just wanted to save this old twitter thread

Spent the today & yesterday learning the Reacting To The Past curriculum, basically What If College Was Roleplaying Games. Good stuff. But at the final Q&A I saw a lot of the newbies asking the same sort of misguided questions that people ask before they DM the first time.

A ton of questions came from a place of fear--fear of failure. They wanted to be in total control of the game and everything to go perfectly the first time they tried it. This is exactly the route to psyching yourself out of running a game.

You've got to leave some loosey-gooseyness in your game and you've got to risk something. It's okay if the first try flops. It's okay if the players run roughshod for part of the game. We learn by doing, not by planning for all contingencies before we act.

I'll admit that I'm lucky in that I started young and was too stupid to know how much I sucked at DMing at first. For adults, the second game is often a bigger challenge then the first, because session 1 inevitably falls short.

So you blame yourself and feel embarrassed and drop the whole project. It's okay to feel those feelings, but you've got to push through and try again. You can do it. It just feels weird because of weird social pressures that have nothing to do with you.

Phantastic!

 

So I was poking around Moby Games, looking at old Commodore 64 games, as I am wont to do from time to time. Today I was checking out Phantasie II. I never played this one back in the day. The only SSI titles I was into were Wizard's Crown and Curse of the Azure Bonds. But Phantasie II is part of the ecosystem of importable character games, so I have some curiosity about it. Overall, I mostly played Ultima III & IV, the first couple of Bard's Tales and the first Might & Magic. I just plain missed Phantasie series.

But I wanted to show you a screenshot I stumbled across. I think it nicely illustrates a couple of small but important points about play.

I wonder how many people named their CRPG wizards Fizzban back in the day. 

This is a top down dungeon exploration view, which I am not normally a fan of in CRPGs. I generally prefer 3D first-person view when computer dungeoneering. 

But what I want to talk about here is the text. "Fizzban hears monsters. Go back?"

What's happening here is important. The party is given an opportunity to engage the monsters or not. Player agency is a critical component of play. But equally important in this moment is the principle of information control. The DM needs to give enough information to the players to make a choice. However, that doesn't mean the DM is under any obligation to give the players all the information. "Fizzban hears monsters" may be a little sparse for tabletop play, but the principle behind it is sound. 

After all, what do monsters in general sound like?  (For a cool example of the different sounds monsters can make, go to youtube and watch some clips of the old Atari 2600 game Crypts of Chaos. I quite like the sound effect used by the one-eyed slimes.) But the point remains that the DM doesn't say "You hear 14 orcs with glaives and one orc sergeant in platemail with a broadsword and mace in the next room." Players get to make a choice based upon best available information, not a complete snapshot of the situation. Sometimes that info is inadequate or just plain wrong. But you have to make a choice anyway. Nobody said adventuring was easy.

okay but what if...

 

