tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60818101170204012732024-03-13T09:42:53.806-04:00Gaming in the WildAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-32737784109494432852017-05-23T06:08:00.001-04:002017-05-23T06:08:31.575-04:00Blizzardo-dominon-ipicus...Rex<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<i>I want to state here and now so that there is no confusion, I would have a tough time surviving the apocalypse. I'm OK with it, I just thought you should know.</i></div>
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<i>This weekend we were without power due to a windstorm which thwomped its way through the area last Thursday. We dealt with it fairly well, but power wasn't restored until Saturday evening and there was much work to be done to get back into a civilised existence.</i></div>
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<i>Also, a few weeks ago I ran into Brent, the player mentioned in this article. An enthusiastic and thoughtful gamer, Brent unfortunately has no time for the hobby these days.</i></div>
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<i>However, I hope you enjoy this one from the vaults and barring anymore special occasions or weather wonders, we will return to our regularly scheduled blatherings next week...</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life is full of little surprises, learning experiences, and constant change. This might be one reason why humans as a general rule are so resistant to change and so in love with routine. We crave the familiar, and wallow in habit, even if or habit is to constantly reject the habitual and move towards chaos. Yes, even doing things differently every day is a habit.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A couple of things occurred this week which reminded me that change and the unknown are good.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, one of our longtime members who due to school has become a sometimes member started returning to game night. Now, he maintains that each week will be a crapshoot as to whether work and school and family commitments permit him to show up, but he is adamant that he would try his best. Mostly, because everyone needs to indulge in that thing that helps make the rest of the things tolerable, and for Brent, gaming is one of those things.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He had mentioned in previous weeks that he had been doing a lot of reading on the savage worlds system, and was pretty stoked about the whole thing. I have never had the pleasure of playing that system, but have heard many good things. And to fit with the theme of the article, one should be willing to try new things.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I mentioned to Brent that he was welcome to run a table, but he demurred, pointing out his potential for an inconsistent schedule. I totally understand his reluctance. One thing you must maintain when running a community gaming group is consistency. As I said earlier, people love routine and familiarity, even when playing games which remove them from the familiar. If they keep showing up each week and the game is called off for whatever reason, they start to reexamine where they spend their time and money.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I could tell by the end of our conversation though, that Brent really wanted to play savage worlds. He spoke of the streamlined simplicity of the system, and how much was left in the player's hands to design and flesh out. I'll admit I was more than intrigued. He's a passionate salesman.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the end, I suggested to him that on any given Thursday, he was more than welcome to show up and take over my table. I have players who are very open and kind and live to try new things. We are of course, knee deep in our Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, but for Brent, I would be happy to suspend that for a week or two if it meant that he got to share this gaming system with us, and be able to give it a shot for his own fulfillment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week he came good on our agreement. While I only know so much of the plot, he decided to run an RPG day adventure set in modern day Wisconsin. Not wanting to spoil things for others, I will say that bad things happen to people on buses in remote locations…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As people arrived, they sat down and looked generally unsure. I was obviously on the wrong side of the screen, and Brent had all the pregens laid out with his other player props for everyone's perusal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the basics were explained however, the mood began to change. We still use the same dice, the character sheets were fairly clear and easy to understand, and the system was not an intimidating coagulation of rules and charts and page references. In fact, the core system is often explained on three pages.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Overcoming everybody's initial nervousness, we sat down and got right to it. As a quick review of first impressions, we all thoroughly enjoyed it. It is easy, it is fairly quick, and the simplicity of the design necessitates player creativity. What that facilitated was a raucous session of hair raising adventure which had our grown up table being shushed by the young ones. Of all the nerve.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lesson here is that sometimes you need to just jump on to the unfamiliar. Start cold on something unexpected and out of the norm and just let it wash over you. None of us were quick to point out any shortcomings, or to immediately start to compare it to other systems such as D&D or Star Wars, which are played quite regularly at our community group. We just let it happen, and it was well worth the adventure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve often pointed out that humans fear change and the unfamiliar. I am no different. I am a big time routine guy. I have a mental schedule of daily activities that I practice the same way every day, in every way. And if that routine is upset, it can throw me so far off track, I wonder if I’m going to make it back to the realm of sanity. My wife is the perfect foil for that, often and I think sometimes intentionally throwing wrenches and boomerangs and lemmings into the spokes of my habit regime just to see what colour I turn. And for that, I love her.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the next time someone brings up a new game or system or LARPing, don’t immediately balk or turn up your nose at the suggestion. In fact, don’t think about it at all. So what if you’re </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">D&D game is about to face the ancient red bad thing of evilness for the last time and rescue Princess Maguffin. It’s nostrils will still be smouldering next week, and it gives her high fancy pantsness-ness another chance to adjust her royal attitude. Dive into deeper waters.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At best, you will discover yet another reason why this pastime is so awesome, at worst, you will find another dark corner of game design to shun in quiet circles. If you never try, how will you know?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other thing I wanted to point out this week goes hand in hand with the above: If you are the person leading your group down the garden path of this amazing new game, for the love of Gygax, know your stuff and be prepared.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While Brent had to look up the occasional tidbit of information, he was overall VERY familiar with the rules. He explained the core mechanic to us and the spirit of the system quite succinctly and then dove into the game, not giving us a chance to complicate things with our adultness and ideas. He had all of his maps drawn and laid out for his (and our) convenience, yet he also left areas of his battlemat blank, so that we could add to the environment; a very fitting choice for a system that promotes player creativity and influence.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His bus prop was pre constructed, and he did quite a wonderful thing with “minis.” Because the game relies heavily on simplicity and creativity, he cut wooden dowels for the PCs and enemies. The enemies were grey and two different sizes, and the PCs tokens were coloured in six different hues, to match the six pre-gens. The kicker is, that he also coloured the “Benefit” tokens (Bennies) the same as the PCs, creating instant and simple association for the players.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was also a troubleshooting chart that he had found somewhere in the webworld. It operated under the flow of “If you are having trouble doing A, try B, C, or D, and if you do so, those actions will benefit X, Y, or Z.” This prop came in handy for just about all of us at one point or another during the evening. Brent even printed out a couple of rule summary handouts, but we didn’t use them. Reason is, Brent knew the system well enough that if we asked about whether we could do a thing, he would just tell us, and the rules sheets stayed where they were laid.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We enjoyed ourselves because it was a good game, but the important thing to remember that even the best game in the whole damn ‘verse can be brought low and left wanting in the wrong hands.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So if you are going to try something new, make sure one of you knows how to drive the bus.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A final note to those who endured the recent Blizzardodominonipicus in the United States: I follow Board Game Geek on the Facebooks. So many gaming enthusiasts got together with their friends and family and groups to game out the storm. Many of them were playing favourite games, but just as many seemed excited to use the weather as the perfect excuse to trap their groups into trying new things. I think that’s great. I don’t envy the cleanup that all you lovely folks are having to deal with (of course, living where I do my sympathy only goes so far), but I greatly admire the optimism and palpable excitement and enjoyment you all seemed to exhibit as you posted your updates and summaries.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Except the ones playing Dead of Winter. You all seemed a little...nervous.</span></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-43996310355026775912017-05-16T05:58:00.000-04:002017-05-16T06:03:16.257-04:00From the Depths: Speak softly, but carry a Big Stick<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>This week, I was far too interested in helping my wife and family have a productive and enjoyable Mother's Day. For the first time in a while, the weather was gorgeous, and we got outside and did the things, as well as visit with family like my own mother, who had just returned from a trip through Ottawa and the province of Quebec.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Here is an article of mine from the Mad Adventurer's Society which caught my eye. Not because I currently have any new members to the BTGC which require special attention, nor am I feeling particularly fed up with the world. Part of having a healthy community is how you as a leader or person of influence deal with the people within said community.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>So here you are. Please enjoy responsibly...</i></span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-56934b6f-10aa-3e1f-dd0b-d512c6885eb5" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sartre said “Hell is other people.” In many ways, he isn’t wrong. Relationships and social interactions complicate our lives to no end, and our responsibilities to these other people fill up our schedules and throw our routines into constant turbulence. In my job as a carpenter building and renovating homes, I often lament that it would be a lot better if it weren’t for the customers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some people simply can’t deal with the world at large. Others can only deal with small groups at a time. I am not a fan of crowds, myself. I find myself increasingly uncomfortable and nervous when around a large group of people with whom I am unfamiliar. Crowded malls may take a little longer to get to me, but a bar where my band is playing causes me no end of stress in a short amount of time, and I tend to go from the extreme of flitting from group to group seeking small talk, or end up sitting at a table tuning my bass and feigning intense focus. Really, I just want to get on with everything and go home. Not to say that I don’t want to be there entertaining people with our performance, just that I break out in social hives when I am lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have it pretty easy, and my social issues are pretty mild. I have developed some natural talents to deal with my challenges, and people are often surprised when I express my fear of social situations. “But you’re so good with people!” That may be true, but is that because I want to be, or because I have to be?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I must pause briefly and give credit to RPGs in general and D&D specifically for helping me develop the more complex social skills that aid me in the above environments. I don’t think I’m alone in the belief that by taking on diverse characters with a broad range of morals and motivations, we can explore the deeper aspects of humanity and its accompanying conditions to better understand what makes us tick. In so doing, our empathy for others is enhanced by truly putting ourselves in another’s shoes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I bring this up for two reasons: Reason one is that for some people, going to an unknown social gathering is a huge deal, and reason two is that we as GMs or hosts of a social event or gaming community have a responsibility to accommodate those people and make them feel comfortable and welcome.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gaming in the wilds of reality means you don’t get to pick and choose who comes through the doors and sits at your table the way you get to do at home. You have to put up with every type of person just the way any proprietor of any business ever.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know that for some of those reading this article there may be the puffing of chests and the declaration that you are in charge, and that if somebody rubs you the wrong way, then you are well within your rights to lock the doors and declare that none shall pass. That is true, and you can do that, but what it will get you is a shortened lifespan for your group, and awkward conversations with most of your members as they question your motivations, and fear your wrathful banhammer.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are those individuals who don’t fit in, it’s true. They are disruptive and disrespectful of property and other people and they need to be dealt with, because the rest of your group are starting to feel uncomfortable, and that is dangerous. They make racist comments and thinly veiled threats against NPCs that have the other players squirming in their seats. And they feel justified for all the usual reasons. That’s how they built their character. Those people aren’t real, so what does it matter?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These people often don’t get the social cues that the rest of the group is throwing at them. Eyes are cast down at the table or glances are furtive and thrown to every other player seated, wondering if they find the behaviour just as inappropriate. The laughter starts off as merely polite and uncomfortable, but shortly there is no laughter at all, and lips become creased as people don’t want to rock the boat. Through all of this, the player is pressing on, clearly not understanding that this isn’t acceptable. That is there world. What makes you think their behaviour is any different anywhere else?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You as the GM/Organizer have to step in at this point. If you don’t address the situation, you will lose your players. I have always maintained that you are creating a safe haven for people to come and explore their hobby. If that place becomes poisoned by that one bad apple, the bunch will simply disappear.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So here is what you do: step up, communicate with respect and tact. And don’t attack.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Always pull that person aside and have your conversation away from everyone else.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> No good will ever come from chastising someone or pointing out their faults or mistakes in front of their peers. Remember public school? That teacher that paraded the shortcomings of others in front of the whole class to make an example? That is embarrassing at best, and humiliating at worst. Don’t be that guy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Never have this conversation via text or email.