RPGaDay 2019
Our one attempt at playing the Paranoia RPG was memorable only for the fact that the GM kept killing us as we tried to go through a door.
Seriously. That’s all I remember from that gaming session.
Guide
RPGaDay 2019
Including an NPC in a party usually means having that NPC act as a guide for the PCs, in case they stray too far from the adventure path.
Not that it works all the time. If ever.
Rarely did our parties stray far from a story line, and in most cases we the GMs managed to improvise our way back to the main story.
So the NPCs we created ended up being an extra target for the bad guys, or an additional attack for the players.
The best name I came up with for an NPC?
Nikki Paula Chambers. Ex-Starfleet security, IIRC, and based on Shelley Long from Cheers. But with combat proficiency.
Mystery
Friendship
RPGaDay 2019
The one time I really played up a “friendship” in an RPG scenario was during a FASA Trek adventure, where an NPC was an old friend of one of the PCs, and through the course of the story this friend gets killed.
To emphasize how close this NPC was to the PC, I had a scene out of Top Gun where the PC had to clear out his dead friend’s quarters, and he came across the same type of photo that Maverick found of him and Goose.
The players actually muttered ‘Aw, man!’ when I described that scene.
Good times.
Examine
RPGaDay 2019
In the earlier days of gaming, my group would simply attack anything and everything we encountered.
This never changed, even as recently as the D&D campaign that we had at work.
But now I see the value of reading the room, or examining the situation, even questioning NPCs instead of killing them immediately.
Oh, how differently encounters could have gone, back in the day.
Focus
RPGaDay 2019
Back in the gaming days of 80s and 90s, the focus of our RPG sessions were to get together and have fun. Since we were all still living in the city, we got together almost every other week on Saturdays, starting in the early afternoon or evening, breaking for dinner, and playing well past midnight.
We were running FASA Trek, Top Secret, Doctor Who, DC Heroes, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, a D&D/Palladium hybrid, and a few that we played maybe once (Paranoia, Men In Black, Boot Hill, Gangbusters).
Nowadays our focus for our monthly RPG sessions is one game only, starting with D&D 5e, moving on to a couple of super hero (M&M 3rd and V&V 3rd) and science fiction RPGs (FFG Star Wars, Hyperlanes, FASA Trek and Traveller), and ultimately back to D&D 5e, which is our current campaign.
I miss the days of playing for hours into the night, but that just isn’t feasible nowadays.
Critical
RPGaDay 2019
There isn’t an instance of a critical hit/fumble that really stands out from my gaming past.
Though I know it’s happened, in both cases.
I once rolled a natural 20 before a game session, as a test roll for a new d20. I don’t believe it ever rolled a 20 after that.
And I know I’ve rolled a natural 1 as recently as our last couple of RPG sessions. Maybe a natural 20 was in the mix as well.
Obscure
RPGaDay 2019
I’m not sure when we first started using a DM/GM screen to keep stuff from being seen by players. It may have been the first FASA Trek session that I sat in on, as Glenn was running the adventure, another player had a document that he should not have, so Glenn walked over and snatched it from him, exclaiming ‘Gimme that!’ and the document went back behind a screen.
Familiar
Ancient
RPGaDay2019
This is the first pair of percentile dice that I ever owned. They were bought by my Dad back in 1978 from a store called Gambit games on Market Street in San Francisco. I needed them for Lou Zocchi’s Star Fleet Battle Manual, the first wargame that I ever bought.
They’re numbered 0-9 twice, so they’re not true d20s.
Ancient artifact from my gaming past. I later used them for RPG sessions requiring d10 or percentage rolls