Question of the Day

Wow. How did it go? What resurrection spells did you use to revive it?

The longest pause I had a game survive was about 45 days. I had to stop GMing it due to health reasons and when I got better I asked if the players wanted to continue. So we took from where we left off and the game went for three more years with everyone resolving their characters' arcs. But in my experience it was more of an exception than a rule. Most games that stalled were clinically dead after two weeks of inactivity and were pronounced dead in about a month. I played in a few games where GM would vanish for about 20 days and come back only to find out that half of the players left due to inactivity. Then those games were either cancelled altogether by GM, or turned into one or two solo-branches.

It's a multi-series / part game that's about 30 years old, and has run off and on over mulitple (very talented, and sometimes very dedicated) groups. We traversed multiple formats and systems, going from Champions to Silver Age Sentinels to M&M to Supers!, and from PBeM to groovygamers.com, phphouse.com, rpol.net, and finally Tavern Keeper. Haven't fired up the finish to a years-old arc yet here on GP, but I will. Oh, I will!

Question: Do you have friends? How do you know they are really your friends?

Yes. Several. I know because we prioritize spending quality time together, on both sides. We enjoy each other's company and find value in time spent together. We share hobbies that we can do together or independently. Plus, we share GIFs.

Those with whom I share a virtual friendship are similar. We share values and discuss these, we value spending time together in games or when chatting. We make efforts to reach out to one another. We also share GIFs, but also other things we know the other would appreciate or that we hope they appreciate.

In writing this, I realize that intentionality is a big part of how I know.

I have friends, and I have trusted friends. I have plenty of friends, but trusted friends —people who, if I told them I was journeying into hell, would grab a backpack and come with me —are few and far between. I know that my friends are my friends because I meet with them weekly for our games, where we also share meals, news, and socialization. I trust these people enough to take off the mask and be myself around them. I would lend (and have lent) them money. But would they follow me on a suicide mission? Most of them would not. I know who would.

I'm very lucky to have some very close friends. I'd say they fall into the "found family" category. We do things for each other that wouldn't do for other people and most importantly, we don't keep tabs.

I was invited to play by a fella that dm’ed my gal since I work offshore and can’t make regular games. A pity since I enjoy playing and I am a forever dm since the early 80’s yes Ad&d and Dnd red box set. I rarely if ever get to be a player so it was nice. The game quickly died out due to the scheduling monster.
So I gathered a few of my friends that only get together a couple of times a year to play magic and dnd. I proposed this site to help us all stay more in touch. They were hesitant at first and agreed to try it. I used a world that I had working my regular in person gaming. And made it a living breathing thing. If my other players did something in the world, it stuck and the other games that took place in said world were affected by it. They lost resources or were inadvertently affected by shipping lanes being embargoed due to choices that were made elsewhere were. The master villian is still causing the world trouble for the "greater good". Long story short. We have been playing on this format for 3 years now. The same Champaign. And it has allowed us to keep in better contact with each other. So thanks GP. Even though your roller hates me…

I've heard it told that a good friend will help you move. A great friend will help you move a body. I have at least a few of the first kind. Luckily I've never been in a position to find out just how great they are. Though I'm not at good at socializing as when I was younger.

My local gaming group is all close friends I have gamed with since the 90s and when I got married it was natural to find both best man and toastmaster among them. When we are able to meet 1-2 times a month we spend as much time gossiping and catching up on whatever new diagnosis we've received as we do gaming. I have a few good friends outside of the gaming group but don't have as many chances to socialize with them (in fact I'm helping one of them move next weekend).

And really great friends don’t ask you to help them move!

Yup. You offer, without them needing to ask.

What are some of the most memorable moments from your games? The ones that stick in your memory, and you bring them up over a round of drinks and good company.

For me, one of the most memorable was when I was running House of Strahd in 2e. The party encountered Strahd for the first time and, predictably, the cleric tried to turn him. He failed, but instead of just telling him that the attempt failed, I had Strahd grab his silver holy symbol over the priest's hand. It began to melt and, with molten silver streaming down their arms, Strahd said, "Your god has no power here! Here, I am god!" They had a lot more respect for Strahd after that. He was no longer "just another vampire."

In 2014, when fifth edition came out, I decided to "get the band back together." I reached out to my friends from high school and college that I played RPGs with in the late 80s and 90s and offered to run some D&D for them. We were scattered across the country, but we all figured out roll20 and started with lost mines of phandelver.

