RPGaDay Challenge 2022 - Day 3

 

This month, indeed this entire year, is dedicated to the fact that I am celebrating 45 years of being part of the Tabletop Role Playing Game hobby, having first played Basic Dungeons & Dragons at the age of eight on August 25th, 1977.

I've told this story before so I won't go over it again here. Instead check out my Secret Origins:

Secret Origins - Part I

Secret Origins - Part II

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Barking Alien

So far this year's question based prompts are fairly easy, though not super engaging as of yet. I've looked ahead though and there are some good ones on the horizon. 

RPGaDay Challenge 2022 - Day 2

Any game that you can confidently run and easily explain to a new player, that they find interesting and want to try, makes for a great introductory RPG.

My personal recommendations is to start off with something the new player enjoys. Are they into the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Introduce them to the hobby with a rules-medium Supers game. Do they like Science Fiction? Perhaps they should begin with classic Traveller or Star Trek Adventures. The idea is to get the ball rolling with a title or genre that will appeal to them so part of the hurdle of learning RPGs, the investment of emotion and mental energy, is already taken care of.

It is much easier to teach someone something they want to learn. 

I don't recommend starting with Dungeons and Dragons these days because it gives the impression its the only game in town. Those interesting in RPGs are going to hear about or already know D&D so start them off with something else so they get better exposure from the get go. 

As noted briefly above, I recommend rules-lite to rules-medium game for the initial introduction. Start simple, let the person getting into gaming process all the components and then gradually add complexity. This is how nearly every hobby works. It also doesn't scare or intimidate a newcomer with have to go through three textbooks and material just to play a game. Let them enjoy themselves first and if they do they'll likely want to dig into the deeper stuff later. 

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I Just Want to Celebrate

Welcome to August and what is intended to be the height of my celebration of 45 years in the Tabletop RPG hobby.

Art by Midjourney, AI Image Generator

Prompts: Barking Alien, 45th Anniversary, Celebration, Green Fireworks

The plan was to make the whole year about this; to commemorate, honor, and in some ways memorialize that which has given me an outlet for creative expression and kept me sane through the decades. 

Unfortunately, I feel as if I've fallen far short of that goal up to this point. Even this post in coming late to the party.

I haven't had much to say lately on the past, present, or future of my gaming. Nothing that I feel warrants a post in my opinion. I'm not enthused or inspired to recount past successes, discuss current goals, or postulate what the next 45 years will be like. Will there even be another 45 years?

To that I will say, "Yes, definitely". I love TRPGs. I love the idea of them, a well executed campaign, and I will likely continue to do so far into my twilight years. Am I enjoying it as much as I have in the past? Well...not always. The frustrations sometimes outweigh the fun but I have to believe that the best things are yet to come. 

To that end...

This month will be what it was intended to be, a celebration of my time as a gamer. In addition to fulfilling the 2022 RPGaDay Challenge for another year, I will be posting some rather personal entries about people, events, and ideas that have impacted my friends and/or myself over my 45 years of slinging dice and using funny voices. 

Also, don't be surprised if you see a few posts on The Orville, specifically Season 3: New Horizons, as the season finale airs tomorrow, August 4th, 2022, at 12 am (on the East Coast of the USA). 

Please raise a glass of your favorite adult beverage and join in the festivities.

Better late than never.

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My apologies that this too is late in coming...

Anyone familiar with Science Fiction, Television, and American History knows by now that we lost a legend last week with the passing of the one and only Nichelle (Grace Dell) Nichols. Most well known for her role in the original Star Trek series and films at Nyota Uhura, the actress, singer, dancer, and advocate for the American Space Program was a key figure in the induction of woman and people of color into the ranks of the NASA's Astronauts. She was an inspiration and a multi-talented woman of class, conviction, and compassion. 

Ms. Nichols, you will be sorely missed and fondly remembered. 

RPGaDay Challenge 2022 - Day 1

 

There is really only one person I can think of but its unlikely to happen for various reasons and that would be my nephew.

There was a time I wished I had a kid of my own to pass on all my geeky interests to but as that never came to pass I figured my nephew might want to try TRPGs when he was old enough and if he were into fandom things. 

While he is - especially Star Wars - he's not into it at the level where I'd think of him as a geek. He does love Star Wars, Anime, and video games but he's more a consumer type than a creative one. That may not be true or a fair assessment but that's how he comes off. 

I just don't think he'd be interested in it and definitely not to the level I am. He has so many interests and activities in his life already and it takes time to learn rules, schedule games, and find time to play. I also don't think his Mom (my sister) would want him even more distracted from responsibilities and school work. He is definitely the easily distracted type. Been there, lived that, so I totally understand. 

In the end, I will introduce to anyone I think would really like it but I am not targeting anyone in particular. Come one, come all.

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RPGaDay 2022 - Nine and Forty-Five

August is a month away and you know what that means don't you? You don't? Oh. My bad. Totally my fault so I absolutely get it.

I've been making a really big deal about this year being my 45th Anniversary in the TRPG hobby and yet I've done jack to really make it special. My repeated intention of doing more posts and posts of a more meaningful nature has yet to be effectively expressed.

I am experiencing a sort of sidelong burnout. I don't lack ideas or the desire to talk about them but for some reason I can't get excited enough or motivated enough to bring my ideas to 'print'. I have thoughts. I want to blog about them. And then...I don't. I get tired from work, frustrated by my own perfectionism, and quickly lose interest in the subject at hand in favor of another, usually unrelated, subject. 

So what's an RPG Blogger to do? Well...it is August and every August we have...

The RPGaDay Challenge!

...to look forward to. Now in it's 9th year, the RPGaDay Challenge is a thing I enjoy doing, though I completely admit to sometimes doing it almost ironically. I often have a snarky, almost mocking attitude towards the questions as they seem, IMHO, to vary between too vague and too specific. This makes them hard to answer as written.

Take this years list posted above. Prompt #12, 'Why did you start RPing?' is a great question and one I'd be very interested in both reading from others and writing an answer to. Questions 22 through 27 don't warrant separate posts; why ask multiple inquires on a single character over the course of six days? It's RPGaDay but one could easy make those six into one post. Number 31, the last of them, can be responded to with a single line with a date. How is that a blog post, let alone what some participants do such as a podcast episode or a YouTube video?

Regardless of the quirky nature of the RPGaDay (and this year doesn't disappoint on quirkiness), I am going to have at it as a way to get my motor up and running. Hopefully it will be interspersed with some other posts I've wanted to get to.

We shall see.

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