Medium: 1) the intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses or a force acts or an effect is produced. 2) an agency or means of doing something. 3) the substance in which an organism lives or is cultured or the element that is the natural habitat of an organism. 4) surrounding objects, conditions, or influences; environment.

The RPG experience can be said to involve several mediums that help bring it about and that give it a place to exist. In the not so distant past, the various “live meeting on the internet” platforms have given in a medium to play with people from around the world while in the comfort of their own homes. This has had a dramatically positive impact on my gaming life, however, it has changed the medium of the environment of play.

And what of that medium? The environment that we set up for our sessions can have a profound effect upon the games. What I have found particularly interesting is even though my game group is from around the world, the ritual of setting up the session, seeing the individuals in their familiar spots in their homes, and even the background noises of dogs & coqui, all help to signal my mind that it is time to engage in the game state.

The rules, procedures, system, mechanics, genre expectations, in/out of character stance, and our culture of play all contribute to the overall medium by which the emergent fiction, individual experience, and events of play take place. Without these, we would simply be engaging in some sort of improvisational story creation. Instead, all of those methods and intervening force carriers combine to produce a tangible method by which the game is played. Like incantations and components of some esoteric spell or ritual, this mixture enables us to produce the closest thing to real magic that we will ever see.

That’s pretty darned cool.

“My child, you have come to me, my son. For who now is your father if it is not me? I am the wellspring, from which you flow. When I am gone, you will have never been. What would your world be, without me? My son.” ~ Thulsa Doom

RPG’s are a continuous stream. Description, situation, intention, declaration, action, reaction, consequence, description… From whence does it all flow? Despite the above quote I doubt that it is James Earl Jones. However, it would be kind of cool if that’s where it all came from. At least the narration would be top-notch.

In truth, not all game sessions have that smooth flow described above. But very often they do. When things are really going well and that stream gushes forth seemingly without effort it leads to very satisfying and engaging game sessions. But how does that happen?

In my experience it’s not all that complicated but the ingredients have to be present. A good amount of buy-in on the part of all of the players at the table is essential. we all need to be engaged with the events of play. I have found that it is crucial for us to listen to one another. If we take the time to discuss beforehand what the genre will be like and what the backdrop is like it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of description to bring us all to the same place. We may be imagining things differently but we agree on the important points and that is what matters.

The group has to have a good sense of what the characters are like. Not just their own but the characters played by the other people. The game master needs to know what their Nonplayer characters are like. As time goes on the group needs to understand that as well. At least as far as they can figure out. All the characters need to start developing personalities and motivations and reasons for why they behave the way they do.

The people at the table have to have an understanding of the game and of the system and how it all works. That doesn’t mean that everybody at the table has to be an expert, but they need to make the effort to learn the system and the procedures and mechanics. we have to be willing to teach each other during the events of play itself.

It’s important to discuss how things are going, to talk about the sessions afterwards, to make course corrections. Do y’all know what’s going on? Is there something preventing our engagement? What are these characters really like? Is there something about the system we are having problems with?

These are all very simple things but if they aren’t in place they can be like boulders blocking the flow of the stream. But when we take a little effort to remove these barriers to good play, we unleash a torrent.

We all understand and buy into the genre & the scenario. We have a good sense of the backdrop and what’s going on. We are engaged in the events of play as they are happening. We listen to each other. All of the characters at the table, player controlled and GM controlled, have motivations and personalities. We instinctively know what they would do. We stay our intentions clearly describing how we are trying to bring them about. We understand how the system works and even if we don’t know the actual probability as we have a good sense of how these mechanics shape play and the experience. The dice contribute their part to the emerging narrative. We describe the outcomes and because we are all engaged we have a good understanding of what’s happening right now. And then we react.

Before you know it we are all carried away by the current.

The primary word for today was small. And yes, while I think a small rule set is wonderful, I didn’t want to talk about that. Engage was another one of the words and engagement is a topic that is near and dear to me. Better was yet another word and it’s true that it’s always good to make the experience better. However, the word that inspired me that me the most was…inspire.

