People play RPGs for many reasons. They love to play to relax, to get away, to strategize, and sometimes even to fit in. Playing RPGs give us all of this and more.
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is being hosted by Nevermeet Press. The topic isThings to Love, Things to Hate.
Talking about the things I love is extremely easy. Here I will touch on just a few of them.
Playing With Friends
I love Dungeons & Dragons. I have not had the opportunity to play many other RPGs, but I have played D&D from AD&D. I have dabbled in some Gamma World, Rifts, Star Wars and Cyberpunk. I thoroughly enjoyed playing these games, but the things that makes them special the most are the people you play with. I love playing games with my friends. I played throughout high school, and missed most of university, opting instead to do some Magic: The Gathering for a few years. Moving to Toronto found me my life group. Playing together since 2000, we have shared some pretty amazing moments. These are just some of the things I love about playing with friends.
FLGS Organized Play
I think I can safely say that I love to play in organized play. The vibe I get at these events always put a smile on my face. It is fun to go into a place where everyone WANTS to be there; going into a place where people will have a good time and try their best to have a lot of fun. I love to play and DM these sessions. I am always sorry to see the 4 hours fly by. It is satisfying to attend these events, where the players are concentrating on their next moves, talking with other players, making new friends and generally feeling accepted by peers who do not judge you on your appearance. You are accepted no matter who you are. These are some of the things I love about FLGS organized play.
Getting Support from the Gaming Community
For some of you who don't know, I recently started a Blog site called 20ft Radius about a year ago. I was struggling to come up with blog site ideas. I started posting and little by little I gained some confidence. Some people were actually clicking on the site. That was cool! Even though things seemed to be going well, I wanted more, but did not know how to do it. Funny enough, that same week, I got an email from one of my regular gaming group giving me pointers on my site. Later that week Sunyaku from Heroes of Shadow gave me some hints on how to match colours etc... A month or two later, I went down to Dueling Grounds in Toronto, where I met Ameron from Dungeon's Master and we had a good chat after playing D&D Encounters for the night. He gave me some solid advice I follow to this day. I would not have the design for my website if it wasn't for Tysylio (my very good friend). He is a true artist and extremely creative. These are just some of the things I love about getting support from the gaming community.
Even though the good outweighs the bad by quite a long shot, there are still a few thing I hate about some of the people I know and I will now outline some of them.
Playing With People Who Always Play the Same Character
Now, I am not talking about those people who actually play the same character. If your favourite class is a fighter and you always want to play a fighter, than by all mean play the fighter. Play it until you get sick of it. The type of player I am talking about is the player who always plays the same character, over and over, no change of personality, no change whatsoever. These people can play fighters, sorcerers, bards or clerics, but the character personality is always the same. The way they play their characters never changes, and to me it is pretty sad indeed. These are some of the things I hate about playing with people who always play the same character.
Maxers and Optimizers
I have always had a problem with people who fully maximize and optimize characters. This is only my opinion by-the-way. I do not mean to offend anyone, it is just one of my pet peeves. I love playing characters that have some flaws, some weakness that the DM could possibly exploit at some point for flavour. Maxers take away from the game, by leaving the rest of the party in the dust. These players deal so much damage that combat barely lasts past the first round. An example of this is the maxer we used to have at the table was a 3.5 Edition barbarian (3rd or 5th level can't remember) with feat this and feat that who dealt 97 points of damage to one of my creatures with a +16 to hit bonus. Needless to say, monster dead encounter over. I cannot increase the monster HP or toughness because the rest of the party would get slaughtered if the monster would last past the first round. This just kills the mood.
Optimizers are just boring. I understand some people like to play them and once again, this is just my opinion. As a DM, the goal is to challenge all the players during game play. The optimizer has a way to get around everything you throw at them. They are the ones who learn to stack certain bonuses with others, resistances for everything etc. For example, a wizard in 3.5 edition could cast Mage Armour, Shield, Dragon Armour and others at 10th level to give themselves a base bonus of approximately 18, just with these spells. WOW!! Just one of the many examples I could give.
These are some of the things I hate about Maxers and Optimizers.
Negative People of the Gaming Community
As much as I love most of the people in the gaming community, there are some that I really hate. Dungeons&Dragons is a community game for me. Everyone should be included, and no one turned away, new players or old veterans. Yet, I have seen, players who criticize others for the way they play(mostly during organized play). Not constructive criticism, but negative criticism. I have trouble just being in the same room with people such as these. I can understand if you are gaming and you want some competition. Some veterans may have trouble playing with newbies, but they tend to either just sit it out, or just not return to organized play. This is allright. Everyone has the right to play. 'Nuff said.
The other type of person are the ranters: the ones who just like to bitch about in the community forums, that complain about everything everyone is doing. They post insults, put people down, only speak negatively about anything they possibly can; without giving any feedback or solutions to the "problems" they may be trying to address.
These are some of the things I hate about negative people in the gaming community.
Although I have touched on a lot of the topics I thought were important, this list is not exhaustive by any means.
I enjoyed writing for this, it was fun. I you have your own blog site and are interesting in participating in the Blog Carnival, read the extremely simple rules at Nevermet Press and send your own submission one day.