Downtime

Warning: The following post contains personal moaning and really has not a lot to do with roleplaying so feel free to skip it and move along!

It has been a while since I last put something up here. I am so slack with blogs that it frightens me sometimes. I start out with loads of good intentions and end up with huge gaps of time where I find it difficult to think anyone will care what I have to say. So I decided I might as well write for myself.

Today has been an odd one. Went to the gym for the first time in ages, finally trying to get rid of the extra bits and bobs I accumulated doing my unhealthy police job. Sitting still for 10 hours at a time really can screw you up. I remember being fit once so hopefully things will bet back ship shape pretty soon.

Went to see Tropic Thunder at the cinema. It was really funny. Some very good acting even if the plot is rather predictable. Some great one liners.

Ended up feeling really defensive and down about the site. I have been running it for almost 6 years and most of the time I feel really good about what I am doing. However it has increasingly become more and more like a job and less and less fun to do. We started this whole actual play business and now we are not novel any more. We are not even really tipped a wink as being the originators of this stuff. Due to the sheer amount of audio on the site now we are getting less and less compliments about the stuff we personally produce and to be honest we are catching more flack than praise.

Since moving to the states we have not had anywhere near the lively chat that we used to have on the site and with DnD 4e coming out we seem to have even more criticism. The Texan players are just very different from my old UK players. Sometimes I miss my old group a huge amount. We got on so well and just worked as a group. Lindsay did not have to berate anyone for cross talking or not playing in character and things just worked really well. It's been pretty strained around here of late; at home; and I was hoping that some things were going to sort themselves out. I can see us returning to the UK and being 10 times worse off than when we first left. I like it here but sometimes the changes are hard and I miss my old friends.

Lindsay has been great as always but she is hugely stressed as well. We need to get out of our current situation and move on with things but we are stuck. Trapped on my student visa unless one of us can secure a job that will support a work visa application and a green card. It is just such an uphill battle to stay here that sometimes I wonder if it is worth the effort. We could go back to the UK and just apply for jobs and that would be that. Our house would be smaller, the petrol and food would be more expensive but we would be treated like real people and not some kind of invader who just wants to leech things and mooch about.

I have started looking into trying to get a job sorted for when I finish my course. I should be able to work from January and would love to find something that I like doing. I don't think I have ever had a job that I have loved doing and I think that would make a huge difference. We need change soon otherwise things are going to turn stale and bad really fast.

I have been planning an update to RPGMP3 for years now (probably at least 3). I have some great ideas to set up a gaming community (not a fake one like Gleemax). A friendly place, where gamers can meet up and share things, listen to the audio games and contribute. Somewhere healthy rather than bitchy. Sadly I am running out of steam. The site is starting to take its tole. There is not a day goes by when I don't have to process an audio file or upload something, or pay some server bills. What started out as a bit of fun on the side of my hobby is starting to look a lot like work. The site is doing really well, people are joining every day, we have enough Patrons and donations to cover the fees.

I am just starting to wonder if I am becoming a weight around it's neck and maybe the limiting factor on the site is me.

Not sure where I am going with this. It sounds like I am moaning and I don't mean to. Things get me thinking and I have no idea how to stop them from spinning away from me. I have given a lot to the site over the years and I think that I have neglected things I should not have, Lindsay (who I love more than anything else on this earth) being the major one. I wish I could have the time again so that I could change things. I am heading towards something that I don't want to face and whatever happens I am going to lose something - I am just not sure what yet, or if there is a way to avoid it and come out whole on the other side.

I know I should not have written this here, but I don't think many folks look at this to be honest. If you were looking for some light hearted roleplaying chat then I am truely sorry, and if you got this far down this post, thanks for reading.

Virgin Gamers Survival Guide - Part 1

OK - my previous post inspired me to write something for those folks out there who might be thinking about starting up their first ever game. Perhaps they have played an little and want to try their hand at GMing or perhaps they are interested in trying roleplaying but don't have a clue where to start. I was at that point when I started and I have had a lot of experience since then throwing games together.

Additionally, I don't think I can have a proper roleplaying blog without starting some sort of episodic post series to draw you all back in and keep you salivating, eagerly awaiting the next time I deem you worthy of my attentions. :P

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to get into roleplaying. Perhaps your friends do it but you have never had the opportunity. Perhaps you read fantasy novels and think it might be a cool and natural extension of that. Perhaps you have played some computer games, like Baldur's Gate and Elder Scrolls (or even World of Warcraft) and wonder about where this all came from. Perhaps someone just bought you a book thinking you would like it and you have no clue where to start with a Clanbook Brujah.

