The Gaming Den

So as it turns out I've been frequenting a monthly board gaming community for a couple of years now.

Being a keen RPG gamer I have for much of that time offered to run various RPGs, primarily Paranoia which is one of the best ones in my repertoire for relatively short one off games.

There has been minimal interest. The community is largely board gamers, infrequently war gamers, and they either don't play RPGs, or don't want to at this monthly event which is not especially well suited to it. It is better to just play three or more full board games than spend the entire time committed to playing one part of an RPG that probably won't continue in any meaningful sense, and would eat up many or all of your foreseeable monthly board game events anyway.

Then a group of kids started turning up and playing 4E. This is all fine and good. But they are well, kids, really kids, really young kids, so you don't want to play with them.

Now since they are such young kids one of their dads runs the game for them. He is a huge 4E fan. After about a year the kids figure out how to run the game themselves (and consequently seem to become more organized and enjoy it more, and run for longer sessions and everything, good for you kids, but, hm, mildly worrying hints of the dad's GMing talent there).

So dad GM is now on the prowl for more RPGs. For I dunno, six months to a year we had the whole 4E bait and switch thing going on. He appointed himself defacto head of all RPG gaming at the club (How? He GMed 4E games for 11 year olds he shipped in himself. It's all the authority he needs.)

He rounds up anyone who might look sideways at an RPG onto his secret RPG emailing list and actually tries to suppress organized public discussion of organizing RPGs on the gaming group's forums.

Any hint of any information we have always indicates by far d20 era 3.x games are what people want to play, but automagically on any given day that the event is on he substitutes in a 4E game and says "oh well it's 4Es turn to be run this month..." and then it burns and fails and nothing gets anywhere.

This much I've shaken my fist into the darkness about around here before.

By chance recently some new RPG players have migrated into the community, a couple of older fellows and some less young kids. They are keen to play, well, 3.x edition games.

Unfortunately they bring with them a, hm, semi competent Pathfinder GM, and the 4E dad GM likes him more than me (because I suspect of my disagreements with him over his bait and switch community take over bullshit). So a... grindingly slow game of Pathfinder has been going on for maybe 3-5 sessions? Never the full length of event because pathfinder GM always leaves remarkably early and takes a couple of the older kid players with him.

I generally chose not to bother with joining the pathfinder group, until recently when the board gamers saw sudden large drop in population and it was basically that or nothing for a couple of events running.

Though I DID manage to round up some of the older kids and some random passers by and run Paranoia at one event thanks to the increase in the RPG community size and due to pathfinder GM and dad GM being sufficiently disorganized that some months their players are left twiddling their fingers with nothing to do.

My little Paranoia game was arguably the most successful RPG game session ever run at the event. Characters were made a full adventure packed with actual things actually happening was played through. This is a big deal because seriously pathfinder GM requires like a WHOLE EVENT to make characters and runs approximately 1 to 1/2 of what should be a brief low character count combat encounter per event.

It was also insanely successful in declared player satisfaction, and very importantly in drawing positive attention from board gamers. I actively had people coming up to me afterwards saying "I over heard your paranoia game, I only play board games these days, but that actually sounded like a real lot of fun!". Which is you know. Sorta what you want to grow the community.

Despite that Dad GM is still running the show and actively trying to hedge out any possibility of me running any RPG ever.

And his latest plan, formulated with the er, assistance?, of the pathfinder GM is a REAL doozy. And it's the main thing I'm writing this post up to complain about.

So this is the main meat of this post is here...

So leveraging their authority of basically between them being the fathers or legal guardians or car rides or something of half the role playing gamers forming this tiny community they have decided the following...

They want to run more games and attract more players (OK, good thing)

They want to run a wider variety of games since running nothing but 4E and then (a bit past the fad unfortunately) a bit of Pathfinder didn't work. (OK good thing)

They decide the top games on their lists are...
d20 Modern run by a kid (the kid isn't that bad... or that good... and it's god damn d20 modern damnit)

pathfinder run by sloooow play

the 5E playtest, because dad GM didn't have enough of crushing failures at attracting or keeping players when he ran(edit: sat there wanking over) every brand new 4E promotional product ever.

