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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 4733254" data-attributes="member: 8447">1. Why do you play D&D? (DMing or as a player)This is the biggest question, isn't it?  RPGs bring together my interests in political and military history, anthropology, archaeology, comparative religion/mythology, my wide reading in literature, storytelling, voice acting, and even amateur theatre.  What else brings it all together?  On top of this, I get to spend 5-7 hours every two weeks with close friends having fun together, sharing old and new jokes, and coming together to create a whole world!2. Would you say that D&D is an outlet for your creativity or are you creative for the sake of playing D&D?An outlet, certainly.  My interests intersect in roleplaying games.3. Follow-up: Why create through D&D? Why not write a story? Or create through some other outlet? What does D&D offer that appeals to you or is unique to itself?Well, I do write stories and poem, and I do read these at open mics and the like; there is also something to the spontaneous nature of gaming that is exciting, as well as being directly involved with friends, thus creating a safe environment for some players.4. In your opinion, who owns your past campaigns/adventures that you’ve DMed?  follow-up: Would whether or not you ran a published adventure affect your answer?Who owns the campaign?  That is kind of a weird question...  I would say "the gaming group".  I do not use published settings and rarely use published adventures, or even noticeable segments of them.  I create worlds as a GM, therefore I own the base concept, but it is the group as a whole that actually creates the world we game in -- each of us contributes to the shape and scope of the world.  If the setting were to be published it would be a team effort; my name would probably be first, but all the other members of my game group would be in very, very noticeable type.  5. In your opinion, who owns your past PCs? follow-up: Would whether or not you were run through a published adventure affect your answer?Me.  Period.  My character, my intellectual property.  6. When playing (DM or PC) are you more impressed with originality or familiarity in the story? Why? (something you’ve never seen before or a clever reference to other stories, mythology, popular culture, etc.)There is very little actually new under the sun; most of the ideas are recombinant, a theme-and-variation on some idea that has come before, a question and answer dealing with a specific situation.  Too much "originality" leads to confusion; too much "familiarity" leads to constraint.7. Granted that D&D is a game with rules and so on, how do you win? (good storytelling? killing the monsters? getting phat lewt?)A good tale well told (collectively), a grand story arc, large accomplishments and/or great loss, with large emotional involvement.  Equipment and "lewt" is at best tertiary; killing a creature might or might not be important.  8. In your view, what is the point of a game system’s rules?The rules are there to support the setting and the tale; if the rules get in the way, jettison (judiciously) the rules and get back to the collective tale.  Rules can place limits and constraints that help focus the tale, reminding the players that they cannot do everything.  But the rules need to fit the setting, rather than the setting being forced to fit the setting.  9. What is the best moment in a session and (more importantly) why?Generically, the best moment is one where we have collectively moved beyond the constraints of the rules and into a higher tale, an emotional truth, a powerful moment that makes us all go, "Wow... yeah, we got it right."  These moments come together every 4-7 sessions, rather than every time.  If they came more often, we would probably be emotional wrecks.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />10. What is your favourite D&D memory and (more importantly) why? (Though I’m interested in creativity and storytelling, don’t feel limited to that. I’m interested in the reasoning as much as I’m interested in the moment)In over 30 years of gaming, I could give you many of them, but I'll come up with a great quick one.  I ran a six-plus hour session of Ars Magica for my group.  After this I went home, got a bite to eat, wound down, and went to sleep.  The next morning one of my housemates, who was also one of my gamers, was waiting for me at breakfast; he handed me a decent-sized document (14 pages).  "What's this?"  "The covenant charter."  "When did you come up with this?"  "Oh, we wrote it last night."  "Last night?  Like after the game?" "Well, yeah, we were kinda excited about everything, so we stayed up for another 10 hours, stayed in character, and created this.  Hope you don't mind..."  Yes, the game could continue without the GM, could stay true to course, and could get the group that excited about collectively creating the world.  I simply couldn't be happier.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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