Whatever the reason you have a task ahead of you. If you are lucky, you will have a group of supportive friends who will be willing to give it a try with you and perhaps they will like it and they will thank you for introducing it to their lives. Sadly, most of use are not that lucky. We have to work to find a group of players, and this is one of the most common issues with gaming today. People are so busy, they travel so much (even to and from work) that it can be difficult to even get a group together for a character generation session, let alone a regular gaming night for a long haul campaign.

So where can you find players?

1. Your FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store)

You will hear that term bandied around the net an awful lot but they are often hard to find in a location that is nearby. Check your local Yellow Pages under Comic Books and Games Supply and see if anything comes up. Often FLGSs will stock comics or your local comic shop will have a friendly relationship with a FLGS and will happily pass on the details on the understanding that the FLGS owner will do the same in return for comics customers. Additionally, try a Google search for "roleplaying games your area" and see what you get.

Ideally, you are looking for a FLGS which has an area to play in and has regular gaming nights with experienced GMs and players who will be happy to welcome you and let you learn the games they are playing. Even if the FLGS does not have a place to play in the store, it is often a good place to try and locate players or a game you can join. The FLGS owner will most likely be happy to hook you up with other players and let you advertise games in their store.

2. The Internet

Clearly you have an internet connection, so get your monies worth and try joining some of the internet forums dedicated to roleplaying. There are lots, and quite often they will have a section where you can ask if there are any other gamers in your area. I heartily recommend giving RPGMP3 a shot for this. Mainly because I run it, but also because I think it is one of the friendliest gaming forums on the net and as long as you are pleasant the folks on there will be lovely and try to help you out.

The net is also home to wonderful blogs and webpages dedicated to gaming and you can bone up on some of the lingo. But to be honest just make sure you know what THAC0 means and you will be just fine.

3. Conventions

Somewhere near you there must be a town or city that will be holding some kind of convention. I live in Houston and there are about 8 or 9 minor cons throughout the year. Obviously if you can get to one of the big cons (Origins, Dragon*Con, or Gen Con) then you are good to go and all your gamer dreams will come true. Otherwise little cons are a good place to start and meet local gamers and businesses in your area.

If they are doing things right you should be able to find them with a simple net search. If they are not doing things right then you will need the blood of a virgin calf and the bones of a black cockrel on the night of the full moon.

4. Universities

Universities are little communities all to themselves. They even have a higher geek concentration than most "normal" communities. There is a pretty decent chance that any university or college nearby will have some kind of gaming society associated with it. The problem here is find it. Some universities will have a list of the socieites and clubs that they have and may even have contact details - others will not. If you find that the latter is the case for you then see above re. blood and chicken bones.

5. Beer and Pizza Bribery

OK. So you have tried everything else and you still can't find any local gamers. You are going to have to create your own. Now we are not talking digging up corpses in the middle of the night and performing some crazy ritual (that would require the "real power" and you are too low level at this point). So you are going to have to brainwash er.... persuade some of your friends that it is something they want to try out.

This is best done by endless pleading and resorting to bribery. Always let them know what they are letting themselves in for, but lay it on thick with pizza and beer (or at least some Mountain Dew).

If you are in this position, chances are you are going to be GMing all on your own from the start so you best look for a system that will work for you and perhaps thats what we will talk about next time...

Gaming Pedigree

After that mildly depressing post about who I am, I thought I would follow up with another about my gaming history and background. Lets kick off by saying I LOVE GAMES. All kinds of games from card games to board games to roleplaying games to war games. Love them all!

I always had a lot of games as a kid. Most of the traditional ones, Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, Ludo and other stranger ones and it was only a matter of time before someone bought me something that would lead me into paths less trodden. When I was about 12 or so, my Aunt bought me the Dragonlance boardgame. I had read the books and enjoyed them and was reading Tolkein and all that traditional gamer type stuff as well. At the same time I was reading White Dwarf (back before it became a catalogue for Games Workshop stuff) and this led me to a local game store in the neighbouring town of Whitehaven in Cumbria, UK.

In this store I picked up copies of the ADnD Players Handbook, the DMG, the Monstrous Compendium and a copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I am not sure which I managed to get hold of first but at the time I was pretty interested in roleplaying. Sadly I had no group up in the wilds of West Cumbria (there are more sheep than people). So I had to take matters into my own hands...

