News: The Killsplosion Kickstarter is a success! I’ve acquired a HD camcorder so we’ll start recording videos soon. The Artemis Spaceship Simulator will take some planning to figure out but we will do it. I’ve also set up a RPPR Minecraft server! Check this thread for the address.
Synopsis: We usually focus on advice for GMs creating or running games. This time, we want to focus on providing advice for players. So we’ve come up with a Be A Better Play Challenge. We want you to determine one thing you can do in your game to make yourself a better player. To help you along, Tom and I discuss some ways in which you can improve your game such as writing a better PC back story, table etiquette and playing against type. Tom also has a new letter and of course anecdotes and shouts.
Shout outs:
- RPPR Minecraft server: Join us! A new world of adventure and jackassery await
- Rare Exports: Batshit insane movie about Santa Claus and the true meaning of Christmas
- Skyrim: Because of reasons
- Night’s Black Agents: Espionage and vampires in a RPG
- War of the Undead: A graphic novel about Nazis, zombies and more
- Black Crusade: The heavy metal album cover RPG
- Big Fan: Patton Oswalt is an obsessed football fan in this dark comedy
- Citation Needed: A compilation of the weirdest entries in Wikipedia
- Boardwalk Empire: HBO does violence. Well.
- Laser Mission: The Rifftrax is funny. The movie itself is pretty awful.
- Fear the Boot: The Kenneth Hite interview is great
- Jennisodes: Fascinating game design panel
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:12:32 — 49.8MB)
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Yay letter from Tom! Yeah funny stuff did happen during those oWoD days.
I’ll accept the challenge specifically I’m going to attempt to play against stereotype.
I support Ross and his Kenneth Hite kick, that man is awesome. AGh! And Night’s Black Agents looks totally sweet. Loyalty/trustworthiness mechanics!
I had a friend who always wanted to play elves… and not just elves, militant, racist elves who hated anyone who wasn’t an elf. He would consider it an agonizing compromise to play an elf who spoke Common… because if you don’t speak Elven, what’s the point in talking to you?
About the issue of playing insane characters, it’s true a lot of people just get silly or play like insanity is a feat with benefits. I played a pyromaniac Malkavian (many moons ago) and I tried not to be silly with it, but I did actually use it to my advantage… with a highly successful Craft roll in a storage closet in an office building, we escaped certain capture and likely torture and execution when I duct-taped together some old computer parts and said it was a bomb. Being known as crazy turned out to be helpful in that situation (he’ll do it, man, just do what he says…)
But when you play a character with a mental problem, I think you have to work with the GM and do what people with real mental problems unfortunately don’t have a choice in… you have to give up some control of your character. In stressful situations, my character would sometimes feel the need to set a fire… or panic in the face of a fire he set… or both… and when these situations occurred, I lost control of my character and the GM declared his actions. Well, that’s what it’s like when you have mental issues, you do things you can’t control. If you can handle that, you can have a character with mental issues. If you can’t handle that, then you can’t play a character with mental issues (or Call of Cthulhu, for that matter).
Hey, little shameless self-promotion here, I have a transcript of that Kenneth Hite interview here: http://subscriptorium.com/477/2samples/1ftb
Oh, this episode gave me such horrible flashbacks to the one guy I used to play with who always made comedy characters… I actually know a few, but this one guy, let alone this event, sticks out in my mind. Mostly because the DM supported his bad roleplaying.
It was in a 3.5 campaign in which the DM had placed many restrictions on the players as far as race and class, as the “civilized” races retreated into an elven forest as the world was taken over by people corrupted by demons. It was a short campaign, designed for levels 7-11 if I remember correctly… But I was playing a half-elf cleric who had a one or two page background, where basically he was kidnapped and tortured by demons at a young age, when he was rescued by the church of Heironious. From there he decided to become an Inquisitor. (Note that decision was simply made because I saw the Inquisitor prestige class in complete Divine).
This guy, through a series of events, talked the DM into letting him play a homebrew class he found on the D&D wiki. This class is known as the Dashing Swordsman, who is literally designed to be badass. He avoids traps on doors and windows if he dives through like a badass. The more badass, the better. He had no backgroud, by the way.
The desire of my character (who I played relatively seriously) was only to become an Inquisitor. The DM wouldn’t let me due to the flavor requirement of “You need to stop corruption first within your church.” And since I worshiped a Lawful Good deity in evil territory, my church didn’t exist.
This guy had two desires that he made up in the middle of the campaign: To get a magic shovel and dig a tunnel to make an underground fortress of ale and wenches, and a drill to pierce the heavens which would make him a deity. I called him stupid. The DM let him have it.
Loved the episode!
I had all my players listen to the episode as we had several recurring issues that have hurt our last few campaigns.