Well if you have any problems with this then you can just run something yourself then! because you see having predated dad GM, run the only RPG event to successfully attract outside interest that this community has ever seen, hell the only RPG one off event to even RUN A COMPLETE ADVENTURE AS AN EVENT, and having spent the entire time he was formulating his list of priorities saying "and I can totally run a 3.x game like everyone on the list is saying they want to play" puts you as a last minute "Well I didn't even consider it but if you aren't happy with that smorgus board of awesome options I guess you can try and take the one remaining regular RPG player who isn't under our direct or indirect parental authority and do that!"

But here is the SUPER AMAZING KICKER, the GOLDEN CHESTNUT of their plan, the TRUMP CARD that will increase the RPG community and bring them the extra players they need to actually run three games at once (which I will note, they didn't ACTUALLY have at the time of making these plans).

The Month of Character Generation!
They fully expect and have basically instructed all their RPG players and everyone on dad GMs secret mailing list to attend next months event and...
DO NOTHING BUT GENERATE MULTIPLE CHARACTERS.

The plan is that then everyone will have a character for every game type they want to run and they don't then have to spend 1 entire session making characters each time they run a new game type! (Because, again, these guys take that long, and yes, again, I ran a group here through character creation and a full adventure with an RPG no problem, and yes Paranoia is sorta simpler in some respects, but also not really any less complex than say, 1st-3rd level or even higher 3.x characters).

Yes the actual plan they have to get more people playing more RPGs is to get everyone they currently have and actively NOT PLAY RPGS with them.

Also their plan is that this will also solve player resistance to using premade characters for their events (which has ODDLY arisen since for instance the pathfinder GM provided his group with a bunch of "premade" 9th level characters almost all of which were HORRENDOUSLY multi-classed (wizard 6 Cleric 3 was like the BEST one) and which don't seem to get actual items despite having all the rest of their choices (badly) made for them. WHY will this solve player resistance to premade characters? Because they will have premade their own, not sensibly at home during down time or something, but during the only face to face play time this dumb ass community has.

But what about all these new players this BRILLIANT strategy attracts? After being drawn in during character generation month when they say "ooh whats this can I play?" and being answered with "Play? We aren't playing! ahahahahaha, noob!". Well see then when they decide to join they can be given a SPARE character one of the regulars generated! And that's totally different to a premade character made by some random GM... because it's a premade character made by some random GM or a random player!

Of course one of the keystones of this strategy is that basically everyone is expected to invest time in making characters for game options they don't actually want to play and dad GM despite not even having 4E D&D on his list of supposed priority games to play has it on basically number one on his list of characters he expects the players to spend an entire monthly meet generating.

Basically even now the whole fucking "this month we make characters" bullshit is also STILL a bait and switch enterprise where dad GM attempts to sate the community interest in 3.x games by letting them make characters, vainly hopes forcing them to them make 4E characters will draw them in to the dark side, and plans in the near future to say "well this months turn is 4E (like it is every fucking month) and how can you protest, I mean you voluntarily made characters for this 4E game that month I arm wrestled all the kids into doing that!"

Now MY alternative strategy that I presented was if you want diversity in games as they claim, and want to see more people playing (and actually enjoying themselves). Just play a fucking game. Get through the character creation fast, get into the meat of the game and run a complete or at least eventful and well paced adventure in one fucking sitting. And if they repeatedly can't fucking do that for shit then step the fuck aside and watch someone who actually has those MINIMUM abilities of a successful GM do so.

Okay. So it sounds like the guy's actively retarded. Not exactly a surprise.

My advice; if the space/community is otherwise useful to you in whatever way (after all, if it wasn't, you probably wouldn't care this much), actively ignore the stupid RPG dad and run your own stuff. Announce it publicly in ways that explicitly go around him, post your own ads, talk to your own people, and barge in and set up your own games on whatever tables before he can get there. Try not to be obnoxious about it, but disregard his supposed 'authority' whenever possible. If you actually are doing a better job, you'll have satisfied players, which is actual authority, as opposed to the semblance of authority you get by assumed power.

