Making Time For Friendship

When I initially designed Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, one of my concerns was making sure that the character creation process was quick and painless. If a video game isn't entertaining for the first 10-15 minutes, you're not going to want to play through the 10-20 hours of content it provides. Same basic principle. If this is my first time sitting down to play an RPG, a character creation process that can take hours had better be worth it. But in my desire to streamline that process, I recently realized that I may have done a disservice to one of the game's primary themes.


You see, as part of the character creation process, I instruct the player to simply write down the other characters in the group as their starting Friends List. Simple and easy, right? But it doesn't really answer the question of why those people are on that list. Not just "Why are you traveling together?" but "Why are you all friends?"

One thing that some tables do is hold a "Session 0" for their campaigns, detailing everything that is needed before Session 1 (the first session of the adventure) can begin. In a heavier system, this session might be taken up with character creation. Each player deciding on their character's niche in the party and building toward that. It can also involve the Narrator detailing the world that the characters will adventure in and players deciding the backstory for their characters.

If an AiO Narrator were to run a Session 0 for their campaign, I think the primary activity would be working out the relationships between all of the characters. Who helped who where and how. I'm sort of picturing the first third or so of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz being Session 0, detailing how the characters met and how they all wound up on each other's Friends List with Session 1 beginning with their arrival in the Emerald City and the Wizard ordering the party to kill the Wicked Witch of the West.

Maybe if I do a revised edition of the game, I'll work something out to give this a bit more structure and make it more of a mini-game.

The Women of Oz

My original idea for this week's blog was to look at the strong female characters of the Oz stories. Heroines and villainesses, rulers and sorcerers. But then I thought of the gamers in my audience (all 3 of you) and wanted to give them something a little more concrete than a book review. So then I thought about the issue of gender at the gaming table.

Tabletop RPGs, like many other geek activities, is predominantly a male activity. (In fact, the only geek activity I can think of that is predominantly female is cosplaying). I'm male, though I have gamed with women (notably my wife). My Monday night OSRIC campaign has one female player. Since her character has the highest Strength score in the party, we all call her "Boots", as she's the one with the best chance to kick down doors. My Thursday night IronClaw game has two female players, one of whom is playing a female Rhinoceros Pit Fighter.

But I know I'm not typical. There are horror stories floating around the net about female players being sexually harassed by the other players or even the Game Master. Like the group that played the world of Gor (JFGI) and had the one female character that spent most of her time getting traded around by the male characters.

The other night, I found this interesting little item: Heartbreaks and Heroines, a feminist RPG. I found it via this great big honking thread on RPG.Net, which is probably still growing as this gets posted. What is a "feminist RPG"? Apparently one that puts women in the primary roles and focuses on the emotional journey of becoming a hero and finding your place in the world.

But wait, if all feminists really want is equality and parity with men, why have a game that emphasizes women? The answer seems to be to create a deliberate imbalance in one segment (the players of one game) in order to create parity in the gamer population at large.

While the project is fully funded, I'm sure the designers would appreciate an extra buck or two to help propel the project even further.

Making Gamers, part 2

I actually wanted to do this blog last week, but I felt that I was putting up too many gaming posts and losing my Oz "cred". I keep shooting for a balance, but that balance swings from one side to the other before it eventually (I hope) settles down.

I think one of the biggest obstacles to bringing more gamers into the hobby is, well, the gamers themselves.

Reason #1) The Geek Social Fallacies. Everyone wants friends that accept you for who you are. But there is such a thing as taking it too far. The unwashed nerd is a pervasive stereotype and a tough one to beat. The good news is that I have only met 1, maybe 2, in my 10 years as a gamer. All of the other gamers I've known have been fairly normal people.

Reason #2) Gamers think they need gamers. It's a fairly common complaint on RPG forums and internet boards: "I can't find any gamers!" People seem to think that only people who play RPGs are going to be interested in playing RPGs. I'll admit that I fall into this to at least some degree. My last two gaming groups have consisted of people that I knew from previous gaming experience.

But remember that every gamer started out gaming sometime. Whether that was red box D&D at the age of 10 or finding the gaming club at your local university, before that point, you were just an ordinary non-gamer. Someone had to introduce you to the idea, plant the seed in your brain and run your first game.

I'd like to propose that any gamers out there reading this invite one of their non-gamer friends to their next game. And if you're a gamer who can't find enough gamers for a group, try gathering some friends and see what happens. And for those Oz fans out there, next time you have a meetup, rather than busting out Trivial Pursuit Wizard of Oz edition, try Adventures in Oz. The beta files are still available on my website until the official game is released, so you don't have to wait forever.