Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6533870" data-attributes="member: 177">In a turn-based, tabletop RPG, yes, probably.Put on a real time pressure, then things get more interesting.  Or, at least more stressful, and sometimes that's interesting.As an example...I played in a live-action RPG once, in which I was playing a mechanic and engineer (named Cody) from a post-apocalyptic world, the kind of guy who can keep an engine running in a Dustbowl of radioactive glass...In the first part of the day, the GMs gave me a partially assembled model of an engine, and told me to assemble the rest, without instructions.  Thankfully, I know a small amount about engines - I couldn't have done it with a real engine, but a model, I could manage.Later in the day, I was told a car was being taken out into a combat scenario (the game used airsoft pellet guns for combat in some scenes).  They had some foam house-sheathing, and told me to use it and duct tape to armor up the vehicle.  These were both entertaining tasks, even if mundane, because I was using my real hands and brain to do them.Then, as they were taking the car out to the combat scene, they said, "Okay, Cody, grab your toolbox and get in.""What?"  I replied.  "I'm not in the fight scene.  I don't do airsoft combat.  I was supposed to hang out in the Cantina for the next block of time.""We know.  But grab your goggles, your toolbox, and get in!""Okay..."They drove the car out to the site of the combat, with me squeezed in the middle of the back seat, surrounded by all the game's combat monkeys.  I rarely got to play with these gents, as they were always in the heavy combat scenes, and I was always in the engineering scenes.  The GM then stopped the car, pulled out the engine I mentioned earlier, and put it on the dashboard.  She then pulled out her airsoft gun, reversed it, and *wham!*  *wham!*, she slammed the butt of it into the model five or six times, breaking bits and having them drop all over...."Cody, we seem to have driven over a mine.  The engine's damaged, and is now your problem.  Everyone else, get ready, as the raiders who planted the mine are coming down the hill..." So now it was a race against time - can I repair the engine before the gunbunnies run out of ammunition?  The combat monkeys were now fully dependent on one of the non-combat characters of the game, which was a real switch for them, too.Doing a seemingly mundane job can become thrilling, if it actually matters, under the right circumstances.</blockquote>

Verification