Ideally, it will look like you running an actual game and having fun while he sits there doing chargen for hours with a bunch of bored people, and afterwards people care less about him and his ideas and want you to run more games.

Of course, this all does assume that the players you are looking for are people other then this guy's kids, or kids who get rides with him. If that's the case, then you're pretty much fucked from the core premise.

Endovior wrote:Of course, this all does assume that the players you are looking for are people other then this guy's kids, or kids who get rides with him. If that's the case, then you're pretty much fucked from the core premise.

And here is the thing.

All the kiddy kids are tied down to dad GM, and some of the older "yeah old enough to game with" new wave kids are tied to pathfinder "I need a whole day to make characters and then leave early" GM, and the two crazy dads are working in tandem.

As of the last event there was ONE other RPG player besides myself, we get other players from time to time, the month BEFORE that there were totally like 4 more, which seems to have sparked all this ambition to do something. I'd totally like to run games for those sorts of players, who are typically actually much older players too, which is an added bonus to them also not leaving 2 hours early because dad fears the dark or wants to be up for 6am mass on Sunday or whatever the fuck is going on with that guy that stops him from running until the event close at (OMG!) 9.00pm.

But see those guys tend to appear from nowhere unannounced (unless they are on dad GMs secret email list, which I doubt, that list never seems to bring actual benefits of any kind for anyone), give whatever bullshit is being run a go and then oddly never return. Being ready any and every gaming event and arriving early every time to try and identify and actually intercept transient players is a big fucking mess.

Mostly I am actually more concerned that the actual board game club itself is flagging a bit, and with slightly less obvious stupidity (well, other than their tendency to forget to collect fees and little things like that). Which is a pity, because as a board game club the community wasn't all that bad.

The sensible thing to do is probably just go back to board games to give them another warm body to try and keep that side of things going. Regardless though I've recklessly committed to offering to run 3.5 next month, either fortunately or unfortunately I will probably not have to actually go through with it because unless there is a bumper turn out next month there will NOT be sufficient RPG players to actually PLAY anything once "BUMPER CHARGEN BONANZA!" takes it's cut.

PhoneLobster wrote:whatever the fuck is going on with that guy that stops him from running until the event close at (OMG!) 9.00pm.

It's NSW, I wouldn't be caught out at dark in NSW either.

That said, a good start would be to report GM dad to the proper authorities for grooming. It sounds like that's what he's up to, and it'll get rid of him for some length of time, possibly several years if I'm right.

Koumei wrote:It's NSW, I wouldn't be caught out at dark in NSW either.

Not a matter of a few suburbs from the location of the club event I have, while walking alone after dark encountered groups of young males who called me a "filthy arab", which was unsettling, not so much because I am neither filthy nor an arab, but because gangs of neo nazi youths in the area seriously beat the shit out of people for less than that.

And that suburb was one of the most upper class fancy suburbs in town, the one the club is at is one of the bad suburbs.

So. Fair enough.

report GM dad to the proper authorities for grooming

Oddly enough while I dislike GM dad and think he is playing petty politics with the limited RPG community for this event, I think he is doing it with all good intentions especially regarding the younger kids who he HAS managed to let go and do their own thing happily enough (eventually).

Strangely pathfinder sloooow GM is the spooky one. But I doubt he is "grooming". Well. Not in that sense anyway. I DO suspect that if you turned over his rock he would turn out to be one of those frighteningly freaky religious fellows. No Idea what religion, but I bet it's one of the super scary weird ones.

In fact. In the interests of talking about people behind their backs here is an entertaining mildly relevant exchange that occurred.

