Comments on: I WAS A GOBLIN: I Was A Gothling https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling Lollards in the high church of low culture Fri, 21 Sep 2007 02:46:05 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Ned R. https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-315775 Fri, 21 Sep 2007 02:46:05 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-315775 What, you mean being a vampire with my name and qualities isn’t enough? *cries* Actually that would be a pretty sad vampire.

]]>
By: aldo https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314934 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:55:51 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314934 I should say, that experience marked the end of my second dalliance with RPGs.

I had run the game before that, a White Dwarf scenario for Cthulhu that I had beefed up and brought into the modern day. (“Draw The Blinds On Yesterday” from WD#63, fact fans) It was a simple yet strangely complex plot, involving a shut box mystery (a flight in from Greece, which using terrorist-related shutdowns I managed to put the right sense of oppression and paranoia) and then a move to rural Wiltshire where cultists on a farm are trying to channel (? can’t remember) into the National Grid and BLOW SHIT UP. Again, overemphasising only slightly the rurality of Wilts I managed to keep them away from broadband, decent strength of phone signals for GPRS etc… of course, if they’d thought about it then they could have driven somewhere. Anyway, after a FRANKLY HILARIOUS incident where they shot the local policeman because HE MUST BE IN ON IT, THEY ALWAYS ARE (as an immediate result of which the only other guy who was actually really any cop at playing took his character off back to the university she was a professor at, in protest that the incompetence of everybody else was almost making him play out of character – as a favour I had the inevitable destruction stop at Bristol so his character could be relatively safe in Cardiff and he could use her again) and featured them trying to do a million impossible things with a transit van on country roads before ‘staking out’ the Cultists. For nearly 6 hours gametime. Which might have been all right, had they not shot the cultist who snuck away from the main group SPECIFICALLY TO TELL THEM that if the group didn’t get stopped in the next three hours then WOE DISASTER ETC.

I think, in the end, the real reason I gave up is because too many people who ‘play’ RPGs seem to think just being themselves is enough. No imagination. No roles.

]]>
By: aldo https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314917 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:54:53 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314917 I can’t help completely agreeing with Tom as well. A couple of years ago, one of my Cthulhu group (before it completely fractured and people moved away) announced he had A GREAT IDEA for a sort of coming-of-age drama “a bit like Buffy”. Turned out to be Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Which is possibly even worse than Vampire: The Masquerade as it is full of cod-American Indian twattery and communing with the Earth Mother and such.

After a while I realised that everybody else had read all the sourcebooks and understood all the subtleties of the different classes and groups and had written their initial characters up – despite us allegedly not being told in advance what game system we were playing; the extent of the character brief was “teenage, New York” – to match the classes and groups they expected to be in, kind of leaving my FAR MORE ACCURATE pudgy Korean kid mainly interested in internet pr0n and playing XBox kind of marginalised.

When I realised the REAL WORLD ACCURACY brought by the game system meant he got put in a suit, in an apartment overlooking Central Park, while doing some completely esoteric BUT NEVER ACTUALLY DEFINED job in IT that he could do from home, and pick up or put down when he liked, I sort of lost interest.

]]>
By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314903 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:02:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314903 This essentially applies to Vampires too.

]]>
By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314902 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:01:34 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314902 The example I was actually thinking of – which I didn’t retell cos I couldn’t remember the details – involved a lengthy and increasingly embittered argument about ninjas and burglar alarms. The guy playing the ninja eventually went to the kitchen for a sulk.

(A cardinal rule of all RPGs should be: if someone’s interested enough in ninjas to want to role-play a ninja, they’re too interested in ninjas)

]]>
By: Pete https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314900 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:54:51 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314900 No I see what Tom is getting at and tend to agree. It might not be that the “how stuff works” is or isn’t what the gamers are expert in, but if the game is supposed to be escapism, then the unfortunate appeal to this in the modern day game could wreck the enjoyment. I might be really good at my job, and therefore suggest that my vampire character get a similar job to pay for his day to day existence. But at that point I have the power over the referee about what would or wouldn’t happen.

Since to be exciting the game requires conflict, then even tedious things like the operation of security systems becomes prey to the person who knows about that stuff.

I remember refereeing a game of Ghostbusters where this problem came up and the players had to explain how they could traverse the North Circular from Edmonton to Neasden in ten minutes by car (they had refused to consider the option of an experimental rocket I had left for them). Whilst an entertaining quibble, one does not expect to hear “bear in mind the knock on effect of the Brent Park Tescos” as part of escapist drama*.

*The response was quite good “considering that hell has erupted out of Neasden, I reckon most people would avoid the Saturday shop for a week”.

]]>
By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314899 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:51:35 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314899 It expanded it from the fat 19 year olds to the gawky ones.

]]>
By: Andrew Farrell https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/comment-page-1#comment-314891 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:08:42 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/09/i-was-a-goblin-i-was-a-gothling/#comment-314891 Good points all, but I do think this is a little off:

And How Stuff Works isn’t always what the kind of people who play RPGs are expert in, especially when they’re gawky 19-year-olds.

Considering that, as you say, it’s supposed to expand the audience of people who play RPGs.

]]>