RPGaDay 2023 #2 First RPG GAMEMASTER

My first gamemaster was a guy that I'm pretty sure was named Chris who lived in Culver City when I was living in LA. While I found him on the internet due to his interest in GURPS, when I reached out to him, he was starting a Rolemaster (affectionately known as "Chartmaster") campaign. My future wife and I only made it to a couple of sessions before transportation logistics just got too stressful to keep up with.

 My first long term GM was Dan, who ran a 3rd edition D&D campaign right when the books came out and there was a lot of interest. I'm sure I've told tales of Konrad the Barbarian before. The only reason I stopped playing in that campaign was because my future wife and I were having a rough patch, so the DM disinvited me to minimize table drama. We did eventually reconcile (and get married), so things did work out.

I want to say that my favorite GM was Kris Newton. Before he was a pretty awesome podcaster, and now a father, he was just a local gamer that I knew. He was usually up for whatever I wanted to run, but also ran some pretty good and interesting stuff of his own. I'm sure I've told the story of the time that our D&D party got pwned by a bard. That's the sort of thing that he excelled at.

RPGaDay 2017 #24 Share a PWYW publisher who should be charging more.

Technically, I could mention myself. I do have a PWYW product out there.

But really, the true answer to the question would have to be Whistlepunk Games, AKA Kris Newton, designer and publisher of Feed: The Vampire Mythos RPG. Because not only is Feed an awesome game, but Kris is a heck of a guy as well. He and his wife put out the Gameable Podcast, which is excellent, as well as the snarky, yet loving MegaDumbCast.

And they don't ask a dime for any of it. Most of the other podcasts I listen to have Patreons or some other monetization going on. Not Kris. He does it for love and for fun, and I'm sure the moment it feels like a job for him, it will be far less fun for him.

But I'm sure every now and then, they might enjoy a little boost to pay for a slightly nicer podcastng rig that can stand up to Portland heat waves, or enough alcohol to endure the next Cars movie.

RPGaDay 2016 #27 Describe The Most Unusual Circumstance Or Location In Which You Have Gamed.

I would have to say the most unusual location I've gamed it would have to be a shed. There was a table in the shed, but not quite enough chairs or perimeter for everyone to sit around it. We were playing D&D, but didn't have our map and minis out. There might not have been room at the table, but Kris was running the game and it was one of his more experimental sessions.

He didn't change systems on us or anything, but there was a trial going on for one character's soul. An NPC cleric of a good god had been corrupted to evil by the actions of one of the other PCs, but had died very soon after, so there was a question regarding the final dispensation of their soul. I don't think I played my regular character that session, but was called on to speak for the powers of Good in the trial.

RPGaDay 2016 #14 Who Would Be On Your Dream Team Of People You Used To Game With?

First of all, the obvious choice: Kris Newton. Not only is he a great GM, but he's wonderful to have as a player. He's constantly looking for what he can bring to a scene, how to advance the plot and how to make the game fun for everyone. What's not as much fun is when he's the only player bringing his A game like that.

My second choice is what makes this list a Dream Team. My friend Meghan who passed away earlier this year. I'll admit that she's not a great roleplayer like Kris, but she's a great driver of people. For those who say that running a game is like herding cats, Meghan was an excellent sheepdog. She was very good at marshaling the party and aiming them at the problems that needed to be solved.

The bottom end of the top tier of people I've gamed with over the years would likely have to be Kane. His roleplay was consistently very entertaining. Dogar the baker dwarf and Xian Calcus the master of interpretive dance were just two of the awesome characterizations he developed. He did have a rough time when the system we were playing tried to address the roleplay in the mechanics. His characterization would be amusing but he would play a disadvantage that wasn't on his sheet while ignoring the stuff that he actually did put down.

RPGaDay 2016 #11: Which Gamer That You Have Played With Has Most Affected The Way That You Play?

As written, this question does not speak to me. I have not had enough experience as a player to have a thought too hard about doing it better.

Speaking as a GM, however, I think the person that has had the strongest impact on my GMing style has definitely been Kris Newton. He was even kind enough to post some of his thoughts on GMing on the internet here, which helps explain some things that weren't making sense as I tried to pick them up via osmosis.

