Hot Elven Chicks and More!

I have to say I amused at the reaction that putting in hot elf chicks as an advertising the OSR idea brought forth from the OSR blogging community. I was going to have a really cool funny hot elf chick post but pretty much everyone beat me to the punch as I took most of this week off due to a scratched cornea blurring my vision. So here is a hot elf chick:



And here is a link to a blog that has already done the job of finding and linking all the best information about the OSR.

I apologize to those of you lured here hoping to find some awesome elf porn. I do hope you will check out the OSR stuff. Given my campaign proclivities a hot samurai chick was more likely, so here:



Think of it as a bonus.

Now on to the OSR content. My newest gamer ADD related campaign idea is to do zero prep work and just make an entire world randomly using the 1st edition DMG, including the dungeons. I figure it would kind of make a game like the old computer games I used to play when I had a chance. I was kind of inspired by the Welsh Piper's post here.

I have also been considering a campaign for my old Steppe Warrior friends that is actually set in the Steppe. I am short of good ideas for that though. What do you do for an adventure in a place with very few ruins or even permanent settlements? I think raiding the encampments of other tribes would get a little old after a while, as would raiding caravans or the settlements of neighboring settled peoples. Additionally, all of that raiding would seem to indicate that the prevailing alignments would be evil oriented and I have never liked the idea of D&D as a method of acting out evil impulses or exploring the dark side of the human psyche; I like heroic games.

The next thing I wanted to vent on was inspired by this post from gnome stew. I actually have a long history of gaming with people I wouldn't count as friends and, in my opinion, it only can work out when you have a new group forming. Then friendships form naturally or they don't. I have tried gaming with people that I knew and wasn't friends with and there is an artificial friendship that comes from gaming together, but in reality it usually, in my experience, just brings out how much you dislike the other person. I mean there is a reason they aren't your friends right? Maybe they have annoying personal habits or whatever.

Over the years I have gamed with a bunch of people that I have given the benefit of doubt for way too long just because they played D&D and there were damned few of us in the area at the time. They ranged from a guy with personal hygiene issues and a distinctly unpleasant attitude towards rules lawyering to the point of cheating who we tolerated because he always brought a ton of snacks and always had the newest books and supplements (2nd edition era), to a guy who was just kind of a dick but we played at his house who later became the groups DM, to an anti-social racist with a crass sense of humor that I just happened to have lived near most of my life and grew up with, to a punk kid thief that constantly cheated on his die rolls who we figured would be OK if we kept an eye on him.

I would not play again with any of these people if you paid me to. Life is too short to waste your time around jerks and I would rather not game than play with them. Unfortunately this leads to the unsatisfactory situation of not gaming, particularly if you live in a fairly rural area like I do, if you want to avoid the "problem" gamers in your area. I tried the conventional means of recruiting new players, putting up flyers at gamer friendly places and internet searches for local gamers, but I found that just lures the people you are trying to escape, since they are usually looking for a new game. I met a couple of gamers in college, but they didn't stick, probably because college populations are transient by nature.

I found a couple of different solutions to the problem and while they may not work for everyone, they worked for me. First, I married a gamer girl and raised gamer kids. I recognize that this is a long term project though, so for most people I would actually recommend my other solution:

Join the SCA. I have met more gamers through the SCA than any other place in my life. Now, it is a medieval history organization, but there are a lot of D&D players there. And other RPGs. And Wargamers. And sci-fi and fantasy fans. Since I first joined the SCA I have gamed with more SCAdians than non-SCAdians and I have never lacked for anyone to game with.

Additionally, depending on what aspects of the SCA might appeal to you, it can be good exercise, which many of us gamers could really use; or you might actually learn something about the general time period in which most of our fantasy RPGs (kind of) take place. I like the fighting, but even if that doesn't appeal to you there are myriad other aspects to the SCA. For instance nearly every SCA event has a feast, so you can try some medieval food. The SCA is also social, which can be helpful to some of us; you can make new friends, even if they aren't gamers, or even a future spouse. I didn't meet my wife there, but I know a lot of couples that did meet in the SCA; it kind of screens out people that don't share a certain level of common interest I guess.

Enough of the SCA recruiting message, you'll either be interested or you won't. I just mention it because, although everyone in the SCA has at least heard of gaming, many gamers have never heard of the SCA.

Anyway, I know Gnome Stew wasn't telling us to game with jerks, I just needed to get the message out there that you don't have to game with jerks. There are other options.

I also had a bit of a rant building about how the advent of MMORPGs like WoW or it's ancestor Everquest kind of ruined D&D, but it's probably been done better in the past and I am not feeling it right now.