Ms. Quixotic Talks About Games

How X Runs Games

I was one of those who had a dad who introduced them to dnd. In high-school, I played using the dice my dad played when he was in desert storm.

When I was younger than that, my dad ran a few sessions of dnd for my brother and I. adnd 2e, using some beginners kit with pre-made characters on glossy papers.

Before that though, we had Conan the Barbarian (the movie). And my dad told us stories in the car on the way up and down to his apartment, 45 mins away. Originally he retold us The Hobbit, in his own words. I don’t really remember what he said, but I remember being told a story. After that, he made up characters, using scenes and stories from Conan and Lords of the rings and other bits and pieces borrowed from the bent paperback books stacked in his basement. We made character sheets, and those characters had children, and eventually they all came back together to fight a dragon. I remember all the parents and children recoiling from the immediate fear aura of a dragon vividly.

Before that was Baldurs gate. And might and magic.

I didn’t run games until high school. I was immersed in 3E at that point, my dad having bought the books and run for us once or twice. I spent a lot of time with the character creator demo.

I ran for my best friend in high school. We sat on my kitchen table many Friday nights, running the first couple levels of the Undermountain campaign. We each had a character (using gestalt rules, I had a cleric/sorcerer, he had a fighter/thief). Our campaign grew, we ventured into other modules (one borrowed from his older friends co-worker, who showed us his many file cabinets of dnd materials. I didn’t care much then but god I do now). I used stronghold building guides from some 3.5 book. I especially loved using the treasure tables from 3E to roll up our rewards.

To take a break from the narrative, a few important points to note about my gaming career:

We played the campaign for awhile. I don’t remember what level our characters got to. I did a lot of role playing in character. I did a lot of talking as my gm-pc and other pcs. We always did a lot of acting.

Eventually, I jumped forward in the timeline when the game was lagging and things got messy. I wrote a ham-fisted storyline which had my best friends character dying (I ran a fake-out adventure for 30 mins before revealed it was a dream. My friend had figured that out already). I don’t remember much more after that.

I ran a few sessions of various adventures in this period, with some of my various siblings involved.

I played a lot of PBTA games in college, ran by my still friend and longtime GM (also someone who just helped playtest my new dungeon). It ran a little 4E (even some of the ‘official’ games using Adventurer’s League or whatever). I ran a few experiments, a little 3.5E on occasion, and played some Roll20, deadlands, and a few different one-shots. I played in a few different campaigns. I was in and eventually ran the campus gaming club. There were a variety of people who liked a variety of games. It was good to try so many different rpgs.

Maybe 5-6 years later, I’m in Portland. Some friends from college have moved here too continually. We play a little 5E (the undermountain campaign) and I have a blast. I think I cried a little. This was depression time and career time and not-yet-out-but-getting-there time.

Jump ahead 5 more years. This gal’s a gal. Out, separated from my wife, living in a new city. Disabled, broke, hottest she’s ever been but deep in covid and isolated and immunocompromised.

I travel home to visit my family and think ‘I’m need to spend more time with them’.

I think I had already started watching Dimension 20 by this time. I didn’t play too much but I bought a ton of books. Played a game with a professional dm (it didn’t work out but they became a buddy). I got really into Pathfinder 2E for a minute and bought a ton more books. Ran a test game or two for my family.

I run a little Monsterhearts. I try to get a few campaigns gojng (it’s the only game my best friend will play, they hate dnd). I love Monsterhearts. I hate running it. I need prep and I need pre-written content. Since I’ve gotten sick, fully improvising makes me literally ill.

Eventually, I find out about OSE. And DCC. I get really into glogs. I start running OSE for my family (the Phaedra campaign).