I haven't used his exact process as described, but I find the focus on play experience to be really helpful. It can be very easy for a GM to spend too much time in their own head, building their worlds, NPCs and adventures for their own amusement without thinking about whether or not the players will have fun with it.

RPGaDay 2016 #10 What Is The Largest In-Game Surprise You Have Experienced?

That would have to be the time the party very nearly got pwned by a bard. Yes, a bard. And yes, he pwned the entire party.

Nor in a straight fight or anything like that. When we actually got to fighting him, it was denouement rather than climax.

We first encountered him as Sir Meriweather, a paladin who was leading a rival band of adventurers. Nobody suspected that he was a bard. Every detail that we could perceive said paladin. Including the fact that he was sort of a pain in everyone's neck.

Our party was exploring a megadungeon. His party was exploring the same megadungeon. We decided  that our adventurer's guild/club needed a guildhall/clubhouse. He decided that he should build a church. We were constantly fighting over the same resources. But we couldn't just fight him, because he was a paladin. No matter how much we hated him, we worked from the assumption that he was doing it all for a good cause.

Matters came to a head when he tricked our party's wizard into making an amulet of undetectable alignment in the shape of the paladin's holy symbol. The wizard's black market contacts conveyed the request without telling him where the request was coming from ("The less you know, the safer you are" and so on). We later discovered that exact amulet being carried by Sir Meriweather.

That's when we stopped assuming his paladin-hood and started trying to figure out who he really was. We were unable to pinpoint exactly what character class he was, but we did discover that the church project was a scam to embezzle from the community. Once he knew his plot had been foiled, he ran. We tracked him onto a ship in port.

As we investigated Sir Meriweather's background, we managed to make contact with the god that he had claimed to serve. He gave us a minor artifact to smite the false paladin with. While my memory says that my character was the one who did that final smiting, my wife also insists that her character did it.

We never did discover in-character exactly what was going on, but once the smiting was done, the GM gave us the rundown. And when he told us that our nemesis was a bard, we were absolutely gobsmacked.

RPGaDay 2016 #4 Proudest Moment of Someone Else's Character

On this blog, I think I've mentioned what I think of Kris Newton as a GM and as a podcaster. What you haven't heard are his exploits as a player. While we were gaming together, we were the primary GMs, trading off whenever we needed a break. He ran a megadungeon in D&D 3.5, while I ran some shiny new system each time.

But my first story is from an era before we had that sort of rhythm. The girl who is now my wife ran a D&D session where Kris played a gnome paladin. One of the other player was a girl who always played the same sort of character. Whatever class or career or whatever it was that she chose, she was always better than you. Not that she was a great optimizer or anything. She just roleplayed every character with the same sort of haughty, snotty attitude.

This time she was an elven necromancer. Her snotty abrasiveness was getting in the way of everyone else's fun and threatening to derail the adventure. So Kris' gnome paladin decided to intervene. He purchased a love potion and put it into a bottle of wine. He then shared this bottle of wine with the necromancer.

At first, I think everyone there was a little shocked when he did this. He just more or less mind-controlled a fellow PC. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw it as a master stroke of roleplaying that specific character. It had the prankish nature of the gnome. It brought the group into stronger harmony, making it a lawful act. And he at least mitigated the evil aspect of the act by sharing the bottle and therefore the potion, making the love magic mutual. (The two players were also romantically involved as well, so it wasn't creepy gamer drama.)

My next story is from a good while later when we were a bit more established as a group. While Kris and I were the most frequent GMs for the group, another player occasionally ran one-shots, typically D&D modules. For one of these, Kris constructed a gnome wizard named The Mystery of Inky Strange. (It's like A Tribe Called Quest. You say the whole thing.)

What really made The Mystery of Inky Strange memorable even though he only appeared once was his use of the shrink object spell. He kept on his person a 10 foot by 10 foot cube of solid stone, shrunk down to the size of a die. Nobody knew this until he threw it and it landed full sized on some huge monster, crushing it to death.

