Sunday, August 30, 2020

#RPGaDAY2020 - Wrapping it all up!


Hi again! It's the end of #RPGaDAY2020 and time I caught up! And then, wrapped it all up in a fitting way.

Right, day Twenty-Four was HUMOUR. You know, games always need a little humour in them. I know that sometimes our old D&D games used to devolve down into a string of Monty Python quotes - usually "run away!!!" but it's always good, especially in these gloomy and miserable times. And one of my favourite games of all time (Ghostbusters) is definitely a game played for laughs.

Day Twenty-Five was LEVER. I mentioned this in my video introduction to #RPGaDAY this year - I have fond memories of being so freakin' stupid in my old D&D games. I remember we did a dungeon where there was a room with a lever on the wall and, being the clueless 1st level thief that I was, flipped it to see what happened. The gravity in the room reversed, and everyone flew up to the ceiling (taking damage - especially those wearing full plate armour). Seeing what I'd done, I flipped it again to bring everyone back to the ground, and everyone fell (and took damage again). I was such a dufus. I remember the next time I triggered a trap it teleported me a mile above the building we were in... 

Day Twenty-Six was STRANGE. I like the weird. You know that already. I adore Twin Peaks, and the weirder things are the better. I guess that's why I've been writing WILD. I just like the potential of doing the weirdest stories. 

Day Twenty-Seven was FAVOUR. I suppose this one should have been the first on the list, as my big favour was really asking you to get involved and to spread a little positivity in the world about tabletop gaming. And it seems a lot of you have already done this, thank you.

Day Twenty-Eight was CLOSE. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've had games come to a satisfying close. The plots wrap up, there's a big finale, and we go onto a different game altogether. It's a new thing for me, most of the games I used to play in the past just kinda fizzled out as circumstances changed, and players moved away... It's great to have a conclusion, an epic battle, a heroic action, and a proper conclusion to the story you've been building over the previous months. And maybe to leave things a little open for a sequel if you fancy going back to the game in the future.

Day Twenty-Nine was RIDE. Vehicles are always tricky in tabletop games. The best vehicle rules I've seen have both been in licensed games that were properties that had a lot of chases in them - James Bond and Indiana Jones. The James Bond RPG by Victory Games was a work of genius, and the chase rules in there were simple and brilliant. And then there's the Indiana Jones RPG (the old TSR one) and that one had the coolest chase flowchart I've seen, allowing you to have randomly generated and endless chases whether this was on foot or in a vehicle. Brilliant stuff!!


Day Thirty was PORTAL, and if RPGs are anything they are a portal into the imagination like no other media. They're a truly interactive and imaginative story building exercise. All you have to do is to step through...

Day Thirty-One is EXPERIENCE and I'm going to wrap up #RPGaDAY2020 by asking another question...

What was your experience with #RPGaDAY? Did you enjoy taking part? Were the prompts okay? I know there have been some negative comments about the single word prompts lacking something - I kinda hoped that they'd free things up and enable you to interpret the prompts in your own ways without it being a single question (which, after so many years, are tricky to come up with). There are so many of these monthly prompts things going around, does the world need another one?

Anyway, I hope you DID enjoy #RPGaDAY this year, and I hope it brought a little distraction in this crappy world at the moment. I'd just like to finish by thanking Anthony Boyd again for doing 99% of all the work this year with #RPGaDAY as I've been a bit swamped. Without Anthony's help there would not be an #RPGaDAY. And thank you again to Will Brooks for designing the cool graphic, and to Simon Miles of Dunromin University Press for the cool dungeon map alternative graphic that has inspired so many this year. And thanks to those of you who took part, and kept it positive, and spread the word of RPGs. 

We now return you to your scheduled viewing...

Stay multi-classy, and above all, stay safe.

Take care.

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