RPG a Day 2017 Question 13

What is RPGaDay2017?

I’ll link here to the actual group. Basically, it’s a series of questions that you can answer. There are 31 questions that you can answer to help shine a light on the different reasons people play role-play games. This is my answer to the 13th question. For my full list of answers check here.

Question #13: Describe a game experience that changed how you play.

For a brief second I almost considered writing about my gallery show. I realized though that my experience, while life changing, had no effect on how I run or play games. To answer this question, I had to sort of figure out how I used to play, which was a psychotic murder hobo as a player and a confrontational douchebag as a DM. I’m not proud of that, but I understand where I came from. Now, I’m far more concerned with story and character. I love watching the players succeed, I love hearing their stories, and giving the players a ridiculous amount of choices. I designed a D&D game that was essentially a West Marches campaign for a single group without knowing what those were. I had to take both of those places and go back and forth until I narrowed it down to a game where I changed and then figure out what occurred that impacted me.

I came up with 2002ish and the Buckeye Crawl, aka my first game of X-Crawl at origins. Part of what affected me, was the game. I love X-Crawl and I enjoy playing it and singing its praises. It’s over the top, harder than hell, and deadly as all get out in all the best ways. However, as I thought about it the thing that showed me how to game better was not the setting but the GM.

Brendan LaSalle, who wrote the book and created the setting, ran the session I played in. The way he ran the game causes me to tell people that if you are at a convention where he is running X-Crawl, you need to play in it. In fact, in a few days from my writing this, he’ll be at Gencon, if you’re going and he’s running X-Crawl, get in that game. Everything about that experience was a new way of seeing things for me.

Before the game even started, he encouraged us to think of our characters, were we faces (good guys) or heels (bad guys). The game we were playing simulated a televised dungeon crawl, we were basically professional wrestlers with swords. Once we’d picked our characters, he asked us to pick our actors. He said, “If they make X-Crawl the movie, who’s playing your character and money, time, or availability don’t matter. If they’re dead, we’ll resurrect them and put them in the show.” I think I was a dwarf Sean Connery, I even did a bad accent. I’d never done that before. Until then, my characters had all been a version of me. They we’re dwarves, elves, wizards, rangers, or street samurai, but deep down, they were all me. They could physically do things I couldn’t, but they made the same decisions I would, said what I would say, and reacted the way I felt I would.

When the game started, Brendan stood up. He stood for the entire game. He was excited, vibrant, constantly moving, I’d never seen that before. Until then, I’d played in basements and at dinner tables with my friends, or at a convention where the DM was on their third or fourth day of running the same module. It’s a little thing and I get that, but the energy he brought to the table set the tone.

He also spent time describing our actions, and the monsters actions. He was genuinely happy when we did something good, laughed when we were amazing, and described the crowd cheering when we did something epic. When we won a fight, succeeded at a room, or got past a puzzle he congratulated us. He wanted us to be the stars of the show because that’s how TV works, but also it’s how a really fun session or campaign should work too.

I have tried to keep most of the things with me from that day. Whenever I run for new players, be it X-Crawl at my local game store or D&D at an established game day, I ask them to pick an actor to play their character. I don’t stand at the table, I’m not in that kind of shape, but I use my hands, change my voice, I try to make myself a presence at the table. I celebrate with the players. I’m going to say that again, I celebrate with the players. There are DM’s that don’t and I feel like they start to resent the players after a while; I know I used to.

I don’t think I’ve played me since then. Certainly, my characters have some of my character traits, I’m sarcastic as hell and it’s hard to get rid of that. Still, I’m very much a different player now. RPG’s used to be a puzzle to solve and now it’s an evening with my friends to tell stories.