I ran Brandonsford first, made a hex map using ktrey’s rules. Stitched in a few different adventures here and there. Cried for the first time during a game:

The party has made it back from a months long (both in real time and in the game) adventure. It’s been hard. Hirelings died, ones who has been PCs when the game started. PCs were maimed. But they retrieved Queen Arianna’s son from the Singing Stones. They bring Prince Hessian to his mother, and I bleed into the characters. As Queen Arianna, who had fully given up on seeing her adopted son again (it had been months since he had gone off to slay the white wyvern. She hadn’t even expected to see his body), I start crying. She runs over to her, slaps him across the face (she’s the strongest fighter in the land, it fucking hurts), and she pulls her son into an embrace. I apologize to my players because I am for real crying as I say all of this. I’ve never had this intense of a moment since then but I want more of this. I finally get what all this difficulty shit is about.

My games aren’t ever rote dry logical errands. Okay, that’s not entirely true as I love a spreadsheet for an expedition, but I love being in character. I want my players to inhabit their PCs. I like backstory, I like folding it into the game. I like earmarking tidbits that people say and bringing it in later. I grew up in trad, I like a little trad. Most importantly, before I knew shit about theory or played with many people, I had my dad and his stories. I had emotion and acting and being in character and trying to do voices. This is rpgs for me. The rules and adventures are fun but they are backdrops for emotion and acting. I’ve run dry OSR shit before and it gets tiring. Don’t get me wrong, I love my players making a map and shit, but the Queen seeing her son alive is why I love to do this.

I played in some glog games and prompted starting a few experimental servers (Shattered Coast and Shattered Horizons). Both were worlds ran by co-gms with a variety of glog-adjacent systems and interesting systems happening. I love a collab. Both games got complicated for different reasons (and I fell out of love for glogs.)

I ran some fun experiments though. I ran a real-time 2 day special summer adventure. That was sick as hell and I really enjoyed it.

My next project was Arden Vul. I ran adnd 1e for my dad’s birthday (find the post on my blog, I’m not linking today) and got really into Blue Bard’s blog. You can find all the season reports on my blog. I am in the middle of writing a retrospective, so I won’t say as much about it here. I love 1E for being abrasive and hard to run. I probably won’t run Arden Vul again. Another key point for me: I am obsessive. Arden Vul is an effort-void. I can prep and prep and prep and it will never feel like enough. It’s too sprawling for me.

I stuck again to my original principles though: I love using modules, I love characters and acting, and I love a fucking treasure table. I love sticking strictly to rules (1e is both good and bad for this).

I ran my cataphracts game after this, while Arden Vul was on hiatus. A life-altering 3 months. I’ll never run it again. This was the continuation of my Phaedra campaign, with the original players (minus 1) as generals (and one seer), with my other friends and some kind folks from the OSR server as other factions. A fucking blast that burned me out for months. So many cool moments I never wrote down because god I was fucking tired. have I mentioned I’m disabled? This was an asskick. Never do it again, will definitely do it again.

Since then, I’ve worked on AAJ. My two regions will available soon. There’s no grand through-line here. This is the first time I’ve written rpg content for public consumption. I haven’t written that many dungeons or adventures at all. I have written bits and pieces but writing for public use is fucking weird. It’s nice to write again though. Dnd and me are on the fucking outs though. I am tired of gold and dungeons and balancing xp. I am tired of fantasy. I’m excited to get my work out there but I’ll not be running dnd next.

If this were a story, I’d wrap things up with a callback back to my dad telling us stories. Maybe us sitting down to play dnd together again. He doesn’t like rpgs anymore though (tabletop, that is, he loves a crpg and warhammer and can’t stop playing the Rogue Trader pc game. His favorite two pastimes are reading 40k books and playing crpgs, so he is fucking set)

God I can’t wrap this up. There’s no ending. I play games a pretty standard way: I like modules, I like treasure tables, I like an all-encompassing rule system. I love being in character and crying at the table.

I am trying against type for my next game: Less focus on rules, smaller scope, I’m writing the content. Hopefully there will be crying though.

Thanks for reading if you got this far. I just wrote this over an hour and my brain really fucking hurts now, goodnight <3