My Personal Rules as a Player

1) I do not hoard my wow-bangs. If I die with a sheet full of magical items or spells, then I played in vain. I am not here to advance a character, I am here to make fun memories with people I enjoy spending time with. Regular battles of attrition are slightly more interesting uses of my time than a 3rd grade math pop quiz.

2) Getting somewhere depends on rudimentary time management. Pixel-bitching for 45 minutes on something that isn't going to change the curve is wasting not only your time but everyone else's. I know there are one-way doors in the game, but most of the time you can come back with better information if it seems like you're missing something, rather than OCD on not-immediately obvious Q or A.

3) I surprise the DM - I do not find the margins and color inside of them. I find the weak points not considered and blow up the best-laid plans of my adversaries like the dudes walking away with their backs to the explosion. I am not concerned about dramatic tension; I am looking to dominate, bypass, confound, and neutralize. Moments of sheer panic will happen regardless but my goal is to have none.

4) Help other players have big moments - I know I'm a strong personality who will end up in a caller-like role whether consciously or unconsciously. So if leading a party, be a leader-servant. When other players are all looking at each other unsure of what to do, break the silence. When other players have an idea, help them make it happen. When you see a way for them to shine that they don't - put them in that position and try your damnedest to make everyone the party's X factor from time to time. When you all get together over beers afterwards, no one wants to hear stories about one person's character.

5) Spend your damn money - buy information, rumors, contacts, hidey-holes, strongholds (name-level or not), small armies of mercs, church support, adoration from the masses, and anything and everything else that gives your DM a lever to move your world. Whenever I look at a player's character sheet - presuming they have all of the basic game necessities met (training, maintenance, whatever) - and there's some ridiculous amount of gold scratched on there I feel like I'm sitting with a middle-manager only capable of following someone else's plan. Help them see the possibilities.

6) Have a short, medium, and long term goals that have zero to do with whatever the DM is cooking up - tying in with the above, adventure seeds are great - I'm always hunting for this stuff. But surely you know something you want to do that's intrinsic to yourself. Are you a fighter that wants a magic sword? Don't pine for it, drop out-of-game hints, or anything else. Start hunting for it; make it known within the world what you seek (at least to those who might point you in that direction). If you're a thief - make contacts way before you're thinking of setting up a guild in a few levels. Look for one ripe for takeover. Cleric? Where doth the church need extending its reach? Etc.

7) Contribute to the game world - make custom spells, items, and prayers. If you're a fighter, don't just found a stronghold - find a good natural harbor and start a new city.

8) Pay attention - be ready to roll. Don't be the guy saying "huh" every time. Speak up. Move things along. Write down stuff.

9) Be versatile - every time I see a player whine because they had a specific idea for a character in mind and must have that or their time isn't fun, I get flashbacks to every high-maintenance girl I've ever stupidly dated anyway. The warning signs are always there early, and they always come true.

10) There is no arc - embrace setbacks. This is not a novel. At this point there's nothing more boring than saving the world except a nice steady progress from week to week where my character consistently waxes in power. I don't invest in the bond market, and I'm not looking to play D&D to meter my progress through the level names. You're not really winning at D&D if you never lose. Gamble. Take big risks with the equivalent of monopoly money. If you're a character-driven roleplayer, seek the admiration that comes from a populace that sees your character rise from the ashes to become even better than before the tumble. Laughing off real adversity is the role most D&D characters should be playing, not the guy who always hits their scratch off ticket for $1 more than it cost.

Against the Giants

So here's the thing about being a DM growing up in a small town.  You might not get to play a lot, if there's not a big pool of people who want to run a game.

I didn't start playing until the school year prior to the release of 2E, so I know that I am on the young-ish side of the OSR.  There was a dichotomy in the product; the books were great, the support material sucked. 

At the time I didn't know anything about the politics of Gygax.  All I knew was the PHB and DMG were like steroids for my imagination.  I could sit and read them for hours, and then go off and make a dungeon for the weekend. 

But whenever I bought a module they uniformly sucked.  And I was more than a little disappointed that whoever was writing these modules was getting paid for what I saw as going through the motions, when I compared back to the rulebooks themselves.

This was 1988-89.  Like I said, small town, so small-town bookstore.  Not a FLGS.  They had some D&D stuff, but it was whatever was current product.  At that time, that meant top-notch stuff like Adventure Pack I, Tales of the Outer Planes and The Book of Lairs II.  My first exposure to AD&D was as a player in the U series, so a drop off in quality was evident.  Dragon was not a part of my life yet, so I was not aware of an impending 2nd edition. 

As mentioned, I was more of a drafted DM at first than a natural one; I wanted to play!  I wanted to replicate the fun I had going through the U series with my mighty wizard Whatever-the-Hell-His-Name-Was!  So when I discovered used product in the comic/game shops of bigger towns I hoarded the classic adventures, but didn't run them for my players. 

Fat lot of good that did me.  Twenty+ years later and I still have never played as a PC through any other TSR adventures.  I've never read them, though I own them all now (and most of them then), to preserve my presumed play experience when I came across a group who wanted to run them.  For various reasons, that hasn't happened.  Most times, 1E groups I was able to join later as a player had all "been there, done that".  They weren't interested.

But a few weeks ago, Stuart was nice enough (and mildly shocked enough) upon discovering my predicament to run a game through if we could find enough players.  As K&KA is not a place with a lot of RPG rookies, I didn't know if four or five players could be found.  But the responses to the thread came in fairly quickly, after two of us had admitted never having gone through the giants series, and it turned out that a fair number of us hadn't.  Once again, something I thought everyone else had done, wasn't true at all.

So we got a Google+ game together.  We've had two sessions so far, and it's been fantastic.  Stuart uses pre-gens, as it's not really a campaign, but I really like my Illusionist/Thief.  We're recording it, but I don't think the recordings are up yet so I can't link to it.  I hadn't used Google+ before, but it's so simple and easy it's like falling down after hitting the Guinness. 

Now I'm hoping that this means I won't be stuck wishing I could play AD&D again, without an outlet.  I see the Constant-Con references, and I'm going to check that out more.  I would really prefer a campaign style where I get to start a character from scratch, and keep the same group together through a succession of adventures.  I don't know if there are those types of games amongst the pick-up style that seems to be the majority there. 

But this technology makes me feel like a game-player, as opposed to a game-reader again.  And I like it.