Hi, my name is Salow, pronounced Say-low, as in "Say Hi, Say Low." Salow!
I've only been gaming since 1999, so that gives me about 13 years of gaming experience. My first game was WEG (West End Games) Star Wars, I explain my first experience here, in Chronicle 001. We played for an hour each day during the week, and then for most of the day on Saturday or Sunday. Since we were at a boarding school, there wasn't much else to do. If you listen to Rho Pi Gamma: The Gamer's Podcast, you can hear several tales of our experiences in roleplaying.
I really appreciated those in our gaming group, as they were the ones that got me through my two years at the school. Our bond for gaming kept us close, which made life much easier in a militaristic environment. But I never Gm'd for that group. I was always the player. But that was when I started gaining experience as a collector, as my roommate passed down his old WEG SW Gm screen to me when he graduated that year. That summer he coerced me into being a GM in a one-on-one game with him. the following year I still kept my player hat on and gamed with a slightly different crew, before graduating in 2000.
My college years saw minimal gaming the first two and a half years. But when I transferred I got back into gaming on a regular basis, including Miniatures (Warhammer 40k). By this time my gaming experience included AD&D, D&D 3.0/3.5, Star Wars d20, d20 Modern, Dragonlance, Vampire: the Masquerade, CyberPuynk, and one of the Marvel Superhero incarnations.
Then I had to go and get married AND move out of the state. But I was able to find a local gaming store and got introduced to WarMachine and Confrontation. Luckily we moved back to my wife's hometown, and I got back into serious gaming. Picking up Star Wars Saga, Malifaux, Dresden Files, Sword's Edge, Dark Hersey, D&D 4E, Exalted, Mutant & Masterminds, World of Warcraft the Board Game, and Last Unicorn's Star Trek TNG.
There are three types of roleplayers: the Player, the GM, and the Collector
The Player: this was every gamer in the beginning. There you were just an innocent person, going about your day and then something catches your interest: whether it was someone talking about a topic, or you spotted a group of people huddled around a table, or you just happened to walk into the right store; but you were captivated by this new thing called: Roleplaying. You probably don't have any dice, or if you do it's probably six-siders from old board games.Nor do you have any books. But, what you do have is a piece of paper, a pencil and a imagination. Everyone will always be a player, but you grow from there.
Depending on your group, and the size of your pocketbook, you can become one if not both of these:
The GM: The Game Master, the Dungeon Master, the Narrator, or whatever you call it, you run the game. You spend less time creating random PCs (player characters) in random Games, like the Player does, concentrating on creating NPCs (non-player characters), cities, worlds, obstacles, adventure hooks and maps to make your game that much more enjoyable. Hours turn to days. Days turn to weeks. Weeks turn to months. As you slave over your adventure/campaign. This is fun, right? Of course! And in only a few minutes it'll all be destroyed by players who go in a direction you didn't foresee coming. But hey, as long as they had fun (you remember having fun as a player, right) that's all that matters.
Collector: You don't have to be a GM to be a collector, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Collectors are the RPG resources for players and gms. Don't have a pdf or book of Game X? I bet you know who does! Collectors buy the latest editions as soon as they hit the shelves. Or the get the "New Game on the Block" [theme song?] because they've read all the reviews and want to explore a new system. They may or may not read the book from front to back, no, that's the gm's job (know the basics and then run it as soon as possible). Collectors also never get rid of their old books. Remember West End Game's Star Wars? Yep they have all the books, and probably even all their old character sheets too.
It's really a cycle for many of us in the rpg community. Though there are "all-time" players, there's people who are "all-time" gms, because without a gm there's no game, and without players you'd basically be reading a book. We come up with a game, and become the gm, but then we dream of playing in that world, and we yearn to be a player. We search through the pages and pages of source material (provided by the collector) in a hopeless search for that next awesome character or idea. Only to see it slip away when the collector brings forth "The New Game!" We play it, we run it, and it all starts over again.
Though there's a plethora of bloggers out there that write on RPGs, I figured one more couldn't hurt. Feel free to leave comments, questions, or recommendations, I will try to address anything I receive.
If you're reading this from the beginning, you may also be wondering about the new title ... but that'll be a discussion for a later time.