Freaky GM : Blah blah, canned adventure text descriptions, bunch of chanting from over behind the grove. Mention chanting again several times. Make a thing of it. Makes a thing of it when there is suddenly still "chanting but less of it" at one point.
Stuff happens...
Another Player : Wait wait, so all that chanting was like JUST these two man sized Demons. What the heck? We thought it was a large group of chanters.
Me, in total innocence : Well I don't know about you guys but when I do chanting I like to do it in as large a group as possible.
Another Player : hahaha chuckle etc...
Me, possibly over extending the joke : ...I mean chanting as just a pair, it's kinda too intimate you know...
Freaky GM, impressively dead pan : Well I start every single morning chanting with one other person.
...
Everyone : Shuffle feet, look aside, clear throat softly, whistle, pretend nothing ever happened or it was a joke, or something, very very hard.
...

The guy is American or something. I don't think he has yet grasped that Australian culture regards you as a person of extreme faith if you can clearly name the denomination of the church you were last (probably by accident) inside of without slurring and dropping your beer bottle.

Welp.

Yeah, under those circumstances, my earlier comment stands.

Really, the situation you're describing sounds an awful lot like the reason why I'm not involved in my own local gaming scene... not many people playing anything on an organized basis, and those that are are playing things I'm not interested in. There's probably other people out there who'd be interested in the same games I would be, but I'd need to assemble a group from scratch to find them... and since the only visible RPG people I'm aware of at this point are the kind of people that drop by the game store to do 4E, the prospects feel grim.

Hell, I haven't even done any PbP lately, on account of all the games I was involved with dying off.

I say use the 4eDad's own methods against him. Quash any 4e talk if at all possible, post up "hey, let's get a 3e game going!" posts, and watch them to see who's interested, writing down usernames so you can make a secret email list when the thread gets deleted or whatever, and find other sites with local gamers and see if you can attract new people. Hell, find other forums and say "We've got 4e, PF, Next Playtesting, and are trying to get a 3.x game going, along with boardgames, and everything else, come check it out" and you'll attract at least a few new people. If all else fails, say fuck it and try to start an online game.

Prak_Anima wrote:I say use the 4eDad's own methods against him.

Sadly I don't have time to create a couple of 12 year olds and have them make a few friends to bring along for next month.

Damn the lack of cloning.

Actually, that sounds more like hippy Buddhism or yoga than crazy religious. On the cat lady crazy scale, that's only three or four cats.

fectin wrote:Actually, that sounds more like hippy Buddhism or yoga than crazy religious.

Those ARE crazy religious religions. Never imagine that new age crazy religion is any different from traditional crazy religion just because they talk to fairies just as often as they talk to angels.

I could tell you stories about the fairy angel cultists that regularly visit our water garden nursery and are considering buying the over priced mansion next door as a cult compound.

But I probably shouldn't. I don't want to offend them and would prefer the insane cult move in compared to the current owner...

I will always prefer hippy buddhists and new age culters over crazy conservative christians. At least the buddhists and new agers have no problem with me marrying a guy if I so choose, and don't want to burn me at the stake for wearing an inverted pentacle. Crazy they may be, but at least they're nice crazy.

Prak_Anima wrote:I will always prefer hippy buddhists and new age culters over crazy conservative christians. At least the buddhists and new agers have no problem with me marrying a guy if I so choose, and don't want to burn me at the stake for wearing an inverted pentacle. Crazy they may be, but at least they're nice crazy.

That's just minority bias. In Tibet the Christians are the nice chill people and the Buddhists are the assholes. That's just a function of who can expect to have their assholishness backed up. Because they are all assholes at heart.

That's... actually a really good point.

Out of curiosity... do you have a source for that assertion? I haven't actually heard anything about assholishness from Tibetan Buddhists, unless you consider frequent but generally nonviolent protests to be asshole behavior. That said, since I haven't actually been to Tibet, and don't place an especially high deal of confidence on the accuracy of news coming out of Tibet, I'm prepared to assume I'm essentially uninformed on the matter.

Endovior wrote:Out of curiosity... do you have a source for that assertion? I haven't actually heard anything about assholishness from Tibetan Buddhists, unless you consider frequent but generally nonviolent protests to be asshole behavior. That said, since I haven't actually been to Tibet, and don't place an especially high deal of confidence on the accuracy of news coming out of Tibet, I'm prepared to assume I'm essentially uninformed on the matter.

