as a youth in surburban hell, this game was an outlet... no, we never ended up in the sewers confused as to whether there might be troglodytes chasing us, or utterly tossed aside by the social fabric of highschool (no more so than anyone else in that miserable shithole that was north dallas)... the games got more interesting, more complicated, more social - more about friends having an excuse to sit around and talk, drink a few beers - for some get stoned (and for others get so messed up they swung from trees)... but in the earlier days this was an outlet we just didnt have any other way.
i wouldnt presume to speak for Randy Kirk and Purna - the group i gamed with back in my early youth... but i remember the game fondly. Sure - perhaps hammering Purna's lead figure with a hammer when a 'ten ton weight' fell on him was, well, a bit over the top (sorry about that ;)) - but we really did need something other than polarbear ashburns and kirk's parent's liquor cabinet... and there's no better way to learn the definition of 32,000 cubic feet than a fireball in a 10x10 room.
Friday, March 07, 2008
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4 comments:
Did you ever watch Freaks and Geeks? (a great show--you should see it if you haven't). There's a brilliant scene in the last episode where one of the "freaks" ends up reluctantly playing D&D with a group of geeks and totally gets into. It's some superb television!
my ex-wife used to play Reve de Dragon with us... i think at first she just wanted to do things that i liked doing - and it gave her a chance to hang out with my friends. People didnt seem to mind - as she really actually made an effort, and as she'd spent so much time as a theater geek the idea of playing a character was remarkably easy for her (i'll pass on the wider contextual comment there).
I wish I were still playing Dogs of the Vineyard - that's the one i'd be playing now given the chance - but everyone has kids and is busy with lives and such. I should probably try to force a game or three and see what happens...
Davy would totally play with you. He didn't play a ton of D&D, his game was something else with a goofy name like DORF or GORF or SMORF or something? And some others that I can't remember. But he still buys and reads entire books about RPGs and I think he'd also secretly like to play again.
i imagine it was GURPS... which wasnt a bad system, though i never really liked Steve Jackson's stuff. Dogs in the Vineyard is, well, a VERY different sort of game. It's sort of D&D meets the Mormon diaspora... so it tends to be, well, a proselytizing sort of game... built around sin. You kinda have to be able to poke a lot of fun at faith ;) - which is easy for us cynical bastards...
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