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I am thirty-seven years old, which means I stand on the edge of the modern age of social communication and the former one. I still see the faults of an exchange of verbiage via the written word that can be so easily misconstrued. Type one wrong word, or choose to use a tone that is a little too business-like, and this person will feel attacked. I guarantee that if you attempt to face the issue with the bravery of being out of range, there will be unwanted collateral damage, and you will be the one who loses. So take a deep breath, look that person in the eye, and speak calmly and clearly.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Start off with a compliment that will let them know that they don’t completely suck.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> You are about to tell them that everyone thinks they are a jerk. This will emotionally wrench them from the group and make them feel alone and rejected. So butter them up a little and let them down easy. If the character they have created is a perfect example of min/maxed, OP, twenty-level feat planning, let them know that. If they are always coming up with brilliant and left-field solutions to the problems the party faces, share that and let it be known how that player has helped the party out of some pretty sticky jams. If they weren’t there, I don’t know what would have happened. This lets that person know that they are part of the team, but there is one little thing that is becoming a problem...</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Give this person the benefit of the doubt.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> They may not know that their behaviour is unacceptable. In previous articles, we have discussed that people are on their own path, and it is not the same as yours. This also does not make you more right about things, just because you and the rest of the group see things the same way. In this individual’s world, it is perfectly acceptable to behave in this way. You are not going to change that. That is how they grew up, and when they go home or back to their other social circles, they will slip right back into that behaviour. You are not their parent, or their mentor. It is not your job to force them to fundamentally change their perception of the world or how they live in it. All you can do is address how they behave in yours. And perhaps that influence will cause a subtle change in them over time. After all, we are all variables in somebody’s world, as they are for us. You hang around with tigers long enough, you will get some claws.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, they may have no idea that their comments and so on are not appropriate for your group. So give them the benefit of the doubt and explain your feelings not as an attack on their character, but as a social misunderstanding. Identify some examples of incidents to show what they have done that is not acceptable, but don’t beat them over the head with exhaustive stories of their dickishness. A laundry list of don’ts is like a hammer beating them down into a pool of shame, and that will result in one of two reactions: self-loathing or anger. You don’t want either of those.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tell them how they can solve the problem.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Don’t just dump a list of failures and issues in someone’s lap and walk away. Give them some clues as to how they can make things better. If their character is their crutch, point out changes they can make to background and current personality traits that will inform how they play that PC. If they are making inappropriate or unknown references to things that people clearly are not interested in, help inform them about things the whole table finds interesting so that if they really don’t know the people at all, they can get an inkling of who they are and adjust their topics of conversation accordingly.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you want to keep people at your table, you have to work with each person and the table as a whole to find the right balance so that everybody is having a good time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Listen to what they have to say.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> After all is said and done, you have to let them speak their piece, and you have to listen. They have stood there and listened to you spout off, it is only fair that you hear their side of things in return. They have experienced things from a different point of view, and you may not be aware of the whole story. Acknowledge their side of things, and then amend your proposed solution in return. This refers to the previous paragraph about helping them solve their problems. Compromise is always a solution, especially if it leads to balance overall.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conclude on a positive note.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Express your excitement about your continued adventures together, and thank them for their attention in this matter. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being polite and expressing gratitude. If more people did this everywhere on a daily basis, everybody’s lives would be a little brighter, so say thank-you. It doesn’t take long, and it will help to rebuild that person’s confidence just a little.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t make a big deal about it to the rest of the group.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Don’t come back to the session declaring that you have yelled at Bob, and he’s promised not to be a big jerk ever again. You are now holding up a big sign over Bob’s head that just reiterates to him and the group that he was being a jerk, and forces all of those uncomfortable moments back to the surface. Congratulations, you are now a big jerk, too. If you feel that it is important to inform the group that steps have been taken, then do so when that person isn’t present. State that there was a discussion and that you have every confidence that things will get better from this point on. They don’t need to know every detail. Simply put, that side of things is none of their business. All the group needs to know is that something is being done.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Make a group effort.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Part of helping someone adjust their conduct lays on the shoulders of the group. Enlist them to work with that person to re-establish a positive vibe. It can be as simple as asking them to just give another chance and be patient. Alternatively, a player or two can step in to engage the person in conversation outside the session. Getting to know them or including them in pre-game chit-chat, or talking shop about character building or adventure themes will help rebuild the gap that is created when someone gets a talking-to.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what do you do if it all just keeps spiralling down hill? Keep an eye on things as your sessions continue. Things may be a little strained for a while, but that is expected. This person is going to be making a conscious adjustment to how they behave, and everybody is going to be a little apprehensive, waiting to see if the other shoe is going to drop. Be positive and push on. Bring focus back to the game, and let things settle for a bit. This is part of giving the benefit of the doubt.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If after a reasonable amount of time it is obvious that things are not working out, you have only a few options left.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, you can revisit the issue, and try again. Some issues may be minor enough that a little kick in the pants is not out of the question from time to time. Especially if things are generally swimming along. Again, you have asked someone to consciously alter their way of behaving and interacting with those around them, and everybody slips up from time to time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Secondly, you can attempt to find them another table. If you are running a public community, cast an eye across the room and have a listen. Talk to the other GMs and see if maybe this person is just the wrong personality type for your particular group. There could be a group they would better fit in with just across the way. Your table may lose a player, but your community will not lose a member.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lastly, and as a last resort, ask them to leave. You don’t want to do this unless it is the only solution remaining. If this person refuses to work with you and the rest of your group, or if their behaviour simply cannot be adapted for the benefit of all, then it’s time to address the problem in a permanent fashion. This is what you have a code of conduct for. This is what they refer to as the Social Agreement that really applies to everybody everywhere. You have all agreed to show up and have fun. In return you have also agreed to do nothing to erode that fun.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just remember that in most cases, the person you are ousting will not accept that they were at fault. They do not see their behaviour as inappropriate or wrong, because it is part of their personality. This has already been evidenced in their unwillingness or inability to change.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Therefore, in the future when they talk with others about why they no longer attend your game nights, etc. they will invariably paint you and your group in the darker light, and from a practical point of view, that is bad for business. If you rely on membership to keep your group going, you don’t want that.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is not to say that you can’t refuse people at the door. As I said earlier and in previous articles, that is why we have rules. A code of conduct that presents a reasonable set of expectations is all the justification you need to address these issues. Make use of it where it is needed, and as long as you feel that you have exhausted all other avenues in your attempts to resolve the issues on a positive note, you can feel justified in your final decision to ask this person to stop coming.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This hobby is about fun at it’s most basic purpose. Nobody will willingly put themselves in a situation that is supposed to be fun, just to feel uncomfortable. It is your job as an organizer and a GM to make sure that people are getting the most out of their time and money. This is one way to deal with the myriad of persons who you will encounter in your real life adventures.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-60615710789986163172017-05-09T05:47:00.001-04:002017-05-09T05:47:12.934-04:00Not at MyTable<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Writing about the elements that make up a healthy and productive community of any kind, I have actively avoided touching on negative influences. However, there was an occurrence this weekend at a premier level tournament that has made it clear to me that sometimes you have to talk about the bad side of things. The seedy underbelly of tabletop hobby gaming that unfortunately also applies to everyday life and our interactions with the wild…</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you want to have a successful gaming community, you need a lot of variables to fall into place. Over the last couple of years, I have gone through quite a few of them including what to look for in a venue, location, and about the importance of consistency in all things. One of the things that those of us have rarely had to deal with is dishonesty and problem players. And I do count us as lucky. I read online all the time about groups with problem players or problem GMs. I have heard the woes of those with alpha gamers, rules lawyers, phone addicts, and a host of other stereotypes. At the BTGC, we have grown accustomed to absenteeism, and it no longer strikes us as a problem, just another foible of running a twenty plus member community based open gaming group. We deal.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing we have never (to our knowledge), had to deal with are cheaters.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cheaters come in all shapes and sizes, and run the gamut of degrees of dishonesty. They try and flub rolls, argue ridiculous attempts to get away with murder, and interpret rules only to their advantage. They employ misdirection, manipulation, and generally create a bad scene as they try and win at everything, with no sense of conscience, or perspective that these are only games.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This weekend at a certain world championship event in Roseville, Minnesota, someone cheated. They were probably not the only one. I don’t need to name names, or point fingers. I’m not here to talk about how the game company handled things or what the right punishment should be. I’m just here to offer my two cents on what trust, honesty, respect and fair play do for a community of any kind, let alone gaming.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Really it’s about respect. Respect breeds the rest of the above qualities. I only ask for respect when it comes to those who inhabit my life and the membership of the Bracebridge Tabletop Gaming Community.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I view things as a matter of respect on different tiers. First and foremost, you respect your fellow gamers. Whether you are playing competitively or cooperatively, casual or tournament play, for an in store game night or a big event day pre-release invite only, secret handshake type of thing, you demonstrate some common respect for your fellow person.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This means saying please and thank you, offering help without a sense of superiority or condescension, listening to what people have to say, and not forcing your agenda on others. There is a whole list of other things that make up the attribute of respect, but as it applies to cultivating a successful gaming community, these are a great place to start.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Respect those who sit down at the table with you. They are there for the exact same reason you are, to have fun and play games. So be nice. The rest will fall into place.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next, you need to respect the establishment. This is slightly unrelated to cheating, but if you want to have a place to play, it is probably the second most important thing. Look after the place and treat it well. Clean up after yourself, don’t abuse the facility, leave things as you found them. Believe it or not, somebody works really hard to keep a place well maintained, clean and up to code so that those who rent a room or such find it reliable and up to a standard that they can accept. Those same people probably rely on patronage for their livelihood, and don’t want to be putting in extra time and money fixing or otherwise dealing with things that could have never happened if you and your companions had just exercised some common sense and self-control.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apply this to your FLGS. They really rely on your spending money to keep them open, clothed and fed. That doesn’t give you the right to abuse their hospitality. My old FLGS was constantly trying to repair broken chairs and tables and clean up after inconsiderate patrons. That is a disrespect nobody deserves. And eventually all of those events you love attending get cancelled, as it’s just not worth the hassle anymore.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now here’s the meat of the article. You need to respect the game.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, this includes the physical components. Break stuff, bend and tear cards, lose bits, and eventually you make the game unplayable. And games these days aren’t cheap. If somebody drops $135 CAD on an Imperial Assault core set, they don’t want anything to happen to it. They want that return on investment of hundreds of hours of good times. Just because you didn’t spend the money doesn’t give you the right to treat the game like crap.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, what I want to point out is respecting the rules. Respecting the spirit of the game itself. To get together with a group of people to live out an escapist fantasy where things happen and there is a winner and a loser. To chat about your day, your strategies, things you are excited about and things you are stressed about. To put a bunch of things on the table and come together over them for a finite length of time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And part of that is the rules. The game is designed to work best when all of the rules are not only observed, but followed. Sure nobody is perfect, and not every game is awesome, but you can say that about a lot of stuff in the universe. I don’t pretend for a second that house rules don’t exist or aren’t useful, but they are still rules. A set of strictures conceived and agreed upon by all of those involved. All knowledge is open and available to all parties.