Game = Life

Over the holiday (which was somewhat gaming parched), I played another Living Dragonstar scenario, and it was everything that its sibling wasn't.  While the story was fairly linear, I felt that we had some flexibility to be creative in how we resolved the story's issues.  I think my favorite moment was when my mostly-non-combatant/support character (a retired combat medic, now a priest of the Father) confronted the minions of the Big Bad (lizardmen, essentially). 

"I am a powerful shaman, and if you don't bring us our missing friend, I will have to hurt you."  (holding out a "tangle" grenade).  GM says: roll intimidate -- dicebot (for once!) is my friend and a 20 comes up.  The lizardmen quiver, shake, wet themselves and flee in terror...

:: chuckle :: Aiden may never get over himself after that one...

In other play... our Friday night home campaign met again after our holiday break (withdrawal, major withdrawal), and the GM did something that I found very interesting.  He presented us each with a survey, asking questions about what we like, dislike, want more of, want less of, etc.  I found it hard to answer, because I'm so essentially happy with the campaign.  Still, I thought it was a courageous move on his part, and it only cements my respect for him as a GM.

On the down/depressing side, the Tuesday night Adventure! game is cancelled on accounta Real Life(tm).  *sigh*  Rick's a great GM and our last session rocked... but they changed his hours at work, and with players all over the country there really isn't a time when he could run it for us and still be able to function at work. At least he hasn't been off-shored yet, and maybe we'll be able to do something via PBEM.  But I'll miss it -- I was just starting to feel like I had some connections to some of the other characters.

It is a hobby, though, and Real Life(tm) still gets to take priority.

I've got lots to say about my Gamer-Geek trek to California for GenconSoCal, but right now I need the help of great minds. In our Friday night home game (which I missed, alas) our characters have come into one wish each. These aren't the paltry D&D 3rd edition type wishes, but a full bore, 1st Edition AD&D type wish. A mega wish.

And I have no idea what to do with it.

Background: Forgotten Realms, D&D 3.5. The character is a 9th level, teenaged, female, halfling wizard. Eren grew up near a wild magic zone, and spent far too much time playing there. She has an afinity - no, an obsession - about all things magical. The party sometimes refers to her as the "halfling gun". The half orc or the human cleric will just pick her up and *point* her at what we want to squash, as she usually has something nifty like Scintillating Sphere, or Ice Storm up her sleeve, and she loves to blow up the bad guys.

She's jazzed about making items (first item was a wand of magic missiles), but bummed that they cost so much in terms of time, money and experience. (Player understands about game balance...)

She's just now starting to realize that good people, nice people, people she *likes* can have very bad things happen to them, and sometimes there's nothing she can do about it.

One character wants to become a half-dragon (his character worships Bahomet), another is seeking early access (about 4 levels early) to a prestige class, so it sounds like we will, to some extent, be doing power-ups. If you read my LJ, you know that I hate being un-useful, or being significantly behind the rest of the gang power-wise.

So... advice? Ideas? I got me a wish here... and thanks for any help you can provide.

A post on Rick's journal about character archetypes has had me pondering. Certainly I have a set of archetypes that I usually play, but now I'm wondering how each of my characters fits into them, and if I'm falling into a roleplaying rut.

Then I started to try to list all of my characters and got bogged down. Good grief but I have a lot of characters. Perchance someone needs to get a life!

Active home games:
Rick Jones's Adventure! Game: Mira Codera, daughter of the pulp hero "Wild Bill" Codero and a Tibetan princess. She inherited both his mental and physical disciplines, making her a powerful martial artist and mentalist. Archetype Mira fits one of my strongest archetypes -- the expert outsider. She's very good at what she does, but was raised in a cloistered/limited environment and is awkward when dealing with the modern world and social situations.

Daggerford (Adam Norman): Eren Willowburr, halfling Mage. Eren is very young, obsessed with magic and a little nuts -- comes with having grown up next to a wild magic zone! She's bouncy, enthusiastic and passionate about everything. Of course, she has the attention span of a goldfish if she's not intensely focused on something. Archetype Child growing to adult. The fun in playing Eren is watching her develop.

More later...