Try something new, be a jerk!

Today's Daily 60(seconds) is an addition to monday's article: Don't be afraid to be an ass!

You know your friends, and you know your gaming group.  I'd say at least half the groups out there always play nice.  The thief doesn't taunt the thefts around the paladin.  The assassin pretends to be a good guy near the palace soldier, and so on.  Well I'm here to say that if you really enjoy that then that's fine, but you shouldn't be afraid to be an ass.  Go on, call the anthropomorphic canine soldier a mutt even if he is played by someone at the same table.  And you, did you hear what he called your mom?  Slug him!

I'm not saying to let the entire game derail into inter-party combat, but you're not gonna lose a friend in real life because your character doesn't like hers, so don't be afraid to just role-play where it goes.  Friends can make a good story, but unlikely friends make a better one, and frankly the best stories I've seen are when two characters who have no business even talking to each other stop killing each other, barely, long enough to solve a crisis.

It's all about having fun, so if you feel like you're in the mood to be a royal pain in the ass, then be one!  And GMs, don't start yelling at me when your players listen, just have fun with it too!  See ya next time!

Be someone new this time...

And now it's time for today's Daily 60 (seconds).  One-shot games, and their secret potential.

Many of you have a regular gaming session, and the beauty of that is that you're able to play campaigns.  Adventure after adventure of your favorite roleplaying game, watching your characters evolve, and just having a great time making an epic story with friends.  This also makes a huge problem.  No one wants to be stuck with a character that they hate, and when you play games that last months, or years, you're really stuck with that character, or you're the guy that bails on his character to make a new one.

Enter the one-shot.  A one-shot game is a one or two session game.  What's the beauty of it?  Who cares what the genre is, be someone new!  Besides trying out a new game, you can be the thief that actually steals because they're greedier than Enron (remember them?), or the assassin that is ruthless and kills anyone who gets in their way.  Be the ultimate do-gooder that won't even curse at their enemy and who prays for their soul when they die.  Who cares if you don't have fun for one session, it will be over and next week you can try a different character.  Maybe this will show you get another long-term character that you'll enjoy that you never would have tried before.

It's all about roleplaying, and most people, myself included, play it safe in long games.  So next time you're playing a short one, just be crazy, kill party members, whatever, just do something new to see if that's your kind of character too.

See ya next time!

2 Excellent Games to Add to the Try List

I know I missed the last couple blogs on gaming, so I wanted to catch up with a double dose today.  Here comes your Daily 60 (second) double, two of my favorite Indy games.

First on the list is one that I reviewed a long time back, but I think it's inventive enough to re-mention it and give a quick overview.  Braid, by Number None, Inc, is a platformer unlike any other, and if you enjoy puzzles as much as you enjoy jumping on heads than this is definitely for you.  Braid is a puzzle platformer.  Yeah, it's in a genre all by itself.  The mechanics involve toying with time itself, fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing, slow-motion, and more.  Use those tricks to manipulate the world around you to maneuver your enemies, the terrain, and even projectiles so you can open the paths you need to follow to the next challenge.  I can't say enough good things about this game and how well-thought out it was. The goal of the game?  Well you should just play to find out.

Next I'll suggest the Legend of Grimrock, by Almost Human Ltd.  This game is lots of fun, it's basically a retro-style dungeon crawl with a few differences.  It uses the WASD movement style, where if you tap forward you move forward one "square" worth, and the entire dungeon basically made in graph paper.  I like the fact that it lets you choose to be auto-mapped or not, and if you choose not, you really will need a book of graph paper to keep everything straight.  The idea is you're trying to get out of a dungeon alive, and that's really about it.  To do so, you'll have to collect gear, equip your team, and combat against guards, monsters, skeletons, giant animals, and more.  Add to that the inventive and deadly traps, and the puzzles and key-based progressions of some rooms, and this game climbs its way towards top of the genre.  It's addictive, and requires a lot more strategy than just "clicking until bad guy dies."  If you enjoy RPGs or pure Dungeon Crawls, add this one to your list today!

So add these to your list if you're looking for something fun and inventive.

To Munchkin or not to Munchkin...

Munchkining… That's the theme for todays Daily 90 (seconds).  

For those of you that don't know, that's the fine art of knowing the rules of the game you're playing so well that you can play numbers games to make the most extreme, powerful, almost ridiculous character that you can.  Actually sometimes it's not consider munchkining if it's NOT ridiculous.  "+5 battle-axe of slaying everything I don't like"?  I have two of them.  "+9 Chainmail of boisterous invulnerability," awesome.

Ok, now to the point.  Why not?  I know that there is one group that says that making characters like that makes the game unbalanced.  Either the enemies have to be hard enough to be a fair fight for uber dwarf and they slaughter everyone else, or most the players have a fair fight and cousin Rockbeard just wades through the enemies like a kiddy pool full of jello.

That's true, it is more work for a game master… Come on, game masters know GMing is work, get used to it.

Other side of the fence is how I feel, let 'em do it.  The game is all about fun.  Everyone should be enjoying themselves, and if some players feel the they can only enjoy the game if they TOTALLY ROCK, then go for it, just hope the GM is creative enough to give everyone something to do.  Remember, Super-ultimate-awesome soldier man with sword and axe skills unseen since the turn of the millennium is really pretty useless when negotiating with a King.

So the moral of today's Daily?  It's one I've said before.  HAVE FUN!  Try to encourage your munchkins to be a little more balanced, but just try and find a way for everyone who's playing to leave every session smiling, or really damn pissed at you… because THAT is the real job of the GM.

See you soon!

Cards Against Humanity, and they mean it.

***********  Impropriety Warning, this is your last chance to skip this blog ****************

Ok, It's raunchy, it's wrong, and it's so far from politically correct that even saying politically correct anywhere near it is offensive.  If your crowd of friends feels strongly enough about some particular savior supporting their afterlife that they can't handle jokes about it, or if you have to put away your porno mags before they come over, then this game is really not for them.

This game is similar to apples to apples in that one (black) card is played from the deck and other (white) cards are played from players hands to apply to it.  For example, "_____, Kid tested, mother approved." is one of the black cards, and the idea is to play the white cards, which are nouns, to make the funniest combination.  You might play "Waffles" but then you're not going in the theme of the game.  More likely you'll get cards played like "A big black penis" or "Golden Showers" or "Natalie Portman." (hey, that would be a nice Episode 1 joke)

The game is for 4 or more players, and the "win" condition isn't really outlined.  You play a black card, everyone else plays a white card, then you pick one who wins and they get the black card in a score pile, and then the next person goes.  It's for the perverse and disturbed to make off-color jokes and inappropriate comments using the veil of a game, and if you have a dark sense of humor, then it can be truly a hysterical game.

If you like dirty jokes, and can handle racially slanted humor, along with your friends, then this might be for you.  If not, then be proud of yourself. It means you're a good person, because even the maker of this game agrees that it's "A party game for horrible people."