Monday, May 31, 2010

Wait a minute...

Some bloggers don't actually play the game they're blogging about?

13 comments:

  1. Can't speak for anyone else, but for me it's been years. I'm getting back into it, and quite seriously, too. That's what my blog is about: the road back to gaming after having given it up.

    My blogging up until now has been (so I see in hindsight) about revving up a giant conceptual fan and blowing out the several years' worth of accumulated chaff, nonsense, dust, spider-webs, and flirtations with other systems that had kept me from being able to take D&D seriously. Every grand blogging idea I had a couple of months ago when this little hobby reawakened in my Mt Dew-addled, aging brain has been completely demolished, either by arguments made by other bloggers or by my trying to blog my through them and seeing how ridiculously full of shit I was on this or that topic. Talk about a full stable, if you know what mean.

    Frankly, I'm still surprised that I want to play this ostensibly silly game again.

    However, the game was a freaking huge part of my past - it lies at the root of my love affair with reading and writing - and I've done more than enough time as a player and as an (insufferable) DM to say confidently that, paisano, I made my bones and don't feel in any way like a poseur. I just haven't killed anyone in a few years, capiche?

    That changes this summer, when the virtual blood of mutants and monsters will splatter in glorious mosaics of, um . . . blood. Or whatever.

    Kinda lost steam there. Gettin' old does that.

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  2. LOL... neither do half (or more) of the poster's at dragonsfoot !

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  3. . . . on the other hand, now that I think about it, it IS kind of silly to blog when all I have is past experience to go on. My blogging may have been all about getting the theoretical straight in my own head, but now that I have to concentrate on the practical again - well, let's jut say that you've helped me make a very important decision.

    Best of luck on your game!

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  4. No shock there JimLotFP. I suspect bloggers are a little more likely to play the games they blog about then are posters on many popular RPG boards and 99% of the folks who ever posted on usenet but love(d) to argue gaming theory and the evils of not playing the games right.
    It's easy to be an abstract expert on the net.

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  5. Define play...as in my weekly game or have?

    PtG,PtP has discussed a lot of games, all of which I have played at some point. Generally if I discuss it I intend to play it again as well. That said, while many of the ideas are attached to a game and may have a few game specific notes they could really be used by anyone in the hobby.

    A good example is a random campaign idea for fourth edition. While it has its origins in the power source designations in 4th edition it could be used for OD&D just as easily.

    A general rule is the more rules it has the more likely it is to be a result of play. the zombie font is right out of my Redbox group dungeon, for example.

    But if you're asking if I was playing Mechanoids Invasion when I wrote about it the answer is no.

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  6. I'd play if I could get the players. In the absence of them, I'm writing stuff for publication (and getting it playtested by Dungeonmum's gang) and testing the random dungeon generator rules in the DMG by doing a solo dungeon (write-up soon, promise!)

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  7. i mostly only read OD&D and talk about it. I've been thinking about blogging about it but the time for that goes into other things.

    The game I play is a rules light (to the point of not having any) zombie apocalypse game, which if anything adheres more to the old ways then the new. All sandbox and no plan. We picked our character concepts out of a hat.

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  8. The urge to gossip is uncontrollable! Who or what set you off this time?

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  9. A few years ago I noticed a lot of reviews on Amazon and other places were being written by people who only rented the movie/read the book to review it. And a lot of movies were being reviewd by fast forwarding through them, skipping vital parts (or the reviewer was so bored they just couldn't bother paying attention.)

    It's the same thing with lots of online gaming -- would-be gamers writing opinions about games they don't play. Don't understand. Wouldn't play if they did understand them.

    'Cause they's gotta have something to feel important about (and do something while wasting time on the internet at work or in school...)

    That's why most online gamers are the "I wish someone would do this..." rather than "Look at what I did!" types always talking and daydreaming about what they want someone else to do for them.

    I went looking around on the net to what gaming goodies there were out there (internet: fast and almost free sharing of materials anyone could make). Nope. Most things I desired and wanted I had to do myself; and most of the internet was (and is) worthless for gaming.

    Theory is boring. Controversy sucks. Blogs and gaming forums are 90% boring and suck...

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  10. To Cameron
    After Gary passed I became interested in the game once again after, oh about a twenty year absence. It took me a while to get back up to speed, 'old school', blogs forums etc. But it all lead me back to playing the game again and were all having a blast. It took me about almost two years from sticking my toe back in those black waters to actually running a campaign again and blogging about my preparations for playing kept me going and inspired me as well as all the other bloggers who were kind of going through the same process.

    So best of luck to you and hope to hear about your games soon!

    And to JD Neal
    Sorry you couldn't find anything of interest on the net. I, on the other hand, found tons of resources that helped me play the game once again.

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  11. Yeah, I'm also curious. What set you off this time?

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  12. To paraphrase Clauswitz, Blogging is role-playing by other means.

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  13. I play the games I write about whenever I can. It's the source of my inspiration.

    Whenever I read something and think about how I like it, or don't like it, or things that the game reminds me of, then I make a mental note and try to write about it then. We're very "seat-of-the-pants", see, and we don't prepare much. Most of my writing is done in hindsight, with an eye to fix some perceived problem I've stumbled over in the past.

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