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When somebody cheats at a game, they disrespect not only the game, but everyone playing it. And to what end? To win? It’s a game! How does that actually impact your life? You don’t suddenly drive a fast car or have gobs of money. You don’t gain access to hidden areas of our world where everyone smells great and ice cream isn’t fattening. When you cheat, you gain nothing. And the victory you have achieved is hollow and worthless.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And worse yet is what happens if you are caught. Communities are built on trust and support. Bringing people in and lifting them up, so that they in turn lift the group as a whole. When they find out that you cheated, something breaks. Trust to be sure, but also respect, affection, camaraderie. There is a space between the untrusted and the rest of a group. A fracture occurs, and it is very long in healing, if ever it does. And you are known by that moniker ever after. People are hurt by those who cheat.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In any hobby, community, relationship or otherwise, someone who has been found to be dishonest is vilified, no matter what they may do or say to atone for their crime. And to gamers, cheating at a game is a crime. It’s an insult, a trespass. And while someone who cheats may be forgiven, there will always be a stain.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And if you cheat on a live stream where everyone can watch it happen, you unleash the grand fury of the internet, and woe be to you who calls it upon yourself.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps this is a rant, and that is why I have resisted putting a spotlight on the negative. I love games and gaming, and I understand the importance of fair play in that world in particular. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a tourney or a casual game, playing by the rules only enhances the experience.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When a group of players are at a table and trust each other whole-heartedly, the game is so much more fun. Even better if you look out for each other. There’s much to be said for helping your opponent do all that they can to play the best game possible. That way if you win, you know that your victory was earned, and if you lose you know that you played the best game possible. Both of those things offer a deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and tell you that your time was not wasted.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So please think about that when you play. And when you are out there interacting with whoever you may meet. Forgive those who make the mistake, and try and show them how much better it is on the light side. We may not have cookies, but sometimes there’s beer.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-53146310916255346402017-05-02T06:11:00.003-04:002017-05-02T06:11:37.666-04:00Come Together<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week I spoke somewhat on how a community needs the support of its members to help it not only survive, but to grow. This week I want to touch on another essential aspect of a successful gaming community…</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am an X-Wing player. It is a somewhat addictive and can be a highly competitive game to those who know where to look. You race pre-painted plastic miniatures of famous (and obscure), Star Wars ships around a 3’ x 3’ play mat making pew pew noises and try to destroy the other fellow. There are podcasts galore that pour over the latest expansions and discuss in detail the viability of said expansions and their included pilot and upgrade cards in a tournament environment. I love that aspect of the game, and look forward to the three small tournaments we organise every year, as well as the Ontario Regional events that we as a small group of Muskoka players travel to attend.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I recently found a podcast on the subject of the game that intrigued me. It’s called Shuttle Tydirium Podcast, named after the ship used by rebel forces in The Return of the Jedi to reach the surface of the moon Endor, where an awful lot happened for a such a small space mostly occupied by massive trees and tiny bears.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Shuttle Tydirium Podcast concerns itself mainly with every aspect of X-Wing that is NOT competitive. They represent the casual players, the ones for whom tournament play is too stressful, too competitive, too exhausting. The players who want to play all of the ships, regardless of their viability. This group of people want to write out and test their own thematic scenarios based on the vast and epic universe that George created. For them, creating new game modes such as an actual trench run, or making prop turbolaser batteries from cardboard or paper and using them to play over a couple of drinks is way more fun than testing out the latest and greatest and most vicious list the meta has to offer.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And they came together over that shared interest. And they started a grassroots community in their city that has spread to the internet, and they are doing quite well, thank you very much. It would seem that there are a lot of hobby gamers out there who share their interest in the casual side of the game.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In December of 2015, I decided to join a theatre company to play bass for a small, local production of the Rocky Horror Show. I have always loved the film version, and would have loved to play the role of Frank N Furter. I was quite happy in the end to fill the bass chair.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After Rocky ended in August of 2016, I had the opportunity to work with the Huntsville Theatre Company again on another production, The Wakowski Brothers. I chose to audition, but not just because the play seemed like a lot of fun, which it is.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I chose to go out for a role because of the people involved. They all possess this amazing focus and devotion to creating top quality community theatre shows and sharing them with the area. Like the podcast guys, the started small, working hard to find others who felt the same way. They put on small productions and gradually increased their scope and vision as the community grew. These days, their shows can draw a few hundred people over a svene to nine show run, which is pretty darn impressive.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was involved for a few years in an online venture which was the birthplace of this blog, The Mad Adventurers Society. What started as a plea for advice on how to start a gaming community in a small town became an offer to write about my experiences, and so Gaming in the Wild came to be.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And once more this thing appeared. Focus, dedication, shared vision, mutual support. A group effort concentrated on furthering the common goal. A genuine affection for each other created by shared interest.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the last few years of the Mad Adventurers, BTGC, and the Huntsville Theatre Company, I have seen the fruits of a shared hobby, interest or passion.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not only do you meet new people and get out of the house, but you forge friendships, sometimes with most unlikely people. You spend time around those with whom you would not otherwise have had the opportunity. And you’re not just hanging out. You start to pour your energy into something. You direct the enthusiasm and energy created by your interests, and you turn it into something.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What an amazing thing it is.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps you enjoy your weekly game nights. You look forward to packing up your stuff and meeting your friends at somebody’s house, a local game store or a gaming cafe/restaurant. For me, Thursdays are it. I pack up my things in the morning and count the hours until quitting time. Changing clothes after work, I don’t even go home, unless my kids are attending, which is an amazing feeling as well.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know that when everyone shows up, they are just as excited as me. And most of them I don’t really even know. We have been lucky enough to gather so many people over the last three or so years that there are members I have never played with or run games for. I feel really lucky.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And there are no egos, no pride or sense of entitlement. Nobody is vying for position or standing. We are all there to play games together, to focus our energy on a thing together.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just like the HTC, we don’t get anything out of this except the chance to do something we love with people who love it just as much as we do. Just like the shuttle Tydirium Podcast, we are trying to spread that joy around. Just like MAS, we all work together to make it better, because that benefits everyone. And we do it without ego or a vision of profit.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that kind of selflessness and focus and dedication is essential to creating, expanding and sustaining a community of any kind.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you step back and think about the people you share a hobby, interest or lifestyle with, do you see those same things?</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-9041615617578122552017-04-25T06:00:00.000-04:002017-04-25T06:00:33.238-04:00Those Who Lift You Up<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">After a welcome reprieve from pounding my face against the keys, it’s nice to get back at it. There are a few things that I noticed, and ideas that I had over the last little while. Let’s just how many of them I can remember, because making notes would have made too much sense…</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, I have to make note of what it is that makes a community based, public gaming organisation tick: the community.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it was just me trying to make this thing work it would have died before it hit the first year. I say that because I am just one man. When Michael and I thought of this venture a few years ago, we took on the mantles of grand gaming poo-bahs in an official capacity. Yet I have never forgotten that our brainstorming sessions were held in the parking lot of Game On amongst our fellow gaming enthusiasts. They helped to bring this thing to life. We discussed location ideas, membership fees, format and a host of other ideas.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jay, Sarah, Alex, and others were essential in those early days, and while I tend to point out the continued efforts of Michael and myself, I am constantly reminded that it is a far larger and more subtle team which exists and continues to help make this group a reality.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most recent examples of that are found in my necessary hiatus from the BTGC to perform in the Huntsville Theatre Company’s production of “The Wakowski Brothers,” a Canadian conceived one act play about two brothers in the vaudeville era of Cape Breton and their struggles. It had me singing, dancing, acting and pummelling my co star, and it was a lot of fun. A very satisfying experience, to be sure.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alex stepped forward once more, taking the responsibility of opening the Centre and setting up the tables for each Thursday evening’s events. I still needed someone to run my table.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shayne is an old friend from high school, I think I’ve mentioned him before. His daughter Morgan used to attend our group, but adult life has swept her up in a sea of responsibility. Shayne used to play in our high school aged gaming group, and it has been a great pleasure reacquainting ourselves. He has taken the DM’s chair for me in the past, and volunteered to do so again for the three weeks I would be absent.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such small gestures on the outside, but without finding someone to lend a hand when you need it, I wouldn’t have been able to open and my table wouldn’t have been able to play. On the other hand, if I had no support from the community group, I wouldn’t have been able to take the opportunity to participate in the production, and it’s important to step back from your hobbies now and again. Variety is the spice of life, after all.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve always spoken about consistency in running a gaming group, and how important it is that when people take the time out of their lives to come and participate in a thing, you had better be open when you say you are going to be. Otherwise you are seen as unreliable and uncaring, and people don’t come back. The same is true of running a business. You post your hours on your storefront to let people know when you are open for business. You have to keep up your end and be there.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that’s another piece of the community puzzle which the BTGC has been very fortunate to have working in its favour, the community itself. We have had for the most part, very good people come through our doors. Whenever I have spoken about the group, I have always tried to emphasize the idea that we are an open, inclusive, respectful and supportive bunch. I feel that those qualities are extremely important to our success, because they are the spirit of what we have tried to do here. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some people, gaming is old hat, a thing we have done for years. It’s second nature. We know all of the references, read all the articles and memes, and have constant links to twitter pages and RSS feeds with all of the podcasts and product release articles for everything we love about this little world. It’s an amazing life, but it can cause us to lose track of what it can be like for someone who is just beginning to explore this strange, new world of science fiction, fantasy and everything in between.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some people, this is a very vulnerable experience. They are not confident, worried they won’t fit in. They are scared of feeling stupid for not understanding the rules, which veterans refer to offhandedly, as though speaking about lessons from kindergarten. They desperately want to explore this new landscape, but for some it can feel like walking into a public place naked, and they need a community that will put a blanket around them and help them find their place.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our community is fortunately very much like that. The people who run the games have accepted that attendance can be spotty, that their tables can look very different from one week to the next, and they have embraced the idea of welcoming new players whenever they happen to pop up. They also understand that sometimes those players want to shift to another table, or that this isn’t for them and that they just don’t come back. And nobody takes it personally.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our players are supportive and helpful. When building or levelling up a player character, there is always someone at hand to lend some help or a handbook. Nobody begrudges those who don’t have a handbook or dice, either. Some people can’t afford all of the things that go along with gaming, but they love the hobby. That’s what we are here for. To provide a place where tabletop hobby gamers can meet and play, and where everyone has a good time. I have seen friendships created and blossom in our hall, and it is a wonderful feeling.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not to say that we don’t have our problems, every group of people does. I just want to highlight some of the things that make our rural gaming community work. I’ve drawn some of these same connections between other community groups, and I want to explore those ideas in the coming weeks. What makes a good team, gaming group, or theatre company? How does a local music scene survive and thrive? There are common traits among them all, and I have had the time to sit back and observe. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, but in my small town-ish world, I have seen things, and they have given me pause...</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-76152329896294844212017-04-18T05:50:00.001-04:002017-04-18T05:50:27.833-04:00One More WeekOver the past few weeks, I have enjoyed a break of sorts from this blog. I say of sorts, because I simply didn't have the time to write for it. Between plays and family and gainful employ, I could not direct any of my energies towards wordsmith-ing of any kind.<br />
