This is Random TTRPG Thoughts #76
It’s June, my schedule is packed, and Summer heat has arrived. As I navigate my way through end of school year chaos my brain attempts to escape through hibernation mode. Force reboots, sparked by coffee, triggers odd moments of cognition. These are random TTRPG thoughts.
- My Dragonbane group had an interesting session the other week, which caused one of the players to muse, “Are we the bad guys?” I created a new shirt design for my store to remember the occasion. There were threatened war crimes and one character realized he was doing a kidnapping before he realized it wasn’t a great idea.
- One of the most fun aspects of talking about TTRPG sessions away from the table are the out of context quotes. This past week’s Numenera session led to the quote, “Oh it’s a localized nuke.”
- The TTRPG code is the players bring the snacks. How else are you going to bribe the GM?
- I was working outside at a coffee shop near my favorite used book store this week. The owner of the store recognized me as he was getting coffee and we both said hi. On his way back out I asked, “Hey, you got anything new down there?” He thought for a bit and said, “Well, not D&D specific, but I’ve got some other games in the back I can pull out for you.” That is literally the only time something like that has happened to me. Also, I grabbed copies of the two Numenera core books for one of my players.
- Dragonbane is running a new funding campaign for two books which expand the game’s world and magic options. Go check it out!
- I am now reading The Elusive Shift and it’s fascinating. There are people nowadays who mock the idea that players get attached to their characters and claim it’s some new phenomenon. It turns out there were people creating personalities and stories for individual soldiers for miniature war games as early as 1960, and it changed how the players used them in the game. Peterson quotes about this phenomenon from Advanced War Games, authored by Don Featherstone in 1969, “It brought to table-top battles a strange sense of compassion…a self-identification with the little figures producing a marked reluctance to commit them to sacrificial missions.” That blew my mind.
- I really want to run a few sessions of The Electric State.
- Here are some other games I want to run. Tales of Argosa, post-apocalyptic Cypher System, Zombie Brain Eaters, Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, and Avatar Legends.
- People are excited about Daggerheart and I think that’s awesome. I suppose I’ll have to review it at some point.
- OK, my Cypher System Super Hero table is making yet another attempt to come back this month! Scheduling has defeated Sneaky Fast Punch for too long! Also, “The Scheduler” would be an amazing villain for a satirical comic about a TTRGP group.