...My friends were quite cool; grungy but cool; and they were pretty happy to give the games a go. On popular vote (some of them used to play Fantasy Battle) we started with Warhammer and in leiu of an experienced GM I had to take the reigns and run a game I have run countless times since that day, The Oldenhaller Contract, from the back of the rulebook. No one was sure what was going on and I am sure we got some of the rules wrong but we managed to get through it, mostly in tact with only a few slight cases of Nurgle's Rot. From that point I pretty much ran Warhammer and DnD for the same group every Tuesday night and we even managed to get a little society set up at my sixth form centre (college).

Then I was allowed to play. There was another kid there called Newton who had also played DnD for ages and he was running a game of Dark Sun. It was the first time I had ever had a chance to play rather than run. I played an Elven Bard that was lucky enought to roll a decent psionic wild talent that meant he could make attacks at range with his mind and also meant he had the prerequisite of telekinesis and a reasonable pile of power points. It was a pretty standard game of slaves make good, but it was great and I loved it. I played lots throughout my college years and finally headed to university with a little experience under my belt.

The university had a roleplaying society. This was a good thing. It was also close to a large city that had a really big gaming store. I played in a good few long running campaigns, mostly Rolemaster, Vampire: The Masquerade and Rifts in my university years and ran a good few, namely Kult and some DnD. I was even President of the society for a few years and I still host their web forum on my webspace. My love of pretty cards also came to the fore during these years and I have since had to restrain myself from getting involved in collectible card games. I had a tendency to buy cards whenever I passed them and as some of you know one pack here and one pack there quickly adds up to a sizeable fort to hide in.

We were fortunate one day at the society that Lindsay had given Paul (who runs Yog-Sothoth.com) a conference microphone she was not using to test out his new Minidisc player. This was tested during my game of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and resulted in the birth of RPGMP3 with the first ever recording. It was pretty ropey but it seeded an idea and we have been running with it ever since.

Every gamer had ever spoken to had story about games they had played in and excellent times they had had. Moments that formed legendary events of their formative years. Obviously these were just stories told over and over and over again at conventions and down the pub, but why did it have to stop there? Why couldn't we record these stories and let others listen to them. We started with a couple of one offs of Call of Cthulhu and then finally progressed to AEG's The Worlds Largest Dungeon. At this time we started to podcast the recordings and were pretty much the first with any kind of gaming content. we did finish the World's Largest Dungeon and the little character in the title bar of this site was actually an Ogre NPC from that game kindly drawn my one of the folks on the site.

Since then I have run and recorded a lot of games. Mostly DnD as this is the backbone of the site but I also have a strong interest in indie games and always run a Christmas Special using some set of indie rules. I have to say I have a very soft spot for My Life With Master and have run it numerous times. Currently I am running DnD 4e and Rolemaster and playing nothing as I rarely get a chance to play any more. I guess through my gaming "career" I have GMed far more than I have played but I don't really mind that.

I don't attend anywhere near as many cons as I really would like to and I must improve on that front. I am a little slack with regards travelling, but I did try to attend Dragonmeet in London every year when I lived in the UK. Not really found anything in Houston and perhaps thats what the world needs... A BIG Texas-sized con! I even have a web address picked out! What do you think?

Rainy Rainy Day!

I live in Houston at the moment (though I originally hail from the UK). We (my wife Lindsay and I) came over here after she completed her archaeology degree and I decided my job working for the wonderful Police of West Yorkshire was leading nowhere. Additionally the job with the Police was rolling shifts and severely ate into my social life and game time. My parents had moved out the US about 6 - 7 years earlier with my Dad's job and I thought it might be nice to come over for a while, so I took on a Masters in Instructional Technology and we moved over just before Christmas 2006.

All in all it has been an interesting experience. A lot of things we were promised could happen have changed or were never correct in the first place. My course is pretty good and I have met some decent people through it. Lindsay had come over on the understanding that she could open a vintage clothes shop but found out that the red tape involved with a non-US national trying to do that were not worth the effort. She has been honing her skills with her sewing machine, she has learned to drive and I am very proud of her.

It is coming to the end of my time on the Masters and we are looking at options at the moment. If we choose to stay I will have to secure a job that will transfer me onto a working visa so that we can apply for a green card. There are some pretty tight time frames involved in things but apparently having done a Masters here puts me in good stead. While I am talking about me finding work I might as well use this platform to point folks to My Portfolio which contains a copy of my CV / Resume and other stuff I have been doing recently. If anyone knows of an appropriate job for an archaeological instructional technologist who loves games feel free to pass my details along or drop me an email.

Lindsay has signed up to do a course in Theatrical Costume and Fashion Design starting at the end of this month (assuming we hear back about her change in visa status). Otherwise she will have to wait until the next intake in at the start of next year. She has had nothing but issues with the international office at her college and it is starting to get a little tiresome I suppose.

