Tag: geek

Unexpected Side Effects of Gaming

One of the suggestions I was given for a blog post was “Unexpected side effects of gaming.”

This is going to be a lot of stuff, but I’ll try to keep it coherent and brief!

The first thing that comes to mind is scheduling! When I’m not gaming a lot, I have a lot of free time and I don’t have to make a lot of plans. When I am gaming regularly, though, I have to work my schedule like magic in order to get in all of my gaming time, plus regular socializing, and that’s with work, school, family, and even conventions in the mix. It’s kind of wild.

Next, there’s stuff like con drop and creativity exhaustion. Con drop is, in case you’re not aware, is a sudden feeling of depression or generally feeling “down” after a convention. I experienced it for the first time last year and WOW. I wasn’t prepared. With a history of depression already, I’m sensitive to things like that, so I got hit pretty hard. On that same note, creativity exhaustion – when you’ve been so creative and done so many creative things for such a long period, like during a con or a gaming marathon or during the design process, and you just reach a peak then crash – is a real thing and it’s really exhausting and kind of paralyzing.

The opposite of that side is the euphoria and creative bursts. I spend a lot of my time in pain and exhausted. At cons, though, and during great gaming sessions or gaming events, I find that I get these strong bursts of positive feeling, my pain eases, and I’m on fire. I wake up earlier, can stay up later, feel more refreshed. It’s pretty awesome. Likewise, after great gaming sessions or game discussions or cons, I get energized and want to write more and design more. Bursts of creativity are great!

One negative thing is the associated drama and social stress. Gamer groups are like any other group of friends – people fight, break up, have differing opinions – and damn, it can get overwhelming and really frustrating. I hate that aspect of relationships in general, where things are contentious and filled with drama-llamas. But, it’s basically a fact of social existence. There’s also a lot of social pressure. Pressure to know games well, to GM, to play a certain way, to know about game design theory, to like certain games, to dislike certain games, etc. That gets old pretty fast.

I would say one of the better things, though, in spite of all that, is the social growth and professional growth I’ve had. Gaming gives me an environment to enjoy myself, learn, and de-stress. It’s given me a place to write and do editorial work and that’s awesome! It’s also given me a lot of good friends that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. As a whole, gaming is a great impact on my life, and even the bad side effects are worth it.

Favorite Games Evar!

Title coined by Meguey Baker


I realized recently that I’ve been gaming for about 10 years! Like, wow. I know I’m still a n00b in comparison to many people out there, but that’s a pretty long time for me to keep up with any hobby. It’s so cool to realize I’ve been doing something for so long!


I asked G+ what I should blog about and Meguey suggested I write about my Favorite Games Evar! which I thought was a great idea. I neglected to ask whether she meant specific games or game systems, so here’s a little mix of both.


This is going to come as no shock to a lot of people, but one of my favorite games of all time is Shadowrun 3rd Edition. I haven’t played any of the other editions. I know the mechanics are kind of wonky and that it’s crunchy as all hell, but the gameworld is so rich and flavorful that I couldn’t help but love it. My first session of Shadowrun was one of the first tabletop games I ever played, and I only lasted 5 minutes in the session before my character was gunned down with poisoned syringes and killed. With probably any other game I might not have ever played again, because character death without meaning is one of my biggest turn-offs when it comes to games. But not Shadowrun! I have played MANY sessions of Shadowrun, multiple campaigns of varying length, and built tons of characters.


I don’t think I have a favorite Shadowrun game, but I have a lot of favorite characters. Enough to fill a different post, so we’ll wait on that!


This is kind of a confession here: I actually like Pathfinder. Not a ton of people are fans of it, because it’s kind of a remix of D&D 3.5, but I enjoyed playing 3.5 with houserules. Pathfinder fixed a lot of the rules so we didn’t have to houserule it as much anymore, plus I really like some of the world they have put together. It’s inclusive and exciting.


In 3.5, I played a game in a world my husband designed that we eventually ported over to the Pathfinder system. I played a half-giant woman who fought in tournaments, owned her own land the size of Alaska (that was filled with diamonds), and was a serious badass. I also got to build a bunch of the gameworld, which was super fun.


I’ve also discovered I really enjoy Monsterhearts. It’s kind of funny. Up until about last year or the year before, I was very no-sex-in-games, no-relationships-in-games, etc. A few sessions of Monsterhearts changed that pretty quickly. I’ve even made two skins for Monsterhearts . I have really pushed my boundaries as a player and as a person with the game, and I’d love to do more of it.


I’m playing a Rusalka in our current game, and it’s mega fun. This is only the second campaign I’ve been in. I really am enjoying the kind of sex-and-drama-filled mess of a high school we’re playing in!


Finally, Clash and Tabletop Blockbuster are my babies. Tabletop Blockbuster is fun as hell, a rocking good time. My favorite session of it? So far, the one I played as Ransom Bentley, who I’ve been writing a fair bit about. She’s a private eye in a supernatural world. Super fun. Clash I’ve only played a few times, but I love the system I’ve designed. Right now we’re playing the Mob against the Untouchables and it is badass. When the system is really showing off, the scenes are tight and filled with conflict and it’s exactly what I wanted out of the game.


What about you? What are your favorite games?

Five or So Questions Series

Very soon I’ll be starting up the Five or So Questions Series, where I’ll interview members of the gaming community with about five or so questions.

Hope you enjoy!

Clash Playtest 1-11-2014

Yesterday I playtested my in-progress tabletop roleplaying “story game,” Clash. Clash is a game about exploring big conflicts from a small perspective. You fight, you argue, and you look at the moments that change the world. It’s a GM-less, team-based game with a table you roll against to have “The World” act against the players.

Clash has been a big challenge for me. It was put together in a single day and then fiddled with and messed with for about a year before I got the courage to playtest it. I’ve had near-zero luck getting playtesters outside my group to play, but I’ve finally got my group into it. I have a lot of emotional investment in it, as it’s my first solo game, so playtesting was really a tough subject to broach with my group.

Anyway, we finally started playtesting, and this is session 2. We had 4 players and the session was about 3 hours.

The setting is Chicago during the height of prohibition, where one team is playing the Mob and the other team is the Untouchables. We have a pretty nice mix of characters, including a young rookie on one side and the son of the woman mob boss on the other. We’ve fiddled with history a bit in part to allow for some women characters, such as my Untouchable, Penelope Wilson, who is a woman fighting against the Mob and against the discrimination within her own organization.

We had a shoot out, an arrest, threatening notes left on doorsteps, and generally a great time. My biggest goal with Clash is for it to be fun, so that was good to see. Players enjoying themselves, cracking jokes when the time is appropriate (and sometimes inappropriate), getting into the gritty parts of conflict – that part of the game is happening.

The mechanics work. Right now I’m fiddling with some numbers to make it run more smoothly, but it seems to be going pretty much right. I don’t think I’ll have many more changes, honestly, because most of it is rewording or fiddly bits. I haven’t made any big alterations so far, and it seems to be working well. I’m going to keep playtesting for a bit, but more than anything I want to get the game in other people’s hands to see if they run into problems.

The biggest change (addition, really) this time around was to write in rules about how to handle multiple actor conflicts. It was just simply adding some wording and I think the rules I wrote in work great for the narrative and mechanical purposes.

Overall I think the playtest went really well. I’m hoping to do a crunch and play some more but I don’t know how much success I will have there. I just want to play more!