Right now I’m only occasionally reading gaming forums like Story Games and The Forge,  I haven’t bought a new game in more than a year, the RPG convention I helped run (TBR) has closed up shop, and I’m in one sporadic D&D3.5 game.  That doesn’t leave me with a lot to post about, which is probably why it’s been almost a year since my last entry.

While it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that I might start posting again in the future, for now I’m just leaving all of this up as an archive, with comments closed (or soon closing).  If you’d really like to offer a comment on something, just drop me an email.

Thanks for reading!

This is a forum for discussion of tabletop roleplaying games. It is not, by design, a standard forum for general use; for that, visit RPGnet or theRPGsite or ENworld. GameCraft has a mission and a target: To become the best place to refine play from the ground up.

In other words, it’s about making play better, rather than being about game design.

And I haven’t bought (or played) any new games for a while.

Which doesn’t leave me with much that I’m inspired to post about.

Which is why I haven’t been posting lately.

Hopefully this will change at some point.

Name 12 characters you have played in RPGs, before looking at the questions that follow. List your characters numbered 1 to 12, with the name of the RPG you played them in. Once you’ve picked your 12 characters, look at the questions and answer accordingly. (No peeking until you’ve picked your characters!) Put your answers behind a cut.

1. Jerrym (Amber Diceless RPG)
2. Captain Wesley Hobart (ADRPG variant)
3. Alishish “The Damned” Rajish (fantasy heartbreaker)
4. Alexander Kovalev (GURPS Fatherland)
5. Greunthard (GURPS Discworld)
6. Marcellus Hamlin (D&D 3.5)
7. Brother Virgil (Dogs in the Vineyard)
8. Amir bin Muhammad bin Ibrahim bin Nasir bin Safwan Al-Majid (aka The Mad Arab) (ADRPG variant)
9. Alvaro Lopez (ADRPG variant)
10. Tony Chen (aka Fat Chen) (ADRPG variant)
11. Garrinton (Timemaster/GURPS hybrid)
12. Benedict Pons (ADRPG variant)

1) Who would make a better college professor: 6 (Marcellus), or 11 (Garrinton)?

Anyone would make a better college professor than Garrinton, even Marcellus.

2) Do you think 2 (Wesley) is hot? How hot?

Yes, and very. I mean, c’mon, he’s a dashing privateer!

3) 12 (Benedict Pons) sends 8 (Amir) on a mission. What is it, and does it succeed?

Their mission is to escape from Amir’s wives. They fail, as there is no escape.

4) What is, or would be, 9 (Alvaro)’s favorite book?

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, translated into Portuguese

5) Would it make more sense for 2 (Wesley) to swear fealty to 6 (Marcellus), or the other way around?

Let’s see, Marcellus may be the Chosen of a goddess, but Wesley is a privateer captain and a crime lord, so I think he’d be the one in charge.

6) For some reason, 5 (Gruenthard) is looking for a room-mate. Should they share a studio apartment with 9 (Alvaro), or 10 (Tony)?

Alvaro, as I think he’d be somewhat less likely to just kill Gruenthard than Tony would.

7) 2 (Wesley), 7 (Virgil), and 12 (Benedict) have dinner together. Where do they go, and what do they discuss?

Together? Wesley? And Brother Virgil?! This is a bad idea, and any discussion would have to center around how Wesley should end his sinning ways. Benedict would just sit there and study them both.

8) 3 (Alishish) challenges 10 (Tony)to a duel. What happens?

As Alishish approached with his huge, glowing scythe, Tony would just shoot him in the face.

9) If 1 (Jerrym) stole 8 (Amir)’s most precious possession, how would they get it back?

No matter what Amir did, his wives would return to him. And Jerrym wouldn’t even try to stop them.

10) Suggest a title for a story in which 7 (Virgil) and 12 (Benedict Pons) both attain what they most desire.

Err…uhhh…pass.

11) What kind of plot device would you use if you wanted 4 (Alexander) and 1 (Jerrym) to work together?

A common enemy.

12) If 7 (Virgil) visited you for the weekend, how would you get along?

Nope. He’s a missionary with a gun, and I’m godless.

13) If you could command 3 (Alishish) to perform any one task or service for you, what would it be?

All he’d be good at is killing someone, so that’d be the task.

14) Does anyone on your friends list resemble 11 (Garrinton) (either in appearance or personality)?

Yikes.

15) If 2 (Wesley) had to choose sides between 4 (Alexander) and 5 (Greunthard), which would it be?

