segunda-feira, 24 de abril de 2017

A Referee-facing Blog


I’ll start with a crude aphorism:

“It’s not a good rpg blog that’s not a self-serving rpg blog”.

All of the ones I follow hew to this blueprint and revolutionary that I wish I could claim to be (I can’t), this is definitely not the crack where I would plant my dynamite.

This whole ordeal got out from under my fingers due to an all-consuming fact: I’ve got games that I wish to start, and I need a place to vent my spleen thoughts such that I can take a step back from the work when it threatens to consume me as well as to indulge in some flapping of the jaw without actually talking to people that constitute one’s would-be player base.

Nothing mines progress more swiftly than wasting time yapping about all the cool shit that’s gonna go down right once we clear just one more river bend… 

Trust me, it never comes; or if it comes it´s guised in the round shape of pear well dipped in disappointment sauce.

So, aiming low, scoring midrung & how to feel good about it?

Not really. Settling for lowest common denominator is what landed me in dubious campaigns, seated alongside social tag-alongs, casual die-tossers and idlers with nothing better to do on a friday evening. Fellows who, despite being perfectly upstanding folk, simply had no business sitting at a gaming table.

Let me be perfectly clear: if you’re trading away one of your weekend evenings of  nocturnal conviviality, it had better well be for some rip-roaring chunk of good gaming. Lukewarm shit-parades plumbed straight from the mines of Cliché’nya belong in but one room of the house, and I already go there frequently enough that I could map it in graph paper, there’s frankly no need to double dip.

So, let me /try/ to be upfront about what this blog is to be about:

- Conceptual innovations in refereeing, otherwise known as: 

1) throw enough shit at the wall that would have a zoo-monkey taking notes. 
2) see what sticks.

- World building.

I don’t fancy myself much of a world-builder but there’s always room for improvement and I do like to engage in some speculative musings from time to time.

- Actual play reports, emphasis on the referee’s perspective.

This means no war stories. It’s either for games that I’m running (Obsidian Portal is far too corporate for my ass*) or participating in. I wish to focus on reporting what worked, what didn’t and my dumb guess as to why. My skewed life experience informs me that failure tales trade highly in both learning value and Schadenfrëude.

- DMing advice.

I’m but an amateur. So is everyone else.

- Random bullshit rants.

Not that I desire to indulge in this, mind you; more because I recognize that, when you have a soap-box, ocasional ranting ends up being a cost of doing business.

- Improving my writing.

I know, the lot of you are right now thinking “you just keep on tackling the base of that cliff, bub”. And you know what? I couldn’t gainsay you if I wanted. Wish me luck, is all.



*Show me up in the comments that blogger is owned by a megacorp, I promise to have the cookie jar handy.


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