Robert, my brother, and our youngest brother, Kent, and some friends started a new campaign my first year of college. I got involved when I was home on breaks and the summer. That campaign started in 1983/84 is still going today, and I still have the same characters in that game. My main character had a situation that was on hold for 15 years until we played it out to learn if my character would be around/have an impact on the game in current time. Griswald is now basically a retired character. He is my favorite.
This is the campaign Robert came up with after “The Quest For The Dice of Destiny” halted and just stopped in mid adventure, mid situation. I still don’t know if Fasbold and Flaessan survived their encounter with a ghost.
I recall a song that a friend came across, perhaps an early Dragon. “You Bash The Balrog, While I Climb The Tree.” Four of us, two brothers each from two families sang it. We recorded it on a cassette tape. I’m not sure if it was a handheld tape recorder or a higher end system.
I think we just made up our own tune. I still remember all the words, once I get going.
Also, “We must away ‘ere break of day” from “The Hobbit”. The tune we came up with was close to what is in the recent Peter Jackson movie.
I’m not sure I ever have. I can’t recall. I have read so much over the years. The problem of getting older is not forgetting, but cycling through all the information to find the answer….
I do recall thinking they were a silly idea at the time. I said the same thing about the D&D cartoon, while watching every single episode…..
I have had little brothers of friends who played in high school who were whiny and had to have their way.
I have had know-it-alls who thought they had the best ideas and would argue rules, specifics of a scenario, or get off topic all the time.
There have also been those who chewed up pencils and leaned back in chairs and broke them.
It runs the whole spectrum. I have had different individuals in my experience who each have had a couple of the traits and thankfully none with all of them.
Game Masters of any RPG who do not explain the scenario and proceed as if everyone gets what the point of the play period is.
I remember we took turns having different people in Science Fiction Club in high school show us their favorite game. The guy who showed us Traveler with all of its different rule books did not have a well balanced scenario and people were dying without any understanding of why. The GM had read the rules and quickly explained them. We got the idea behind RPGs, but we did not understand key points about how Traveler was different. That was over 30 years ago, and I don’t remember specifics other than we were not happy with the experience and only tried Traveler a couple of times. My brother, Robert and I came up with our own science fiction RPG with simple rules and we played that until Star Frontiers came out with all it’s detail and simple mechanics.
ConQuest? I think that was the name in downtown Kansas City, MO. I think we went to that two or three years in a row in high school in the early 80’s. I have not managed to make it to one since.
[EDIT] I did not think to update this post before it was published to mention my experience with the Marmalade Dog 19 game convention. Post 1 and Post 2.
Fookes Software’sNoteTab, is my favorite all-around, all-purpose program. It is billed as a programmable text editor. This means you can build scripts to handle various text editing tasks.
A text editor is plain text, like if you used a typewriter. A word processor is like Microsoft Word, or OpenOffice Writer, the user can do bold, underline, pictures, etc.
The benefits of using a text editor to do your writing is that you can focus on the content first, and the presentation later. With a word processor, there is the constant temptation to format text as you go rather than going with the flow.
NoteTab has one useful feature for taking notes called Outlines. A NoteTab outline is just a plain text file with a special formatting code in the first line so that NoteTab will show it as an outline.
Example of NoteTab Outline
I have many uses for outlines in my campaign design, session preparation, and record keeping.
NoteTab’s scripting abilities allow it to open other programs such as web pages or PDFs in Adobe Reader.
I have outlines for ideas for this blog, DM notes, Hexcrawl notes from various sources on the internet, lists of NPCs, ideas, etc.
I prefer to use NoteTab Pro for its versatility, but there are two other versions, NoteTab Standard, which is included with NoteTab Pro, and a free version, NoteTab Light. The free version can read outlines but cannot create new outlines without a workaround. All three versions support a PasteBoard feature. One document is designated as a PasteBoard and any text you copy using CTRL+C, for example, goes to the paste board. One inventive NoteTab user built a clip to do a similar thing with outlines, and creates the header composed of the date and time. This clip is good if you have a lot of repetitive information you plan to copy from an electronic source, and need to keep it organized.
If you want outlines in multiple depth and with formatting, such as bold or underline, check out InSight or PowerOutlines by DataOmega. InSight has all the bells and whistles plus the kitchen sink. PowerOutlines is focused on outlines. Both products can import NoteTab outlines. PowerOutlines has the added benefit of being able to save to the NoteTab outline format, so you can view and edit the same file with either PowerOutlines or NoteTab.
A good text editor is critical for organizing and storing notes. Be aware that online there are raging debates about the best text editor. I have a couple that I use, depending on my needs. Like an edition war, pick the one the works best for you and don’t waste time arguing about it.
Sometime in high school. I remember sitting around the TV watching “Mazes & Monsters” with Tom Hanks with the whole family, like we did back when there was only one TV in the house.
My parents gave me the Players Handbook for Christmas the year it came out. We spent Christmas at my aunt’s house, and she asked my parents if it was really a good idea to get that for me. My mom stood up to my Dad’s sister and I believe Dad did too. She said something along the lines that if it was so bad, she wouldn’t have bought it. They new it was just a game and not a source of evil.
