Roleplaying Games & Nerdy Stuff

[Matt71]

I'm kind of a nerd and like playing card games like Magic the Gathering, and pen & paper roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. Even published some games of my own. Roleplaying games seem like a pretty ideal hobby for being on the road as you mostly just need your imagination, a pencil and some dice. Now that you can buy most games in PDF format and don't even need the physical books.

So, are there any fellow gamers out there on the road?
Have you found it difficult to play consistently due to being on the move?

,Matt

 

[LeeRevell]

I was heavily into RPGs back in my Navy days in the early 80s.  Have played a few computer types since.  I was playing AD&D, Runequest and Space Opera primarily.
Life took over though, and work intruded into my fun.
Never got into the online games.
I'd love to find a group of old gamers like myself to get back into it now that I'm retired.

 

[Ariel]

I certainly hope I can find fellow gamers on the road.  Happy to see this thread!

Right now I play D&D 3.5 and 5th edition and am always up for Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, you name it.  I could see this working for one-off adventures with pre-gen characters if you're out at gatherings with groups of people who might be interested.  Additionally, many small towns have gaming or comic shops that hold Wednesday night D&D modules, Friday night Magic, etc. drop in sessions.

I figured that more than likely I wouldn't run into gamers, or at least rarely, but would still plan to have some games on hand that would be easy for anyone to play that might be so inclined.  I'm thinking story games along the lines Microscope or The Quiet Year would be best.  Story games are small and light for storage, easy to teach, and can be finished in an evening.  Board games would unfortunately take up too much weight and space.  I love having Arkham Horror and things like that on hand, but I don't think that those will survive the great culling when I transfer to a rig.

Whatever the case, you better believe that I'll have dice and a grid mat on hand.

 

[mconlonx]

A friend who I used to game with recently turned a bunch of us on to Hearthstone. Similar to MtG, but online. A lot of the same tactics and strategies work as much of the game mechanics are very silimilar. Of course he basically gave up on RPGs for on line games, along with a bunch of our old gaming crew, but we're dispersed now, so no biggie.

For whatever reason, I just can't get into online gaming, and it's been ages since I've done anything live. Just seem to have lost my passion for it...

 

[Ariel]

A friend who I used to game with recently turned a bunch of us on to Hearthstone. Similar to MtG, but online. A lot of the same tactics and strategies work as much of the game mechanics are very silimilar. Of course he basically gave up on RPGs for on line games, along with a bunch of our old gaming crew, but we're dispersed now, so no biggie.

For whatever reason, I just can't get into online gaming, and it's been ages since I've done anything live. Just seem to have lost my passion for it...

Yeah, neither can I.  I used to do quite a lot of text-based online roleplaying games about ten years ago.  Those were pure RP with some mechanical combat or skill aspects, but those games have either dried up and died or have become intolerably inbred as people moved on to graphical online games.  I just haven't been able to get into the modern online rpgs.  I prefer a more free imaginative storytelling environment with solid rules and mechanics to go along with it, hence my preference for pen and paper.

 

[Theadyn]

Not really for the role playing, but for gaming, I will admit.. *peeks around cautiously* I have been really big into World of Warcraft for a lot of years. Six. No way I could ever do a set up to play that on the road. I still have my subscription, but yeesh.. stupid xpac came out and now I'm looking at having to level 13 90's up to level 100 now. I just don't have the energy or the want to. So, I have been slowly leaving it. Haven't really played any other games yet, I'm afraid to, haha. Don't even want to look up how many hours I've played on WoW...

 

[Ariel]

My husband Skypes into D&D sessions while travelling for work and the DM trains the webcam on the grid, so I suppose one could arrange for something like that. Not for me, though... I need to be IN YO' FACE.

Drama classes have helped.

 

[Matt71]

There are web sites built for running games online like roll20.net
The big problem I see is not having access to a fast internet connection, especially if you are Skyping video.

 

[highdesertranger]

I have no idea what any of you are talking about. highdesertranger

 

[Matt71]

I have no idea what any of you are talking about.  highdesertranger

Not sure if that's a request for more information or not, but here goes.

Roleplaying is kind of like shared storytelling where each player has a "character" that has attributes, abilities and skills that are usually rated by numbers. For example you might have a Strength attribute that determines how strong your character is in relation to other characters. There are a lot of  different games with their own mechanics, but they all basically function the same.

Most games have a "Game Master" who controls the world around your characters and comes up with stories and challenges for your characters to solve. As players, you have your characters react to what the Game Master presents to you and use some mechanic (usually rolling dice combined with your traits) to determine if you are successful at what you were trying to do. Some games don't have Game Masters and players chard control of the entire world with limits set by the game's rules.

Games can go for a few hours or carry on for years over multiple session depending on your preferences. Game rules range from incredibly simple to incredibly complex. One game might allow you to just say what your character does and they just do it, while another game might make you calculate the weight and velocity of a bullet to see how much damage it does to someone. Some games are built around strategy and tactics, some around storytelling.

There are many different games that cover pretty much every genre to satisfy most interests. Genres run the whole gambit; I've played games about fantasy, the old west, teen romance, super heroes, professional wrestling, cop dramas, steampunk, science fiction, space opera, Wuthering Heights, anthropomorphic animals, vampires, werewolves, historical drama, samurai, the military, saturday morning cartoons, prime time television, cyberpunk, office romances, greek mythology, you name it, it's probably been done.