Well, I'm mostly referring to Tibetan Buddhists back when they had actual political power. While I have no doubt that on a local level they have continued to be assholes to non Buddhists to the same level as local Christians are to people when it comes to the illegal school prayers they do anyway and local persecution, that stuff doesn't make the news nationally here, so there's no reason we would hear about it in Tibet.

But back when Tibet was Tibet, and not a Chinese possession, they kept the vast majority of their population in the worst kind of shitty serfdom, slowly starving to death so they could live rich opulent lives, and kidnapped children to populate their monasteries. To the extent that anyone in Tibet wasn't a Buddhist, they probably weren't treated very well for it.

I'm sure if you wanted to, you could go back and look at the Tibetan Empire attacking bad wrong Hindu's or something, but whatever, people do that.

You guys are scaling up your authority=assholeness argument when you should be scaling down.

Just go look at small scale authority you can observe side by side within the same societies and contexts.

Traditional christian style extreme religious fanatics treat their kids like shit and make their lives a mess.

Modern new age bullshit style extreme religious fanatics treat their kids like shit and make their lives a mess.

The perfect example is the most basic, life saving medical care for children they control, new ager and traditional fanatics are both highly likely to refuse "evil" life saving modern medicine, or use bullshit detrimental and deadly voodoo shamanism instead. Or even out of nowhere decide that something completely imaginary needs a life endangering batshit voodoo "cure".

It's all about the same consequences for basically the same action. Putting completely insane unrealistic beliefs ahead of personal welfare and the welfare of others and it ALWAYS manifests most clearly and consistently in extreme cases in the way they treat any children they end up being inexplicably responsible for the welfare of.

So anyway. The crazy RPG community at the local board game club has met. Miraculously sufficient players decided they wanted to play instead of make characters. Most of them even brought in characters they had made already for the game. Further saving us actual limited face to face event time.

I ran a game. It was successful. An actual adventure was had. All players involved got to do stuff and a lot of it and not sit around 45 minutes between turns.

One player needed to make a character. We achieved this AND played the game. Remarkably three other players turned up with 1st level characters in hand. They seemed surprised and pleased when things came up like "2 rogues? sure no problem", "No spell casters? Sure, whatever", "MM LA Zero orc? Yes I know what it is, no it isn't a problem", "Notably higher than average attribute rolls on all these characters? Excellent that will help us out nicely".

The rival project for making characters and not actually playing did go ahead. At 4-5 hours the 4E dad GM came over and badgered some of my players about the 4E characters they had graciously made for him outside of event time.

At that stage he said "Well so far we have ONLY been making d20 modern characters". So presumably about an hour after that after the full 5-6 hour event they MAYBE had a d20 modern character each. Or at least were 5-6 hours closer to that goal. Yeah.

Also he was badgering them about the 4E characters they made for him based on.
1) What is this, I don't even, I've never heard of, oh, in the rules you say, a book of some form, which you proceeded to actually use based on some assumption that when I said "make 4E characters" I meant "make 4E characters"? Passive aggressive hmmm.
2) Well now tell me which sources all the individual options on your characters came from. Yes this is sufficiently important for me to interrupt the game you are actually playing.
3) Why are your attributes so high? They are wrong. I'm going to make you redo your sheet with a strict point buy instead because I don't believe you rolled them, and I don't care because they are too good anyway, and I am afraid of you having generous attributes for some reason.
4) I mean fuck, my bait and switch, er I mean multi edition character generation event, is nearly over and your 4E characters are the only 4E characters I have and I'm proiritizing fixing them above all the other non-d20-modern characters for all the other more popular editions we were supposed to be completing. I am also prioritizing them over the game you are in right now and are currently fighting a large and climactic encounter in. No this sort of thing CAN'T wait until the same day the character is actually used for a hypothetical actual game, even checking tweaking a character handed to me by players requires too much time and work to do that AND play! Instead you can do that AND play that other guys game!

