The game that changed your life

[buzz]

Now, when I say "life," what I really mean is your gaming life. That is, was there a particular gaming session or campaign that fundamentally changed the way you game, or the way you look at games?

For me, it was a series of Call of Cthulhu and Rolemaster sessions I played back in college. Up until then, I generally GM'ed for my group of friends, and I considered myself to be quite adept at it. My group generally preferred for me to "take the reins." When I started playing again in college, I figured that I would be the one "schooling" the guys I was playing with.

Boy, was I wrong.

Mike, our CoC Keeper, was simply the best GM of any stripe I've yet encountered. The CoC games we played were the moodiest, most enthralling, and terrifying sessions I've ever played. Mike didn't need to use the Sanity or Magic rules. Magic would work once you were freaked out enough and convinced it really could. I once had a character blasted with a shotgun by another character because the player was convinced I was turning into... something, and was terrified to act otherwise. Mike would also use his trusty Mac SE/30 to create weird sound effects and alien music that would add to the experience. Truly amazing.

The RM game was run by my roomate Fred. Fred wasn't as good at creating mood as Mike was, but he ran a very creative and well-developed game. He also began our campaign with a very novel concept: we would describe the kind of characters we wanted to play, and then he would make them. When the campaign began, we each started with one-on-one sessions in which we sort of RP'ed our lives up to the start of the campaign. We didn't even get to choose our own names (much like real life). We started with no character sheets and no idea of our stats. As we got to know our characters, more stats were made available. In the end, I knew that character better than any I have ever played.

Every game I have run since, no matter what the system, has been influenced by my sessions with Mike and Fred.

What about you? What campaign or session had a profound impact on your development as a gamer?

 

[johnsemlak]

D&D, no question. D&D was what got me into gaming in the first place, it still occupies nearly all my gaming time.

 

[MEG Hal]

D&D 2e we played a campaign twice a week in a homebrew and we ended up owning part of town and I was Hawk Drydor (see Bluffside, he is in there ) a Ranger with a pair of breeding blink dogs. We had a bard named Homer and it was a frickin blast, we were in our 20's so it was a solid campaign, very well run.

 

[Henry]

Now, when I say "life," what I really mean is your gaming life. That is, was there a particular gaming session or campaign that fundamentally changed the way you game, or the way you look at games?

Two games fit that bill:

1) A demo game of Alternity that (either Rich Redman or Rich Baker, I forget which) GM'ed for me and some others, that showed me never to judge a game by reading its rules. I was convinced until that time that ALternity was unplayable, until I actually SAW it run.

2) Forgotten Realms 3E campaign I played in with an exceptionally competent Dungeon master. We'll call him "B". He was one of the best DM's I ever saw, creating mood, working on individual plot threads, and interweaving the whole together for up to THIRTEEN players at one time. Each of us didn't get a huge amount of face time, but if he had run a game with only four or five people, he would have been fantastic at it. He was game-altering in that it opened my appreciation for the Forgotten Realms, and it opened my appreciation for knowing a campaign world inside out. If a DM really knows and breathes and enjoys a campaign, he can make a game truly something. A lot of my thoughts on characterization I get from him.

 

[hammymchamham]

my first attempt at RPGing (PnP wise) was with 2 other 2nd ed veterans. The game wasn't any fun for me. I was playing a dwarf fighter, and the first encounter had a goblin, so I started talking to it (hey my dwarf knew goblin), but then the DM and other player started making fun of me. So I stoped playing.

This was a black mark until 2 1/2 years later. After playing through Diablo 2, some of my college buds where going to start a game of DnD (this was when 3rd edition was new) and I said I would. 2 years later, Its been the only PnP I have played, but its what got me into RPGing

And as with Henry, what changed my style was a FR game with the best DM I have had the privillage with. Things went smothly, even IF it wasn't 100% by the rules we just kept going. Very creative DM, and gave me the style I like to use (trying to act out events and add strange voices to some NPC's)

 

[Greatwyrm]

I'd say Alternity. Unfortunately, I was running it during a time when we had a shortage of players in our area. A couple of the mini-campaigns I ran were probably some of my better work as a GM.

One was basically a military style sci-fi dealing with a lot of tough moral questions (e.g. is it okay to travel back in time and kill someone when they're a child, before they grow up and threaten to destroy the solar system). The other was a kind of cyberpunkish thing that taught me some ways to keep the action level high and intense without the whole game being combat.

 

[Shallown]

Amber DRPG

I think it taught me to quit thinking with limtations of rules in a game. I use that today even in D&D and just make up or apply rules as needed to fulfill the roleplaying.

It really taught me to role play better and be more attuned to the character i was playing. But don't get me wrong I love rules and systems, designed a few and such and love a good dice rolling combat but roleplaying still apllies even then.

I guess you can say it taught me to game outside the box.

Later
-

 

[blackshirt5]

Well there were all those games that we played at parties when we were still dumb kids in high school, most of them involving tossing an unattached girl and an unattached guy into a closet and barring the door with a chair...

OH! My bad. Wrong type of games.