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And the break has been refreshing. I couldn't go to game night, either. And that was as refreshing as it was frustrating. However, it gave me the time to look at the world through muggle eyes. I was a normy for a bit.<br />
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So with a weekend approaching that holds almost no plans beyond the mundane, I am excited to get back to the keyboard. Next week there will be new content. I have quite a bit that I could say, so I have no idea what will be said. Isn't that exciting?<br />
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For those of you that have hung on, I thank you wholeheartedly. Your faith in me is very welcome and appreciated.<br />
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Until next week, my mad adventuring friends...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-19322301094712270812017-03-14T06:07:00.003-04:002017-03-14T06:07:56.969-04:00The Stage BeckonsOver the next few weeks, I will be performing in a local community theatre production of a lovely Canadian play entitled "The Wakowski Brothers."<br />
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What does this mean for my blog? I'm glad you asked. What that means is that I am now in crunch mode. I have very little on my mind besides the play. Apart from my usual duties as a productive adult, I am using my twenty fifth hour to rehearse choreography and run my lines.<br />
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This is my first real return to the stage as an actor in about thirteen years. While living in Calgary, Alberta I performed in a small production of Maskerade, a Discworld novel by the late Terry Pratchett. One of many from the series that has been adapted for the stage. In high school I was heavily involved in all kinds of stage productions as either an actor or as a musician, but after a couple of mediocre experiences with community theatre groups, I left the stage and went about my business for a while.<br />
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It has been very exciting returning to that world, and I look forward to writing about it in the future. Theatre folk make great inspiration for a blog about gaming, especially role-playing games. I have a few ideas, but am lacking the necessary free time to put them down in some sort of sensible form.<br />
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So I will take the next few weeks off from writing for you. My table at the BTGC is being looked after by my friend Shayne, and I am excited to return in April to see what sort of chaos the party has wrought. Alex is opening the centre up, and between he an Mike, the place will be locked up each Thursday as I parade around on stage, dramatizing and highlighting the world of Vaudeville in Cape Breton in the nineteen twenties.<br />
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I will miss you these next few weeks, but I will return. The life of a middle aged, small town community theatre performer and gaming enthusiast calls.<br />
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Somebody has to do it...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-28471411284466225772017-03-07T08:38:00.000-05:002017-03-07T08:38:18.413-05:00Safe Haven<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">A couple of interesting things have happened over the last few weeks. Some gaming related, some not. Overall, they speak to the humanity of our hobby, and the nature of those who take interest in our world…</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-grpr6hje_Y8/WLwCKdhihaI/AAAAAAAALU0/KwWVG3RyPOo0Jca1uU2omJYaotfeLdrugCLcB/s1600/foggy-545838_1920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-grpr6hje_Y8/WLwCKdhihaI/AAAAAAAALU0/KwWVG3RyPOo0Jca1uU2omJYaotfeLdrugCLcB/s320/foggy-545838_1920.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a young man who comes to the Bracebridge Tabletop Gaming Community almost every week. He is polite, quiet and good-natured. I can’t spot whether he is in a bad mood or having an off day. He is from the Young Ones’ Table, and since starting high school last fall (making him around fourteen or fifteen years old), he has not only maintained his membership in spite of that dynamic shift in his daily life, but he has met and encouraged new young ones to come out to the community, which is very cool.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Watching those new faces come in and wondering who will stick around and who will fade away for whatever reason is always a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me. As I stated in previous Mad Adventurer pieces, we want to grow, but not too much. We want people to enjoy and further spread our hobby to those who would love it, and to those who sometimes need it in their lives. Tucker in some ways, is that person.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I work with his father. We build stuff. Boat houses, homes and cottages decks and docks. Welcome to Muskoka. I was asking him the other day how Tuck was enjoying high school. I know it can be hard depending on who you are and who is around you regularly. Children can be cruel, and some people just get targets painted on them for whatever reason, deserved or not.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He said that Tuck is doing well, but that it is not his nature to elaborate. A frustration for his father, as he is a relatively open sort, who wishes that Tuck would open up a bit here and there, just to make sure he really is doing OK. Then he remembered that it was in fact, game night that evening.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He said suddenly that it really was a good thing that we were doing over at the Centre. He told me that while Tucker has his friends and social life outside of school, family and the BTGC, that the community was the only organised social activity his son attended. I think it eases his father’s mind to know this, because he was an active athlete in his youth, who attended a steady schedule of practices and games and such. It can be hard for a parent to relate to their child if they are not cut from the cloth you are used to.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thanked him profusely and said that I was glad Tucker was still so enthusiastic after all of this time. He was one of the original Young Ones, attending RPG night all the way back to our Game On days, before the BTGC was born.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everyone is different, and life can be cruel in general. I live in a town, not a city. Bracebridge has around sixteen thousand souls, and our neighbouring towns of Gravenhurst and Huntsville have a little more and less of their own. Outlying townships have far less.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Certain hobbies and interests have a far smaller representation here. It’s easy to find indoor and outdoor sports organisations, as our identity is so ingrained with those industries. Hunting and fishing, boating and camping, hockey and soccer and baseball, oh my. You can learn fencing and martial arts, or find an archery club with a small amount of effort.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All three of our major towns have active, if struggling arts communities. From visual arts and the written word, to drama to music, it doesn’t take anybody interested that long to find someone who is of that world. I myself am returning to the community theatre stage in less than a month to portray a middle-aged Vaudeville performer reuniting with his brother to relive the good ol’ days.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet as we whittle through the different pastimes, it becomes harder and harder to find others who get excited about the same things you do. I know there are remote controlled vehicle enthusiasts in the area. Some for R/C boats and trucks, some for planes and drones and helicopters. I know that there are quilting clubs and scrapbooking organisations, but I couldn’t tell you where to find them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s easy enough to throw a rock and hit someone who plays hockey or a musical instrument (usually guitar), but it in a small town, the per capita chance of hitting a hobby gamer is far less. And some of us need to find each other.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some of us, gaming and role-playing games are a sanctuary of identity. It’s what we love and strive for, invest our money, time and headspace into. Whether it’s new X-Wing ships or Firefly TBG expansions, massive tomes for D&D or model paints for our new World War Two wargame armies, we are devoting a significant amount of ourselves into this hobby, the same way that other people invest a piece of themselves into organised sports or ballet.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This hobby is where we feel like we belong to something that other people just don’t get. Our community is such a small segment of all of the hobbies and interests out there, and that makes it a precious thing, and a misunderstood thing as well. Just like anything else, we have those with a casual interest all the way to fanatics and fanboys. And when we come together, many of our differences are cast aside, unless someone asks a question about which edition is better, then all bets are off.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The point is, I’m glad that we are here for kids like Tucker. And adults. We’ve always had our share of grown ups looking for an escape from the everyday as well. For whom politics and sports and camping just aren’t quite enough. Those of us who would rather read the Dragonlance Chronicles than Pierre Trudeau’s memoirs.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To that end, I’m glad my son has started to attend game night. He will be twelve this year, and while we game at home as a family, I have always been reluctant to bring him to the Centre. It’s a long evening, and he is quite young compared to the rest of our membership. I was worried that he wouldn’t last from five to nine, and want to go home.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I resisted. Let’s face it though, I was also selfish. Game night at the centre is an escape for me, and I was nervous about giving up a piece of that. Being able to do something so separate from the rest of my daily life is a precious and wonderful retreat, and I was selfish in my desire to keep that pure.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think I am also a little scared. Scared that my son would reject a hobby that I have so dearly loved for so many years. Nervous that he would think it was silly and pointless. He likes board and card games well enough, but RPGs are such a deeper part of that world for me. So many of my friendships both old and new have been forged over that table filled with books and funny shaped dice. What if my son couldn’t get that? What if we couldn’t share that?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a father, that is a fearsome prospect. Right now however, I think my son needs this in his life. He’s that kid at school. He’s the clumsy one. Not coordinated or interested in sports. He’s the one who enjoys learning, and gets upset when his classmates disrupt the class. He’s a reader. Not because they make him read, but because he wants to. At recess, on the bus. Other kids don’t get that.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He doesn’t want to grow up. At an age where the mind starts to change and begins noticing the differences in the genders and starts to turn over thoughts otherwise never fully understood, my son is rejecting them. He feels that when his few tenuous friends begin joking about body parts and the opposite sex that they are being inappropriate, and he wants nothing to do with it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And he doesn’t have a lot of friends. And he lacks a best friend. And as his father I worry. I remember what it was like to be the outsider. In my world, I still am because of my interests. Theatre, music, gaming. Most of my social circles are a part of those things, but at work and in the public eye, I’m something else. When you’re not into the usual things, there is always a distance between you and others in the world of casual conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My son has always been a little older than his age. I don’t think he belongs to the realm of the “old souls,” but he is an educated, well spoken lad, and in our world, that makes him “other.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So bringing him to game night is what he needs. To relate to others with his interests. To see that there is a social plane where he is safe to express his ideas, to engage in discussions and arguments that don’t devolve into ridicule and insult.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember what it’s like to be on the outside. I remember the price exacted in an adolescent world for being who you are. He’s lonely without a partner in crime, a best friend he can share anything with. I had that, and it made a huge difference. Guys like Chris Brown, Shawn Crawford and Richard Brown. The guys who were the Yin to my Yang. Allies and compatriots.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hope my son meets someone like that soon. I can be his father, his dad and dungeon master. I can be his port in a storm, and game night can be all of those things for him that they have always been for me. I know that he’ll grow and change and get interested in things other than gaming. I hope he does.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And hopefully game night can continue to give him the sense of belonging he and so many other people need and seek out there in the wild.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-39652137492197542692017-02-28T17:40:00.002-05:002017-02-28T17:40:57.715-05:00And, They’re Off!<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week I touched on our homebrew campaign at the BTGC, and how I am using our actual winter season to guide the weather and its inherent challenges in the world of Port Haven. This week I will touch on a specific way in which the Muskoka winter wonderland has had a direct effect on the story of our group of heroes…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Muskoka weather is not particularly extreme. Our lowest temperatures in the deepest of the cold winter are around minus twenty two Celsius, and our hottest and most humid summer climate can be in the upper twenties above zero Celsius. Our humidity is high most of the time, and with Georgian Bay close by, we can get all manner of exciting weather to help remind us that we are not in control. We have had as much as four feet of snow in a twenty four hour period come down, but that’s not what I’m talking about this week.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As an aside, I am not a winter person, but this is not strictly speaking, a rant blog. There are Angry GM’s for that.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was struck one day by the landscape of our jobsite after a particularly blustery bout of ice pellets, freezing rain and wet snow which was driven across the landscape by a fierce wind. As the precipitation fell to earth, the wind carried it across the terrain like a sandblaster in a desert. It carved drifts and swales into the land. The trees and earlier drifts took on the roles of the leeward obstacles, and the frozen moisture was bent and shaped into elegant contours of glittering crust, rising and falling through the trees like waves frozen in time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was rather beautiful. I still dislike winter, but I would be willing to enjoy such a view from the comfort of a warm room.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My partner waxed nostalgic of his memories surrounding days like this. He said that as a child growing up in rural Ontario, if the snow had a crust thick enough, he would drag his bicycle out of storage and ride it through the trees. Imagine a skate park, if you will. Go to the shallowest pool and envision a bike wending its way from one side to the other. Down into the pool and up to the lip, turn and descend once more. Clearly these drifts were not that deep, but if they were firm, the bike would glide through the trees, sliding and turning in childish delight.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And as we stood and exchanged stories of winter adventures and the innocent exuberance of youth, I had an idea.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since I am using real weather to dictate the climate in the game, why not have a similar winter blast assault Port Haven? And what would a city do if it was such a meteorological event that the streets themselves were filled with this icy landscape of luge-like conditions?