As a child (and as an adult) I was inspired by fiction and fantastic tales from real life. I wanted to be somebody in those settings. Role-playing games gave me the opportunity to fulfill that inspiration in a way that I had not anticipated. To this day I get inspired by a premise or an idea very easily. it’s easy for my imagination to run wild with the right inspiration. Sometimes reading about a setting or the premise for a role-playing game immediately gets me thinking about characters that would be fun to create and play in that scenario. I start thinking about running games in a world like that which is being described. I start thinking about what sessions might be like.

Reading the system of a particular game, reading about the mechanics. Taking a look at them in terms of how they work mathematically, I start to get inspired by what those mechanics might represent or might feel like in play. I see something novel or unusual and I want to try it out. Sometimes I encounter a problem or idea and I start to think about mechanics or procedures which might work well to solve it. Sometimes I get inspired to create games or at least tinker with the old ones.

When play has not even started yet I begin to be inspired by the other players and the characters that they bring to the table, the ideas that they bring or what the game master starts to pitch. Very often I get inspired in the session 0 as we start to talk about what we would like to see or what we would like to do. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

When play starts, and the various elements at the table are interacting I often get very inspired. It doesn’t matter what side of the metaphorical screen I am on, the other players, the mechanics in play, and the emerging fiction inspire me. Very often I am inspired by the characters themselves. It’s easy for them to take on a life of their own and become somewhat independent of the people at the table. There truly is a magic that happens during play itself that inspires us to talk about it afterwards. That has become an important part of the culture of making reflections videos after the games.

It’s been my experience that RPG sessions inspire more RPG sessions. New games inspire more new games. discussions with friends about the games and the techniques and the experiences inspire more discussions. A chain reaction of RPG inspiration, even while it ebbs and flows, is something that I have become accustomed to. I hope that you have found this to be true as well.

Fine cuisine (and more plebeian fare) is quite often a mixture of ingredients & flavors that coalesce to produce one final flavor. RPG’s are no different. Change one part of the recipe, and the flavor is different. If you’re like me very often you open up a menu and the overwhelming variety can be paralyzing and you choose the regular. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Not so long ago I mentioned that there is a game for everybody. well this is certainly true, it is just as true that there are many flavors or experiences out there waiting to be tried. Sometimes you discover that you like this new flavor, and other times you discover that it’s not for you. The RPG banquet is enormous!

When I branched out of my preferred group of games & play style I discovered how big the menu was, and just how different the flavors could be from one another. Some of the ingredients have such a strong flavor that they resist attempts to make the game taste different. Sometimes that’s the genre or idiom of the particular RPG. You CAN alter the ingredients to a degree that that flavor is changed, but then you realize it’s no longer the dish you intended to try. Other times the system & mechanics are so powerful that they produce a certain feel or flavor no matter what you do (unless you choose to ignore them, and once again you’re not playing the game you set out to play. Then of course there are the people at the table and how they play. I have friends and acquaintances where I know the flavor they’re going to bring to the table. The overall flavor of the experience will be greatly affected by their contributions.

I found that very often I will be in the mood for one flavor of experience or another. Sometimes I want an old reliable comfort food type RPG, sometimes I want spicy & thrilling, and sometimes I just want to try that new (to me) RPG that looks so intriguing.

It’s very rewarding to be able to know just what sort of experience I’m hankering after at a given moment, and also knowing the recipe needed to produce it. Even then, the chef always manages to surprise me.

I’ll be honest. I had nothing for the word throne. I just kind of talked about gambling a day or so ago, and community is something I’ve talked about a lot. That left include.

Inclusion is one heck of a buzz word and hot topic these days. As for me, when I looked at the word include, it made me think of choice. Role playing games can be very intense, very personal, even if there is no role-play to speak of, people are right in each other’s faces during the activity – Even if they are on opposite sides of the world during the experience. Often we come to these games expecting certain things to be present, or not to be present. There are activities we want to engage in or to not engage in.

