A Role Playing Games Blog
Sunglar
(275 comments, 210 posts)
Posts by Sunglar
The Genesys of a new game!
0September 30, 2011
Miss me? Well that’s a deafening silence… I guess the interwebz is a harsh mistress. Before I plunge into the post at hand let me take a moment to tell the two readers left who remember me what I’ve been up to. My last post was almost three weeks ago about the Speak Out with my Geek Out. Since then I have been embroiled in a big project at work. It’s been some long weeks, some over seven days long. Mind you I am not complaining, I have a thriving job in this economy, and I have the privilege of working with educators and students, which I love. Still all this hard work has meant I have had little time to post here in the blog. The brunt of the work is done, there will be a lot to do in the coming months, but I hope to get back to the extracurricular activities I love… and posting, back to posting too!
Now, on to the post…
This one has been a long time coming. I met one of the creators of the Genesys Universal Roleplaying Game on the plane ride to Gen Con. It was a lively conversation about the games we love, how we played and the effect games have had in our lives. He told me about this game he was creating with his friends. When we stepped out of the plane I got to meet some of the other creators, we exchanged numbers and planned to see each other again during the con. But you know what Robert Burns said about plans…
(But if you don’t, click here!)
Time to Speak Out with my Geek Out… Role-Playing Games in my case!
2September 12, 2011
Well that should come as no surprise… Past post and the theme of the blog should be a dead giveaway. But this is supposed to be a post about why I love my geeky hobby and possibly an introduction to someone who wants to know what role-playing games are and may want to try their hand at it. So here is my post…
When I first read about the Speak Out with your Geek Out I was intrigued. As I wrote recently I am a big proponent of sharing my love of the role-playing hobby, showing other people how to play, and supporting gaming groups locally. For these reasons we have a local group called Puerto Rico Role Players and through posting in this blog I feel ever closer to the greater gaming community.
So to the question at hand, why do I love role-playing games?
Caught unaware…
7September 6, 2011
I am not a closet gamer! By that I mean I do not hide my love for role-playing games. If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you know I regularly post about RPGs and other assorted geek interests. I actively support my local gaming community as much as I can. Heck I blog about it!
People around me know about role-playing. Coworkers and acquaintances know that I play “the game” on Tuesdays and know about the “geek picnics” I get involved in periodically. I talk about RPGs to my non-gaming friends (which there are not many of since most of my friends actively game or have gamed with me at some point in their life) when they ask about it. I am not pushy and try not to force my hobby on the uninterested.
Role-Player’s Cant
12August 25, 2011
Tell me if this has even happened to you. You sit down to play for the first time with a group of gamers who’ve been at it for a while (be it a few months or many years). As the new guy or gal there you may feel a little trepidation, there is of course the expected period of adjustment, and then someone uses a phrase that has no meaning for you and everybody start laughing. A common word to which you attach no particular importance elicits a reaction from the others around the table. If you can identify yourself with this experience then you have witnessed what I like to call role-player’s cant!
True many of us (well at least in similar age groups and from similar cultures) may share some references we throw around at the table. Like brushing off a terrible critical as “just a flesh wound”, calling a particularly deadly weapon the “holy hand grenade of Antioch” or calling any mysterious chivalrous order the “Knights who say Ni”… Thank you Monty Python, we are in debt to you! But this is not the type of patois I’m thinking about. I’m referring to the words, phrases and concepts that form around a tight knit group of friends over a period of time.
I began to think about this after writing my post on “puerco papers”. This is a concept that I associate with my immediate group of gamers and I know that when I have used it outside that group I have always had to explain what I’m referring to. Daniel (@Highmoon) left a comment on how I was introducing our very own terminology into the greater gaming community, and that got me thinking. I asked around my friends and players for suggestions, and began to compile the words and phrases we have come to use over the years in our groups. Let me share some with you…
Gen Con 2011, a retrospective… Part 4!
5August 24, 2011
I fear this whole Gen Con retrospective might be getting a little old, after all Gen Con ended 2 weeks ago. With all the complications I’ve had to write these posts you’d figure I’d get the hint the universe was trying to tell me something. Heck, last night as I was getting ready to write this last post (yeah its finally over!) a tropical storm hit Puerto Rico. You might say the fates were against me.
Well the fates be dammed! I intend to finish this thing even if it’s the last thing I do. (If Michael sees the readership number plummeting and you see my name stricken from the authors list you’ll know what did me in!) I’ve covered RPGs, other games, “stuff” (t-shirts, artists, authors, et al) but this last post is about the most important reason I went to Gen Con. What was it? Read on…
Gen Con 2011, a retrospective… Part 3: On to other stuff…
0August 22, 2011
So we’ve covered role-playing games (and I missed a couple of things but I’ll get to that in my next post), other games and minis, but there is so much more to do at Gen Con. One of the things I wanted to get where t-shirts. My last time around I stocked up and while most were worn to tatters, but a couple lasted through the years… So getting new shirts was high on my to-get list. Unlike some games that were impulse buys with t-shirts I took the time to shop around see what was available and I brought the ones I wanted on the last day.
The Off World Designs booth had the official Gen Con t-shirt for sale so I stopped there and got two for friends (including the esteemed creator of this blog to whom I am yet to ship his shirt, shame on me!) and while there I picked up their Boba Fettish t-shirt for a friend. While I love their designs, and just browse their webpage to see some great ideas, in my circles they are probably the best known geek shirts purveyors, so I get to see their shirts on friends… I wanted something different!
Gen Con 2011, a retrospective… Part 2: Other games and minis too!
0August 16, 2011
And we are back… Welcome to part 2 of my Gen Con retrospective. When we left our brave traveler he was in the midst of the four best days in gaming, Gen Con! Ok let’s get back to business.
I am primarily a role-player, while I dabble in the occasional board game and played some CCGs back in the day, there is nothing I would rather do that chuck dice and tell a story among friends. So you can imagine role-playing games were my primary draw at Gen Con. I did not even visit the wargaming and board games area until Saturday. I did not see the card games at all (sorry CCG fans). However I did see some very interesting games of the strictly non-rpg variety in the exhibit hall and got to demo a couple of them.
Fantasy Flight Games was there, talk about beautiful games. The number of FFG bags around the convention was outstanding. I was particularly impressed by their Dust Tactics demos. I just watched but the miniatures and terrain that drew me in seemed to be part of a fun game that made me want to play.
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