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clearly, they would have a race.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I developed the idea, I used the party’s input to create the governing system in Port Haven. Since we had decided that our little Port metropolis sprang up out of a need to move goods up the coast and inland along the river network, we knew that a monarchy of any kind didn’t make sense. No nobles would waste precious resources trying to settle an untamed land filled with nomadic barbarian and Orc tribes, never mind the other more dangerous hazards that lurked in the mountains and forests of the area. A duchy or fiefdom was also out.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intrepid and devoted business men and explorers, mercenaries and men and women of the wild would be the ones to establish this business beacon of the north. So, the group decided that a governing town council would be the ones to run the show. These would be the most powerful business interests and investors in Port Haven. These would be the ones who owned the ships and riverboats that kept goods moving along the coast and into and out of the deeper darker continent further inland, past the dangers that prevent more traditional overland travel from safely reaching their destinations. The landowners and real estate moguls with all of the warehouses and title deeds. An oligarchy, with a figurehead representative who relates with the town’s population, makes decrees, and kisses all of the necessary babies.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back to the race. The group bit into it mostly because it sounded like fun. I gave them the opportunity to design their own sleigh, spy on and mess with the other teams I had created, and also gave each of them side quests and encounters to accomplish these goals, including researching the best routes, and coming up with the cash necessary to outfit themselves and their sweet ride.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the course of three sessions they did their dirty work. They asked if I wanted to know about their plan or sled design, and I said no. This would have taken my fun away. I would always rather be surprised by their plans, than able to however unconsciously plan to foil them.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They managed to intimidate one team (the “legitimate businessmen”), and sow dissent in the the Orc team as well. A failed attempt to intimidate as well as spy on the dock workers’ team was a bit of a setback, but they made up for it by completely deceiving the wagon wright who was making their sleigh come to life. He had agreed to do so if they managed to get a letter to his lady love, whose affections had been forbidden by her father, a very important man.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was one of those moments all GMs relish in roleplaying games. I asked the group what he did for a living that would make him so successful that he would not approve of his daughter being courted by the best and most successful wagon wright in town.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moneylender? They said.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I mentally jumped out of my seat with glee and promptly made him the city’s humble but powerful underworld leader. It was also an opportunity for a character to make use of their back story in the group’s first attempt at legitimately delivering the letter. It didn’t go well.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the end, the rogue crept in at night and stole a reasonable expression of her interest, and the young craftsman set about his task.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I set up a three legged race. Not like that. The first leg was a fairly straight forward ride through Reektown, where we knew all of the candlemakers, tanners, blacksmiths and other odious artisans would be assigned. Each character was able to act and contribute to the race, and I ran the four teams they competed against.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Players will be players, and the dice flew as skill challenges were made involving ever filling water pitchers, harpoons and eldritch blasts against the dock workers team (the Slippery Scales). They pulled ahead and passed through the first leg in third place, entering Cross Ways.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I came up with Cross Ways simply to ensure that the race wasn’t just a straight luge run to the docks, where the finish line waited. I decided that it would be fun to have a section of town where the streets ran perpendicular to the natural flow of the rest of the roads. Most port towns have their major travel arteries flow towards the port itself, allowing easy inland traffic to and from, and in most cases, it just flows.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Crossways is a section of Port Haven where for no reason at all, every street and artery flows against that natural design. Because I said so.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whipping through the narrow streets where no road lasts for long before running into the side of a building, the group tangled with other teams, while one member of their party who had been stationedthere all along, harried the Orc team, eventually knocking them out of the race.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They came to the final leg tied for first place.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The final leg was through Market town, or what is commonly known as “The Bizarre.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Due to the fact that Port Haven would attract a variety of people from all over the civilised coast further to the south, and also based on the idea that even some of the more savvy indigenous races nearby would give the “big city” a shot, I felt that any market Port Haven would have would be incredibly diverse. Thus, the colloquial play on the word bazaar.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any manner of food, item and service can be found there, as long as you are willing to pay, and believe it has a chance of being legitimate. Buyer beware exists everywhere, even in fantasy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flying along tight alleyways crammed with booths and through open markets and stalls, the team took on the last two teams to emerge as the winners. Some of it might even have been fair.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was a fun session, with frantic dice rolls and a timer I used for each leg. The story opportunities given to me by my players’ deeds and deceptions will keep things humming along for a while yet, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-5573156702814790942017-02-21T09:00:00.000-05:002017-02-21T10:12:47.254-05:00Filling in the Blanks<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s been a little while since I have spoken about our new homebrew campaign. In fact it’s been a couple months, and that was back in the great halls of The Mad Adventurer’s Society. Perhaps it is time for an update on how things are going in Port Haven…</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b5FreF8Nlq0/WKralGscP6I/AAAAAAAALRY/-uAPvCkRzaUsEyevJ0vkEDzGkKEZOWEqACLcB/s1600/forest-1950402_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b5FreF8Nlq0/WKralGscP6I/AAAAAAAALRY/-uAPvCkRzaUsEyevJ0vkEDzGkKEZOWEqACLcB/s320/forest-1950402_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just to bring you all up to speed on what Port Haven is, I have to give a little bit more from before that. Before this new campaign, I had been running the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign for fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons for over a year. We were halfway through and the bounce had gone out of our bungee. Being a community gaming organisation, the player roster changed so many times that there was very little character investment in the overall plot, which had reached the point of crawl, rinse repeat anyways.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We flat out ditched PotA.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And with a brand new table of player characters, I decided to start a homebrew. Except I had no ideas for a homebrew, nor time to create one.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I let the players make it up.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They wanted to be somewhere a little wild, but with a bastion of civilisation. Near a coast, and with a variety of temperate terrain to suit a variety of adventure locales. The characters they had made lent themselves well to a nomadic tribal society. A goliath ranger, half orc barbarian, a tiefling runaway warlock and a storm cleric to name a few of the six players I have.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We managed to sketch the broad strokes of the countryside and its inhabitants in just a session or two, and have since then been filling in some of the more general details.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing I have really enjoyed has been my decision to let the weather of the real world govern the climate in the world of our port city. It’s winter in Muskoka, and unlike more popular destinations in Ontario like Toronto, we have an ample amount of snow on the ground around here. So every week as I contemplate the encounters I’m planning, I pay attention to what is happening outside. Working very closely at times with the outside as a carpenter, I am never that far, and am very conscious of how temperature can affect mood and performance, and how multiple layers of clothing feels when you move and bend, twist and walk.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was anticipating regular Survival checks and Constitution saves as we navigated their adventures, but lucky for the party it has been a fairly mild winter. Not without snow and extreme weather, but certainly lacking the brisk -25C temperatures we are used to in January and February. Lucky sods.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I let other matters inform our adventuring as well. Christmas is always a holiday worth capitalising on in the world of role-playing games, and I feel I did OK in this regard. The group was looking to hire themselves out, having just cast off their employment as local militia/constabulary toughs, and I had a desperate young man engage their services.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was from a fairly new logging settlement and had come to Port Haven hauling the final shipment of cord wood and lumber for the season. His brother was supposed to arrive a day or two after, but hadn’t shown up.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After discovering the empty settlement and spending a tense night searching amongst solstice decorations and strange wooden dolls, the group set off to find the missing people of Timberfell. I didn’t want to specifically use Santa, Jack Frost or Krampus, so I blended all three into a demon who wanted to put the settlement and then the whole north into perpetual winter. Demons don’t understand food stores and the necessity for the seasons to change, but all these humans think solstice is so great, why can’t they just celebrate forever? What a great gift for the demon to give the world?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They did indeed save Timberfell and return to Port Haven to collect their profit. Since then I have had to take a few absences, and my friend Shayne was there to take the reigns, filling in with prequel adventures and a side quest or two as needed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And as needed, we have begun fleshing out more details, and as needed I have been attempting to sow the seeds of an overarching plot to get the players tangled up in. And thus far, it has been a good experience. The players’ backstories are giving me plenty of fodder to be sure. Everyone has come up with enough of a history and origin to give me some good plot hooks, and to tailor certain encounters to appeal to certain backgrounds, but as the PCs navigate these encounters, they are themselves shaping how my story will go.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We start a story. I establish the scenario and give the group time to formulate a plan. Due to the fact that our port city is only conceptualised in the broadest strokes, they have every avenue available to them when it comes to where they can go and who they can talk to. Locations, NPCs and their relationships with those people are up for grabs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You would think this might be viewed as an easy or win button situation, but that’s where I come in. The Dungeon Master’s role is to create and referee the challenges the party will face, so I do my best to add an element to these people and places as they arise. Which usually means putting some kind of roll to the group.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The party is currently adventuring at level four. They are no longer a wet behind the ears troupe of rat slayers, but they are certainly not the epic heroes the city needs. However, my players are not very lucky. They just don’t get stellar roles all the time. So when they go off to have a chat with the local dreamleaf dealer, or bribe the quartermaster or try and pass along a suitors’ gift to the moneylender’s daughter, things just have a habit of not going their way. Low roles or bad choice of skills to use have kept things challenging for my little group of would be heroes, and given me no small source of story for them to enjoy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The challenges I am facing as a DM are as they have ever been since forming the Bracebridge Tabletop Gaming Community, and even further back to Game On when it was open.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mostly time and regular attendance. Time will ever be a factor, since we game once a week and for only a few hours at a time. This stretches certain scenes to the breaking point and throws off my schedule if the PCs make things unnecessarily complicated, which they inevitably do. I am trying to make each minor story no more than three sessions, and any major plot movement take up no more than six. That means three weeks to complete the fun stuff, and six weeks to go through anything major.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I set a time limit of April/May to end this campaign, so that means I have to get a move on. After this is done, I am looking forward to getting back into FFG’s Star Wars system, as it has been too long since I have been able to run a campaign there, and the variety will do the table good. Keeping things fresh.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Attendance is just a thing I can’t control. Sam has trouble getting a consistent ride, Morgan seems to be working a lot of Thursdays, and sometimes I get extra players from another table whose plans just fell apart for whatever reason.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing you have to remember about running a gaming community is that people are paying you. It is very rare that I can just call off a night due to lack of attendance. If I have two or three players, I am running something. The problem comes when those two or three people are not the ones who would benefit directly from the story being played out, or they are people who have not been involved at all! The best laid plans of mice and men, indeed…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet so far, we have been lucky. Things are treading along quite well compared to the previous campaign, and I hope that the group’s very real involvement in creating their world has played a role in motivating them to attend. Shortly I will accelerate the meat of the story, now that they have had a chance to reach a certain level of camaraderie and teamwork amongst the table.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-7208684766664592092017-02-14T09:00:00.000-05:002017-02-14T12:24:48.809-05:00The 25th Hour, and the Courage to Use It (Originally published on the Mad Adventurers Society)<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This past week, I have been unable to find the time necessary to put together the piece I wanted to write. It's a </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">big</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> enough subject for me, that I didn't want to just bang out something at the last minute. So here is a piece I wrote a long time ago on the nature of time and how we can squeeze one more hour out of the day when we really need to...