So there we go. In summary and comparison.

My Plan to actually play an RPG? A Success.

Vs

Rival plan to just make characters for an entire event? A failure. Did not make characters for multiple games. Did not work for clearly intended 4E bait and switch. MIGHT have partially succeeded in making characters for ONE d20 modern game. But if so they spent between 5-6 hours doing so.

Vindication!?

Congratulations. This D20 modern thing sounds like it's going to be a trainwreck.

The d20 modern thing probably won't be a train wreck. It most likely do what d20 modern does best, and be a vague and confusing disappointment.

D20 Modern is not being run by 4E dad or slow as treacle Path Finder dad. It's being run by one of the older teenagers, he has sold it pretty hard to the 12 year olds and as far as I can guess having not paid much attention until 4E dad kindly brought his event to my table the kids were sufficiently enthused that they hijacked basically the entire "lets make characters for ALL THE GAMES!" event into what I can only imagine was a "learn the entire d20 modern system from top to bottom and make characters of some unreasonably high starting level" session.

Now I've seen D20 Modern kid in action, I even played one game of d20 modern with him running it. Against my better judgment on a slow board game day.

I chucked his ineffectual looking multi classed premade characters (7th or 9th level or something stupid, like ONE based off fast and it was bad anyway, some of them were Smart, no really SMART) wrote up a Dreadnaught on the spot, then ran around with my massively superior (for d20 modern, so actually just very mildly superior) numbers and chainsaw berserk striked my way through a pointless and dull dystopian sci-fi FPS mission knock off he had clearly lovingly hand crafted a whole half an adventure worth of.

I don't want imply it was all that bad or that I sabotaged anything, fun was had by all, my awesome chainsaw powers only helped us not end up, as we would have, either TPKing or being bogged down forever in a losing attrition war against the nine or so thugs in the stupid compound we were supposed to capture. All the same despite a few laughs had all round on the day I don't think I was alone in being just sorta disinterested in bothering to continue that.

He isn't the most charismatic and interesting of GMs but he was competent, he knew his rules sufficiently well and had all the basic required skills to actually run a game.

Now the younger 4E kiddies may well enjoy the change of rules, setting, style and pace. It COULD be a success. But I suspect that it will be plagued with the problems d20modern games always are. The setting/story/characters will all be generic, dull, crap and disappointing and the rules will help enforce those things if not be the root cause of those things.

D20 Modern Kid is like all D20 Modern GMs/fans. He has a vision. He isn't sure what it is. But he is determined to achieve it in the least efficient manner possible.

Sadly I suspect that he will run 1, maybe 2 sessions, and then interest will just sort of quietly evaporate. This will not especially be his fault, it's just what d20 modern rules and d20 modern campaigns do best. If he can manage to realize that and plan it as a 1-3 sitting event that's actually almost perfect for irregular event formats like this, but I suspect he won't.

The 5-6 hour prep session event just now however is truly remarkable and leads me to wonder how he ever managed to run that one half an adventure I chainsawed through. But then again, I don't have any particularly clear idea of WHAT it was that happened at the table that managed to burn through all that time and energy.

Maybe they all wrote characters, learned the rules in detail, discussed and created a co-operative setting, select optional d20 modern rules modules, changed their minds about everything three times and redid it all form scratch.

Maybe.

Gloating mc-gloaty update people.

So anyway. I ran a second day of the grand adventure intended to prove you can just play a god damn D&D game to promote D&D plan.

Things looked iffy at first. Everyone was late. Then suddenly everyone turned up. What a twist.

Anyway. Also a twist. We gained a new player.

Honest to god the (counter) plan intended to grow the local RPG community at this event. Actually worked. Someone found me talking about our plans on a public forum (like I said they would vs the secret email list). Then they turned up on the off chance (like I said they might). Then we made them a character. Then we continued to play the game.

It may not last, we might have only gained 1 guy for 1 meet. But it was fun to watch the new guy turn up and when the d20modern game and the (did it happen I hardly noticed?) a 4E game was mentioned by 4E dad the guy actually said something like "oh I sort of saw the stuff about this one on the forum and kinda came specifically for this."

