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My Gen Con plans…
6August 3, 2011
I am really looking forward to Gen Con! I blogged about it a while ago… We are so close to that most sacred gathering of geeks in Indianapolis that I can taste it. I’ve only been there once before in 2007 but I can tell you it’s one of those things you have to do at least once if you are a gamer. Last time I think I missed a lot of the fun, I bought too much, gamed too little and did not interact with people enough. All issues I intend to correct.
I also plan to cover Gen Con for the blog. The how is still taking form. I’ll be taking lots of pictures and talking to whoever will indulge me, to know what fun things publishers big and small are planning and unveiling at the con. In this day and age there is so much information and coverage (like the fine folk at This Just in from Gen Con) that I don’t aspire to bring you every bit of news, just what I think will be of interest to our readers. I hope to post in some form from Gen Con, let’s see if the Exhibit Hall and random games don’t kill me…
What’s my plan? Well it’s fluid… At first I began filling up a log schedule and after a while I realized I would be running from one place to the other with little time to just ENJOY being there. So I scrapped it and decided to play it by ear. Here is the (very) rough outline: (more…)
Puerco papers for better gaming!
8July 28, 2011
This post needs a preamble. As I was finishing my weekly game in the wee hours of the night (more accurately really early in the morning) I was asking among my players for possible topics they might be interested in reading about. Although some ideas were thrown about I ended up writing the Superhero games are hard! post. After I was done writing I noticed a message from my player and good friend Sara suggesting the topic for this post. Big thanks to her for the inspiration!
Imagine this… “The table is abuzz with excitement. The players are about to make a pivotal decisions that could change the game. They are throwing ideas back and forth and suddenly someone notices the note quietly being passed by one of their own to the nemesis behind the screen… FOUL cry the other players. A puerco paper has been unleashed on the game!”
Call it what you may, secret communication between the players and the Game Master can be a contentious issue. At our table we call them puerco papers, puerco literally means pig, and well paper you get. So it’s meant as a disparaging, and somewhat tongue in cheek, remark on the player writing the note. I don’t exactly recall exactly how the term came about, but I seem to remember my friend Sammy coining it at his table and cross pollinating to ours through mutual players, even before Sammy played with us. It’s part of the unique lexicon, like “Tempus be praised”, “anchorchas” or “chiclán”, that develops among a gaming group.
Players are not the sole perpetrators of puerco papers, Game Masters often find the need to pass along secret information to a player or players, by either passing a note or pulling them aside from the table for a few moments. So it can be either a puerco paper or a puerco meeting, even a puerco session if the GM meets with a group of players outside of the regular gaming session. With current technology the communication can happen via text message, in or outside a session, e-mails, social media, you name it. In my experience players are more forgiving when the GM does it, but when a player passes a long a note it can be the seed of discord and distrust.
Superhero games are hard!
4July 27, 2011
If you’ve read any of my posts in the recent past you probably know I am currently running a Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition game. After fantasy, which is my favorite RPG genre, Superheroes are my second favorite. I have started more supers campaigns that any other genre besides fantasy. Off the top of my head I can think of eight, and about two dozen more that were planned but never executed. Of those I considered one really successful, well until this one.
My current Dawn of a New Age campaign has become the favorite supers game I have run. Before that it used to be a Heroes Unlimited games that we played for a few months. I don’t recall exactly how long that other game ran (this was in 1992) but I think this one has surpassed it. Last night we played our 30th session, over seven and a half months of weekly games. I think the success is based on many factors. First and foremost a group of players interested and committed in the game.
Secondly preparation and I’m not talking about the weekly kind, but campaign prep. I did a survey to gather information on just what the players were interested and not interested in to use as a guide when preparing the campaign and possible adventures. Discussed their characters, went over expectations, so we all started knowing what to expect.
But you know what they say about best laid plans. As it is inevitable the plan has needed revisions. Players have changed characters, despite discussing expectations they were varied and sometimes contradictory and trying to mesh them all has not always been successful. Overall I think we have stuck to it and every so often there is something of interest to everyone. As will al role playing games not every session an highlight all the different plots for every character but there should be something for everyone to do.
Twitter and me!
2
I was not keen on Twitter at first. Some may say I am not big on change, but let’s just say I did not close my MySpace page until last month! I was not quick to migrate to Facebook when it came along, so when I began blogging and discovered how the RPG blogging community was active on Twitter I reluctantly joined. It took some time for me to get used to Twitter, I still use Facebook and remain very active, out Puerto Rico Role Players group main form of contact is there. I use Facebook for my games all the time, and it’s worked better that most other online tools I’ve tried, it has to do with the service’s pervasiveness, I am well aware of that.