</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8H-RpGCteCk/WKLjycMwaBI/AAAAAAAALQw/84mUbsH8DG8bgd6Ncr6UnWjs5a8tEWiwwCLcB/s1600/pocket-watch-560937_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8H-RpGCteCk/WKLjycMwaBI/AAAAAAAALQw/84mUbsH8DG8bgd6Ncr6UnWjs5a8tEWiwwCLcB/s320/pocket-watch-560937_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As years pass and responsibilities increase, free time is absorbed by real life like The Nothing consumes every imaginary world you’ve ever traversed on a flying dog. Finding the time to indulge in whatever pastimes you enjoy becomes an exercise in herding kittens. What we end up doing is holding a lottery, where we cast off the smaller pleasures in favour of the things that we really enjoy and that contribute to the balancing effect that hobbies have over the stresses and rigors of our days of toil.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">If time (or lack of) can act as walls closing in on the average tabletop gamer, preventing them from enjoying their hobbies and interests, what is an intrepid enthusiast to do to mitigate that conundrum?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 25th Hour</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a book somewhere with this title. Apparently, there is a movie of the same name. I have even heard that both of these are very good things to pass your time consuming. What I am talking about has nothing to do with either of these things. Let’s move on.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first time I heard the concept of the twenty fifth hour was from one of my many musical influences. I can’t remember whom exactly to credit with the idea, but the concept is simple: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a secret twenty-fifth hour lurking in the corners of every day, and if you find a thing truly important and absolutely need time to do it, the twenty-fifth hour is there for you to make use of after all of your other duties and commitments have been met.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This hour could involve some simple exchange of scheduling. Instead of taking an hour to answer emails or check facebook, you sit down and have a good long look at your character backstory and compare it to how your sessions are going. Does it all fit, and what changes do you need to make?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes the twenty-fifth hour is hidden throughout the day in smaller chunks. Five minutes here and twenty minutes there, you contemplate the contents of the tournament deck you are preparing for an upcoming con, making notes on which cards need to be in the deck, and what cards are upcoming in the next expansions and how will they affect your strategies going forwards. The twenty-fifth hour involves sacrifice and dedication, because you need to focus on gathering those small moments throughout a day or night and compile them into blocks of time where the reward is that extra opportunity to work on what you are passionate about.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For me, the twenty-fifth hour lurks at the beginning or the end of the day. A long time ago, I needed more practice time on the bass guitar. There were techniques and scales that I was learning as part of my own voracious appetite to expand my knowledge and understanding of my instrument and music as a whole. These approaches to the bass were not a part of my usual musical vocabulary as it applied to my band. As a rock/metal cover band, slap/pop techniques and jazz scales didn’t show up nearly enough in our set lists. What that means for a musician is that you have to practice and explore those things outside of your usual musical routine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t exactly have tons of free time sitting in heaps around me. Besides my normal practice routine learning and maintaining proficiency in our library of songs, I had all of the previously mentioned responsibilities of adulthood breathing down my neck. Home, wife and child were all things that I wanted and needed to pay attention to, no matter how much my brain was masticating the application of seventh chords over a II-V progression through the circle of fifths.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I needed more time, so I resolved to get up earlier, and/or stay up later. You may think this is silly, or you may wonder why it took me so long to figure it out. However, simply decreasing your hours of rest is not the healthiest choice. We have all heard over the years how our bodies, minds and souls need rest to be healthy and navigate the perils of the day. How else will we recover hit points?! The powers that be, and game designers are not wrong, so I caution you to be honest with yourself when examining your rest patterns, and make healthy choices.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I discovered with some conscious experimentation that I require (read: absolutely NEED) seven hours of sleep a night to function in a productive, safe and sane manner. There are certainly times when I get less or more, but on average I aim to meet that seven hour goal, because I know that it is appropriate for me and my lifestyle.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I established how much sleep I needed, I tacked that newfound extra time on to the parts of the day where it would do the most good. This turned out to be the morning. Up at five everyday, to make coffee and sit down with my bass in a quiet corner of the house.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was definitely the benefit of scheduling my time in the morning. Silence. With everyone else asleep in the house I had free reign of that hour, without hearing “Daddy” or “Honey” on never-ending replay breaking my concentration and drawing me away from my studies. That was the time that I needed to devote to learning new aspects of my instrument and expanding my base of knowledge in musical theory and how that weave of talent works in different genres of music. Mission accomplished.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does this apply to gaming? Easy. Exchange bass and music for games and gaming. Wouldn’t it be nice to study up on your latest campaign in a quiet house with a fresh-brewed cup of java? Not your thing? Fine. Headphones playing your preferred music and a pot of tea, or your favourite anime and a smoothie. It doesn’t matter. Once you find that extra hour, it’s almost like a cone of solitude, a bubble of space/time seemingly separate from the rest of your life where you can hyper-focus your efforts towards a thing. It happens that way because you have made that special, extra effort to prioritize that block of your day for that singular purpose, somehow segregating it from everything else and drawing your full attention towards it. Remember my “woodshed” analogy? you are in it. And away you go.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The twenty-fifth hour can be helpful as an emergency measure if you just haven’t been able to study up on your game between sessions. There have been weeks where all of my worldly responsibilities have just been too much for me to hit the books and prep upcoming encounters for my group. It was a real challenge to prepare when we were playing 4E D&D, and I had to find an extra hour quite often, but that’s a distant memory now, and we don’t need to dwell on it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have even on occasion used my twenty-fifth hour in the hour right before our session started, staying in my car outside of Game On (our FLGS at the time), and vigorously cramming stat blocks and NPC notes before allowing myself to exit and make my way inside.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We’ve all been there. Desperately seeking the extra bit of time that we need to prepare for a session or read up on rules, etc. before our games began, and defining an extra hour of a day and making other apparently small time sacrifices in an effort to create that chunk of space to get there. Establishing that block as a definite thing and calling it a Twenty-fifth Hour can help to draw your brain into the necessary state of mind to reach your goals as a GM and enjoy the effort spent, which helps to reap the rewards in the form of a great session for all and more time spent enjoying what you love.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what happens if that extra block of time has to be taken in the wild? What if those who choose to ignore your weird little hobby are forced to confront it head on, and what if you are content to separate those elements of your life for your own peace of mind, but this time it just can’t be avoided?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just Do It.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ran into this exact problem a few years ago while running a D&D Encounters series on top of my usual campaign arc. For those unfamiliar with Encounters, it is an adventure series published by WotC and distributed to participating stores and their in-store groups. From a certain starting date, each group plays through one encounter per week, usually over twelve weeks, and completes a story arc that leads to the next adventure. This is all well and good, but at that time my group was really enjoying our homebrew, so after each official encounter we would switch settings and play as much of our regular game as we could for the remainder of the evening. As DM, I thought it would be easy to study one encounter a week for the serial game, and still maintain all of the information I needed to run our usual game. Of course, this was fourth edition, and I was just plain wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a DM for fourth, you had to maintain a seemingly mountainous mental list of abilities and special attacks and conditions and ohgodicanttakeitanymoreimsogladfifthishere. Phew.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ended up behind the eight ball on game day having not spent enough time to confidently run that evenings’ session. I had a choice to make: I could study in the parking lot. Like I said, I’ve done that before, but the job site I was on was a fair drive from the store, and would only leave me about twenty minutes before the session to fit a lot of stuff in my head.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second choice was to grab that encounters book and put it in my lunchbox, whipping it out in front of everyone, with my yogurt whatever else I had stuffed in there. Fantastic depictions of struggling dwarves and meticulous maps and numbers and arcane symbols there for everyone to see. People knew I did something every Wednesday night, but were content to file it under “weird stuff Rob does that we don’t get” (I also listen to weird music, have a seemingly bottomless well of obscure music and movie trivia, make constant TV and movie references, and generally have an odd and ridiculous sense of humour that may or may not lead to dancing around and behaving like an idiot. Normal geek behaviour that is lost on a lot of the people in my life. Sigh. Nobody gets my art.).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had to go with option two. And that’s when I had that revelation that I was in my mid-thirties and that I was still behaving like a child when it came to the things that I loved. I was still hiding my interests because they weren’t common or understood by some people who populated my world. I was still deferring to that group when it came to what was acceptable to talk about in casual conversation. I realized that if I chose to wait until the end of the day to study up, I would be under prepared and it would be because I was putting social discomfort and fear of others’ disapproval before what I liked doing and the necessary commitments that I made to ensure everyone else had a good time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a lot of ways I was very mad with myself for feeling this way. I enjoyed working with these people, and we had a good time all around. If I sought their approval or validation, it was because of the jobs we were doing together (remember, I’m a carpenter. We build houses). I only needed them to be satisfied with my workmanship and not what I did when I left work. That’s not to say that I would go to work and boast about our orc-slaying exploits on the tabletop, daring any cynics or non-believers to question my undying loyalty to polyhedral dice. Just that I shouldn’t have to hide it just because I’m the only one interested.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I wadded up the adventure book and sandwiched it in next to my leftover roast beef and made my way to work.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first break I very casually pulled out my snacks and book, poured my tea from my thermos and opened to the appropriate page. I didn’t really start reading, because I was immediately aware that conversations about hockey and hunting and yard maintenance were dying off around the room as people noticed that it wasn’t a magazine I was reading, but something altogether different.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To my great delight and even chagrin, I wasn’t mocked or derided like a nerd in a school yard. I was asked questions about what I was doing. They were curious enough to listen until they understood just enough to know that I wasn’t under the impression that I would be conjuring flames or summoning demons anytime soon. I was different enough already that me pulling D&D books out of my lunch box just wasn’t a shock to them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I explained that I was studying and needed to get as much done before the end of the day as possible, and after they were satisfied with the concept and mechanical explanations of how the whole thing worked, they respected what I needed from my twenty-fifth hour and left me alone, returning to their own conversations about the things that were important to them. The hobbies that filled their own spare hours.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s common knowledge now that I run a community gaming group, and that I have spent Wednesdays and/or Thursdays for the last few years engaging in what is a niche hobby, but really no different than someone who has a weekly poker game, or coaches youth hockey. I don’t fly my geek flag in defiance of the norm, it’s just a thing that I do, like everyone else.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s not to say that I don’t have moments of insecurity. It’s a lot of fun when someone new starts at the company and is confronted by my interests. The casual, comfortable attitude of everyone around me is inspiring, and at the end of the twenty-fifth hour, it’s just me and my hobby, and I’m smiling.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The twenty-fifth hour is there for anyone devoted enough to find it. Sometimes loving something and being committed to its pursuit means putting yourself out there in uncomfortable situations. It is worth it, if you are willing to make the necessary sacrifices, and sometimes you can be pleasantly satisfied with the results, making it all worth the risk.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-91361809828737154042017-02-07T09:36:00.000-05:002017-02-07T09:36:29.969-05:00This is Forty<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This year marks my fortieth turn around the sun. What does that mean to me? What deep and timeless wisdom can I pass on to the rest of the world? To be honest, I’m not sure, but that might be the best lesson I’ve learned…</span></div>