Right now I'm playing in a game about rabbits based on the Richard Adams book Watership Down, called The Warren.

Probably more information than you needed.

 

[Ariel]

Questionable internet options aside, as the rp gaming generation ages, there's likely to be more and more willing pen and paper participants out on the road. Gary Gygax himself is 69, after all.

How cool would it be to have a semi-stable group that gets together for regular sessions of an epic campaign in snowbird-country during the winter, with hiatuses during the travelling season? I'd be all over it. Something like this may already exist for all I know.

 

[Matt71]

Questionable internet options aside, as the rp gaming generation ages, there's likely to be more and more willing pen and paper participants out on the road.  Gary Gygax himself is 69, after all.

That's what I'm hoping for. I am also planning to visit a lot of my gamer friends on our journey, play games with them and steal their electricity 

By the way, Gary Gygax died in 2008.

How cool would it be to have a semi-stable group that gets together for regular sessions of an epic campaign in snowbird-country during the winter, with hiatuses during the travelling season?  I'd be all over it.  Something like this may already exist for all I know.

That would be great. We may even recruit some new people to play. It's not all that different than telling stories around a camp fire.

 

[Ariel]

Right you are. And here I am, more likely to assume that someone is dead when they are actually alive.

Sorry, Abe Vigoda.

 

[VanLifeCrisis]

ive played dnd 2nd edition, 3rd edition and pathfinder(best i think). It is hard getting a consistent game going when im stationary, cant imagine how it would work with a bunch of nomads, i guess if you were all camping in same areas. I think the longest running game ive played was my own at 4 sessions, they always seem to fall apart.

 

[Matt71]

Well, it does seem like there are groups of folks that seem to hook up with each other periodically on the road. Maintaining an ongoing narrative is likely impossible, I can see people regularly playing whenever they get together, even if it's a bunch of one shot adventures.

 

[AimlessWanderLust]

We've done a little bit of D&D and Vampire, but that's only because we're stuck in one place for jobs. Otherwise we are all about the MMORPGs: WoW, SWTOR, and Rift; not to mention Hearthstone (not an MMORPG). And then the things you can play on the computer offline like Portal, the Final Fantasies, and Diablo.  Then we have quite a few simple card-based games we carry around with us in a bitty box. The biggest physical game we carry around is Carcassone and thankfully it fits in a file box with the few books we haul around. I'm sure I've missed something, but that's what I can recall that we do at the moment. A lot of games, and we're big into fantasy and sci-fi. Our laptops seem to actually work fine for gaming - especially since you don't need the majority of the keyboard, so you can just set your mousepad and mouse over the unused right-hand side of the keyboard. (Actually, I'm fine with using the trackpad, but Nate has serious problems with gaming on a trackpad.)  So, yeah. Fun on the road, literally!

 

[Matt71]

It's good to know there are gamer van dwellers out there. We don't want our recreational activities to be limited to horseshoes and shuffleboard
My MMORPG experience is limited to City of Heroes and a short venture into WoW which I lost interest in. I've played Diablo on and off. Janet sticks to Facebook games.

How hard is it to find Wifi good enough to support online play? I hear it can be pretty sketchy out there.

 

[LeeRevell]

My last real RPG experience of a sort was playing a series of Computer based games from TSR/SSI called "The Gold Box Series", based upon a series of novels. Several player characters in one's party, typical Sword & Sorcery fare. Characters could be transferred from one game to another as you progressed in XPs. But.... you lose all items. Me being an old-school hacker at heart (NOT the malicious type, that developed in the field later), I learned to use a sector editor to go into the game disk and 'transfer' my characters over past the regular system, keeping all my gear. Being exmilitary myself, I took the mindset of my party being a small tactical unit - warriors being grunts, archers are snipers, wizards are artillery..... EVERYBODY had a 'necklace of magic missiles' - I called it a bag of grenades.
The danged game responded by converting one of my characters into a vampire that would occasionally put the bite on another character - that get's irritating!
Great fun! I began actually winning the games, as my characters were basically super-equipped. Drove the computer batty on the final 'big boss' battle scene, where I was SUPPOSED to get beaten down and rescued by the townspeople. I had already killed the bad boss by then.
Only problem is, these games are on my old Commodore C64 system, not the PC platform. I was not into PCs at that time, as Atari and Commodore OWNED the 8-bit world. Have not been able to find those old games for the PC system. Wish I could.
Still have the old Atari and C64 machines and all the peripherals. Not sure yet if they can be made to work on newer flat screen TV/monitor? Got to look into that. Love those old games. Graphics were not nearly as good as today, but the game play was fun.

 

[Rugster]

Oh, wow, the Gold Box series still rate as some of the best games I have ever played! Pool of Radiance, Champions of Krynn, etc!!!

We moved this week and I found my old ancient copy of the AD&D module, A2, Secret of the Slaver's Stockade

I was never able to find a cohesive group of pen and paper rpg players but spent lots of time playing CRPG's and when Diablo was released, and then Ultima Online, those were good days. Did some beta testing for Diablo2, Everquest and was one of the players picked to sit on a panel with the lead programmers and lead designer to discuss one of the major UO expansions.

I've wanted to try playing a pen and paper RPG usung the internet, maybe something simple like a forum, moves are taken daily.....

Did any of you ever play Wasteland? Probably the greatest computer rpg of all time. And Lee, I think you can download the old gold box games, let me find the link.

 

[Rugster]

Here is a site I have used before:

http://www.abandonia.com/