Actually new guy seems suspiciously like a bit of a gaming den lurker (or poster) and I kinda suspect he may even have found us from this thread here. So if you're reading this, Hi new guy, and tell no one about the "our favorite edition" thread. I strongly suspect poo would be flung. Not that the GM or anyone from that thread is really closely involved in this little RPG community at the board game club, but the GM from that might be within ear shot while attempting to do what he always does at the meets these days... which is sapping the vitality and gamer base from the community to try and fuel his incredibly inconveniently located board game store in a vampire like manner, yes he went and opened a gaming store since that thread. Yes it is terrifying.

Anyway the game itself went OK. New guy actually asked for a few things from SEVERAL splat books beyond what I was familiar with. It largely didn't matter, some sort of crazy wizard familiar substitute immediate teleport I don't care about because seriously with this group and this adventure he doesn't really need that (actually a familiar to round the wildly rambling players up in one place for an encounter would probably be better), some dragon blood thing that did... something something whatever I don't care I'm sure he will remind me if we do. And then some OTHER feat that sounded sorta awesome but is probably nothing but by then my eyes glazed over because I'm running this whole thing on 3 hours of sleep and a wild depression kicker from the latest minor disaster in phonelobster's incredibly stupid not-really-a-romantic-life-but-it's-easier-to-just-call-it-that.

(Pro tip. Do not ask lobster about this shit. Stories are typically insane and melodramatic like anything lobster related but also really lame and depressing, far too many disappearing sociopath drug addicts with no forwarding address, teenage orphan red headed poets dying of incurable medical conditions, turning up five minutes late to find the girl you planned to meet being carted off in an ambulance after a surprise encyclopedia based attack you might have prevented, and people fleeing the country for five years to avoid a single casual only kinda sorta date. You know. The usual depressing shit. Anyway. The latest one is actually totally lame and boring. I mean hell. Even the one where I got engaged when I was in preschool and got switched out with a substitute lookalike body double during the 15 year interval before the promised marriage was more exciting.)

So anyway. No sleep. Deeply depressed. Still ran a fun game. New guy was perhaps a bit put out by the rather hilarious if pointlessly distracting and time wasting antics of the rather mixed bag of zany random event players we have as they for the most part get their minds blown by my "well yeah sure, whatever waving that stolen 4th best regional governor trophy in the air and telling the villagers you are now "the mayor" and they should bring you their largest dogs, might well achieve something" play style.

But once he adapted to that I think he had a good enough time along with everyone. And despite being, oh hell WELL below my best game I managed a fairly representative example of anything goes manic fun times GMing style. If somewhat sloppy and skittish in attention span, but then when am I not?

So yeah anyway. In your face "lets generate characters for an entire month and never post about actual games on public forums" guys. I got one whole possibly temporary new player AHAHAHAHAHA.

PhoneLobster wrote:, yes he went and opened a gaming store since that thread. Yes it is terrifying.

Oh dear God save us.

I know how much of a fuck you don't give, but the familiar replacement is from PHB2 and is for Conjuration Specialist Wizards (so already sounds like a Denizen). They get, X+Int times per day, a short range Immediate Teleport, ie "Avoid 1 attack/round for X rounds/day" (more relevant at low levels where you aren't in 50' radius AoE effects and enemies can say "Oh, so that arrow auto-misses. What about the other two*?")

Almost every dragonblooded thing comes from Races of the FanboyDragon and you care precisely as much as you need to, because it's very much "whatever".

Well done. I may not like you much but you're leagues ahead of that cockbag and probably run a good game, so gloating is in order.

Also, please, more info on that gaming store. This should be hilarious.

*Or, depending on power creep feats, PrCls for archers and such, nineteen.

Personally, I wouldn't be worried. If crazy guy has opened a game store, then take it as a sign of his impending bankruptcy, and take advantage of all the time he has to be running his store to run your own games and solidify your own influence independent of his shenanigans.