Long Live the d20!
I've only been gaming since 1999, so that gives me about 13 years of gaming experience. My first game was WEG (West End Games) Star Wars, I explain my first experience here, in Chronicle 001. We played for an hour each day during the week, and then for most of the day on Saturday or Sunday. Since we were at a boarding school, there wasn't much else to do. If you listen to Rho Pi Gamma: The Gamer's Podcast, you can hear several tales of our experiences in roleplaying.
I really appreciated those in our gaming group, as they were the ones that got me through my two years at the school. Our bond for gaming kept us close, which made life much easier in a militaristic environment. But I never Gm'd for that group. I was always the player. But that was when I started gaining experience as a collector, as my roommate passed down his old WEG SW Gm screen to me when he graduated that year. That summer he coerced me into being a GM in a one-on-one game with him. the following year I still kept my player hat on and gamed with a slightly different crew, before graduating in 2000.
My college years saw minimal gaming the first two and a half years. But when I transferred I got back into gaming on a regular basis, including Miniatures (Warhammer 40k). By this time my gaming experience included AD&D, D&D 3.0/3.5, Star Wars d20, d20 Modern, Dragonlance, Vampire: the Masquerade, CyberPuynk, and one of the Marvel Superhero incarnations.
Then I had to go and get married AND move out of the state. But I was able to find a local gaming store and got introduced to WarMachine and Confrontation. Luckily we moved back to my wife's hometown, and I got back into serious gaming. Picking up Star Wars Saga, Malifaux, Dresden Files, Sword's Edge, Dark Hersey, D&D 4E, Exalted, Mutant & Masterminds, World of Warcraft the Board Game, and Last Unicorn's Star Trek TNG.
- - - -
There are three types of roleplayers: the Player, the GM, and the Collector
The Player: this was every gamer in the beginning. There you were just an innocent person, going about your day and then something catches your interest: whether it was someone talking about a topic, or you spotted a group of people huddled around a table, or you just happened to walk into the right store; but you were captivated by this new thing called: Roleplaying. You probably don't have any dice, or if you do it's probably six-siders from old board games.Nor do you have any books. But, what you do have is a piece of paper, a pencil and a imagination. Everyone will always be a player, but you grow from there.
Depending on your group, and the size of your pocketbook, you can become one if not both of these:
The GM: The Game Master, the Dungeon Master, the Narrator, or whatever you call it, you run the game. You spend less time creating random PCs (player characters) in random Games, like the Player does, concentrating on creating NPCs (non-player characters), cities, worlds, obstacles, adventure hooks and maps to make your game that much more enjoyable. Hours turn to days. Days turn to weeks. Weeks turn to months. As you slave over your adventure/campaign. This is fun, right? Of course! And in only a few minutes it'll all be destroyed by players who go in a direction you didn't foresee coming. But hey, as long as they had fun (you remember having fun as a player, right) that's all that matters.
OR
Collector: You don't have to be a GM to be a collector, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Collectors are the RPG resources for players and gms. Don't have a pdf or book of Game X? I bet you know who does! Collectors buy the latest editions as soon as they hit the shelves. Or the get the "New Game on the Block" [theme song?] because they've read all the reviews and want to explore a new system. They may or may not read the book from front to back, no, that's the gm's job (know the basics and then run it as soon as possible). Collectors also never get rid of their old books. Remember West End Game's Star Wars? Yep they have all the books, and probably even all their old character sheets too.
It's really a cycle for many of us in the rpg community. Though there are "all-time" players, there's people who are "all-time" gms, because without a gm there's no game, and without players you'd basically be reading a book. We come up with a game, and become the gm, but then we dream of playing in that world, and we yearn to be a player. We search through the pages and pages of source material (provided by the collector) in a hopeless search for that next awesome character or idea. Only to see it slip away when the collector brings forth "The New Game!" We play it, we run it, and it all starts over again.
- - - -
Though there's a plethora of bloggers out there that write on RPGs, I figured one more couldn't hurt. Feel free to leave comments, questions, or recommendations, I will try to address anything I receive.
If you're reading this from the beginning, you may also be wondering about the new title ... but that'll be a discussion for a later time.
Long Live the d20!
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