News Archives: March 2008

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Carry On at Camp David (Update)

Carry On at Camp David will run on Saturday, 12th April. We'll aim to start the game at 2pm. People will probably want to arrive a bit beforehand to get into costume.

(Matthew, can you book the room for me? Thanks!)

I have noticed that there's a bit of confusion about signing up. Freeforms work best if everyone playing has signed up well in advance. Partly this is to give you a chance to sort out costumes - most people can't lay their hands on an Elvis or Sheik's outfit at ten minutes notice.

But mainly it's because I'm going to need to re-write the game somewhat. It looks like there'll be a higher proportion of females playing than the game was written for, and I want to change some of the secrets round to accomodate people who've played before. There's also a couple of characters that look a little weak, so I might make them more interesting while I'm at it.

I'd like to start re-writing this weekend, so sign up before then, please! Just fill in the handy form at http://grahamrobinson.com/freeform.html.

Posted by graham @ 08:28 pm

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Gary Gygax, 1938-2008

Gary Gygax's passing has affected me a lot more than I would have thought. Mainly, I keep thinking "what if" thoughts. So much of my life is indirectly Gary's fault. I met Claire playing D&D. I met most of my friends through gaming of one description or another. Indeed, if I try to describe myself, "gamer" is one of the first adjectives to come to mind. Would any of this have happened without Gary?

Maybe Greg Stafford's desire to create a game that played like an "interactive fantasy novel" would have led him to write Runequest anyway. Maybe someone else would have. After all, Phil Dick wrote a pretty good description of role-playing. Oh, he got some details wrong, but so did the original D&D. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The fact is, Gary Gygax *did* write the first role-playing game (with Dave Arneson, who often seems to get forgotten...) And for that, I thank him, and will miss him.

I haven't played D&D since they brought out the so-called "third edition". (Yeah, right. D&D had been available in five earlier editions* while I was gaming, and I missed the start by nearly a decade. AD&D second edition was a badly-flawed but playable role-playing game. Third edition was an overly-complicated, skirmish-level war game that explicitly encouraged munchkinism. Admittedly, skirmish-level war game was always D&D's roots, but third edition got rid of pretty much anything else.) Now, I'm seriously tempted to drag my old hardbacks out of the loft, roll up some high-level characters, and send them screaming to their deaths in "Tomb of Horrors".

* - Basic D&D ("Red Box"), Advanced D&D (1st Edition), AD&D (2nd Edition), Basic D&D ("New, Easy to Master" and "The Rulescyclopedia"), AD&D (2nd Edition, "Skills & Powers" books).

Posted by graham @ 05:49 pm

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