Probably Gruenthard, since he’s easier to understand and also the definite underdog.

16) What might 10 (Tony) shout while charging into battle?

Something simple, like “Die!” Only in Cantonese.

17) If you chose a song to represent 8 (Amir), which song would you choose?

“Stand by your Man”

18) 1 (Jerrym), 6 (Marcellus), and 12 (Benedict) are having dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. There is only one scallion pancake left, and they all reach for it at the same time. Who gets to eat it?

Marcellus, because he’s the lucky one.

19) What might be a good pick-up line for 2 (Wesley) to use on 10 (Tony)?

Pass again.

20) What would 5 (Gruenthard) most likely be arrested for?

Hacking people up with a magic sword.

21) What is 6 (Marcellus)’s secret?

He has magic pants. No, wait, that’s not a secret.

22) If 11 (Garrinton) and 9 (Alvaro) were racing to a destination, who would get there first?

Garrinton, as he’d be driving something that flew.

23) If you had to walk home through a bad neighborhood late at night, would you feel safer in the company of 7 (Virgil) or 8 (Amir)?

Either one would be a fine protector, but Amir would be less of a threat to me.

24) 1 (Jerrym) and 9 (Alvaro) reluctantly team up to save the world from the threat posed by 4 (Alexander)’s sinister secret organization. 11 (Garrinton) volunteers to help them, but it is later discovered that he/she is actually a spy for 4 (Alexander). Meanwhile, 4 (Alexander) has kidnapped 12 (Benedict) in an attempt to force their surrender. Following the wise advice of 5 (Gruenthard), they seek out 3 (Alishish), who gives them what they need to complete their quest. What title would you give this fic?

“Two Swords Against The Red Menace”

Of course, I’ve realized that this meme is really only entertaining to people who know who some of the characters are, or at least can infer things about them from the games they came from.

But the Forge isn’t their vision. It’s ours, just Clinton and me. And not only that, Clinton and I (I keep saying both of us because we talk about this stuff, and I’m representing those talks right now) want to keep the Forge’s function right where it started – finding people in the canebrake, struggling with their designs, or having produced an amazing design but not knowing what to do with it. We like it working best and most for the guys with a crappy Geocities website and a neat game idea, who aren’t quite sure how the internet can help them further.

As long as the Forge lasts, it serves those guys first, and that same spirit/attitude of theirs which both Clinton and I individually try to preserve in ourselves. That’s why it is not, and will never be, an imprint of the kind that would force membership or identity of any sort on someone just considering or along-the-way of developing their own game and perhaps company.

It might be the single most lucid version of his ideas that I’ve seen, and he even manages to get through it without once saying something that makes me think he needs a thwap upside the head.

On a somewhat related note, Ron’s started a thread over on the Forge for what he’s calling the Forge retrospective project. The basic idea is that people choose a limited period from the Forge’s history, summarize it as best they can, and then comment on things that they find especially interesting or surprising. Given that one of the problems I’ve always had with the Forge is the volume of material that goes by, I’m hoping that people end up posting about some interesting things I might have missed.

The Gamechef game-design competition
Irish games convention charity auctions
Magic the Gathering, 9th edition (Wizards of the Coast)
Perplex City (Mind Candy Ltd)
Spycraft 2.0 by Patrick Kapera, et al (Alderac Entertainment Group)
Twilight Struggle by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews (GMT Games)

I’m not really sure how you can compare a game design contest to a collectible card game to a charity auction, so I have no idea at all which of the nominees is likely to win, but I still think it’s pretty cool that Game Chef made the list.

I also wished that she hadn’t chosen to use Story Games as her example of a board community, since I’ve found it to be a unique and odd place to which several of her suggestions can’t actually be applied (for example, most anything involving diversity among mods, since Andy is the one and only). I get that much of the recent commentary on inclusiveness got started because of a thread there, but I still don’t think it was the best choice for an example.

On the substance of the issue though, I agree with the overall goal of trying to make gaming more inclusive of women (and lots of other folks). It seems kind of obvious. At the same time, I can see why people might reflexively defend a community they’re a part of when it gets accused of not being welcoming enough, and there were unhelpful comments on both sides of the debate in various parts of the internets. Let’s hope that the reasonable people can have a discussion that actually gets us somewhere.

And no, I hadn’t really intended to end up with what is in large part a “me too” post, but I decided I didn’t want to get involved in debating certain people either.