Three hours, fifty eight minutes, and twenty seconds of Zak and friends

0:2:36 - "Couldn't take care of himself" (Mandy) 
0:9:51 - "Intentionally exposed Mandy to death threats" (Mandy)  
0:16:42 "Chin Up" (Hannah)  
0:21:28 - "Was violent and angry, and would not stop if someone said no, and pressured Mandy to groom women" (Mandy)  
0:25:08 - "So this was not an overnight change in Mandy?" (Mandy)  
0:27:37 - "Would habitually abuse women, degrade them, and talk behind their backs" (Jennifer)  
0:31:37 - "Retaliates, is manipulative, gaslights and uses BDSM spaces to abuse people" (Jennifer)  
0:34:40 - "So Michelle, you were there, did you see any of this?"  
0:39:49 - "So did a lot of people interact day to day with Mandy?" 
0:45:43 - "So a lot of this is hard to imagine unless you were there"  
0:47:02 "Wrote Mandy's blog and tumblr posts" (Mandy)  
0:50:11 - "Were your players only there for career reasons?" (Goons)  
0:53:17 - "So you and Mandy did not know Jennifer, Hannah, and Viv for very long?"  
1:00:19 "So is this all explained with Borderline Personality Disorder?" 
 1:03:31 - "Michelle, are you a sockpuppet?" "Uses sockpuppets?" (Funky_Pete, Olivia hill, Ava, roadsidedeadcat, seanfsmith, Tris)  
1:08:57 - "Does not believe in free speech - and blackballs, blacklists, cancels, deplatforms, and doxxes people" (RPGPundit)  
1:16:20 - "Uses sealioning, strawmen, fallacies, ETC"  
1:17:36 - "Uses people as shields" (Cavegirl, Scrap Princess, bethhmm)  
1:19:34 "You knew scrap princess, correct?"  
1:22:59 - "Uses flying monkeys" (Skerples, Mandy)  
1:25:33 - "Does not ask for consent"  
1:35:29 "Has admitted to wrongdoing" (Cavegirl)  
1:35:58 - "Michelle, what did Mandy try to re-contextualize?"  
1:45:40 - "So Mandy wrote her facebook post?"  
1:48:55 - "Michelle, do you have proof that Mandy wanted to destroy him?"  
1:53:13 - "Skerples claims that he had a secret inner circle on G+"  
1:58:45 - "Stalked or harassed people, according to Olivia Hill"  
2:00:28 - According to Olivia Hill, His books have the names of victims on the back" 
2:01:25 - "Only sued Ettin successfully because he is in Australia"  
2:06:51 - "Overly litigious, at least that is what Skerples, Andrew Girdwood, Joe Slowboat, tegiminis, and others claim"  
2:10:33 - "Rich, had a trust fund" (GauntletRPG, Pata, Gau, Robert Bohl, iospace, Tristram Evans, Tsilkani Aka InfiniteJest)  
2:11:39 - "Uses sealioning, trumpian tactics, and is a failson"  
2:13:23 - "Michelle, what was your reaction to all these takes, and comments you received?"  
2:15:13 - "Trust Fund?" (GauntletRPG, Pata, Gau, Robert Bohl, iospace, Tristram Evans, Tsilkani Aka InfiniteJest)  
2:19:05 - "Has given up" (Scott Michelson)  
2:23:48 - "What role did porn play in his career in RPGs?"  
2:26:57 - "Did anyone talk to his witnesses?"  
2:30:00 "Grim Jim, RPGPundit - they are connected"  
2:35:04 - " According to scrap princess and Patrick Stuart, he has an inability to admit he is wrong, what do you think about this Michelle?"  
2:35:58 - "Would lecture in circles, he would rage and scream and throw things or slam doors" (Mandy)
2:42:53 - "Mandy was Programmed"  
2:48:05 - "Michelle, was Mandy a meek person, or a controlled person?"  
2:48:39 - "How did all the things flip?"  
2:51:42 - "Was this change gradual or fast?"  
2:51:42 - "So did Mandy cut everyone off?"  
2:57:33 - "Makes his personal drama unavoidable" (Omegadungeon)  
2:59:27 - "This is all just drama"  
3:05:27 - "Froghammer?"  
3:15:50 - "Mike Mearls gave a list of names to harass" (James Hargrove, Akeche, Collin the Doodle, Kai Tave, Stokkie, and many others)  
3:23:22 - "Skerples was warned about him"  
3:24:30 - "Bought Viv's breast implants" (Viv)  
3:32:40 - "Sappelcline" (HardKore, Patrick Stuart, Jay Allen, Olivia Hill, and others)  
3:38:33 - "You met with scrap princess in person, correct?"  
3:46:46 - "Shit his pants outside a Chik-Fil-A at gen-con 17'" (Goons)  
3:49:55 - "The influence of video game people is?"  
3:51:53 - "Michelle, how did you and Mandy meet? What was your relationship like?"

Encounter Critical news?!?

 So rpg bad boy Venger Satanis has bought the rights to the best game that isn't D&D.

a very serious game

(5J) HULL DAMAGE 

These boxes refer to nonessential systems such as crew quarters, the mess hall, storage areas, and the bowling alley.

Just over here reading Federation Commander: First Missions, the freebie introductory booklet for Federation Commander, Amarillo Design Bureau's attempt to make Star Fleet Battles relevant to the modern game nerd.

What if the party were... fruit?

Stumbled across this on amazon: HERO Creations – Epic Fruit Adventurers. Not gonna lie, I am digging the pineapple archer.