On the gaming front, we met some really great gamers when we arrived here in Houston and we have been educating them slowly to the world outside of DnD. The original game shop we found has closed down recently due to some very bad business decisions and some bad personal decisions even though it was the top store with Wizards in the city. Its a shame. If I could have worked here at the moment I might have considered trying my hand at a FLGS. There are rumours of some of the regualrs opening a couple of new stores but neither of them have much experience in retail and pretty much know nothing about the gaming industry outside of playing the odd game of Dungeons and Dragons and butchering Vampire Dark Ages. If two stores open as close as I believe they are going too they are just going to put each other out of business.

I have thankfully found a very nice (and pretty stable) FLGS about 35 miles away across the city and have been buying my DnD supplies from there recently. I love that the internet is a great place for bargains but with a game that requires face-to-face interaction I think we all should support our local stores. Too many have been dropping like flies round here due to bad cash flow or bad decisions and it would be awful not to have a store nearby. I am a browser, what can I say?

I am not going to say that moving to Houston was the best choice we could have possibly made, but it has opened some doors and firmly closed some others. If we can manage to get me a nice happy job and get set up as real people I think Lindsay and I will both be much much happier and so will Ruby the Pug (eating a Hydra nearby). I always felt guilty that the decision to move over here was more mine than Lindsay's so hopefully it will pay off soon.

Anyway, there we really not a lot about gaming in this post, but I felt that a little introduction was in order. Feel free to have a look through my portfolio, which I really must updated, and drop any jobs that look good my way. I can work from January without many restictions. Going to watch Lindsay play the Sims 2, I always find that theraputic and I have been a rather neglegent husband of late, what with all the files I have been adding to my website and the start of the redesign project.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the first post :) I will try and keep talking and pull it back to a more gaming track tomorrow. I have managed to weather out Tropical Storm Edouard today and only had to go out into the garden once to dig trenches to get the water away from the house. I like the rain but sitting inside without the option of heading out has made me a little cabin feverish.

First Post (Again!)

So here we are kicking off a new blog. I have tried this lark a couple of times in the past and either they fail because I run out of stuff to say or I get distracted by some other project that seems more shiny and interesting. This foray has been inspired by the articles on writing an RPG blog over on the Musings of a Chatty DM blog so you can all head over there and complain!

My aim is to write something every day (or most days, lets not put the pressure on just yet). currently I run the website RPGMP3 which has been recording and podcasting actual play tabletop RPG session for around 5 years now. We have just broke through 1 terrabyte of bandwidth downloaded each month and we are starting a site redesign project to make the place a little more Web 2.0.

I am currently running (and recording) Dungeons and Dragon 4e Keep on the Shadowfell every Thursday evening and Rolemaster 2nd Edition every other Sunday. I have to say at the moment Rolemaster is my favourite, but I always found it nice to GM something that I can make up on the fly rather than having to plan it out too much in advance. The Rolemaster game has just headed into the start of The Grand Campaign and I will consider it something of a personal achievement if the players get anywhere near through the first section of it. The adventure is incomplete but there are some guildlines on where it was supposed to go, so it will allow a good amount of flexibility when we finally get there.

With regards to DnD 4e, I have found the jump from 3.5 a little more difficult than I would have hoped. I think most of that is due to a necessary change of mind set. I have heard 4e refered to; both positively and negatively; as a board game, a minis game, a wargame and even a card game. At the FLGS nearby they run a 4e game and one of the regular Magic players taps his cards as he uses his abilities. I am still on the fence about 4e, I really like some of it, but I am also rather dubious about other bits too.

I have noticed a large increase in traffic on my site due mostly to 4e and the recordings we are putting out, but most of the folks that come through and comment on the forums are more interested in picking us up on rules calls that have since been errataed than on telling a decent story and it is further increasing the divide between the two types of gaming, as I see them.

There are those who like to play a role (I guess I fall into this camp as I will often let players get away with things if it increases their enjoyment and further the story) and there are those who roll to play (where rules and dice and levelling are more important than why you are doing it in the first place). I have met players from both camps, and there is nothing wrong with either style of play but I prefer story over dice rolling. Generally this means I will tweak the rules on the fly to suit the situation. I never break the rules, but my rules calls often fall more towards the drama of the story than the needs of the system. But at least I am always fair.

Anyway, enough for a first post I think. I will try and keep things light and happy round these parts - even thought he background I seem to have picked is a little dark and dreary. And I will try to update this as much as possible.

On a side note, anyone out there who can code PHP or CSS drop me a line as I have some lovely site redesign work that needs some attention.