27 Character Sheets

In a fit of girly-ness this evening, I watched 27 Dresses. I'm guessing that many of you either haven't seen this movie or saw it under duress with your significant other. And I'm also guessing that you're just waiting to see how I'm going to connect this to gaming. And here it is:

About half-way through the movie, Jane comes to realize that she must discard the baggage in her past (in the form of 27 dresses) in order to move on. And I got to thinking that as you move on to a new character, it becomes very important to dump the baggage of your old characters.

You have to let your old characters retire gracefully. If you let the memories of your previous character dictate your new character, you may attempt the Mark 2, a re-creation of the character concept, because you are sure you can do it better this time. Or, in the event things didn't turn out the way you planned, you may create the antithesis, trying to create your new character as different as possible.

I'm not always good about letting past character retire, but I do try to keep my characters separate, at least in my own mind. For me, it helps to have a developed back story; it's easier to keep everyone separate if they all had different stories.

What techniques do you use to move on from your old character(s)?

General Managing...

My normal blog perusal (thanks Yax) led me to Gnome Stew and an article on how a Game Master has to be a good general manager. This article makes several excellent points, however actually implementing some of them can be a challenge.

Organization and Scheduling, the bane of my existence!

The article recommends several good tips for keeping the same sane and moving forward, including organizing of one's gaming pile and using Google Calendar or another calendaring tool to get your gaming herd together.

I completely agree with the use of Google Calendar to manage game nights and coordinate the group, but its only a good as the group using it. We've had problems in the past with people not checking the calendar. Using notification features of the calendaring software could help this problem, but the easily forgettable nature of email can still lead to failures. This is still generally better than having to call my entire group, plus I hate talking on the phone anyway.

As far as organizing the gaming pile, I have the most trouble with this task. My books are generally strewn everywhere, a few book bags contain my entire collection and they regularly get separated. I have a battle mat, however it often gets left in the trunk of my car or at other people's houses and tends to be AWOL when I need it.

Be prepared!

What I really need is the equivalent of a "emergency preparedness kit" for gaming nights away from home. The only problem is that you can't fit large items like a battle mat into a quick-carry kit like that... I imagine things like a set of dice, maybe some miniatures if your group prefers to play with those, a notepad, and if you're really ambitious a few quickie game session ideas to get the ball rolling.

So what else would you have in your "gaming preparedness kit"?

The Changes With Which I Don't Agree

As I was working on another post outlining some of my thoughts for playing the new races, I rediscovered the one thing that upset me the first time I read through the races section of the PHB.

They changed the Elf gods!!

Corellon Larethian has historically been credited as the "Creator of the Elves." In 4E, he is merely the "patron of the fey." Did he get demoted? Absolutely! Why? I'm not sure, but the part of me that's actually an elf is outraged!

Corellon was not only associated with music, magic and the arts (as he is currently described in 4E), but also with warfare when the need to protect arose. He defeated Gruumsh in battle in the beginning of the world, before he created the elves. This battle was the underlying reason elves hate orcs. Corellon also cast out Lolth after her betrayal during the aforementioned battle. This was the underlying reason Corellon despises Lolth and her followers.

Sehanine Moonbow is one of the lesser-known Elf gods, but she suddenly appears in the regular pantheon, but not as we all knew her. Before, she was a goddess of death and dreams, now she's the goddess of trickery and illusions. In Races of the Wild, Sehanine is described as sending a "dying elf a vision of the next world to give him hope and strength during his passage." The 4E PHB describes her as sending "shadows to cloak lovers' trysts." She just sounds so tawdry, so much less noble.

Races of the Wild also states that Sehanine was Corellon's consort. 4E says she has "close ties" with him. I can overlook this little change, but it sure sounds like they are "just friends" now. Maybe she didn't want to be in a relationship with someone who got demoted from "Creator of the Elves." Or maybe he didn't agree with her new career choice. Either way, they must have had one heck of a falling out to go on as "just friends."

Now, I'm pretty forgiving in the changes they made if 4E. But to change the defined roles of the gods in the pantheon? To take away their mythology, their history? That's just change for the sake of change without any real growth or development.

All work and no raccoons make Dante a dull boy...

I don't know if its the extra talk about zombies, the truly fantastic banter surrounding in-game amusements, or the fact that I'm taking the first of my vacation time from my job this week but I'm going to draw some inspiration from a very likely source: one of my favorite web comics.

Questionable Content has been running a storyline lately surrounding one of their characters potentially getting mauled by an errant raccoon, and a few of the jokes lately have been revolving around rabies. Also, there have been a few dream sequence strips lately that reminded me a lot of something that would fall out of Vanir's head.

This got me thinking to what Vanir could do with a rabies infected character. As this idea took root, I started to contemplate how he could sing "My Sharona" with a mouthful of faux foam to really sell the point and then it hit me... rabies would probably be a minor inconvenience. (At least in 3.5 edition).

Without falling back on the lame shtick of "uh... this is magical rabies. It's resistant to 'Cure Disease'", the best I could do is hope that his antics would lead the group into enough immediate roleplaying to make the notion interesting for a bit.

Sadly, work responsibilities have prevented me from getting far enough into the 4e books to know if they made curing disease more of a process, or if its still a magical balm for all sorts of interesting maladies that could make for an interesting gaming session. Perhaps this week I will tear into those books and all questions will be answered.

Until then, head on over to Questionable Content, read a few, and tell Jeph that Dante sent ya. Maybe he'll stop by over here and make my month. I don't even know if he roleplays, but I'm assuming from the tone of his strip that he's got enough nerd in him to roll a few 20's.

Behind the Screen: What amuses you?

After Friday's post, it has become increasingly clear (thank you, commenters) that I am easily amused. It appears that I tend to fall for most old jokes at least once, and that must be why I currently love our D&D group.

You see, in addition to featuring everyone's favorite non-sequitor generator Vanir we also feature a few members of our group that delight in horrifyingly severe puns. And they're almost always funny once.

So rampant and severe the rate of punning, we had to institute an "out of character" demarcation to determine when a joke was being cracked and when the player was acting in character. (This should clue you in as to the level of seriousness that most of our campaigns attain.) In our group, holding up a piece of paper is the way to tell the GM that whatever it is to come spewing out of your word-hole next is not to be considered in-character. It is usually quite effective, until someone in your group realizes that by holding up a piece of paper they can speak freely and frequently for the whole session We all have our crosses to bear!

So that leads me to the question of the day: Does your group fall back on any humor/movie quote/funny stuff when nothing else presents itself? How do you manage things when the line blurs between character acting and player venting?

I know some groups continually fall back on Princess Bride quotes, Monty Python sketches, or Slayer lyrics. So what does it for your group? Whatever it is, I guarantee you I will fall for it at least once!