Wednesday Weekly Oneshots 1&2: Strange Gods and Strange Lands

Wednesday has always been roleplay day. At the University where I met my good friends and regular roleplay team, Wednesday afternoons were free from lectures and seminars. I can only imagine this was so the numerous (and probably award-winning) sports teams could converge and train while it was still light. The delightful outcome of that was a tabletop gaming society that could run games from 2pm - 7pm every week.

This was a unique experience, being involved in a capsule game that ran for the length of a semester every week. It meant that we got to experience different systems, plots, GMs; I would whole-heartedly support anyone attending a University with a roleplay society taking part and trying all the games you can. It will form the way you look at games.

Anyway, what is all this preamble in aid of? Recently a long running Star Trek game came to it's end-of-season break, and we were left with our Wednesday evenings again. And it occurred to me: Why can't we reclaim our Wednesdays for exploring our game experiences?

"Like the falling of small stones": Tabletop RPGs as the Ultimate Procedurally Generated Game

Tabletop beats video gaming. A bold statement perhaps, but some of my most immerse and emotive gaming moments have been around the gaming table. The ability of a GM to adapt to a given situation is what makes tabletop gaming the ultimate interactive storytelling tool far beyond the limitations of video gaming.

This topic was sparked by the events of our monthly game of Vampire the Masquerade (V20) which is a system that prides itself on the importance of telling a good story. Veronica, the childe of the Sheriff of Birmingham was snooping around the outside of a very well protected house. It was supposed to be a simple night of observation and information gathering. The rest of us were already crossing out our night's blood point and readied our actions for the next night. Unfortunately player action stood in the way. What followed was a string of actions and reactions between PC and Storyteller that took us completely off track:

HabitRPG: Roleplaying as Myself

An adventurer approaches...

I could live my life by gamification. I have always struggled to build up positive habits, or complete difficult tasks. Procrastination is the bane of all my days and without strong incentivisation, I wouldn't get much done. I've tried it all: to do lists, phone alarms, buddy systems, and reward schemes. Nothing really worked. For some reason I can just never stick to anything for any length of time, it is why I've found maintaining the blog so difficult. My notebooks are full of half-completed post drafts, but I can never seem to remember to maintain habits.