The entire table was stunned and impressed. Including the guy who was running the game. There was some question regarding whether the stunt would work, but after a little discussion and page flipping, it was allowed to stand. Though the GM did say that it was the sort of trick that would only work once. But for a one shot game, that's all that was needed.

Before I make myself into too much of a Kris Newton fanboy, my final story is of a different player and a truly awesome heroic sacrifice.

The system was Cartoon Action Hour. The campaign was a mashup of my own devising. Centuries ago, psychics insects from Mars came to invade the techno-magical paradise of Atlantis. The Atlanteans and the Martians both lost. Atlantean civilization fell just as they crippled the Martian war machines (though no names were named and no public domain sources were harmed in the course of this campaign).

The campaign begins with the alien homeworld sending reinforcements as well as the greatest general in their history, whose mind was preserved in a psychic crystal and then given a crystal body in order to live again. The party was a ragtag bunch who came together when the bar they were patronizing blew up (one of my several attempts to redeem/justify the old "You all meet in a tavern" bit).

One of the characters was a Martian named Scout, because that was his role in his hive. When he reported to his queen that the homeworld was trying to restart the war, she told him to stop it by any means necessary. The economy of the hive was too intertwined with that of the local human towns. Killing and conquering the humans would be too disruptive to the hive and there's no guarantee that the long term trade- off would be worth it.

So they make it to the final confrontation with the great general himself. I gave the players a lot of leeway and freedom to describe how this whole thing goes down. So Scout hijacks a flying saucer and pilots it with his telekinesis. Rather than strafing the general with the ship's telekinetically powered force beams, Scout proceeds to crash the ship directly into the General himself.

The funny thing is this was actually the first character death I've ever had to deal with. I had been running games for quite some time before this, but whether I'm just too nice or don't calibrate my opposition well enough for my players, this was the first time that a character had actually died on my watch. But at the same time, this this was a clear player choice. I was running the session very loosely, so there was no rolling for damage or anything like that. I gave him the choice to bail out of the ship at the last second and he said no.

On the plus side, he did take the Big Bad of the campaign down with him. It was a sufficiently dramatic moment that I played The Touch in honor of his sacrifice.

Make Mine Gameable!

I may have gotten a late start, but I seem to have caught the podcast listening bug.

First there was Welcome to Night Vale. Then came Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. And now I bring you the latest in my playlist:

The Gameable Podcast!

It started life as the Gameable Disney Podcast, examining the Disney animated films for gaming inspiration. They would occasionally look at other works outside this narrow purview in their "bonus episodes," like the live action/animation hybrid Mary Poppins or the live action but cartoony Herbie the Love Bug films.

But it seems to have fulfilled its original mandate and has expanded its reach to the computer animated Pixar films. I'm still playing catchup (I'm currently on their Hunchback of Notre Dame episode), but I'm looking forward to seeing what they continue to come up with.

The typical episode gives a plot synopsis with occasional gaming asides, followed by I'd Play That (Each of the hosts picks a character from the story that they want to play. This can be a protagonist, but is as likely to be a side character with room to grow, or sometimes even a villain). Then comes Un-Disney-fication, a discussion of how to remove the kid-friendly elements from the story and make it more robust as a setting usable for multiple stories. After a discussion of the music of the movie, with each host picking a favorite and least favorite song, they move on to the Final Verdict: Does the movie provide a setting or story that you can easily present to your players?

As of Episode 31 (The Lion King) they make system recommendations as part of the Final Verdict. They had made reference to systems previously, including taking the "Mary Poppins is a Time Lord" to the logical conclusion of filling out character sheets for Mary Poppins and Bert the Chimney Sweep using the latest Doctor Who RPG, but it was never a regular feature or a terribly strong recommendation until this point. Needless to sat, I was very jazzed that Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road was one of the system recommendation in Episode 32 (Pocahontas) due to its relationship mechanics.

DISCLOSURE: This podcast is hosted by Kris Newton, who is a very creative person who I used to game with some years ago. He wrote The Jaded City of Oz sample adventure for Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. I regrettably lost touch with him some time back, but I'm glad that there is still a way to bask in his gaming genius.