So little by little I have balanced my use of Twitter and Facebook. These days most updates I do on Twitter and they appear on Facebook. Oftentimes I will post in English in Twitter, where the majority of my followers are English speakers, and do my occasional update in Spanish in Facebook, where I have a LOT of Spanish speaking friends.
One thing I had NEVER done was participate in a large scale real time discussion with lots of other people. I get hashtags; I had just never tried it. Some time ago I had seen the #RPGchat discussions and lurked, fascinated by all the ideas floating about. So last week I saw they were discussing Gen Con this week and decided to join in. I used my iPhone with the Twitter app and was able to follow and participate so easily.
The people participating in the discussion where friendly, helpful and so much fun and I won a prize they were giving away! It was the most fun I’ve had in Twitter. Shout out to all the fine folk there, it was a pleasure to meet you. I will definitely be joining them again.
I did embrace Google+ early one so worry not I’m keeping up to day.
Just in case, if you are interested, in Facebook you can find me as sunglar@hotmail.com, in Google+ as sunglar@gmail.com (you can see a pattern emerging here) and in Twitter as @Sunglar. I’d love to get to know you all better!
You learn who your true friends are in times of hardship…
4July 11, 2011
I have not posted here since July 1st, and my last post was about the planned Puerto Rico Role Players Geeknic. Was it the greatest geeknic on earth like I predicted? Well if a concussion, incessant rain, floods, trips to the hospital and your car getting stuck on a flooded street are your idea of great, it was epic!
Don’t worry everybody is alright. My lull in posting had nothing to do with getting hurt, it’s all work and real life responsibilities keeping me away, but vacations are approaching and I hope to make up during that time. But I know you are not here to read about my life, you are here to know what happened at the geeknic? Well let me tell you…
One of the wonders of living in a tropical island is the weather. It’s usually beautiful and sunny year round, BUT every so often we get torrential rain (and don’t get me started about hurricanes) that was the case last weekend. It rained all weekend, but when Sunday rolled along, despite some drizzle, it seemed like the sun was coming out, so I made my way to the park where the geeknic was going to be held and met up with my fellow early birds. We set up and then the rain came… We began moving stuff to a dry place and there was when the first mishap occurred.
Come one, come all, to the greatest geeknic on earth!
1July 1, 2011
by Sunglar
in Dark Heresy, Humor, News & Reviews, Non-RPG, Other Systems, Pathfinder, Random musings, RPG
I try (I really do) not to toot my own horn, or try to use the blog (too much) to promote another project I’m involved with, Puerto Rico Role Players. I guess there is some crossover, as I share posts from the blog on the Facebook group for Puerto Rico Role Players and oftentimes write about activities the group organizes here, but mostly after the fact. I don’t recall actually using the blog to promote an upcoming gathering. This post aims to correct that.
For over a year a group of RPG fans from Puerto Rico has been gathering to share our love of gaming, food and camaraderie in different places across the island. The group was formed over two years ago and after forging an electronic community and doing some demos at local conventions we finally decided to hold a social activity to get to know each other better. We settled on getting together on a park or other public place and someone suggested the idea of calling it a geeknic. He actually got the idea from geeknic.org, everybody loved the idea and we ran with it.
Gen Con here I go!
5June 17, 2011
I realize it maybe a little premature to be so excited about it, Gen Con Indy is still over a month and a half away, but I feel like a kid the night before x-mas. Gen Con was a mythical place for me most of my life. I read about it, saw pictures, knew people who had been there, and I could not wait to make the pilgrimage that every RPG geek must do at least once in his or her life. So back in 2007when a friend put together a trip I jumped at the opportunity.
We all gathered together and travelled from sunny Puerto Rico to that mysterious land called Indiana. I loved going, it was fun, exciting and I spent far too much money! Since we went as a large group we spent most of our time together, I played little and had very little interaction with other convention goers. Amazingly for a gaming convention I only played a couple of encounters at the Wizards of the Coast room and some demos at booths, but that was it. My fellow travelers played some CCGs but that’s not my thing so I roamed the Exhibitors Hall and took a LOT of pictures.
When we left we all said “We are coming back!” And we meant it, but real life happens and putting together a trip where all of us can coordinate our schedules becomes harder and harder. Then I began writing for the blog, and last year when Michael said he was going I wanted to go to Gen Con and meet the Stargazer (i.e. Mr. Rock Star). Sadly work and other situations kept me from going, 2010 was not the year for me.
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