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I guess it's been a rather busy month, as far as role playing goes. Actually, come to think of it, it's been a flat-out busy month. To think that I thought I'd have all this free time after the semester ended. Ha!
Anyway, RP stuff. I dropped one of my Saturday games. Good GM, but the group was somewhat lacking and I wasn't enjoying it anymore. Plus I wanted more time, as my "just a few hours every Sunday" game turned into "well, we'll roleplay for a few hours, and we'll have dinner and watch movies and hang out."
Meanwhile, my other Saturday game moved. Remember when we moved to the game store, and it was pretty cool? Well, it went downhill. The promise of "Oh yeah, I usually stay late after the store closes to play EverQuest, you guys can stay, too" turned into "Hey guys, I want to close the store half an hour early tonight." The store was always dirty and dimly lit, the LAN parties too loud, the couches kind of yucky, and the A/C non-existent. Half the time when you wanted to buy something, you had to pull an employee away from their game to ring you up. And their selection kind of sucked, unless you wanted Star Wars action figures.
So after much nagging from my Dad and brother, Chris and I went down to a newish gaming shop. We picked up a couple of L5R books, had a chat with the owner, and generally liked the vibe. Chris told our GM, who checked it out and found out they had room for our gaming group. Despite the fact that it was only 2 days until our next game, he moved right away.
We've only had one session there so far, but it went pretty well. The store was a lot cleaner, brighter and more comfortable. They close even earlier than the old store, but we decided that we liked them so much that we'll start 2 hours earlier. Hopefully things will continue to go well there.
I started GMing again, a Legend of the Five Rings game for my husband. L5R is a pretty fun game, I enjoy the samurai culture and the variety of characters. What I don't enjoy is the quality of the books. Sure, they're printed on nice shiny paper and have beautiful illustrations, but the writing... ugh. Typos and grammatical errors abound, up to and including sentences that just end with several words missing.
And heaven help you if you're a Unicorn. You see, the Unicorn clan is the strongest cavalry in the Empire. They have these huge warhorses and lots of techniques designed to aid them in mounted combat. The problem? There are no statistics for horses in the entire book. None at all. We had to use a D&D book to calculate how far our group could ride in a day. Forget having combat stats. The good news is, since you don't have hit points for your horse, it can never die. The bad news is, since you don't have attacks for it, it doesn't do much in combat. You'd think maybe this would be in the errata on their website. Nope, I checked. The best I've been able to do is get my friend who used to run 2nd Edition L5R for us to type up the 2nd ed stats so I have something to work from.
All griping aside, L5R does still have a lot going for it. I'm running a social game, and the rules for social situations are just as rich and varied as the combat situations. I really hate running combat, so it's nice to be able to use a system that encourages social play. Plus it was really easy. for me to whip up an entire notebook of NPCs. Making characters is always my favorite part of GMing.
All good things must come to an end, and soon our little mid-week EarthDawn game will draw to a close. If, of course, we can ever get everyone together again. Our most recent session found my character running through the city of Great Thera in nothing but a g-string. Being an illusionist, she hastily disguised herself as a male ork in a pair of shorts. I feel so bad for the poor woman on the street who saw through the shorts illusion, but not the ork illusion.
Our next session will be our last. I don't know if we'll continue the mid-week game beyond that. I've been petitioning for EarthDawn to be replaced by Call of Cthulhu, and Alex has been begging for Mage. Of course, Chris is the only one actually willing to GM anything and he doesn't seem too enthusiastic.
I suppose I would be remiss in my duty as a roleplaying columnist if I did not mention the dire straights that Palladium is in. Details are sketchy due to legal considerations, but apparently someone did something bad and Palladium is on the verge of bankruptcy. Now, Palladium is not my favorite game company. I've played a few Rifts game and I haven't enjoyed it nearly as much as I have most other systems. I did have some fun in the last session of our Sunday Rifts game when my temporal wizard pulled of a diamond heist, though. And most of my gaming friends are or have in the past been big Rifts junkies.
That said, I hate to see any gaming company go under. The people at Palladium seem pretty cool and I wouldn't want to see anyone's hopes, dreams, and years of work go down the drain. There are many ways you can help Palladium, including buying the special print they're selling, buying books (my favorite on-line retailer www.stiggybaby.com has been running a sale on their books AND giving you extra entries in their monthly gift certificate drawing), and much more.
More and more our world is turning into Shadowrun, with megacorps and big boxes. Let's help the little guys stay afloat for as long as we can, shall we? I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world where Wizards of the Coast is the only game company!
I'll leave you with that grim thought . . .
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