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<img alt="Birthday, Cake, Birthday Cake, Dessert" src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/12/30/11/53/birthday-1114056__340.jpg" /></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since my last birthday, things have changed a bit. I have played bass in a community production of the Rocky Horror Show and through that, renewed my interest in local theatre productions. Which means that when my local band was put on further hiatus by a member's’ sudden and unfortunate back injury, I auditioned for a role in one of Huntsville Theatre Company’s upcoming productions, and got the chance to do the part.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last year, myself and a fellow by the name of Dorian took it upon ourselves to organise three local X-Wing tournaments to bring the space boat playing community of Muskoka together. Again, I made lots of new friends, and through that, we organised a trip to attend the recent Regional Tournament in the city of Toronto. It was quite a day.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My wife and I took a trip to Mexico for the first time with a group of close friends, which was also a first. While I didn’t make any fast friends per se, I did talk to a lot of people, and the experience itself was amazing.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a standard of measure for the year leading up to my fortieth birthday, it was pretty darn good, and the milestone itself gives me pause for reflection.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve received a lot of jabs from a variety of sources about this number and what it means. Being a male, I’m used to the playful, derogatory comments of my peers, and working in residential construction makes that double. We have an unfortunate culture of affectionate insults and jibes, and I am just as guilty of participating in it as those around me.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As it turns out, it doesn’t bother me. This forty business. It is essentially, a number that represents the average middle of my life, provided I first make it to eighty, and then don’t bother to go too far beyond that. Apparently, while I am not yet over a certain hill, I command a charming view of the descent.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet more than anything, I am excited by the prospect of what is to come.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, I’m glad that after so many years of floundering around as an adult and trying to get it all together that even at middle age, nobody really knows what they’re doing. They can stamp and sulk all they want, but there is no definitive guide to being an adult, just constructs and obtuse directions, ever-changing societal norms and shifting taboos of accepted rites and procedures. Just like high school, real life is like an old note binder, full of crumpled and torn notes mismatched and unorganised, with only small sections laid out in any kind of system of reference, with scattered sticky notes in a variety of colours, coded to a form lost long ago.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s comforting to know that I didn’t miss the meeting. That we’re all in this together...Ish.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turning forty, I am even more comfortable in my geekery. I have zero time to hide my habits from the world. Like a vegetarian, I proudly rampage through the streets, declaring my love of hobby board gaming and tabletop role-playing games to the world. I defy anyone to chide me for my love of Star Wars or Tolkien. I happily bring small filler games with me wherever I go, knowing that somehow, somewhere, someone will ask to play…</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All right that’s a bit extreme, but you get the picture. I’ve written a few times before about lunch break talk and water cooler chat. Everyone else discusses plans which follow the popular or common pastimes of the world we live in. In idle chat, the worlds of organised and outdoor sports get thrown around. Whole days are devoted to world championships and the get togethers to enjoy them. I have no interest in these things, so I always keep a tight lip and try not to make real eye contact. And in the past, I have always demurred from discussing Star Wars movie marathons or guys’ weekends playing epic D&D.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now I offer a brief overview of the Bracebridge Tabletop Gaming Community and what we do, or acknowledge my sons’ growing interest in the Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG system. And at forty, I no longer do it with the defiance of the last few years. I’m no longer silently challenging people to question my hobbies. It is simply one of the things that I do for fun, to get away from the slog of adulthood and the mundane, which at times permeates the real world.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At forty, I have reached the point of no longer apologising for who I am. Now I’m still a Canadian, so that really means I just apologise less, but it still applies.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I rehearse for this play, I am being reminded of the concept of balance in all things. We are currently rehearsing three nights a week. I go to game night one night a week. Each of my two children travel to various lessons and such two nights a week each. I have a full time job. This does not leave a lot of fully attended family time. So I have discovered now that I am forty that life is not supposed to be that hectic.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We work to live, we don’t live to work. We can’t be constantly racing from one appointment to the next, scribbling everything down in calendars synced across devices while we fling emails and texts out into the stratosphere. There needs to be time where you sit silently and wait. Just stop, and take it all in. Take something in that is not important or necessary.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe play a game?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having a hobby is so important to us as people. It’s a goal to strive towards as we careen through the day. It can be a social thing like gaming, a family thing like camping or the chaos of group meal preparation, or a very private thing like my sister, who plays the drums alone in her basement.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hobbies and interests of any kind are a form of escapism. They are a way to de-stress from the rigors of the world. In a role-playing game, players take on the roles of fictional characters who are exploring fantastical worlds and fighting in great conflicts for the betterment of all. Tabletop gamers play a multitude of different categories of games both alone and with others as a way of forgetting about the things that keep them up at night. So much the better if they can talk and laugh with others while they play, no matter whether it’s cooperative or competitive.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I am now fully forty years old, I am more comfortable in the skin I am in than I have ever been before. I am an old shoe, worn around the edges, but a perfect fit.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This does not mean that I will grow complacent in my coming years. There is more time that needs to be staked out to spend with family and friends. There are so many more games to play, and new faces to meet playing them. There is always struggle, but I firmly believe humans are meant to struggle. We can’t just rest on our laurels and fade away, it’s not how we’re built. To strive onward is when we begin to shine. We need to push against our hardships in order to fail and learn from our mistakes. It’s how we grow.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is an idea in some circles of teaching known as the three stages of learning. It states that in the first stage, you don’t know what you don’t know. The second stage is described as knowing what you don’t know. And the final stage is knowing what you know. I feel like I’m smack in the middle of the second stage. As much as I have learned many things in my last forty years of existence, the most important thing I have learned is that there is a whole universe of things out there yet to learn, and while it can be a scary place, it’s OK. With the right people around you, and staying true to the things that you love which give you respite from the challenges of your life, you will be just fine.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com2Bracebridge, ON, Canada45.0389565 -79.307878744.6799605 -79.953325700000008 45.397952499999995 -78.6624317tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-79851396811035624012017-01-31T15:14:00.004-05:002017-02-04T06:06:16.092-05:00The Grand Adventure, Part 2<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week I began recounting the experiences that my group of space boat flying friends and I had at our first ever regional tournament in Toronto for the tactical combat game X-Wing, from Fantasy Flight Games. This week, we see how it all went down…</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CCNV9cOCZJM/WJDuZTqdq5I/AAAAAAAAK74/1n4m_ul1yKIvKYCpgX6TisQhrT0EDVnIACLcB/s1600/2017-01-21%2B15.29.40.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CCNV9cOCZJM/WJDuZTqdq5I/AAAAAAAAK74/1n4m_ul1yKIvKYCpgX6TisQhrT0EDVnIACLcB/s320/2017-01-21%2B15.29.40.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the morning of the tourney, we all woke up very early. I don’t know how people prepared themselves for such a long day, but mine started with a coffee and a third time through my prepacked bag of tournament goodness. In a tournament, you are required to have all of the necessary components and tokens and such, and you can be disqualified without ever playing a game if you don’t have the smallest piece. Now, I knew that Face to Face Games, Toronto was going to have a certain amount of inventory for sale at the event, but I really didn’t feel like paying for stuff that was sitting somewhere at home, just because I forgot it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I packed snacks. I made a thermos of tea. I had another coffee and started checking in on my travel mates. Soon, Vince showed up at my door, and we left the silent and wintery glow of my house, driving away while my family still slept.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Donnie was waiting at the end of his driveway. Backpack over one shoulder, he looked like a kid waiting for the bus on the first day of school. Three grown man-children piled in my CR-V, like kids at christmas, or teenagers off to their first big rock show. We were off.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A two hour drive later and a couple of missed turns, we were at the college campus where the event was being held. The store crew was just showing up and I had been sitting for a couple of hours, so I helped unload the trailer and set up the tables. I met Elizabeth and Graham, two of the many hard-working employees from Face to Face Games in Toronto, and they were just lovely. Elizabeth I found out, had designed some custom produced tokens for the store, which were on sale that day and looked pretty cool. Graham was obviously the head cheese of the day, and I would learn later had an amusing connection to Muskoka.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Donnie wasn’t there ten minutes and had gotten himself into a game of Star Wars: Destiny, the new </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">collectible</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> dice and card game from FFG. Most X-Wing players are pretty excited about it. His opponent informed us that he never won a single game in his first four tournaments, and we all laughed nervously. Dorian and Jason had arrived earlier, and I chatted with them about strategy and such, as the bustle and panic of setup, registration and on site commerce filled the room. The butterflies in my stomach were very real.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Six rounds of Swiss games began at twenty after ten. Swiss rounds are games where you have a chance to accrue tournament points against semi-random pairings, thereby clawing your way towards a top sixteen elimination system, which eventually leads to the final match. There were ninety-nine players registered that day. If you don’t want to do math (like me), then assume that each player at the beginning of the day had a roughly sixteen percent chance of making it to the next round, or that only one in five(ish) players would move to the second half of the day. How you perform in Swiss either decreases or increases your chances, based on tournament points and score. There is more to it of course, but...wizards…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, does the X-Wing community live up to it’s reputation as honourable souls working together to play the game they love?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My first game was against a very cool and laid back dude named Mike. We were at the “stream” table, where VTTV were still getting setup to stream featured games over the internet, and I was very thankful that my first game of the day would not be broadcast.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was shaking really badly. Filled with a childlike nervous excitement that usually only rears its head when I am going on stage. It was electric. However, now I had to move tiny plastic models around a board with as much accuracy as I could, and that made things...challenging.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mike was cool though, and a calming force as we chatted about our lists, and how many premier events he had competed at. He was playing a “classic” list, what we refer to as “Super Dash/Corran.” He informed me that he loved the list, and had been competing solely with it for the last three years.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I lost the game.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, we had a great time. He was an engaging opponent and apparently I didn’t do that bad. It took almost the whole game for him to eliminate my list, and he thanked me for an interesting challenge when we were done.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was on cloud nine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My second match against Franco proved to be a learning experience. He was playing one of the latest ships which I hadn’t encountered before, and I believe I handled myself pretty well. However, there was a card interaction that was bothering me throughout the game. The match ended with another loss for me, but I lasted a long time. I destroyed his new U-Wing (from the Rogue One movie), and almost destroyed his VCX-100 (the Ghost, from Rebels), getting me half points. And again, the match almost went to time, meaning I held my own.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In games like X-Wing, nobody is perfect, especially the designers. Some upgrade cards and rules are released with poor clarifications in their wording, or a loophole which allows them to be used in a manner unintended at released. In those cases, FFG has an errata and FAQ which they update as needed to help stabilize the game. In this case, Franco was using a card improperly according to the FAQ. I do not believe he was doing this intentionally.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lesson was learned when after the game, I checked my copy of the latest FAQ, and discovered that he was using the card in a manner that afforded him an unfair advantage in the match. I had it under the table with me the whole time, but never checked it. I should have. Trust your instincts, folks.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not wanting Franco to repeat his mistake again, I found him and informed him of the rules surrounding the interaction. This is where the X-Wing community shines again. He was mortified. He apologised profusely, as I told him that it didn’t matter any more with regards to our match. There was no way to take back our game. I was honestly okay with it. He thanked me for telling him, and we shook hands and parted ways. He was truly repentant, and like everyone there, just wanted to play the best game possible.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My third game against was my first win. I came up against Patrick and his Han Solo/Luke Skywalker list. We both had a lot of fun, and there some very tense moments as the odds swung from side to side. Everyone has quirks, it would seem. While most players don’t mind you handling their ship’s movements once they reach your side of the three foot game mat, Patrick was adamant that he handle his stuff at all times. I was respectful of that, as I realised that just like many different athletes, superstition can play an important role in many aspects of someone’s life.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At this time, most of our group from Muskoka had accrued a win. We all seemed to be having a blast, as we would meet at our group table, and then as the latest pairings were posted, we had only minutes to get to our next table and set up.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My fourth game was against a “swarm” player. This usually entails flying many low costed ships with very few upgrades. Just like the Empire, a swarm player uses sheer numbers to overwhelm their enemy, taking casualties as they may. Devon was playing what most would call a mini swarm, as it included a couple of uncommon ship choices, including my second Rogue One ship match up, a Tie Striker.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As an added bonus, I got to play at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwEiE_G8-yU" target="_blank">stream table</a> so that our match was broadcast to the world, via the internet.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was another close game, and another learning experience. I held my own against Devon, and while he wasn’t playing a true swarm, his ships flew in a tight and well practised formation. Yet I plucked him down to his final two ships, and he had at this point only managed to destroy one of mine. I will not take all of the credit though, as he was subject to will of the dice gods. There were some crucial rolls both offensively and defensively that he just couldn’t get to work in his favour. I’m sure if the dice had been on his side, the match might have went very differently.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My learning experience came at a point where I just made a couple of bad maneuvers. I saw the board laid out in front of me, and saw the next two turns play out in my head. I realised too late, that by making the choices I had, I would lose the game. I said as much, and my partner was encouraging, but I knew the truth. I desperately tried to recover on the following turn, and only made it worse. The match was over, I had lost.