|
September 2005
Holy cow, is August over already? While I'm certainly looking forward to the Labor Day weekend, I'm not sure I've quite caught up with everything that was supposed to happen this past month.
Since the deadline for this month's column is looming and editors really hate to hear such things as "I have writer's block this month and don't know what to write", I'll take a cue from my son-in-law and use the old "Top Ten" list format to cover up a distinct lack of creative juices this month. Since I'm an editor myself on a local club newsletter, I empathize with Sheryl on those last minute or missing submissions. Fortunately, one of the columns I'm waiting for is from the President of the club, so if anyone wants to get testy that I didn't have the newsletter in the mail by today, I can simply smile innocently and tell them what I was waiting for.
While I'm waiting, I'd like to share my top ten signs that you won't last long in a game.
- You treat every life-or-death decision in game like a life-or-death decision in real life, and spend hours vacillating over what to do before you actually try anything. By the time you finally decide to open that door in the dungeon, everyone else in your party is already back in town spending their loot.
- You treat every life-or-death decision in game like a joke. Your fellow adventurers are discussing the best way to proceed while you just laugh and throw open the trapped chest, killing everyone in the room. You'll probably even believe that your group's cleric had only enough mana to resurrect everyone but you.
- You can remember precisely what every character in your party said and did in last week's gaming session, but you forgot that it was your turn to bring the pizza and beer this week even though the GM called and reminded you that same afternoon. Oddly enough, every other week you can remember whose turn it was to bring the munchies, and are quite vocal in your criticisms if they do not choose the right toppings for the pizza.
- Your favorite meal before gaming is from the local greasy burrito stand. You also figure that since it's a perfectly natural and normal thing that happens to everyone, your fellow gamers shouldn't mind your copious flatulence at all. In fact, they should find it as amusing as you do.
- You spend inordinate amounts of time developing your charisma just so you can convince busty tavern wenches to indulge in weird intimate practices with you, which you proceed to describe in vulgar detail to everyone else around you (including the GM's grandmother).
- You ask the GM's grandmother if she'd like to go out for a beer after the gaming session is over and discuss trying some of those practices in real life. You then get offended when she calls you a lightweight and tells you that you couldn't keep up with her anyway.
- You get really offended when the GM's grandmother rolls up a character and proceeds to kick your character's butt all the way from this town to the next. And back. Twice.
- You never bring a player's manual or rule book to the gaming session, but you have 592 assorted dice, which you spend 10 minutes or more before each die roll selecting which ones will give you the best chance for the result you want.
- You don't have any dice, but you bring every rule book ever written for the game you're playing so that you can double-check and cross-reference everything the GM decides to be sure the game is being run properly. It may take your party 3 hours just to get out of town, but hey, at least you'll all know you did so in complete conformance to the rules.
And my #1 sign you won't last long in a game . . .
- (Drum roll, please . . . or was that dice roll? I can never keep that straight . . . ) When the GM tells you that something you did was against the rules, you call the GM a "Mofo" and tell him that rules are for (insert derogatory term of your choice here). Act surprised when the GM doesn't agree.
Join us again in October when hopefully I'll have something intelligent to write about.
Naw . . . Sheryl never told me that writing intelligently was required for the job . . .
|