One of the great things about this hobby is that we get to choose what and who we will include in our experience. From another perspective, we get to decide if we will include ourselves in a given experience. It’s not unusual for my group to talk about various games that we might want to play. Sometimes just about everybody is on board except one person. So if we play that game we won’t include them. And they will breathe a sigh of relief. Trust me, there are games that my friends are interested in playing that I have no intention of being included in! Far from being a negative thing, when you look around you start to realize that the hobby is enormous and there is something for everybody. Take a premise, an idea, a genre, a mechanic, or a way of playing, and a group of people will assemble around it if we take the time to include each other in the discussion and the experience.

Sometimes we play together and we find that we are looking for different things depending upon the game being played. There are friends of mine that I would play certain games with and not others. We can make the decision to include each other when our interests and intentions overlap. The magic of the Internet has allowed my newer friends and I to include each other in our role-playing experiences which is very cool. As time goes on the makeup of the group changes and we get to include new people. New games. New experiences.

Sometimes games are about a certain thing or it contain certain elements and we decide not to include that game in our repertoire. Other times we are in a group where we decide to include or exclude certain elements. There comes a time when you are no longer playing the original game or genre and that’s not what I’m talking about. Instead, there are elements that we may wish to explore or two emphasize and other ones we may want to deemphasize or not have present. That’s one of the great things about having a session 0 and talking about your expectations for the particular game. We have done that many times in the groups that I have been involved in. Sometimes it takes some fine tuning but as a reasonable adults we can talk about what to include and what not to include.

So for me inclusion and choice go hand-in-hand. Inclusion with intention. Sometimes you have to ask yourself “what’s missing?”And then include it

Role playing games are full of weapons. Swords, guns, baseball bats, rocket launchers, lawn jarts, you name it. But this blog post isn’t about that…

RPG’s are full of conflict. F of challenges. Full of… Problems. Just like life, role-playing games are full of problems. our characters have motivations and desires. They make choices. They encounter scenarios. It really is just like real life. Unless they were content to let the world roll over them and sit by passively they’re going to have problems.

Problems need solutions. Solutions don’t just materialize out of thin air… Usually anyhow. in order to solve the problems and overcome the challenges that face them our characters need to use various strategies and skills and abilities. In a sense these are all weapons that we use to gain the advantage or to slay the metaphorical dragons that stand in our way. Occasionally they aren’t quite so metaphorical but usually they are.

Sometimes many of these weapons are in the hands of the player themselves and we might end up using our own intellect and creativity to solve the problems we encounter in the game. Other times the weapons are squarely in the hands of the character and releasing more upon their abilities and talents as expressed in the game’s mechanics or other methods of expressing the competence and ability of a particular character. And occasionally they have a highly modified spaceship which can be used as a weapon to solve all kinds of problems like getting the hell out of Dodge.

Some of my favorite moments in role-playing games have been when the players or their characters use approaches or abilities other than the obvious in order to solve the problems that they encounter. Whether this is the 10 year old kid in the game at the library deciding to bargain with the Wights in the ruins on Witch Island rather than fight them or the aged professor using his intellect and oratory skills to confuse a would-be assassin, it’s always nice to see somebody reaching into the armory and using a different weapon than you anticipated in order to vanquish their foe.

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, or a Venusian dragon for that matter.

This is one of those days where I choose one of the alternate topics. Actually they’re not really alternates they’re just options. In fact I chose a completely different option for the YouTube video for today.

The word support makes me think of supporting characters. This is different than a supporting character in a literary sense. There’s a lot of talk about spotlight time in role-playing games and while I understand the sentiment it doesn’t necessarily mean that much to me. Very often I find it just as fun if not more so to play a character that supports the goals and motivations of another character. Perhaps they aren’t so much of a support as they simply aren’t the central focus. The character has their own goals and motivations but, the focus of play tends to be on someone else.

In our lights in darkness All for One campaign not only does one of our characters have a bit more of the attention placed on them and their family, but we also have the pleasure of playing each other’s lackeys which can be a real fun time. We get to have the same sort of fun when we play the sky is no limit campaign of leagues of adventure.

For me it can be very immersive and very natural to play with what amounts to real dynamics between real people the way real world relationships actually work as opposed to trying to create some sort of artificial scenario where everybody is just as important and just as Central as everybody else somehow rotating the spotlight time in just the right manner.

Supporting roles are often the most fundamental. After all, I’m a bass player. Who is more important than that?