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the internet.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My fifth match was against Katie, a lovely young lady from Sudbury, who had come down with her boyfriend and another four players. She absolutely wiped the floor with me. Honestly, it was the first match of the day where I just had my hat handed to me. It was the only game of the day where I finished with more than ten minutes left on the clock. I’m proud of that.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was still having a great time. Seriously.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My final matchup of the day was against Donnie. My friend, my teammate, and one of the passengers in my car. He had gone zero for five by that time, and was the only member of our group without a single win.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We laughed, and I told him that I wanted him to win. So did he, but we agreed that he needed to earn it. I wasn’t going to throw the game. We both knew that it would be a hollow victory.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I won’t get into the details, but we had a good time. There were some more tense exchanges of fire and flight, but in the end, I got my second win of the day. I was two and four, meaning two wins, four losses.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So after the dice dropped at twenty after ten in the morning, after completing six seventy-five minute games which believe me didn’t feel that long; after only getting a few minutes between these matches to refuel and use the facilities, it was about seven o’clock in the evening. That’s about nine or so hours of X-Wing.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And remember, after we were done, another game would be played for the top sixteen players, then the top eight, the top four and finally the final pairing which would decide first and second place. We estimated the whole event would last until midnight or so.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I made sure to thank Graham and all of his help for their efforts, and discovered an odd connection: his parents live in Bracebridge. We didn’t have time to discuss the finer details, but I invited him to look me and the rest of the Muskoka Star Wars gamers when he was in town.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.facetofacegames.com/toronto_tournaments" target="_blank">Face to Face Games in Toronto</a> put on a great event. Graham, Elizabeth and the rest of the crew went well above and beyond in their efforts to give everyone a great experience, and I commend them for it. The facilities were decent, the group was organised, and you could tell everyone there wanted to have a great day. I bought a very nice custom playmat to commemorate the day, and on the way home, the three of us in my vehicle agreed that we would definitely do it again. As a first experience at a big time regional tournament, we couldn't have asked for a better group. I commend Fantasy Flight Games Organised Play Division as well for producing a fun and competitive tournament environment that serves to strengthen an already great game.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The caliber of players in Ontario is unbelievable. These guys play two and three times a week, and participate in league nights and all sorts of championships and tournaments. I spoke briefly with last years’ National Champion Alan Fung, and he said that in some ways, it’s almost unfair. In some ways, I can agree. It didn't stop me from having a great time, though. And we all learned a lot that day.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our group plays maybe once a month on average. We organise quarterly tournaments at each location (Tea Beards, Up North Games, and the BTGC), and in between all of that we have other gaming interests we would love to explore. Like my Dungeons and Dragons group and other board games I love to play. It makes it hard for any of us to consistently play. Most of us have kids and other commitments which don’t afford us as much free time. This is called “real life,” and it isn’t always awesome.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Does the X-Wing community live up to it's reputation of open, inclusive and supportive gamers who want to expand the player base by having fun and growing as a community? In my experience, absolutely. If you have had other experiences, please let me know in the comments section below.</span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After leaving my house at six-thirty in the morning, I finally returned home at about ten-thirty or eleven o’clock at night. A sixteen hour day.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was exhausted. I was ecstatic. I placed seventy-seventh of ninety nine entrants from all over Ontario and beyond.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can’t wait to do it again.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-22042675875602700092017-01-24T11:43:00.000-05:002017-01-24T11:43:44.857-05:00The Grand Adventure, Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last weekend, my X-Wing playing friends and I all piled into a couple of cars and made our way down to the city of Toronto for our very first regional tournament. And what a day it turned out to be...</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those of you who may not be familiar with X-Wing, I will give you the nickel tour: X-Wing is a tactical miniatures game played out on a 3' by 3' mat using surprisingly well made and pre-painted plastic miniatures depicting various ships from the star wars universe. In tournament play, two opponents create custom made lists using a point buy budget and fly around the board trying to kill each other whilst making pew pew noises and alternatively praying to, or cursing the dice gods. Got it? That's enough for now.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">X-Wing is published by Fantasy Flight Games, and they love organised play. Many of their card games and miniature games follow a seasonal schedule of store, regional and national championship tournaments stretching around the globe, culminating in a yearly worlds tournament which takes place on their home turf at the aptly named Flight Center building in Roseville, Minnesota. Pretty neat, really.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Players who play this game, love it. And I mean love. Since 2012 when the game was released, the publisher and players have nurtured and grown the community as a social monster. A world-wide, tightly knit population of players have expanded the sales and popularity of the game beyond its intellectual property using podcasts, play through and live streams of various tournaments, match ups, play testing and forum debate. Now this could be true of any popular game, but one thing that has managed to stay true in the community is a distinct and palpable sense of mutual openness and community. We’re all friends.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everyone who plays X-Wing is a comrade who is encouraged and assisted as they get better. While most people will not share tournament lists for obvious reasons before a game day, afterwards they will happily spill all of their secrets about why they chose certain ships and upgrades, and what their overall strategy was. Any store supporting the game will most likely have weekly league nights and monthly tournaments where fast friends get together to explore the myriad possibilities the game has to offer. At the tourney, we saw a variety of league and club T-shirts indicating who belonged to what group. Yet there was no animosity or arrogance. Everyone inter-mingled and laughed together as they discussed the event.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Based on a true spirit of sportsmanship and mutual support, the community at large embraces a philosophy called "fly casual." Based on a Han Solo line from the original trilogy, it acknowledges in a way I have not seen in other competitive gaming groups the understanding that by playing fairly and working with each other, the community thrives. Helping new players learn the game, and veteran players explore ideas in a conscientious climate of respect is key to this philosophy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's not to say that there are no bad apples in the bunch, but by and large if you ask a player about the game, you are about to make a new friend who genuinely wants you to be a part of their hobby, unlike other hobby communities who employ a self-serving attitude of superiority towards those who try and break into their little clique. But that is not why I write this blog. At least not today.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today and next week is all about five friends who came together largely through X-Wing to travel from Muskoka to Toronto to participate in our very first Regional Tournament. I have to admit, we were a bunch of wide-eyed children who behaved as though we were going to our first rock concert. It was great.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Asking for advice from some more experienced tournament players, our preparation began months ago, by creating and playing possible lists and whittling away at our choices by constantly swapping upgrades and pilots out. We tried new strategies with older lists, or swapped upgrade cards and other things that came out in recent expansions with some of our classic favourite lists. We were told to find a list and settle on it as early as possible, so that we could begin tweaking it. Then we could play that list and only that list. We wanted to know those cards and ships like our own children.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We read up on the current FAQs and erratas, tournament regulations and studied the “meta.” If you are not familiar with the term, “meta” reflects the game outside of the game. For X-Wing and other competitive games, that would mean which pilots and upgrades were trending, and in which combination they would most likely be seen in. This would include set ups and strategies that were popular, and how often those lists and strategies were winning or losing overall. There are plenty of podcasts and websites you can reference to research these secrets, and we did so. Most of us already listen to most of those casts anyways.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of us began watching games both current and older, using that as a form of research. Suddenly, I found I was comparing myself to athletes, a thing which never happens. Ever. And I’ve even done a couple of obstacle races.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My wife laughed at me, but with love and support as I explained who three time champion Paul Heaver was, while he played one of his championship winning games on our big screen. She sipped her tea and nodded her head, and after a minute I smiled like a psychopath and went back to observing the master at work.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the months and through Christmas holidays we would get together and try stuff out. I was settled on a “Defender/SF/Bomber” Imperial list, which is decidedly left of meta, as I was bringing two ships which were largely regarded as not very competitive. The Tie/SF is an Episode 7+ ship which has both a front and rear firing arc, reflecting the Tie Fighter in which Poe Dameron and Finn used to make their escape from the clutches of the First Order.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tie Bomber is a classic ship from the original trilogy, boasting two barrel-like hubs between its angled solar wings. Both of these are thought to be too squishy (meaning easy to destroy), and not worth the point investment.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tie Defender is a fanboy fighter that was first created for the series of Tie Fighter and X-Wing computer games of the nineties, and was then formally introduced into canon around the same time...er...Legends.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I won’t get into the details of the list, as I am more interested in writing about my experiences with my space boat friends. If you want to know more about why I went with such a risky list, post in the comments below.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After a couple of months of casual practice and plenty of research, all but one of us had settled on the lists we would take with us. That process alone is a tonne of fun.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last year, we banded together to hold our own tournaments within our own group in Muskoka. We used the “Seasonal Kits” which FFG distributes as a casual type of official tournament package, with prizes and cards. They are sent out quarterly, and are the lowest tier of play available. Then it’s Store Championships, Regionals, etc. We held one tournament at each of our gaming hubs: One at Tea Beards in Gravenhurst, the Bracebridge Tabletop Gaming Community in Bracebridge, and our final day at Up North Games in Huntsville.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They were a relative hit, and we all had a great time. Since there were only eight of us at most, almost everyone got some kind of prize beyond the alternate art card you got just for showing up. We ordered pizza for lunch and played the Star Wars soundtrack while the matches were going on.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was the big leagues, though. This was a Premier level tournament in one of the biggest cities in the world. Would it really be a good day? Was the community really as open and welcoming as we thought it was? Were we about to be crushed into oblivion and sent crawling back up to cottage country with our tails tucked between our legs? Find out next week!</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-15327737182948436152017-01-17T08:02:00.002-05:002017-01-17T08:02:44.636-05:00A Little While Longer...I'd like to thank everyone who has migrated over here from the Mad Adventurer's Society. It is a pleasure having you. Having said that, I have just returned from a vacation in Cozumel, Mexico. Things are settling down at home, but it has left me with no time to write a blog entry this week.<br />
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I appreciate your patience, and look forward to giving you more great content in the future, like a report on my first ever regional X-Wing tournament!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081810117020401273.post-36700982945075033602017-01-03T08:00:00.000-05:002017-01-03T08:00:22.023-05:00Coming Soon (I think)<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6tAG7lHRQTc/WGpJBH7C0ZI/AAAAAAAAKMs/FL3sQwK0MCQhzXWueNC8DFrOlWByeAsYgCKgB/s1600/20161118_182242.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6tAG7lHRQTc/WGpJBH7C0ZI/AAAAAAAAKMs/FL3sQwK0MCQhzXWueNC8DFrOlWByeAsYgCKgB/s400/20161118_182242.jpg" width="400" /></a>Hello, and welcome to the new home of Gaming in the Wild.<br />
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If you followed my exploits with the Mad Adventurer Society (the site has now been archived for the time being at <a href="http://www.madadventurers.com/">www.madadventurers.com</a>), then you know all about me and my little world.<br />
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If you are new to this blog space, I will give you a brief summary...<br />
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I am a Canadian gamer, musician, community theatre actor and one of a pair of plucky middle aged children who run a community based gaming group called the Bracebridge Tabletop Gaming Community in Muskoka, Ontario.<br />
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I am also a husband and father of two, and I have spent the last couple of years writing Gaming in the Wild over at the above site. The site is closed to new content, but you can still check out some of the awesome gaming articles, podcasts and advice that has been doled out to all gamers. It's really good stuff and I am proud to have been a part of it.<br />
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I will be producing written content here from this point onwards, and I ask that you be patient. <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/118135773254306824708" target="_blank">+Brian Casey</a> was a fantastic editor who did so much of the hard work, and I am eternally grateful to him for his efforts. Now it's up to me, and I have never done this sort of thing before.<br />
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So please bear with me as I get this jalopy on the road, and don't forget to look for me on Twitter @RobAlmond which I use mostly for geek stuff and to promote my writing, and on the Facebooks as well.<br />
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I hope to be writing to you in the coming weeks, but I am going to Cozumel for a week, so there may be a slight<br />
delay...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05909555997288499578noreply@blogger.com2