(no subject)

[the_rck]

A few things have come up recently that made me realize just how long I've been gaming. That meme was one, but more than that has been talking to people who are impressed by my experience. I'm 36, and I started role playing at 17. I started writing LARPs at 20 and GMing table top games about a year later. That's nearly 20 years as a player and a bit more than 15 as a GM and scenario writer. I suppose that is quite a while. It doesn't really seem that way to me because I've lived it. I guess I kind of assume that everybody else has the same background.

Now all of that experience makes me a better player but not a better role player. I mean, there are still characters I can't run and times when I can't figure out what I'm doing or manage to stay in character. I just know the out of character responsibilities of both GM and player pretty well, the sheer work that can be involved, and I try to live up to my part of the bargain. I fail sometimes; we all do. I've just done some pieces of the process enough that they're automatic.

Interestingly, events in Scott's life have brought him to similar conclusions. He's realized that, in Lewis' Star Wars campaign, he's got more game experience than any of the other players by at least a decade and quite likely more life experience by more than that. He'd been feeling rather down because he realized that he was the only player who wasn't either a student or a white collar professional, and he'd been feeling a bit like an outsider because of that. A talk with the GM established that the real dividing line is that Scott's the oldest, the only one with a child, that sort of thing. His priorities are different in ways that have nothing to do with the type of work he does. With different priorities, he might well be working some place else; he just wouldn't have a wife, daughter and house.

And speaking of that Star Wars campaign... The GM finally revealed part of how his campaign world came to be (The Death Star destroyed Yavin IV, and the Empire wiped out pretty much all of the rebels except the player characters). The pcs are traveling to the Death Star on an Imperial transport (they're infiltrating as musicians who're going to do a big PR concert) and it diverted to pick up a VIP, one Lord Skywalker.

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I have had like experience. I've been gaming since before there was an AD&D. Not long before, but lessee... I remember getting dragged into D&D sometime in '76 when "Cody"'s brother got stuck babysitting us. Anyway, that's a hell of a long time. Infact it's so long, I may even have the year wrong, but I definitely remember gaming before I figured out that girls were neat. A few years ago I had a gaming group filled with novice to semi experienced players that were mostly in high school. They thought I was an awesome GM because I came up with complex, adult oriented plots. And because they were uninhibited kids, they really, I mean really got into the games. So having all that gaming experience was great for them and it boosted my ego to new heights. Of course I also alarmed them with my knowledge of how a lot of the thief/spy type of thing common to role playing games goes down in real life. Even that was good, because they all had a very cartoon view of violence going into my contemporary urban campaign. They were teenagers from Ann Arbor so they had little experience with actual violence and had their views up to that point informed by Hollywood. I tried to portray violence in all its messy glory. Most importantly, I made sure that every act of violence came with consequences. For instance, they might have to deal with someone dying in agony after being shot, or they might acquire a criminal record, gang grudges, and even penalties to stats simuluating the pyschological toll that violence takes. That opened their eyes and I think those kids grew up a bit more thanks to my campaign than they otherwise would have. So different life experience makes for more insteresting and engaging games. That's why I like groups that trade off GMing duties among the members. Everyone has a different take and you can learn a lot.

[the_rck]

All of that is also stuff a lot of people don't think about in role playing. It's kind of tangential to what I was thinking about, but it's another important aspect to bringing life experience to the table.

I was thinking more about interpersonal courtesies when I started writing. Of course, there's also a certain ability to bluff...