Archive for November, 2008

Player character portrait from the game "Icewind Dale"

Heroes beyond thirty

11
November 7, 2008
by Stargazer in ,

Most of us have probably started playing when they were teenagers or when they entered college. We didn’t have a significant other, probably no job, a lot of free time and an overflowing imagination. Ah, those were the days. I can still remember roleplaying sessions that started early in the afternoon and ended well after midnight. We played every week and met in a friend’s cellar room that was heated by a wood stove. It was our roleplaying “dungeon”. ;)

Later at the university we usually met every two weeks with our Rolemaster group and almost every weekend with my Shadowrun group. We had a lot of free time and everyone was living close enough to organize weekly meetings. I am now 33 years old and have a 42 hours per week job. Although I have much more money to buy all the nice miniatures, roleplaying rules and dice, it’s harder than ever to organize a roleplaying sessions.

Since we are all occupied during week days, we only meet on weekends. And even then it’s hard to get all players to the table. Someone always has some previous appointment, like a friend’s birthday, marriage or something like that.

I still enjoy roleplaying games very much and I would like to play much more often but real life always comes in the way. How do other “heroes over thirty” cope with these problems? Do you just accept that you can’t play that often or do you have some tips for your fellow senior gamers?

I am back!

4
November 6, 2008
by Stargazer in ,

To quote Mark Twain, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. It took me some time to think about various issues and make some decisions. I won’t get back to a daily (or almost daily) routine, because I just can’t put out that many articles without dropping overall quality. I don’t know how other bloggers are able to put out that much content while maintaining a certain quality. Perhaps they hire ghost-writers. :D

In the last days I have mainly checked out several interesting roleplaying games. High up on that list where FUDGE and FATE. I like that both games are pretty easy to get into for new players but have quite some complexity underneath. And it’s easy to plug parts of other systems into both FUDGE and FATE. You need a sanity mechanic? Rip it out of Cthulhu and use it. It’s as easy as that.

Especially FATE looks very promising since it has completely done away with common attributes. Instead of attributes it uses “aspects”. The concept of aspects is a bit complicated in a few words, because they can be everything from character traits to background information or special abilities and even magic items. If Indiana Jones were a FATE character, he would for example have “fedora and whip” as one of his aspects. One of Han Solo’s apects could be “Millenium Falcon” or “Bounty on head”.

And since FATE works well in the pulp genre, I think it could be a perfect match for my Asecia Reloaded project. Asecia Reloaded is a complete overhaul of my campaign setting in the making “Asecia”. I have thought long about the future of my setting and talked with some friends about it. I will keep some core elements in touch but I will go a slighty different route. And the whole campaign will get a pulp novel touch. So stay tuned, I still have some ideas up my sleeves! :)

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