents. One blog I found was Wired’s Geek Dad. He has posts on teaching kids to game, a starter guide for gaming with your kids, and setting up a gaming group with your kids. I also got some good advice from the meetup group I’m a member of on gaming and parenting, which I will share. I hope those of you who regularly read this blog and have kids share some of your best pieces of advice with us in the comment section.

(bonus points if you can name the artist)

I was begining to think gaming had lost it’s appeal to me. I’d go to games, and I wouldn’t have much fun. Turns out that it wasn’t what I was playing, but with who. Sometimes we have friends we enjoy hanging out with, but when it comes to that one activity, hanging out becomes something of a chore.

It wasn’t until I got into this one group, and the one trouble making player left, that I realized it wasn’t what I was playing but who I was playing with. Suddenly, the magic was back, things clicked, and all was good. I had got my groove back.

Fast forward to today, suddenly I found myself back in a familiar scenario. Through a chain of friendships, one player who I really didn’t enjoy playing with, was about to join my group. I tried to be okay with it, but in the end, I was only stressing out my self. I should have been honest from the start, and put my foot down and said “No.” My attempts to not hurt anyone’s feelings ended up blowing up in my face.

Sometimes we need to remember, just because we enjoy hanging out with someone doesn’t mean that we’ll have a great time gaming. I have a great time hanging out with my mom, but I really don’t think a game of GURPS would as fun with her. And because we don’t want to game with someone doesn’t mean that we hate them. Just means we want different things from a game.

Need to name a character? Do what I do… start a blog and pick names from spam comments you get.

One product I’ve used is Gary Gygax’s Extraordinary Book of Names by Troll Lord Games. I picked it up a couple of Dundracons ago (time to register folks, I have) from the Troll Lord Games guys. They cut me a good deal on a set of books. It has lists of names grouped by origin, and gives ideas for naming groups or towns.

There are name generating sites online as well. I usually just google for random name generators, and search through the results.

A tip for GMs, keep a list of random names with you during your game for NPCs. This is helpful for when players start talking to random NPCs. The act of looking at your notes for the name can give the impression that the person they’re talking to is someone important. It can also turn a random NPC into an interesting recurring extra. Most of my favorite extras in my Buffy game came from random NPCs.