From there, I spun it out into a custom campaign based around the choices they had made and their back stories. Over about five years, we went from level one all the way up to level 20. As the adventure progressed, the big bad emerged, and they eventually learned that it was one of the character’s long lost father. The father tried to turn the son to betray the rest of the party.

And in the final battle, at level 20, with appearances from all their favorite NPC’s, they faced off with him and his minions. As the fight went on, the father again entreated the son to join him. He finally asked so, what do you say? And the character, a bard, said one word. Die. And cast power word kill. The big bad had 99 hit points left. And if you know that spell, 100 hit points or less means death with no save. It was a truly epic conclusion to a great campaign. Here’s a screen shot of that moment from Roll20:



Afterwards, I commissioned a piece representing the party and their favorite NPC’s. Here it is:

It's not the best game I played, but certainly top three. I was playing a Twi-lek Jedi in a Star Wars: Force and Destiny game with some people I met over google hangouts. One of the PCs that I enjoyed both in game and out disappeared and we decided to find out why. After some investigation, we found his body in a dumpster carved up and long dead. For the first time since I started the hobby. I felt a strong emotional reaction to the situation. Anger towards the people that did this to my brother, and sadness at the loss. We gathered his remains and went about spending the rest of the session performing a proper funeral. I'm fairly certain everyone, including the GM, had a few manly tears to shed that night. That was the point where I knew roleplaying wasn't going to be a passing hobby for me. I pretty much pursue moments like that whenever I play now. I wish I could say it's common, but I've only had a few games get there. Everyone plays for different reasons. I play to find those moments where I get that spark of emotion that draws me into the game like nothing else.

What's the first movie you remember seeing where you thought "I am definitely too young for this"?
I was definitely still single digits when our uncle decided my little sister and I should see . .

I remember being about ten or eleven and my parents were going out with some friends so they let us rent some movies. They did not supervise my selections. I was the oldest by about five years.

Purple Rain, Ninja 3: The Domination, and don't remember the third but I think it was more age appropriate.

my friend's father rented Conan the Barbarian for his birthday. I think we were 10.
I remember him jumping up and fast forwarding through the nudie bits, but the bloodletting was all good

I was 11 or 12 when my aunt took my cousin and me to a double feature at the Drive-in. It was one of those drive-ins with two screens at opposite ends and the concession stand in the middle. The first movie up? David Cronenberg's The Fly! The beginning is a bit slow, and my aunt fell asleep, and my cousin and I watched the whole thing. So that was a bit traumatizing. The second movie was Maximum Overdrive, which was so bad, that my cousin and I turned around and watched the movie on the other screen through the back window (with no sound of course, because our speaker was playing Maximum Overdrive). And on the other screen? Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

When I was young my aunt used to run a video rental store that went belly up. Since my parents had a pretty big house we ended up with a box full of old vhs tapes. They were all without boxes so very little indication what each movie contained. My parents worked odd hours (they ran a night club/restaurant) so I was often on my own after school. I had a tendancy to just pick a video tape at random and watch and one day I put on Rambo First Blood. I was 7 at the time. I also watched the old IT mini series around the same time.

There have been films I have considered probably* too scary to watch for me (the one I can remember is Hellraiser, glmipses of which I have seen in some TV programme that showed pieces of films, their ratings in charts, and brief summaries/reviews), but I don't recall ever thinking it's due to age - in fact I concluded that tying such things to age was fundamentally unjust/discriminatory pretty early on (though not sure if before or after seeing that programme).

* == I did not get the opportunity watch Hellraiser until . . . maybe my 20s, not sure.

Heavy Metal. Saw it on HBO when I was about 15. My parents were very lenient when it came to nudity (I'd been reading my father's girlie mags since about age 12), but I remember feeling very naughty watching it for the first time. The scene in the airplane graveyard frightened me, but the most traumatic moment I ever had from a movie came when I was watching Alien on home video. It was near Christmas, and my brother and I were sequestered in our room while my parents wrapped gifts. I was watching the movie with a big bowl of popcorn on my lap. At the exact moment that the facehugger jumps out of the egg, the power transformer across the street blew with a huge bang. The lights went out, and popcorn went everywhere! We were months getting all the popcorn out of that room! In fact, I think when we moved about eight months later, we were still finding pieces.